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The sun was about to reach its peak when they rendezvoused with the main forces.
"I hear them," Takuma said as his ear twitched. Everyone glanced at him before looking ahead, and a few moments later, a travelling sea of green and blue in front of them became visible. They had finally caught up with the main force's backline just in time as they were about to reach the ROOT base.
The column of hundreds of shinobi covered the entire breadth of the road as they marched forward with speed. They weren't loud, but the sound of hundreds of boots hitting the flattened road created a low, constant vibration.
"Masks up," Itachi ordered.
The team, dressed in grey and black, put on their masks and sped up.
"Make way!" Takuma yelled, backing his voice with chakra.
The people in the back jumped in surprise upon hearing the startling, inorganic voice. The ones who saw them first saw the masked ANBU and began relaying instructions. The sea of shinobi parted as they began to peel away from the centre of the formation. The ranks shifted to the left and right, opening up a straight corridor, allowing the ANBU team to run through without slowing down.
Takuma gazed at the crowd on both sides as hundreds passed by. He could feel their gazes and their nervousness from the soon-approaching battle. The last time he had seen this many shinobi in one place was during the funeral at Yu during the Steam-Frost war. And even then, there weren't as many participants in that siege.
They were making their way to the front when they skidded to a halt on the dirt path as they were cut off by a kunoichi with flat bangs and long sideburns that framed her face. Her hair reached the small of her back with red ornaments tied into it. She appeared in a whirl of green leaves and was dressed in the Leaf flak jacket, but the blue was replaced with black, with white diamonds at the cuff-ends of her sleeves, and an arm patch on the upper arm featuring a Uchiha fan inside a shuriken—the symbol of the Leaf Military Police Force.
Takuma's eyes narrowed when he saw the woman, and he felt a burst of anger that he had pushed down.
"Jōnin Sayuri," Itachi said, stepping forward.
Without a word, Uchiha Sayuri's eyes turned red as her Sharingan came to life. Whispers filled the space as some of the shinobi marching forward paused to stare; it was not every day they got to see the revered Uchiha dōjutsu. She observed the ANBU for a tense moment before her eyes returned to their normal onyx hue.
"Follow me to the front." She then turned to face the increasingly large crowd and barked orders, "Keep moving! Maintain formations!"
A jōnin's words were enough to scare people into obeying. The chūnin in the crowd began to get their people in order and move them back into formation.
"Something wrong?" Aquilla asked as they followed Sayuri towards the front.
Takuma tore his eyes from the woman who had essentially fired him while he was recovering at the hospital. "Just some undesirable history. Ask me later over drinks after all of this is over," he whispered, patting the Hyūga on his back.
As they crossed the halfway point, they started passing by the jōnin placed around the force to ensure they had proper coverage in case of an ambush.
"All of them are leaking chakra," the sensory-nin from reconnaissance said. He gazed at Hyūga Utsuse, who looked right back at him as they passed her by, startling him. He pulled his eyes away and spoke after a moment. "The jōnin are getting ready."
Takuma caught a glimpse of Sarutobi Asuma with a cigarette between his lips. The smoke he exhaled didn't dissipate into the open air like it normally would, and instead remained as rising clouds of smoke. He could guess that it had something to do with chakra.
Chakra burn, he thought, glancing at his captain. They had discussed his fight with Kinoto the last evening. Itachi thought that the ROOT jōnin had suffered from chakra burn after using the A-rank ninjutsu because he hadn't prepared his body to bear the load of the jutsu safely.
The Leaf jōnin were preparing themselves for the battle to come.
Takuma nervously swallowed. "It's finally feeling real for me," he said to Tern, who nodded as she unconsciously fiddled with a strap on her gear.
Waiting for them at the front of the army were two jōnin.
Hatake Kakashi had heard the commotion and was expecting them. He was dressed in the standard Leaf gear and was participating in the war as himself. There wasn't any need for him to hide behind his ANBU identity. In fact, all ANBU in the main force were participating as regular shinobi. Only the Fune team was dressed in their ANBU gear.
Kakashi gave the order to stop the army. He looked at them, but his gaze lingered on Hopper's squad. There was a sense of relief in his eyes when he saw that his subordinates were safe. Neither side reacted or showed that they knew each other, but seeing each other after an operation where lives were lost was a weight off their shoulders.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Weasel," Kakashi said.
Itachi nodded as he touched his chest, where a mini scroll hung from a hoop. There was a sombreness among the ANBU; even without being told, they could guess that the scroll stored the belongings of his subordinates.
"Are we ready?" Itachi asked.
"The advanced scouts have done their job. We have a clearer view of the location," Kakashi said. "They're using a small village as a cover and the land behind it as their base. If we want to get to them, we will have to go through the village…"
"And you suspect a hostage situation."
Kakashi nodded. "They would not hesitate to sacrifice countless lives if it meant it would buy them a moment's worth of time to escape. We must operate under the assumption that lives will be sacrificed and that the village would be used against us…"
The weight of the situation rose and became clear. They knew that Danzō chose the small village with no remarkable qualities for a reason, and perhaps this type of situation was among them. They didn't know how the villagers would react, but one thing was clear: it wasn't going to be easy navigating the situation.
Takuma closed his eyes and clenched his fists, his first thought being to ignore the villagers altogether and leave them to their fate. He thought that the value of their lives wasn't comparable to ROOT not having even the slightest chance of getting away. He didn't want to believe it, but maybe sacrificing lives once had made the already low value of life—from living as a shinobi—even lower.
"What do you suggest?" Itachi asked.
"I'll take the lead on the village situation," Sayuri said with a furrow between her brows. "I'll try to reduce the loss of civilian lives to a minimum." She gazed at Itachi. "You make sure Shimura Danzō meets his end here."
Takuma didn't like the woman, but like every Uchiha, she harboured a deep grudge against Danzō, and those feelings meant she would do anything in her power to make sure that man was dead, even if it meant giving up her chance to avenge her clan member with her own hands.
"Give me Yūhi Kurenai," she said. "Her skill with genjutsu would be useful in keeping the deaths down."
Kakashi seemed pensive. He had to decide whether tying up the jōnin to the villagers would be an appropriate use of their resources.
"About the jōnin you fought, Kinoto… What is his condition?" Kakashi asked Itachi.
"He won't be a problem."
"How sure are you?"
"It would be impressive if he somehow manages to make it here, but even then, he wouldn't be in any condition to participate at his fullest." Itachi pointed at Hopper's assault squad standing behind him. "They could take him out."
Kakashi hummed in thought, then turned around to look at his best friend doing handstand push-ups, with drops of sweat dripping onto the dirty ground below him.
"Very well. Uchiha Sayuri and Yūhi Kurenai will deal with the village and villagers before joining us. All other assignments remain the same… We are ready to move." Kakashi turned around and asked the other jōnin who was with him, "Are you ready?"
Might Gai got off his feet and stood up straight. He rolled his shoulders, and just that small moment made everyone around feel prickly from chakra and a pure sense of psychological danger.
"I'm starting as a mentor for a team of academy genin next week," Gai said, his charismatic smile still bright, but it also had a sense of seriousness befitting the situation. "I'd like to do their youthful potential justice as their teacher, so let's finish this quickly and early so I can return home and prepare properly."
Takuma looked between Itachi, Kakashi, and Gai. They had a lot of firepower on their side.
———
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The ROOT agent wheezed as she sprinted through the woods. Her lungs burned, and her throat hurt. She had been running at a speed far above her usual pace to gain even a single minute to reach back home.
She cut through the trees with the sound of her heart in her ears until she saw the entrance to a man-made cave, and the familiar sight almost made her knees buckle from exhaustion, but her body clenched up when two masked agents appeared before her and grabbed her. She managed to shrug off one of them with a grunt, but the second one had a firm grip on her.
"Verification," he said, his voice muffled behind his mask.
Those words gave her enough reason to push her arm out of her cloak, where her death-mark appeared on her upper arm. The agent holding her touched her mark to channel chakra through it to confirm she was an authentic ROOT agent, but as he did so, she, too, grabbed his arm and channelled chakra into his death-mark, causing him to stiffen. It was her way to punish him for what she believed to be a waste of time. They could kill each other by channelling chakra in a specific way.
They had a massive problem on their hands, and every moment not in front of Lord Danzō was a crime.
"Confirmed."
She pushed the man away roughly and asked, "Lord Danzō… Where?"
"Inside. Why—"
"The Hidden Leaf is coming!" she yelled and rushed inside the entrance, which opened up into a vast cavernous system made from expert use of Earth Release ninjutsu. She ran through the tunnels, asking where she could find Lord Danzō, only to be kneeling before him a few minutes later. She tried to stay on one knee, but couldn't help but slump down to both.
"My L-Lord?" she stuttered in worry and fear when she saw her master with heavy bandages around his left eye. For a moment, she forgot about the Hidden Leaf being about to knock on their door. She scanned him to see what was wrong with him, but other than the bandage around his head, everything else seemed to be normal.
"I'm healthy, my child. Speak, what made you rush so?" he asked, his voice kind.
"My Lord!" The worry for her master was replaced by the message she wanted to deliver. "The Hidden Leaf is heading our way! I followed Uchiha Itachi from Fune, and they met up with a larger force! I couldn't take the risk of getting closer, but there was a substantial number!"
Danzō looked at another agent in the room, who nodded and quickly left the room.
"Their numbers?" he asked.
She was cautious in answering because she had only seen an army from afar and had been in a hurry to return home. "Five or six hundred."
Danzō's silence became an increasingly heavier weight on her until he broke it.
"Sound the alarms; raise the alert to maximum. Gather the captains… We're abandoning the base."
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