We have stopped for the night, the journey is too long to do in a single trip. We skipped sleep last night, so everyone is dead-tired and ready to fall asleep. Kakashi is also probably tired, although you couldn't tell by looking at him, his ANBU ass is probably too used to these kinds of all-nighters and more.
We draw straws to decide the night-watch order. It ends up being Hinata, then me, then Sakura, then Kakashi. Before sleeping we seal and tie Hirogi up, even though I'm pretty sure she wouldn't try to escape even with that by this point.
—
"Sasuke, wake up, it's your turn"
I groan "Allright, just give me a minute to actually wake-up"
Hinata responds "Ok, I'll wait for you to get ready before I go to sleep then."
Hinata, bless her heart, does exactly as she said. After I wash my face I find her waiting. Once I take over her watch she just goes to bed and instantly falls asleep.
-next day
Today we all eat packed rations while running to save time. We will continue travelling until nighttime, having passed Kumogakure yesterday. After we wake up tomorrow we'll look for a spot to set-up our outpost.
-next day
We've found a pretty good spot. A mountain-cave that's difficult to spot from either above or below. Shifting some boulders makes it completely undetectable. You wouldn't know something was up here if you didn't know where to look beforehand.
While landscaping the insides of the cave the memories from the shadow clones come. One of the squads apparently annihilated a minor village. While searching for another they manage to find out they're getting followed. Afterwards they pretend to search for some more time before heading back to the outpost. Once they get there the hunter-nin following them proceed to ambush and pop them.
I'm honestly kind of sad I don't get to see the explosion that'll happen when they enter the hideout.
With that concluded I go back to making space for the interrogation room.
-next day
After we have breakfast, grilled goat, we begin preparing for a raid. This involves Hinata making a shadow clone and it going out to scout. Until we manage to gather some intel we'll have to make do with this.
It's while we're having lunch, breakfast leftovers, that the clone pops and we receive some intel. It managed to find three villages in total, two of them are too large for us to attack, one is just the right size.Located on a mountain top. Fortyone Genin and seven chunin. We'll attack them tomorrow, right now I'm on a winning streak in Monopoly-Catan.
-next day
"The village is built partially underground. What is visible is less than half of the village. The rest is located underneath the mountain. There is one tunnel leading to the base of the mountain, length is approximately four hundred meters. The entrance into the mountain from the village is hidden inside of the most south-eastern house. That entrance leads to a fifty meter long tunnel. Most of the enemy shinobi are located in the underground part of the village, above is a token force, composed of eleven genin and one chunin."
I begin the strategy planning "I will make three shadow clone squads and Hinata will make two shadow clones, one squad head over to the hidden tunnel at the base of the mountain, when we begin the attack they will use fire jutsu to heat it up to extreme levels and cause as much smoke as possible. After we eliminate that token force silently we do the same to the entrance tunnel. This should kill most of them. My two squads will each pair with one of Hinata's clones and hunt anyone using earth jutsu to escape. Did I miss anything?"
Both Hinata and Sakura shake their heads. Action time.
Hinata and I create the shadow clones, they all immediately dash towards their destinations. Afterwards we sneak up on the enemy shinobi. The first we eliminate is the chunin, Hinata popping his heart with a quick lunge when we're in range. From there we ambush all the other genin, most of them in groups of two or three. When they're all dead we move on to phase two.
Hinata leads us to the entrance tunnel. After we throw the bookcase hiding it Hinata immediately shouts "They're aware we're here!". With that warning I quickly began using jutsu, alternating between fire and wind jutsu. By the second fire jutsu the walls are searing red, by the third they are colored a bright white. I stop at the fourth, when the ceiling of the tunnel begins dripping. Soon the screams begin.
Afterwards we just sat and waited, Hinata prepared to warn us of any potential danger. After about twenty minutes she confirms they are all either dead, captured or soon-to be dead. We continued waiting for the tunnel to cool-off for about five hours. When I can actually touch it without my skin sizzling we proceed to go looting, and by that I mean stealing their kinjutsu scroll.
After securing it we meet-up with the clones and go back to the outpost. I don't dispel them just yet, I'll do that after they help us carry the six captives.
-next day.
Having arrived late the previous night I didn't spend any time actually examining the captives before we tossed them in their cells. This time we've got a grandma, two blond girls about nineteen each, a bald twenty-something and a pair of male twins around seventeen. The grandma, twins and baldy were all chunin, so they should have some better intel than the others.
Something interesting happens during interrogation. One of the blonds tried to pass a written message to Hirogi. I say tried because good luck doing that with a Byakugan right next to your sorry ass. Hirogi quickly snitched to Hinata, and I'm now reading the secret message.
'There is a hidden storage seal under my tongue. Help me Access it and we can all escape together!"
When I ask Hinata whether this was pre-written she shakes her head, apparently she was curious what she was gonna do with it. A look under the tongue reveals that yes, there is a storage seal there. More concerning is that it's invisible to the byakugan somehow.
—
-Haharu POV
The hunter-nin are all dead. The trail runs cold.
It matters not, they must still be somewhere in the land of lightning.
Thankfully I have convinced the Raikage of the danger Sasuke Uchiha and his team (I doubt he is operating alone) poses towards our internal security. He has thus personally given me the mission of hunting him down. Mutan was assigned to the front-line, there will be a large offensive soon.
There is a weak lead, A village deep inside of the land of lightning was massacred to a man, no signs of the Uchiha's usual tactics. Until either more attacks occur or there is a clearer sign of his presence we must continue investigating the current area.