As Ryusei moved toward the spot where his three-month-old teammates would be waiting, his thoughts were still on his earlier choice, burning the depot without even checking what was inside.
It wasn't that he didn't value potential intel that could hurt Konoha or be used as leverage. He simply knew his limits.
He wasn't a genius codebreaker who could skim enemy cipher sheets and instantly pull something useful before being discovered.
The fastest, safest way to finish the mission was to erase it all at once.
And truthfully, he didn't feel confident lingering there alone, not with the unresolved threat of that mysterious genjutsu attacker still hanging over him.
The upside was clear: a clean mission meant a buffer before the next B-rank assignment, justified under the pretext of recovery after a successfully performed taxing operation with unexpected complications.
Even Hiruzen wouldn't likely break the unspoken shinobi convention and order another mission of that scale so soon, not when B-ranks were rarely handed to genin teams in the first place.
A few weeks or months of breathing room could change everything.
He figured this success alone gave him at least a twenty percent better shot at reaching his goals in this world.
Only he knew how fast he could advance now.
His intended rapid growth wasn't just about training; it was fueled by various creative but logical methods carried on from his previous life, read online, over the years, tailored to fit this one.
In a few weeks, his soul would fuse completely, judging by his estimates.
And even more importantly, over the following months, it would perfectly adapt its new, larger form to his brain, body, and chakra system, forcing them also to evolve and grow in some way following natural laws of this world.
That process alone would rebuild and strengthen his spiritual energy, something the Senju bloodline had never been known for, and enhance his baseline brain function.
If things stayed on course, he could become dangerously close to a perfect shinobi: the physical vitality and chakra reserves of the Senju, fused with the refined spiritual energy of the Uchiha, chakra more potent, efficient, and precisely controlled.
His mind would grow sharper, faster, able to plan ten moves ahead, retain every detail, and adapt on the fly.
Short of Otsutsuki's perfect alien bloodlines, he'd be the pretty complete package for a human shinobi.
And he intended to use every part of it to gain a higher status in this world as fast as he possibly could.
As he approached the location, Ryusei assured himself that he to not only finish his part of the mission cleanly but also greet his teammates now as if close to nothing was out of the ordinary.
The last thing he wanted was to give anyone a legitimate excuse to call in a Yamanaka for a "routine" soul probe.
If it ever came to that, whatever they found buried inside him would be enough to kill him, and if it didn't, he'd choose death over letting it happen.
Fortunately, the mission was complete.
He could pass off his earlier erratic and weakened performance as the aftereffects of a strange genjutsu attack, one Hiruzen himself had ordered, though no one else needed to know that part.
Now that he thought about it, the genjutsu had been unnervingly strong.
His reaction might have been extreme thanks to the soul takeover, but genjutsu was a deeply personal weapon, reaching into the most sensitive corners of the human psyche.
Everyone's response was a bit different to different genjutsu; maybe it could be attributed to this one 'triggering' him strangely.
And he hadn't failed. Without a failed mission hanging over his head, there was no cause to "diagnose" him, no grounds to push for invasive mental evaluations. That alone was reason enough to keep up the act.
Ryusei arrived just as the last of the fighting wound down.
Okabe stood in a cratered section of the field surrounded by high earthen rocky walls, with giant earthen spears rising from the ground everywhere in his vicinity, the evidence of his previous advanced Earth Release use for this battle.
He looked to be in his late twenties and quite burly, with a plain face and hair and Konoha's standard jonin uniform.
Kanae was dusting herself off, her expression unreadable despite the slight tear in her sleeve where a cut had bled through.
Renjiro's sword was still humming faintly with chakra, his stance loose but his chakra signature oddly… excited, like a dog still itching for another round, sensed with Ryusei's sensory mode for internal mental states.
He had dark gray hair and an assassin-like black combat uniform fitting for a Hatake style.
The battlefield itself looked like three separate disasters stitched together, Okabe's side terraformed beyond recognition, Kanae's area littered with precision Gentle Fist strikes and bodies that looked untouched but weren't, and Renjiro's section… well, that one was mostly just messy slash Hatake-style kenjutsu marks.
They were all visibly tired. Okabe looked the most drained, Kanae carried herself as if ignoring the ache in her side, and Renjiro still had that twitch of leftover energy that made Ryusei keep him in his peripheral vision.
Ryusei stepped forward, forcing the same polite, "gentle" smile the original owner had used for years. He even made sure to speak in the same soft tone.
"Looks like I missed the afterparty. Did you save me a piece?"
The words were meant to sound light, maybe even a little caring toward his lovely 'Anbu' friends, but in his head, Ryusei was already laughing at the absurdity of it.
Unlike the original idiot, he knew full well they'd all seen through him long ago.
That fake warmth wasn't fooling anyone of any higher intelligence, probably never had.
The original Ryusei's so-called "gentle" look was really just a narrow, slit-eyed stare, and to make it worse often paired with that grin at certain moments, also thought by the previous owner to make him look even more "harmless" for some reason.
But, just those kinds of eyes alone, in nine out of ten anime he'd watched in his old life, were the universal red flag for "scheming villain" or "two-faced snake" - rarely a 'good' character.
Here, it had become second nature, practically muscle memory, because the original owner had worn that same expression since childhood, not to mention outside, but even inside his own house, to 'train' it better.
He'd started using it to "hide better," though it was hilariously counterproductive. Of course, the original never realized that.
The guy had been living like a paranoid outcast ever since his mother died when he was six. No friends, no adult support, nothing.
His social intelligence was so far in the negatives that he built these kinds of self-sabotaging mannerisms without even knowing it.
He now wore it without thinking, even during most battles.
So, even if he wanted to, Ryusei doubted he could drop that expression anytime soon or maybe ever without feeling awkward. So he just left it.
Besides, any sudden change in his long-standing behavior or mannerisms from the previous Ryusei could make people suspicious, maybe even point them toward the one thing he could never let slip: that he was a transmigrator from another world.
Right now, that was the biggest taboo in his life. He would never risk exposing it in the slightest, no matter what it cost.
If it meant doing things that hurt him in other ways, so be it. In the end, it was just a matter of picking the lesser evil.
So in the end, Ryusei resigned himself to keeping the same look. At this point, there was no backing out from that.
It was either keep the odd face or start explaining things he'd rather die than talk about.
The three of them stopped whatever they'd been about to say to each other and just stared at him, as if just noticing him, their faces unreadable, but scrutinizing.
The silence stretched long enough for it to start feeling awkward.
Ryusei scratched the back of his head and mussed his already messy hair with a sheepish grin.