(December, year 54 AK)
"So, what should we do next, Shisui-sensei?" Itachi asked.
"Continuing the mission as it is - no longer viable, our official mission is canceled. I'll confront the client and retrieve the item, we will return to the village with the item immediately, before Stone village sends someone else."
"But why should we bother with the item that has no value for the Land of Fire?" Hikari asked.
"It would be for our village to decide what to do with the item. Our village can negotiate with the Stone village or The Earth Temple directly and get something of value from the exchange. Either way, it is inappropriate to leave the item behind after you guys had fought so hard to protect it." Shisui said.
Then as he looked over his three teammates and saw in which state they were, he said, "Return to the mansion and rest for two hours, after that we will move out and go all the way back to the village at the maximum speed."
"Yes, Shisui-sensei." The three of them replied and left.
As Yuta returned to his assigned room inside the mansion, he fell onto his bed like a sack of potatoes and was already asleep even before his face touched the pillow.
His whole body and clothes were covered in dirt and blood splatters, but he didn't care even one bit about dirtying the sheets with that.
As for cleaning up and taking a bath - that was completely out of the question, he was completely wasted and the two hours that Shisui gave them, it wasn't even remotely enough for him to fully recover and after that he has to get up and run all the way back to the village at a maximum speed. Yuta felt helpless at just a thought about how tiresome such a journey will be for him.
He hates traveling with his whole being by now, having to run for days. But what he hates even more than that is to have to run for days at a maximum speed while being exhausted. Ninjas could run at the speed of a car from Yuta's past life, but the distances are vast, and getting anywhere could take from few hours to multiple days of running.
After just what felt like a split second to Yuta, suddenly a loud knock on his door woke him up.
As Yuta opened his eyes and looked at the window, he with tired reluctance and tired look in his eyes noticed that it was starting to lighten up outside, that could only mean that the two hours had passed and it's time to get up and move out.
'Fuck my life...' Yuta thought tiredly, but the next second he pushed back the tiredness and unwillingness of getting up and switched into his professional mode.
He quickly got up from his bed and opened the door, and as he did, he saw Itachi behind it, and Yuta immediately felt a bit of envy as he looked at him.
Itachi stood there in a cleaned-up clothes and looked refreshed and full of energy, the direct opposite of Yuta, whose clothes were all dirty and stained with dried up blood, his face and exposed parts of his skin was also dirtied and by now he really needed a bath, to say the least. And the way Yuta felt right now, he would've preferred a good twelve-hours sleep even before the bath.
"It's time to move out." Itachi said calmly, and to give him credit, Itachi behaved as if he didn't notice the dirt, smell or how tired Yuta looked, remaining completely professional in this situation.
"Got it." Yuta replied, although his tone was raspy, it carried a sense of readiness to act, and the look in his eyes had already returned back to its normal state, it was calm and focused as always during the missions.
Yuta and Itachi moved out of the mansion and found Shisui and Hikari already standing there, waiting for them.
Shisui was carrying a wooden box on his back the size of a backpack, Yuta figured that was the item in question.
'Too bad I wasn't present when Shisui confronted that guy, I could only imagine the look on his face when he realized that he had fucked up.' Yuta thought with a bit of satisfaction.
"You don't look too good, Yuta. Maybe you also need to be carried like a baggage?" Hikari said with a smirk as Yuta came closer.
As Shisui looked at Yuta's state, he frowned a bit. And even Itachi, although he stood silently and his expression didn't change at all from his usual calm and blank one, Yuta felt that Itachi too was emanating something like pity when he looked at him.
'Damn it! I'm not that weak and fragile, why all of you are looking at me like that?!' Yuta thought in exasperation.
"I'm fine!" He blurted out indignantly.
"Okay, if you say so. But don't worry, if you were to collapse on the way, I would carry you back. Although I would have to throw you into the river first, you seriously reek..." Hikari said with a smirk.
"Yea, very funny, can we go now?" Yuta said with a deadpan expression, unable to take it any longer.
"Let's move out." Shisui said and they started running.
On the way, suppressing the feeling of soreness and tiredness in his muscles, Yuta glanced at the sky, it was still quite dark and it was only starting to lighten up. At this point Yuta knew, that it would be a long while before they will stop for the night. This is the critical part of their way back, since they have to leave the Land of Grass as soon as possible, and even when they enter the Land of Fire, they won't be completely safe either if there is a pursuit.
The border patrols should be able to intercept any regular intruders, but those patrols mainly composed from Genins and Chunins, there is rarely a Jonin stationed on such duty, and only when there is some sort of an intel that something might happen there. After all, Jonins are the few elites of the village, and the village has better things for them to do than to stay at the border duty.
When something major happens at the border and the regular border patrols were unable to handle the situation, that's when a Jonin could be dispatched in a timely manner to resolve it, like when it happened during Yuta's mission with Mist ninjas.
That means, that if the Stone village sends a Jonin team quickly enough, then such a team would have good chances to successfully infiltrate the Land of Fire and slip past the border patrols to continue the pursuit of Shisui's team even inside the territory of the Land of Fire.
So right now they have to gain as much distance between them and a possible pursuit team from the Stone village as fast as possible, no time to rest. Those two hours were already a lot in their current situation.
So, Yuta had no other choice but to grit his teeth and run, and to try his best to not slow down his team.
They were moving much faster than they usually do, and Yuta was spending a lot of energy just to keep up.
After about an hour of running Yuta felt that his muscles were heated up properly and his exhaustion was pushed back a little, and he continued running in a formation without much problem.
But after another six hours or so, his second wind started to fade and the exhaustion returned hard. It was only noon, and Yuta knew that there at least ten more hours of running that he has to endure, there is no way he would allow someone to carry him like Hikari suggested, he would die from embarrassment and humiliation.
'This won't be easy, huh...' Yuta thought. But exhaustion or no exhaustion, Yuta continued to run in a formation without slowing down.
After two more hours Yuta entered a state of some kind of a trance, his exhaustion and pain in his muscles faded to the periphery of his senses and by now Yuta paid no more attention to all of that than he would to a stamina bar in a videogame.
Yuta knew for a fact how much he could push his own body and to continue running even through the exhaustion, he already tested that thoroughly during the mission with the Mist ninjas, so now he estimated, that he should be able to run until they stop for the nigh, although just barely.
'I will feel even worse tomorrow morning, huh...' Yuta thought absentmindedly as he continued running.
By the time it started getting dark and sun was about to set, Yuta was already in a state, when he didn't even register what was happening around him, all he sees and knows right now is his squad's formation, his place in it, and that he had to keep going.
By this time he regretted using his last bits of chakra to finish off Keisuke quickly during the fight, if not for that, he would've had much more energy today, but what's done is done, and Yuta didn't want to time-travel and return to that clusterfuck of a fight just for a such insignificant reason as to have a better time during his way back to the village.
After another hour it became too dark to continue moving at a fast pace, and Shisui finally stopped the group for the night. Shisui quickly found a small cave and led the group in, and as soon as Yuta entered the cave and found a relatively flat and dry surface on the ground in a corner, he untied his ninja tools pouch, placed it on the ground and fell down, using it as a pillow. He was already asleep as soon as his face touched the pouch.
What were the rest of the group were talking about before going to sleep and if they set up night watch shifts or not, Yuta wouldn't know and wouldn't care, since the last remains of the fumes he was going on for the last couple hours were already depleted a while ago and he was on the verge of collapsing for at least last half an hour or so, so when he realized that it was finally time to rest, he only had a few seconds to find a place to lay down before his body will decide that place for him.
--- AN ---
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