Chapter 6
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The month flew by without much incident, I mean when you are on a cycle of train, eat, train, bathe, sleep and then repeat not much happens around you that you are aware of. Our report day for special forces selection was here and I was just rising from my deep slumber to prepare myself for the task at hand. After washing my face brushing my teeth and taming my long black hair (that I'm still not use to) into its usual single ponytail and dressing myself I was off into the early morning darkness. It was cold enough that you could see your breath, winter was almost here and in the land of earth they were brutal. It would snow but only on the tops of the mountains but it did get bone chillingly cold, temperature could sometimes drop into the negatives but with our whole village being made of stone and the Suki tribe being the engineering geniuses that they were designed a heating system throughout the whole village that kept it warm through the winter months.
I took to the rooftops seeing as it would be quicker than using the labyrinth of bridges below. We were meeting up at Tsuchikage's tower an hour early because like idiots all four of us forgot to go to supply and get our issued shinobi gear, to which okaasan lectured me extensively to stop being so forgetful. I neared my destination and pushed chakra to my legs and leaped off the last rooftop and landed in front of my friends.
" Late as always, Yuudai-kun," Aoi said with a smile.
" Good morning to you as well, Aoi, everyone" I responded as I knocked the dust off myself from my landing.
"Well, you weren't that late, only two minutes late" Fuuma clarified. " Let's go."
We all filed behind Fuuma and walked to the second floor to the central issuing office. We talked with the shinobi on duty there who quickly took our sizes and began shoving clothes and gear in our hands. We didn't get the traditional red and brown Iwa shinobi wear, instead we got black gi's and mesh undershirts and pants ( which are uncomfortable as fuck) a pair of black pants, and a winter cloak.
" Is this what special forces get issued?" I asked the clerk.
" Just those who are going through the selection process, if you pass that then depending on what kind of specialty they assign your squad you will get more specialized gear. "
That was good to know at least.
After getting changed we made our way downstairs to the basement to wait. Jin and his group was already waiting along with a few more people in total I'd say twenty so 4 four-man squads. It was tense wait but as soon as the clock struck 4 everyone began to move through the door off to the right of the help desk. It was a short walk but soon I could feel an uneasy sensation settle in my gut, great perfect time for nerves to set in. We reached a giant hall with a second story balcony going in a circle around and at its ends were staircases, the group began to separate back into their respective teams due to the new space and in a flash a person with a cloak and hood on appeared before us.
" Welcome to you all, I glad to see so many participants in today selection, I hope you are prepared?" it asked and no one responded. " I'll take that as a yes, let's not waste time then," five large scrolls appeared in front of the mystery person. " Here are the tasks we have picked out for you to complete, each scroll contains a mission briefing, each one is a A-ranked mission, now you will have six weeks to complete said mission, you are operating independently of the village we have each one of your records and will dispose of them should you be captured,"
Man damn, that is a dead sentence to everyone here should we get caught, basically we will have no backup period. If things get ugly you have to dig yourself out of it and should they get deadly then well... die.
" Of course you will be allowed to withdraw from the mission at any time and nothing will happen to you our your squad, however you will be permanently banned from attempting the selection course again, understood?" it asked.
" Yes," we all said in unison.
" Oh, by the way leave your headbands here on the desk we wouldn't things to get tied back to us now would we?"
After placing our headbands on the desk we then picked a scroll and began to read it's contents.
" Aw, shit why did we pick this one?! it's going to be so boring" Fuuma said placing her knuckles into her cheek. I began reading over her shoulder as did everyone else.
"Picking up intel, from an informant in the hidden leaf, huh? That is actually pretty dangerous" Josai said sagely.
Dangerous isn't the word I would use let's try... Suicidal, crossing the land of fire's borders without travel paperwork would be tricky, but then infiltrating a ninja village without paper work was damn near impossible, and to even get travel papers takes longer than six weeks with all the background screening we would have to go through because we are from the land of Earth.
"Also there is a meeting place and a time, if we miss it..." Aoi trailed off implying what we all knew. Miss that hit time and we fail our mission. So the pressure was on right out the gate. We quickly memorized the rest of the details and were off to gather supplies. We couldn't carry too much food or water only enough to last for the trip to the border. We kept weapons to the bare minimum so about three kunai and ten shuriken. We wanted to look like travelers; civilian travelers, not shinobi. After all our prep work was done we set out, we started at a shinobi's pace so we could reach the border between Earth and Grass by nightfall.
"Josai, have you already started thinking of a plan to get us into Konohagakure?" I asked as we moved.
" Yes, however, it will be tricky especially with out paperwork or identification, but we do have a three weeks before the meeting with the informant so I'm sure we can come up with something," He said. I only hoped he was right otherwise this would get ugly quick, and by ugly I mean we would be dead with only a month of shinobi experience under our belt, talk about sad.
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After crossing our border and getting close to the border the land of Grass shared with the land of Fire, we began dampen our chakra trying to cover our movements as much as possible. The only thing I hoped for was that there wasn't a Hyuga on patrol or on duty at an outpost there would be no hiding from those eyes they possessed. Once we reached the border we split off of each other at least 300 to 500 meters to make it look less obvious we were traveling together and we slowed to a civilian pace to hide our shinobi capabilities. Crossing the border wasn't as hard as I thought it would be in fact I passed an outpost with a wave and smile to the shinobi on duty. Was Konoha that lax on security? Or did they not care about kids walking past their borders? Well whatever the case I was not complaining. I continued my journey and I began to think to myself, how slow I was moving.
I had gotten so use to moving at shinobi speed which wasn't slow at all, you could cover a mile in three minutes. Right now I felt as though I was moving at a snail's pace like the whole rest of the world was flying past me at break neck speed and I was just standing still. I knew at this pace it would take us a few days to reach our destination seeing as Konoha was located in the southern part of Fire country, but their security was so relaxed in fact as I pushed my senses out I could only feel the faint chakra signatures of my comrades, nothing else.
"Oh, to hell with this then," I said as I flared my chakra a bit. In a flash of body flickers I was surrounded by my comrades.
" The hell Yuudai we thought you were being attacked," Fuuma said looking around for enemy shinobi. " Don't scare us like that,"
" Awww, is Fuuma-chan worried for my well-being, I'm honoured" I said jokingly. She took a swing at me that I easily dodged.
" You know I hate that suffix, you dick."
"Anyways," Josai cut in. " What's up, Yuudai"
" It's there security, when you guys crossed the border did you run into any issues?" I asked
" No, not at all" Aoi answered as did Josai and Fuuma. " That is strange, but not every nation will be on high alert like ours is." Aoi concluded.
She did have a point, out of all the nations ours was the only one to never from any alliances with any of the other shinobi villages and the one time we did we stabbed them in the back hence why mist shinobi will kill an stone shinobi on sight, so there is a reason for us to defend our borders heavily, but this lack of urgency, this lack of worry in the air was unnerving, too welcoming.
" Well we should be able kick it back into shinobi pace, just keep a check on your chakra and not let it flair too much." I said. They nodded and took off again. I hopped up into the trees and landed on a branch. " Now then, let's see how easy this is," I said and began a most terrifying task of tree hopping. I pushed chakra into my legs and eyed my target, I leaped and overshot my landing target and fell to the ground landing with a thud. " Fuck, as I thought not easy at all." I dusted myself off and tryed again. After about 20 minutes of damn near killing myself I was finally able to keep a steady pace, but I couldn't lose focus so fighting up here was a no go for me.
As we approached Konoha night began to fall and I carefully flared my chakra a bit to sign for a meeting. As everyone appeared we began to discuss our plan to infiltrate the village.
" So, any bright idea's anyone?" I asked looking over the group.
" Nope, not one" Fuuma said with a sigh.
" Nobody was expecting you to have one anyways, thought is not your forte Fuuma" Josai said with a smirk.
" Fuck you, four-eyes," Fuuma spat.
" Fuuma, language." Aoi said simply. " Honestly we don't know the perimeter layout, so we should probably scout that out before making any plans."
" True, alright Josai with me we'll go scout," I said. "And, shut-up Fuuma."
" Fuck you, I didn't say anything," she defended
" But you were going to," She closed her mouth at that. " thought so, let's go Josai,"
It took us about 10 minutes to get within reasonable distance of the gate without being seen or heard. We then moved back and west through the forest. We made a clover pattern around the village making sure we remained concealed but still able to see and collect intel. Then we reached the backside of the village where the mountain was and began to scale the shallow side. We peeked over and to our joy it was undefended and just high enough that we could take to the trees for our landing. Josai and I hurried back to the girls to bring them to our new found entrance. After meeting back up it was then quickly decided that we infiltrate tonight, we still had about two weeks before the rendezvous with our informant but we also saw this as a chance to collect more intel than just what we were here for. Also unbenounced to by friends a chance for me to see where we were at in the timeline of "His" story.
We made our way back to the mountain and scaled it one by one, after everyone was over the side and we made sure no one had saw us we decided to rest for the night taking turns in two-man teams in the treetops.
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Morning came quickly and my senses were assaulted by the buzzing chakra in the village. It baffled me how anyone can grow accustomed to this overload of information at once. I could see the other were also having a hard time adjusting to the village. The girls seemed worse off with Fuuma complaining of a headache, and Aoi being very irritable which shocked us. We decided to look even more civilian and rid ourselves of the mesh armor we wore underneath our gi's. After we had changed we headed into the village center making sure we slowed the production of our chakra to that of a civilian, Which made life hell for us. If shinobi had a crutch it was chakra, we used it to regulate everything about our bodies from temperature to keeping our muscles from becoming sore and when you slow your chakra production which is different from damping or shrinking, what you are in a sense doing is shutting off chakra to everything but vital organs and even they get the minimum in order to do normal tasks, Now we were in a sense normal kids however when you use something all your life to just shut it of from parts of your body makes things a bit more uncomfortable. Plus the humidity, kami the humidity the fact that it is fall and it's still this hot and humid is a crime, for people who live in the mountains the air here is like trying to breath through a wet towel.
We decided that it would be best to split into two-man teams and observe the village like that. Fuuma and I went west and Josai and Aoi would take east.
" Why, are we always stuck together?" Fuuma asked in an irritated tone. I took a deep breath.
"Because, one you and Josai would do nothing but fight, and two you and Aoi are both extremely peeved right now and two females together both with fucked up attitudes just leads to a host of problems I don't want to deal with," I explained. "Watch out,"
I grabbed Fuuma out the way before an orange flash with a paint bucket took her out. Soon a group of shinobi hot on his tail flew past us.
" The hell are they doing?" Fuuma asked. I looked behind me and pointed.
" Probably trying to catch the person that did that," I said. The faces of the Hokage were riddled with graffiti with obscene words and pictures. Man it's hard to believe that the perpetrator of that prank would be the savior of the world, never judge a book by it cover I suppose.
" Are those the village's previous hokage? Man that little boy needs his ass beat."
I just chuckled at this and kept walking with Fuuma falling in step with me. As we ventured through the village my senses began to adapt and it wasn't as overwhelming as in the morning, it seemed Fuuma was also adapting well. We walked for hours looking at various infrastructure and making sure we kept marks on the security patrols as they moved throughout the village in teams of two. We tried as best we could to find weaknesses in their defense. Of course we were still genin not as experienced in our current undertaking so I'm sure the little details that we will remember from this place won't matter in fact I don't think the village will even ask for it. Konoha for a shinobi village was a pretty happy place people greeted you on the streets, helped you if you needed it not expecting anything in return, in Iwa yeah forget that someone does something for you then you can bet your ass you owe them something in return and you better deliver. It was kind of hard to believe these people treated Naruto with disdain well some of them not all were guilty of that.
As the day began to come to a close Fuuma and I stood on top of a bridge, looking down at our reflections down in the flowing river.
"What's with this place why is everyone here so happy?" Fuuma asked.
" It's simple because they are free, freedom brings happiness because it is a basic human desire to be free," I said. " Iwa is not free that's why people are unhappy there," I finished and looked to my left to see Aoi and Josai walking up to us.
" Yo guys, how was the sightseeing trip," I joked. Josai chuckled a bit.
" It was... eye opening to say the lest," he responded. " I mean, people are really happy here,"
" Nothing is perfect however," Aoi said "I did hear a story about an entire clan being murdered only leaving one survivor, this place has it's problems too."
She must have heard the story about the Uchiha clan, that was an ugly event that took place and to be honest should have never happened the third hokage should be ashamed. I get he was acting in the best interest of the village but can we honestly say that it was worth it.
"I see, so what do you think about our system back home?" I tested. I wanted to see where their heads were at. I wouldn't push them, I wanted them to come to their own conclusions and solutions.
" Terrible"
"Cruel"
" Disgusting"
All words were either said in pain or disdain, well I think I know what they are thinking... How do we bring about change? It's not an easy question to answer. You can try words but of course when you're dealing with an old system that benefits people at the top who have all the power and money they are NOT giving that up without a fight.
"We already said we will get stronger," Fuuma said " But we don't have a sensei, someone who can guide us this past month we trained hard and sure we all got a little better but at that pace,"
" It would take longer than we would like," Aoi finished.
That is another reason why Iwa was inferior in terms of shinobi development. You developed yourself especially if you came from a branch family, and kami help you should your family be civilians. The three man cell with a Jonin sensei plan works period look at Konoha and Suna, they produce excellent shinobi once you wouldn't want to get into a life or death battle with. Iwa was all about mass production of shinobi, keep pumping them out of the academy give them the basic and intermediate skill set and then your on your own to advance to the expert level. We had good shinobi to learn from but then that tribe shit would interfere and really stifle the development of not only other shinobi but their own. There is more than one way to skin a cat, unless you're an Iwa nin then there is only one to do everything.
" So we are here for sometime correct?" I asked and they nodded. " Well then there is a library here, filled with tons of information on a myriad of topics,"
" Yuudai are you suggesting that we steal books?" Fuuma asked.
" No, dummy he's saying that we find books on things we want to learn and study them," Josai said. " Man, I wonder if you really-"
Fuuma rush Josai and knocked him over the railing of the bridge and he hit the water and began to be taken down stream.
" Fucker, serves him right," Fuuma said dismissively " anyways, so we'll be hitting the books hard then huh?"
" We should get notebooks, I have a little bit of money my otou chan gave me for graduation, It's best we have notes to reference back to." Aoi said.
" Great Idea, okaasan gave me some money as well I'll get us an inn, so we can sleep comfortable and only have one person on guard." I added as I looked down stream. " Ummm, maybe we should go get Josai."
"Agreed, come on Fuuma," Aoi said grabbing Fuuma by the arm.
I looked up at the sky the sun's light was fading. I shighed
" Is this what you wanted? Kami-sama? To start a revolution, with a band of misfits? I swear your idea of a joke is so sick." I left to find my friends, I didn't know what that crazy man upstairs was plotting but something told me I'd find out soon enough.
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A/N: Well there you go this was really fighting me it's like I had the idea but it just kept coming out wrong, I restarted numerous times because of that. Well I tried to get through this mission in one chapter but yeah wasn't gonna happen, but I'm glad I was able to use Konoha to sew the seeds of rebellion in our heros now lets see how long it will take that seed to germinate. As always thanks for reading and liking the story… Until next time my friends.
