Sealing Salientia - Chapter 34: Infiltration - Author: PenSmoke

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor make any profit from writing this.

Previously on Sealing Salientia: There, attached to the inside of the wall, and connected via seal matrices to multiple other points, was an exploding tag, primed to detonate.

Konoha
Wednesday, October 14th, Year 71

Motioning to his sensei to look inside, he watched as the older man went from a normal complexion to pale and ashen within a second as the blood drained away from his face.

Hiruzen turned towards him, harshly whispering, "Is it about to detonate? How long do we have?"

Jiraiya looked at the tag, giving a closer inspection now that he could see part of it. After visually tracing out what he could see, he responded. "It looks like it is set up to trigger from a remote location, linked to that location through a chakra line in the wall." He heard Hiruzen inhale sharply, and regretted what he knew had to be said next. "It is linked to others throughout the building and beyond. I saw at least a dozen hotspots in the Academy while using sage mode."

The headmaster was shaking, though with fear or rage, he couldn't quite tell. Perhaps it was a combination of both. "We need to see how far the explosion area is and where a safe place to evacuate is. The Academy is supposed to be an evacuation point, and if it is compromised, who knows where else could be. Can you map it out?"

Jiraiya sat still for a moment again, gathering the natural energy around him. When the appropriate amount had been gathered, he mixed the energies together and re-activated his sage mode. Using the expanded sensory abilities that the enhancement provided, he began to trace the tendrils of chakra lined material stretching out from this particular note.

He followed the line going upwards through several more seals before it dead-ended in a circular ring of seal on the ceiling, likely to ensure the collapse of the roof overhead. Going back to the line heading down, he watched as it encompassed several more explosive tags in the basement before heading out through the earth underneath, a thin line of metal disappearing into the dirt and rock below them.

Speaking up, he informed the headmaster of his findings. "The entire building is rigged, roof to basement, and in such a way that should it go off, everything would collapse in on itself, trapping anyone inside. The blast radius looks to probably include the practice grounds outside as well, though I can't see much more than that at this time. The connections are very thin, and disappear underground."

Hiruzen walked a couple of feet down the hall, grabbing a poster that was hanging on the wall elsewhere and using it to cover the hole that Jiraiya had dug, hiding the explosive tag contained within. After camouflaging the spot, Jiraiya followed his former sensei as they walked back to the office. Once within, and the security seals were activated, Jiraiya discussed the next steps further.

"Should we evacuate the school building now?"

Hiruzen shook his head. "They may be waiting for a panic to set them off. And if they are embedded that deeply in the walls and throughout, they have been here a long time. I doubt that someone managed to infiltrate the village put a whole demolition arsenal within the past day. We should map it out and wait until the building is clear of all students before trying to remove them."

Hiruzen started pacing around his small office. "You can trace them, so I think that you should be looking to try and find the source, and see if any other locations are compromised. I'm going to go inform Fugaku of the situation, and I will have Mebuki dismiss a single class at a time over the next few minutes, to get the building emptied sooner. I think that is the safest course of action."

Jiraiya nodded, that made sense. Causing a panicked mass of students fleeing the building would only arise suspicions, and if it was indeed someone waiting and watching, the sudden burst of activity would certainly elicit the explosive demolition. He stood up, cancelling the seals and activating sage mode for the third time in less than an hour. In a way it was good practice, but he could already feel it wearing on him, even though he had barely used any abilities while in the state. He supposed that he still had some work to do before it was considered perfect.

Leaving the office in a calm and controlled pace, he watched as Mebuki's face went immediately to panic before Hiruzen calmed her down and informed her of her task. Together, they all left the office, Jiraiya with a notebook out to sketch where the tags were, Hiruzen with a glint in his eye as he made his way towards Hokage tower and Mebuki looking worried as she went down the hall towards the nearest classroom.

Jiraiya started his search by looking down to try and track where the thread of chakric conductive metal went, but beyond a hundred feet under the dirt it was too difficult to sense the tiny wire. He thought about using an underground travel technique, but wasn't sure whether or not the disturbance in the rock could set it off. Abandoning that idea, he started focusing his efforts above ground.

He thought about what targets he would target in an enemy city if he wanted to cause as many casualties as possible and disrupt any ability to retaliate. The Academy made sense, especially as it was a shelter for evacuation. Therefore, other evacuation areas would likely be targets.

In addition, the hospital would be a huge target. Preventing the quick healing of injured or wounded back to a potential fight would be a great asset for an attacker. Another obvious target would be the Hokage tower. Besides being a symbol of the village, it housed administrative functions, recordkeeping, and several important offices. If that were destroyed it would severely hamper any organized response from Leaf ninja.

While the wall that surrounded the village wasn't really a deterrent to any sufficiently capable ninja, breaching it would allow any invading force a better chance at getting more personnel inside. It would make sense to try and rig that with explosives. Lastly, the market district, especially stores that produced shinobi goods would be a highly valuable target. Disrupt the supply chain, and make it so new provisions were not available, that would be of a large benefit to an enemy force.

Finalizing his mental list of where to look, he went to the nearest location, the market district. Strolling at what he hoped was a casual pace, he stretched out his senses to look for any sort of chakra disturbance. It was common practice for many stores that were owned by former or current ninja to have some small chakra activity. Ichiraku practically glowed with the multitude of seals that existed there. But, he was startled to see that nearly every single building had some form of energy signature radiating off of it.

He walked up to the corner of a street, and stopped for a moment. Leaning on a wall of one of the buildings to get as close as possible, he felt the same energy signature as at the Academy, a long trail of explosive notes set throughout the entire district. Many of the various shops around the area had at least one, and they were chained together, likely to all blow up in succession. And just like the Academy, each section seemed to have a line heading deep down into the earth below that he couldn't trace.

Trying to hide his growing anxiety, he started towards the hospital, fearful of what he might find. While passing several residential areas on his way, he was appalled to discover that many houses and apartments also had explosive notes buried in their walls. Everything from large apartment complexes to single family houses had them, and in no order that he could easily discern.

Attempting to maintain what he hoped was perceived as a casual walk, he approached the hospital. As he reached the main doors of the healing center, he was temporarily relieved to not feel the foreboding energy reaching out through the walls. But, that relief was short-lived as he meandered around the larger structure, finding nearly half of the building completely covered in explosive material. The tags were all over the newest section of the facility, but the older sections had none. This gave him the first clue as to the pattern.

On his way walking around the periphery of the village, he concluded that this was something that had real meaning. Each section of wall that had been blown apart by the Kyuubi had several tags within it, but the older parts that had remained intact were clean. He could very clearly see several tags inhabiting the area of the wall where he had escaped with an asleep Naruto those many years ago.

All of the houses that had tags on them looked newer, possibly rebuilt after the attack as well. No buildings that were older had anything planted in their walls. As a quick check, he strolled as near as he could to some of the older clan districts. Confirming that he felt nothing in those areas, he cataloged the information and made his way back towards the Hokage Tower to report what he had found.

Upon his approach, he quickly scanned the building and was somewhat relieved to see that it was clean of the tags. This made sense, the Tower was unscathed during the Nine-Tails attack those years ago, and had been around since practically the founding of the village.

Entering the office building and climbing up to the top floor, he was met with the bustle of activity as ANBU agents swarmed in and out. Animal masks and black cloaks fluttering around represented the only slightly controlled panic that he felt at the moment. Muscling his way through the crowd of ninja, he attempted to get into the hokage's office where he could see Hiruzen and Fugaku both talking in an urgent manner.

When Fugaku raised his voice, the ANBU agents stepped aside to facilitate his entry. Moving with haste through the narrow opening afforded him between the bodies of his ninja brethren, he entered the Hokage's office.

"Sensei, I completed the preliminary scans of the town. Hundreds of buildings throughout the town are affixed with exploding tags throughout. The barrier wall has several sections compromised, a large chunk of the hospital, the entire Academy, and large swathes of the residential district and the market district are covered as well. I noted that it seemed as if only newer construction was affected. Older buildings such as the original hospital wing, clan compounds and the Hokage tower seem to have none."

"Thank you Jiraiya, that will be most useful information. You look tired, you should rest."

Realizing that his sage mode was still going, he cancelled the chakric ability. Immediately, a wave of tiredness settled on him like a warm blanket. He stumbled over to the couch in the office, barely able to stand on his feet. He thought about it for a moment, and he had probably kept sage mode active for nearly 3 hours so far that day. While the boost was great, his body wasn't used to using it for so long. He could feel a pounding headache settling in, and his limbs felt heavy and weak. It was yet another sign that he needed to practice with the nature chakra more often to build his tolerances.

Lying down, he drowsily asked. "What are we going to do about it?"

Hiruzen responded first, "Well, with such a large portion of town compromised, we are going to have to either find the activation area and destroy it, or evacuate the entire populace to a safe area, once one has been established."

Fugaku spoke next. "If as much of the town is covered as you say, this is not likely an infiltration mission that was recent. This is a long term-operation that has been going on for years. While we have no idea when or what the trigger is, I think it is best to draw as little attention to the issue right now. If they haven't been set off yet, the person is likely waiting on a specific moment. While we work on both a plan to neutralize the tags and discover who is responsible, this is going to be an ANBU level operation, only the highest security clearances allowed."

Jiraiya could feel himself drifting towards the unconscious embrace of sleep, but he had one last thing that he needed to say. "Sensei, make sure Naruto gets to the Senju compound safely. Please?"

As Hiruzen nodded in affirmation, Jiraiya let himself go into the land of blissful slumber.

AN: Shorter chapter, I apologize. Work has been extra busy recently, and I've been working a lot of overtime, including up to 80-hour weeks. Between trying to deal with that, planning an upcoming wedding and just raising a family, I haven't had much for spare time. Hopefully the overtime for work will calm down through July, and I'll be back to writing a lot more soon.