Chapter 1-22
The Land of Rivers, despite its position as Rain Country's drain and getting blasted frequently by scorching hot desert winds from its western neighbor, was altogether a very beautiful place to be.
It was lush, vibrant and the people had a surprisingly laid-back attitude. You had the sense, that the people understood their place between the Great Powers and just made the most of it. If shit happened, it happened.
Missions like this one had been rather common since I had taken up Kurenai's offer and finally got to wear my very own chunin-west.
They gave me the notion, that the lower-ranked D- and C-ranked missions were meant to be a mixture of revenue, public relations and to basically keep the house in order. A- and S- rank, I reckoned, would deal with immediate threats, and required utmost secrecy.
These missions, like most of them before, had a very different feel.
I paused at a junction in the hallway and felt Kurenai do the same behind me, I let the servant around the corner continue on his way and waited for him to disappear downstairs.
Yes, missions like this tended to be covert, too, but they didn't have that life and death urgency…yet.
During peace times, like now for example, missions tended to lay the groundwork for the next big conflict, that was inevitably always looming behind the horizon.
And Konoha, in our case, used that precious time to influence and 'gently' steer its direct neighbors to suit its needs and for them to favor us instead of the enemy.
That's why we were currently sneaking through a townhome of a prominent member of this country's court. Incidentally, it was actually the fourth and last one of this night, just this one, and we were done.
Eager to proceed, I finally stepped around the corner when I felt, that the coast was clear. Gently and quietly, I slid the door to my right open and let Kurenai soundlessly slip inside the bedroom. Watching her proceed to the sleeping occupant I followed her inside and closed the door just as quietly as I had opened it.
Keeping my senses on the house and the immediate neighborhood I watched as my sensei took a small breath and concentrated for a second.
I had learned quickly that missions weren't as straightforward as initially had thought and you really couldn't half-ass your way through these missions anymore.
You couldn't just willy-nilly put the target under a genjutsu, that influenced something as profound as his opinion or worldview. Worst case there's already a genjutsu in place by another party, since stuff like this was basically part of the game, and you might end up with two similar genjutsu working against each other, which could easily leave the poor guy or girl go crazy. They literally could develop some form of schizophrenia and all the work was for nothing.
Anyway, either you used the genjutsu-disruption or pain without the target noticing to break any genjutsu, that might be in place, just in case, or you did it like us, more subtle and safer, and used a sensor to check for anything amiss.
It was funny in a way, I thought as I watched Kurenai gently tap the forehead of the sleeping court member with her index finger, missions like this were basically a giant chess match, a constant back and forth, between the major players of this world.
You got hints from spies, that would report a foreign presence or noticeable shifts in politics and suddenly you were off to swing the balance back in your favor. Sometimes later a foreign spy would report the same thing to their employers, and they would send someone to undo your work. A couple of weeks later you might end up in the same position over the same sleeping person doing exactly the same thing again.
Back and forth.
Sometimes life could feel just a tiny bit unfair. And yet…I wouldn't want to switch places with the Kumo chunin currently relaxing in a nearby hot spring of one of the many famous spa resorts in the Land of Hot Water, because I was currently hovering over his blissfully unaware client cloaked in my flawless Hiding with Camouflage Technique. Said client, who was peacefully sleeping, wasn't going to leave this hotel room alive.
We used the first three days to observe our target, a wealthy elderly merchant with close ties to Kumogakure, who Konoha had decided would have to be removed from his business and replaced with his son and heir, who was already getting influenced to be more pro-Konoha in his dealings.
This whole mission was some serious spy and assassination shit and I loved it.
The elderly pro-Kumo merchant apparently didn't even know he had a Kumo bodyguard. It seemed The Village Hidden in the Clouds, valued their business with the guy to such a degree, that they had assigned a permanent shadow to the guy to keep him safe without him realizing it. Who wanted to know, that they are being watched while having fun in a brothel or got wasted in a bar? Ignorance was bliss after all.
The chunin in questions felt like a decently strong average-Joe and even looked the part, which was probably the point since we had only spotted him trailing our target with my sensing.
I had been somewhat envious of the guy when we had decided to watch and wait before proceeding with the assassination.
The man was basically on paid vacation. Whenever his charge went into a bar to drink himself stupid, he could enjoy a couple of drinks to keep up appearance and keep an eye on him. Whenever his charge decided to enjoy a day or two at a spa, he could sneak in and enjoy the amenities, too. Whenever his charge decided to visit a rather fancy brothel, …well, you got the idea.
This relaxed atmosphere, we had eventually decided, was going to be his downfall and my chance to ruin his day.
Fully aware and proud of the way our skills complemented each other during these missions Kurenai brought her genjutsu to bear on the unwitting chunin while I was going to deal the killing blow.
Again, this mission was going to be anything but straightforward in its execution. There was one overreaching guideline, which made things delicate.
No signs of foul play. At all.
Taking calming breaths, I focused on my chakra.
Before I suspended my sensing for this finicky operation I let it linger on my sensei and marveled at her technique, which currently kept the chunin utterly relaxed in the water and out of the way.
Her technique was simple, keep the target relaxed, make him doze without having him fall asleep. Too much and he might notice something amiss, let his superiors rather think of negligence than third-party involvement.
The delicate part, however, was her featherlight touch on his mind and her ability to withdraw her chakra completely when my deed was done, leaving absolutely no trace of genjutsu and foreign chakra.
A minuscule shake of my head brought me back to the here and now.
I closed my eyes; this would be almost invisible to the naked eye anyway, my senses utterly focused on myself and the sleeping form in front of me, or more precisely his heart with my hand hovering just above the skin.
I felt a chakra thread form at the tip of my index finger and carefully extended it, no more painful than the sting of a crane fly my chakra pierced his skin.
More and more I extended my chakra and carefully guided it around my target. Guided by his underdeveloped and untrained chakra pathways I wrapped my own chakra around his beating heart.
Once, twice and a third time until I felt I had a good enough grasp. Finally, when it contracted my chakra became taut and refused to grant the sleeping man his next heartbeat.
Asystole, the most serious form of cardiac arrest and in this case completely irreversible.
No blood flow, no brain activity, no struggle, I held his heart until he finally died peacefully in his sleep.
'You are welcome.' With that, I carefully reeled in my invisible chakra string, always mindful to keep the surrounding tissue undamaged.
"Do you have a plan?" Kurenai quietly asked standing next to me on the wooden roof of the little store. Almost smack in the center of this rural little town just opposite the tavern, which housed our two targets.
The Legendary Stupid Brothers
Konoha missing-nins, very distant relations to the famous Akimishi-Clan…and absolute juggernauts in the truest sense of the word. They were monsters.
As the name implied, they have never been the smartest, and back during their days serving the village had apparently been the subject of ridicule courtesy of their various teammates until…they finally snapped.
They literally had torn the remaining members of their squad at the time limb for limb.
Since then, they had been roaming the Land of Fire and had taken whatever…and whoever they wanted.
Emboldened by their incredible strength, deceptive speed, and their unbelievable resilience, which hid a cruel base cunning, that abandoned any and all morals they might have had at some point, the proposition of having to face them was a bleak one.
Oh, there had been attempts to subdue and kill them, but they somehow unknowingly managed to reach the sweet spot in the bingo-book.
They were still too unimportant for the village to reserve the big guns to search and destroy them and their bounty was still too small to attract the big external bounty hunters, who might be capable of killing them.
That left them as the occasional B-rank mission for unlucky chunin squads or the particularly daring jonin.
I pursed my lips at the question, partially because of the torn bodies strewn around in front of the tavern, partially because I sensed a lot of townsfolk in the tavern serving as a meat shield, and partially because I had just the jutsu for this.
Even without the civilians, open confrontation was a less than pleasant prospect. This was going to be the fifth attempt on these freaks of nature. They had been in three iterations of the bingo-book so far, and every time their picture had updated it became more and more hideous. Their appearance had become littered with scars, burns, and blotches of poisoned skin, that were always somehow overshadowed by their stupid empty grins.
Long story short, you could injure them, but better pray that you killed them, because chances were high, they tanked whatever you hit them with and were already coming for you to retaliate.
Genjutsu in this case was also unfavorable in this particular situation as they would probably just freak out and smash and stomp through the civilians lying around them.
"Yeah," I quietly breathed out, this was what I was good at after all. "I have something in mind."
I swallowed uncomfortably; I didn't want to know what Kurenai was going to think when she would eventually see the results. The other reason was that I remembered the split-second sensation when I had subjected a Shadow Clone to the gruesome fate while I had tested the finished jutsu.
Eying the missing door of the tavern, which would make things a tiny bit easier, I went through the hand seals of the basic Clone jutsu but finished and held the tori seal at the end. Then, I gently breathed out.
Suddenly, two translucent figures stood in front of me, only visible by the slightest of distortion.
Indoors, covered by the darkness of the night and straight-up murder. I had made the perfect jutsu just for this; I wasn't even twelve yet and already a prodigy at killing.
Still holding the bird seal, I closed my eyes and began to guide the incredible fragile chakra constructs of the roof, across the street, and finally into the tavern.
Sensing every living being in the building I had my Wind Clones step around the bound and sobbing villagers on the floor and to the loudly snoring missing-nins sleeping in the middle of their carnage.
Crouching near their heads each clone gently lay their hands over their lips and noses ...and waited. They might be translucent, but they were also impervious, which meant any second now both brothers would gasp for air and seal their fate.
Sensing their spiking heart rate, they almost simultaneously tried to take huge gulps of air, which was the exact moment I let my clones disperse.
In an instant, a giant burst of shredding wind chakra rushed into their mouths, down their throats, past their voice boxes, through their windpipes all the way down to their bronchi, and finally into their lungs.
Every single spot of soft tissue in their respiratory tracts was torn apart the moment my wind chakra rushed past it.
This was the first time I had used it on living breathing beings and I sensed what I honestly had expected. A short but intense and unbelievably gruesome death-struggle.
Disregarding my hand-seal I opened my eyes and looked up at my sensei.
I answered her questioning gaze with a blank one. From the first hand seal to the completion of the mission, less than thirty seconds had passed.
"They are both dead." I simply said and saw her eyes widen in shock.