Here's the new chapter. I know it's been a while, but college has been kicking my ass recently, but I have a break now so I'll be able to release a couple of chapters this week.


After the meeting ended, they split up into 3 groups. Lee chose to accompany Aoba while he and Sakura went alone to investigate their own lines of thought. He figured that the best place to start was by learning about the shinobi who the Akatsuki had been hired to kill. The headquarters of the Chishiki no hoji-sha was a spiral-shaped maze located underground, that was split into seven sections. Each section was surrounded by a self-repairing barrier. The deeper the section, the more vital it was,with stronger barriers further in. The first two sections had been attacked during the first attack. But the first section only held an emergency medical area, some emergency rations, a sensing unit, and a small barrier team. The second contained the messenger unit responsible for receiving all messages and packages sent to the organization, and distributing them to the desired location with the headquarters, and a barrier team. Attacking those two sections held no benefit if they were capable of doing whatever mysterious attacks they'd pulled during the past couple of days, unless some condition required for the mysterious attacks were fulfilled during the first direct attack. The problem was that he lacked data. He didn't have enough information to know what the condition was. And so, he asked the attendant who'd been left with him if he could get any information on the Shinobi who'd defected. The attendant nodded and called for Shita.

Shita bowed on arrival and said "I was informed of your request, Shikamaru. You would like to know about Tomoe, the Shinobi who defected, correct ? Where would you like me to begin?"

He replied "Well, I'd like to know everything you can tell me, but mainly I want to know what role she played here and what her skill set is."

Shita replied in a slow tone, as though he was thinking about each and every word. "She was essentially an information gatherer. As you know, we collect all sorts of things, but our primary trade is that of information. Tomoe spied for us, negotiated for us, and generally did whatever was needed to gather useful information. She got us what we needed for the best possible price. After all, everything has a price. As for her abilities, she was mostly focused on genjutsu, disguise techniques and hiding her chakra. She posessed some medical jutsu as well. But the most impressive move she posessed was probably her ability to manipulate corpses."

He paled at that last line and asked in a harsh whisper, "You mean the Edo Tensei ?"

Shita looked surprised, and said with a laugh, "No, of course not. She couldn't actually bring anyone to life. She simply manipulated corpses like puppets. I believe she called it a stronger version of the Dead Soul jutsu. The corpses she manipulated didn't actually have the abilities of the original, though they looked the same as they did when they were alive and she could even have them speak, and she could hear and see through them."

Well that was interesting. There was one way he could see that being used to cause the current situation, though it brought about some other questions. He asked, "What was the range of her jutsu ?"

Shita replied "I don't know what the exact range was, as I don't believe she ever tested it to that extent. But I know she could use it from a range of 50 metres."

Well that made it hard to make any precise conclusions. But all in all, this Tomoe didn't seem to be very strong combat-wise. Which made him wonder...

"Why did you hire the Akatsuki to kill her ? Couldn't your group have killed her yourselves ?"

He knew that the Akatsuki had an impressive reputation. It apparently consisted of multiple S-rank ninja, and they were willing to take on incredibly risky missions for a relatively low price. Of course, ever since it was found that they were taking down jinchuriki, their reputation had gone down among the bigger nations that had jinchuriki, but smaller organizations and villages like this still continued using their services. But it didn't seem necessary for this particular task.

Shita gave a small smile as he said, "I'm afraid you overestimate our strength Shikamaru. Our main strength lies in the strength of our barriers and in our information network. Of course, we have certain other powerful tools at our disposal, but Tomoe knew about those, so we believed it prudent to hire mercenaries. Of course, that backfired. Why that happened is something I still don't understand."

He wondered what those powerful tools were, but since Shita didn't seem interested in adding anything more on that front, he moved on.

"Alright. I have one last question. Do you know why she defected ?"

He noticed Shita hesitate before answering with "I'm afraid there's nothing I can really tell you about that. You could ask her yourself if you ever managed to find and capture her. If that is all, I'll be leaving now. Please do call if you require anything else." Shita then bowed and left the room.

Well then, that was done. Normally he would have just walked back to his room and taken a nap, but something told him to keep looking around in order to understand the structure of the organization. And so he strolled around, while occasionally asking the attendant assigned to him some questions.


She'd gone out on her own, as she and Shikamaru had slightly different lines of thought. She had chosen to investigate the bodies of the deceased in order to get some idea of their current opponents. She was not a great medic nin at the moment, but she was well-versed in the anatomy of the human body, and her sensei had taught her about how different jutsu can affect the body, and how to observe those changes. Luckily, the Chishiki no hoji-sha didn't cremate the bodies immediately and had preserved them.

The bodies were kept in the emergency medical area in the first section. She was greeted by a man named Gary, who asked shown a woman called Maya to show her around. Maya was a nice but somewhat aloof woman who caught her up on what they'd discovered.

Maya rubbed her head sheepishly as she said "I'm afraid I don't have much for you. What we have is that during the first attack, there was a decent variety of attacks being thrown around. There were fire style jutsu, lightning style jutsu, and a wind style jutsu. All of those were incredibly high level, to the point that the bodies has been rendered unrecognizable. Some of the bodies were cut up badly, with major blood loss. It's as though they were slowly tortured before being stabbed in the heart. And then, of course, we come to the main mystery. The fire style jutsu that mysteriously burned the men who went crazy in the middle of the night, seems to be the same one that was used during the initial attack. How exactly it took place is unknown. I'm afraid the body was burned so thoroughly that we can't tell much. What we do know is that the body was dead a short while before it was burned. I suppose I'll leave you to investigate the body yourself."

And with that, Maya bowed, and left to converse with some of her fellow medics. She turned her attention back to the bodies. The medics had done their work pretty thoroughly, and there wasn't much else she could find. But after carefully using a variation of a sensing jutsu, she found something. She could feel a small chakra mark on the forehead of the body. Although it had been burned thoroughly, she could still feel the remnants of a seal. That was something. At some point, a seal had been placed on this person's forehead. Unfortunately, due to the severe burns, she had no idea what the seal had done. But it probably played a role in the mysterious attacks.

She decided to head back to her room right away instead of investigating around further. She didn't really know what else to investigate, and besides, this particular aspect of the mission wasn't her forte. This was Shikamaru's domain. While Shikamaru had a lackadaisical air about him, she knew from Ino that he was the kind of person who came through when it came down to it. Besides, there was something she wanted to work on, and it was best to do it in the privacy of her room.


He'd accompanied Aoba, but mainly because Aoba was the team leader. He knew that he didn't really have anything to contribute to this aspect of the mission, but didn't mind, as he knew that he'd been assigned for the combat portion. While he knew better than to underestimate his fellow chunin, he knew that he was the main fighter of the team when the time came to take on the Akatsuki. And so he chose to quietly accompany his team leader, trying to observe what he could of the organization, and observing how his team leader operated. He wasn't acquainted with Aoba, but he'd seen him around the village on occasion. As Aoba was a tokubetsu jonin, there was plenty to learn from the man.

They were on the way to the site of the first attack. He'd seen some of the devastation when they entered, and now was seeing it again. He observed as Aoba asked the surviving guards who were posted at the second barrier the details of the attack, like what the assailants looked like, what jutsu they used, and any other details they could remember. As he stood close by, he saw the medical area. Since the door was open, he could see Sakura listening to a young woman talk while pointing to certain bodies lying around. Something about that woman caught his eye. It wasn't her appearance. She was certainly pretty, but wasn't astonishingly beautiful. Still she had a certain air about her, like the cool winter about to break into spring.

But then he noticed that Aoba was almost done with the questions, and so turned his attention away and accompanied Aoba back to the room.


A/N

Hope you enjoyed that. I think I'll be done with this arc in one or two chapters. The mystery here is actually easier for the readers to figure out, as there is certain access we have on the world of Naruto that the characters themselves don't. Anyway, I wanted to do a mystery arc like this, but it's surprisingly tough. It took a while for me to even figure out what I could use. I'll be back soon with another chapter.