"That was… loud," Minato commented as he spied the bunker with his binoculars. "You didn't tell me it would be so loud."

"So long as you're not standing next to it, all it should sound like is distant thunder," I replied wryly. "Besides, the snow will dampen the sound over large distances, and the location for the bunker was chosen for it's remoteness. We shouldn't have anything to worry about."

"You seem to think of everything, Uchiha-san," Minato rolled his eyes. "I like that in a comrade. You remind me of my student, Kakashi."

"Please, I'm no where near his caliber," I shrugged. "Now, shall we head down there and check it out?"

"How certain are you that the whole opposing force is eliminated?" Minato asked as a reply.

"95% certain," I replied blasély. "The feedback I got from the technique indicated that all of them were hit directly, and none of them managed to ground themselves in time. So yeah, pretty certain."

"Only 95%?" Minato asked wryly.

"Nothing's 100% certain in life," I stated truthfully. "People have managed to surprise me in the past, but most of the time the technique works. Either way, I'm drawing a Chakra String from the exit as we walk in, just in case."

Minato lowered his binoculars and sighed. "Then I'll leave one of my kunai out here as well, just in case."

"If anything does happen, don't worry about me," I replied. "I can teleport through my string instinctively now, so just worry about getting out yourself."

"Alright," Minato nodded. "But let me know right away if you feel your string being cut. If that happens, I'll get us both out."

I nodded back. "Shall we?"

Minato nodded again, and as one we body flickered down into the dry gorge that concealed the entrance to the bunker.

The geography of the gorge was interesting: it was a short and narrow gorge, about 25 meters in height, with most of it occupied by a bend that lead to a rocky flood plain. One end of the gorge lead to the flood plain, while the other stopped at what was usually a small waterfall, where water from a brook would flow between two large hills.

It was late fall, so the brook was pretty small and usually dry at this time of year, but in spring it would become flooded with melting snows, which would fill the bottom of the gorge. However, given that Konoha would change the location of it's hidden bunkers in Iwa territory every two months, it was expected that the bunker would be abandoned by spring, so the spring waters was nothing to worry about.

The bunker itself was located at the outermost wall of the apex of the bend in the gorge, where earlier spring floods had carved out a large hollow in the wall. The entrance to the bunker was located just inside of this hollow, and was usually covered by a physical illusion that was made to resemble the wall.

The Ninja guarding it would usually use the Transformation technique to turn into large rocks if their patrols noticed any Iwa nin in the area, to avoid detection. It wouldn't fool chakra sensors for a second, but from a distance it would fool most nin that couldn't sense chakra, and Iwa nin worried about encountering enemy ninja this deep in their own territory, usually only expected ninja that were actively working on missions, not hiding themselves to avoid detection.

It was now fully night time when Minato and I arrived down in the gorge. When we got there, it was to find that the Iwa nin who had been posing as Konoha nin were still twitching, despite being keeled over and smoking.

"Are you sure they're dead?" Minato asked curiously as he observed one of the twitching Ninja from a safe distance.

"Their hearts are undergoing cardiac arrest," I replied thoughtfully. "And their nervous systems are fried. Just don't get too close, and they should go still pretty soon."

"Remind me to gather up their bodies when we come back out," Minato frowned thoughtfully. "In case there's any bounties, mind. I don't want to try and seal them up while they're still alive."

"Yeah, ok," I nodded, before reaching over to the inner wall of the gorge to attach the end of a chakra string to it.

Minato nodded back, before tossing one of his Flying Thunder God kunai at the inner wall himself. That done, we made our way towards the entrance to the bunker, and started walking down the long hall way that lead to the bunker proper.

"Be careful not to inject any chakra into the walls," I said as we passed through the entrance. "There's a lot of explosive clay in there, we don't want to set any of it off."

"That's good to know," Minato replied with a frown. "I wish the Iwa nin didn't use explosive clay so much, it kills pretty much indiscriminately. I've seen many Iwa lose their own comrades to their own explosions. Even innocents have been affected by them."

I rolled my eyes. "Sometimes I think the Iwa don't even care about their own men, despite the investment it takes to train them up. So long as it kills their enemies, they don't seem to care. So long as it works, they're fine with indiscriminate killing."

Minato gave me a strange look. "I find that hard to believe. Surely Iwa would care about their own people…"

I shrugged. "In my mind, reality is what it is. Those rock fuckers can all go to hell as far as I care. I've lost too many people I care about to them..."

"I've lost people I care about, too," Minato replied with a frown. "But I refuse to let hatred consume me. I'd rather focus on the people I have left, and do my best to forgive the Iwa… they're just defending their village, after all. It's not personal."

I rolled my eyes, but didn't say anything else. It felt pretty damn personal to me, but I didn't want to get into an argument.

We fell into a companionable silence as we walked down the 300 meter passage way, which gently sloped downwards into the earth, and I started noticing the presence of atmospheric seals. Atmospheric seals regulated the atmosphere, removing carbon dioxide and adding oxygen to the air.

Eventually we arrived at the end of the passageway and emerged into a decently sized alcove. At the other end of the alcove was a large dry moat. The alcove itself was about 3 meters in diameter, but the dry moat was 20 meters wide, 30 meters long, and 40 meters deep. The bottom was covered in earthen spikes pointed upwards, and the entrance to the bunker proper was at the other end of the moat, at a higher elevation than the alcove we were standing in. The walls and roof of the moat were covered in slick oil, which made it impossible to wall walk over to the other side.

The only way to get to the other side was to jump, or in my case, use chakra strings to pull my self over there. Or if you were a smart Iwa nin with a lot of extra chakra you wouldn't need to fight with, you could use Hiding Like a Mole technique to tunnel your way over there through the walls. However, average ninja didn't have the necessary chakra to do that, so for most of them, they had to jump.

Which, I should point out, made them easy targets for ninja defending from the other side.

Minato decided to throw one of his kunai to the other side, as it was safer than actually jumping, while I just extended a chakra string, attached it to the other side, then jumped and quickly retracted it to pull myself to the correct position. A moment later we were both standing in the alcove that was the entrance to the bunker proper.

However, it seemed there was a problem, as just a few meters down the hall, there was an active barrier blocking our way. The barrier was a dark purple in color, and there appeared to be a seal matrix in the middle of it.

"What's that doing there?" Minato asked curiously.

"I think it's one of the atmospheric barriers," I replied a moment later as I examined it. "One of the seals must have activated it for some reason…"

"Can you find out why it was activated?" Minato asked me.

"Maybe," I nodded, before activating my Sharingan and examining the seal matrix for a moment. "Oh, I see. It seems that my lightning technique ignited something and started a fire, so the barrier activated to stop smoke from billowing out. I'm sure that the atmospheric seals have responded to the fire, and we'll be able to go in, in a moment."

Minato nodded thoughtfully. "I see. I remember my student, Kakashi, having problems with-"

It was only because I had my Sharingan active that I noticed it in time: Explosive Clay in the hallway walls suddenly becoming active with Chakra. My head turned sharply to look at it, and on pure instinct I teleported back along my chakra string towards the other side of the dry moat.

I re-appeared just in time to see the side of the dry moat I had just been on explode violently. I hoped Minato made it out in time to avoid the explosion.

A moment later I noticed a Ninja emerging from the wreckage of the explosion, and watched as they jumped over the dry moat towards me. I realized just in time that it wasn't Minato, it was… A FEMALE IWA NIN!

IT WAS THE ENEMY!

My blood turned cold as I realized that I was about to engage in battle, a battle for my survival. I couldn't let the Iwa Nin escape, or Iwa could find out what had happened here earlier than needed. But I also felt a cold thrill as I realized that if I could restrain this person, I could interrogate them and find out more about what had happened to the bunker, and how Iwa had found out about it.

With that in mind, I extended my hand towards them. Chakra strings shot from my finger tips, and I extended them to wrap around the Iwa nin, hoping against hope that they weren't a chakra sensor.

No such luck, for the Iwa nin pulled out a kunai and cut the strings. Damn it, I was going to have to restrain them the old fashioned way… with Ninja Wire. I couldn't pull my spool of ninja wire out just yet, however, cause the Iwa nin had landed in the alcove, just in front of me.

We engaged in a brief taijutsu battle, and a moment later I found I was glad I had specialized in avoiding hits, for it seemed that the Iwa nin was a medical ninja that was skilled with the Chakra Scalpel. If I wanted to avoid getting hit in a vial area, I'd have to end the fight quick.

That in mind, I started powering up my lesser known Lightning technique, Arc Shot. It worked on similar principles to the Art of the Dancing Arc, but didn't require all of the steps necessary to set up the Dancing Arc technique, didn't require as much chakra, and I only had to charge one polarity, instead of two.

As a consequence, it was less powerful, less accurate, could only hit one or two people, and it didn't kill but instead briefly incapacitated whom ever it hit.

During the brief taijutsu battle, the Iwa Nin maneuvered herself to have her back facing the passage leading out. Upon spotting the sparks on my hands, the Iwa nin swore loudly, before tossing a senbon at my hands while leaping away towards the passage to gain some distance.

Unfortunately for her, I managed to avoid the senbon, and managed to fire the Arc Shot at her before she got too far away for it to hit her. She keeled over like a wet noodle, and I quickly unspooled the bindings on my left arm, before touching the storage seal there to get out the spool of ninja wire.

I infused the ninja wire with my chakra, and quickly approached the Iwa nin with the intent to restrain her. Unfortunately it seemed she had recovered enough from the Arc Shot to take some kind of action.

"Fuck you!" She snarled at me, before clapping her hands together. "Katsu!"

From her clasped hands came a wave of chakra that activated the explosive clay in the walls of the passageway.

Instinctively, I sent out the spool of ninja wire to grab and restrain her, then pulling her into the alcove with me.

Next I flashed through 10 hand signs, before quickly kneeling down and slamming my hands on the ground.

"Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall!" I yelled, and a moment later a wall of Earth emerged from the ground to protect us from the explosion, with just a second to spare. The explosive clay exploded, but the wall held.

I breathed a sigh of relief, before turning to regard the Ninja I had just restrained. I had no need to fear that the ninja would escape the wires, for I had written seals on them that would prevent chakra use once activated.

"Who are you?" I asked in a clipped tone. "How did you survive?"

"Fuck you!" The Iwa nin replied harshly. "I'm not saying nothing."

"Oh, but you will," I snarled sharply. "I have ways of making people like you talk."

"I'm not afraid of torture," The Iwa nin bit back in the same harsh tone. "You're not getting anything out of me."

I rolled my eyes. "As if I'd use anything so crude."

"I'm not saying nothing," The Iwa nin repeated stubbornly.

With a sigh, I bent down and picked up the Iwa nin and pressed her back against the wall I had just created, and keeping her eyes at the same level as mine. Stubbornly, she closed her eyes and looked away. I rolled my eyes again, before using Chakra Strings to force her to face me and force her eyes open.

"Genjutsu interferes with the brain and our perceptions," I replied, giving the Iwa nin a vicious smile. "But what most ninja don't realize is that our brains are also responsible for deception, and for objective analysis. With my sharingan, and the right Genjutsu, I can prevent you from accessing that part of your brain, and you'll be unable to stop yourself from honestly answering any question I ask. With the right Genjutsu, I can make you think I'm your friend, or your parent… or your superior, and in the state you're in now, there's nothing you can do to stop it."

I finally found what I was looking for in her eyes: fear, fear of me and what I was capable of. I reveled in it, the fear I so easily elicited in my interrogatees. But it was time to get down to business, for sooner or later I had to back up my words with action, or else the fear was for nothing.

Without the Sharingan's hypnotic abilities, such a Genjutsu wasn't as readily possible, which was why it wasn't something that most ninja were capable of. Also, the Genjutsu I had spoken of was something I had personally devised, so it was a technique unique to me.

I closed my eyes and molded the chakra for the Genjutsu I needed, and a moment later I opened my eyes and used my sharingan's hypnotic abilities to impress the Genjutsu deep in the Iwa nin's mind.

"Hello," I asked curiously. "What's your name?"

"Akiba Dai," The Iwa Nin replied slowly.

"What is your rank?" I asked next.

"Tokubetsu Jonin," Akiba replied.

"Who's your commanding officer?"

"Yokoto Yoshihito."

I raised an eye-brow. "I'm Yokoto Yoshihito. Address me as you normally would."

"Ok senpai," Akiba nodded.

"Now, kohai… I have some questions about your current mission. Do you feel comfortable answering them?"

"Sure thing, Senpai," Akiba nodded.

I paused, thinking about what questions to ask. I wanted to find out how Iwa had found out about the bunker, but I wasn't sure if Akiba was privy to that information. First things first, however: I needed to find out how she survived the Art of the Dancing Arc.

"Recently you experienced a massive electric shock. How did you survive it?"

Akiba frowned in thought. "Hard to say, my mind fizzed out a bit. I was healing up one of our comrades when I had the shock, so I think I might have healed myself somehow."

I rolled my eyes. "That makes sense. You are a healer, after all."

"Yep." Akiba nodded blithely.

"Ok. What is your mission here in the Leaf's bunker?"

"Our team was sent to keep an eye on the on the tree fucker's bunker until we got word that The Escape Artist was on his way. Then we were to take over the bunker and set up a trap for him, just in case he managed to avoid the capture team somehow."

My blood went cold at the sudden revelation. "You knew… that The Escape Artist was on his way?"

"Yeah, we'd known since we were assigned the mission a month ago."

I frowned in thought. "And, just to clarify, your mission was to capture him? Not kill him?"

"Yes, capture only. We need him alive so we can get his escape techniques for the greater good of all of Iwa. That way, the Unity of the Stone will never again be challenged."

It seemed that Minato had been right on the money: Iwa had been trying to capture me for my escape techniques.

I frowned… but there was something that didn't make sense. I had only gotten the mission a week ago, after finishing a different yearlong mission. Anyone could have been assigned to that mission, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so there was just no way they could have known I was coming a month ago… could they?

"Do you know how Iwa found out that I was coming a month ago?"

"Yeah, Lord Third Tsuchikage said they got the info from Kiri," Akiba nodded.

"Did he say how Kiri got the information?" I asked with bafflement.

Akiba frowned. "Nope, just that he had gotten it from there."

I frowned in thought. Iwa and Kiri were allies of convenience. They were geographically on opposite sides of the Elemental Nations, so their interests didn't conflict like that of Iwa, Kumo, and Konoha did. It wasn't unheard of for two of the Great Villages to share information with each other, especially if they were allies.

However, for Kiri to share information about one specific ninja from a foreign village was unusual. They must have gotten something out of the arrangement… perhaps a promise form Iwa that they would share any techniques they got out of me.

There was something nagging me about the intel, though. The fact that Kiri had gotten intel at all indicated that there was a leak in the higher echelons of Konoha, for only someone on Konoha's ninja council had the power to influence mission assignments, with final decisions usually resting with the Hokage.

Then there was the fact that Kiri had gotten the intel so early, before the decision itself had actually been made. 'Who was going to be assigned to what mission' wasn't something that was written down on paper months in advance, it discussed by the council, and usually decided upon the same day that those assigned to the mission set out to complete it's objectives.

What that meant was that someone on the Ninja council had conclusively decided that they wanted me to go to Iwa at least a month in advance, and hadn't decided to keep quiet about it, to the point were a spy had picked up on it.

Well, that was one possibility. There was another, even worse possibility: that someone on the Ninja Council had decided that they wanted to get rid of me, and had decided that the only viable way to do it safely was to arrange for a third party to do it. With this in mind, they had leaked intel to Kiri that I would be going to Iwa, then used whatever Political Capital they had to make sure that I actually went to Iwa.

After considering the two possibilities, I decided that the second one was more likely, due to the fact that I found it easier to accept the idea that I had political enemies, than it was to accept the idea that someone liked me to the point that they couldn't shut up about me.

Considering the second possibility, I realized that it made a disturbing amount of sense: Iwa for one could be counted upon to invest the resources to bring in an enemy ninja that had knowledge that could save the lives of more of their Shinobi. And secondly, the very next courier mission after mine had included Minato Namikaze, a God of Shinobi.

It was clear that if I had been successfully captured or killed, Minato's job would have been to clean up the mess he found, and it was likely he was the only one who could be trusted to do such a thing.

"By any chance, did Kiri also send information that Konoha's Yellow Flash was also coming to Iwa?" I asked Akiba.

"What? No, not as far as I know…" Akiba replied with confusion.

It didn't confirm my theory, but it did lend it a bit more credence. If Kiri had a spy that was privy to the upper rank's mission discussions, and if someone in the upper ranks was blabbing about their favorate ninja all the time, I was fairly certain they would have found out about that.

Still, it was just a theory for now. I had no evidence, just a theory.

But a theory could lead to evidence, and whom ever it was that had instigated this, I was certain I would be able to find them.

Turning to regard the Iwa nin, I decided that I had gotten all the information that I needed from her, so I sent a disruption wave through her chakra to remove the Genjutsu.

Then I watched closely as the dopey expression on her face was replaced with confusion, and then despair as she realized what she had done.

"Thank you, you've been most helpful," I replied with a smirk, then I pulled out a kunai and jammed it into her heart.

Once that was done, I pulled her away from the wall, removed the ninja wire, then dropped her on the other side of the alcove. Then I turned around and created an opening in the wall. A moment later Minato appeared, for I had noticed him trying to get a chakra string through the wall the whole time I had been interrogating the Iwa nin.

"Uchiha-san, are you alright?" Minato asked with concern after he had teleported in with his chakra string.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied calmly, before indicating the Iwa Nin. "This girl was a healer, that's how she survived the technique. She must have restarted her heart and repaired the nerve damage. I just got done interrogating her."

"Did you get any useful intel?" Minato asked curiously.

"Yes, but I'm afraid that's classified," I replied shortly. "Covert Ops business, I'm afraid to say. I'm a member of the Covert Operations department of Intelligence. You wouldn't have known."

"I see," Minato nodded with a frown. "I understand why you didn't tell me before."

I nodded back. It was standard procedure for members of Covert Operations to only reveal that they were members on a need to know basis, since members of Covert Ops were basically spies, or Spooks as other Leaf ninja called us.

"It goes without saying that you're not allowed to tell the others about this," I replied seriously.

Minato nodded. "Of course. Now, shall we continue?"

"I'm low on chakra," I replied softly, looking over at the dry moat. "I'm not sure I'll make it across right now."

"I'll use Flying Thunder God to get us across safely," Minato replied simply, before extending his hand.

I took it, and a moment later we were standing on the other side of the dry moat again. The earlier explosion had collapsed the walls and roof, so there was a pile of rocks blocking our way.

"The atmospheric seals are probably shot to all hell," I said a few moments after we had arrived. "Without them we'll probably find it difficult to breath in there."

"I'll write something up," Minato replied, then he pulled out a scroll, a pot of ink, and a brush to do just that. "It'll take me a few minutes, so maybe you should sit down and eat something in the mean time. You look awful."

"Probably a good idea," I admitted.

I sat down and leaned against of of the more intact parts of the wall, before pulling out my bag of food pills and my canteen. I popped a food pill in my mouth, chewed it up, and washed it down with a swig from my canteen.

It had actually been a while since I had eaten anything, so even the normally bland foodpills tasted amazing at that moment. The Art of the Dancing Arc technique, along with the fight I'd had just a moment ago, had taken a lot out of me, and I was still very tired.

Hopefully Minato and I would finish the mission soon so we could go home and I could finally get some sleep.

When I was finished eating, I put everything away and watched as Minato drew up his seal. I wondered if Minato knew anything about the intel leak in the higher ups from the village. I thought it was unlikely, after all he wasn't on the council himself, but he was known for working closely with them.

I doubted the Hokage himself was interested in having me offed like that. If he actually was, he wouldn't have used such an oblique method of doing so. Instead he would have just had me thrown in T&I and then would have come up with an excuse to have me executed.

No, it had to be someone else on the council, someone who didn't want to attract too much attention to their activities.

I would of course investigate all of them, but there was only one person I could think of that had the motivation to arrange my death in such a manner:

One person who had cause to eliminate a famous Uchiha.

One person who had the resources to arrange such an intel leak in the first place.

One person who could arrange for me to be in the right place at the right time…

Danzo Shimura.