Ndewo, ezigbo ndị na-agụ akwụkwọ!
HUMONGOUS shout out to Ishimaru Taiki (you sure? Thanks for reading, man), Imheretolive08 (you'll just have to wait and see…. Thanks for reviewing!), guest110 (I picked some things from the canon Kannabi bridge mission but twisted it around in such a way you'll have to squint to pick it out. Thank you for sticking with the story), Stone TheLoner (glad you liked it :) ), BJJF691 (my thoughts exactly!), LeviDragon (can't wait to show you!), saiyan prince (hope you like it. Thanks for everything) and namory.boss (I appreciate you for reading my stories and I'm glad you like them. Thanks so much). You're all fantastic people. All your reviews made my day :))
We've still got a long way before this story ends and still so many questions to answer…
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 6
11:11pm
In that operation, everyone had a role.
A function assigned to them ahead of the job that they were expected to perform to the utmost perfection, otherwise they wouldn't have been picked for this delicate job.
There were no jokes.
No playing around.
No mistakes.
They rehearsed beforehand, running through situational drills and playthroughs, memorizing blueprints, layouts and terrain to the finer extents of detail, as provided by the spies planted within their target households.
It was a cohesive unit of people, men and women of the highest calibre of professionalism, taking their roles as seriously as if the held the lives of their team in their hands, and in many ways this was a truly risky job.
One wrong move, one slight slip up, and an alarm was triggered. The high profile, politically powerful and socially wealthy nature of their targets promised that the entire country would fall on them like a furious anvil if a mistake was made along the way.
So therefore, no mistakes were made.
No greater team to rob a rich family's home than a tightly knit family such as the Whisper Group.
The risk of letting their Leader down if they failed helped bolster morale.
Naruto narrowed his eyes at his people, eight in number and all squatting down with him around a blueprint of the estate they were about to rob.
His people looked at him, stone-faced in their attentiveness to his next gestures.
"Check yourselves." He ordered and they did so, confirming that their black gloves were properly on, their dark clothes were fitted fine, their ninja sandals were strapped tightly to their feet and that their backpacks were loaded with their equipment; nothing was sealed in order to reduce triggering any sensory alarms. They turned to their boss and nodded their heads once, confirming that they were ready. "Just like with the others; get in, bind and gag, gather all the valuables, and get out. Lio," he tossed a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the pink eyed girl that was returning from her miniature mission of scouting the outer wall of the estate. "Will be at the front with the carriage. Zero chakra useage, we carry everything out and load it onto the carriage. Let her worry about lifting the carriage back to the base. Understood?"
They nodded.
"No tagging the house. Don't even leave a scuff mark on the floor. If I find out you did, I'm taking that foot." He said that with certain finality, staring at hard at each of the seven with him and making sure to drive home his point by dragging his pointer finger across his right ankle. "No talking and no signing. No communicating at all. You all know what to do and how to do it, if there is a problem, then flag for my attention and I'll see what I can do." He then glared at them, emphasizing how important this point was; he didn't want any victim reporting about the tone of a of the robber. "Otherwise, don't talk to me."
This was their second house that night, or rather their seventh major robbery in three days.
There was a reason they hadn't been caught.
Besides Naruto and Lio, who went on every robbery job for the past three days, the other seven were a different set of thieves that were specifically prepped for the second house for that night.
A different team for each of the seven jobs, that way it would reduce fatigue when a team was made to perform another robbery another day and also reduce the risk of a mistake because one or more team members confused the drill for another property with the one they were currently on.
Lio leaped away, heading to where the carriage was hidden elsewhere. She would drop back minutes later, holding it over her head in a feat of miraculous strength, but by that time, Naruto and his people were already inside looting the mansion.
"Game faces on."
As one, the members of Whisper Group pulled down their mouthless ski masks and tucked the ends into the collars of their turtleneck shirts. Any strand of hair on their heads poking out was neatly arranged under the mask, negating the chance of a hair follicle being left at the scene. Finally, they wore circular shades to hide their eyes and one of theirs, a female ex-ninja from Snow, rolled up the map and stored it into her backpack.
The team got up and exchanged fist bumps.
"Let's get to work."
Thirty minutes.
The small slice of a much larger, much more populous crime family raced to the walls of the compound and, in sync, two of their own removed grappling hooks hooked to their hips. They eased up on the hooks, letting them drop a little while they held a firm grip on the rope connected to it, spun the ropes and launched the hooks over the walls.
The hooks flew over the barbed wires on the top of the wall and their sharp ends bit into the concrete wall on the other side.
Tch-tch
The ones that tossed the hooks swiftly stepped up the walls, catching a pair of wire cutters each and snipping into the barbed wire. Ever so gently, they eased the cut portion of the wire back toward them, maintaining a steady grip on their ropes and not cutting themselves, and tugged it off the wall for it to fall on the soft bed of grass outside the wall.
The team bound up the ropes and zipped through the opening, spreading out left and right under the crisp silence of a chilly midnight.
No illumination from the moon or the stars, solely relying on memory to find their way around.
Instead of proceeding with the breaking and entering, they found the night guards hired the previous day in response to the other elitist robberies, patroling the grounds at the front and back entrances of the house.
Six Kumo jounin in total, appointed by the Raikage for this long term night watch mission. None of them were allowed inside the house because the Matriarch of the Shig Family didn't want "filthy, savage ninja dirtying her fine carpets", as per the information provided by Naruto's spies.
The woman wasn't a big fan of ninjas.
She was an open opposer to anything proposed by the ninja half of the Council, barring her children from attending the Ninja Academy, and she didn't patronize anything related to the ninja arts, which meant that her mansion was devoid of protective seals. The Lady often donated countless sums to the Military Police, making her a close friend to the Police Chief.
Nestled safely in the shadows and taking aim from afar, the eight robbers blasted poison darts at the jounin, nailing their necks with a wet, mute thunk.
A moment of panicked confuse hit, followed by dry gurgling and messily reaching for their radios, though unable to because of a charged numbness reaching out of their chests to their fingers and feet, blooming not unlike rosebuds in the spring, and leaving an aftertaste of lilacs on their immobile tongues.
Cotton-mouthed and frozen in positions of hasty distress, resembling gasping mannequins and puppets.
Then they dropped.
It took them four minutes to pull them by their flak jackets and toss them into the groundskeeper's shed, stabbing each of the six ninjas with two more needles for extra measure.
You can never be too safe.
An overdose could trigger a heart attack, at the very least, or a newly developed, serious, fatal and long-term allergic reaction, but that was out of Naruto's hands.
Kumo ninjas were strong; they'll be fine.
Naruto lifted a pair of binoculars to his pale eyes, rather not activating his Byakugan and sending out a pulse of his chakra, and noticed an open balcony window with a thin set of curtains fluttering inwards. The room was mostly dark, if not for the slim crack of light shining from inside.
He pointed at it and one of the grapple hook bearers tossed whirled the hook around and flung it up.
It landed heavier.
Tch!
The child in the bedroom woke up with a groggy mumble, turning on his side to the window and squinting sleepily at the odd shadow that clambered up his balcony-
His eyes flew open, and so did his mouth.
Gyeee-
One of the robbers sprinted around the large bed and covered his mouth, tapping a point on the side of his neck and easing the child back to a fitful slumber.
The lady sighed in relief.
Naruto crept to the door, cracked open a little to allow a thin stream of warm orange light to beam into the child's bedroom, and quietly opened it wider, sweeping his eyes and senses about for anyone alerted of the promptly silence squeak.
The house was still.
Good.
He turned back and nodded to himself when he saw that the boy was tied up by two of his school neckties, one around his wrists and the other around his ankles.
Tight.
The lady that knocked him out hefted the child onto her shoulder and Naruto stepped into the hallway, giving her room to leave the child in the kitchen pantry.
The boy proceeded to slide into three more rooms and push a pressure point on the three other children's necks while they slept, making sure they fell deeper asleep. His people bound them and carried them downstairs to the pantry.
Madam Morishita Shig on the other hand was having a quiet glass of wine by the fireplace, wearing a sheer, velveteen nightgown and fluffy slippers, worrying about the string of robberies her high society acquaintances suffered, leaving them with not a single moveable valuable possession.
None the wiser of the ski mask wearing blonde creeping low around her back, padding so softly on the linoleum that his ninja sandals seldom left a print.
Shadows waved on the walls, haunting effects of the fireplace casting light about the spacious yet cold room. The orange glow of the flames draped over the lady's dark toned face and ran softly over her frosty white hair, tied up into a loose bun at the top of her head and covered by a hairnet.
The warmth of the fireplace didn't reach the ex-CORE Operative.
Madam Shig pondered the last time her husband had been home, always frolicking aimlessly about the country, bumbling like a moron with his many brainless playthings.
Like many nobles, their marriage was a mere convenience.
She snorted.
Their four children weren't even his.
The first two were the Raikage's, not that the Kage would ever find out and not that she would ever tell him, the third born was from a faceless fling in Konoha and the last born was probably from one of her husband's business partners.
Maybe.
She wasn't sure.
Either him or the home tutor that came around three times a week to revise classwork with her first two children; she fired him and had him shipped off to Kiri by his agency. That affair had been the closest to being discovered by the public and sending him away quietened the noise.
The poor boy was in love with her, apparently.
She sighed; he was charming, she admitted, the heartfelt poems in his letters and the photos of him and his class warmed her heart.
She daintily sipped her wine, crossing her legs with a regal exhale, deciding to surprise him with a visit sometime in the week when those bothersome robbers were caught; Ay assured his Council, of which she was a member, that they were all safe.
Naruto glanced around the tall back of her expensive, ornate chair and clasped her mouth shut with his gloved hand as her lips parted, jabbing her neck microseconds later and freeing her to slump forward, falling on the rug.
Bump
The wine from the dropped glass leaked onto the carpet, spreading turgid purple over an impeccable red rug.
He personally lugged her to the pantry.
Funny enough, the pantry was the very first place the Whisper Group scraped clean, shutting the door afterward, breaking the doorknob and tipping an equally empty fridge in front of the door.
None of the Shig Family's house workers lived on the estate, not the chef, cleaners or the groundskeeper. A big inconvenience for the workers but the pay was good enough to keep them around. This in turn provided their absence a strong alibi.
One of the house helps, and the groundskeeper as well, were Naruto's followers, proud members of Whisper Group. They were hired two years ago, right after the Raikage's investigation on the reducing number of unhoused people was ended.
Naruto wasn't thinking of that now though.
His priority was on scrubbing the house clean of valuables.
Whatever could be carried was carried.
Whatever looked like expensive was taken.
By the time they got to their fifteenth trip, the carriage outside the gate was full and Lio pulled it onto the paved road, sealing the large wooden box away into a storage scroll.
As Kushina once described to the Hokage after her short fight with the little girl, Lio's chakra had no weight, density or presence but it was staggeringly heavy when each chaka-layered fist met her body. It dispersed far too quickly and easily, making it impossible to steal a sample to return to Konoha with.
Naruto was careful on her role. He didn't want to risk leaving Lio's chakra remnants close to the crime scene.
Lio rushed away and returned with another carriage some minutes later, filling it up again with items from the house and repeating the process over and over again.
After grabbing the paintings, priceless porcelain, costly materials and expensive nicknacks, they continued to the furniture; chairs, tables, chandeliers, vacated wardrobes and dressers, beds and mattresses.
They even took lightbulbs.
The Boss of Whisper Group rolled up the crimson rug by the fireplace and one of his subordinates carried it to Lio's carriage, coming back to help his boss lug the grandfather clock standing prominently in that same room.
The boy wondered, for just a second, if they should also rip up the kitchen tiles.
They looked expensive...
He shook his head with a frown, waving for the others to forget about the tiles; on their fourth job, they did indeed steal the kitchen tiles but in that case, they had time on their hands.
Their thirty minutes was up.
A police patrol would cycle close to the estate soon. Still, the relative isolation of the estate made the job easier, albeit not so isolated that other wealthy homes weren't in earshot.
Each target was picked carefully. Not at random.
There was also the robbery job Whisper Group concluded not two hours ago on a different estate clear on the other side of Kumo, which was yet to be reported, as far as the calmness of that night indicated. That estate had more guards and the Head of the House, the nephew of the Lightning Daimyo's Advisor on Kumo Matters, had good training on self-defense; the struggle to silently disable the guards was too protracted, forcing Naruto's hand to make the order for his people to strike fatally instead of to incapacitate.
This household, on the other hand, assumed six jounin were more than enough to guard the large estate.
The boy took a last stroll through the mansion, marking what was left and bobbing his head at the sheer emptiness of the building. He reached the attic, walking up to one of his subordinates trying to crack open a safe filled with who knows what, and simply tapped the safe twice.
The safe cracker jogged down the attic and returned with two more comrades, a man and a woman, who helped him heft the whole safe downstairs.
The confidential documents in the safe would be retrieved and Naruto would decide later to either reuse or resell the safe; finding buyers of highly priced, stolen items in the criminal underworld wasn't a problem.
Not in the least.
Gato was already showing interest in an oil painting of the Nine Tailed Fox devastating the Valley of End, a rare piece of artwork from the First Hokage's wife, Mito Uzumaki, purchased and transported to the Lightning Daimyo's palace, then finally gifted to an acquaintance as a show of sincerity. The wealthy aristocrats Whisper Group stole the painting from would never own it again.
See, yes, probably, but not owned.
It was going be be auctioned away in during the coming months, as Naruto's group had a large haul to whittle down.
Early bids were flying in.
The invitees were already booking tables.
The auction hall the bidding would take place was going to take place in the northernmost region of Snow country, in a small town untouched by war and a productive recruitment ground for Whisper Group.
An announcement was made to interested parties and those parties spread the word to other interested parties, sending waves of curiosity across the continent's black market. Black and white images showing samples of just a few items planned to be sold passed from one filthy hand to the other, leered at jealously, anxious to throw their bloodied money away and attain those treasures.
The next week was scheduled for prospective buyers to travel to Snow themselves or send their proxies in their stead, and when that was done and everyone was comfortable, the auctions would commence.
The Boss of Whisper Group put himself in charge of security; no unconcerned person, ninja or samurai, was going to cause any trouble on his watch.
Whisper Group were the talk of the underworld, and that auction announcement sent the black market into a frenzied buzz.
That's good.
Naruto was curious about what was in this attic safe though; another safe was stashed in the Lady's office and that had official village documents concerning Council matters; copies of Council meeting minutes, annual reports from the traders in Kumo and the like. The likely thing inside the attic safe were family related documents, account statements and account information.
Other households had safes, this was the first time the entire thing was being stolen instead of cracked open and emptied.
Finally, Naruto soundlessly watched his people lift the barren fridge away from the pantry door and carry it to Lio outside.
All the while, the Shig Family, restrained and blindfolded, slept peacefully, yet to realize the full extent of the robbery until they were found by one of the housekeepers in the morning.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Some hours later
This was troubling.
A spree of brazen robberies on a scale not seen in Kumo was rippling through the village, and it was the most unlikely of victims suffering.
The elite.
Within three days, seven homes of prominent men and women, Shinobi and civilian alike, were broken into at the oddest and most random hours, and then priceless properties like jewels, paintings and antiques were carted off alongside cash stolen from hidden stashes.
Anything of worth, food and clothes included.
All the rooms were cleared out.
All of them, even the master bedroom where the owners slept.
It was a clinical operation that took no longer than half an hour, of which the home security team were silently incapacitated while the rich home owners were abruptly shaken awake and threatened to keep quiet or else.
Only on one occasion were the robbery victims physically injured and tied up, and that was only in the case of a retired Shinobi on the civilian half of the Kumo Council that woke up to the shuffling of feet outside his door, picking up his bow staff in spite of his wife's pleading for them to escape through the window, and was immediately whacked upside the head with his weapon, knocking his out.
The police reports and victim statements were spread over the Raikage's desk and the looming mountain of a man, stared hard at the irksome sheets of paper with his fingers laced and bridged over mouth.
He grunted, flicking his gaze to one report and picking it up with a deep rumble from his bare, thundering chest.
Victim(s): Lady Morishita Shig, Akihito Shig, Tamamo Shig, Rami Shig, and Ikuko Shig.
At about 2200 hours, the thieves scaled the fence and cut through the barbed wire on the western wall of the estate.
Night guards were neutralized (poisoned needles to vital points: neck). Rounded up and dumped in a pile at the back of the house in the groundskeeper's quarters. Alive and recuperating at the hospital. Awaiting statements and poison analysis.
They then subsequently climbed the walls to the third floor using grapple hooks (identified from the markings on the roof). The thieves broke the window of the oldest son of Madam Morishita Shig, 14, and restrained him, doing so to the other occupants of the house.
Wheel tracks at the front of entrance gate to indicate a cart but no hoove prints were found to indicate it was horse drawn. Wheel tracks end five metres going away from the gate and disappears once they reach the road. Unexplainable.
Thieves made sure not to use chakra.
Thieves wore dark clothes and ski masks, seldom speaking and going about the robbery without notable communication, as if they already had a layout of the household beforehand and performed their individual functions as dictated in whatever plan they came up with ahead of the robbery. Akihito Shig confirms this description, although he isn't sure as he was knocked out soon after seeing them climb into his bedroom window.
(This correlates with the report from the other robbery victims, confirming that the crime was performed by the same people. It is unexplainable how they coordinate these crimes on the houses of seven high security targets during the span of three days without losing composure.)
(Performance enhancing drugs?)
Victims were herded into kitchen pantry, tied and blindfolded.
No fingerprints were found.
A housekeeper, Precious Sakuranko, found Madam Morishita Shig and her children the next day and alerted the groundskeeper, Tooru Wakono, who in turn called for the police.
*See next page for Miss Sakuranko and Mister Wakono's statements.
Ay dropped the police report and rubbed his brow.
Everything of value was taken from those seven esteemed households, documents and account statements too.
Gone.
The thieves disappeared as easily as they appeared, leaving the victims penniless and scrambling to contact their accountants to salvage their accounts before the thieves got to it.
Ay didn't care for the state of their wealth, they could do with being taken down a few hundred pegs.
No.
He cared more for the documents stolen from those homes.
Not only was a member of his Council robbed blind of all his possessions, but four of the other victim households were from the Lightning Daimyo's Council and the other two had strong political ties with said Daimyo.
It was a national emergency.
The Lightning Daimyo's letter sat on the far corner of Ay's desk, crackling hot white with the Royal Lightning Seal and waiting, ever patient, for the Raikage to read it.
The white haired Kage knew without reading it that the Daimyo was losing his patience; soon, ninjas and samurai from the Daimyo's court would troop into Kumo and demand they shake down the village for answers.
Long before that point was reached, Ay would remind his Daimyo that though Kumo was in Lightning country, neither he nor his village owed them anything. Unlike Konoha, which was formed by the Fire Lord allocating land to the Uchiha, Senju and Hyuuga clans, Kumo existed before the country and played a role in the Daimyo's lineage ruling the land.
Ay didn't need to be told that the series of high profile robberies was a blazing red flag that needed to be brought down.
It didn't help that he had no leads.
Nothing to follow.
Naturally, the helps were the initial suspects, but although the housekeeper, groundskeeper and chef were good friends outside of work, they didn't have any exceptional ninja or samurai friends/acquaintances. Their network of friends reach as far as other low income civilians and family members, extended and otherwise. They were under constant surveillance.
This crime was too organized to be any of the rough street gangs running about the red light district; none of the thugs sneakily selling Copper Pot had enough useable brain cells to plan such a heist.
Speaking of Copper Pot…
Some days ago, Kumo's Military Police discovered that the streets were inexplicably devoid of the foul drug. The Copper Pot gang were nowhere to be found, run out of the village and later on tracked down somewhere outside the Lightning capital by Ay's Shinobi.
Copper Pot kept the less fortunate dregs of the society under control, blissfully dulling their senses to the point of an unresponsive catatonic state. Then there were suddenly less buyers of Copper Pot, about two years ago. So also did the number of homeless people and street children drastically fall, almost vanishing completely off the streets and relocated elsewhere to rebuild there lives.
As long as they weren't causing trouble, Ay surmised.
He didn't dig any further.
Violent crimes were down and petty thefts were controllable, so why poke at something good?
The Copper Pot gang found less and less customers, and the police were made to intervene when the gang started to become rowdy.
Now the Copper Pot gang had fled Kumo in all their numbers.
Interrogations concerning their migration brought forward two cryptic words.
Whisper Group.
They spoke those two words with an astonishing amount of fear and trepidation, looking over their shoulders as if they expected some strange assembly of people to emerge from nothing to slaughter them.
Whoever or whatever this "Whisper Group" was, they singlehandedly eliminated Copper Pot from Kumo.
Ay scratched his chin, humming and staring down at a different police report, an old one where a man in his early twenties on his way back from his day job as a Veterinarians Assistant was being harassed by some Copper Pot gang members, pestered to try the drug "like the good ol' days." If not for police intervention, it would have escalated to battery.
Saying that Copper Pot is an addictive drug was like saying fire is hot.
People hooked on it didn't so easily pull out; so many people die from complications because of the drug. It was a convenient drug that could be downed as a pill, smoked while in it's earlier stage of development, snorted or inhaled as a noxious gas.
What force was stronger than a person succumbing to his addictions?
Probably death.
How could the Vet's Assistant fight against the urge to inhale the drug?
What offer could possibly be more enticing than the sweet allure of pleasurable half-death?
The Raikage didn't know he was leaning back until his back met his chair.
... Whisper Group.
That name…
It kept ringing in his head.
Whisper Group.
It was all connected in a line so straight and blaringly obvious that Ay tipped his head back in personal disappointment.
Whisper Group rehabilitated the destitutes of Kumo by either giving them jobs or sending them to school, cleared the streets of Copper Pot so as to reduce the temptations of jumping head first into it, and all the while maintained utter invisibility and secrecy to the extent that their beneficiaries spoke not a murmur of their helpers identity. This also explained the fallen crime rate, because Whisper Group managed to satisfy everyone somehow.
Then there was the mastermind…
Only praises and veneration for him bringing them out of abject poverty, giving them a strong push forward to properly live their lives.
It was not unlike religious adoration.
No locations were disclosed.
No names were pronounced.
One thing they did divulge was that their patron was closely followed by an entity the beneficiaries collectively referred to as His Guardian Angel.
Back then, two years ago when the investigation on the rehabilitated destitutes was conducted, Ay shrugged and pushed the case aside to worry about other matters.
They weren't causing any problems.
What was the harm?
Now in the present, if the red flags were any more blazing, he would be blind.
Hundreds of former destitutes were gainfully employed or going to school.
Absolutely none of them were enrolling in the Shinobi Academy, all registering into the Civilian Academy.
This meant that they were more committed to learning complex subjects than to be tied down by active duty to their village upon graduation. Already, they didn't seem very patriotic to Kumo, not with how they were treated during the time they lived at the edges of society.
Ay dragged his hand down his face.
Whisper Group.
It was a conspiracy that would sooner make him look mad; whatever it was, they were gathering together in deathly scores of men and women under the benevolence of their nameless patron, flying right under the Raikage's radar.
The purpose of this group was still undefined but they were growing at an exponential rate. Those rescued destitutes worked normally and did their duties wherever it was they were employed, meanwhile something more sinister was boiling behind the scenes.
Or rather, the criminal underworld was being rattled to its finer foundations, though Ay's mind didn't stray that far.
Unfortunately for him, his mind also didn't venture to the Chill Acquisition.
Another unfortunate thing was that he couldn't burrow deeper to uncover the truth behind Whisper Group, for he still had the seven robbery cases strewn across his desk and zero leads. Leaving the robberies unanswered and allowing the robbers to escape wouldn't look good on his reputation.
The last unfortunate thing Ay didn't realize was that every single person that worked in the robbed households were former homeless people, picked off the streets, cleaned up and given new lives. These Whisper Group members, hidden in plain sight, were linked together in comraderie and also to their most precious Boss.
And he wouldn't find out till it was too late.
"Mabui!" He roared, hearing a surprised thud on the other side of the door, followed by a hurried scampering. The door to his office creaked open and a young girl with intelligent green eyes marched inside. "Cancel all my meetings today."
"Yes sir, Lord Ay."
Before she could close the door, the Raikage added with a grunt. "And tell Fujimaru to call back the house helps for more questions. I need answers!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Meanwhile at the heart of the Red light district, with the Whisper Group
Mystic Tanaka's Pleasure Castle
"Oi!" A loud voice boomed, speaking over the celebratory din of the brothel. The man, probably in his late forties and wearing a worn out brown cowl over his Shinobi clothes, clapped for attention. The hood was tossed back to show his age-lined face and the unmissable botched job of restoring his gnarly nose, done years ago when he was a Snow ninja of which the left side seemed to be an old scratch wound that carved out a large portion of his nose. The grizzled veteran barked once more. "Oi! I'm talking!"
Some of those toasting their successful jobs and the prostitutes lingering through, supplying drinks where demanded, turned to the higher ranked gangster in their family, quieting down and forcing themselves to sober up after what was six straight hours of partying.
"Thank you." The ex-ninja shouted. The guards at the door as well as standing watch outside perked their ears to hear what the man wanted to say. "I think we've all got our fill of partying for today. We still have to sort through the junk we got and keep up appearances on our turf. The big boss sent me to say that there's still a lot of work ahead, and a whole lot of expansion to prepare for."
"Did the boss say anything about more jobs?!" An excited woman called, speaking on behalf of her table and getting the affirmation of the other celebrants in the brothel; running money out of Kumo and Snow weren't very exciting or eventful jobs.
"Matter of fact, he did." The spokesman confirmed with a nod. "He wants us to clean out the missing ninjas migrating to Snow. They're using the war to make a mess on our turf and the big boss isn't happy. Then we've got those annoying Kumo kids and Big Ay sniffing around for us, so we need to keep a low profile."
Saying that out loud was almost redundant.
Whisper Group was built on a low profile.
The Pleasure Castle was a brothel that were among the earliest to band around Naruto. All the matron wanted was protection for her girls and Naruto-or the One from Chill on their first day of meeting-looked like the kind of no-nonsense person to watch over the brothel. She paid for the protection with a small percent of the brothel's weekly profits and also agreed to host them once in a while, as long as Whisper Group held up their side of the deal.
Naruto didn't mind that.
Using the brothel as a nexus point, Naruto expanded allegiance and beneficiaries of his patronage outwards to the slums and struggling homes of the red light district, which was why the six-hour party raved without interruption by Kumo's forces; the people and houses around the brothel acted as diversionary shields to the prodding of the Raikage's people.
The Boss didn't allow the party to go unchecked though.
Patronizing the prostitutes was on the customers pockets, not Naruto's, and the bartender had the freedom to cut anyone off the moment they started to get rowdy, knowing well that the more sober gang members would beat the drunkard if he made the wrong move.
Although there were circles of gangsters and the wobbly dancers spaced here and there, moving to the tune of their drinks and the music, saying that the celebration was a "rave" was an exaggeration.
People were happy.
People were excited.
They boasted of their roles on missions to the starstruck call girls, told stories of them hunting down missing ninjas and regaled themselves with colourful tales of encounters with their young boss.
Loyalty was at an all time high.
The spokesman clapped his hands. "Let's get a move on. The sooner we organize the loot, the sooner we get our bonuses!"
With that, the gangsters roared in jubilant cheers.
Their boss was notorious for giving big bonuses, when it was undeniably deserved, that is.
All of Kumo was Whisper Group turf, adding as well the northern, eastern, southern and a few spotty places in the central regions of Snow country were also classified as territories under Naruto's watchful gaze, primarily protecting the forgotten people considered to be the dregs of society and also those families in desperate need of financial intervention.
Western Snow country was being troublesome.
Patrolling their turf and ensuring the war between Konoha and Iwa, and their allies, didn't harm those in their care was the priority of the rapidly growing crime family.
Upstairs, Naruto closed a compiled binder of the items accounted for from their fourth robbery job, the latest compilation of stolen items; the items from the fifth to seventh job were still being sorted and documented.
One thing Naruto pressed on his followers was organisation.
Neatness of the mind, the body and of actions.
Everything they did was sorted clearly, cleanly and legibly, such as the thick binders of stolen items contained black and white pictures of each item, the condition they were in, and the estimated market value. The last part could be altered depending on the reaction of those willing to bid on the item.
This level of detailed neatness realized the problem of a paper trail, a problem Naruto didn't yet have a solution.
The boy groaned tiredly and rubbed his eyes, running his hands down his face till they settled on the collar of his dark, rankless Shinobi vest. His head was tipped back and his blaringly pale eyes focused on the velvet redness of the ceiling. He was still in the dark, long sleeved turtleneck and similarly toned pants, gloves and ninja sandals-the nonofficial uniform of his merry gang when they were on not-so-legal jobs-,albeit the ski mask had been set down on the desk. The boy wore a black coloured, rankless flak jacket tossed over his torso. It had no outer pockets but it was a piece of clothing Naruto liked wearing.
If not for his yellow hair and pearly white, moonish eyes, Naruto would have looked like a figment of the night.
A mirage in the darkness.
The Madam of the Brothel, often called the Matron, gave him free reign of her private quarters; the place was a quaint little master bedroom repurposed into her sleeping quarters and an office.
There wasn't much paperwork when it came to handling prostitutes. The Matron just liked reading and feeling important, which explained the desk and the reading light close to her bed. The room had one window on the other side of the room from the door, adjacent to the desk. It was open, giving the room a natural coolness, though the mosquito net panel on the other side of the window was rightly sealed shut for obvious reasons.
Naruto eyed the burglary-proof bars, the last layer of protection from the elements. Those old, rusted iron bars were a common fixture on the windows of the brothel. It was a security measure to keep the girls at ease instead of intimidate them; it wasn't news that people try to break into brothels.
The boy felt like a prisoner.
He felt like a spectacle.
He wrinkled his nose.
In a way, he was.
His Byakugan then strayed to the flouriscent, shining clear light to every corner of the room and his jaw subtly clenched, suddenly agitated.
It was a familiar feeling of dread.
Not for himself but for Kakashi.
It spiked up abruptly when the Hatake was either in perilous danger or heading towards a certain demise.
It was less about predicting the future and more like...a gut feeling.
Naruto's gut feeling, at least with Kakashi, was always right, and in the thirteen years he had known Kakashi, this amount of stomach twisting fear hit him only once before.
...And the end result of was Sakumo Hatake dying.
The hairs on his neck stood up.
His ears twitched.
His body trembled.
He needed to go.
He needed to go.
He needed-
The blonde snapped up, toppling his chair back. It quietly bounced on the thick carpeted floor, sounding like a muted bump.
The little girl dozing off on a futon, grasping a protein bar in one hand and drooling a little, blinked awake, leaping off the floor bed with a wobbly spring.
" Hm? Whuh? Where're you goin'? What're we doin'? Another job? Is it another job?" She yawned and tossed two aimless punches in front of her, shadow boxing the air and rolling her shoulders, not so swiftly hiding the hazy film of drowsiness in her waning pink eyes. "I'm ready. Let's do this. Let's go."
The frazzled boy turned to her, studying her for a moment with an empty gaze, until his hands came up and gently pulled her beanie down over her ears, cupping her reddened cheeks and half-smiling.
Lio was a strong girl.
For the past three days and the last seven jobs, she was quite literally the work horse of the group, drawing the carriage of stolen goods away and sealing them once it was a safe distance, returning soon after with an empty carriage and repeating an uncountable number of times. She didn't get much rest between jobs and Naruto's vacant eyes drooped when he spotted the shadows in his friends eyes, the weary slump of her shoulders despite her efforts to square her posture and the pallid tone of her fair skin.
Lio was strong.
Though she didn't put much resistance when the boy slowly lowered her back to the futon on her side, encouraging her by pressing down on her shoulders. The bed all but forgotten.
"S-Sir?"
His hands gripped a blanket and draped it over her, kneeling by her and sitting back on his heels. Her bleary eyes stayed up on him, tucking a hand under her head and searching for the depth of kindness she knew her Master held for her, shaded under an impenetrable pane of emotionlessness.
"What's wrong?"
The voiceless child smiled, a tiny expression of sincere warmness.
He signed with his one free hand.
"Be right back."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
While that was happening...
"I was hoping you'd spare us some of your ROOT. Maybe one or two CORE so we can, y'know, win this war."
"Your hope is misplaced, boy. My Operatives are currently indisposed."
"I don't think you understand how careless your looking; Konoha will fall if this plan doesn't work, and your ninjas are "indisposed"?"
"Do not worry about if your "grand idea" fails, boy. I have contingencies, one's so crucial I doubt you would be able to comprehend them."
"Now's not the time to run your mouth. We need as much help as we can get. All our manpower has gone to drawing out the Iwa ninjas into Fire country. The people left to actually blow up the bridge are my students-"
"Then what's the problem?"
Minato stumbled, mentally and physically stuck on what else to say. The war council tent was vacant except for the two influential men, seated side-by-side but only in the literal sense.
Figuratively, they couldn't be any more apart.
Minato had hoped reason would bring their opposing ideologies to a brief truce.
"Do you not think they can handle such a delicate operation?" Danzo spoke up, his eyes pointedly facing forward in a blatant show of not deeming his surrogate daughters husband the smallest regard.
The blonde Namikaze didn't care for that, only for the continued prosperity of his family and home. "Of-...of course. It's that...they're just kids."
"They are not "just kids"; they are ninja." Danzo parroted, mocking the softhearted Shinobi with a side eyed stare. Once again, Minato was surprised into silence, this time amazed that Danzo was the one lecturing him. "If you are not confident in your... lacking training methods...follow along."
"I can't. My seals are more useful in active combat." Infiltration, in the blonde's case, was simple. Even without his tri-prong kunai. It all came back to his presence being essential in supporting the forces drawing Iwa into Fire country. He wasn't leading any of the five units, they were for Jiraiya, Orochimaru, Tsunade, Kushina and Fugaku to command; Minato was going to fall under Tsunade of the Sannin as background support for her medical expertise. "Tsunade's already mobilized me."
"If you do not trust the Hatake and his teammates, and you are unwilling to go with them, then I have nothing else to say to you; how you managed to convince Hiruzen on this your "plan" is beyond me."
Danzo didn't feel the need to enlighten Minato on how a rotation of twenty of his CORE were permanently stationed around their Master in case Naruto decided to use the war to attack him, and the remaining were on the field.
The war hawk stood, shooting a look to the chair at the head of the rectangular table, where the Hokage ceremonially sat.
The unoccupied space glared back at him.
Silent.
"You will fail...and Konoha will burn. But everything will be fine, boy," Danzo drawled, shifting his dark eyes from the Hokage's seat to the man favoured by the village, Minato Namikaze. "Because I will rebuild Konoha from the molten ash."
Minato frowned.
Done speaking his mind and outlining his stance in the matter, Danzo left the tent.
The Namikaze would rather die than let that happen.
Danzo Shimura had a severely warped Hero Complex. And in truth, Minato wasn't that different; it was merely the paths they followed for the sake of Konoha that set them apart.
This was a reality both men didn't know.
Now that Danzo didn't want to help save Konoha, Minato had no other option but to call in a favour.
He whipped out a Hirashin kunai from inside his flame designed white haori and held the grip in his left hand, nearly at arms length from his chest and pointing the tip upwards. With an inaudible crack, he bolted chakra into the seal and brought his left hand close to the blade, flicking the flat side twice.
Ping. Ping.
A thin message sent far and wide to the dozens of loose Hirashin kunai hidden from detection, and also to those blades in the possession of people. Two kunai to be specific.
Kushina had one and Naruto had the other.
Each kunai not in his possession pinged quietly, passing on the message to the furthest reaches of Minato's electrifying chakra till it got to the sole kunai held by the mute blonde he entrusted the tri-pronged weapon three years ago.
Minato waited in stillness, staring at his blue eyes on the blade's reflection.
Ten seconds...twenty seconds...forty seconds…one minute-
Then his chakra core felt a tug, like another tri-pronged kunai elsewhere had been stabbed into a surface. He focused on that sensation, gripping the sharp tug and letting it pull him to its destination.
He was gone in a glimmer of yellow light.
On the other side of the space/time ninjutsu, Naruto quirked an eyebrow at the older blonde, who observed the simplistic setting of the Matron's sleeping quarters.
"Old man." He waved, sitting on Lio's futon with his back to his sleeping friend and his legs crossed. He rushed to quell his churning worries, maintaining a composed smirk. He followed his gut, the one thrumming for him to fly to Kakashi's aid. It was coincidental but fortunate that the quickest path to the Hatake needed something from him.
Minato went right to business, yanking the kunai he once gave the younger blonde from the carpeted, wooden floor, tossing it back to the boy. "I need a favour." Naruto snagged the harmlessly thrown kunai in his left hand and placed his right index finger over his lips, breezily shushing the man and jerking his head back, indicating the peaceful slumber of Naruto's Guardian Angel. The young Yakuza Boss sat in such a way that Lio's face was hidden from Minato's attentive eyes and the rest of her body was under a warm, bright orange blanket. The Namikaze cringed, repeating himself in an apologetic whisper. "Sorry. I need a favour."
"Funny. My thoughts exactly."
He unzipped his flak jacket a little and pushed Minato's kunai inside, with the sharp weapon getting sucked inside a Storage seal.
Lio grumbled, breathing inaudible words in her sleep, turning to the other side and curling into herself, giving the two blondes her back.
Naruto's eyes stayed on Minato's, gingerly getting up and zipping his vest once more.
"So, old man," He rubbed his hands together and gestured to the other blonde. "Let's hear that favour."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Misting Rainbow Waterfall
Waterfall country
"Rin?" Kakashi called, breathing evenly as his eyes darted left and right. The girl plodding to his right hummed, distractedly fiddling with the zipper of her Chunin vest. "Do you ever feel like you're being…watched…?" The Hatake tossed a look to his back, looking at Obito to ask this question too but was met with a daggered stare, even misstepping and stumbling a little but never once glancing away from his eternal rival. Kakashi faced front with an eye roll. " Hn. Nevermind ."
Rin stopped with a gruff exhale, motioning at her vest's zipper to her childhood friend as it had stubbornly refused to pass higher than her lower abdomen. "Obito, come and help me with this."
Breaking his stare, the Uchiha bobbed his head and came up to the girl, casting a quick glare to the Hatake as he stopped as well. "Sure. Okay." Obito gripped the zip, his eyes dipped down to the task at hand and wearing a sullen expression. Rin's brow furrowed, then she winced when her friend tugged the zip up. He poked her gut, joking. "Suck it in."
The girl slapped the boy upside the head, hiding a wiggly smile at the Uchiha's lilting laugh. " Shush."
"I was joking. I'm sorry." He grinned, tugging again and speaking to himself. "It's caught on something." He pulled the zip down, then up again and this time it travelled a bit higher than before. He said, speaking a bit louder. "See? It's just stuck."
"Oh…" Rin muttered, peering down at her zipper.
The Hatake crossed his arms, growing impatient.
"What…is that…?" Obito whispered, spying a tiny section of white paper jammed in the zip. He dragged the zip down all the way and a square of paper toppled out; it was rigorously folded, though rumpled due to age. He made to pick it up but Rin beat him to it, shooting back upright, scarlet-faced in apparent embarrassment. She flipped around when the Uchiha activated his two tomoe sharingan, blocked from guessing the contents of the paper. "Rin…"
"It's nothing. It's a surprise." She yammered, basically squeezing the paper back into her vest and drawing the zip all the way up to her collar, lifting herself up to her toes in the process.
Obito eyed his friend, suspicious. "It's a nothing…surprise? A surprise nothing."
The team's medic tapped the side of her nose, playing off her crimson cheeked expression with a wink. "Exactly. A surprise nothing. You should probably forget you saw that."
"Uh…huh." He drawled, leaning back a little, half tempted to hypnotize the truth out of her but, after a snappish mental conference, he deactivated his doujutsu; hypnotizing Rin was a big no-no. "I'll just steal it off you while your sleeping."
Rin pointed a stern finger up at the boy, warning him. "Obito Uchiha, don't you dare-"
"Can we go now?" Kakashi interrupted, reaching peak frustration at the stop. "We're supposed to be at the canyon before midday."
As if on cue, the team's radio crackled.
"Team Minato…bzzzzz -...Team Minato do you-tzzzzz -...-opy."
Kakashi, the team's leader for the mission, answered. "Copy."
"Are…tzzz-tzzzz …in position? Bzzzz . T-minus five minutes-bzzzz -commencement of Operation: Open Jugular." Obito flinched at the missions designated name, appropriately speaking without speaking what the operation entailed. "Get-baaazzzzzz -positions. Over."
Many of Konoha's communication towers outside the village, particularly the ones in Grass country and Waterfall, had been torn down by Iwa, making communicating orders to ninjas outside a major problem for Hidden Leaf's war effort.
The area of Waterfall country they were in, Misting Rainbow Waterfall, was a newly scouted out entryway to Kannabi Canyon.
Already, the trio could hear the violent crashing of the water tumbling down from the miles high waterfall. They carefully stalked from the forest, following Obito's lead when the Uchiha gave them the clear that no other human soul but them was in a quarter mile radius.
The raindow the waterfall was named after formed a misty halo at the top of the pouring water. They squinted up at it, slack jawed by how small and powerless the waterfall made them feel, forced to listen to the overpowering symphony of water crashing to the bottom and cascading down the river to who-knows-where.
Kakashi shook himself out of his amazement, nearing the river a little and looking upstream to the waterfall, patting Obito's shoulder and pointing to where he was looking.
The Uchiha's sharingan blinked on, and he nodded. "Yup. There's a tunnel in there." Where the water met the river, was a cave and winding onward was a slim tunnel. An unbearably tight squeeze for an adult but just slim enough for three teenagers to hardly shuffle through. "How are we going to get there."
Kakashi sent the silent radio a reply. "In position. Awaiting further orders. Over."
"Copy."
"Kakashi." Obito called. "How're we getting in there?"
"Scared of getting wet?"
"I don't like getting wet."
"Explains a lot; you smell like you don't take baths." The Hatake grunted. Obito scowled, about to rip into the team leader with a scolding comment.
Rin jumped between the cool Hatake and the hotheaded Uchiha. "Kakashi, don't you know any Jutsu to hold up the water?"
"I'm conserving my chakra for something useful."
"If we get drenched by the water, we could get sick." Rin pushed. "That'll affect our performance on the mission." The dull eyed, masked boy crossed his arms over his jounin flak jacket. "Think about it."
"Leave it, Rin. It's fine." Obito scoffed, proceeding to the base of the waterfall. "My clothes'll dry on the way."
"Obito…" Rin sighed. Her friend waved over his shoulder and took a small step onto the water, ensuring that foot nicely floated on the surface of the water before joining his other foot. "Obito, c'mon…"
"Let's get this over with." He stopped and motioned to the collosal waterfall, not saying anything anymore.
Kakashi took the lead and Rin entered their middle, while the Uchiha came up at the back.
They leaped into the hidden cave and any sign of their presence vanished with the deafening noise of falling water.
Two minutes passed.
Five minutes trickled by.
Ten minutes soon followed.
Fifteen minutes-
Awoooooooh!
A gutteral howl rose from the forest surrounding the magnificent waterfall, bellowing by itself.
A call.
A summons.
From behind a tree, covered by the shade, a pair of clear white orbs blinked, seeping from the shadows. The figment of darkness had a tanto slanted across his lower back and a single weapons pouch on his left thigh, containing a myriad of kunai, shuriken and senbon needles.
Obito's sharingan weren't evolved enough to pick out the human chakra core from the vague, transparent cloud of nature chakra formed by the plant and animal life, as the presence was squeezed so small and so tightly it was undetectable from the lesser trained.
Naruto glided go the spot Team Minato formerly stood and lifted his ski mask to his temple, pulling the long sleeves of his turtle neck halfway up his forearms. He squatted down, perching his forearms on his thighs and facing the hidden tunnel to Kannabi Canyon. In an instant, thick veins raced from the corners of his eyes, setting his vision ablaze.
'Byakugan.'
The boy tracked the team traversing the breathlessly tight tunnel, fixing his gaze last on the silver haired former ROOT Operative.
So far, nothing of note had happened, and that worried Naruto.
The blonde blinked, cancelling his ocular ability.
A wet nose pressed into his cheek and Naruto chuckled mutely, a short expression of brief appreciation for the company. He turned to the wolf and ran his gloves hands through the white coat of the deadly animal, ruffling the fluffiness with a slight smile. In return, the wolf hungrily lapped at the boy's face, barking and mewling, tilting her head up for Naruto to scratch her neck, jovially wagging her tail. Her glittering red eyes, sparkling imperial gold and royal velvet, fixed firmly on the pale eyed teen petting her, dragging her tongue up his face twice more.
The former CORE patted her sides and got up, getting serious. He ran his hands down his face, cleaning most of the the wolf's wet kisses as he did so, and whistled. It was a long and shrill tone that made the wolf he was petting flatten her ears against her head, shifting back and lowering her tail.
Fuuuweeeeeeeeeee!
The female wolf the Yakuza Boss had been playing with brought her head up and howled.
Awoooooooh!
Then, like an orchestra of frigid wrath and feral loyalty, the snow wolves stalking about the forest joined the first wolf in their staggering numbers.
AWOOOOOOOOOOOH!
Naruto drew his ski mask back over his face and rolled his shoulders, seamlessly stepping on the rushing river and speeding headlong into the tunnel.
Flashback
Minato laid out what he needed Naruto's help for, telling the thirteen year old boy in no few words how dire the situation was for Konoha.
"I know they won't mess up; Kakashi, Rin and Obito. The thing is that this mission is too big to be left for hope and faith ." It couldn't be stated enough that this plan was Konoha's last chance for survival; whatever contingencies Danzo was concocting needed the village to be overrun and trampled, and Minato wasn't having that. In every sense, failure was not an option. "I need you because I also need certainty . I want success to be inevitable, no matter the cost. I would have been fine with anyone of your siblings but Danzo blew me off. I don't want your help, Naruto; I need it."
Minato took off his forehead protector, passed it to the ex-CORE ninja, a familiar show of sincerity he showed the Danzo-trained child three years ago; this wasn't Minato Namikaze, Jounin Shinobi of Konoha, once-in-a-lifetime genius, and prospective Fourth Hokage of the Hidden Leaf. But Minato Namikaze; orphan, student, teacher, and husband.
"I swear on the love I have for my wife, the love I have for my family and the love I have for my home, do this for me and I'll owe you more than one."
How could Naruto pass up such an offer?
Naruto accepted, and although Minato was sure the younger blonde would cash in his favours in the near future, his opinion of the ex-CORE Operative skyrocketed.
Flashback End
Minato needed a shadow and fortunately for the man, Naruto just so happened to be exactly that.
He shadowed the team as they made their way to cut open Iwa's jugular.
Still, imminent peril and unavoidable death awaited them in Kannabi Canyon.
Authors note
Next time on: Whisper Group
CORE Operative One shook her dozing brother, trying to wake him up. "Sandy, get up. Master's calling us." The Uchiha rolled onto his other side, smiling wistfully at the sugary dream he was having. His brow twitched when a gooey marshmallow sandwich rippled inwards, turning into his baby sister's talking head. "Sandy, get up already!"
The napping child's eyes burst open and his Mangekyo Sharingan twisted hotly in their sockets.
He grated, glaring a hole through his overexcited baby sister.
" What?"
"We found big bro!"
"Big bro? Which one? We've got like fifty."
"Nine-Nine!" The girl squeaked, vibrating on the spot so vigorously her medicated, wire-rimmed glasses nearly left her face. The oversized storage scroll on her back rattled, mirroring her exuberance. Immediately, the sleep cleared out of the Uchiha's foggy mind. His eternally activated sharingan wound to a halt, then beginning to spiral backwards, anticlockwise, whirling in mounting happiness. "Sandy, we found Nine-Nine!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"You've got that Kumo stink all over you but you still reek of Konoha, Hatake Shit." Kisame grated, gnashing his teeth and sweeping around in a full circle. Samehada sniffed the air, twitching in impatient agitation, searching for the one that had gotten it's handler so frazzled. "All you do is run…all you do is hide…. Come on out, brat."
He remembered the brain splitting headache he got on waking up the next day after the blood soaked blonde had knocked him out, made worse by the shark teen being trapped neck deep in the ground.
His grudge against the Sakumo Hatake lookalike ran deeper than the rivers of hell.
The Kiri jounin snapped to his right and his jaw clenched, the knuckles of his unarmed hand popped.
Two pale lavender eyes hovered on the right side of a boulder, bodiless.
Vacant.
Like spotlights beaming onto the shark teens soul, those eyes blinked closed and open again, punctuating the long sigh floating to Kisame's hearing.
Really?
Now?
Of all times, now?
Literally and figuratively, Kisame was in his way. And given the altercations that had taken place and the current state of the mission, Naruto was far too annoyed to humour the shark teen with a fair execution.
Two seconds had passed in utter stillness and Kisame's last nerve snapped, bellowing.
"Come on! Let's end this! Here and n-"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Genjutsu wasn't working.
Her will was too strong.
"Tell us what you know!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A hollow ringing sang in Obito's head as his ear drums burst and his head snapped to the side.
He vaguely saw Kakashi yell something frantic, a curse maybe, diving without a second thought and reaching his hand over the edge of the inky crevice, catching his teammate by the shirt.
Obito's eyes dimmed.
The masked boy ground his teeth, lying flat on his stomach and gearing all the muscles in his arm to keep his teammate from falling to certain doom.
Not before he took back all he said.
Not before he apologized.
Obito wasn't breathing.
" Yaargh! Obito, wake up!" Kakashi wailed, feeling his grip weaken and the Uchiha's shirt started slipping from his fingers. "No, no, no, no, no, no-"
Rrrrrip…
The shirt tore instead and Obito fell.
"NO!"
And that's it!
Not in that order. And I purposely removed some paragraphs before, between and after some of the scenes, keep you guys on your toes.
Expect chaos, calamity and death in the next chapter.
And fights. Lots and lots of fights :D
So, what do you think of this chapter?
What do you think of the story so far?
Let me know in a review, would you so kindly! And stay safe, please and please. The world these days is pretty grim, so let's try to be happy and hopeful :))
I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.