CHAPTER 21
The Kaska Valley
The Grass-Iron Country Border
The Kaska Valley was the natural border that separated the Grass Country from the Three Wolves Mountains, where Iron Country was located. It was a cold and rough landscape that snowed constantly, discouraging travellers from following that path. Both sides of the valley towered high, tipped by a dense layer of snow, and at the bottom of the valley was an icy-slick but travelable path that used to be a river several hundreds of years ago but had been frozen solid and mixed with heaps of rocks that had tumbled down from the valley's sides.
The route to Iron Country was so difficult to travel that people coming from the northern and northeastern regions of the continent—Chill, Kumo, Snow, Hot Water and Grass Countries—more often preferred to take the longer route, first travelling down to Fire Country, which was warmer, and then proceeding into Iron Country. That particular route wasn't nearly as frigid as the Kaska Valley path.
And it was more guarded.
Iron Country, given their aversion to associating with shinobi nations or other nations that didn't strictly follow the Samura Way, didn't send many soldiers to guard both routes, especially not a difficult route like the Kaska Valley. The Fire Country path, though not fully guarded by Iron Country, was fortified by the Fire Daimyo and some ninjas from Waterfall village. Only a few Iron samurai were posted to oversee and check travellers.
Kaska Valley, though more accessible to the northern regions, was fairly unused for the reason that it was not only unguarded by samurai or shinobi, making it a haven for highway robbers and missing ninjas, or at least those that could brave the terrible climate.
A guttural howl rose from the left side of the valley, echoing over the howl of the wind like a siren, soon joined by other howls and a small tumbling of rocks down the side of the left valley.
Three caravans slowly pushed through the valley, pulled by thick-haired horses that marched down on the snow with firm, heavy hooves. The horse at the lead caravan was blonde with a heavy white fringe covering its ears, constantly twitching its ears and flicking its bushy tail, and the other two were a mix of red and white, similarly fringed and cautious. Each step by the horses was careful, as if testing the hard ground in case it was instead thin ice, meanwhile snorting hot air from their pinkish nose.
The horses were Shinden Long Hairs from Shinden County, at the extreme north of Kumo and bordering Hidden Chill. Since Shinden was the countryside that immediately bordered Hidden Chill, the place was dense with snow and close to freezing, though a variety of animals lived in the sprawling region, sparsely populated by a few animal rearing families. One such family specialised in raising the Long Hairs and training them. The horses were raised to survive in the harsh and cold climate, though not as extreme as the blizzards in Hidden Chill, they could thrive in cold regions like Northern Kumo, Snow, and Iron.
Since Snow Wolves would attract too much attention, Naruto had procured a few Long Hairs for the caravans. They were very agreeable animals, pulling the caravans diligently but at the cost of being properly fed and watered, which was reasonable enough.
Naruto's sister, One, rubbed her cold-reddened nose and looked up from her book, squinting through her wire-rimmed glasses toward the howls. A heavy gust of wind hit her and the girl shivered, tugging the thick scarf around her nose over her lower face and pulling at the hood of her cloak down her face so that only her eyes could be seen.
Her whole body was covered in a pale grey cloak, sitting with a hunch and crossed legs on the roof of the caravan at the front of the procession. Her sword was on her left side, sheathed.
She grunted and returned to her book.
Progress was slow, but One wasn't complaining. It just meant that she would have more time to read her book; it was a horror/mystery story about an alien horror haunting a small, fictional town. Supposedly, it was based on true events in Grass Country.
One loved horror stories, particularly when they featured strange, unearthly monsters rather than human villains; cryptid abominations were her fascination. They were far more engaging to read than pointless romance novels or even detective stories. It was why she had been so interested in finding the Kraken that surrounded Whirlpool Country and taming them. Because, if the myths were to be believed, the Kraken was created by the chief god, Kami, to help defeat a renegade goddess and her clan in a terrible war between the gods that lasted for a century; some people from the goddess's clan defected, starting from her children, inevitably ending in the goddess's loss and her being sealed into the moon. The identity of the goddess and the name of the clan were lost to time.
After the battle, the Kraken grew too powerful and nearly overcame the earth, but was tricked into accompanying a powerful woman from the defeated goddess's clan to the bottom of the sea on a supposed mission to eliminate the remaining renegade clan members, after that the Kraken was betrayed and sealed for the rest of time under the ocean by the woman. The Kraken eventually went to sleep and smaller—though still incomprehensibly bigger—Kraken peeled off its flesh and congregated around the body of the original Kraken, which just so happened to be somewhere near the Uzumaki island years later.
Another myth said that Kraken originated from an alien virus that came from outer space on a meteor that struck the water close to where Whirlpool Country was presently located and had mutated the aquatic life in the area into its image, albeit keeping some of the previous characteristics of the original creatures. Countless centuries of adaptation and evolution later, the eldritch squids were now a figment of myth that One could proudly say were real.
One preferred the first myth. It was more fun to imagine, and also because it heavily hinted at the existence of the original Kraken, which still slept somewhere in the world's oceans, sealed away in a similar manner to that of the goddess sealed into the moon. The Kraken themselves, whichever ones had the brain capacity to communicate, didn't know where the Kraken was sleeping, and they didn't want to know.
However, her master, Danzo, forbade her from revealing her findings in any sort of publication. He forbade her from searching for the Kraken since that would take her mind away from her training and her missions. He forbade her from doing anything other than bettering her skills and improving her relationship with the school of Kraken around Whirlpool Country. She was to note down her discoveries and limit them to the ROOT Archives.
One scowled, pulling down her hood again.
If the world knew of the existence of Kraken, it would change aquatic research for the rest of time. There were all sorts of creatures, not only Kraken, that resided below human attention. Fantastical, baffling, horrifying, and astonishing creatures.
The girl sighed and rubbed her eyes, pushing her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose.
Her attention was briefly drawn to the burly Long Hairs drawing the carriage, one for each caravan.
Naruto didn't tell her how he got his hands on three of them at once, or if he had access to more Long Hairs, just like how he didn't tell her how he trained snow wolves into ninken for the organisation.
The more she was exposed to Naruto's organisation, the more she was surprised.
Till that point, One knew only a few things for certain; Whisper Group was valued in the hundreds of millions, soon to be billions if the other items that were to be auctioned off were sold and they expanded further. The organisation was in the process of constructing a primary headquarters in Hidden Chill, after paying for the massive swath of land in cash to Kumo. They were tens of thousands strong, having taken over Kumo's criminal underbelly. Ninety percent of Snow Country was also part of the group's territory, recruiting people and discreetly buying properties in Snow, which was evident from the total takeover of Little Whirlpool and turning it into a textile-producing village. They were in the process of infiltrating Kumo's Department of Intelligence and they were making progress in infiltrating Lightning Country's Police Department. They had a large number of professionals as loyal members of the organisation, and they ran the day-to-day operation of the large group.
Whisper Group was highly centralised, both in terms of the command structure and the personnel.
They had millions of civilian dependents and shop owners who weren't necessarily members of Whisper Group, depending on the organisation to protect them from small-time street thugs and overbearing government officials who pocketed some of their taxes. Whisper Group only interacted with them directly to collect protection money and occasionally patronise their shops. These people made the bottom of the structure, with them not being part of the organisation and not knowing the full reach of the organisation.
Another branch of the civilian dependents were civilians that, though weren't official members of the organisation, allowed Whisper Group freedom to use their homes and businesses for their activities, like the brothel in Kumo's redlight district where the group met to celebrate robbing members of Kumo's Council, or the laundromat in Kumo where Lio and Naruto had lured in the Copper Pot gangsters and executed them (Note: Chapters 6 4).
Then some civilian members were professionals, generally referred to as Civilian Professionals. That is, civilians that were former accountants, school teachers, nannies, doctors, nurses, janitors, housemaids, engineers, electricians, garbage collectors, and so on. They were formally inducted into the organisation and were allowed the full benefits of membership; protection, salaries and allowances, health insurance and sick leave, full scholarships for them and their children, and some other smaller benefits. However, this was only if they used their skills as professionals for the growth and development of the organisation. In terms of their activity, it was these civilian professionals who worked in the background, ensuring that the organisation functioned as it should without any significant loss. They also closely advised Naruto on how to proceed in certain specialised situations.
After the civilian professionals were former shinobi and samurai, as well as recruited criminals, like thieves, murderers, arsonists, and counterfeiters. Albeit, the ninjas and samurai were higher in standing than the recruited criminals; they were the visible enforcers of the organisation, going on "jobs", which consisted of catching and cashing in missing ninjas within their territory, laundering money across borders, chasing away troublesome gangs from their territory, moving stolen goods from one place to another, relocating newly inducted group members and their families to new stations, recruiting and rehabilitating the destitute into the organisation, checking in on rehabilitating members, and overall following the command of their Leader. They had the same benefits as the civilian professionals.
In that same class, there were also former ninjas, samurai, and recruited criminals that made up the organisation's "Shadows". The invisible enforcers underwent the more nefarious and murderous "jobs", like discreetly assassinating a business owner who had been causing trouble for their members in the community, eliminating large market competition that had resisted the urge to join the group, killing or intimidating politicians and their families, and also diverting the attention of the Raikage and the Lightning Daimyo.
Most times, the shadows ended up killing their targets.
Whisper Group wasn't yet ready to be revealed to the world, after all.
After them was Lio.
Naruto's Guardian Angel.
One still didn't know why the people called her that, except that she constantly hovered behind him wherever he went. She doubted that Naruto needed any kind of protection that he couldn't render for himself, and despite the carnage she had seen at the elevator at the auction hideout, she didn't yet see why or how Lio was so important.
Regardless, the people looked up to the girl with reverential eyes.
It didn't take away the fact that Lio was powerful, bearing a mysterious sort of chakra that was both heavy and light, dark and light, wispy and billowing.
One didn't yet know Lio's deal. Lio treated One like a pest—
One hummed thoughtfully, exhaling from her mouth.
—Just like how she treated Kakashi like a pest.
At the centre of the structure that was Whisper Group was Naruto, also known as the One from Chill or Mr Fishcake.
The girl hid her snigger at the name; children and younger members of the organisation called him that.
It was a name that gave him an air of warmth and familiarity among the children and their parents. One had to give Naruto credit for his manipulations of their perceptions of him; making them comfortable to be in his presence while they were young, training them to be useful to the organisation so that they were more susceptible to his instructions when they were older.
One shrugged, recalling that was exactly what her master had done for the first year of COREs induction when they were five hundred in number and not yet reduced to one hundred.
The organisation was a monstrous, well-oiled machine made up of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of moving parts. No one person, aside from Naruto, was more important than the other. Everyone had a part to play and a function to perform, and they did so extremely well, maintaining the secrecy of the operation all the while.
Naruto kept the organisation together using one thing: Loyalty.
The people he brought in were less than nothing before they met him, and he had lifted them out from the pits they found themselves in, saving them from social and financial ruin, and giving their children better lives.
It went past being indebted to him. Even the worst of the worst people, the murderers and other criminals saw Naruto as a saviour.
It was…
One frowned.
It was nearly like CORE.
The people wanted to make Naruto proud…
A haze covered the girl's eyes and her face lowered, no longer reading the book. The wind tousled her hood, making it slip back to show the bandanna on her forehead and a bit of her bright orange hair. She took out a bookmark from inside the folds of her cloak and marked her place, closing the book and tucking it inside her cloak.
She could very well find a way to communicate with her master and her siblings about what she had discovered. She didn't know how to, as if the moment, but she very well could.
But…
She hesitated.
Her brother was far smarter than her, even as she was physically stronger than him. His resourcefulness made him nearly unbeatable. The level of control he had on the organisation and the people, from the civilian dependents to the shadows, swallowed any chance of the organisation's existence from slipping out into public notice.
The information she had gathered in twelve hours was freely given to her by her "colleagues".
However, a large problem remained. Even if she managed to send the information to her master and her siblings in CORE, it was still far too vague for anything substantial to be done; the location of the base in Hidden Chill was impossible to find without an authorised guide, the civilian dependents blended in with the rest of society and could not be identified, the civilian professionals shared the same problem as civilian dependents as soon as they ventured back to their homes, in that they did not wear any sort of identification.
One could memorise the faces of the civilian professionals she had seen and wouldn't know where to look to start searching for them the very second they left to go home. It was why Naruto had rushed to evacuate the auction hideout; the anonymity of the civilian professionals and the anonymity of the organisation was at risk.
He couldn't care less about the identities of the guests.
Naruto had all of his bases covered.
Anything One found out was because he allowed it.
The girl sulked, crossing her arms with a pout. "Wonderful."
"Woah!" the coach of the first caravan called, pulling the reins and stopping the trotting Long Hair. One cautiously reached to her side and grasped her sword, holding it by the sheath. She turned around and held up her right fist, stopping the other two caravans. The drivers of the other caravans pulled their horse to a stop, and then One held up a single finger, wordlessly telling the guards inside each caravan to remain out of sight.
"What's the matter?" she asked, sitting up and peering down to the coach.
He looked up at her and she frowned at the skittish flicker in his eyes. He was a civilian professional, a merchant who worked in the organisation, and it was only his first time travelling to Iron Country through this route; he frequently took the route passing from Fire Country.
"Border security. Look," he said, pointing forward.
One leaned forward, holding her sheathed sword in her left hand as she looked ahead. A few yards away was a barricade made from flimsy, rotted trees and piles of rocks, with only a slim passage between the barricade that would barely squeeze the caravan through, which was currently manned by one samurai.
The man was lean, with hollow cheeks and pointed cheekbones. He was in a dull, over-washed grey kimono with a baggy pair of grey pants underneath and dark sandals. He wore an eyepatch over his left eye while his right, beady black like a beetle, narrowed at them from his position.
An Iron Country forehead protector was tied around his neck.
He raised his left hand toward them, his right sitting on the butt of the katana strapped to his hip, flagging them to approach.
He was alone.
One clicked her tongue. "Go on."
"But, Miss…the only border security is at the Samurai Bridge," the merchant stammered, looking between the man annoyingly waving for them to proceed and the girl sitting on the roof of his caravan.
"I know what I'm doing. Now, move," One ordered with a glare that dared the man to counter her.
"Hyah!" the driver snapped the reins and the horse brayed irritably, but it stomped forward with heavy, stubborn steps. Its hooves left deep imprints in the snow, easily yanking the massive load of goods and proceeding at a normal pace.
Nearing the barricade, the samurai held his hand up and shouted, "Stop!"
The driver dutifully pulled his caravan to a stop, and the other caravans followed suit.
The samurai warily watched the horse, inching away from the docile creature, more so when the horse pawed at the ground with its left hoof. He came around to the driver, glancing up at the girl on the roof of the carriage and only seeing a thoroughly cloaked and scarved person looking back at him through a large pair of glasses. Only a bit of their orange hair showed.
"Get down," the samurai barked impatiently, tapping the sword on his hip. The driver spared a glance at One, and the girl nodded once. The driver stumbled down from the carriage, waving for the drivers of the other carriages to remain where they were. "What is the purpose of your visit?" the samurai asked, barely noticing the guarded stance of the people he stopped. He wandered down the side of the first caravan, sending a glare to the driver of the second caravan before he looked at the back, while the lead driver followed him with twitching steps. There were four people at the back of the caravan, two men, one woman, and one teenager, as well as several bundles of material. "Huh?"
"W-We are simple merchants, sir. Looking to sell our wares." The lead driver tried to smile but it came off as a wince.
The samurai grunted, climbing into the back of the caravan and pushing aside one of the men at the back, removing a small knife from his pants pocket and cutting the binding on a bundle of material. The bundle fell apart, revealing only thick blue blankets and white bedsheets.
The man that had been pushed aside scowled, but otherwise didn't say anything.
"Is that so…?" the samurai muttered, shoving his way out of the caravan. "Where are your papers?"
The lead driver blinked, confused. "Papers?"
A slow smile slipped onto One's face. She looked around them, checking the contours and bumps of the valley around them, and her smile lifted.
The samurai didn't seem too pleased with the response, gripping his katana but not unsheathing it. "Yes. Your papers. I want to see them."
Again, the lead driver looked to One and the girl shrugged, nodding. The lead driver looked back at the samurai, seeing the quick look the samurai sent to the girl on the roof of the caravan. "A-As far as I know, sir, this road is free to use. We only need to show our Travel Permit when we get to the Samurai Bridge—" he stopped abruptly when the samurai made to pull out his sword. The driver held up his hands, again shooting One a frantic look, but the girl, obscured by her scarf and her hood, didn't move to interrupt. He didn't see it, but the girl was extremely entertained by the interaction; the driver's fear and the samurai's attitude. "Lord Mifune, sir, your Daimyo made that proclamation two years ago."
Mifune had done so in an attempt to separate his government and samurai from the scourge of bandits and highway robbers that employed the same tactic; they would demand the papers of the merchants, travellers, and tourists, rob the people blind and oftentimes kill them, and then taking away the Travelling Permit to use it to legally sneak into Iron Country.
The Iron Daimyo's law was public knowledge. But it didn't do much to reduce the banditry.
"Well, I'm ordering you to show me your papers, shinobi scum!" the samurai yelled, his voice so high that veins throbbed on his neck.
One sniggered.
The samurai, red in the face and furious, looked at her. "Is this funny to you?"
"Very funny, yes." One nodded, lying on her stomach and lazily kicking her legs, setting her chin on the back of her hands. Her voice lilted playfully, haughty as she looked down from her higher perch. "Please continue."
"That's it," the samurai snapped, pulling out his sword. He pointed at the girl on top of the caravan. "Get down here."
The girl paused and a short gust of wind tousled her hood, easing it back to show more of her orange and making the scarf tied around her lower face, showing a bandanna tied around her forehead, her small, cold-reddened nose and pinkish, babyish cheeks. Her lips were small and smiling, pale from the wind. "You're not the boss of me."
The man gaped, his previous zeal reducing. "You're just a child…" He looked at the lead driver and the man's hands came up in surrender, as the samurai pointed his blade at him. The lethal tip of the sword grazed the driver's chin. "Your guard is a child?"
The driver blubbered.
One snorted. "And?"
The samurai didn't deem her a look, growling and muttering to himself, "This changes things…" he looked at the driver, shaking and sweating. "This is your last chance. Give me your papers and you can keep this moving." He swept his eyes on the other caravans, barely glancing at the girl on the roof.
"I-I-"
One exhaled, frowning. "Y'know, I don't like being ignored—"
"Quiet, girl." The samurai glared up at her, and One's expression dimmed; her smile lowered slowly and a touch of frost ringed the lens of her glasses. She got to her feet and looked down at the samurai, her scarf unravelling as it fully fell to her neck, blowing behind her, as did the hood of her cloak.
Her katana was in her left hand, holding the blade by the sheath. Her right hand was on her hip. Her face was cold. "I dare you to say that again."
Her tone didn't leave any room for argument. She was daring the man.
A deathly silence blew through the valley, pouring over the caravans and all of the spectating group members. Even the wind felt it was out of place to howl, breezing quietly from west to east.
The samurai took the bait. His mouth opened. "I said—"
Quicker than anyone could blink, One's right hand, the one that had been on her hip, pointed at the samurai with a finger gun. Translucent chakra gathered at the tip of her pointer finger and she bent her thumb down. "Bang."
An invisible bullet raced from her finger and smashed into the samurai's chest, caving in his sternum and fracturing his ribs at the implosion. An oozing hole burst at his back, about the size of a penny, spraying a few misty droplets of blood on the snow.
The samurai stumbled back once, surprised. He dropped his sword and clutched his chest, feeling the hole and wheezing incoherent words as he looked up at the girl. Blood bubbled up from his mouth, with his left lung perforated with a few rib fragments, and he collapsed onto his back.
One smirked, rolling her eyes. "Don't be so dramatic. That won't kill you." Her finger gun levelled with the man, shuddering on the hard, snow-packed ground. Tears welled up in his eyes and he coughed, holding his other hand up, pleading with the girl as she pointed at him again. "This will."
An invisible bullet fired from her finger and smashed into his head, between his eyebrows, exploding from the back of his head in a visceral shower of blood, brain matter, and skull bits. He slumped back dead, with a small hold on his forehead, the hole at the back weeping chunks of red and white fluid.
One blew her finger and mimicked holstering the gun.
Studying the ocean surrounding Whirlpool Country had exposed the girl not only to the Kraken that populated the area but also observed a way an obscure fish hunted for its prey, firing blasts of heat, and pressure bubbles at its target and imploding its sense of direction.
She replicated that effect, after several trials and errors, and without being able to create the heat effect those fish were able to use alongside the pressure shot.
One called it her Water Pressure Bullets.
She gathered some senjutsu chakra from her Kraken summoning contract, isolating it to only her hand and not her whole body, and a small bubble of nature chakra swelled up on her finger, with the atmosphere inside the bubble being equivalent to the pressure thousands of miles underwater, where no human body or anything other than the inhabitants was able to endure. Even without the heat effect, One's pressure bullets were fatal. As long as she charged it up and fired at a weak spot, like the head or heart.
Obito experienced it during the Kannabi Bridge mission (Note: Chapter 7). He was lucky that One hadn't fully charged the shot, or else Obito's current vegetative state would have been replaced with an embrace with the grim reaper.
If she had been able to incorporate heat into her water-pressure bullets, then the samurai's head would have been a smouldering stump. Obito's too.
The quiet of the valley was stifling; the lead driver and the other driver's mouths hung open, slouched in shock at the quick display, the people in the caravan under One and the people that scrambled out to get a good look at the bleeding corpse, with its blood spattered on the snow, were frozen in amazement, mumbling and sending looks up at the girl. The guards also assigned to the job were unmoving, not at all surprised but still impressed by the feat; she was personally assigned to this escort job by the job, who highly recommended her skill.
They weren't going to doubt Naruto.
However, even the horses were on red alert.
There hadn't been so much as a bang.
The samurai's death was utterly soundless.
The girl eyed the driver when the silence became too prolonged. She pulled on her hood self-consciously. "What?"
"That was …" the lead driver stuttered, searching for words that escaped him. "That was…fantastic."
One scoffed, her pink cheeks darkening ever so slightly at the praise. "Yeah, well, whatever. About time." She coughed into her fist, with there being not so much as a shift from the people in the caravans. The horse grunted and snorted. One raised her voice, though not at the people she was guarding, but to the equally surprised bandits hiding behind covers in the valley, "I've you have any sense, let up pass!" She pointed at the frozen corpse; its face still contorted in a grisly mask. "You saw what happens when you mess with me!" she pointed with her right hand around her, carefully turning on her heel and jabbing her finger at every place the bandits cowered behind; underneath a white and grey blanket on the side of the road, behind a mound of snow, underneath a pit covered by a plank and a thin layer of snow, behind one of the barricades ahead of them, and underneath the caravan at the very back of the procession. The two bandits there immediately scrambled away, hands covering their heads and diving behind another mound of snow, where One's hands followed their retreat. "Good!"
She sat down with a humph and faced toward their destination, dropping her sword at her side and crossing her arms.
"Let's get a move on." She directed the words at the lead driver and the man scrambled back to his place, gripping the reins and cracking it.
The horse snorted lazily, though otherwise they got up and began stomping ahead, dragging the caravan forward with it. The other caravans followed suit, weaving through the makeshift barricade. Those that passed the barricade caught sight of a scruffy man holding a rusty, chipped ninjato hobbling away and leaping into one of the holes, joining his comrades.
A laughing smile played at One's lips. She bit her bottom lip, securing her scarf over her mouth but no longer bothering with her hood. The bandanna covering her brow was enough shade from the cold wind.
One took out her book and went back to reading.
Authors note
Jutsu List
Water Pressure Bullets: This is an S-rank hiden jutsu created by One, a member of ROOTs CORE Initiative. She was inspired by small crab-like fish that hunted thousands of miles under the ocean and used heat and water pressure to confuse their targets, allowing the fish the chance to swoop in for the kill. First, One needed to train more in her Kraken Sage Mode so that instead of covering her body with nature chakra she only covered her hand or hands. Then she would swell up an invisible bubble of nature chakra on her fingertip and then release the bubble at a target; she doesn't necessarily need to shape her hands into guns. That is a stylistic choice.
The technique was created to be an assassination technique, and it has acquired several successful kills during missions when she was in ROOT, given that the jutsu doesn't make any sound and the bullet can be fully charged in half a second. It is an instant kill technique unique to One. It doesn't tax One's chakra reserves since she uses pure Kraken nature chakra; her function is simply to draw on it, concentrate, form the bubble, aim and fire. A fully charged bullet has the capability of breaking anything it comes in contact with, shattering bone, perforating solid steel, and crushing marble, and it travels at the speed of one meter in half a second.
However, the downside is that a fully charged bullet can only be fired once every five minutes, with any subsequent bullet being a quarter in strength and less effective. The five minutes timer resets after shooting every quarter-charged bullet. Not even One knows why this happens. The technique can be detected by sensors. The longest distance a fully charged bullet can reach is five metres, but that sacrifices plenty of momentum. Quarter-charged bullets reach less than half of that distance with less of the efficiency. Still, quarter-charged bullets are fully capable of doing terrible damage at close distances, as evident from the chapter above.
Done
Technically, on paper, this escort job to Iron Country is One's first operation with WG, but her true first job will take place in the next chapter.
Hope to see you there :)
Foy.