Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Also a cheeky little discount– more information on that at the bottom AN.
"The Daimyo?" I asked Uraume as we stepped into my office with Uzume by our side this time. She hadn't left since the ight ended, and considering that was the most fun I'd had in a long time, I ain't much opposed to having her around.
"Looked into it, spoke to a few of the ministers that he came with that the Hyuga have business with. Offer him a place in Konoha, the security of our walls, promise him that nothing will touch him here, and he will be your man till the day he dies" She said with a wry smile.
"So it was all about saving his own hide then" I scoffed and tossed a ryo coin over to her. She caught it deftly with a smirk.
"It always is"
"Betting on our poor Daimyo?" Uzume asked.
"We bet on everything. Uraume seems unwilling to accept that I occasionally have good ideas".
"For good reason, last I checked you've lost six of these so far" She said, pocketing the coin with a proud little smile.
"I take this to mean that you lot are finally letting me in" Uzume pressed.
"We never intended to have you on the outside, Uzume. You just didn't seem to have the interest in this kind of thing, you know?"
"Subterfuge and sleuthing? Miss me with that. But being informed would be nice. My clan looks to me to have answers, and I'm supposed to be your best friend, so how do I explain it to them that I have no idea what you are doing?" Her tone was only slightly aggravated, so that was a good thing.
"You know exactly what I am doing. I'm increasing our forces by training the older genin. I've brought the reserves out of retirement and convinced the clans to commit more men to the fight" I said.
"You know what I mean. I'm not stupid, Shori. You know what I don't see here? What I haven't seen anywhere in Konoha recently? Shikahime's dry smirk. We both know there's only one reason she would be away from you at a time like this. You've sent her somewhere" She accused. Uraume tapped her fingers against her leg in the Hyuga sign language— No, and not for the first time, I decided to ignore her advice.
"Not just her. Kizuru, Toshiro, Inoken, and Shiba. They're on a mission" I said.
"What kind of mission?"
"The kind that either wins wars or loses them" I said. She scoffed.
"Am I going to have to drag it out of you?"
"Kumo has no jinchuriki. I killed one of Iwa's. Whispers in the wind say Kiri has made a new six-tails. Shika's job is to kidnap both these Jinchuriki while posing as Kumo shinobi" I said.
"That's— that's…"
"Insane? Stupidly risky? Guaranteed to kill four of the few friends we have left? A sign of his fading faculties? Try all of the above. I told him it was stupid when he sent them in, but he's certain this gambit will work" Uraume cut in when Uzume struggled to find the words.
XXXXXX- SHIKAHIME
"This is so fucking stupid" She heard Inoken whisper in hr ear, and didn't nod but agreed with him all the same. It was stupid, and risky, but it was the way to get the job done. She and Shori might have been the only ones who knew how well and truly fucked Konoha was at this point. Shori's innate insanity might have been the only thing keeping the people from protesting his reign in the streets, but he needed to deliver something, and deliver it quickly. That was where this mission came in.
"Quiet" Kizuru hissed in their direction before he went back to whistling. His genjutsu, auditory by nature, would mask their presence here, while both Toshiro and Shiba worked to eliminate any traces of their presence here. Even their scent was eliminated with every step they took. They had to be ghosts for this mission. At least for the beginning chunk of it. Quiet in, make a bit of noise in the middle, and then sneak out like ghosts at the end. It was the kind of plan she would have made. That made it all the more shocking when Shori delivered the thing fully formed to her all those days ago.
They moved out of the treeline, once again in a plain mountainous area. One difference between moving in Iwa and moving in Konoha was the lack of immediately available tree cover. It meant that they could be easily spotted from a distance, but that was where Toshiro's own genjutsu came in. If it could even be called genjutsu at this point. Once they stepped into full view, even without any signal, they folded in to get closer to Toshiro and thus within range of his jutsu.
This was the last few hundred metres until they made it to Iwagakure's mountain proper. Their spies had been able to give them a general area, and Shiba's sensing had helped narrow it down so they had a good grasp of the location and whatnot. They travelled in silence while Shika worked out the plan for what they would be doing when they got there. They wouldn't be using any of Konoha's spies beyond the information Shori had already given them. She had no doubt that Iwa had spies within their spies, so it would have been much more difficult to carry out a false flag operation like this one when their whole intelligence apparatus had their paw prints over the thing.
When they arrived at the base of the mountain, she reached out with her earth release, creating a small cavern for them to hide in. Trying to tunnel into the mountain itself to get to the village would probably kill her with exertion, as well as get them all killed from being found out. Even this much earth manipulation was dangerous next to a village filled with people who made the art their bread and butter.
"Now put these on" She whispered to her team, taking out the Kumo headbands. She consciously stopped her hand from shaking as she reached up and took off the Konoha headband wrapped around her neck before replacing it with the kumo headband, trying not to think about what had definitely happened to its former owner— what might happen to her if anything went wrong here.
They moved like shadows once they were out of their hole in the mountain, working to cover it silently, quickly, and most importantly stealthily. Now, the genjutsu that covered them was entirely Toshiro's. Kizuru's auditory genjutsu worked by cloaking one sound as another. Out in the wilds that would have been ideal, but here any sound was going to be investigated regardless, and they needed him to preserve his chakra for the next stage of their plan when they would actually need him to be on the top of his game.
Toshiro was superb when it came to genjutsu, but there was a reason Kizuru's clan was considered to be on the same level as the Uchiha when it came to the art, and within the village they would be needing all of that. Once they reached Iwagakure's walls, they stopped without touching them. If she was the one in charge of the village she would have at least a few Earth release masters monitoring the wall at all times so she made sure to avoid even thinking about tempering with it. Their point of entry would be far more subtle. They crept along the wall's circumference until they reached the village gate, and as they got close enough to spot the scouts watching the steady flow of caravans and carriages, they waited until the perfect moment.
One of the scouts turned in the other direction and her shadow snaked out instantly, racing along the wall before grabbing a hold of the other one, forcing him to stay still. He never got to sound the alarm as the next second, Inoken had taken over his body. Inoken's body fell limp besides them, but Shiba wasted no time in sealing him into the scroll Shori had given them exactly for this purpose. She removed her shadow from the first before latching on top the second just as he turned around. Inoken reached out and grabbed the second man by his face while he remained paralyzed, before leaning down and capturing that man's lips with his newly acquired pair.
She detached her shadow once she was certain that the second man was under her teammate's control as well.
"Okay, let's go." She signaled the others, and they retreated backwards until they were certain that they were out of view of the gate guards.
The wall behind them rumbled until it opened.
"You were right" Inoken said in the Iwa shinobi's body. Those were words she would never tire of hearing if she was being honest with herself.
"Straight into the village?" She asked about the tunnel.
"Yup. Their anbu use it. It's monitored, but only by the wall scouts and one other".
"I assume the second you is handling the one other?" He nodded, an intense look on his face.
Three minds would probably be stretching it for him, she figured. She placed a hand against the face he controlled.
"Be careful"
"Always" He said, leaning in into her touch before turning abruptly and leading them into the deep.
They covered the tunnel quickly, being careful to be stealthy enough that they weren't announcing their presence but well aware that the tunnel was so small that if there was anyone else here, then hey would notice them in virtually no time. Hence, the speed in their movements. The tunnel had multiple outlets, but beyond using Inoken's control of the Iwa scouts to get a good understanding of the village layout, they were also using that access to figure out where the village jinchuriki was kept, or to figure out someone who knew.
She wanted to ask which they were on the way towards, but she was wary of making noise and in any case, she would be finding out the second they arrived at their intended destination and then there were only two possibilities. She'd made this part of the plan already then.
Once they left the tunnel, they found themselves in a residential district. So plan two then. Inoken pointed towards a single house and the rest of them folded into the shadows, hidden by Kizuru's genjutsu as Inoken approached from the front door. Ordinarily, taking a jonin on in their home was the kind of thing that only suicidal idiots like Shori even countenanced, but here they had a simple advantage.
Inoken knocked on the door in his false form, and the person within seemed to only take a few seconds before swinging it open.
"Daisuke? What are you—" The woman began before she froze under the control of Shika's shadow. Some of her clansmen preferred to maintain their control by leaving the target's head free to move about, but she did not judge the chakra savings— significant in truth— to be enough to risk it here in this situation.
Inoken leaned into her and kissed her in this form, while Shika looked away, not quite able to ignore that it was her friend in that body kissing an enemy shinobi. When the woman's eyes glassed over, Inoken stepped past her and into the house before stabbing his body straight through the neck and dragging it from left to right. Blood sprayed everywhere, splashing over the living room, but none of it got outside, he was careful like that.
Shika released her hold on the body when she felt it stop resisting her jutsu. That meant Inoken had full control.
"Sorry about the gruesome sight, guys, but she was a bit too strong-willed to control with three other bodies under my control. Had to let go of one, and that one had run its course. The other two are going to help us with our distraction. Shika, I take it you left the package where we agreed?" She nodded, still worried, but recognising that this wasn't the time to mention her worries about his ability to just stab himself in the neck.
With the woman under Inoken's control, his movements shifted again. Where with the first man, he had shrunk in on himself trying to avoid attention and make sure that no one noticed him, with the woman it was the opposite. Like he expanded himself to take as much space through the road as possible, and despite that, no one touched him. The woman was given a wide berth, the kind of which that would make sense for a pariah, not the respected Jounin that she had to b to be entrusted with being the Jinchuriki's sensei.
Walking behind Inoken's stolen form and hidden under a tandem genjutsu— this time from both Kizuru and Toshiro to make sure that there was not even the vaguest chance of their presence being noticed, they walked into the hospital. Inoken went straight to an elevator and, seen in the crowded hospital, she (he) was given a wide berth. For the rest of them, Shika had to employ some genjutsu of her own. She wasn't a once in a generation prodigy like Toshiro, or from a clan of genjutsu monsters like Kizuru, but her jutsu relied heavily on yin release so it was not like she was a complete novice.
It was a simple enough thing to convince every civilian or nurse who brushed, or almost brushed into, them in the crowd into thinking that they had been nothing but a figment of their imagination. They entered the elevator after Inoken and instead of pressing any of the buttons, he reached for the control panel and flipped it on its side, revealing another button. This one, he pressed. And instead of going up, they went down. Of course, the hidden layer in a village of earth release practitioners would be underground.
"Well, that's fucked" Toshiro whispered to them as they kept going underground. A quick escape was going to be impossible once they took the jinchuriki. At least, impossible through conventional means.
"Our extraction is not an issue" She said.
"In fact, you could say our mission is almost complete" Shiba whispered with a smile on his face. She gave him a skeptical look. He had no idea what Shori had planned, so why was he so easily able to guess that their role was almost complete.
The elevator dinged to a stop and as the door swung open, there were three anbu operatives waiting for them.
"Lin-san, explain yourself. Your presence here has not been approved by Tsuchikage-sama" One of the anbu operatives said. While the other two instantly took apprehensive stances. Good instincts. Even with their genjutsu, they could feel something off, well, that was why it was time for them to strike.
Her shadow caught all three of them at once, and in a matter of seconds they'd run each other through with their blades. "Shadow possession: mutual suicide dance" she whispered to herself as an alarm started blaring, and her team swarmed out through the doors.
Shiba was the most dangerous of them, his swarm rising with him and dealing with swathes of Kumo shinobi as they came. Every shinobi that tried to engage him at a distance found their bodies covered by specially bred insects that imparted electric shocks at a distance. Apparently, the Aburame had made them by mimicking the behaviour of electric eels. Those who came close were cut apart with Toshiro's seamless Kenjutsu, near impossible to oppose with how he weaved genjutsu into every movement.
And then there was Kizuru, whose fingers moved across his flute at immense speeds. Last she heard, some enemy shinobi had managed to break the old one Shori had made him, but it seemed their mutual friend had managed to find the time in his busy schedule to make him a new one. At least it seemed Shori-made, from the seals that dotted its construction, weaved around it like some sort of art. Inoken, in the woman's body, was a storm of blistering taijutsu as she worked her shadow through him.
Whenever he engaged someone, their shadows would link for a second, and that was all she needed to freeze them for long enough for Inoken to deal with them. In a matter of minutes, they were the only living things in the hallway, a fact she made sure of by moving from body to body and performing quick stabs to the throat.
"Toshiro, deal with the elevator" She ordered. No doubts the main reason they hadn't been buried in bodies was Inoken's distraction. She felt guilt run through her before she squashed it. Students in the academy were shinobi-in-training, and so were viable targets in something like this. And logically, she knew they were the perfect distraction. No Kage could ignore an attack on their youngest and most vulnerable and expect to remain Kage for long. She watched as Toshiro walked to the still open elevator and dropped a set of seal tags.
"Let's go" She said, and they stormed ahead to the room at the end of the hallway. Within was a single person, a young girl, attached to various machines. Well, Shori had been right when he said there was no way she'd be standing soon. Toshiro got to work disconnecting her from the machinery, showing that his time spent in the hospital had not been wasted. She wondered how it must have felt to be placed on a genin team with monsters like Shori and Uzume as a clan-less shinobi. It couldn't have been all that enjoyable, she thought, as a rumbling sound began from above them.
"Someone's digging through" Inoken whispered at them.
"Disguises now. And Toshiro hurry the hell up" She said, placing her had on the headband and activating the seal behind it, hoping to gods that Shori's work was perfect. In a matter of seconds, she looked around and could not recognise any of her teammates. They all bore the appearance of strange Kumo nin.
Toshiro spread a scroll over the unconscious jinchuriki and in a puff of smoke, she disappeared.
"Out of here" She commanded, figuring they still had some time until the ceiling above them exploded, revealing a floating short man.
"Fuck, it's the Tsuchikage" She heard someone say. Way to state the obvious.
"Out of here now" She barked, barreling through the thin wall with her earth release while Inoken jumped right at the Tsuchikage.
She watched out of the corner of her eye while retreating as Inoken's stolen form stopped in midair, caught in some sort of cube, and turned to dust.
"To me" She screamed, and the others wasted no time in grabbing on to her.
"Home" She whispered the codeword, and they were gone.
A/N: And that's the chapter. The initial intention for this chapter was brief confrontation with the Tsuchikage but old man Tsuchikage's bag is much too instantly fatal for most of the Konoha kids to last longer than a few seconds. Since I have further plot points for most of these characters, it was best not to kill them all off (spoiler: If I'd have gone that route Shika and Toshiro would have been the only ones to survive). Next three up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)( same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Also, there's a cheeky 10% discount available for all monthly plans till the 14th.