__________ POV Narration __________

The Blind assassin yawned as he did a few more handstand pushups to pass the time.

A long sword leaned on the wall by the side of his relatively large room.

He was given privacy within the confines of that home, but every exit and entrance to the house was closely monitored.

'They really aren't taking any chances, huh?'

He didn't feel all that bad about their lack of trust. A hidden village would normally be that guarded. It was mostly the same while he was at the Cloud Village for a while.

It did irritate him that the Village elders weren't quite appreciative of his efforts.

Danzo even had the gall to imply that Konoha didn't have any obligation to hold its part of the deal.

The Assassin was half a mind to kill him then and there. There was no point in trying to build friendly relations with a nation that didn't show him any respect or goodwill.

But it seemed that the Hokage had already talked with Danzo beforehand. And Hiruzen was adamant about keeping his part of the deal.

At least that was the vibe that Ken had gotten from that meeting.

Only the Hokage and some of the Clan Heads were friendly and seemed to wish to form some sort of alliance. Maybe they were a bit forward, but at least they were respectful.

It would've been nice if the others were a bit more tactful...

Unlike the Uchiha Clan Head, who essentially 'ordered' Ken to take off his mask.

Now, the Blind Monster didn't care about people seeing his face. He had no reason to care about it. But it was simply a lack of respect at the end of the day.

One wouldn't ask a foreign Anbu to take off their mask if they were making a deal with a different Land, it didn't matter if they were in the presence of the whole war council or not.

Ken was not some random Bounty Hunter off the street, he was a legend of the Shinobi World at that point, leading an organization that was the equivalent of a hidden village in the land of Samurai.

He didn't need his ego to be inflated by some useless village executives, but some respect could've still gone a long way.

'Whatever, shinobi will always be shinobi... My presence does warrant a certain degree of caution.'

The real problem was the Hokage's right-hand man. And his shady demeanour.

'That Danzo... He isn't even an elder from what I remember, just Hiruzen's attendant...

There isn't much information about him out there, all I know is that he used to be in the same team as the Third Hokage...'

Ken pondered about it for a few minutes, but he couldn't do anything besides sigh in the end.

Then he felt something strange. His senses flared, he felt as if a blanket had been taken off of his head.

'The barrier's fallen...?'

The Fuinjutsu that made infiltrating Konoha undetected fell for exactly one minute, it was almost unnoticeable to a regular shinobi, it came and went fast, but the outage was noticed by Ken's enhanced senses.

The more powerful people within the city were bound to have noticed it as well.

It was clear what had happened.

'Someone infiltrated the village...'

Ken had no way of knowing why exactly, he wasn't paying full attention to the entire village, too much information to process, his mind was still human after all...

But the Leaf was sure to start investigating instantly, and they certainly jumped into action quickly.

Ken could feel a few of the people stationed at his house running off. Leaving it with less supervision.

'I'll take this chance... Might as well find a place to hide that scroll, and investigate whatever is happening in the hidden village... I can use that as an excuse as well if I get found out.'

Ken's curiosity ended up taking the better of him, and he immediately turned into a blur.

The first thing he did was use the distraction of his watchers to create a Lighting Clone, to which he bestowed most of his chakra. He left it in the bedroom, before turning into a blur.

He escaped from his extremely small window, his body twisting and bending unnaturally at great speeds as he ran off into the distance.

The Shinobi observing his house weren't able to observe his departure due to the mess that came with reorganizing their surveillance to work with fewer people.

Ken couldn't really feel them blink because most of them wore masks, but he trusted his speed to slip by unnoticed.

The Blind Assassin took off his mask and tied his hair in a pony spiky ponytail, leaving a long tuff of hair to obscure most of his face beside his mouth.

He also took off his armour and put on the most unassuming clothes he had. He looked just like a civilian, he blended into the village with ease, walking on the streets with a wide smile on his face.

He also managed to find a nice place to leave a reverse summoning scroll, right underneath a large dumpster without wheels.

'It's gonna be unpleasant to get reverse summoned into trash... But hopefully, they won't find it...'

The disguised assassin then put his hands behind his head and whistled as he walked off.

The defensive barrier in the city was unlikely to spot him as a difference since he hadn't even left himself enough chakra to be classified as a Genin, so he was free to wander for now.

Ken wasn't stupid however, he realised that some more skilled shinobi will be sent to his home to check on him. If they were skilled enough, they would also notice that he had left a clone there.

'But only someone like the White Fang or the Hokage personally might be able to tell the difference...'

So he wasn't particularly worried about getting found out. Even if he was to be found out, it wasn't like he was doing anything bad.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And so, his elbows raised to the sky as he smiled and blended into the streets. He looked so unassuming that no one even bothered to give him a second look. His presence was fleeting.

But his senses were spread out all around him, he was feeling the wind bend around various houses within the village, and he was looking for anything out of the ordinary.

Eventually, he found it... A rather large home in the distance, currently vacant, one door was open large, and there were no real signs of struggle, but Ken noticed quite a few lingering scents as he got closer to the house.

It mostly permeated with a sweet smell, likely belonging to a young girl. But there were 4 more distinct smells fresh in that home.

And as he stood at the door of that house, he also felt other shinobi approaching the house from other directions.

'I guess someone important lives here... It may be worth following the scents for now... It'll take a while for them to track it otherwise.'

It felt odd, the home belonged to a little girl alone from what Ken could sense, and the other 4 seemed to be grown men.

'It's worth observing them for a bit...'

Ken smiled, his hair swaying in the wind as he turned into a blur right before Shinobi surrounded the house.

He immediately started tracking down the culprits.

He jumped over the village walls without even bothering to look behind.

Strangely enough, there weren't many people guarding that part of the wall, which was likely why the intruders had targeted it, to begin with.

As he ventured further into the forest at a steady pace, he picked up on yet another scent.

'Another person started tracking them down... Strange, was he waiting outside for his allies? But he seems to be trailing the intruders much like I am...'

The assassin was like a bloodhound, his spiky ponytail swaying in the wind as he jumped from tree to tree, the bangs of hair covering his scarred face didn't move at all, disregarding the wind.

He trailed the scents perfectly, he was able to reimagine the route they had taken, the way they had walked, their positions...

The girl seemed to be either tied up on one of the kidnappers' shoulders or on his back. And the other three kidnappers all seemed to form a triangle around the one carrying the girl.

Two stood in line with him, one covered their backs.

Meanwhile, the other scent he had tracked seemed to trail behind them perfectly. The person in question seemed quite trained, but the Blind Assassin could still notice some mistakes.

Like the fact that he had left some fallen leaves behind. Thankfully the kidnappers hadn't noticed it, but it was still a rather big mistake for a good assassin.

'Then again... Shinobi aren't exactly conventional assassins, most of them are soldiers that use special tricks to fight.

Only the Anbu, the special ops, really handle assassinations normally...'

The Anbu were certainly the most trained when it came to stealth. But there were some exceptions of Jonin that were particularly good at it.

Ken had come to realize that nature energy and the special skill he had created in his past life were the only reasons he could outmatch some of the more skilled shinobi in stealth.

They were just that good. If they had the tools he had, they would've been just as skilled.

But they lacked the talent to create such a sadistic technique, and for some reason, not many people could handle Nature Energy like Ken could.

Still, the shinobi he was trailing were all skilled. The 4 kidnappers were covering their tracks perfectly, and the one tracking them was skilled enough to not get noticed by them.

Eventually, Ken ran into something interesting... The unconscious body of one of the kidnappers.

It made him pick up his pace, no longer taking the matter so leisurely. He started spreading his senses to their limits, his mouth turning into a slight smile.

'The person tracking the kidnappers is a lot more skilled than I gave them the credit for...

It seems he was able to take one out without any of them noticing it...'

It wasn't long before he finally found the group, his senses finally catching up to them as he turned into a blur and appeared on a tree right above them, concealing his presence effortlessly.

Sensing the situation down in the forests, he realized that things were certainly dire...

One of the kidnappers appeared to have been stabbed in the chest with a kunai, the other two seemed to be encroaching on the girl and the... Young boy?

A boy wearing an opened-up sweater, regular pants and sandals, and a headband on his forehead. His hair was also raised up high and spiky.

'So the skilled tracker that made a mockery of these trained shinobi that infiltrated the village is a boy as young as I am? Well, it's hard to tell, he may be even younger...'

The boy seemed to have pulled the girl away from the kidnappers, he was also uninjured, which was an accomplishment in itself.

He wasn't even panting, but he had lost the element of surprise. The shinobi were in a formation that made it impossible to take them all out silently one by one.

He had only managed to pick off the one that had stayed in the back, but the other three were too close together, and they were all in each other's peripheral vision.

That much Ken was able to tell when he was tracking their scents as well, which was why he hurried to catch up to them.

Each kidnapper seemed to be carrying a weapon. One had a sword, and the other had a ball and chain, which was wrapped around his wrist.

Ken couldn't tell much about their appearance besides the fact that they wore generic Shinobi Clothing and masks. They had no headbands, so he couldn't tell what villages they were from.

"M-Minato?" The little girl's tired voice was the first one that Ken heard. She seemed shocked to see him.

Ken could feel some of her features as well. She seemed to be wearing some sort of dress, alongside sandals that extended upwards to her thighs. She seemed to have very long hair, and she also wore her headband in the same way as 'Minato'.

And then he felt the chakra within her... So much that he couldn't even sense an end to it.

It was only then that he finally realized who she was...

'The current Nine Tail Jinchuriki... Kazue's little sister, Kushina Uzumaki...'

Ken could feel the young man's head angle towards Kushina, and give her a warm smile.

The calm smile on Ken's mouth receded a bit when he felt that. His lips turned downward in a slight scowl.

But he wasn't scowling at the Minato rescuing Kushina. He wasn't scowling at his bravery. But rather, at himself.

'... A child so kind ended up as a Shinobi? This world really is unfair...'

But then again... Could Ken really claim that the boy was an exception to the norm?

The assassin couldn't help but think back to the shinobi he had killed in the past.

How many of them had the potential to give someone such a warm smile? How many of them had the potential to live a fulfilling life?

The truth was that Ken had no way of answering that question.

He couldn't possibly know. He had never bothered to look at shinobi in such a way.

To him, they were barely even human, not deserving of a second look as their corpses dried out in a field.

He had forged alliances with some, but he had kept them at arm's length. He hadn't ever cared about actually befriending Shinobi.

But it was the smile of that child that reminded him that Shinobi were people as well. Not the screams of pain and agony of the thousands he had killed in cold blood.

For a second, that realization dwelled on the Assassin's shoulders, before he heaved a sigh and shook his head.

'Innocent or guilty... Why did I think it would be a good idea to take it upon myself to judge that...'

He remembered his promise for a second. To plunge a blade into his own stomach if he took the life of an innocent.

He had no way to prove that he had done so yet. But now he also realized that he was too conceited.

'Who am I to judge them anyway...'

He was nothing more than a maniac fulfilling whatever fantasy of justice he had in his mind. Nothing more than a hypocrite.

'Well... Better that I realized this now than never...'

The two unmarked shinobi seemed to have approached Minato and Kushina.

The young man was preparing to roll backwards with Kushina still in his hands, he hadn't even managed to untie her yet, but he had cut away some of the rope already.

The two shinobi seemed to be fast though, at least faster than him while he was carrying Kushina.

But they didn't get to reach Minato and Kushina...

They both stopped dead in their tracks, their muscles standing rigid at the sight in front of them.

Out of nowhere, a figure appeared behind their targets... A figure they could only describe as frightful.

He was tall, filled with muscle, his face was mostly covered by hair, and he wore regular civilian clothing, but there was just something unnerving about the way he appeared in front of them...

Neither Shinobi could even feel his presence there, they both gulped as they thanked god for having their sights intact to even be able to see their opponent.

But they soon realized that seeing their opponent didn't matter at all...

A chilling murderous intent exuded out of the man in the very next second, their hair stood straight as their spines trembled in fear.

No amount of training could have ever prepared them for that feeling of dread that set in alongside that man's presence.

They weren't prepared... They weren't prepared at all... Nature itself didn't seem to be prepared for his rage.

The grass around them all started bending away from the people they were trying to approach, the trees around them seemed to be bending away from them as well.

Both Minato and Kushina noticed that change, their eyes widening in shock.

They couldn't feel the murderous intent, it wasn't directed at them at all. But they still got a feeling of dread just from seeing the way nature reacted.

They slowly looked behind, only to see a tall man tower over them.

His face was mostly covered by hair, but they could only see his mouth, noticing a cold scowl on it.

"Seems I've run into something interesting..." The man's cold voice sent shivers down the spines of all of the people present.

'... I hope we can get out of this alive...' Was the only thing Minato could think of at the time.