The Clone Jutsu gambit was successful, but it only gained Takuma a few seconds, which he knew. However, a few seconds of stillness in a fight was all one could hope for. This was the first time after the Frost mission he had faced the element of surprise—but this was the first time he was the sole target. The four assailants coming after him were solely interested in taking his life.

He climbed up a building wall and stopped in the middle and stared down at the figure running at him. They were dressed in complete black with a gray mask peeking behind the hood.

He slipped a hand into his weapons pouch and tied one of his few explosive tag to a kunai as he wondered about the identity behind the assassins. His thoughts immediately zeroed in on the drug trade. It was obvious that his recent mission had threatened the drug lords—by taking action outside Hidden Leaf borders, he had set a dangerous precedent—and this could be their attempt to take him out. He was an easy, low-risk target because of his background, and taking him out would definitely force the Narcotics Task Force to review their future plans.

As the man neared, Takuma threw the kunai with an explosive tag on its tail.

The question was: Who was it? Which one of the drug lords had ordered the hit? Takuma felt very invested in finding the scum who had ordered the hit and then beat them to the inch of their lives.

The tag exploded, and the man was thrown back to the ground. Takuma didn’t wait to see the man re-attain his balance before hitting the ground; he immediately turned his back to block a kunai from another assailant with his own.

That was all the rest he got.

“I’m afraid this is not how one makes friends,” said Takuma as he pushed the man up the wall. “If you wanted to talk, I have recently developed a taste for tea. We can chat over a late-night tea session.”

He got no response from the man. Takuma didn’t mind; he wasn’t expecting them to speak up from the get-go—and he had more time to flare some choice words out of him.

Takuma sent chakra to his soles. The wall beneath him cracked, and he jumped high just when the second man reached him on the wall. He leaped over him and landed down on the road. The moment his feet landed on the ground, he took off again just a moment before a large volley of shuriken could butcher him.

He wasn’t given a second of rest as three men surrounded him with swords drawn.

A kunai each slipped into his hands, and the moment the steel gleamed, the three men charged.

Takuma clicked his tongue and moved. He caught a sword between his kunai and used his full force to push him away, and began a mental stopwatch of three seconds. He turned back and launched the two kunai towards the second man, who used his sword to block them; the force behind the kunai sent sparks out on impact, but by that time, Takuma had already moved to the third man. Takuma dodged a slash for his torso and followed with a lashing kick augmented by chakra; number three blocked this strike but was pushed back a few feet.

‘Resilient,’ thought Takuma when his strike didn’t blow away the No#3. These days, his Ring opponents spent most of their time in the arena dodging his strikes because every hit slashed away at their chances of victory by a significant percentage.

The three-second stopwatch went off, and Takuma returned back to No#1. The man was fast with his sword and right from the bat, had better kenjutsu skills than any other Ring fighter Takuma had faced; Takuma had to move his entire body constantly so as not to get cut by the sharp blade.

Within a breath, the three men were back on Takuma, and he pulled all of his 2v1 experience in the Ring to handle three men, which was difficult. Not only were there three men for him to handle, but they were also better at collaborative combat than any pair Takuma had fought. In less than fifteen seconds, he had gotten half a dozen cuts on his body.

But in return, Takuma did some damage to their clothes as well. He tore No#1’s hood, shredded one of No#2’s sleeves, and slit the hem of No#3’s robe. They wore exactly the same attires from the boots, to the robe, to the mask—he had to distinguish themselves at a glance to better recognize who was who while he got to understand their combat quirks.

Suddenly, the three men jumped far away from Takuma simultaneously. The answer came before Takuma even had the chance to be confused. He felt a heat and looked up to see multiple basketball-sized fireballs descending towards him.

“Shit!”

Takuma immediately weaved the three hand seals for Body Flicker Jutsu, but the moment he pushed off at inhuman speeds, the fireballs hit the ground, and an explosive force slammed into Takuma along with the blasted pieces of road pavement. He hit the wall with his front side, barely protecting his face.

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What he couldn’t protect was his injured chest from his Ring fight. His ribs made hard contact with a concrete wall, and whatever Sango's work had done was undone in an instant. Takuma felt the taste of iron invade his mouth, and he knew there was some level of internal bleeding. He gritted his teeth as he slid down the wall to grasp control over himself before he even landed on the ground, No#2 sped towards him with a sword.

Takuma let his knees buckle to avoid a head-decapitation strike, but the pain in his chest didn’t allow him to escape from the corner he had been trapped in. He went for the second-best option and threw a fast-acting smoke bomb, which covered seven feet of area in thick black smoke. Bearing the pain, Takuma swept No#2’s legs and whipped a blind augmented kick that made contact.

He propped himself on his knee and weaved another set of hand seals, and mist solidified in the air, plummeting the visibility in the area.

Takuma rose up and took out one of the sachets Sango had given him. It was a painkiller; it wasn’t an instantaneous drug, but he was hoping it would have some early semi-placebo effect.

A kunai silently came out, and he assumed stealth mode as he moved around the heavy fog of the Hidden Mist Jutsu. The lack of functioning street lights in the area already had visibility in the dumps, but with the mist filling the area, seeing anything was all but impossible even for Takuma, who was trained for combat under the mist.

But against four shinobi whose combat ability was unknown, it was a trade-off Takuma was willing to make. Moreover, the longer he stretched the fight, the greater the chances for someone reporting the fight to the authorities, leading to someone from the Police Force arriving at the scene.

He was taught to finish fights quickly, and stretching the situation for external interference went against the philosophy, but he couldn’t see any other option. Escape was an unreliable option—as long as he made it to a populated region, they wouldn’t dare to assassinate him there—but fighting while on the run had increased risk and vulnerability, which increased with the number of assailants. Four people weren’t great odds.

Plus, there was a non-combat issue with running. If he, the Narcotics Task Force’s leader, ran today, he would be setting an example. If assassins could scare the leader, what would that say about the subordinates? He had to thrash this attempt right here and now so that no other drug lord would dare to send assassins after his people.

And he wanted information. He didn’t have to kill four trained assassins; he just needed to kill three and capture one alive.

‘Now, where are they?’

Takuma’s hearing sharpened as he concentrated, spreading around the empty streets. There was no ruckus. The Fire Release jutsu earlier ensured that none of the residents would dare come out. He simply hoped one of them would call the Police Force, but he also knew that the neighborhood he lived in didn’t particularly love the Police Force—there was a chance they would instead let the situation pass before they informed the Police Force of the aftermath.

The sound of a skid of boots against the pavement pinged Takuma’s ears, and his eyes widened. He quickly whipped back and blocked the sword with his kunai. Clang! Takuma knew the sound was enough to give the others an idea of his location.

He needed to move quickly.

Takuma skipped back a few feet, beyond what the current visibility allowed to be seen so that he could slip away, but the figure jolted forward, not allowing Takuma to escape.

‘Fight it is then,’ Takuma thought.

He launched ahead and aimed an augmented strike for the head, which was swiftly dodged by a quick side step. Takuma tried to follow with a quick hook kick to the chest, but his leg was grabbed. Without any hesitation, as soon as Takuma felt the grip on his foot tighten, he used the hold as a pivot to take off the ground to land an augmented blow right to the head. Baam! Takuma felt the satisfying reverb shoot through his leg.

The grip loosened, and Takuma landed on the ground. He sprang up and forward for the follow-up attack when a kick slammed into the side of his face.

The man, unphased by the augmented kick, retaliated when Takuma thought he had a clear view for a follow-up attack. The augmentation wasn’t at full force due to his awkward position, but it was still enough to disorient someone for a moment, but here, it didn’t seem to work.

His eyes went for his marking and found the man missing a hood. It was No#1. He wondered if it was just No#1 who was extra resilient or if it was everyone on the team. He added that to his combat analysis as a punch flew towards his face.

He pulled his torso and head back to dodge the punch. No#1 grabbed the momentum by its reign and launched a flurry of attacks on Takuma, who went on the defensive as he bobbed and weaved out of every single strike. Not a single attack after the initial kick touched Takuma.

And when he was ready, Takuma retaliated. He slammed a body shot into the pit of No#1’s abdomen. An elbow strike assaulted the head next. Takuma grabbed No#1 by his shoulder to finish the combo and pulled him down for an augmented knee strike into the chest.

“Come on, bitch,” he whispered just loud enough so that No#1 could hear.

No#1 stumbled back to make space but immediately shot forward.

Takuma could hear every exhalation that preceded a strike. The time between the two events was extremely short, and usually, there was no use in tracking the exhalation pattern, but now, with zero visibility, Takuma used that breathing pattern to his advantage.

No#1 unleashed a flurry of sword strikes that Takuma dodged or blocked. They weren’t as sharp and precise as before; the mist obstructing the vision was paying off. He side-stepped a sword jab and returned a low kick to the thigh that hobbled No#1. Takuma closed the distance, but the trained assassin wasn’t one to go down easily; his sword hissed as it came for Takuma’s neck. He diverted at the last second by his kunai so that it could only tear the fabric over his shoulder.

Crack! Takuma’s strongest augmentation fist made unobstructed contact with the chest. He felt the familiar sensation of rib bones moving under the force of chakra that shot out from his fist.

“I’m better than you at this,” Takuma spat.

“But unlike you, he’s not alone.”

The voice was followed by a low shrill of a sword, and moved out of the way. However, the sword caught his upper arm and left a deep gash.

Takuma hissed in pain, but the twisted expression stayed on his face only for a second, soon replaced by a large grin.

“So, you guys can speak,” Takuma laughed, but he didn’t feel good about it.