His initial plan was to kill Orange-Mask and then shake off the leader before escaping—but now, as he stood on the rooftop after blasting the leader off the roof and Orange-Mask was nowhere to be seen, Takuma wondered if he had found a window to escape.

He could tell that his two pursuers were trying to keep the whole ordeal quiet for some reason, and the leader was especially holding back—he deduced they were trying to keep it all relatively quiet so they could rope the rest of his team in. Takuma knew if he pushed it, there was a risk that the situation would escalate to a point he didn’t want it to.

He weaved hand seals for the Hidden Mist Jutsu. In a couple seconds, a mist descended over the rooftops and spilled out down the street level. He jumped down into the thickening mist and was still in mid-air when he heard the intimidating scratching of a sword being released from its scabbard.

Goosebumps rose on his skin as Orange-Mask suddenly appeared through the mist. He was ascending while Takuma fell. The masked shinobi’s sword struck quickly; Takuma only had the opportunity to raise his guard. The steel shredded his metal-plated arm guards and left a painful gash along both his arms.

He cursed as he stumbled to the floor, the water tentacles stabilising him, holding his breath and focusing on his hearing. There was a pin drop silence until Takuma heard soles rubber against the rough surface. He looked up and caught Orange-Mask zooming down at him, barely a few metres away. A tentacle contested the razor-sharp sword with a kunai that bounced off against the sword firmly held by Orange-Mask, allowing Takuma to sidestep the swing at the last moment.

Orange-Mask blitzed Takuma with a sword dance the moment his feet touched the ground. Takuma was pushed to his physical limits as he moved every part of his body; every swing had enough speed and power to end him. The tentacles rushed forth, but Orange-Mask immediately retreated, disappearing into the mist Takuma had created.

He realised he had set up the perfect playing field for an assassination. He had a choice to make, he could decide to trust the training he had done to fight in the mist, or lift the jutsu to revert back to the previous combat environment. A shadow cut through the air. One of the tentacles threw a kunai that Takuma caught, and he raised his hands above his head at the exact moment Orange-Mask brought his sword down at Takuma.

The sword slashed against the flat of kunai supported with both of Takuma’s hands. Sparks flew and Takuma’s heart leaped when he felt the sword slice through the kunai. His skin tingled at the shuddering sensation rattling his bones. He had felt it before with Kameko when she used her kenjutsu.

Orange-Mask was using chakra flow to enhance his sword’s lethality.

Takuma urged his tentacles forward, eager to put some space between them. They wrapped around Orange-Mask’s thighs and waist and threw him away. Takuma diverted the water to strengthen the tentacles and commanded them to slam Orange-Mask to the ground..

He’d use the brief break to prepare his strongest augmentation yet.

Orange-Mask used his core to spin in the air and got in the position. He swung his sword, cut through all the tentacles holding him, landed directly on his feet, and disappeared into the mist before Takuma could even raise his fist.

This won’t do, he thought.

Takuma flexed his back, and the tentacles retreated into the water mass on his back. As much as he liked the flexibility of the tentacles, he didn’t think he could split his focus between his body and the tentacles. He needed the extra concentration to focus on his senses to help him in the mist.

He held a kunai in his left while his right hung loosely at his waist.

“Come on,” he mouthed to himself.

The mist split near Takuma as Orange-Mask snuck in from behind. He turned and blocked the repelled sword with a kunai swing, drawing closer with an augmented strike, ready to turn it into a second-form augmentation.

Takuma’s fist passed through an afterimage. A second later, Orange-Mask reappeared to Takuma’s right. He stabbed his sword into Takuma’s neck, but the blade pierced the back of Takuma’s hood as he bent forward at the last moment. Orange-Mask disappeared, and a volley of shuriken flew from the direction he’d exited from. Takuma deflected all of the shuriken but his balance was uneven, so he rolled forward, and a split-second later, Orange-Mask appeared from above to stab the empty ground.

He charged Takuma, who hit him in the crotch with a swift kick. Takuma used the kick’s momentum to lift himself up and rushed a stumbling Orange-Mask. He tried to take him down to the ground, but Orange-Mask eluded Takuma’s grab with a skillful sidestep and pushed Takuma’s back to put some distance between them while he recovered.

Takuma turned back, intending to continue the pressure, but Orange-Mask had disappeared.

He could do this; he could contend, Takuma said to himself—but he didn’t have a clear advantage. He was proficient in low-visibility combat, but his opponent was efficient and even masterful with the sword. If he wasn’t winning against Orange-Mask, he feared what would happen if the leader joined the fray.

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Takuma formed a quick release-seal and the mist thinned out. He saw Orange-Mask a few metres away from him, trying to sneak around to get at him from behind.

He turned around and dashed into the nearest alley just as Orange-Mask gave chase.

———

.

Kon leaned against the building in an alley with a groan and grabbed his head. His vision swam and then everything he saw doubled. He fumed in anger when he remembered getting caught up in another trick. He could almost hear the Master Instructor, who had taught him to be a shinobi since he was a five-year-old babe and had turned him into a ROOT agent.

He had let himself go. It had been years since he had been involved in active combat—in fact, he didn’t like combat—it was crude and inelegant. He understood its place and importance in society; he just didn’t like participating in it. He was among the weakest in his batch and his other peers—which is why he had made himself useful in the intellectual side of things and had managed the drug trade for ROOT.

But that didn’t mean he was a slouch in combat. He cleared the ROOT standards in his category. Which was why it pissed him off that he wasn’t able to engage the target in combat because he wasn’t able to stay with him for long enough. He looked around and noticed mist from the Hidden Mist Jutsu thinning out. By the time he emerged from the alley, the mist was all but gone. His subordinate was known to use that jutsu, but he couldn’t figure out why the jutsu was released.

Was his subordinate killed by the target? Or was the target able to hold an advantage in the mist? The second didn’t seem viable—which, in turn, increased the former holding true. In one leap, Kon crossed the height to the nearby rooftop to find his subordinate and the target. As he looked around, he spotted the target running across the street. His concern for his subordinate vanished, and he furiously chased after the target, closing the distance.

Kon heard the sound of fighting in the opposite direction and stopped in surprise. Did the second target kill his other two subordinates and proceeded to find them? Kon didn’t turn away and continued chasing the target. If he had indeed lost subordinates, then he had to ensure the capture of the target.

At the entrance of another alley, Kon blitzed through hand seals for Fire Release: Running Fire. He put a finger on his lips and breathed out two streams of fire that attached to the walls on both sides and crossed the surface. The fire streams ran past the target and reached the other end of the alley, gathering to form a wall blocking exit through the alley.

The target stopped and turned back to face Kon. With the fire in the background, there was a shadow over the target, which, along with the hood, obscured the target’s face.

“I’d advise that you don’t struggle; I might end up killing you,” said Kon.

The target didn’t reply and pulled out a kunai.

Kon pulled out his sword from its scabbard and dashed towards the target, but just before he reached him, he abruptly shifted direction towards the wall and used it as a springboard to shoot himself to the opposite wall and launch himself toward the target with his sword at the ready.

The target froze up for a split-second, making him a beat late as he tried to follow Kon. There was no time to evade. Kon thought the target would use his kunai to block the sword and was ready for a contest of strength—he had the momentum on his side. However, to his surprise, the target pulled his fist back. It seemed he was planning to trade damage—accepting to be pierced by Kon’s sword in exchange for getting in a strike of his own.

Kon recalled the target’s physical strength when he had kicked his subordinate through the wall. He accepted the trade—his body had been forged from the torture the Master Instructor liked to dress up as light sparring.

The target’s strength didn’t worry him.

Kon had the advantage of range and stabbed his sword forth. He smirked as the blade cleanly pierced through the target’s shoulder. He then braced himself for the target’s hit—but as he did, he detected chakra.

Anyone who trained chakra had the innate sense to detect the presence of chakra—but that sense was extremely dull. Two shinobi with enormous reserves could be sitting next to each other, and neither would detect chakra in the other. Only sensory-nin with a highly sensitive chakra sense could detect innate chakra in a meaningful way.

For everyone else, they could only detect chakra when it was being used near them in a high volume.

Kon’s eyes shifted to the target’s arm, which was about to hit him. He saw a translucent blue sheen covering the target’s fist and wrist. Chakra was usually colourless when released out of the body in cases like chakra adhesion used for wall/tree and water walking—but it gained a blue colour when a high volume was concentrated.

Kon instantly recognized that he was about to be hit by an augmented strike with so much chakra packed into it that it had gained a visible blue colour—and it was coming directly for his face.

He had made an error in judgement.

He shifted his body at the last moment to move his arm up to protect his face. The target’s fist collided with Kon’s upper arm, immediately shattering it to the bone. Before Kon felt the pain, he felt a flood of foreign chakra rampage out of the fist and into his arm. He’d stopped the blow itself, but the target’s violent chakra rampaged. The force fractured his shoulder blade and snapped his collarbone in half.

Before Kon’s body could fire any pain signals, he saw something much worse. The moment the fist collided with Kon’s arm; the target’s entire arm exploded. Kon expected blood, flesh, and bone—but instead, he felt a splash of water in his face. Before his mind could process the information, the target turned into a human-shaped mass of water and then a puddle.

Kon landed on the ground, his left arm hanging limp by his side, and a shoulder that was sagging dangerously. The pain hit him; it was intense, even with the adrenaline running through him. He ignored it; his pain tolerance had been thoroughly developed.

But the shock was a welcome addition to help numb the pain. He had traded damage… with a clone. He had lost his left arm, taken damage that would require weeks to fix, and then a further few weeks in therapy to regain his original performance… all to kill a clone.

Kon remembered the sound of fighting he had heard prior, and it hit him: he’d been baited again. The target had used the clone to draw him away while the target engaged his subordinate in combat.

Kon swallowed his anger, held his broken arm with his other arm, and went to find his subordinate. Fifteen seconds later, Kon was standing over the dead body of his subordinate. His mask and weapons belt were missing.

He stared at the bloody hole in his subordinate’s forehead as his other two subordinates arrived.

“Reporting,” said one of them. “The target was a clone.”

Kon closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to contain the rage as his iryo-nin subordinate immediately tended to his mangled arm.