When Takuma opened his eyes, his body felt more uncomfortable than ever before. He groaned loudly as he forced himself to sit up from the dirty cot that served as his bed with his muscles screaming murder. It was a bizarre experience because not only had he woken up without a sore muscle after continuous days of intense training—but he was a young teenager!

He wasn't supposed to get sores and aches when he hadn't done anything physically taxing.

"Fuck me."

He stood up and stretched his body through the pain and half-limped his way outside of his room and saw his water clone sitting cross-legged in front of Ryoya and Aranai's room. The clone opened his eyes when he heard Takuma approach.

"How long was I out?" asked Takuma—at this point, he didn’t even know whether it was day or night.

"Around twenty hours more or less."

"That was long," Takuma said and then gulped down an entire bottle of water.

It was fortunate that clones didn't need further focus after they were created. As long as Takuma didn’t run out of chakra or wasn't killed, his clone would continue to exist until it ran out of chakra so he had created one to keep watch over his prisoners while he went to sleep.

He hadn't used clones to interrogate them because he didn't want to miss out anything that could give him an advantage in subsequent sessions. He also didn't completely trust himself (his clone) to perfectly transfer information through words.

"Any words between them?"

"Nothing useful."

"Okay, I'm going out," said the clone. "I'm exhausted."

Takuma nodded and the clone walked away, confusing him, but then he turned around and ran towards him, dispelling himself a moment before they collided. A mass of water drenched Takuma from head to toe and he stood there stunned, not expecting that to happen. It had the intended effect because he was now completely awake. He chuckled and then went for an actual bath, changed his clothes, and prepared three sets of meals, before checking up on his two prisoners. They were chained to opposite sides of the room and their whispered conversation stopped when Takuma entered.

"How are you two today?" he asked as he put the plates in front of them and sat down in the middle of the room with one of his own. There was an awkward silence in the room as the two prisoners stared at Takuma, who was too busy eating to pay attention to them.

"We... We told you everything we know, please let us go," said Ryoya as he cautiously looked at Takuma.

Aranai had been tortured too much to make requests like that and was silently eating his food in small and quick bites, wasting no time in fear that the food would be taken away. Takuma's reward ladder had worked in making them more comfortable, but fear was hard to erase, and he expected for him to be affected for a long time—probably developing some level of PTSD.

"I will let you go in a week," Takuma replied.

"Why in a week?"

Takuma glanced at Ryoya and that was enough to make him shut up and even scuttle back despite the distance between them

"Eat your food," he said. "I will keep my promise; you'll be released from my custody in a week's time."

Even though he had gotten the information out of them and sent it out of the city to the camp, he had one more use for them. They were in the last week of their precursor mission and it was going to be the most active period.

Given that the rest of his team was under surveillance, he had to do most of it all alone.

"Behave and you'll return to your friends."

———

.

After eating and taking care of his prisoners’ hygiene, Takuma left the safe house. He couldn't leave a clone in his place to keep guard because a water clone had to be within a certain distance of the caster otherwise it would be dispelled automatically.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He was only planning to be out for an hour or two and was willing to take the risk and separated them into different rooms for safety reasons. Just like his first day in Yu, Takuma wandered around the town without a disguise. He had been in the city for two months, so his hair had gone from a fresh cut to beyond overgrown; he’d grown paler than usual and he had even lost significant weight from his face, giving him sunken cheeks.

With all he’d experienced, he looked nothing like the picture plastered around the town.

He peered into shops, observed hotspots, and avoided three groups of patrolling shinobi. The caution and fear lingered on the roads, which wasn't anything new, but there was an edge to it that he couldn't place.

"So what's new, pops? I've been living under a rock," Takuma asked a tea stall owner as he got himself a couple taiyaki.

"The shinobi have been going through the town with a comb," said the stall owner as he served his order.

"Oh, did they catch someone?"

"Yeah, they arrested an entire milling factory under the suspicion of being traitors and helping rebels. If I remember correctly, the owner's name is Motohiro."

Takuma's hand paused for a moment before he bit into his taiyaki which felt tasteless in his hand.

"That sucks, huh," he said briefly, but his mind was racing.

A mill owner named Motohiro? There was no chance that could be anyone else. How did the Hidden Frost know that Motohiro's rebel group was connected to him? Motohiro’s was a small group and that was one of the reasons he and Gaku chose them because they drew less suspicion and Motohiro was more involved in keeping his community safe over resisting the tyranny.

Had someone inside the group betrayed them?

He had to find out more. Takuma finished his snack and went to the one place he knew he would get information. But as he arrived at Hoshiguro's estate, he was stunned to spot Hidden Frost shinobi outside the estate, standing guard. He immediately retreated and got a higher vantage point to see over the high walls, and after waiting for a few minutes, he caught a glimpse of a walking Kumi family member he didn't recognise.

Had the Hidden Frost also found his connection to the Kumi family?

Takuma then noticed one of the Kumi family members exiting the estate and immediately decided to follow him until they were a good distance away from the estate.

The member was a man in his early twenties. He wore a tacky tracksuit, had a buzz cut close to the skin, and hummed a tune as he turned into a back alley to take a piss. He put his hand against the wall and when he turned around he was startled out of his life because Takuma was standing beside him.

"You are—!"

"Why are there shinobi at the estate?"

The man looked like a deer caught in headlights and froze in place for a couple seconds before his fight-or-flight instinct kicked in—and he chose flight and turned to run away. To Takuma, he looked slow as a turtle and he kicked him when he moved his right foot. The man slammed into the wall and curled up into a ball after he fell to the ground.

Takuma waited and watched him groan in pain for a full minute as he struggled to get up only to fail and slip back to the ground.

"Let’s try again: why are there shinobi at the estate?"

The man retreated into the alleway not at all aware that one of his hands was drenched in his own urine. He looked up at Takuma in fear, and didn't speak a single word, making him sigh.

He had done enough interrogation in the last week and his patience had worn thin. He was in no mood to be subtle about it so he slipped a kunai into his hand and stepped forward to scare the shit out of the man, which he assumed would be much easier than doing the same to a shinobi.

"Stop! Stop! I will talk, please don't kill me!"

“You’d better because I won’t ask again.” Takuma stopped advancing and gave him a cold stare. "Why are there shinobi at your estate?"

"They-They were invited by Young Boss Gyon!"

Takuma felt his body go cold. Gyon was the leak who had given out the fake address to the Hidden Frost. He had talked to Hoshiguro, who had promised that he would take care of it—but now there were shinobi at his house. That raised the question: Had Hoshiguro turned his back on him for his son? Or had Gyon done something to his own father.

"What about Hoshiguro?"

"The b-boss is bedridden. The young boss took over and invited the shinobi."

"Why is he bedridden?"

"I-I don't know. I just know that his health took a dive, the young boss took over the next day, and the shinobi came after that."

Takuma closed his eyes and took a deep breath when he felt his anger rise up. They were a week out from the mission ending in success and he didn't want things to go wrong because a piece of shit wanted more power by selling out his own city.

'I should've killed him when I first found out,' thought Takuma.

The only reason he had not killed Gyon was because of Hoshiguro and because he didn't want to lose the Kumi family's support—but now his supporter inside the family was bedridden. WIth the traitor in the head’s seat, Takuma knew he had lost the family’s support—with Motohiro’s group arrested, his team under surveillance and the Kumi family no longer an option—he was truly alone with no real support.

He wasn't going to make that mistake again. The two-time traitor had signed his own death sentence.

He was going to start and christen the last week of his mission at Yu with Gyon's life and blood. If he didn't do that, he would be angry for the rest of the week and he didn't want to spend the most active week of the mission bubbling in anger about a piece of shit who didn't know what was at stake.

Takuma looked down at the Kumi member, who was going to help him make that happen.

"Let's talk. Tell me everything you know, and I will let you go," Takuma lied again.

Seven days remained until the main forces arrived at Yu.