Another day passed and Takuma once again found himself sitting before the masked ANBU duo in the same tent where he had met them first.

"How's the interrogation going? Got anything good out of him yet?" he asked, knowing it was unlikely.

He would've been beyond impressed if they managed to get the ROOT agent to open up within a day. Unlike the people Takuma had interrogated, the ROOT agent was most definitely trained in resisting torture and interrogation.

"We are ready to meet your demands," said the man.

"Don't put it like that—that makes it seem like I'm sort of a terrorist. This is a simple, honest trade," said Takuma.

"What do you want to know?" asked the woman.

"Who was behind my assassination?" Takuma replied without hesitation, all pretence draining from his face.

"You were targeted by ROOT itself," said the woman. "The bodies of your assassins went missing, but from your official statement and the fact that you made it out alive—we believe that they were trainees and you were assigned to them as a mission. You wouldn't have had a chance if they were genuine ROOT agents."

"Who ordered it? Give me the name of the drug lord?" Takuma asked; he didn't care about the assassins themselves; they were dead. He wanted to know the name of the drug lord who was so threatened by his work at the Narcotics Taskforce that he put a hit out on him.

Once he had a name, he would either kill the bastard in his free time or straight up put a bounty on his head and let someone else do the work.

"There is no drug lord."

"What?" Takuma frowned. "What do you mean there's no drug lord? Who ordered the assassination then?"

"ROOT ordered the assassination. The organisation itself wanted you dead," said the woman.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Takuma leaned forward, his brows tightening. "Please explain it to me like I'm five."

"You're correct in assuming the assassination attempt was related to your work in the Narcotics Taskforce. We looked into it, and the farm raid you conducted was the reason behind the assassination. That farm was connected to ROOT as one of their external revenue sources to fund their illegal operations. It seemed they didn't like a mere genin encroaching into their business and decided to send a message. They failed, of course— or maybe they didn't since you no longer work there."

Takuma fell into silence as his mind worked on the information he had received. It wasn't a drug lord, but ROOT itself targeting him. He hadn't thought of that because he didn't think ROOT would be in the drug trade and because he was too unimportant to be targeted.

Apparently not.

"You asked me about the posters with my face on them, right? It has to be Kon's doing. Was he involved in the assassination?"

"ROOT agent, codename: Kon. Real name: unknown—or if he has one. Many ROOT agents are registered because they're technically Leaf shinobi, but Kon wasn't one of them—he was never part of the Leaf shinobi system. However, he's one of the better-known agents due to his involvement in management rather than being a field agent. Last we know, he was in charge of several of ROOT's financial investments."

The woman glanced at her partner, who put a scroll on the table.

"What's that?" asked Takuma.

"That's everything ANBU has on Kon. This is our offer for the trade," said the man. "I'm sure you'd be interested in finding out more about the man who killed your teammate."

Takuma stared at the scroll resting on the table and considered what else he could get out of ANBU. What could they give him that would benefit him the most? He could ask them for an obscene amount of mission points which he could use to improve himself and grow stronger.

If he had been stronger, Rikku would still be alive so mission points made the most sense.

He stared at the scroll, and it stared back. The scene of the hallway in the manor house played in his mind. He felt Rikku's feeble weight against him and saw Kon's elated grin as he stared at him. He closed his eyes as the sludge of emotions pushed through his veins.

"Take it or leave it," said the woman.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I'll take it," said Takuma, the feeling of anger blowing fires in his chest. He wanted to know everything there was about Kon to one day build an opportunity where he would have the bastard's neck in his grip so he could snap it with a twist. "This is all the information I have. It has names, connections, confirmed facts, theories, snippets—everything the Frost shinobi said is in here."

"We will still want to ask questions," said the man as Takuma set down his own scroll before picking up the one on Kon.

"Sure, I don't mind." Takuma opened the scroll to start reading it.

Across from him, the woman also picked up Takuma's scroll and found it to be completely empty.

"This is empty," she said.

"Yeah, sorry about that; I don't trust you guys," Takuma said. He gave them another scroll and continued to read its contents to see if it was authentic, which it seemed to be. "Now, ask your questions and let's get this over with."

———

.

The day after Takuma had the meeting, the ANBU duo left with their ROOT agent prisoner. He was surprised because he thought they would ask for at least two more follow-up meetings, but it seemed that they took his warning of putting the agent in danger seriously. He was tired and didn't want to play stressful mind games with the ANBU-nin so that was fine by him.

Takuma didn't even have the motivation to continue reading the scroll about Kon after the first reading—in fact, he didn't want to do anything but lay in his bed. Just when he thought he would have a complete day off, the entire team was summoned to Toridasu's office. There was tension among the team; they thought they were being assigned another team member to fill in the slot left behind by RIkku.

Takuma wasn't sure if they were ready to let someone inside so soon after Rikku's death and whether that person would fit.

"You have until the end of the month to file your mission report," said Toridasu.

"Yes, sir," said Anko, waiting for him to continue. That couldn't be everything he wanted to say because that could've been conveyed through a memo delivered by a genin.

Takuma took a silent, deep breath to calm down his irritation. If he had been pulled out of bed because of this, then he wanted to bash Toridasu's bald skull in.

"Anything else, sir?" asked Anko.

"No, nothing else," said Toridasu as he looked up at the team. "Just that when you're done with that report, all of you will be relieved of your duties... congratulations, you're being sent home."

———

.

The team spent the next few days drafting their joint and individual mission reports, motivated by the announcement of their return orders. The speed at which they worked was impressive because none of them had thought they would be going home and fully believed that they would be either staying in Yu to defend the city as it was now Camp Banana's new base location or eventually going to help out with the other border cities.

So, when they got the news that they were going back home, they started to work furiously on the report, which wouldn't have seen any work for at least another half-month if they weren't going home. They completed and turned in their reports in three days, an amazing time for a mission as complex as the Yu precursor mission.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush; the Hidden Steam is complaining about what you did," said Toridasu.

Takuma, standing across from his table, stayed silent. He had been called for a private meeting in Toridasu's office a day after they handed in their reports. He was surprised that it had taken so many days for the topic to come up. He had expected it to happen as soon as the Steam shinobi had started talking with the civilians.

"They want me to punish you strictly."

"...I'll take whatever punishment you deem suitable," said Takuma; there was no use arguing for himself—what he had done was deeply wrong.

"I'm not going to punish you, even though I should," said Toridasu. "You can't just blow up so many people from another nation on their home soil and expect not to be treated as a terrorist. I mean, they would've understood if the people you blew up were enemies of the state—but you blew up poor workers."

Takuma simply stood there, ready to take whatever was coming his way.

"I'll take whatever punishment—"

"Did you not hear me?" Toridasu sighed. "You killed a jonin—that was a big contribution. You made the recapture much easier and prevented many casualties during the battle. However, that doesn't mean what you did was right. I'll say it straight so there's no confusion: what you did would levy heavy punishments if Shirakumo was your commanding jonin. He would make sure that you wouldn't be able to leave the Genin Corp for several years—no department would take you in—and because it goes on your record, the chunin would hesitate to take you up for out-of-village missions."

Takuma looked at Toridasu, wanting him to move on to the punishment. The man had said that he wasn't going to punish him, but with Toridasu it could be something else which was just as bad as official punishment.

"But I'm your commanding jonin, so I'm letting it slide. As you're leaving soon, I'm going to make it seem that you and the entire team are being sent away due to your actions—that will make the Hidden Steam happy," said Toridasu and then his expression grew solemn as he continued. "But Genin Takuma—"

Takuma stiffened when he heard his rank along with his name.

"—see that this doesn't happen again. You were lucky that the Hidden Steam recognised your contribution and only demanded that I discipline you. It could've easily gone up the chain of command and every single one of them would've played hot potato with the issue until they would, without doubt, decide that the only solution is to punish the person responsible as harshly as possible. At worst, you could've been sent to the Hidden Steam so they could deal with you according to their laws and your team would pay dearly for your actions—especially Mitarashi. Her career would've screeched to a halt because of her past and the rest would've had rocky futures.

"I'll say this in case you have some idiotic view of things: you can't treat civilians as though their lives don't matter. I've seen plenty of shinobi who believe that, and let me tell you, those guys feel untouchable until they do something they shouldn't have even dreamed about, and it never ends well. Do you understand?"

Takuma nodded, "Yes, sir."

That was all he could say.