Two weeks went peacefully without any accidents, Yuta was going through his usual five-hours intense physical training daily, as he wants despite lack of talent with it to gradually grow his physical strength to not fall too far behind others in this aspect. As for the rest of the time, he spends it doing research in fuinjutsu, looking for ways to improve his barriers to be able to restrict someone as strong as the Iwa Jonin he fought on the last mission, but with not much results for now.
After the first week the team-two gathered together and decided to spend another week in the village before going on another mission. Itachi asked Yuta if he foresees any threat to their team in the near future, but Yuta was unable to tell him anything about it, as he didn’t know himself, so he just told Itachi that everything should be fine.
Koichi was also checked on the team-two that time, he congratulated them for making good contributions to the village and asked if they want exchanging it for some jutsu, Yuta after thinking for a minute came to conclusion that his modified jutsus - fire bullets and water bullets are already on the decent C-rank level and his water wall jutsu is the best for defense on C-rank from what available to him, so there is not much sense to get any more C-rank jutsu.
But when Yuta asked Koichi for B-rank jutsu he got rejected, as Koichi said it is too early for him to start using B-rank jutsu in combat, and the contribution they made is not big enough yet for it.
‘Yea, I can see why he says that, all the times I used ninjutsu around him it was weakened version, so on that level it is actually too early for me to try and use B-rank jutsus. Well, in the next year or two I will gradually show more power in ninjutsu and will be able to get B-rank jutsus I suppose, and with a little time-travel cheat if I can get one jutsu, I can get all of them. Also, I can ask Itachi for it later on too. But from what I saw in our previous mission, he didn’t use B-rank elemental ninjutsu yet.’
Itachi rejected the offer of some C-rank jutsus right away, that is understandable, as in the Uchiha clan he can get any jutsu they copied over the centuries. Hikari on other side picked some wind and lightning jutsu one of each, Yuta was slightly surprised as he didn’t remember a single time when Hikari actually used a ninjutsu in real battle but knowing her obsession with new jutsu he shrugged it away.
The team-two gathered in the morning on theirs training grounds that are still reserved for them by Koichi, Itachi and Yuta was calm, but Hikari was worried, she said looking at her team members, “How are you able to stay so calm when we about to go on a mission after what happened last time?”
Yuta saw where it was going, he placed the seal tag on the ground between them and activated it before Hikari spoke even half of her sentence. A slightly blurred veil covered the group, protecting them from possible spies.
“You shouldn’t speak about that so casually.” Yuta scolded Hikari with annoyed tone, “You never know who might be listening.”
“So, you do take my warning seriously then, that’s good.” Hikari said, “What about you Itachi?”
‘So, she approached Itachi too that day, interesting.’
“I’m not sure if I should believe you on your claims about Shimura Danzo, but it’s true that we were attacked by the Root shinobi, no doubt about that.” Itachi said in a grave tone.
‘She told Itachi about Danzo? Seems like her conversation with Itachi went different, what else did she told Itachi… Well, even without Hikari’s intervention the fact that Root shinobi attacked Itachi will make him suspicious of Danzo and Itachi wouldn’t trust Danzo so easily. But what will happen with his relations with Shisui then, as Shisui likely belongs to the Root.
At least in what I remember about him, Shisui was often meets with Danzo and share some of his views on the that ‘true shinobi should protect the village from the shadows, surprising his emotions and be just a tool’ or something along the lines, I wonder how the Itachi becoming suspicious of Danzo will affect the relations between him and Shisui. If Shisui became our enemy, it would be a disaster…’
“Tsk, when you start believing me it might be too late!” Hikari exclaimed annoyed.
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‘It’s not going anywhere, maybe I should try to extract some more information out of her…’
“Will Itachi believe you or not, how it would change a thing?” Yuta said calmly, “You claim that it’s Shimura Danzo who is the one who is behind the Root shinobi attack, and he won’t stop from getting the job’s done, right? But what we even can do about it? Danzo is a member of the village’s council, and as you say, he is the head of Root, what we can do against someone with so much power?”
‘Come on, tell me your plan, you can’t just possibly go and speak about Danzo like that for just the sake of it, you should have something on your mind already…’ Yuta thought looking expectedly at Hikari.
“That is enough!” Itachi interjected firmly, “We are not making moves on the village’s council member no matter what! There should be other way to solve this.”
“Tsk, whatever, don’t blame me when you get killed…” Hikari said dejected.
‘Tsk, it won’t be easy to convince Itachi to assassinate Danzo after all…’ Yuta thought being slightly upset.
After that the team went to the Hokage Tower and accepted a new B-rank mission for hunting down three Sunagakure’s rogue shinobi of Chunin level in the land of rivers that caused some trouble on the land of fire borders some time ago and run away to hide in the land of rivers, the small country that is between the land of fire and the land of wind.
The team-two left the village and went west, in the direction of the land of rivers. They were on guard all the time, checking if there someone following them in case of the new Root attack would happen, but for the three days of travels they didn’t encounter any and their travels went smooth, all except for some mental strain for being constant on guard, and their speed of travel was also affected by constant checking if they are being followed or not.
On the fourth day they sneaked across the borders without registering, as they didn’t want to draw any attention to them before the mission was completed.
After that they went through the boring and time-consuming process of looking for the trail that rogue shinobi might have left. They went from the one village to the other, and asked questions being in disguise, looking for any rumors or witnesses of their target.
After an entire week of searching, they finally found the trail, some people in the village they were in, said that they saw their targets, as those three rogue shinobi robbed some goods from the villagers.
After that it was just a matter of time for the team-two to finally catch up with their target and after a few more days they found three rogue shinobi in the small town.
They spied on their targets for a day and after those three rogue shinobi left the town, where they were swiftly dealt with by the team-two.
In less than a minute-long fight, each of the members of the team-two killed one of the rouge shinobi each, they stored the bodies in the sealing scrolls and went back to Konoha.
The fight was boring for Yuta, he simply catches his enemy in the visual genjutsu and burns him with fire bullets that he didn’t see coming and hence didn’t dodge. Itachi and Hikari dealt with their opponents swiftly as well.
After three more days of travel, they finally returned to the village. It was a long mission that lasted three whole weeks, so after they reported the mission completion and received the payment, they decided to take a break from missions for another two weeks.
As Yuta went to the market to buy some groceries as per usual, he heard some people talking about Kumogakure outrageous doings.
Yuta was interested in what happened in the past three weeks he was gone, he stayed closer to the conversation to listen about it. It appears that a few days before, the head ninja of Kumogakure delegation that arrived in Konoha for discussion of the peace treaty between the Konoha and Kumo, sneaked into the Hyuga’s clan compound and tried to kidnap Hyuga clan leader Hiashi’s daughter, but was cut by Uchiha Fugaku and interrogated on the spot.
It seems that Fugaku extracted the information about the Kumo ninja’s mission of kidnaping the Hiashi’s daughter and reported it to Hiruzen right away.
After that Kumo delegation tried to make a scene and demanded that their captured shinobi to be freed and they also had guts to demand Uchiha Fugaku’s dead body as a compensation for attacking them. But after all the information from the Kumo ninja was extracted by Ibiki from the Interrogation department with the help of Fugaku, the Kumo ninja was freed and Kumo delegation was thrown out of the village.
While Yuta going through the market, he heard how many people discussing the recent event with Kumo, and most of them are dissatisfied with the Hiruzen’s decision to free the captured Kumo ninja and letting the Kumo delegation to get away with their disgusting scheme. There so much dissatisfaction that is building up that Yuta even thought that this might be someone’s else doing by influencing the public opinion from the shadows…
‘But who can blame the dissatisfied people of the Konoha really?’ Yuta thought, ‘They was always told that Konoha is the strongest and mightiest shinobi village, and now they let Kumo shinobi to attempt such a scheme and let them go unpunished, without any consequences at all… And it seems that Hiruzen suppressed the information about the real reason Kumo ninja attempted kidnaping, as I remember he intent to die by the hands of Hiashi in the first place.
But for the moment those rumors get me worried, what if Hiruzen was stupid and senile enough to actually demand Fugaku to sacrifice himself? Oh, Danzo would love that outcome so much! I can imagine how pissed he was when such a good opportunity to get rid of Fugaku just slipped away…’