Noa POV
The barrier shattered into small fragments, shining with almost blinding, multicolored rays against the dim and muted world around me. My thoughts were frozen. That small ball of darkness in my chest had grown at an alarming rate.
I sighed and took a deep breath. I am on a mission. Letting my mind shatter is the worst thing I could do while my sensei's life and mine are in danger. I walked slowly towards Shisui as he leaned his back against the wall, closing his eyes and exhaling, trying to calm his heart. A moment later, his chest rose, and he opened his eyes.
"That was hard. Thank you, Noa. You have saved the mission yet again."
I approached slowly, observing the tigress. A massive hole had been blown clean from one side of her head to the other. The wound was cauterized by the immense heat and lightning that had covered the spear, but blood and brain matter still leaked slowly as I watched her twitching body.
Then, reality fractured. As the tigress gave a final, violent jerk, the world blinked into darkness. Light ignited the scene once more, showing me a memory. The stone corridor became a carpeted office. And the ANBU... the ANBU was a man in a suit. His head was a pulped, unrecognizable mass against the expensive rug, dyed red with his blood. My mind was trying to escape this reality and drag me, kicking and screaming, to my previous one. I heaved. With a desperate, frantic pull, I ripped my mind out of the past, crashing back into the present with a sharp gasp.
I shivered slightly, and Shisui noticed, tapping my shoulder. "Noa, I know that we have been through a lot in such a short period, but I am still here for you no matter what it is you are going through and whether you want to talk about it or not." He squeezed my shoulder reassuringly, then continued, "Do you want us to retreat? After all, the knowledge we have now about Iwa's intervention is critical, and Lord Hokage needs to know about it."
After a moment, I took control. The shaking stopped, and I shook my head. "No need, sensei. Let us just send a message to Konoha and finish our mission. The enemy ANBU haven't been here long, so our target might not know they arrived and gone into hiding. They were good, I will give them that much, so they might not have been detected by the criminal syndicate leader yet."
Shisui looked worried, eyeing me carefully before nodding. "Good decision. But if you feel like not continuing at any time, let me know. I know you saved my life too many times for me to declare this, but I promise I can take care of myself and finish the mission alone."
I laughed despite myself, an appreciative smile touching my face at Shisui's attempt to cheer me up.
I then asked, "Well, we lost our contact. What can we do now?"
Shisui shrugged. "The mission scroll specified a backup plan. A spy in the Land of Waves. He is very close to the criminal syndicate, so I am sure he has the information we need. Though you will have to go in yourself. You can mask your chakra level incredibly well, and the fact that the Iwa ANBU could detect me means that I might have slacked off on my old ANBU training."
He sighed. I could see him having the same issue as me with training time limitations, though in his case, it was due to the crazy number of missions the Hokage was assigning him.
He continued, "It is a bar. Just use a transformation jutsu and approach the bartender. Speak a few words, and he'll know what to do. But before that, let's hide somewhere and recover our chakra levels. It would be stupid to go after our target with us this tired and, in your case, low on reserves."
I nodded. We masked our chakra signatures just in case and moved across the small port city to hole up in an abandoned house.
After a few hours of meditation, which I spent mostly bottling up the dark weight in my chest, fighting an impending sense of doom that messed with my usually sharp intuition, I finally recovered my chakra, thanks in part to the soldier pill I took on the boat.
Shisui and I moved deeper into the island nation. Luckily, it was not too big, and we quickly made it to a neighboring city to make contact with our spy. Shisui marked the location on the map and gave me a sequence of instructions to follow as I set off.
He stayed relatively close as I made it to the bar. Adrenaline kicked in, and my mind cleared. I was transformed into a middle-aged man with sunken eyes, long dark hair tied in a ponytail, a nose that looked like it had been broken and healed crooked, and a mouth missing a few teeth, complete with a small ring on my left ear.
Walking into the bar, the door opened with a loud squeak, attracting the attention of multiple unsavory-looking gentlemen who eyed me with distrust. This was an island with ships coming and going constantly, so the sight of visitors wasn't entirely strange. However, the port had been on lockdown for a while now, making my presence as an unfamiliar man highly conspicuous.
I approached the bartender and spoke with a depressed, exhausted tone. "I have been trapped here on this miserable island for more than a month now. I am tired of it, and I am not excited about staying for a second more. Do you have any information on a smuggling operation to take me off this hellhole?"
The bartender eyed me warily. Some of the men lost interest after hearing me complain, but someone approached from the side. "I can take you off the island."
I eyed him carefully. He had a shifty stance, eyes darting around, and a body too frail to be a real ship's crew member. I scoffed, "If I want to get scammed out of the little money I have, I will come to you first. Go away."
His eyes widened in offense. He looked ready to start something, but the bartender shot him a strict glare that caused the man to recoil and retreat to his miserable corner.
The bartender then looked back at me, his tone annoyed. "I only help customers."
I rolled my eyes and spoke clearly. "I will take the grilled squid skewers, but give me a wedge of sweet orange instead of lemon."
Luckily, our spy was smart enough not to react visibly to the passcode. However, his movement halted so slightly that if you weren't actively looking for it, you wouldn't have known.
I covertly surveyed the room as I waited for the food. Next to me sat a hooded man. He was draped in a heavy coat, but he looked muscular beneath the thick fabric. I had a feeling that he might be a shinobi, however, I did not dare to send a chakra pulse and risk getting exposed and ruining the entire operation.
The food arrived, and I dug in. I was starving, and eating would help the soldier pill metabolize better. It tasted horrible, but that was expected of cheap bar food. Still, I wiped the plate clean out of pure necessity.
I wiped my mouth and asked, "How much?"
The bartender answered with annoyance, "250 Ryo."
I yelled despite myself, "What?!"
The bartender grumbled as I slammed a hand on the counter. "It is 50 Ryo on normal days! Even if I gave you some extra for the current situation, I would still, at max, pay maybe 40 Ryo. But 250 Ryo is stealing, pure and simple!"
The bartender and the rest of the occupants were completely puzzled at how I had somehow decreased the price despite acknowledging the special conditions. However, I ignored them and pressed on, fully committing to the act. "I will not get scammed! Money doesn't grow on trees, you know."
The man next to me nodded slightly in agreement. "You have a good head on you," he said, his voice deep and raspy. "Money is what matters, so do not waste it on a greedy parasite like this man." He eyed the bartender, who recoiled in fear, before continuing. "He tried to scam me multiple times on multiple items. I even compared his prices to other bars, and he is definitely a swindler." He looked back at me, giving a quick nod of solidarity.
I was impressed. It was as if he could read my mind, sharing my exact sentiments on merchants and their kind. However, the moment I truly took in his appearance, my heart froze. My mind shut down entirely, and I almost lost control of my transformation jutsu, because sitting right beside me was a living nightmare.
The man's skin was an unnatural, earthy tan, but that wasn't what made my breath catch in my throat. It was his eyes. They were cold, soulless, and unsettlingly vacant, sending an icy spike of pure terror straight into my soul. They were pupilless, glowing green irises surrounded entirely by blood-red sclera, a demonic stare that promised nothing but death.
The rest of his features were hidden by a dark gray mask that concealed the lower half of his face. Even in this dimly lit bar, there was a predatory stillness to him, a weight that suggested he was something far more dangerous than any ordinary traveler.
My chakra almost flared erratically under the surface as I desperately fought to keep it masked and calm. Kakuzu. The immortal treasurer of the Akatsuki. A rogue shinobi so impossibly ancient and lethal he had supposedly fought the First Hokage and lived, was sitting less than two feet away from me, casually agreeing with my complaints over a cheap plate of squid.