The bull-masked ANBU asked in a bewildered tone, "What were those things exactly?" Although his voice sounded distorted through the mask, it felt familiar. I narrowed my eyes, focusing on him. He noticed and hurriedly turned his head to the side.
Eventually, I shrugged and answered, "From what I sense, they are separate chakra signatures. They do not belong to the main body but can operate independently and follow instructions. At first, he had five different signatures, but I took one out. He should have died. Instead, a signature replaced the destroyed heart, and he continued like nothing happened."
The ANBU team recoiled as Swine asked, "What the hell kind of ability is that? Is he immortal or something?"
I replied, my eyes still focused on the direction where Kakuzu had disappeared. "I think if we destroy all those chakra signatures or the thread bodies that have masks, he will die."
The gorilla-masked operative spoke with a grim tone. "Is that some sort of forbidden jutsu? Because if so, it is one of the most powerful jutsus I have ever heard of. It is beyond this world."
Swine nodded in agreement as Shisui sighed. "I do not even know how to report that thing to the Hokage." He then looked at me, likely wondering how to handle explaining my recently exposed trump card.
He gave me a gentle smile before turning to Swine. She handed him the storage seal holding Gato and his bodyguards. "You better pay us big for this," she said. "After all, we wasted the few hours we get to rest to come help you. Now we have to do a series of risky missions while deprived of sleep."
Shisui's shoulders dropped as he replied, "I will."
Swine waved goodbye to me with a wink, and she and the gorilla flickered away. The bull remained for a moment, looking at me before speaking with a strange tone, "Well done." Then he vanished to catch up to his team.
"What was that about?" I asked as Shisui scratched his neck.
"Who knows, ANBU are weird like that."
I narrowed my eyes, looking at him. "Weren't you also in ANBU?"
He answered with a confident smile, "Yeah, but I was a completely normal one."
I chuckled as we started moving toward the port city opposite the Land of Fire's shores.
Once we arrived, we were greeted by destroyed buildings, burning warehouses, and countless rotting corpses left on the streets. A deathly silence surrounded the area like a heavy fog.
Shisui led me to a shipyard. Luckily, we found a large enough boat to transport us across the water. Shisui was very considerate, going out of his way to ensure we did not pass the area where I had executed my jutsu. However, I could not stop myself from turning toward it since the destruction was not far away. A distant, dark look settled in my eyes now that I had the time to process everything that had happened during this hellish mission.
"Can you help me here, Noa?" Shisui asked, pulling my attention back.
I replied absentmindedly, "Yes, sensei," before my thoughts fully caught up. I created multiple shadow clones to assist Shisui. He formed some of his own, and together we moved the vessel to a makeshift pier near the service warehouse.
My mind was still, almost frozen. I tried my best to distract myself, but my thoughts fought back, dragging me toward the dark feeling boiling up inside my heart. My hands shook a bit as Shisui jumped into the boat.
"Come now. Although I am not very familiar with boats, I saw the previous shinobi use them, and it doesn't look too hard. With a clone or two, I can probably manage."
I nodded, not feeling like talking. I jumped in and sat at the edge of the hull.
I kept my eyes on the island slowly disappearing into the early morning fog as we moved gently through the quiet waves. Shisui's voice drifted over, almost distant. "You know, I think manning a boat is very pleasant. Maybe I should take it up as a career."
I smiled. It was a weak one, but that was all I could muster. Shisui's words felt far away, drowned out by a mental wall I tried my hardest to hold up. The thoughts on the other side were too loud to ignore as he spoke again. "Try to get some sleep, Noa. I will handle things and wake you up once we reach the Land of Fire."
I nodded, my eyes vacant as I lay down. The calm sound of the waves and their rhythmic splashing lulled me to sleep. At the edge of consciousness, I felt it. The barrier keeping back the dark thoughts from the mission collapsed. They drowned me as the world faded out.
Blackness consumed everything until it suddenly did not, and I was staring at the glass facades of high-rise buildings towering over me. The aggressive blare of a taxi horn and the constant, rhythmic hum of thousands of tires rolling over hot asphalt filled the air. The smell of exhaust hung heavy as the frantic pulse of city traffic surrounded me, and I stood still in a sea of moving people, eyes focused.
My prey was one of the board members of a real estate company. Ambushing him outside his work had initially seemed like the best course of action, but he had grown exceedingly cautious, especially after the brutal murders of two of the men who, like him, had been involved in my sister's death. He now traveled with a massive security detail that escorted him from work to home, and he kept them stationed heavily around his property until he left for work. However, while inside the corporate office, his arrogance took over. He maintained a minimal personal detail, relying heavily on the occupied building and its internal security infrastructure to deter any attacks.
That was his mistake.
After acquiring the building's old schematics and aligning them with the surrounding grid, I orchestrated a quick sabotage that triggered a cascade failure across several HVAC units. Management had no choice but to call an external contractor. Luckily for me, the assigned technician had a predictable habit of taking a long smoke break just before heading inside, a quirk I had noted when testing the system's response earlier that week.
As always, an uncontrollable rage was screaming at me to be let loose from the depths of my mind. The dark feeling boiled hot in my chest, threatening to shatter my control. I took a deep, steadying breath and ruthlessly bottled it down.
"The time will come soon enough," I whispered to myself, as I fought to maintain my cold, calculating persona and keep the rage-filled one at bay.
I kept my eyes on the small, rarely used rear entrance. Right on schedule, the maintenance van arrived. The technician parked his vehicle specifically out of the old camera system's direct line of sight. He wanted to smoke in peace without security reporting him.
I stepped out of the shadows, a work cap pulled low to obscure my brow and tinted glasses shielding my eyes from the overhead lenses, making my features unreadable to the camera system. I waved at him with a relaxed, familiar posture. "Hey man, long time no see! How are things?"
He looked confused, squinting as he tried to focus on my face. He remained puzzled as I casually closed the distance between us. I needed to ensure that nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I reached the camera's blind spot. If a bored guard happened to be watching the monitors, all they would see was an old friend greeting the technician.
As I stepped into his personal space, his confusion shifted to suspicion. "Who the hell are you?" he asked, his tone guarded.
But by then, I was already in the blind spot.
I delivered a precise, devastating uppercut that caused him to instantly lose consciousness. Before his limp body could hit the pavement, I caught him, dragged him into the open back of his van, and slid the doors shut.
Inside the dim cargo space, I stripped off his uniform first, pulling the jacket and pants gently from his limp frame to ensure they remained pristine. Then I bound his arms and legs tightly, perhaps too tightly just to be safe, and securely gagged him. With the uniform secured, I quickly donned it and adjusted the fit. Finally, I pulled out the ID card I had painstakingly forged. I had scoured the company's social media accounts, using photos of employees wearing their badges as templates to create a perfect replica.
I grabbed the toolkit, opening the van door just enough to slip out without revealing what was inside. I closed it behind me and locked it with the keys I had taken from the maintenance guy.
I walked toward the entrance of the building. My eyes were cold and my hands steady, a perfect, hollow shell hiding the burning wrath beneath.