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Midday brought a symphony of clinking cutlery and sizzling griddle grease. Waitresses in their simplified hakamas pirouetted between tables, balancing plates of food above their heads, as the scent of miso broth fought against the aromas of sauces and spices. In the corner booth, tucked away from the chaotic floor, two friends sat hunched over their meals.
"Have you thought about changing to something other than knuckledusters?"
Masaaki, busily tucking food into his mouth, looked at Takuma, who had the same amount of food on his side of the table. Despite the size and height difference between the two, they ate almost as much as each other.
"Where did that come from?" Masaaki asked mid-chew.
"I recently sparred against a coworker who used bukijutsu through a pair of gauntlets," Takuma replied after finishing his bite. "Knuckledusters lock your fingers; you can't sign hand seals with them on. Gauntlets, while bulky, would give you more flexibility."
Bukijutsu was famous for its efficient use of chakra and low requirement of hand seals, which was a great advantage. However, it also tended to warp its users' fighting style, as their weapons predominantly became the centre of their style. This wasn't a real problem as long as they were conscious of it by covering their weaknesses, though a significant number did not tend to do that.
Takuma didn't want Masaaki to fall into this trap, as he was especially vulnerable with knuckledusters that locked his fingers. Unlike the Shinobi Academy in the Hidden Leaf Village, where everyone was given a chance to test in front of a jōnin, for students from other academies, only their best were sent to the Hidden Leaf Village to get tested. The level of competition was higher for outsiders, and even though it wasn't really talked about—and the jōnin would deny it—there was a pretty strong bias for the graduates of the Hidden Leaf Village's Shinobi Academy.
There was no denying that it was the best academy because of its high-quality teachers and resources. Not to mention, each class had plenty of clan kids, so it wasn't strange that a teacher would want better students; and better students were exactly how the clan kids were seen.
Many jōnin used the chance to establish a connection with the clans. All of that made it so that a jōnin would very rarely take in a team of outsiders. Masaaki, Ai, and Nenro were a talented bunch who had suffered because of that flawed system. Takuma predicted that, in a couple of years at most, Masaaki would be promoted to the chūnin rank, becoming a chūnin before turning twenty. It was a great achievement that most Hidden Leaf Academy graduates were hard-pressed to achieve.
"You're not the first to bring this up," Masaaki said.
Takuma wasn't surprised. If he was bringing it up, then he expected someone at the Akimichi clan, Masaaki's sponsors, to have already brought it up. What he was more curious about was why his friend had stuck with knuckledusters if he had already had the conversation.
"I don't see any need to switch out." One of Masaaki's hands disappeared below the table, and he had a knuckleduster around his fist when it came back. "My fingers are locked up, but isn't that the case with every weapon? Gripping the hilt of a blade, the length of a staff, the shafts of a nunchuck—all of them require one or both hands to be engaged. How's that any different from my knuckledusters?"
"But you can drop a sword at a moment's notice—"
Masaaki straightened his fingers, and the knuckleduster literally popped up into the air like an ejected shotgun shell. "Fast enough for you?" He caught the knuckleduster and replaced it with a bowl of rice soaking with beef juices and sauce. "Just so that you know, I carry five pairs on me." He ate for the next minute before he spoke. "I have thought about switching. I mean, I hear about it once a month. I just don't think I need to. Maybe gauntlets would be better—I personally disagree—and even if they were, my knuckledusters mean more to me than just that, you know."
He had often talked about the old shinobi back at his home, who had trained him to fight, taught him how to use the knuckledusters, and even imparted bukijutsu to him. That old shinobi was, without a doubt, the man Masaaki respected the most. Their relationship was similar to Takuma's relationship with Maruboshi.
"How about you? How's the sword working for you?"
"It's chugging along. It's a perfectly fine option against lots of weaker opponents, but I'd rather not use it against a tough opponent."
Takuma sighed. His progress with swordplay was particularly slow. His foundations were sound, but he wasn't good when it came to applying them through advanced techniques.
Masaaki chuckled to himself.
"What?"
"I just imagined you with eight swords."
"Eight? Ah, one for each tentacle."
"The mental image is so goofy."
"Come on, man. One sword is already too much for me."
———
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Takuma looked up from his desk at the knock on his door to see Goshiro, the Head of Staff, outside his cabin.
"Come in."
"I have the things you asked for."
He paused before recapping his pen and motioning Goshiro to sit down. He received a file and opened it to read the intelligence report on the Hidden Leaf genin named Yakushi Kabuto. When he passed by Kabuto on the street, he looked into the man and found him working at the same hospital where Ai was studying, and he had felt the need to keep an eye on him ever since.
"I failed to find anything outright suspicious. I must say, though, it must've been a tragic childhood," Goshiro said.
Takuma wasn't surprised. The report was a compilation of the village's records on Kabuto. The spy had done a great job of keeping his record clean, allowing him to exist just as another genin—a valuable one at that due to his skill as an iryo-nin. If not for Takuma, he wouldn't even be on ANBU's radar.
In fact, he still wasn't, which was going to change now.
"May I ask why we are looking into him?" Goshiro asked.
The staff attached to the squad worked closely with the operatives. They knew about the work being done and thus had knowledge of and access to confidential information. As the Head of Staff for Ratel's squad, Goshiro knew more than the operatives themselves about what was going on throughout the squad.
If not for Takuma's clone, Goshiro would be the one with the most knowledge of the squad, and whatever was going on, Goshiro was keyed in one way or another.
"Call in Hippo. We'll discuss it together," Takuma said.
A couple of minutes later, Hippo walked into the cabin. "So what's the situation, boss?" he asked as he took a seat and immediately got comfortable.
"I have a new investigation for you," Takuma said, passing the file to Hippo and waiting for the genin operative to skim its contents.
"Okay, this could be forged. The chances are probably low. What's wrong with him?" Hippo said, immediately establishing the difference in skill set between an operative and a staff member. Even though Kabuto's record seemed clean, all three of them had seen enough squeaky-clean records in their time as ANBU-nin which turned out to be more than they initially seemed.
Goshiro furrowed his brows as he asked for the file to read.
"How?"
"An academy in the boonies, stationed in the middle of nowhere, and then he suddenly ends up in the village. Seems like a classic identity that no one would bat an eye at," said Hippo.
"I suspect he's connected to ROOT. He might be a sleeper," Takuma said.
In truth, he hadn't remembered that much about Kabuto from his memories. He knew that Kabuto was currently Orochimaru's subordinate, but he had also been connected to Danzō and ROOT in some way that he couldn't clearly remember, so his claim wasn't entirely wrong.
"What stood out?" Goshiro asked.
"It started as street chatter—a while before this squad was built—so I looked into him, and like Hippo, the background stood out. It's not in the file, but I looked into it more, and the academy listed on his record no longer exists; it was shuttered a few years back."
"What about the teacher?" Hippo asked.
Takuma shook his head. He had tried to get a personal confirmation from perhaps a teacher who might have seen Kabuto in class, but that turned out to be a dead end. Records about remote academies were often run by one or two career genin, and the records about them weren't always up to standard.
"But, there was something I did find suspicious. And that was his parent."
Kabuto's background included one Nonō Yakushi as his parent, who had rescued him as the sole survivor of the Battle of Kikyo Pass—a battle between the Hidden Leaf and an unknown group at the tail end of the Third Shinobi World War—and had adopted him as her son.
"Nonō Yakushi. That sounds familiar," Hippo said, narrowing his eyes.
"Tokubetsu Jōnin Yakushi Nonō," Takuma said.
"That's right!" Hippo exclaimed before his face turned somber. "Didn't she die?"
"She was killed in action."
She was a captain of the Medical Corps who had died in a foreign operation in the Land of Rock.
"Tokujō Nonō ran an orphanage when she was alive. It's known that she spent a lot of her time there, so it wouldn't be reasonable to think she would keep her adopted son there. Now look at the location of the orphanage and the academy," Takuma said, pointing at a map of the Land of Fire spread on a wall.
"Not exactly close," Goshiro said.
"Doesn't that seem strange?" Takuma asked.
"It does." Hippo looked at Takuma. "So you've been keeping an eye on him?"
"I have. I'd like you to take over those duties now," Takuma said.
Unfortunately, even with his clones, he had too much work, and while he could continue to keep an eye on Kabuto, he knew he couldn't give it the time it needed. Kabuto was dangerous. He didn't want to spook the spy because he made a mistake because he was overworked.
Additionally, he wanted to include ANBU resources because that was objectively better than him doing everything on his own, but he still wanted some control over the situation. When he was in the Inquisitor Unit, he would've needed to talk with Campbell and Barbary to get things started, but in Ratel's squad, he was in charge, and that allowed him to keep it low.
Among the people in the squad, Hippo was the best for the job.
"What would these duties be?" Hippo asked.
"Surveillance. He's a sleeper agent, so he hasn't been doing much, so it would be a waste to weed him out. I just want to watch what he's doing, collect information that might give us an idea about what ROOT is planning, and stop them before they come to fruition."
Even though he knew that Kabuto was working with Orochimaru, he had to frame everything in the ROOT context because otherwise, it would be outside his jurisdiction, and he would be required to relinquish it to someone else.
"Be conservative in how intrusive you'll be. I don't want him spooked."
"You got it, boss," Hippo said. "I'll be reading his secret daily journal."
.
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The link is in the synopsis!