While Suna's rescued kunoichi slept, I had already taken care of her wounds more thoroughly, with the expectation that the next morning, not only would I be able to move on to some village, but that Pakura would not be a burden, having regained at least some of her fighting ability, good thing the damage had been done to her body, and the keirakukei was in relative good order.
Samehada had only slightly damaged the chakra channels, sucking out chakra in the only blow that had passed.
Of course, severe depletion depresses the entire system, including the source, but any iryonin's arsenal of chakra pumping and tweaking techniques could deal with that in just a dozen minutes, and the kunoichi's own body's powers were also involved in the recovery.
At the same time, I was thinking about how to approach the task from the Konoha Small Council that Kaguya had sent through the seal just a couple of hours after the message had been sent.
Just because the haughty farts at the head of the Hokage believed in my abilities and the feasibility of the plan didn't mean the S-ranga kunoichi would follow it or even want to become Kage after the recent betrayal of the village leadership, despite her earlier ambitions.
Try to play on a desire for revenge or vanity by sharing the spoils with the swordsmen? It was doubtful, to be honest - a man who had just recently escaped from the clutches of death would hardly want to go into the jaws of a tiger if there was a remote chance that his head would be bitten off instead of being satisfied with a piece of meat and letting his neck be rubbed.
I've never been much for rhetoric, though I've never been much for words. Maybe he should just lay it out and let Pakura decide what to do instead of trying to influence the kunoichi's decision.
It would be decent to the girl herself, having just recently walked the kunai blade, and it would allow me to maintain a good relationship with the S-rank fighter anyway, regardless of further developments.
From time to time, distracting me from work and reflection, I was reminded of the clones sent to mop up the remaining Mists.
A bit tired of keeping up the frantic pace of running after the swordsmen who had pulled far ahead, not expecting to be attacked and in terrain ill-suited for using the ninjutsu of the Mist's main element, even the jonins were becoming fairly easy prey, drained by the combined attack of the clones.
The sand wasn't really suited for my usual ambushes, but the kage bunshins were able to hide a bit easier than a real shinobi, subject to the limitations of flesh, including the constant chakra injection into the surrounding space, so enemies reacted when it was too late to do so.
A little more than a dozen chunin could not be counted as an enemy at all - purely on physical advantage, the kage bunshin could mop up ten times that number, not to mention the long chain of pursuers.
The moment when quality trumps quantity. But it allowed me to get a relatively easy supply of fresh bodies in decent condition, rather than chopped up into minced meat or turned into charred charcoal, as was often the case with Konoha ninja.
However, I made one small miscalculation - when I ordered the shadow clone to retrieve the sword of the slain Jinin Akebino, I overlooked the fact that the body was also worth retrieving, even if it would have slowed him down, if not for the reward, then for a detailed study of the modifications applied to the shinobi.
Because when my copies reached the place where Pakura had been ambushed, none of the chunin were there, and neither was Jinin's body, and the sensorics showed a complete absence of chakra users in the radius of sensitivity.
Judging by the tracks, the Kiri-nin had fled almost as soon as they'd found the swordsman's corpse, and it was a futile endeavor to pursue them.
The only thing that consoled me in this situation was that the chunin didn't go back to Kirigakure, given the mores of the Mist, but simply deserted, taking the body with them for the sake of a big reward.
The reason is clear to anyone - if the returning swordsmen knew their comrade had been killed, they would have killed all the shinobi in the vicinity simply because they didn't even see the attacker and allowed the village's relic to be stolen.
The same punishment should await them at the hands of the Mizukage, regardless of merit or clan affiliation. Although there was only one of the latter in the ambush, the jonin Hoshigaki, easily identifiable by his appearance, the rest of the group showed no sign of the kekkei genkai, demonstrating the Mizukage's distrust of the clans.
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