Yakushi Nono'u looked at the Fox mask, her voice low. "When will you kill D?"
Yagami countered with a question of his own. "Why? Are you that eager to see him dead?"
Nono'u hesitated for a heartbeat before nodding firmly. "D is the one responsible for coordinating with the orphanage. As long as he lives, the children are never truly safe."
"Excellent. It seems we share a common enemy," Yagami said. "The veterans of Root are the ones most fanatically loyal to Danzo. The recruits are merely puppets, mission-clocks controlled by the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal. Killing a rookie means little. Killing D is a true blow to Danzo's infrastructure."
He paused, then added, "I won't hide it from you—per Lord Yellow Dog's instructions, I intend to use D as a test subject to crack Danzo's seal. That seal is a nuisance; it allows Danzo to arrange the most heinous tasks without fear of exposure. Among the veterans, C stays by Danzo's side at all times. D is the only viable target."
His voice softened. "If I can break that seal, the children Root has taken from you might actually have a chance to come home."
"Thank... thank you."
Nono's eyes shimmered with an intensity she couldn't suppress. Yagami watched as her cheek muscles—her zygomaticus major—seemed to shift unnaturally downward. It was a jarring, almost horrific sight.
Yagami raised a finger and pointed to his own face. Nono realized her disguise was failing under the weight of her emotions. She turned away, peeling back the damaged layers of her mask.
When she turned back, Yagami saw a face that matched the legends—gentle, kind, and radiating a natural warmth. It was the face of the "Walking Priestess."
"Forgive me," she whispered. "I lost my composure."
Yagami hadn't expected the promise of breaking the seal to hit her so hard.
"Fox, of the seven children taken by Root, three are already dead," Nono said, her voice trembling. "And this month, Danzo took three more. I don't know how much longer the orphanage can last. I don't know if I will collapse first, or if the home will simply vanish."
Her breath hitched. "Root's training is barbaric. They demand results and ignore the human cost. One child... they were training him in soft-body contortion. By the time he died, his little body was just a... a heap of..."
She couldn't finish. She couldn't let herself remember.
No wonder she was desperate. Danzo was treating her orphanage like a personal livestock pen. Yagami wanted to tell her to just close the place and run, but he knew better. Anchors, bonds, hope—these weren't things you could just cut away.
"People think I'm just a cold executioner in the ANBU," Yagami said, "but I have people I cherish too. I understand you. We are ninja; we use any means to achieve an end, but there has to be a bottomline. A baseline of humanity."
He stepped closer. "Kidnapping a child with a seal is easier than catching D, but I won't do it. I have a slightly higher set of standards than Danzo. I promise you: I will never use a child from your orphanage as a lab rat."
The Priestess, who had walked through the most dangerous corners of the world without flinching, was now weeping silently. Yagami watched the starlight filter into the cave, feeling a genuine pang of sympathy for her and the orphans.
After a minute of her muffled sobs, Yagami stepped forward and pulled her into a firm embrace, resting her head against his shoulder.
"Don't lose hope," he whispered. "We still have a move to make."
Nono'u's body stiffened for a fraction of a second before she melted into him. It was a practiced gesture for Yagami; Yuka often leaned on him this way. He rested one hand on her back and gently patted her head with the other.
"When I first met you, your talent for deception terrified me," he admitted. "I never knew when you were plotting my end. But it's different now. Stand tall, Nono. For the orphanage, and for yourself. One day, when I am the Minister of ANBU, no one will touch those children."
"Mhm..."
The tension in her shoulders finally dissipated. As she pulled back slightly, Yagami felt something slick and rubbery against his neck. He reached back and pulled away a piece of strange, putty-like material.
"Ah, sorry," Nono said quickly, her face flushing as she began to clean the residue near her ear and neck. "That's my biometric clay. To change my body shape, the suit is essentially one continuous piece, so it gets... complicated."
She tugged at a section of the clay near her collar, accidentally pulling away a large chunk that altered the shape of her shoulder entirely. Yagami watched in fascination as the clay revealed molded curves and prosthetic structures underneath.
Seeing his disbelief, Nono'u decided to drop the act entirely. She shed the integrated clay suit, leaving her in her base attire.
Yagami reached out, his finger lightly brushing her skin. "You keep this covered in clay all day, yet your skin is this clear? Is that a medical ninjutsu trick?"
Nono's heart hammered against her ribs. She had lived a thousand lives under a thousand names, but standing before the Fox with her true face felt like the most dangerous mission of her career.
She looked at him, her hand trembling as she reached for his fox mask. He didn't pull away. Beneath the porcelain mask was a face still partially obscured by a dark cloth mask, but the eyes were unmistakably his.
Half an hour later.
"In my disguise arts, there is a 'Hip-Shrinking' technique to change one's silhouette," she whispered, her voice breathy and exhausted. "Want to see how effective it is?"
"Hnn... It's... quite tight..."
Yagami eventually conceded defeat in that particular skirmish.
As the morning light began to gray the cave entrance, Nono took a long time to recover before she began reapplying the clay to reconstruct her false identity. Yagami cupped her face in his hands. "It's strange. I feel like all my distrust of you has vanished."
"Hmph." Nono deliberately put on a menacing, "spy" expression. "You should be careful, then. I might just feed you false intel and lead you into a trap!"
Now fully transformed into a different person, she produced two scrolls marked 'Left' and 'Right.'
"These are paired scrolls I created for intelligence transmission," she explained. "Our previous methods—blackboards and hidden marks—are too slow. You take the 'Right' scroll; I keep the 'Left.' If I have urgent intel, I seal it into mine, and you can summon the contents through yours."
The Walking Priestess was indeed a master of her craft. This was even more efficient than Yagami's reverse-summoning Stone Panda system with Yuka.
"Understood," Yagami said. "Now, find me that Cloud camp. I need it."
He was ready to end the conflict in the Land of Steam next month. Sakumo had finished his "merit-based" rewards and built his prestige; any further delay would make him look incompetent rather than heroic.
As he watched Nono disappear into the forest, Yagami had a sudden, lingering thought: 'Did that woman just play me?'
He had "sacrificed" his dignity, and yet he was still the one doing the heavy lifting to help her with D. She was a master of deception, after all. But then he remembered the sensation of that "Hip-Shrinking" technique.
'Well,' he thought with a wry smile, 'if it's a sacrifice, at least it was a memorable one.'
(T/N:- indeed that a big 'sacrifice'. This mc is so horny ngl.)