As the sun began to set, Seina subtly cast a spell to make them tired. The boy, who was frowning because he didn't want to go to sleep, had to be reprimanded by his father. Once they were in the carriage, she increased her influence, noticing with some surprise and curiosity that the boy seemed to be fighting against it with great effort. How this was possible, when his adult parents hadn't even noticed anything, was a mystery.
Once they were asleep, she turned around, urging the horses to move so they could make up for lost time. Thanks to that damn kid, the time she had hoped to save on the journey had vanished. In fact, if she didn't hurry, they would end up spending more than three nights in the forest. Luckily, as night began to fall, the roads emptied, and they found themselves almost galloping down the dirt path.
"This mission is a real pain in the ass," Naruto complained.
"Oh, really?" Sasuke asked sarcastically while keeping watch in another direction. "We should find a place to spend the night and start setting up protections."
And so they did. They found another spot to set up the caravan and secured the surroundings again to prevent any attacks or spying. They ate while the others slept deeply, though now free from her enchantment. Apparently, all the travel, and doing nothing, had tired them out.
"If we hurry, we'll reach Shukuba before sunset tomorrow."
"Good. Who wants to take the first watch?"
"I'll start tonight, if that's okay with you," Naruto said. The others nodded.
"Great. Wake me up."
Naruto agreed to wake Sasuke for the second shift, so she sat in the driver's seat to get as much sleep as possible. She drifted into a light sleep, as she always did when sleeping away from home, so whenever she heard something unusual, she would wake up. She remained "asleep," but her mind was alert before her reflexes could even kick in. She noticed that one of the adults in the caravan was having some kind of nightmare, so she cast the Somnus spell before they could wake the others in the middle of the night.
Suddenly, she woke up with a start. Sasuke, beside her, sensed her sudden awakening through their bond. What happened next unfolded in mere milliseconds: 1) she realized the boy was awake, pretending to be asleep, 2) he tried once again to break free from her enchanted sleep spell, 3) the boy realized that she had caught onto his deception, and 4) he pulled out a syringe hidden somewhere secret and tried to stab it into her neck, lunging at her with ninja-like speed.
The sudden fight lasted only a few seconds after her epiphany. Seina rolled out of the attack's reach, Sasuke intercepted the enemy's arm, grabbing it firmly, and Naruto, awake at the first movement, knocked him out with a tranquilizing senbon to the neck. The adults, snoring under her spell, didn't even notice. Seina put the boy under again with another spell, just in case. Their team, now fully awake after the attack, exchanged glances.
"What the hell just happened?" Sasuke asked quietly.
"We'd better talk mentally. We don't even know if the other clients are really our clients or if he has some kind of recording device hidden."
"It's clear he's not just any kid."
"Is he even a kid at all?"
"Honestly, right now, I'm even doubting whether he's actually the son of our clients," she thought. "The others seem clearly like civilians, but this one… He's been behaving so well until yesterday, did you notice? And now he attacked me with ninja-level speed."
"Do you think he threw that tantrum to delay us?"
"Could be."
"How long has he been pretending to be asleep? Why didn't he attack us sooner?" Naruto asked, his mental voice slightly frantic.
"He was going for Seina," Sasuke said, completely certain. "He seems to have been waiting for her to be fully asleep."
"The big question is, who is this boy, and who does he work for?"
"We'll have to interrogate him."
Seina chained him up and placed temporary seals to suppress his chakra, which he had clearly been hiding. She petrified him and used iryo ninjutsu to degrade the tranquilizer Naruto had injected. Once everything was ready, she woke him up. The boy couldn't move due to her petrifying spell, but his eyes looked at them all with growing fear as he realized he had been caught and was trapped.
She entered his mind. She needed answers as soon as possible and didn't care about invading the privacy of someone who had possibly just tried to kill her, even if he was just a brat. She quickly realized what was happening, and with her, so did Sasuke and Naruto. That seal in someone's mind… She had seen it before. On Sai. It was Danzo's work. She dug into his memories, trying not to hurt him but extracting everything she needed.
As she had suspected, he was not the son of the clients, who were indeed civilians, but a recruit from a few months ago with exceptional infiltration skills. The plan was for him to pose as the son, avoiding suspicion, and wait for the other team to attempt to kidnap them. If they failed, he was to act alone and at least try to capture Sasuke. When he realized that the other team had failed on the first night, he decided to wait for the right moment.
Unfortunately for him, Seina had decided to move ahead of schedule to reach Shukuba as soon as possible, so he had no choice but to delay them in hopes that Danzo's other team could attempt to capture them on the second night, far from the busy roads travelled during the day. When he realized that night that the other team wasn't going to show up or couldn't approach for unknown reasons, he decided to act alone when he heard them talking about quickening the pace the next day to arrive before nightfall—the only feasible time to attack them without anyone noticing. He knew there wouldn't be a third night, and that Seina wouldn't allow another tantrum that could delay them, so he had only one option left.
He had been given syringes filled with powerful sedatives. The plan was to take her out first since she was the most dangerous and could teleport them away with hiraishin before they could even touch Sasuke and Naruto. Once she was unconscious, they assumed that the barriers she usually set up would dissolve on their own. It was clear they didn't know they weren't fuinjutsu, but rather her magical powers. Without the barriers, the other team could, theoretically, kidnap Sasuke more easily, leaving Naruto and Seina behind with the clients to finish the mission however they could.
That way, they would have lost the last Uchiha, allowing Danzo to pressure the Hokage in another way. Additionally, he could manipulate them emotionally by making them feel guilty for failing to prevent Sasuke's abduction. For Danzo, it was a triple victory. He would gain control of Sasuke, manipulate them into joining Ne, and perhaps even push the higher-ups and the council to rebel against Tsunade-sama.
She pulled out of his mind, leaving him unconscious once more.
"…"
Sasuke and Naruto, who had been with her during the… interrogation, couldn't believe it. Meanwhile, Seina realized that she couldn't return to Konoha with the entire team again without Danzo starting to suspect something, so she had to do something.
"What are we going to do?"
"I've already escaped from Danzo once and managed to make him think I didn't realize who was behind it… If we go back to Konoha, all together without a scratch, leaving the boy and the other Ne team free, he'll immediately know something is up. We'd have to be complete idiots not to question who keeps trying to kidnap us," she said. "According to the boy, the others are watching us."
"They're waiting for the barrier you raised to fall."
They had to come up with a plan immediately. The real child of their client had been eliminated, so how the hell were they supposed to tell the clients that their son was dead and that their supposed child was actually a mole, handpicked to kidnap and attack the very shinobi they had hired for protection?
"Why don't we take this step by step?" Sasuke thought, assuming the role of reason when he noticed the chaos in their connected minds. "What do we do with the boy?"
"We only have three options: either we turn him in to Konoha, let him go as if we hadn't noticed anything, or kill him," she thought. "Turning him in to Konoha would make Danzo realize we know something happened during the mission, same as killing him outright."
"But we can't just let him go either."
"Unless… Huh… Yeah. I think I've got it," she smiled, realizing that the best plan was always the simplest. "Here's what we'll do."
She explained what she had in mind. First, she would erase the boy's memories of the attack so he would think nothing strange had happened. Then, she would put him to sleep with a sedative injected into his neck to cover up the puncture wound from Naruto's senbon, and they would leave at dawn before the clients could wake up. They would make the boy—and the waiting Ne ninjas—believe that Seina had put them to sleep so they wouldn't be a nuisance for a few hours, allowing them to make up for the lost time caused by his tantrum the previous day. That would explain why, for the second night in a row, the barriers hadn't fallen.
She would put the boy under the Imperius Curse to make him send a short note, written in his own handwriting, to the other team, informing them of the complication. A note that would reach Danzo to prove that, luckily, they hadn't figured out what was really going on. After all, they hadn't fought the other Ne team. Their attackers could have been anyone, right? At least, that's what she planned to write in her official report, which she would ensure reached Danzo discreetly once she spoke with Shikaku.
"And what about the clients? How are we going to tell them their son is dead?" Sasuke asked with interest—and not-so-secret admiration.
"That's the fun part. Naruto, don't you dare start yelling," she ordered, knowing how her brother was. "Once we reach Shukuba, I'll put the boy under the Imperius Curse again to keep him from meeting with the other Ne ninjas. We'll make it seem like we're leaving for Konoha that same day using some clones and the hiraishin, but we'll actually stay in Shukuba to finish the plan. We need to kill the boy in a way that looks like an accident, ensuring his body is disfigured so his parents can't recognize that he's not their real son. That way, the Ne ninjas won't see a need to recover his corpse either."
"It could work," Sasuke thought in disbelief.
"…I guess we don't have much choice," Naruto sighed.
"If everything goes as I expect, Danzo will think we haven't realized a thing. Again. The clients won't find out their son was murdered, and the Ne squad watching us won't be able to interrogate their mole."
"Shall we begin, then?"
Seina woke the boy up again. It didn't take long for her to erase his memories of the night, making him believe he had slept deeply after she discreetly injected him with a sedative in the neck. She took his hidden syringes and replaced their contents with saline solution, keeping their previous appearance of a sedative.
Dawn was approaching, so they sat down for breakfast, watching the first rays of sunlight. As soon as the earliest travellers and passers-by appeared, they left the clearing with the carriage in tow and headed toward Shukuba. It took several more hours before everyone stopped snoring. By then, they were less than three hours from Shukuba. Once the clients woke up and had breakfast, Seina discreetly cursed the boy, ruffling his hair with a friendly smile.
"Aren't you going to eat a little more, Mamoru?"
"No, mother. I want to finish reading my book."
"Alright."
Seina ordered him to write the note as naturally as possible. A short while later, while the clients were chatting about finally reaching their city, she climbed into the driver's seat.
"Why don't you walk beside me and chat for a bit, acting distracted and bored? We need to give the boy a chance to throw the note."
"We're less than three hours away," Naruto said, crossing his arms behind his head. "At this pace, we'll get there after lunch."
"Hn. We saved half a day. Not bad."
"Do you think we could explore the city?" her twin brother asked with some genuine excitement. "I have to show you what I saw last time."
"I don't think that's a good idea, Naruto."
They were talking in a relatively low voice, though any ninja would have heard them. She knew, thanks to her curse, that Mamoru had already discreetly dropped the note on the side of the road. If she hadn't ordered him to do it, he might have just thought he had accidentally lost it. They continued their journey amidst the crowd. She ordered the ninja mole to read his book to distract him from his anxious mother's questions.
The final hours felt eternal. The moment she saw the city of Shukuba in the distance, she almost burst into tears. Entering the city felt like a weight had been lifted off their shoulders. They accompanied their clients to their fairly large home. As soon as they stepped out of the carriage for the last time, Seina sent a few mental orders to the boy and to his mother, whom she had also placed under an improvised Imperius curse, instructing her to send him to bathe thoroughly.
"It has been an honor escorting you to your home, Yoneno-san."
"Thank you very much for your service," the man said formally. "Safe travels."
The woman nodded. Seina subtly released her from the spell's influence. They went to a crowded restaurant to eat and created a few clones in the bathrooms. They swapped places with their clones, making it look like they were still finishing their meal, and left under their invisibility bracelets. They returned to the Yonenos' house without anyone seeing or sensing them.
Now came the interesting part. They had to wait about 20 minutes for their clones to return to Konoha using the hiraishin, register at the entrance as an alibi, and then go to report to the mission department. The moment their clones disappeared, signalling that everyone now believed they were in Konoha, she knew it was time to eliminate the mole.
They had debated what kind of accident would be the least suspicious way to kill and disfigure the child without raising any alarms. In the end, it was Naruto who had the idea.
"Aren't they supposed to be under death threats?" he asked rhetorically. "We could plant some homemade bombs in the house to make it look like an outsider broke in while the clients were on their way."
"For the second time, I agree with the dobe."
And so, they crafted a few civilian bombs to plant around the house while the mole bathed under his mother's orders. Their plan was to detonate only one out of five, making it seem like two were faulty and the other two hadn't gone off because they weren't triggered accidentally. The only casualty would be the child when a bomb exploded in his room the moment he jumped onto his bed after his bath.
Seina placed the fatal bomb inside the boy's mattress to lure him there. Sasuke and Naruto planted the other bombs in the other bedrooms. Once investigated, it would appear as if someone had planted those bombs intending to kill the entire family. It took her barely 20 minutes to go in and out. She watched through her enchanted glasses as the boy slammed the door open, entering with his robe tied around him, running like the child he was supposed to be.
"Don't run inside the house, Mamoru!"
"Yes, Mother!"
She directed him to the bed, where he jumped onto the mattress with a laugh, diving straight onto the bomb. He did it with all the youthful enthusiasm of a child, just a second after she released him from the curse. The moment his torso touched the device, he was blown away, dying almost instantly. The explosion could be heard from afar. It shattered the windows, blew the door off its frame, and ignited some toys on the floor along with the bedding.
People began running in the opposite direction as the Yonenos screamed, rushing upstairs with some of their servants. Seina watched as the boy's face and upper torso, burned and bloodied, were unrecognizable, along with most of his bruised and broken body.
"Let's go," she said when she saw the mother sobbing uncontrollably. "We're done here."
She used the hiraishin and appeared at home, startling Kakashi. He instinctively pulled out a kunai but quickly put it away, knowing it could only be them. The moment he saw Naruto's sad and guilty expression, Sasuke's severe frown, and her obvious exhaustion, he knew something had happened.
"What happened?"
"Ugh…" Naruto and Seina answered in unison, too tired to elaborate.
"Sasuke?"
Seina collapsed onto the large couch, closing her eyes and resting her feet on Kakashi's lap. Naruto didn't even comment on the oddity of her posture, throwing himself onto an armchair while Sasuke, seated on the moveable section of the sofa, began explaining everything to Kakashi.
He told him about the initial attack attempt on the first day, thwarted by her protective barriers, the brat's attack on the second night that led to his interrogation, Danzo's plans, the clients' son's death, and their frantic plan to fix things without Danzo realizing that, despite failing to abduct them, they still had no idea who was truly behind it all.
All Kakashi could do was sigh as he placed his hands on her feet.
"We're going to have to talk to the Hokage," he told her specifically. "If we all go, it'll be obvious something is going on."
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Kakashi agreed.
Naruto and Sasuke disappeared to take a shower. She wanted to do the same, but the feeling of Kakashi's hands massaging her feet was too tempting.
He didn't speak when they were left alone. He seemed to be staring into nothing, deep in thought and concern. Seina relaxed so much, feeling safe at home with Kakashi by her side, that she fell asleep.
She woke up a while later when Kakashi firmly touched her leg. Looking out the window, she saw it was already night.
"You could have woken me up."
"I had a feeling you needed to rest."
"Ugh. I think I'll go take a bath."
Kakashi took her hand, giving it a subtle, reassuring squeeze. She left Naruto cooking, with Sasuke starting to help him. While she bathed, she tried to meditate so she wouldn't think about the conversation awaiting her—again. She was sick of these conversations. They were always about the same thing.
The next day, in the end, she wasn't able to see the Hokage. In the morning, she worked at the hospital, keeping up her routine to avoid suspicion, and in the afternoon, her teacher wasn't in the office. A bit disheartened, she went home to at least train with her team. Kakashi wasn't there, but Sasuke and Naruto were.
"Why don't we do something other than training?" Naruto suddenly suggested.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Seina-nee, you know a lot of games. Why don't we play one?"
"Games? You mean sports?"
"Yeah, that! Sports."
"There's only three of us, dobe."
"Actually, we can play and train at the same time," she smiled. "Why don't we each make a clone and play three-on-three?"
"At what?"
"Volleyball?"
"What's that?"
"How do you play?"
Seina explained the rules and how to play. She quickly conjured the necessary equipment, and they split into two teams of three—them against their clones. It took a few minutes to learn not to crash into each other, including the clones, but after several shadow clone summons, they got the hang of it.
That's how Kakashi found them in the training grounds hours later, still determined to win only their second set.
"What are you doing?"
Sasuke leaped into the air, intercepting the ball she had sent from below, and smashed it to the other side of the net with full force.
"Take that! 75 to 73!"
"Just you wait!" Naruto's clone shouted from the other side.
"Hey, Kakashi. We're playing volleyball. Want to join?"
"I think I'll just watch for now," he smiled, leaning against a training post.
He watched them play on the massive volleyball court, much larger than any normal one. She felt his intense gaze on her a few times but paid little attention, only responding with a small, discreet smirk. They ended the day exhausted from playing, but they managed to forget the unfolding plot for at least a few hours.
The time would come to face reality sooner or later, but for now, she wanted to stretch those fleeting moments of carefree happiness as much as possible.