Chương 375: CH_10.9 (375)

It took Barbary 24 hours after Krait's summons to arrive at the Bunker with Campbell, Kestrel, and a large team of ANBU staff. Some were from the Inquisitor Unit, but there was also general support from the Domestic Branch who had come to seize and document things before allowing relevant outsiders to rehabilitate the animal and human test subjects.

"This is terrible," Barbary said as he stood a few meters away from the staff, putting the kid they had found in the bunker into a body bag.

"... He seemed fine," Krait muttered without energy. He had talked to the kid and had managed to persuade him that everything was going to be fine, and the kid had trusted him—only for the kid to die half an hour after the iryō-nin pulled out of the bunker. The verdict? The kid's health wasn't stable from the intensive experimentation done on him. Given his internal state, he was lucky to be alive.

The move out of the bunker's familiar environment, as bleak as it was, triggered massive stress, which caused his immune system, which was already hanging by a thread, to give up. Takuma, who had just finished receiving medical treatment, put his hand on Krait's shoulder to offer comfort, but didn't have words. The tragedy was that, according to the scientists, the bunker had never managed to keep a test subject that had undergone experimentation alive.

The ones they had found alive were those who hadn't undergone experimentation yet. The kid was the biggest success. Given those facts, the death didn't seem like a surprise, and yet no one saw it coming. ———.

"This was an unnecessary risk," Campbell said as they stood at the edge of the bloody corridor without the dead bodies. Takuma had just given him a rundown of what had gone down.

"Your clone should've dismissed itself the moment it recognised the illegal experimentation. The guard you knocked out was noticed missing, and that caused them to realise your presence. You could've died here and it wouldn't have been worth it."

"Yes, sir," Takuma replied. He guessed that he had missed wiping some blood or a tooth while cleaning, raising the alarms when it was inevitably discovered.

"I'm glad that you're safe. Learn from this so you can be safer next time," Campbell said, his stern tone shifting to a warmer one. Takuma nodded. He didn't mind criticism when the other party was worried about him. Campbell was also right about learning from his mistakes as danger was part of the job, for which skill and experience were more reliable than luck.

"What do you think we'll find in the research?" asked Takuma.

"You said they were doing Orochimaru's research. Whatever that is, it's bound to be nothing good," Campbell said as he thought about what this discovery meant for"This place has to be connected to the outside in some way. We must find that connection, chase it down, and see how far it takes us. This could be another inlet into ROOT's network in the Land of Fire."

Takuma didn't respond, but those words pulled him away from his thoughts to the bunker and brought him to what this could mean for him as an opportunity to advance his career and goals. ANBU had just about filled the ROOT-shaped hole in their intelligence and security systems enough that it had stopped bleeding, which meant it was time for them to start acting on their department-wide hunt for the traitors. The bunker's connection to ROOT was a chance to get a head start and join the hunt initiative.

He glanced at Campbell and thought about Barbary because they, along with their ANBU Captain, would decide who would get to work on this case. He was new and inexperienced, which was bad for his chances—but he was also the one who had brought the existence of the bunker to light, and if nothing else, he was going to do his utmost to use that to get a slice of that pie. ———.

The entire team was having their midday meal in the clearing outside the bunker, which had been transformed into a temporary hub with fully furnished tents brought in a storage scroll.

"I heard you met with Inenpachi," Amami, aka Kestrel, asked as she sat on the table beside Takuma, who had been put in charge of the people in charge of proper documentation and transportation of collected evidence, which was mostly a desk job, given to him because of his injuries.

"I did."

"What did he say?"

"That I need to sleep more." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Kestrel snorted and almost spat out her food.

"I'm also doing something else with him," he said. She was a Yamanaka, close with Inenpachi, and bound to find out what they were doing. And it wasn't as though it had to be kept a secret, so he shared some details about the research with her.

"Gosh, you must hate that you can't use clones all day, you little freak?" she grinned, but he could also tell her she was judging him just a little. Takuma shrugged. She wasn't wrong; so much was hanging on his ability to use clones to boost his progress successfully. There was no one inside the tent he was working out of but he sharpened his ears to confirm no one else was around before putting down his spoon and turning to her.

"Hey, do you want to be on this case? This is a ROOT facility, and Campbell said he's going to pursue it to find their network. I want to be part of that." Amami stared at him for a moment.

"And you don't think they'll let you on." She's terrifyingly sharp, Takuma thought as he nodded.

"You and I are new, so our chances of getting on this are low, but if we present a united front and approach Campbell and Barbary, that just might work. I have experience finding people from the Police Force and just spent two months investigating and finding even more people. All these scientists and guards need to be interrogated for information, and I don't need to say who will be best at that. I think if we go and present ourselves as a package deal, we can maybe convince Barbary to let us on."

"I'm interested, and your plan does seem to have some merit," she said but still sounded like she needed more convincing.

"This is probably going to need two senior members. I think we, as a duo, can replace one of them. Seeing that Krait was on this mission and doesn't currently have a caseload, he'll be on it, which leaves the other two. Caracara is presently the busiest of the squad; she's not here today, so she's more or less out. This leaves us with Dhole, and with his penchant for staying put—case in point, he isn't here—I think we, as a duo, can replace him.

"What do you say?" he asked. If his chances of accomplishing something weren't good by his lonesome, then he just needed to add others for help. He had done the same at the Police Force by roping Arisu into the raid, which had turned into the Narcotics Taskforce. He figured there was no harm in using the same tactic in ANBU. He also felt comfortable taking this to her because they had already collaborated before and thus knew how each other worked.

"Dhole isn't my mentor, so there's no risk and all reward in here for me, so why not? Let's do it," Amami raised her spoonful of curry near his mouth; he was surprised but ended up eating it anyway.

"Good boy." Suddenly, all her antics during their recruitment came back to him, and he suddenly wondered if it was a good idea to team up with her again. ———.

"You know, Tapir told me he offered you an Assault Unit assignment. I can see why," Barbary said as they began to pack up, which included all the dead bodies, which were cocooned in thick and wide bandages with fūinjutsu on top to slow down degradation.

"Do you enjoy fighting, Ratel?"

"The thrill of it all can be tempting when you're winning, but no, sir, I don't enjoy it," Takuma said, feeling the pain in his back. Almost all movement sent waves of it rippling across his body. Barbary chuckled.

"You know, that says something about you."

"What does?"

"That you got your ass kicked in the Ring so much that you associate fighting with getting beat up."

"I'll have you know I was a top ticket fighter."

"So was I."

"Not as much as me, sir." Barbary, as Slash Baron, was popular in his own right, and the old-timers would know about him, but by the end of Takuma's run, he had the longest 2v1 win streak of any Ring fighter in its history. Scars' record still hung in the betting hall, and he was confident it would remain there until some maniac replaced him. Unlike Slash Baron and his Troupe, he never joined a team, which added a mysterious quality to his legend.

"But you're not wrong. There's truth to that. I do associate it with suffering," Takuma sighed in introspection. The Ring was a part of that, but he had been getting his ass handed to him since he arrived in this world. He had lost all but one fight in his year at the academy. His encounters in the field also hadn't been pleasant. Except for his raids during the Narcotics Taskforce, he had seldom been strong enough to clear combat without difficulties.

And that bothered him because it always felt like he wasn't progressing fast enough to match his combat needs. And because of that frustrating feeling, he never had the chance to enjoy combat as Barbary expected he would.

"Maybe you'll have a change of perspective. As you grow stronger, fewer people out there will match you, which means there is a lesser chance of running into someone who can kick your ass," Barbary said, and he could sense a tone he couldn't recognise.

"Some people call becoming a jōnin a tipping point because once you reach that level, it becomes almost impossible to kill you if you aren't another jōnin. You know how a group of above-average genin with great teamwork can take down a decent chunin?" He knew all about it and had led a team of great genin to take down one pain-in-the-ass chunin himself.

"Do you know what happens when a group of above-average chunin with perfect teamwork try to take down a new jōnin?" Barbary asked an almost rhetorical question.

"They get annihilated. That's how strong you have to be to become a jōnin."

"I don't think that tipping point will come for me, sir," Takuma said after considering his words.

"Ah, did I discourage you by mistake? I didn't mean to. You're young, Ratel. You should aim high as the sky. Forget jōnin; you should aim to become the Hokage," Barbary laughed goodheartedly as he went in for a back slap, but stopped when he remembered where Takuma was injured.

"Not at all, sir. I'm going to become a jōnin."

"That's great!"

"But I don't think my view will change." Takuma smiled almost ruefully behind his mask.

"I plan to remain in the field for the foreseeable future, even when I become a jōnin. It sounds counterproductive, but I wish I get to fight more than my fair share of jōnin because Ring has ruined me; I need to get into fights to get better—and that is going to be tough and painful. I've seen how jonin fight too." He looked at Barbary; he couldn't see his expression because of the lion mask.

"But I have to be able to win consistently against normal jōnin because if I can't accomplish that, how am I expected to survive the monsters of this world?"