Chương 401: CH_10.35 (401)

Even though four ROOT agents had recently been captured in Inahara, there was much more buzz about the discovery of three agents. This wasn't surprising because they were found in the Hidden Leaf Village. The higher-ups were much more concerned about spies in their backyard, and because of it, there was tremendous pressure on the team to complete the arrest of all three agents without fail.

Barbary, who followed very much a laissez-faire style of management, had them prepare a report on how they would handle the arrest, but also grilled them on things that could go wrong. As annoying as it was, the team understood that the lieutenant was under direct pressure, and he was doing his best to shield them.

But Takuma had to admit, he didn't feel much pressure when he laid out his target with an augmented punch to the face and saw him fall to the ground on the feather-strewn floor of a communications tower with carrier birds screeching and flapping their wings in their cages and pedestals. The attention and pressure also came with free use of resources to ensure everything went smoothly. He immediately ducked as a massive eagle, with metal on its talons, flew towards him after seeing a masked man drop his handler.

The bird was grabbed by its neck by Yazo before it could reach Takuma. The other two assault squad members also covered him and the ROOT agent to shield them from the frenzied birds.

"Thanks," he said, nodding to Yazo and his two assault squad teammates, who didn't get an opportunity to do anything. Takuma and the team crafted a plan to arrest all three agents simultaneously. Each team member was going to lead one of the arrests, and they were not only accompanied by assault squad members but also had Police Force backup. The team also restricted the information because it had created such a big commotion within ANBU.

The Police Force was told that their targets were unrelated criminals who had escaped to the Hidden Leaf from another city and that they were helping those city police arrest them. ANBU's involvement was kept a secret until the very last moment when the operatives arrived on the scene.

They also had to rush the planning and preparation in two days because it had been a while since they had left Inahara, and the chances of ROOT finding out which of their people could be affected and alerting them rose with each passing day. Not to mention, they were also concerned about the other ROOT agents finding out about Penro Juro's arrest and going into hiding because of it.

"Another easy win," Yazo said as he handed the eagle to one of the other handlers. Takuma had to agree. After his bunker and Inahara encounters, he was expecting and prepared himself for another bloody fight or a drawn-out chase—which was why he had disregarded sleep against the doctor's orders and used his four hours of shadow clone usage exclusively for work to dial in the planning—but things had gone smoothly for him.

His walkie-talkie crackled before Jotomi, an inquisitor squad staff member, informed him that Amami and Krait had also been successful in their arrests. Takuma suddenly felt the tension drain from his shoulders now that all three agents were in custody, but a moment later, he steeled himself because the job wasn't over until the agents were secured at the holding facility.

"That's that. Now, we just need to get them into prison," he said to the assault squad.

"Let's get him prepared." A fūin-nin checked the agent, and once again, there was no death-seal, so they simply slapped a chakra-suppression seal on him and got him ready for transport.

"This one also doesn't have a death-seal," Yazo commented.

"We actually came up with a possible reason," Takuma said.

"Why do you think this guy was working here?" Takuma's target worked at a communication tower as a bird handler responsible for sending and receiving messages to other cities, outposts, and countries via trained carrier birds. It was a strategically important position because the carrier birds had to be trained to their specific location. If someone wanted to send a message to the Hidden Sand, they not only had to train the bird with the city's location, but also with the specific tower's location.

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"His current access level is middle of the line, but if he kept doing a good job, he could eventually be hired by us or be transferred to a tower that handles sensitive information. Places like those do regular body checks, and the death-seal would show up, and get him booted. Hell, the death-seal probably would show up during the hiring checks." The team reasoned that now that ROOT had lost its influence over Hidden Leaf, one of their primary goals was to regain what they had lost.

Gaining the influence they had before would be impossible, but it was likely that most ROOT agents in the Hidden Leaf Village had orders to rise to important positions around the village. Amami's target worked in a power plant that generated the electricity that powered the entirety of the Hidden Leaf Village. On the other hand, Krait's target was a guard at a major armoury warehouse. Forget about the future, they were already in important positions. ———.

A day later, two men and a woman gathered in a dark, dingy hotel room where the only light came from the streetlamp through the gaps in the dusty blinds. Two sat around a table while one man leaned against the wall with torn wallpaper. The woman's rusty chair creaked as she leaned forward.

"Three of ours were caught yesterday," she said, her voice emotionless, but her words carried weight. ANBU regularly operated within the boundaries of the Hidden Leaf Village, but most of it involved keeping tabs on clans and known criminal elements, communicating with the Leaf's Intelligence Department, interrogating people for their secrets, and solving cases of national importance, among other duties—but an active combat operation within the city boundaries was exceptionally rare.

So, the news about an ANBU operation involving three different locations spread quickly through the circles that monitored such things.

"How did they find out about them?" asked the man at the table.

"Were they in contact with each other?"

"They were part of the same cluster, yes," the woman replied. ROOT agents never met face-to-face unless there was something pressing that forced them to. They exchanged information through drop-off locations. Status checks were done secretly; at a periodic interval, one agent would watch another agent for a day in secret to see if they were alive.

However, that was only one level of separation; not all agents knew of the existence of other agents, so even if one agent were captured, they wouldn't pull down everyone else along with them. In this case, the three agents knew each other so that they could call upon one another for support.

"Do you have any news?" the woman asked the man leaning against the wall.

"A fourth one was arrested the day before yesterday." The duo at the table was shocked because they hadn't heard about a fourth arrest. However, it could make sense because an individual arrest wasn't as eye-catching as a simultaneous triple-arrest and thus could take a few days to spread and reach their ears.

"I received a message from the main command earlier this morning." If the fourth arrest was surprising, then the communication from the main command made both of them alert because the two events coming so close to each other couldn't be a coincidence.

"What did it say?"

"These arrests are a result of ANBU successfully capturing other agents elsewhere, leading to an information leak." The message was purposefully vague without any information about who, how, or when, but it did warn all agents that they should keep their eyes and ears open for any suspicious activity and raise their internal threat levels for the foreseeable future.

The agents operating within the Hidden Leaf Village were already facing the most danger, but not only did they have less overall support, but there was also a possibility that their identities could be leaked at any time. Every day from now on would be spent looking over their shoulders, looking for ANBU, even if they were keeping their heads down and not trying anything that might reveal them as agents.

"Those at risk of exposure would be getting genjutsu blocks to protect intel in case of capture." Genjutsu blocks weren't permanent and required periodic maintenance to keep up.

"None of you are exposed, but you need to spread the news to your cohorts." The other two breathed a sigh of relief. The safest option would be to send everyone at risk of exposure underground, but that would mean abandoning their undercover post, wasting all the progress they had made in the last year or so, and sacrificing anything they could've accomplished in the future—risk of being exposed didn't mean it was certain that they would be captured.

Anywhere else, they might have gone the safe route, but abandoning progress in the Hidden Leaf Village, even if it were only a portion of agents, would put them back significantly. It was a risk assessment question, and the main command had decided to toe the line.

"Anything else?" asked the woman.

"No." The trio of agents ended their meeting after discussing some more details. The agent who had received the communication from the main command walked through a dark street, keeping in the shadows. He had lied to his peers because there was something else in the message. He had been given an additional mission. It was to keep an eye on someone who was possibly behind the capture of their agents.

"Takuma," he whispered to himself.

"I wonder what you're like…"