Chương 454: CH_12.21 (454)

It was a usual workday at the Hitoge clan's factory. Workers, donned in protective masks, gloves, and goggles, worked their various tasks, from churning vats of bubbling chemicals to preparing batches of raw ingredients to packing the product to keeping the floor and equipment clean. The morning sluggishness had given way as everyone fell into their practised rhythm of work when a commotion struck at the factory's entrance.

Everyone turned and saw a group of ANBU staff, and leading them was a masked and cloaked ANBU operative, who called for a stoppage of work.

"W-What is this?" The factory manager, along with other Hitoge clan shinobi, rushed down and out from the offices and looked around in panic as the outsiders began to order his workers around.

"This facility is under suspicion of selling controlled substances to unauthorised parties and supplying to the black market demand. Here's the warrant." The eagle-masked ANBU-nin handed him a signed warrant.

"Everyone's to safely stop their work and gather here on the floor. No one is allowed to leave or make contact with the outside. You're all under arrest." People were gathered and accounted for, entrances were secured, and the only phone line was cut. The ANBU staff began separating people to confiscate their belongings and register their personal information, but the workers refused to cooperate, looking to the factory manager for instruction.

"You're mistaken. We're legitimate," said Hitoge Daigo.

"That's what I want to believe as well, but we have our duty to confirm." The masked ANBU-nin turned to face the workers, who showed loyalty to their employer.

"And it's your duty to comply in accordance with the warrant. I'll repeat it. All of you are under arrest. If you have done nothing wrong, you've nothing to worry about, but obstructing an investigation will have its consequences…

"I'd like to be civil here, but I can also make things difficult, more for you than me," he said to Daigo, who nervously swallowed.

"Order them to cooperate." Aquilla moved on without waiting for Daigo's response, who felt humiliated by the action, but could only clench his hands as there was nothing else he could do. The warrant was entirely legitimate, and it would've meant one thing if it were the Police Force, but this was ANBU, who could come knocking.

"We have done nothing wrong. Everyone, please cooperate," he announced, giving his workers a knowing nod—everyone was going to be fine. With his word, the workers began to cooperate with the ANBU. He was nervous that someone might say something, but even though they knew what was going on, no one had any insight into how things actually worked. He gave the clan members a look. As long as they kept their mouths shut, even ANBU wouldn't be able to find anything.

Daigo turned to see that the operative was on the stairs, heading up. His heart leapt in his chest as he hurriedly followed.

"Is there any way I can help, ANBU-nin?"

"Yes, let's talk in your office." Hope flickered in his heart. Perhaps there was a way to dissuade the ANBU from their investigation. He bit the inside of his cheek. In the absence of the clan leadership, he had to at least try to negotiate with the ANBU. He only hoped that someone outside the factory, who saw the ANBU, would carry the word to the clan head.

"Alone. Just you and me," said the ANBU-nin, pointing at the others to stay outside. Daigo motioned for the others to stay outside and closed his office door.

"Please sit," he said as he sat behind his desk, but the ANBU-nin ignored him and slowly paced around the office.

"I feel there's a misunderstanding here. We take our responsibilities seriously and follow the letter of the law. I've got our ledgers here in my office. You're free to take a look. I assure you, you'll find nothing out of the ordinary. And if there are some small mistakes, I'll take full responsibility." He thought that if the ANBU-nin were satisfied with what they got on this visit, he would back away, and that would give the clan enough time to make arrangements to protect themselves further.

"It's you, in fact, who misunderstands Hitoge Daigo. You're right that you'll be responsible for the mistakes made here, but they won't be small, and their repercussions won't end with you. The Hitoge clan is in trouble, and you'll be the one getting the worst of it all." The ANBU-nin's tone was relaxed and unhurried, but it weighed down the air in the room. Daigo tried to say something, but the ANBU-nin continued, "So before we continue, I'm giving you a chance to come clean.

In cases like this, the punishment ANBU suggests to the prosecution and judiciary isn't pretty, but if you cooperate right here and now, I can assure you that you'll be treated well in view of your help. But this offer is only applicable if you accept it here while I'm still in your office." A bead of sweat dripped down the side of his face, and he felt an itch in his palm. The way the ANBU-nin talked made it seem like it was already a done deal. Had someone fessed up? Did the clan have a mole?

It seemed plausible; it could be how ANBU had learned about their skimming and black-market dealings. But if they already had an insider, why would they need him? It was a bluff. The ANBU-nin was trying to scare him into turning on his clan. He firmed up his resolve. They would only get out of this predicament if they presented a unified front. He wouldn't turn on his clan and family.

"I don't know what to say. I'll, of course, cooperate fully with the ANBU, but I can't give you what you're looking for because there's nothing of that sort here. You'll quickly find that we have done nothing wrong." The ANBU-nin sighed.

"Perhaps I expected too much," he said, disappointedly. The tone of it struck Daigo the wrong way. His eyes narrowed.

"Listen here, I've been civil here. But if you—" The ANBU-nin didn't wait to listen and was already walking out of his office.

"Hey!" He got up, ready to give the ANBU-nin an earful, but his words died on his tongue when he saw the masked operative headed to a part of the floor that was restricted to him and a few others for significant reasons. His clan members shared the same thoughts, as one of them tried to stop the masked operatives.

"Hey, you can't go there!" His young and brash second-in-command put a hand on the ANBU-nin's shoulder.

"Idiot!" Daigo cursed under his breath. The ANBU-nin turned around faster than any of them could track and struck the youngster a couple of times on the offending arm, which then suddenly went limp. The ANBU-nin then kicked him in the foot to force him to his knees.

"You're not someone to dictate what I can do or not," the ANBU-nin said with a kunai against the fool's neck. He looked up at Daigo and commanded with disgust.

"Get your mutt in control." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Get him to his office," Daigo said, feeling the shame.

"I-I can't feel my arm!"

"Shut up!" The other clan members picked the fool up and took him away. Daigo followed the ANBU-nin, feeling the pace of his heart pick up, but he had to keep a straight face.

"If you tell me what you're looking for, I'll be able to help you," he said as the ANBU-nin opened a door to a big room full of machines and pipes.

"This here is delicate machinery with dangerous stuff flowing inside." In that moment, all he wanted was for the ANBU-nin to get out of the room. He did his best not to look at a specific section of the room, but the masked man went right there and then reached out to open the cover to a body-length cabinet with electrical switches, pressure gauges, and flow levers.

"Please be careful," he said in hopes that the man would back away, but the ANBU-nin pulled the fake cabinet with its fake innards to reveal an unpainted rectangular patch of red wall behind it, like he knew it was always there. For a moment, Daigo didn't know how to react. He froze up and just stared as the operative put his hand through the red patch, which was actually a block of earth put up through Earth Release ninjutsu and not a natural part of the wall.

"Look at that," the operative said as he stepped into a small room with files, ledgers, wads of cash, and several bars of gold.

"I hope you were going to show me these as well." Daigo opened his mouth, but no words came out. He couldn't believe what had just happened, but he also didn't know that hiding behind the eagle mask was a Hyūga, who knew about the secret room before he even entered the building. ———. Hitoge Goro, the head of the Hitoge clan, a man in his fifties, was having a terrible day. As he was enjoying his lunch, he was informed that ANBU had raided the houses of several of his clan members.

It was an absolute shock because of the utter suddenness of it all. And while he moved to deal with it all, unknown to him, ANBU had already sealed off his clan's factory and arrested all the people who worked there. He still had no idea what had happened there. But he made the connection that the raided houses belonged to the people managing them. And now, he had an ANBU-nin sitting before him in his own home, forcing him to stay when he wanted to go to the factory to assess the amount of damage.

"What? Not satisfied with harassing my clan members? Want to raid my clan's ancestral hall as well?" he said with spite. The badger-masked ANBU looked around the lounge as though considering it, which further infuriated him. He tried to keep his calm because the man was an ANBU.

"I think we've done enough for the day. I have to leave some fun for later. But I must say, we've discovered many things of interest today. Many of your clan members seem to have a penchant for hiding money underneath their floors and inside their roofs. Now, I don't want to be hasty in my accusations, but it sure looks like ill-gotten gains that they haven't declared as part of their income." Goro narrowed his eyes.

"There's nothing wrong about keeping your wealth at home."

"Of course," the ANBU-nin nodded.

"What do you say about a tremendous amount of cash, bars of gold, and ledgers upon ledgers of transactions in a secret room hidden behind a fake wall covered by fake machinery. What do you think about that? Is that something that businesses do? You'll have to tell me because I'm not really familiar with it." Goro felt his heart drop. Those ledgers had their off-the-books transactions.

That money was a portion of what they earned from their dealings and of the capital they used to buy raw supplies to fulfil their off-the-books orders. All of it was an attempt to keep their two businesses separate—but now those things were in ANBU's hands.

"Any comments?"

"What do you want?" he asked. He probably could've dealt if they had only found the money, but those ledgers weren't something he could avoid. The ANBU-nin pulled a sheet of paper from the folder he had brought and placed it between them. It seemed to be a copy of a Police Force document.

"Yesterday, the Police Force opened a case of repeated exploitation of Genin Corps genin against your clan. Due to the number of complaints, they'll be pursuing it in earnest." Goro read the document, and if it was true, then the Police Force was indeed coming after the Hitoge clan. His grip creased the page. He had taken care of that issue and had made sure that they wouldn't face any more trouble, and yet, it had returned to haunt him.

"This is something I'm sure you'll recognise. It has your signature on it." The ANBU-nin placed a second page, another copy, between them. Goro's face paled when he realised what it was. It was a complaint that he had written against a chūnin who had disrespected the clan by refusing to work with them. He had pulled some strings and written a complaint to put her in her place. How was he supposed to know that she would go on to become a jōnin?

That complaint had haunted him, taking away nights of sleep and leaving him sweating, wondering what would happen if it ever reached her.

"I wonder what'll happen if someone shows this to Jōnin Ayaka. I heard this letter was a part of the discussion during her promotion considerations." A jōnin, with her influence, could crush them. Even if they were officially recognised as a shinobi clan by the village, they weren't much bigger than a shinobi family. A vindictive jōnin could end them like an ant under a boot.

"W-What—""I'm not done." This time, the ANBU-nin retrieved a few pages and more copies from his folder. Goro hesitantly picked them up, and for a moment, he was confused about what he was reading.

The contents were horrible; who in their right mind would call the Fourth Hokage, the village's hero, a weak shinobi and an unworthy leader, and how his face on the Hokage Mountain was an insult to the Hidden Leaf Village—that was until he saw his brother's name in the salutations, which was when he suddenly recognised his brother's handwriting. The other two letters were equally horrible.

"W-What do you… What do you want? Why show me all of this?" By the time he was done reading, his back was drenched in sweat, and his feet, folded underneath him, were devoid of power. ANBU finding their ledger and the Police Force case were bad enough, but if Jōnin Ayaka ever found out that they were the reason her promotion was delayed, they would be ostracised. It wouldn't have, in any way, jeopardised her jōnin promotion, but it was used against her to delay it a year and promote someone in her place.

And if someone found his brother's letter, their clan's reputation would take a serious hit; reputations mattered a lot in their world.

"Because you made the grave mistake of working with Danzo and his ROOT," the ANBU-nin said gravely. Goro flinched. His clan had worked with Danzo. They had sold him various controlled substances over the years while ROOT was still part of the Hidden Leaf Village. All the transactions were off-the-books. They were paid a lot for their product and service.

"This is punishment. Do you understand?" He slowly nodded. Danzo and ROOT were sensitive topics for the Hidden Leaf. Once upon a time, he thought about his small connection to Danzo as a boon, but now that had turned into a curse, threatening to be the end of his clan.

"What will happen to us?" he asked.

"The black market dealings and the Police Force will remain. Your clan will fully cooperate and take the punishment given to you. Your manufacturing licence, which permits you to run the factory, will be stripped, and a permanent ban will be part of that. As for the other things, we'll keep them hidden for the moment, but if we ever hear that you're dealing with Danzo or ROOT in any capacity, you'll know what will happen.

"Remember this clearly. All of this is happening because of Danzo." ———. While Ratel was conversing with Hitoge Goro, another member of his squad was having a similar conversation with another Hitoge clan member. The day had been so chaotic for the clan that they didn't notice that one of their own was missing.

"A secret second family, that's quite something," Hippo said to Kenzou, Goro's eldest son, as they sat in an ANBU black site facility.

"I mean, I couldn't do it. How do you manage to juggle different families? I would drive myself crazy." Kenzou had his balled fists digging into his thighs as he sat in a metal chair with his head bowed down. Tears streamed down his red face, which had swollen up from crying ever since he was kidnapped from the streets and brought to a small room with a blindfold on his eyes. He felt his life was over. If his wife and his family ever knew that he had another family outside, his life would be over.

"Now, to be honest, no one needs to know about it," Hippo said. For the first time, Kenzou looked up with hope. He hadn't made a single attempt to persuade the ANBU-nin to keep his secret because he didn't think it would've made a difference. Why would they keep his secret? But he also hadn't considered why ANBU would care about his extramarital offence.

"Do you know about the clan's dealings with Shimura Danzo?"

"Y-Yes," Kenzou said, suddenly feeling defensive. No one was supposed to know about their dealings. Ever since Danzo had been branded a traitor, the Hitoge clan had done all in their power to distance themselves from the Shimura clan, even though they had been so desperate to curry their favour before. Hippo got up from his chair across the table, screeching as he got up, and walked around the table before placing his hands on Kenzou's shoulder with heft, causing the scared man to flinch.

He leaned in close and whispered,"We want you to be our inside man in the clan. If your clan ever makes contact with Danzo or any of his supporters or allies, please let us know. Do that, and you can keep your two lives separate. ANBU has no interest in breaking families. How does that deal sound? Want to take it?" Kenzou knew there was no choice. If he didn't want to ruin his life, he had to accept. And so he did. ANBU had eyes and ears inside the Hitoge clan.