From that, he realized that the man who just talked about killing the kids was the same man who glared at Yami's bat. Yami also found out that this man was exiled from the hidden stone village and had also lost an ear to hidden leaf shinobis. Yami continued to listen to the conversation for a few more minutes. At first most of them were giving reasons like
"They are from the hidden leaf. We don't want the attention of one of the five great villages."
"I am not sure about fighting trained shinobis."
"They were able to take down one of the seven mist swordsmen."
But after Gato said that he will pay 100,000 Ryo to each group that participates, and the one who kills the jonin can take the bounty, all the groups agreed. They knew that the bounties of the 2 jonins were millions in the bingo book.
'As expected money triumphed their fear of death.' Yami thought as he shook his head. By this time he had already formed his original body and stood near an abandoned building. He was still using a couple of bats to find the other bandit groups.
After a few minutes, Yami saw the group leaders come out of the inn with their men and split into different directions. He expected Gato to put them all together as that would be easy but seems like Gato was smarter and knew that piling them all together may catch a lot of unwanted attention and keeping multiple bandits and mercenary groups together could also lead to infighting among them.
Yami summoned a few more bats and had them follow the leaders. Yami didn't send a bat to follow the stone shinobi who was with 5 of his subordinates and decided to follow him personally.
'He seemed the most dangerous of all so I need to take him out first. The most important thing is to kill them without creating a commotion. It seems l will have to wait until they reach the inn they plan to stay in tonight.' Yami thought. He was wary of the stone shinobi from the start and having him in the fight tomorrow at the bridge was the last thing he wanted.
Yami saw that the group had entered a small mansion. He noticed there were 10 more shinobis at the mansion. He understood that Gato must have lured this rogue stone jonin by telling him that he will get to kill hidden leaf shinobis. Gato knows what they want and how to get them on his side. This is how he has been doing business and smuggling for so long.
Yami started to scout the mansion and the guards protecting it. There were 2 gates to the mansion and 2 guards guarding each gate. The backyard had 2 more guards and in the mansion, there were 9 Shinobis with 7 living downstairs and 3 on the first floor.
'The leader must be on the first floor and there must be 2 guards outside his room. I would like to start killing the guards but one wrong move and the leader might get alerted. He is from the hidden stone so he might try to use some earth-style jutsus.' Yami thought. He kept coming up with different plans to take down the entire group. He even thought of putting the leader into a genjutsu and making him see his own subordinates as leaf shinobis so that he kills them. He will have to add some trash talk to the genjutsu so the leader feels that he is surrounded by leaf shinobis and they are looking down on him but this plan could lead to the group leader using earth-style jutsus or him shouting nonsense attracting everyone's attention.
*sigh* 'I think the easiest way is the most effective as well.' Yami thought. He hid inside the bushes located at the mansion's corner. He made some ruffling noises to attract the attention of one of the guards.
Guard-1 noticed this and said to guard-2 "I think something just moved in those bushes."
Guard-2 waved his hand and said "Must be some animal. Go and check. Maybe we can have a rabbit roast tonight."
Guard -1 nodded and walked toward the bush. He had a spear in his hand. He used the spear to poke inside the bush but nothing happened.
'The animal must have left.' he thought but that's when he saw that the bush a little ahead of it was ruffling.
"So there you are my dinner." Guard-1 said and went ahead. Before he could poke the 2nd bush with a spear he felt like he needed to cough but he couldn't. He touched his throat and saw that a kunai has passed through it. He couldn't even scream. He looked toward the hand that was holding the kunai and saw a kid wearing a hidden leaf headband. He wanted to alert the other guard be couldn't and fell to the ground.
Just before touching the ground, Yami held the limp body of guard-1 and sealed him inside a scroll. He then used the transformation technique and changed his appearance to guard-1. He picked up the fallen spear and came out of the bush.
Guard-2 saw that Yami came back empty-handed so he asked "You couldn't even catch a rabbit?"
The disguised Yami smirked and said "He has run off to your side. I will see if you can catch him." while walking near the guard. He then looked at the bushes behind guard-2 and said "See, there he is."
Guard-2 turned back to see but couldn't see any rabbit nor any ruffling in the bushes so he asked "Where?"
"Here" Yami said making guard-2 widen his eyes. He saw that a spear had pierced his heart. He wanted to ask why but a hand was covering his mouth and wasn't letting him look back. He died thinking that his own comrade killed him.
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