Tap, Tap, Tap...
"How come no one is even paying attention to us?" Enkai asked Ao while matching his steps.
"Most of them are on our side, those who aren't, still respect me and will not ask you anything until I am around," Ao explained while leading Enkai towards the Mizukage's office.
"Wow, I am impressed by your authority." Enkai gave a quick clap before letting out a disappointed sigh, "I am a bit sad that nobody is looking at my new get-up, though."
In the name of disguise, he had changed his upper black poncho and mask for a traditional white coat and mask. He was also not wearing his iconic fedora hat.
Despite that, he was glad that he went through the trouble of negotiating. Otherwise, things wouldn't be as easy as it is now.
______
The air was chaotic.
"But I don't want to be the Mizukage! Choose Ao!" Mei screamed as she looked at all the nearby people; all of whom were looking at her with determined eyes.
"Damn it..." She cursed under her breath and vengefully looked at Enkai, who was smiling and discussing something with Ao.
When he noticed Mei staring at her he looked at her and said with a happy smile, "Well, now that you're willing to become the next Mizukage. Why don't you give me the layout of Mizukage's building so I can infiltrate it better."
"No need, I will accompany you there." Mei was about to say something when Ao spoke up.
"Are you sure? Just so you know I will kill anybody there who looks suspicious to me in the slightest, you think you can watch while I kill your comrades?" Enkai smirked, his fedora hiding his eyes, making him seem mysterious.
"No, and I will resist if you choose to harm anybody other than the mizukage just because you 'felt' like it." Ao looked at Enkai and spat those words with viciousness.
"...You sure you want to walk out of here alive? Because your attitude makes me think otherwise." Enkai glared while veins popped up near Ao's right eye.
"Stop! You two!" Mei had to interrupt them before they started fighting.
Then she looked at Enkai and decided to change the subject, "Why do you want to kidnap him anyway? Why not just kill him? That piece of sheet doesn't deserve to live."
"That 'piece of sheet' you're talking about isn't the mastermind responsible for the damnation of Kirigakure like you think he is."
Enkai then looked at Ao and continued,
"There is someone else on top of him who is manipulating him to do what he does, and he might have his pawns scattered around the mizukage's building. Now here is a question for you Ao, how would they disguise themselves if they were to hide inside the Mizukage's building?"
Ao's eyes widened as he mumbled, "Kiri-nins."
"Your Comrades," Enkai rephrased Ao's words. Then he continued, "Whom I will kill if I find them suspicious." causing beads of sweat to form on Ao's face.
"Those are purely speculations," Mei said to Enkai.
When Mei saw Ao's pensive expression, she decided to support her argument for him.
"What if they are not?" This time before Enkai could answer, Ao opened his mouth, making him smile.
Ao continued with a grim expression, "When Mizukage-sama was a jōnin, he used to be kind and compassionate. Then one day, things changed, people don't change that abruptly. Something was- no, something is wrong."
"But how will someone manipulate someone as strong as Mizukage-sama?" Mei asked, now invested in Enkai's theory.
"That'd be by a genjutsu." Enkai raised his hand and butted in. Resulting in everybody in the room to look at him as if he was stupid, some even let out repressed chuckles.
"What?" Enkai, who was subjected to everybody's stare, asked curiously.
Ao pressed the bridge of his nose and said, "Mizukage-sama is a jinchuriki, a perfect jinchuuriki at that.'' When Ao finished up, some nodded and smiled at him, thinking of him as a cute kid who made a mistake.
"Oh..." Enkai nodded in understanding, he forgot that people still didn't know about the existence of mangekyō sharingan.
Ao was about to voice out another theory when Enkai said, "Ever heard of the Mangekyō Sharingan?"
"What's that?" Mei asked, Ao looked at Enkai and replied, "The advanced form of Sharingan? Nobody has awakened that since Madara."
"Well, Madara is alive, and is controlling your 'Mizukage-sama' by a genjutsu from a Mangekyō Sharingan," Enkai said while air quoting.
This caused the already chaotic environment to become even more chaotic as gasps ran across the room, some even started denying reality as if they couldn't hear what Enkai said.
"That's unbelievable, it's impossible," Ao said what everybody in the room wanted to say.
Enkai looked at them and sighed.
Convincing them would be hard even for Enkai, because even though he knows everything about the story he doesn't have physical evidence to back it up.
"You don't have to believe me if you don't want to." Enkai said, causing many to gossip with sceptical looks, but then Enkai started pointing out certain people present in the room, "You just need to ask him, him, this fattie, that cutie and that girl."
"What?"
"W-What are you talking about?"
"Is this guy crazy?"
"H-He must be!"
"Haha, you guys aren't actually thinking of listening to him, right?"
At this point, everybody in this room was confused, some were just confused by the recent events, some were just having a hard time processing all the information, and others just weren't sure what to believe and what not to.
Regardless, all of them were silent, and all of them were staring at the five people who had been called out by Enkai, causing an invisible pressure to fall on them.
Then one of the ninjas standing near the one of the suspicious ninjas said, "Why are you sweating so much?" and that seemed to have snapped his last straw as he looked at the other suspicious ninjas and tried to flicker out of there, except he couldn't.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Gasp! Everybody gasped when all the suspicious people fell on the ground as if they were puppets who had their strings cut off.
"Relax everybody, I just put them in a minor genjutsu so they couldn't run away or try to kill themselves," Enkai said, those who looked at him noticed how his eyes were no longer blue and instead had turned into red copy wheels.
'Jōnins don't get knocked out by just some minor genjutsu!' is what some of the experienced ones wanted to say but kept their mouths shut.
"...What is the meaning of this? What is going on?" Ao wanted to get angry at Enkai for knocking out five of his trusted comrades. He truly wanted to believe in his comrades, but he wasn't sure anymore.
After all, he noticed how that shinobi tried to flicker out and run away from here before Enkai took care of him. However, not everybody was as perceptive as Ao.
"Why did you do that!?" Mei asked in a fit of rage, "Becau-" "Answer me!"
Before Enkai could even open his mouth Mei screamed again.
She thought Enkai just killed her subordinates, even though Enkai said otherwise a moment ago.
If this was anybody else she would have already attacked them. But truth be told, even she was scared of him.
After all, he managed to almost kill the raikage, THE Raikage.
So she thought maybe emotionally attacking him would be the best strategy because, to her, Enkai still looked like a child.
"Calm down Mei!" Mei, who was about to scream again, heard Ao's shout and quieted down.
Then Ao looked at Enkai and prompted him for an explanation, to which Enkai smiled again and said, "Well, we all know and fear Madara Uchiha! I just used our fear for him as a way to figure out the traitors."
To be honest, this was never his plan.
His original plan was to say 'You don't have to believe me if you don't want to, Ao can just use his byakugan to see if the mizukage was in a genjutsu or not.' but then he noticed how five people didn't get nervous among the crowd and decided to improvise a little bit.
Enkai was about to end his explanation with his previous remark but when he noticed some confused stares he explained further, "When I mentioned the name of Madara everybody had a startled reaction except for you know who."
"Ohh.." this time a lot of the jōnin understood what he meant.
Then Enkai looked at Ao and said, "You know what that means, right?"
"They knew about Madara before you mentioned that."
"Exactly!" Enkai confirmed, he was getting tired of all this explanation.
He noticed some unconvinced stares and decided to speak up one last time for the day.
"I know some of you are confused, and not very convinced. You don't need to trust me, just torture them and you will know everything you need to know. Also, do it with secrecy, you don't want other Madara followers to catch wind of it do you?"
Enkai said, as he started walking away, "I will come here again tomorrow in the evening, I am hoping you will be able to sort things out among yourself by then."
Ao, who watched Enkai leave silently, waited until Enkai was out of their base. Then he screamed towards everyone, "Take these guys and throw them into a cell, I will be interrogating them myself."
"Mei-sama, Chojuro we need to talk." Ao looked at Mei and Chojuro and almost dragged them to a different room to discuss things.
...
"There seem to be a lot fewer people around," Enkai said, as he sat on a couch centred in the room.
In front of him, Mei was sitting on a couch and Ao and Chojuro were standing behind her. They were the only ones inside of this fancy room.
"Yes, and you were right. Madara is alive somehow and he has been controlling Kirigakure for a long time now. Do you want the details?"
"Oh spare me from that." Enkai slumped down in mock tiredness before looking at Mei and saying, "Now can we finally discuss how I can kidnap the mizukage?"
"Yes." Mei nodded.
"Great, Ao you will be accompanying me right? Can I trust you to kill the Mizukage's personal guards?" Enkai said as he looked at Ao.
Before he wouldn't have handed such delicate work to Ao but now that traitors had been found amidst them, Enkai was sure that Ao can handle this job.
"You don't need to kill them. They are my people who work secretly for mizukage." Mei said with a reassuring gaze.
"How would you know that they also don't work for Madara like your people from yesterday?" Enkai let out a mock laugh.
"..."
After staring at the quiet Mei for a few minutes, he sighed, "Alright fine, I won't kill them if they didn't attack me first."
"Okay." Mei let out a breath of relief and smiled gratefully. Then she looked at him and said, "There is just one problem."
"What is it?" Enkai asked as he leaned forward.
"You can't enter the mizukage's building without any solid reason. Even we, Kiri-nins, are not an exception to this rule." Mei informed with a difficult expression.
"Don't worry about that, Haha." When Enkai heard it he just laughed and then stretched out his hand,
Poof!
To everyone's surprise, with a poof of smoke; Kubikiribōchō – The Executioner's Blade appeared.
"..."
Enkai noticed how jaw-dropped everybody was and smirked with a smug expression, "Is this a good enough alibi?"
"...Y-Yes.." Mei said as she couldn't take her eyes off the sword.
"Alright, now I just need you people to gather around the best sensors, medics and fuinjutsu master you can find and decide a rendezvous point where we will meet after kidnapping the Mizukage," Enkai said in a single breath.
"Wait, what? Why?" Mei was very confused about what she heard, she even looked at Ao to see if he knew something about what Enkai was talking about, alas even he shook his head in confusion.
"Oh, right, I forgot to mention." Enkai let out an awkward laugh as he continued, "I am not sure about the details but Madara has some form of insurance placed inside of Yagura – The moment his genjutsu lifts he will most likely die."
"Shouldn't you have started with that?" Ao said with a deadpan expression.
"Yeah, sorry about that." Enkai scratched the back of his neck,
"Anyways, make sure to do that."
He looked at Ao and said, "Ao we shall meet here again tomorrow, except this time, it would be for kidnapping purposes."
Enkai stood up and started walking away, not before turning and saying, "Oh, as payment for saving your village I will happily take two S-rank Jutsus of my choosing or two favours from you, Ms Future Mizukage."
"Okay," Mei nodded without skipping a beat.
"Oh, also," Enkai turned around when he heard Mei's voice from behind, "Disguise yourself into something else, you're more famous than you think."
Enkai nodded and walked away.
______
And that brings them to the present time where they shall meet and kidnap the Mizukage.