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The chief guard was no dummy. He knew he could easily ignore Gilgamesh and let him do something stupid that might put his village in a bad position and potentially spark another ninja war. However, the problem he had was the lack of elite personnel in his village. One of his promising talents was that of a boy who was good at absorbing people's chakras, but the chief guard knew that even that had its limits.
What he wanted to avoid was the Hidden Stone village, which used his hometown as a base of operations, which had happened in the last war. They didn't have the manpower to resist and could only be bossed around by the other big nations, hence why the chief guard wept at night for his people.
"No problem. Please wait here; a carriage will be brought to you shortly," the chief guard answered.
After a few minutes of waiting, a carriage filled with food supplies and a medical kit arrived with a horse in tow.
"I see that the Hidden Grass knows where its bread is buttered. I will send my regards to the Hidden Stone village too," Gilgamesh smiled as his group left.
'This kid is going to give me a heart attack. What does he mean by that?' the chief guard thought and went inside, glad that the day was finally coming to an end.
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"Woah, Gilgamesh! I didn't know you studied the art of politics?" Anko smiled, joshing around as she treated Gilgamesh as if he were her age mate.
"I won't lie, I was scared for a second. I thought they would attack us. And no, I wasn't afraid of that; I was afraid of what this would lead to in the long run," Ebisu added as they chatted behind the carriage.
"Yeah. I too was hoping the chief guard wouldn't resort to such tactics, but… I had a counter ready for that," Gilgamesh shared his thoughts.
Anko and Ebisu wondered what Gilgamesh was talking about until they both remembered he was infamous amongst the Anbu for his genjutsu tricks.
"Wait, Gilgamesh! That dangerous fireball jutsu you did earlier… was it genjutsu?" Anko asked with desperation in her voice. Was she also a victim of his genjutsu?
"No," Gilgamesh answered.
"How can I be sure it wasn't?" Anko asked again, but Gilgamesh just ignored the question and went over the shift routine with the two ninjas while Mura rode the cart.
Gilgamesh flew ahead of the group, and Anko begged many times to also fly with him since Ebisu had his chance. She finally got her chance and didn't fail to touch the clouds, surprised at their nature.
"I always thought that I could walk on them but was so far from them," Anko commented as the both of them hovered high in the skies.
"We should be able to walk on clouds. Some of them contain water after all," Gilgamesh smiled as Anko tried it immediately.
"And they also contain gases," Gilgamesh palmed his face, but then something caught his eye on Anko's body.
It was not the way she dressed with a tan overcoat covering her fishnet and miniskirt outfit but something else glowing on her shoulder with chakra veins spread deep in her chakra pathways.
Anko stopped messing about with the clouds and caught Gilgamesh gazing at her shoulder.
'Hoho, it seems I still got it. So I am the type of woman you find attractive, eh, Gilgamesh?' Anko thought in her head as a sly smile crept up her face, but she soon shook her head.
"What are you looking at, boy?" Anko asked, signalling the end of her airtime as she pleaded with Gilgamesh and even offered to let him look. But Gilgamesh only deactivated his jutsu, causing Anko to scream as she fell from great heights until Gilgamesh safely caught her and left her with Ebisu.
"How could you?" Anko looked horrified as her body was still shaking. Ebisu complained and scolded Gilgamesh, but he only flew ahead and took care of any wannabe bandits waiting for them and left some for Mura.
After a few days, the group arrived at the Stone Village and stopped at the gate since their mission was over. They collected their pay, and the lady's family packed a week's food supply for the team after they heard of what happened to their daughter through messenger hawks and the lady herself. They invited the team, but they had to decline and leave for Konoha as soon as possible.
In the Tsuchikage's office, a girl with short black hair read the reports of what had transpired in the Hidden Grass Village recently to a rather small, stocky old man with a triangular beard and angular moustache who sat before a desk, wide-eyed as he heard the report.
"Are you saying that this person is from the Hidden Leaf?" the old man inquired, leaning forward.
"Yes," the short-haired girl replied.
"Have we confirmed if this is the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails?" the old man pressed.
"No, we haven't," the girl responded once again.
"Aargh, my back," the old man complained as he suffered pains from straining his back too much leaning over his desk.
"You should just retire, old man. Let another take your place," the girl responded to the old man's pain plainly and without filter.
"Oi, Kurotsuchi! You should treat the Tsuchikage with a lot more respect!" A rather large man, with a large nose and cheeks wearing a red bandana on his head that had the Hidden Stone's metal badge on it and donning a red shinobi outfit just like the short-haired girl, indicating homage to the Hidden Stone, reprimanded the girl beside him who only pouted.
"Why don't we use this opportunity presented to us to gauge or do something about this little one since he is in our village? I cannot let our village fall behind Konoha and the Hidden Cloud Village in power," the old man said as he lifted off his seat and hovered above the ground. This is the man who was known quite well in the Third Ninja War and was known by… The Fence Sitter.
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