Soon enough, the full attack on the village would begin: but where an army's stealth was obviously limited by their size, in the shinobi world that also implied that the worst ninja at concealing his own chakra was the one that unwittingly warned the enemy of his presence, and through him, of his entire company.
...
It came to absolutely no surprise that Kumo readied itself for Konoha's push: but where an army would meet an unyielding wall of lightning coated steel, two ghosts could sneak through.
Common strategy imposed that the best sensors were evenly split between being part of the personal team of the best fighters or placed strategically in key points of the village itself: sensors of a caliber high enough to spot me and Itachi when we were actively trying to suppress our presence so insanely rare that soon enough we reached Kumo proper.
It was a breathtaking view under the faint light of the barely-there moon: much more imposing than Konoha could ever hope to be.
Straight smooth walls of white stone were undoubtedly littered with seals to impede a shinobi willing to use chakra to climb, while shinobi and kunoichi of various levels of skill were placed as lookouts. Of course, that didn't stop me or Itachi.
The Village was built on the south side of the mountain, climbing for a couple of hundred meters in height until the mountaintop itself: on the very peak, there was a structure that I could easily spot as nothing but a giant lightning rod.
Do they use seals to turn that into usable electricity? I followed Itachi as he nimbly ran to the base of the wall, only to disappear from my sight from an instant to the next.
What? I stilled in front of the point where Itachi had disappeared: the smooth whitish wall that hid the village proper from sight was in front of my eyes, my ears didn't pick up any weird echo that could indicate a hidden tunnel, and there were no subtle hints of ink that could signal the presence of an active seal.
I was baffled for a full second, only to tense when a familiar hand with nails painted with an unforgettable deep purple emerged from the white expanse in front of me, then wiggled its fingers in a mockery of an invitation to follow it, and soon disappeared one more.
With a half-exasperated sigh, I stepped forward, and from an instant to the next, I found myself walking across a small tunnel that spit me inside the village proper: "Kumo appears to have a serious problem on its perimeter."
Itachi turned halfway towards me raising an eyebrow in what could have been a sardonic smile if the rest of his face painted an expression different from his usually stoic face: "It took considerable resources for the Akatsuki to place this hole in the defenses, undoubtedly, we will be found out once we make our retreat, this entrance will not be available later."
I nodded distractedly as I looked at the city that climbed towards the peak of the mountain, and the imposing building that was nestled over a hairpin bend of one of the larger roads so that it almost hovered above the rest of the buildings.
The usual bustle of any Hidden Village was subdued, with only a few smattering of civilians moving about, their expressions nervous and their eyes shifty.
"Most of the people are already placed near the shelters." I noted idly, "Konoha will attack in less than an hour, how do you want to play it?"
I shook my head as I forced myself to return to the here and now: according to our info, the Raikage himself was leading Kumo's deep attack on Hi no Kuni, which left the Hachibi Jinchuriki as the last bulwark for its hidden village.
Matatabi should have been reformed by now, but there are still no signs of it. My eyes still skittered all over the place, taking in the tense atmosphere that hovered over us as I followed a quiet Itachi.
"Line of action B." The laconic answer was the last thing I heard of him as we moved at a civilian pace across the Hidden Village.
We avoided a direct path, knowing that any lookout would spot our direction and appear to question us. We could subdue anyone, really, or rather, Itachi could, and with barely a glance at that. But soon enough, we reached our destination.
We kept walking, keeping the building on our left while we attempted a standard recognition that didn't make use of chakra: stealthy or not, it was more than likely that one of the best sensors available to Kumo would be placed as a lookout at the command center of Kaminari no Kuni's Hidden Village.
The plan, and its variations, had been hashed out quickly and efficiently before we even approached Kaminari no Kuni, so when the time came, there was no hesitation: we were professionals, even if I was of course much less experienced in this kind of black-ops bullshit than my counterpart. So we roamed more or less casually until a raven cawed loudly from over a street lamp.
With that signal, which implied the imminent attack of Konoha's forces, I didn't hesitate when Itachi suddenly decided to walk straight toward a secondary entrance: a flutter of chakra, and a copy of myself manifested besides me.
Just as swiftly, I followed my Akatsuki companion while a Kage Bunshin of myself started to walk openly across the street: on his form gone were the traveling clothes, in place of a non-descript shirt stood my trademark blue armour, and my clone stopped hiding his chakra as he rose his hands as non-threateningly as possible.
Immediately, he was stopped by a sword placed next to his neck held by a kunoichi, while a team composed by 5 more ninja appeared in a semicircle around him: "I am here to inform you of a hole in your defenses, and of an assassination attempt on the life of Killer B, jinchuriki of the eight tails."
The voice of my clone rang loudly in across the street while Itachi mind-whammed the two shinobi that were placed to guard the secondary entrance: his Mangeyko Sharingan spun freely as I followed him. It's not like he'll need it much longer.
In silence, the next two chunin dedicated to administrative duties led us to the toilettes, and just as the door closed behind us, Itachi snapped the neck of the kunoichi, while I did the same to the other shinobi: a kunai appeared on my hand and, sharpened as it was, I used it to precisely skin the faces of the newly made corpses.
"Orochimaru was a sick bastard, that's for sure." I grimaced in distaste at the necessary deaths while I nicked the skin on the back of my left arm, but Itachi's silence wasn't conducive to the light-hearted mood that relaxed me before the beginning of the action proper: "You know, you're not a very funny conversationalist, not very entertaining."
The stoic expression of the Uchiha didn't waver, and his silence remained.
"Fine, fine." I lifted the peeled-off face of the kunoichi, and when Itachi closed his eyes, I placed it over his visage. With the blood from the light cut in my arm, I went ahead: "Kuchiyose no Jutsu."
The Snake Contract is dead useful, that's for sure. I echoed my previous words on Orochimaru, albeit with a different twist.
Under the guidance of my chakra, one of the many snakes that lived in another plane of existence lent me its shedding skin, and with a gleaming flutter of scales, Itachi disappeared, only for the mousy, brown-haired kunoichi to take his place.
Immediately, the skin-deep feeling of the chunin's chakra lapped against my senses, and with a wry smile at the lightly unnerved expression on my now female companion, I repeated the process for myself.
The bodies were quickly sealed away in a couple of scrolls and pocketed so that there were no traces left of their existence: "We're ready to roll."
Following the subdued but active feeling of my clone's chakra, we moved across the building with Itachi leading the way, our expressions matching those of the people that recognized us while we made a show of striding purposefully with a random stack of papers that we nicked from an unoccupied desk. With a barely concealed worry on our faces, nobody stopped us.
A shinobi appeared to be willing to actually talk to us while he started to walk at our side, only for Itachi's absolutely insane genjutsu to ward him off that idea, and soon enough, we entered a large circular room that held in its center a wide table covered by a detailed map of the war effort.
Still our attention was immediately called towards my Kage Bunshin, who had been forced to kneel with his arms kept apart in front of a frowning Killer B: "... so you should really begin to worry about something more pressing than Konoha knocking at your door."
"And who is this would-be assassin?" a random shinobi barked out, his eyes narrowed in annoyance.
My clone concluded his explanation of the situation just as a blonde kunoichi took notice of how close we were to the intended target of the supposed 'assassination attempt': "Aahaha! But of course, it's me!"
The Eight-Tails Jinchuriki opened his mouth to start rapping when the disguised form of Itachi stumbled in front of him, and with a tilt of his head, the previously green eyes of the kunoichi blazed with the red of his Mangeyko: "Tsukuyomi."
In a split second, I slapped a seal over the Iron Seal etched on the shoulder of the imposing Killer B, while my free hand, faster than any could react to without a lightning armor jabbed a syringe containing a yellow liquid into his arm: immediately after, I flashed through handseals and used the summoning technique once more: "Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Hebitaberu!"
From the floor under the Jinchuriki, appeared the open maw of a green snake that immediately swallowed the stumbling Junchuriki: normally, Killer B would have broken through the Tsukuyomi thanks to the help of the Hachibi, but the counter seal placed over the Iron Seal had been developed by myself and Tobirama himself, coupled with the nature-chakra-empowered venom that now coursed through his body... well, he was going to be out for a few days.
The snake that had just swallowed Killer B disappeared into the summoning plane with his prey inside him, just in time to avoid the slash of a lightning-covered katana that dug a deep trench into the ground, and in that moment chaos erupted.
My clone exploded himself with all of its chakra while Itachi and I flashed away from the main building, the explosion covering our retreat as I felt the joy of success thrumming through me.
Part one, complete.
...
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