With new pink hairstyle, courtesy of Takeshi's instructions, Kanna Uzumaki blended in effortlessly. The color wasn't her first choice, but it was the best she could achieve with her current skills.
In the ninja world, pink wasn't particularly attention-grabbing. As long as her transformation jutsu remained undiscovered, she didn't have to worry about being caught.
However, this technique was only a low-level genjutsu, not a high-end disguise. Kanna was well aware that her safety was far from guaranteed.
Her fate rested on Takeshi's promise to send her to the cat castle once she was truly safe. Until then, she had to remain vigilant and avoid detection. To prevent suspicion, Takeshi asked her to remove her headscarf, and they strolled around the garbage dumps together.
Next, she even ventured close to a Kusagakure Genin, showcasing her pink hair. After checking a few times, she felt confident. As long as Kanna didn't seek trouble, there was little chance of being caught.
After parting ways with Kanna, Takeshi patrolled the town, detecting a couple more ninjas in the area. Although they were only Genin, they seemed more powerful than usual. Two newcomers caught his attention. Takeshi followed them, tracing them back to their residence.
Initially, Takeshi prepared to leave, but then the Grass ninja mentioned something to his partner. "Weren't you on a mission?" he asked.
"My mission required me to come here, don't ask more information." the other replied.
While sneaking, Takeshi found his words peculiar. What mission could there be here? Missions along the border of the Land of Fire were mainly under the jurisdiction of Konoha; the Land of Grass had no capacity to intervene.
This town was the first one encountered on the trade route from the Land of Fire to the Land of Grass, so the so-called "mission" was likely related to the Land of Fire.
However, the scale of ninja deployment in this town was not large. Were they only targeting a portion of Konoha ninjas or the Land of Fire's territory?
Takeshi pondered this for a while, deciding to leave this problem to Naoki Gekko, who would be responsible for reporting.
Next, he followed the same pattern, tracking another ninja who had returned home. This guy was a bit rough around the edges.
When he saw a cat following him, he turned around, looking annoyed, and tried to scare Takeshi away.
Takeshi had no choice but to pretend to be frightened and flee in a panic, then secretly follow him from afar. However, this person didn't reveal anything. He was a single man who drank alcohol when he got home.
Other than that, he didn't do or say much. Takeshi waited for a while, watching him while he slept, hoping he would talk in his sleep, but found out that this guy was knocked out drunk.
'What should I do?' Takeshi thought for a moment, then used his transformation jutsu to impersonate the person he was traveling with.
He barely stood upright behind the drunkard and patted his shoulder. "Huh?"
The drunkard turned his head, his eyes blurry, and he vaguely saw someone standing behind him, who looked very familiar. "You shouldn't drink during the mission."
"Uh... Captain, um, I didn't drink, I'm not drunk... Have the higher-ups decided what to do yet?" He mumbled in a confused manner.
The voice was so low Takeshi almost didn't understand him. But he heard the last sentence about the higher-ups being undecided clearly. "You can't drink even if they haven't made up their mind. If the superiors decide to launch an attack, it won't be difficult to kill you in your current state. If any superiors come to know about this, you will be punished."
"Yes, yes... I, I will go out to sober up. On the way, I saw a woman... The female beggar... looks pretty... Ugh!" Seeing him still talking nonsense, Takeshi came closer, inches away from his face, and used Hell Viewing Genjutsu to induce terror in him.
He was already drunk, and because Takeshi implanted suggestions by using words like "attack" and "punishment," the ninja immediately fell into the Genjutsu of being beheaded as punishment.
Takeshi stood motionless in front of him, staring at the Grass ninja for a few minutes, weighing whether to kill him or not. Finally, he decided to use the Hell Viewing jutsu again and prepared to leave.
The drunkard had been screaming for a few minutes, and Takeshi could hear several figures rushing over. From the looks of things, they were the Genin and their captain. The captain had an angry look on his face and was clearly frightened by the screams before rushing over in a hurry.
"Sir, he seems..."
"Let me take a look." The captain immediately entered the room, hit by the smell of alcohol. He then kicked the drunkard angrily.
The drunkard didn't move even after being kicked. Takeshi was surprised, wondering if he had accidentally killed the man. He was suspicious and feared the captain would figure it out, jeopardizing the mission. But after thinking about it further, he relaxed.
Not every village had the special jutsus like those of the Yamanaka Clan. At most, they would only look at the scars on the corpse to guess how he died.
After a moment, Takeshi quickly left. He had spent a lot of time with the drunkard, and it was getting late. If he didn't go to Naoki immediately, he would probably get angry.
The restaurant mentioned by Naoki was easy to find, right on the edge of the village, and it was a bit crowded.
Takeshi found it quickly. After arriving, he followed the scent to find Naoki. At first, Takeshi thought Naoki might be waiting in the restaurant.
But after searching for a long time, he found him in the kitchen. Rushing in through the window, he paused. 'What was Naoki doing here? Chopping vegetables? Is this what a Special Jonin should do?'
As he came closer, Naoki turned around and said, "You're finally here."
"Meow~ What are you doing?"
"Chopping spices and preparing to eat some cat meat tonight. The meal is almost ready, I was waiting for a cat to come over, so I can cook it," Naoki said expressionlessly.
'Hehe... Are you trying to mess with me? Can you handle the consequences?' Takeshi didn't say anything, just stared back with a smug look on his face. Naoki was irritated enough to almost swing his sword but, thinking of the mission, he sighed softly and said, "Follow me."
After going out the back of the kitchen, they walked to the underground wine cellar.
Clearly, this restaurant was Konoha-sponsored. "Two new ninjas arrived this afternoon, and the other ninjas were also transferred here recently. There were no ninjas stationed here before," Naoki said, staring at Takeshi. The meaning was obvious.
"That's all, meow?" Takeshi shook his head and said, "They came here on a mission. One of the people who arrived today is the captain, but there was a little accident, meow..."
He told Naoki what happened, including how he used Genjutsu to scare Kusagakure ninja, but ended up accidentally scaring him to death. Of course, during this report, Takeshi didn't mention about the female beggar nor specifying on using Hell Viewing Genjutsu. He just said that he had a special Genjutsu.
Naoki listened thoughtfully. This information was enough to prove that there was indeed a faction in Kusagakure that favored the Iwagakure Ninja , but this faction was still in dispute with others, as they were undecided.
If handled well, Konoha might not necessarily lose this alliance. The message must be sent back immediately! But here came the problem.
He had no way to send the message back quickly. To do this, he could only send a shadow clone back. But the shadow clone consumed chakra, and the traveling time was time-consuming...
"I can send the message. Rin has a Summoning contract and can deliver messages, nya~" Takeshi said slowly.
"..." Naoki was silent for a few minutes, and he low-key regretted coming to this mission.
After a comparison, he found that what Takeshi said before was absolutely correct. This cat was indeed very versatile—except for not knowing medical ninjutsu, he could do almost everything a ninja could do, and do it better.
Naoki worked hard for hours and only found out about new ninja transfers into this town, but Takeshi even found out what they likely planned, about a captain being sent here, and that the superiors had not decided yet on whether they wanted to continue the alliance with Konoha or not.
'Is there something wrong with me? Am I that useless?' Naoki couldn't help but doubt himself, but after a few seconds, he decided to write down the information first and let Takeshi pass it back before thinking about anything else.
Special scrolls were needed for transmitting valuable information. Having years of experience in spying and intelligence work, Naoki had no shortage of these scrolls.
Not long after, a piece of information was written down by him in Jiraiya's code format (the base coding format was actually created by Konoha's intelligence department, and each commander and squad leader could modify it slightly to their preference).
Takeshi couldn't understand it at all, but he pretended to understand and nodded in agreement. The Special Jonin of the Gekko clan was very eager to compare himself with this cat, so Takeshi couldn't let him see that he didn't understand anything written within.
After a few minutes, Naoki handed the scroll to Takeshi. Takeshi held it under his paws, then took out the Summoning Blood Contract and added a bit of theatrics and acting.
After a few seconds, he used the Flying Thunder God to teleport the scroll to Rin. "Meow~ Done!"
Since this was a Special Scroll for intelligence work, only certain people had access to open it, so there was no worry about others peeking. After Rin gets it, she will definitely give it to Minato as soon as possible, and then Minato will pass it to Jiraiya.
Naoki didn't understand this, as there were no Summon beasts in the Gekko Clan. To avoid looking ignorant, he nodded without asking more questions and said calmly, "Let's go to the next target location."
"Meow!" Takeshi didn't expect to stay in one place for long, but he had just found valuable information and deserved a rest. However, Naoki was fully mission-focused, and Takeshi had no choice but to follow along. Taking advantage of the darkness, they left the town.
Kanna, who was hiding beside a garbage dump, hid as best as she could. She didn't know what horrible future she had escaped.
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