Next morning, Kumo, Raikage office
T&I director burst into the office, nearly blowing the door off its hinges, interrupting the meeting between the Raikage and village elders. Ignoring the disapproving glares, he immediately moved to the Raikage and whispered something in his ear.
The Raikage straightened upon hearing the intel and nodded to the director.
"Get five battalions ready to be deployed and call the war council. Inform Darui of this, and tell him to hold on before backup arrives." Raikage ordered.
Upon puzzled glances of elders, he continued.
"We are going to War."
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In a small manmade cave, Itsuki watched as Kenta slowly came back to consciousness.
"Took you long enough." Itsuki quipped.
Kenta immediately got up, trying to find his hidden kunai and bringing forth his chakra but found himself incapable of either.
"Whoo-Whoo calm down. Removing the curse mark was not easy, you were thrashing a little too much and so I had to seal your chakra." With a speed Kenta found difficult to follow, Itsuki's hand went behind his neck and pulled out what looked like sealing paper. Immediately he regained his ability to mold chakra.
"Now fine?" Itsuki asks.
Kenta looks at his arm and notices a partially healed wound where there was the curse seal before. Kenta nearly sags in relief.
"Oh, that seal was a nasty piece of work. I had to take a lot of flesh beneath it to remove it." Itsuki speaks jovially, not giving away the lie.
Removing the seal was simple for Itsuki, as it was a simple copy drawn by someone with only marginal knowledge of curse marks, good but nothing special. But he has no reason to explain this to Kenta and oust himself as a seal master. After all anyone with even the peripheral knowledge of sealing could tell that curse seal was a killswitch but only true master could remove them. And Itsuki was most probably the only seal master specializing in curse seals, which if got out will make him a priority target of every ninja village in entire elemental nations, something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
Kenta looked evenly at Itsuki and asked, "What do you want?"
"What? No thank you, no gratitude? At least kotow and swear life alliance to me." Itsuki quipped jovially but faltered when Kenta's stare did not change.
Itsuki sighed dramatically, but inside he too felt a little sad. Not because he went to all this effort to save Kenta and he did not even thank him but because Kenta's behavior just highlights one of the problems he has with ninjas.
People like Kenta grow up their entire life in the ninja village, taught and indoctrinated by the said village to mold them to their desired shape. They are taught to kill, backstab and plunder, make use of any and all opportunities to take advantage of others so much so that the mere concept of altruism, someone helping them without asking something in return was inconceivable and feels like a trap to them. The very word thank you does not exist in ninja's vocabulary outside of formalities.
Itsuki's facade changed a little, his tone became a touch harsher and his easy-going air all but disappeared, "Now, let's plan how to get out of here."
Kenta too understood now the stranger means business. He leaned forward, focusing on what looked like a rough hand-drawn map of the border region.
"You and me, we both have one objective, to escape the encirclement without alerting the sensor or sensors," Itsuki said, Kenta nodded in affirmative. But it is easy said than done.
"As long as we are in the encirclement, our chakra signature will not be singled out but staying here we can be only be hidden for so long. It's only a matter of time before we can be found. And the moment we are out of the encirclement, we will stand out and be killed." Kenta supplied.
Itsuki as a sensor himself understood that finding a specific chakra signature among hundreds of different chakra sources is very difficult, just the information influx can be overwhelming. So all sensors train themselves to discard excess information such as 'flavor' of chakra when sensing over a large area for a long time. To them, all chakra signatures appear as dots on a map, with each dot denoting a chakra signature. Itsuki was not trained to do so, that is why despite being a more powerful sensor than most, he is not able to maintain a large sensing radius for a very long time.
"And sensors take shifts, so there is no window of opportunity we could exploit." Kenta finished.
Itsuki looked thoughtful for a movement before asking, "How many sensors are there?"
"Just two, as far as I am aware."
"And where are they stationed?"
"No one knows but definitely not in the center of the encirclement, that would be way too obvious," Kenta answered.
"Then we only one way to escape, by taking out the sensors," Itsuki said.
Kenta looked at him like he was mad. His voice rose as he spoke"Did you not hear what I said, we do not know where the sensors are. Also, they will be guarded. My brother will be there, the entire comm unit will be there also how..." But Itsuki immediately cut him.
"You said the communication unit is there with sensors?" Itsuki suddenly asked.
"Yes but how..." Before he could even finish, Itsuki cut him once again.
"Say no more. I know how to find where they are."
Kenta looked skeptical, "Even if we reach there, how will we kill the sensors?"
"Don't worry, I have perfect distraction planned," Itsuki said, 'Now give me your radio unit."
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'Beep _ _ BeepBeep _ Beep _ ..."
Over the cliff, in one of the tents, one ninja was bent over a large machine and carefully listening to sounds coming from it. His one hand was holding a primitive-looking speaker over one ear and the other hand holding a pen and writing the message onto a piece of paper.
Just as the beeping of the machine finished, the ninja immediately rushed to the command office. Upon receiving the gesture to enter, he rushed inside.
"What is it?" Darui raised his head up to look at the ninja. Ninja came forward and passed the written message to him, "An urgent message from Kumo just came in."
Darui read the codded message and muttered, "Damn"
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The Radio comms being used by Kumo ninja was a relatively new technology developed by Kumo's R&D department. They were somewhat bulky but extremely convenient for maintaining communication outside of combat. And given that no one outside of Kumo knows how to operate them, making them extremely safe from being tapped.
That is if you do not consider a transmigrant coming from a world leagues ahead in the technology, and having the knowledge of said technology.
Needless to say, Itsuki took apart the entire thing as Kenta looked on in shock. 'Oh, this is the receiver, no need for that. We will be needing a larger antenna. Huh, this thing has no battery. How...oh that seal. Chakra to electricity conversion, impressive piece of work. Poor efficiency but not bad.' Taking out the seal, he placed it in his jacket. 'It might be useful later.'
"You know how this works?" Kenta asks, trying to poke and prod the stranger in front of him. At the end of the day, their alliance was temporary. The stranger knows all about him while he did not even know this stranger's face. He assumed the stranger was a rogue ninja but if he knows the comms good enough to do whatever he was doing, he might also be a Kumo-nin like him trying to defect.
Itsuki did not reply, too enthralled in the work to care. Soon his apparatus was ready. Unsheathing the ninjato he used to skewer Kenta, he took two wires from the comms unit and rolled one of them around the blade of ninjato and the other on another tanto's blade.
"Okay, now we are ready. Hey, hold them." He handed the blades to Kenta, who almost panicked seeing Itsuki coming towards him holding two blades.
Placing the blades in Kenta's hand, he started to order him to align them correctly, "No tilt it a little left, no to the right and a little down Yes perfect."
"Now what?" Kenta asked, his hands steady despite the blades.
"Now we wait."
And they did not wait long.
Itsuki's comm unit started to beep, He immediately got up and ordered Kenta, "Start rotating."
"What?"
"Start rotating at your place slowly, stop when the voice in the speaker becomes clear."
Kenta looked skeptical but did as he was told. Slowly the static feed lowered to allow a barely intelligible voice.
"Keep going," Itsuki said, his focus on the speaker.
The static lowered and the voice became recognizable, making Kenta clench his teeth at the hateful voice of his brother.
"Slow down" Itsuki ordered, seemingly unaware of Kenta's change of emotions.
"...all south troops are to fall back and be ready."
"Stop" Itsuki ordered, making Kenta halt in his tracks. Itsuki faced the exact direction Kenta was facing and expanded his sensing range and sure enough, few miles off in that direction he sensed multiple strong chakra signatures over a cliff.
"Yes, found em."
Itsuki then immediately moved on to the next part of the plan. Making a half rat hand seal and held it while concentrating.
'Now let's get our distraction ready.'
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Raiden once more woke up in his interrogation room, with Raikage sitting in front of him. He immediately stood in attention.
"Raikage-sama"
"At ease," Raikage commanded. He took out a map and placed it on the table before speaking, "In light of the evidence, you are cleared of any charges of treason."
Hearing it, Raiden almost sagged in relief. But Raikage was not finished, "But your situation gives us a unique opportunity. We know you are not a traitor but the actual traitors have no idea about that."
Raikage then proceeded to take out a large blob of white clay and placed it on the table. At Raiden's puzzled glance, he started to explain, "This is C4, a very powerful explosive we seized from Iwa in last war. The amount placed in front of you is enough to raze an entire hidden village."
Raiden was shocked at that and looked at innocent white clay with renewed respect. Raikage continued, "I have a mission for you." Pointing at the clay, he continued, "You will take this clay and detonate it here, at the border to stop traitor's plans once and for all." he pointed at a cliff marked on the map.
"Those traitors plan must never come to fruition. Instigating war on all sides while weakening Kumo, if they are successful then Kumo will be razed to the ground." Raikage spoke, his voice filled with anger and passion.
"So tell me Raiden, will you save KUMO, will you risk your life for the good of KUMOGAKURE?"
Raiden replied in an equally passionate voice, "YES!"
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Raiden woke up in a shallow ditch covered by a small layer of earth. Picking up the C4, he immediately left the ditch and started moving in the direction of the cliff overlooking the entire valley, his eyes filled with determination.
"For Kumo."