Chapter 68: To the Capital (4)
After dealing with the inn-owner and handing over some compensation for the broken door, we left the inn which was now no longer a safe place to stay the night. Asuma made the call to travel through the night. Keeping us on the move would make us a more difficult target, he reasoned.
However, not before we questioned the five remaining assassins, which brings us to now.
One of the assassins woke up from a tight slap. I could see him blearily come back into consciousness as he adjusted to his surroundings. The man was currently tied to a tree, stripped to his underwear to ensure he had no access to any hidden equipment we did not find.
Asuma gripped the front of the man's hair and slapped him again, leaving a nasty red palm print where the jounin had hit him twice.
He had requested for me to stay and watch while Hinata and Shino kept guard over the other prisoners, claiming that though it might be too soon for something like this for our first C-ranked mission, it would be better to get accustomed to the more unpleasant side of our business sooner rather than later.
We had separated the prisoners and intended to interrogate them one at a time. Not only would it prevent them from sharing information, but we could also possibly play some mind games with the isolated assassins.
"What is your name?" Asuma asked coldly.
As the man regained his senses and realized he was nearly naked and bound, he understood what situation he was in. He stared indifferently at the jounin but remained silent. There was no fear in his expression, as if he was unafraid of death.
"Who sent you?" The Sarutobi repeated yet received dead silence once more.
Asuma slammed a fist into the bound prisoner, sending him reeling and coughing from the impact. The jounin had held himself back - the punch was heavy enough to cause pain but not enough to cause any internal injuries.
"I will not ask again. Who sent you?"
The prisoner looked up before spitting at my sensei. Asuma agilely leaned away from the projectile, and shook his head, "Wrong answer." before he sent another fist careening into the jaw of the captive.
Seeing that the 'gentle' approach wasn't working, Asuma fished out a kunai and brandished it menacingly.
"I know how to kill a man over a hundred different ways with this thing. I know a thousand more ways to make them hurt without them dying." He leaned in real close and stared coldly into the prisoner's eyes. "Last chance."
The prisoner chuckled, "The Sun shines eternal."
Asuma froze and tilted his head in shock, "You… what did you just say?"
The tied-up assassin flinched and looked up at Asuma's face, almost as if only now taking in the appearance of his captor and realizing his identity. "You're one of the Twelve…"
The jounin grabbed the assailant's throat and hissed out, "You said the Sun shines eternal. What did you mean by that?"
The prisoner's eyes flickered, scanning Asuma's facial expression, but I could sense a tinge of regret, like he knew he just messed up. He tightened his lips, determined not to say a single word more.
Asuma thrusted the kunai an inch deep into the man's body, near his clavicle, which prompted a muffled scream of pain. From what I could see, the kunai was stabbed into one of the body's nerve clusters, stimulation of which would result in immense pain.
"Talk!" The jounin demanded, digging the sharp end of the kunai around the wound. The prisoner suppressed the scream, the veins around his face and neck bulging crazily, but he refused to divulge any more information than he already had.
Asuma ripped out the kunai in frustration before turning back to me. His eyes held a viciousness and edge that looked out of place from the usually kind expression he adopted. "Go back to the others Shinji." He commanded, his tone leaving no room for debate.
In his hand, the distinctive swirl of wind nature chakra circulated ominously. If a kunai was like a butcher's knife, then wind nature chakra in the hands of an expert was a scalpel. I could tell that he no longer wished for me to witness what he was about to do.
"Understood."
---------
Asuma returned to our makeshift encampment shortly thereafter, his uniform stained with some drops of blood. He looked like he tried his best to clean himself up but with little success.
Our other captives were still bound and unconscious, with Shino's kikaichuu constantly monitoring them to ensure we were notified if they had awakened. Yoshiro mostly kept to himself, still unnerved by the assassination attempt and mentally going through a checklist of people who might want him dead. Hinata stayed vigilant, her doujutsu occasionally being activated to survey our surroundings.
I got up and approached the man, "Asuma-sensei. What did you find out?"
He shook his head, "Nothing much. The bastard was stubborn."
Looking in the direction he had come from, I asked, "What about… did you…?"
Asuma glanced at the rest of the team who had similarly shifted their attention to the jounin before turning back to me, "Loose ends have to be tied up, otherwise there might be consequences to your inaction." The hidden meaning in his words need not be explicitly spelled out.
Seeing that he still took the time to impart a lesson even during a time like this, I could guess that he was used to being in such situations.
"Sensei, when he said, 'the sun shines eternal', did you know what he was talking about?" I probingly asked.
Asuma adopted a look of deep thought, "I… I can't be sure. For now, it's not something you need to be worried about. Just forget about it."
I nodded in acknowledgement. If the man decided that it would be wiser not to share what he suspected, then as a genin and his direct subordinate, there was no way I could refute his decision.
He walked up to one of the unconscious captives and hefted the motionless individual up on his shoulder. Time for round two, I supposed.
Before he began the entire process of questioning the assassins, Asuma had informed us of the protocols regarding battlefield interrogations. They were a necessary part of intelligence gathering -ugly, but necessary. Information warfare between two opposing sides consisted of the gathering of intelligence as well as preventing the other side from gaining any intel.
Sometimes we would capture enemy combatants who held key pieces of intelligence, without which our own forces might suffer the consequences. Hence, enhanced interrogation methods were at times needed to pry the information out of captives unwilling to divulge the needed intelligence.
There weren't really protocols, per se. Ultimately it came down to 'acquire the necessary information via whatever means necessary'. If we had the time, methods aside from torture would have been preferred to ensure the intel received was accurate and reliable. For example, prolonged periods of isolation, starvation, dehydration and sleep deprivation were all extremely effective in breaking down the will of the prisoner.
But we didn't have the luxury of time being on our side. Our client just had an attempted assassination, and those who wanted him dead might send another batch assassins as soon as they realized their first attempt failed. Lacking so much information meant that we were in the light while our enemies were in the dark, so we had to hurry.
Making it to the Capital city was one way of ensuring Yoshiro's safety. No matter how brazen the assassins were, there was no way they would dare act in the Capital since security in the city was second only to Konoha in the entirety of the Land of Fire, possibly even surpassing it.
Technically, we didn't really need to question the assassins for their motives and who hired them. Team Ten's mission was to safely escort Yoshiro to the Capital, and that was it. As long as we could ensure the client's safety up to the Capital city's gates, our mission was accomplished. However, Asuma went the extra mile to investigate the true culprits behind Yoshiro's attempted assassination as a gesture of friendship. It was an effort to ensure Yoshiro's safety even after the mission was complete.
That was also part of the professionalism Asuma had mentioned earlier – displaying the consideration and competence expected of professional, high quality mercenaries like ourselves would almost always guarantee a return customer. Even if we couldn't get the answers we needed, as long as a sincere effort was made and a certain modicum of results achieved, the client would be satisfied with our performance.
Personally, I was considerably astonished at how much went into the business side of our industry. I had always thought the demand for our services always trumped the supply, and thus Konoha could maintain a steady stream of income regardless of our performance. However, Sunagakure was a good example of poor management. Even if the Kazekage was an extremely powerful shinobi in his own right, it didn't matter if their village had a bad reputation that turned off potential clients.
It put a whole different perspective on the Suna-Oto invasion of Konoha that was going to happen in half a year's time. The reason that had been offered for Suna's participation in the pre-planned invasion was due to a series of budget-cuts by the Daimyo of the Land of Wind which resulted in an economic recession for the Suna. However, budget cuts weren't the root cause of their financial problems. After familiarizing myself with the business side of running a hidden village, I could guess that the fundamental reason for their budget cuts was the result of a poor reputation and lack of professionalism in their shinobi services. At least, when compared to Konoha that is.
One had to wonder why the Kazekage didn't just invade the Land of Wind's Capital city and threaten the Daimyo into giving them more money. The answer was easy enough to deduce. First off, that would just be straight up extortion and robbery. Who would want to do business with a village that was criminal enough to rob even their own ruling Daimyo? The subsequent drastic fall in reputation would only worsen their already bleak financial situation, and it would only be a short term solution to a systemic problem.
There were a multitude of reasons why the respective leaders of hidden villages didn't just take over the country, and reputation was just one of them.
Though Asuma put in the extra time and effort to ensure Yoshiro's safety out of consideration of their friendship, there was also an element of marketing Konoha's shinobi services as one that would go above and beyond what was required of us to guarantee customer satisfaction. That was what cements Konoha's reputation as the most prosperous and 'strongest' hidden village on the continent.
Konoha wasn't labelled the strongest because of any measurement of tangible strength, though the Yondaime's display of overwhelming lethality during the Third Shinobi World War and the fact that we housed the jinchuuriki of Kyuubi, the strongest Bijuu, definitely helped. Rather, we were labelled the strongest because everyone else said so.
The current Konohagakure was far from the likes of Kumogakure, objectively the strongest hidden village in this era in terms of military might. Just the fact that their jinchuuriki could exercise complete control of the Hachibi meant that Killer B was the equivalent of a tactical weapon of mass destruction. Our current jinchuuriki, Naruto, couldn't even come close to Killer B's full might, though his potential was certainly higher. But that was only the case in the future.
Yet, Konoha was still publicly identified as the strongest because we had a stellar reputation acknowledged by the people who actively employed our services. It didn't matter if we had a Kage that was well past his prime, nor that of our three Legendary Sannin, only one could still be considered as being a loyal and active agent of the village – all that mattered was public opinion, of which we had plenty in our favour.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone