Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_251

When Takuma opened his eyes, his body felt more uncomfortable than anything. He groaned loudly as he forced himself to sit up in the dirty cot that had served as his bed and his muscles screamed. It was a bizarre experience because not only had he woken up without a sore muscle after continuous days of intense training—but his body was that of a young teenager! He wasn't supposed to get sores and aches when he hadn't done anything physically taxing.

"Fuck me."

He stood up and stretched his body through the pain and half-limped his way outside of his room where and saw his water clone sitting cross-legged in front of the Ryuya and Aranai's room. The clone opened his eyes when he heard Takuma approach.

"How long was I out?" asked Takuma, his biological clock was all out of whack.

"Around twenty hour more or less."

"That was long," Takuma said and then gulped down an entire bottle of water.

It was fortunate that clones didn't need further focus after they were created. As long Takuma wasn't killed, his clone would continue to exist until he(clone) ran out of chakra. He had created one to keep watch over his prisoners while he went to sleep. He hadn't used clones to interrogate because he didn't want to miss out anything that could allow him an advantage—and he didn't completely trust himself(clone) to perfectly transfer information through words.

"Any words between them?"

"Nothing"

"Okay, I'm tired, I'm going out," said the clone.

Takuma nodded and clone walked away, confusing him, but then he turned around and ran towards him and released himself a moment before they hit which caused a blob of water drench Takuma from head to toe. He stood there stunned, not expecting that to happen, but it had the intended affect because he was now completely awake.

He chuckled and then went for an actual bath, changed his clothes, prepared three set of meals, before checking up on his two prisoners, who were changed to the opposite ends of the room. Their whispered conversation stopped when they saw Takuma walk into the room.

"How are you two today?" he said as he put the plates in front of them and sat down in the middle of the room with his own plate. There was an awkward silence in the room as the two prisoners stared at Takuma, who was all too consumed by the food.

"We... We told you everything we know, please let us go," said Ryuya as he cautiously looked at Takuma.

Aranai had been tortured too much to make requests like that and was silently eating his food in small and quick bites, wasting no time in fear that the food would be taken away. Takuma's reward ladder had worked in making them more comfortable, but fear was hard to erase, and he expected for him to be effected for a long time—probably developing some level of PTSD.

"I will let you go in a week," Takuma replied.

"Why in a week?"

Takuma glanced at Ryuya and that was enough to make him shut up and even retreat in fear.

"Eat your food," he said. "I will keep my promise; you'll be released from my custody in a week's time."

Even though he had gotten information out of them and sent it out of the city to the camp, he had one more use for them. They were in the last week of their pre-cursor mission and it was going to be the most active period. And given that the rest of his team was under surveillance, he had to do most of it all alone.

"So behave and you'll return to your friends."

———

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After eating and taking care of his prisoner's hygiene, and ensuring they wouldn't go anywhere, Takuma left the safe house. He couldn't leave a clone in his place to keep guard because a water clone had to be within a distance of the caster. But he was only planning to be out for an hour or two and was willing to take the risk and separated them into different rooms for more safety reasons.

Just like his first day in Yu, Takuma wandered around the town without a disguise. He had been in the city for two mouths, his hair had gone from a fresh cut to beyond overgrown; his complexion had grown paler and he had even lost weight on his face, giving him sunken cheeks—he looked nothing like his picture plastered around the town.

He looked into shops, observed the hotspots, and avoided three groups of patrolling shinobi. He could feel a sense caution and fear lingering on the roads, which wasn't anything new, but there was an edge that he couldn't place.

"So what's new, pops? I've been living under a rock," Takuma asked a tea stall owner as he got himself a couple taiyaki.

"The shinobi have been going through the town with a comb," said the stall owner as he served his order.

"Oh, did they catch someone?"

"Yeah, they arrested an entire milling factory under the suspicion of being traitors and helping rebels. If I remember correctly, the owner's name is Motohiro."

Takuma's hand paused for a moment before he bit into his taiyaki which felt tasteless in his hand.

"That sucks, huh," he said briefly, but his mind was racing. A mill owner named Motohiro? There was no chance that could be anyone else. How did the Hidden Frost know that Motohiro's rebel group was connected to him? Motohiro's was a small group and that was one of the reason he and Gaku chose them because they drew less suspicion and Motohiro was more involved in keeping his community safe over resisting the tyranny.

Had someone inside the group betrayed the group?

He had to find out more. Takuma finished his snack and went to the one place he knew he would get information. But as he arrived at Hoshiguro's estate, he was stunned to spot Hidden Frost shinobi outside estate, standing guard. He immediately retreated and got a higher vantage point to see over the high walls, and after waiting for a few minutes, he caught a glimpse of a walking with a Kumi family member he didn't recognise.

Had the Hidden Frost also find his connection to the Kumi family?

Takuma then noticed one of the Kumi family members exiting the estate and immediately decided to follow him until they were a good distance away from the estate.

The member was a man in his early twenties, wore a tacky tracksuit, had a buzzcut close to the skin, and hummed a tune as he turned into a back alley to take a piss. He put his hand against the wall as he pissed and when he turned around he was startled out of his life because Takuma was standing beside him.

"You are—!"

"Why are shinobi at the estate?"

The man looked like a deer caught in headlights and froze in place for a couple seconds before his fight-or-flight instinct kicked in—and he chose flight and turned to run away. To Takuma, he looked slow as a turtle and he kicked him when he moved his first foot. The man slammed into the wall and curled up into a ball after he fell to the ground. Takuma waited and watched him groan in pain for a full minute as he struggled to get up only to fail and slip back to the ground.

"Why are shinobi at the estate?"

The man retreated to the wall, not at all aware that one of his hands was in his own piss. He looked up at Takuma in fear, and didn't speak a single world.

Takuma sighed. He had done enough interrogation in the last week and his patience had worn thin. He was in no mood to be subtle about it. A kunai slipped out of his sleeve into his hand and he stepped closer to him which scared the shit out of the man, who wasn't a trained shinobi used to pain.

"Stop! Stop! I will talk, please don't kill me!"

Takuma stopped and gave him a cold stare. "I won't say it again. Why are shinobi at the estate?"

"They-They were invited by Young Boss Gyon!"

Takuma felt his body go cold. Gyon was the leak who had given out the fake address to the Hidden Frost. He had talked to Hoshiguro, who had promised that he would take care of it—but now there were shinobi at his house. That raised the question: Had Hoshiguro turned his back on him for his son? Or had Gyon done something to his own father.

"What about Hoshiguro?"

"The b-boss is bedridden. The young boss took over and invited the shinobi."

"Why is he bedridden?"

"I-I don't know. I just know that his health took a dive and young boss took over the next day, and the shinobi came after that."

Takuma closed his eyes and took a deep breath when he felt his anger rise up. They were a week out from the mission ending and he didn't want things to go wrong because a peace of shit wanted more power by selling out his own city.

'I should've killed him when I first found out,' thought Takuma.

The only reason he had not killed Gyon was because of Hoshiguro, who was the head of the Kumi family, and he didn't want to lose the Kumi family's support—but now his supporter inside the family was bedridden, and the traitor was at the head. He knew that he had lost that support and if he needed help, he wasn't going to get it from the Kumi.

But he wasn't going to make that mistake again.

The two-time traitor had signed his own death sentence.

He was going to start and christen the last week of his mission at Yu, with Gyon's life and blood. If he didn't do that, he would be angry for the rest of the week and he didn't want spend the most active week of the mission bubbling in anger about a piece of shit who didn't know what was at stake.

Takuma looked down the Kumi member, who was going to help him make that happen.

"Let's talk. Tell me everything you know, and I will let you go," Takuma lied.

Seven days until the main forces arrived at Yu.

———

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AN: Shorter chapter. In the last week, we see return to some exciting action. Time for chaos