Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_243

Aranai was a Hidden Frost chunin who had made a great situation for himself in the city he was occupying as part of a war against the Land of Hot Waters. He was making money hand over fist by not only selling drugs to his peers, he had also found a way to export drugs to his home country along with all the food and produce they were diverting to the Land of Frost—he had made more money in the past couple months than he had made in the last several years as a shinobi.

Money aside, his reputation among his peers had improved considerably as he had become an important source of relaxation and recreation. Most people didn't want to be in a foreign country away from their home and he helped them calm down.

However as he looked at the dozen shinobi lying down on the infirmary beds, all extremely sick, he had intuition that the good times were about to end. He recognised every single one of them as one of his regular customers. The iryo-nin had confirmed that none of them were going to die, but they were going to be sick for at least a week and weak for longer.

"There is the star of the day. Come, Aranai. Let's have a time."

He flinched and looked at Ebi, his jonin in command, standing at the end of the hallway. He glanced into the infirmary one final time before following Ebi. They didn't exchange words until they were in Ebi's office that only had the effect of worsening his nervousness.

"I don't have a problem with you selling drugs," said Ebi after they sat down. "In fact, it helps me that you're keeping people in their rooms, away from the city creating trouble which is always annoying to deal with. However, you must admit, putting people in the infirmary is overdoing it—sure they won't create any trouble because they can't get up from their beds—but we're still in the enemy country, or have you forgotten it, huh, Mister Businessman?"

Aranai sat straight in his chair with his hands clenched in his lap. Ebi was generally a laid back man with no micromanagement in his leadership style, he trusted his men to act like adults, but when they screwed up, he became scary. Just last month a genin had beaten a civilian to death in a drunken stupor; Ebi, a jonin, had forced the genin to fight him for two hours every day for a week and had disallowed the iryo-nin from healing the genin. Ebi was frigthening when he was angry/displeased.

"I apologise, sir... I didn't know the drugs were faulty." He was lucky he hadn't done any from the current batch. "I will go rip those bastards at the Goharu family a new one."

"Typical," Ebi sighed, making Aranai's heat leap into his cheat. "Diverting the blame; taking no responsibility."

"I... I-I am—"

"I—I—I. You don't have a stutter. Speak properly."

Aranai felt resentful as he chose to keep quiet with his head bowed. It wasn't his fault that those men had fallen sick. He hadn't told them to buy drugs. And he wasn't making the drugs; he was getting from the city civilians, and they had delivered good product until now, how was he supposed to know that they would deliver a faulty batch.

"You'll be punished for this, of course," said Ebi with a flat tone, "but that's a minor affair. You should be more concerned about the drugs you're sending back to the country. I know Honjo" —another Hidden Frost jonin stationed in Yu— "is helping you send drugs back home... If those drugs are faulty, that'll be a much a bigger problem. After all, Honjo will do everything to save his skin."

He looked up at Ebi with an ample amount of fear and surprise, making Ebi scoff. Recently, he had been sending larger amounts of the Gohary family drugs into the Land of Frost. Jonin Honjo was helping him with the delivery, taking a cut in return. He was happy because his earnings had gone off the roof, he had also grew closer to a jonin through mutually beneficial business. But Ebi was right—if things went wrong, Honjo would throw him under the bus without a moment of thought.

A hundred thoughts about the possible consequences rushed through his mind, making him lightheaded.

"I'll be banning the drugs moving forward," said Ebi.

Aranai wanted to argue. It was only one batch, as long as he confirmed that the next batch was good, they wouldn't have a problem—but seeing the look in Ebi's eyes made him think that any opposition would be a very bad idea.

"As you order," he said.

Ebi excused Aranai after verbally beating him some more, putting fear of retaliation and punishment into his heart—and all that did was boil anger in his heart. He wanted to do nothing more than to barge into the house of that bastard Waichi and rip him several news one. He wanted to do see the fear in the Goharu family's head as he told him how royally fucked he was.

But he would do it tomorrow. Today, he was meeting with the whore and he really wanted to blow some steam. She had told him to bring along one of his subordinates because one of her handmaids wanted to get into the business. He was of two minds to go alone and enjoy two women worshipping and serving him, but decided to take one of the leeching bastards—it'd be wise to build some additional trust... in case he wanted a scapegoat to put the blame on.

———
.

Takuma gazed at the two-storey townhouse in an affluent part of the city. Chinatsu didn't like bringing business to home and the team was residing with her, making their house unfit to host business, so Gaku rented out the townhouse for Chinatsu to host her client.

He entered the building and saw the team busy with setting up the place. They seemed used to it from prior experience. Iori, Rikku, and Kameko were preparing everything from the rooms to the drinks and food, Gaku was talking to Chinatsu about being careful, and Daiki was conversing with Anko, who seemed to be completely ready for her role.

Takuma was at a loss about who to speak to about setting up his things. The objective was to capture two shinobi—one of them was a chunin with unknown combat ability—and they had to do it stealthily without leaving any trace which required finesse.

"Come with me," Kameko snapped her fingers and gestured him to follow.

Takuma followed her to one of the bedrooms. It had huge canopy bed, the floor completely covered with an extremely soft rug, a full-size mirror facing the bed, and a two person dining table with a red table cover and padded chairs, a candlestick, and pricey cutlery.

"Look here." Kameko walked to one the walls with a cabinet lining the wall and pointed at something Takuma initially missed, but not a closer look was a cigar-sized hole in the wall, partially covered by the cabinet. "Is this enough?"

Takuma leaned down to look at the hole in the wall that connected the bedroom to the tiny storage closet next door. "I'd like it to be bigger. Can you do it now?" he asked. There wasn't time before the Hidden Frost shinobi arrived.

"No," she said.

Takuma sighed before shrugging. "I'll make it work."

He looked at the room. In less than an hour, the Hidden Frost chunin would be in the room with Chinatsu. He was going to incapacitate the shinobi using genjutsu after which Iori would use prisoner fuinjutsu seals to restrict the chunin's chakra and body. In the other room, Anko would deal with the genin. Ideally, given that they didn't know the chunin's combat ability, they would want both Gaku and Anko to dealing with chunin in case anything went wrong—but they didn't have a choice. Neither Rikku or Kameko could pull it off, and they needed Iori on the chunin for the fuinjutsu. Anko was not only stronger and could easily deal with a chunin, she was a much better actor, and was comfortable with the role.

"Are you confident?" asked Kameko.

"I think so," said Takuma, placing the fragrant incense sticks on the table in front of the hole.

"You think so?"

He looked up at her and shrugged. "I have done all the preparation I could do, I'm not nervous, so as long as the guy's experienced with genjutsu—or weird—I think I'll be able to ensnare him."

"Weird, how so?"

"Weird as in genjutsu doesn't work on him."

"He doesn't have a Sharingan."

"Sharingan doesn't make you immune to genjutsu, it's just makes it difficult," Takuma sighed with a chuckle. He had tried to put genjutsu over Mikoto hundreds of times as part of their lessons, but he had failed every single time. She always kept her sharingan active during those practice sessions; she didn't need it, she was a jonin with a mastery in genjutsu, but she activated that eye to raise the challenge that he was never able to meet.

"And," he continued, "genjutsu doesn't work on me, and I don't have the Sharingan."

"What?" asked Kameko. "What do you mean genjutsu doesn't work on you?"

"It literally doesn't. Well, it does work, but I don't have to do anything to slip out of it. It just happens and then I know I'm in a genjutsu, and breaking it easy enough after that."

Kameko looked like she didn't believe.

"I'm not lying."

"How is that possible? Are you lying?"

"Absolutely no idea. I just said I'm not. If you know a genjutsu, you could try it."

Kameko looked thoughtful for a moment before saying. "If you're not fucking with me, it could be new bloodline limit." Bloodline limits were genetic mutations that granted those with the mutations with unique chakra abilities. Dojutsu like the Sharingan and the Byakugan were bloodline limits, and so were the advanced nature transformations.

"It could be," said Takuma. "My teacher and I did discuss the possibility."

When Mikoto wasn't able to find any previous cases of automatic genjutsu breaking, they considered the possibility that Takuma was the progenitor of a genetic mutation which gave him a genjutsu related bloodline limit. The field of genetic testing wasn't advanced enough to reliably detect genetic mutations, so testing for it wasn't an option—and Mikoto as an Uchiha with Sharigan wasn't a big fan of genetic testing as the Uchiha protected their bloodline with frevor. Moreover, Takuma was extremely busy with work and it didn't really matter if it was a bloodline limit because it didn't change anything.

"Maybe if Orochimaru hadn't defected, he could've been able to tell. He was big into genetic testing," Takuma laughed like he had told the funniest joke—he wasn't going to let Orochimaru anywhere near him; he didn't to get bit and cursed with a juinjutsu.

"How do you know that?"

"He's one of the Sannin. Of course, I read up on him," he said matter of factly. According to Maruboshi, history had important lessons and answers to problems, so Takuma had read a lot about the shionbi history, and the Sannin were quite prominently recorded in the Hidden Leaf's history.

Orochimaru was at the forefront of genetics. And with what Takuma knew about him from his meta-knowledge, he assumed that Orochimaru was ahead of the contributions to field he had publicly made. While Tsunade was looked at the greatest iryo-nin to ever live, Orochimaru wasn't a slouch in the medical and scientific fields. His image had been tainted in the recent years due to his actions, but his works were still very prominent in their fields.

"Hey," said Kameko. She looked hesitant for a moment. "Try to keep her safe, okay?"

"Chinatsu?"

Kameko nodded. "She... she's obsessed with revenge. That bastard scum does it rough; she says it's not a problem, but I know she's hurt. He's a shinobi, he's much stronger than her, and you said it yourself that he'd be pissed because of the poisoned drugs; I'm worried he might over do it... so hurry if possible."

Takuma looked her. He didn't have any personal connection with Chinatsu, but he didn't live with her. The others did and it wasn't strange to form some connection with the asset.

He nodded. "I'll do my best."

"Thank you," Kameko said earnestly and then left the room.

Takuma followed her with his eyes. He had agreed, but he wasn't going to hurry to the detriment of the genjutsu. A lot depended on the shinobi's capture. Not only would it kickstart doubt and chaos in the enemy camp—but Takuma was doubly invested in the capture. He wanted his questions about the assassination organisation, their identity, their role in Yu, and the overall war, to be answered.

He couldn't afford for it to go wrong.