Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_235

The sun climbed up the sky, bringing about the early morning. In the factory base located in the industrial district, Takuma opened his eyes at dot six in the morning. His comfy camping roll sat a few minutes away but Takuma was separated from the cold, hard concrete floor with a thin bed sheet.

He stayed there on the floor for a minute before getting up and putting on some pants along with his weighted-gear—a weighted-vest, and a pair of ankle and wrist weights each—the gear's load had been increased, putting more burden on Takuma's body with every movement.

He walked to the nearest reinforced steel column, stopping a couple meters from it. He put his hands up front and started to punch the air in the steel column's direction. The shadow boxing slowly ramped its intensity until after a few minutes he started build up sweat that dripped down to the ground around his feet. Eventually, Takuma began to feel the burn in his arms, but he forced himself to cycle through jabs, hooks, and cross, uppercuts, elbow strikes until he couldn't bend his elbow and his shoulder shouted in pain. After letting his arms rest for fifteen seconds, Takuma repeated the same exercise with his legs, cycling through kicks until his body forced him to kneel.

With the warm-up done, Takuma eyed the column before him and jabbed in its direction. The chakra jetted up his arm and shot out his fist.

Ting!

The chakra from the second-form augmentation touched reinforced steel, producing a sonorous sound.

Takuma jabbed towards the column again.

TONG!

Takuma's eyes squinched. Too much power. He took in deep breath and threw another augmented jab for it to create the proper sound. Much slower than the shadow boxing, but consistently, Takuma threw second-form augmentations strikes at the steel column, judging and training his fine-control over his augmentation by using sound.

He couldn't train outdoors; fortunately, the factory was large enough for his needs. As long as he kept the noise down, he was free to do whatever he wanted. Despite how open the factory was, he did sometimes felt stifled from not getting to train under the open sky with grass under his feet like he was used to, but he couldn't be greedy. If there was one thing he could ask for, it would be sparring—he hadn't a spar since he had left Camp Banana. Spars were important as he got to make and test adjustments to his fighting style and combat strategy by testing them out against a living, and more importantly thinking, thinking opponents. He missed Ring, which had turned into his testing grounds for fine-tuning aspects of his fighting style.

For two hours, Takuma constantly kept his body on the move, switching between intense and light stretches. His increased physical conditioning had begun to show results—the imbalance between his physical and spiritual energies had shortened. He forecasted that he would attain balance in an year or year and a half. His chakra quality hadn't improved enough for him to see any real benefits, but he was looking forward for when it did.

But immersive himself in training could keep him away from his thoughts only for so long.

He walked to a table where the naked blade with the familiar smith's touchstone. Not in his wildest dreams did he think he would see that touchmark while he was out of the Land of Fire, fighting in a foreign war. He assumed that the assassins belonged to a local organization, but if they were present in Yu, helping the Hidden Frost controlling the city—then the organization's scale couldn't be local.

"Hey, I brought some food!"

Takuma flinched and looked back to see Daiki walking towards with a parcel. For a massive guy, he had deceptively silent footsteps—but it was to expected, Daiki was a ranger.

"Thank you," Takuma smiled as he received the parcel with hot food.

Daiki noticed the knife blade on the table and looked at Takuma. "Anything new you remembered?"

Takuma shook his head and sighed, "In fact, I feel I know less about them now than before."

"I heard that Anko has already sent a letter," said Daiki.

Daiki was the team member that visited the factory base the least because of his duty as the "muscle." He was either at home to protect Chinatsu or visiting prospective clients with Gaku as his bodyguard. Due to his size, he was an eye-catching figure, and thus, just like Takuma couldn't be connected to the team, Daiki couldn't be connected to Takuma, which was why he visited the factory base the least.

"She did. After it reaches the camp, they'll send it over to the war commission, who will communicate with the Police Force. Depending on how quickly all the parties move and the cooperation level of the Police Force, we could be looking at a week before we get a response," said Takuma.

"I believe the war commission will move quickly given our mission and location."

"Let's hope so."

"So, what's the plan now?"

"Gaku and I'll be going to meet the resistance group. We need their support; we have to convince them that we weren't behind the police station arson."

"How're you going to do that?"

"No idea yet," Takuma sighed. "Hopefully, something will come to me by the time we're doing the meeting."

———
.

Takuma had nothing as he stood in an empty basement of some building in a random part of Yu. He was dressed identical to the last meeting, in a full-body robe and a blank white porcelain mask. As Gaku talked to Motohiro, the leader of his resistance group, Takuma could feel the resistance member's eyes on him—the youngsters in room didn't even bother to hide their doubt and blame, and they knew he was a shinobi who could slaughter them all.

That was a huge problem. If they truly resented them, no amount of healthy fear would stop the resistance screwing them over by reporting them to the Hidden Frost forces.

"No matter how you ask, how many times you ask, my answer will be the same," Gaku spoke calmly to Motohiro and his group. "We weren't involved in the arson that happened at the police station."

"It sure looked like your work, and you even went one step ahead and killed this time as well," said Motohiro, glancing at Takuma.

"You killed a good man!"

From the crowd, a man yelled at Takuma and Gaku. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was flushed as he pointed furiously at them. The people around the man held him back in fear that he would do something stupid.

"We didn't," said Gaku, "why would we kill those men?"

"Because you're shinobi," Motohiro said as though stating the obvious. "One of them was a good man—a great man!"

"Even though he was in the police?"

"Because he was in the police!" said the man who had yelled.

Motohiro explained: "He had been in the police for a decade. He stayed in the force to protect the city when your kind put thugs into power. And because he did that, he... he was killed."

The entire room looked somber. There was a clear distance between the resistance group and them. Just one week back, the resistance group was excited and willing to help them, but today, they looked like being in the same room was a grave sin.

Gaku looked at Takuma before turning to Motohiro. "Be reasonable, Motohiro. If we wanted for anything like this to happen, we would've done it the first time around. We didn't even know the connection between you and that police officer. Ask around, you've been there for all the meetings. We didn't go around you to get some information."

Gaku took a step toward Motohiro that made the entire resistance group react negatively and moved towards Motohiro to protect him.

Motohiro raised his hand to calm the group down.

"Even if I wanted to work with you, my people don't trust you anymore," he said. "I'm their leader, not their ruler. They trust me do to the right thing. If they don't want to work with you, I'll follow their wishes. And right now... the right thing to do is to not work with you."

'Bullshit,' thought Takuma—if Motohiro wanted, he could smooth this kink easily; the group trusted him completely and would follow his command even if they didn't like it. Motohiro's milling business had been feeding the families connected to his resistance group; he was their saviour.

So, the reason he was talking about separating from the team meant that Motohiro himself didn't want to work with them.

Takuma stepped forward to stand beside Gaku.

"What can we do earn the group's trust back?"

Motohiro stood up straighter and looked at his group behind him.

"We have simple demands," he said. "We realize we don't trust you because we don't anything about you. We want you to open up about your operations instead of only coming to us at the end when you need our help."

"We can do that," said Gaku before Takuma could answer.

"We need a token to support that claim." He looked to Takuma. "We want you to show your face... Right here, right now."

Takuma was taken aback and genuinely didn't know how to respond. However, it wasn't his first time facing a situation like this. When he was operating as Tobi the drug dealer, he wore the mask to hide his identity—and most of the time, people refused to work with him because of his insistence to wear the mask. All of his connections as Tobi were built on the back of Enomoto acting as a guarantor, which only got him so far even with Enomoto's substantial backing. In fact, he had more connections in the underworld as Takuma he had gotten through his Scars' identity—where his real identity was relatively well-known in the background. So while it shouldn't've come as a surprise that Motohiro wanted to see his face, Takuma was nevertheless rendered speechless for a moment.

There were other resistance groups they could work, but Motohiro's was the most organized. Motohiro as a leader was the perfect level of agreeable, capable, and a good leader who had the trust of his people without much internal struggles and disputes. They could switch to those other groups but it would take time and effort. Moreover, if the news leaked that Motohiro's group had broken the partnership, the other resistance group might not be as malleable as the team would like.

Takuma decided to agree to keep the cooperation with Motohiro's group. He already put the team in danger by getting caught by the unknown organization, he didn't want to create another problem with by protecting his face.

"We agree," said Gaku before Takuma could speak.

Takuma wanted to beat Gaku into the ground for taking the decision on his own. If Takuma wanted to say now, it wouldn't look good to the group if the only two people the group had seen were disagreeing in front of an outside party they were trying to convince.

"If that's what's required..."

He reached for his porcelain mask and pulled it down to reveal his face.

"You... you are a kid," said Motohiro, surprised.

Takuma sighed, having gotten used to the reaction from civilians. He had found that showing his battle scars was a good way to stop all the kid talk; unfortunately, he was wearing too many clothes to strip. So he decided to go with a simple demonstration. Takuma raised his foot, pumped chakra through, and stomped it down lightly.

The tiled floor of the basement shattered from end to end. He controlled his strength so only the topmost layer cracked. The entire room jumped in fear and shock, but all of them quietened down after screaming in surprise as their eyes stuck to Takuma in fear.

"Show off," Gaku whispered between coughs.

"I hope this is enough for my competence to go undoubted moving forward," Takuma ignored his colleague and addressed the Yu citizens.

There was fear in Motohiro's eyes, but he put a strong front andd stood up to Gaku and Takuma.

"One more thing..."

"You're pushing it, said Gaku, his laidback attitude quickly draining away.

"I said we had simple demands, and this show of trust is beneficial for both parties, we will match what you showed—but before that, you must do something for us."

Takuma narrowed his eyes. It was a crucial moment, they couldn't let the resistance group become cocky into thinking that they could hold their support over the team's head as a hostage.

Takuma thought for a moment before asking Gaku to stand.

"What is it? I won't guarantee we'll help until I've heard the demand."

"We want you to help us with a robbery."