Chapter 78: A C-Rank Mission
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Come in!"
Hearing the young man's voice from inside, Asuka pushed open the door and entered the Hokage's office.
"Hokage-sama!"
Minato Namikaze set down the documents in his hands and looked up at Asuka with a smile.
"Asuka!"
"Hokage-sama, I suspect I'm being ostracized by the ANBU."
Asuka walked over to the desk, planted both hands on it, and immediately began complaining.
"I've been in the ANBU for almost four months, but I've only completed one mission. I've been sitting around doing nothing ever since."
"Well…"
Minato picked up a document from the desk and handed it to him somewhat awkwardly.
"It's not just you. None of the new members of your team have been assigned missions either."
"Although you're a jōnin, ANBU missions normally require you to be accompanied by the team captain. Unfortunately, your captain has been rather busy lately, so it isn't convenient for him to accompany you in the short term."
"As for Yūhi Kurenai, who joined the team at the same time as you, she's currently working as a substitute teacher at the Academy."
"And because your public identity is that of a member of the Police Force, the village hasn't assigned you another official position."
Thinking about that captain who had apparently gone off to prepare for pregnancy, the corner of Asuka's mouth twitched.
Some people got pregnant on their first try and gave birth naturally.
Others could spend an entire month trying without getting any results.
Asuka shook his head, banishing those strange thoughts from his mind.
"Hokage-sama."
"Since I have nothing else to do, why don't I take my students on a C-rank mission?"
"Even a B-rank mission would be fine."
"They've been training quite well lately, and they've already completed plenty of D-rank missions."
"Wait a moment."
Minato began searching through the mission scrolls for a suitable C-rank mission.
A jōnin accompanied by three genin was technically qualified to undertake a B-rank mission.
But having a jōnin supervising them didn't mean a B-rank mission was safe.
B-rank missions usually involved combat against enemy shinobi, and there was still a possibility of casualties.
For a team of inexperienced genin, a C-rank mission was more appropriate.
"There we go."
Minato looked through the recently submitted missions, pulled out a scroll from beneath the desk, and handed it to Asuka.
"Several villages in the surrounding area have recently reported children going missing. It has happened multiple times already."
"The villagers pooled their money together to commission this mission."
"Hmm."
Asuka nodded.
There had indeed been several cases of missing persons recently.
The Police Force had been dealing with multiple disappearances, and quite a few people had gone missing inside Konoha itself.
Ryoichi had even asked him to use his connections to increase the workload of the Police Force.
If Asuka didn't know the old man well, he might have suspected that Ryoichi himself was behind the disappearances.
He had no idea about the missing children outside the village. There were plenty of criminals in the shinobi world who kidnapped children.
But the disappearances inside Konoha…
After eliminating that useless Uchiha scientist who had supposedly spent decades trying to revive Hashirama yet somehow had made no progress whatsoever, Asuka immediately settled on another suspect.
Orochimaru.
A fake scientist: decades of research, yet the results were exactly the same as decades ago.
After so many years, even repeated experimentation should have produced something.
Yet decades had passed, and the man was still stuck at the theoretical stage.
Asuka had never expected this before attending the clan meeting.
A real scientist, on the other hand, used his own life to explore the mysteries of life. His actions matched his words, his execution was exceptional, and most importantly, he could actually research whatever he wanted to research.
Back when Asuka worked as a private detective, he had once accepted a strange commission.
"Investigate why several hundred donkeys on a villager's farm outside the village have been making inexplicable noises in the middle of the night."
At the time, he discovered that Orochimaru was wandering around at night like a corpse herder, frequently driving a group of sluggish humanoid creatures past the donkey shed.
Every so often, those creatures would let out an ominous roar.
Naturally, the donkeys were terrified.
Asuka secretly set up a simple trap and captured one of the humanoid creatures.
That was when he discovered that they were essentially unfinished Edo Tensei subjects.
He remembered that mature Edo Tensei normally required living sacrifices.
These unfinished versions, however, contained corpses dug straight out of graves.
So Asuka anonymously dropped a letter on the Third Hokage's desk and reported Orochimaru.
It wasn't exactly live human experimentation, but grave robbing was, in a sense, a form of desecration.
An evil scientist digging up the graves of his ancestors in the middle of the night.
With Orochimaru's genius, he would surely maximize the value of his resources.
He had probably already established an entire grave-robbing industrial chain.
Sell the burial goods for money.
Use the corpses for experiments.
If the experiments failed, sell the bodies back to the relatives through the black market.
Back and forth, back and forth.
Apart from wearing out a few pairs of shoes, he would have made quite a bit of money.
Asuka simply wasn't sure whether Orochimaru was currently researching Wood Release or Edo Tensei.
"Asuka?"
Minato noticed that Asuka was standing there blankly, with an occasional thoughtful expression flashing across his face.
"Do you have any other questions?"
Asuka snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Minato.
He shook his head.
"No. That's all."
He turned around and left.
There really were a lot of evil scientists in Konoha.
Danzō, who presided over evil scientific research.
Orochimaru, the evil scientist who actually conducted the experiments.
And some Uchiha elder who had been completely useless, yet had spent half his life researching Hashirama without producing a single result.
A truly evil scientist.
Asuka vaguely remembered hearing that the elder had recently adopted a goddaughter.
What was her name again?
Uchiha… Izumi?
---
South of Konoha.
Asuka walked leisurely down the road with a bag over his shoulder and both hands in his pockets, looking more like he was enjoying a spring outing than leading a team on a mission.
He glanced back at his three excited students and shrugged.
"This isn't our first time leaving the village for a mission."
"But… but this is a C-rank mission!" Iruka said, clenching his fists excitedly.
Remembering his own first C-rank mission, Asuka couldn't help laughing.
"When I first took a C-rank mission, I was invited to participate in a war."
"But when we arrived, we discovered that it wasn't really a war at all. It was obviously just a skirmish between two villages."
"The enemy village surrendered the moment they saw shinobi arrive."
"The mission reward was thirty thousand ryō."
"To conserve our strength and prepare for the arduous mission ahead, we ate well, drank well, and slept well."
"Our round-trip travel expenses came to twenty-eight thousand ryō."
"That left two thousand ryō for the four of us to split."
"It paid even less than a D-rank mission."
The three students were instantly deflated.
Their mouths twitched as they recalled the description of C-rank missions.
Participating in wars.
Capturing or subduing beasts.
Delivering confidential documents.
And now their mission was simply to search for missing children.
Their expressions immediately fell.
It seemed…
There probably weren't any ninja traffickers involved.
Seeing the three suddenly looking so dejected, Asuka pulled four lollipops from his pocket.
He tossed three of them behind him, then unwrapped his own and began sucking on it.
"How has your training been going lately?"
Yūgao raised her head and smiled.
"Yesterday, Anko and I sparred. We ended in a draw."
"Even though it was a draw…"
"She's Orochimaru-sama's student!"
Asuka smiled approvingly.
"Not bad."
Before he could ask the other two, Yūgao hurried forward a few steps and quietly asked:
"Sensei, what do you think Orochimaru-sama is like?"
Asuka looked at Yūgao in confusion.
"What happened?"
"It's just…"
Yūgao bit her finger hesitantly.
"Yesterday, Anko and I were sparring when we encountered Orochimaru-sama. After seeing the ninjutsu I used, he praised my teacher."
"He praised me?"
Asuka shuddered.
Why would that guy praise him for no reason?
Was Orochimaru interested in his body?
Yūgao continued speaking to herself.
"Orochimaru-sama said that back when the Senju clan still existed, commoners like us could follow teachers from great shinobi clans and learn ninjutsu."
"Just like Jiraiya-sama. He was a commoner, yet he was able to study under the Third Hokage."
"But in this era, we can only learn a few crude techniques, like the Three Basic Techniques, before eventually walking toward our deaths."
"He also said that the three of us were extremely lucky to have encountered a teacher from the Uchiha clan."
"And that our teacher doesn't hide anything about his strength."
Hearing that Orochimaru had praised him, Asuka shrugged.
"What is there for me to hide?"
"Your teacher knows nearly a thousand ninjutsu. If you want to learn them, then learn them."
"If you manage to drain every last technique out of your teacher, I'll just go imitate other people's techniques."
"And if you eventually take disciples but don't have any ninjutsu to teach them, come find me at the clan compound."
"I'll write down a few dozen techniques for you."
Yūgao, Iruka, and Hyūga Hanabi all had the exact same reaction.
The corners of their mouths twitched.
They had often wondered why members of the Uchiha clan so rarely became teachers for outsiders.
After all, teaching others should have been extremely beneficial for a powerful clan.
But now…
They seemed to have discovered one of the reasons.
Given the emotional characteristics of the Uchiha clan…
Ninjutsu probably wasn't something they were particularly inclined to share.
Or perhaps they simply weren't inclined to share anything at all.