Chapter 111: Uchiha Kou Targeted
The Anbu's objective for the day was straightforward: head down to District One and round up a handful of embedded spies.
As a newly developed urban planning zone within Konoha, District One functioned as a dedicated civilian sector. The sprawling area housed numerous factories, expansive ranches, and a variety of modern facilities. Driven by highly developed industrial and agricultural sectors, it offered stable employment for the everyday populace, while guaranteeing free education for their children.
Bolstered by Konoha's formidable protection, dedicated administrative management, remarkably low taxes, and guaranteed security, the residents here lived in what bordered on a veritable paradise compared to the war-torn lands beyond the village walls. Stability, tranquility, and harmony defined their daily lives. However, the constant influx of merchants, passing caravans, and laborers turned the district into a bustling melting pot. Naturally, this chaotic blend of transient faces provided the perfect cover for foreign spies to slip through the cracks and blend in unnoticed.
At present, Kou and her two Anbu teammates maintained a strict surveillance over a modest, unassuming house where the suspected spies had holed up.
To the uninitiated, an Anbu stakeout might sound like a grueling test of absolute stillness and unwavering focus. The reality, however, was far less glamorous. Crouched in the shadows, her two teammates were currently slacking off, carrying out an entirely casual, mundane conversation through rapid, lazy hand signs.
The squad leader for this particular operation had even possessed the sheer audacity to instruct Kou to keep a vigilant watch and avoid getting distracted.
Kou seriously suspected she was the victim of blatant workplace bullying. Whenever she ran operations with Sakumo, the legendary White Fang took excellent care of her, handling the heavy lifting with effortless grace. Yet here she was, a recognized favorite of the Hokage, being forced by these two mediocre operatives to shoulder the entire surveillance burden alone.
Truly audacious.
Concealed within a dense patch of tall grass, Kou allowed her own focus to drift. Amidst her mounting boredom, a familiar, distinct signature brushed against her sensory range. Black Zetsu had arrived. The entity clung surreptitiously to the sprawling roots of a nearby oak, oozing into the soil like a puddle of sentient, dark sludge.
Kou immediately perked up, a hidden spark of amusement flaring in her chest. If Black Zetsu was lurking nearby, the ancient parasite was absolutely preparing to stir up some entertaining trouble.
Right on cue, the situation inside the house shifted. The monitored spies received some unknown, silent signal. Instead of preparing their gathered intelligence for extraction, they hastily began gathering their documents to burn them.
The squad leader, who had spent the better part of the afternoon feeding the local mosquito population, practically vibrated with sudden fury. He had waited all this time, hoping to trace their communication lines and intercept a larger network, only for the targets to abruptly abort.
He snapped a sharp, aggressive hand signal. "Crush them!"
"Captain, we still need to take them back for interrogation. We cannot literally crush them to death," Kou reminded him, her tone dry and utterly flat beneath her porcelain mask.
"Then crush them half to death!"
The squad leader drew his standard-issue Anbu straight sword, the steel hissing against the scabbard, and launched himself out of the brush as the vanguard.
Seeing the sudden charge, the remaining teammate quickly scrambled to follow. He almost perfectly replicated the captain's exact trajectory. In theory, this was a sound tactical decision; the squad leader had already cleared the path, meaning there should be no hidden traps or immediate danger.
Unfortunately, he failed to account for the sheer, reckless burst of Chakra the captain released upon breaking cover. The kinetic shockwave rattled the structure of the target house, dislodging a heavy wooden convenience store sign from the edge of the roof.
By the time the teammate rushed forward, gravity took its course. The heavy wooden board plummeted downward. His skull slammed directly into the falling sign with a loud, incredibly crisp clang that echoed across the street.
Just hearing the hollow, ringing impact was enough to make anyone wince in sympathetic pain. The unfortunate teammate was knocked entirely senseless, his momentum halted as he tipped backward and fell flat on his spine, completely dazed.
Fortunately, his rigorous physical conditioning as an elite operative kicked in. He executed a sloppy kip-up, bouncing back to his feet while aggressively shouting, "I am fine!" before blindly charging through the front door of the house.
Trailing a few paces behind, Kou almost shattered her carefully cultivated cool and aloof persona. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from cursing out loud at the sheer absurdity of the display.
Usually, to maintain operational security and keep her true capabilities hidden, she exclusively took assignments alongside Sakumo. Now, on a rare deployment with the general roster, she was forced to witness this absolute circus. Where were the consistently lethal, terrifyingly efficient Anbu she remembered from the original timeline? How had they all devolved into bumbling idiots under the current administration?
The sun had begun to dip, signaling dinner time across the district. Most villagers were indoors enjoying their evening meals, leaving the streets relatively bare.
However, the sudden eruption of splintering wood and shouting quickly drew an audience. Curious residents peeked their heads out of second-story windows. Pedestrians who had been strolling along the roadside immediately sprinted for cover, yet they continuously craned their necks to look back over their shoulders. Their wide-eyed expressions made it entirely clear that, despite the lethal danger of a shinobi skirmish, the irresistible allure of fresh neighborhood gossip outweighed their basic survival instincts.
Living in a hidden village built on military power, witnessing shinobi clash in the streets was treated as a semi-regular occurrence. Scenes of catching spies happened frequently enough in District One that the local populace had grown largely desensitized to the chaos. As long as one maintained a safe distance to avoid catching a stray burst of Ninjutsu, there was little to actually fear.
, District One boasted a highly responsive, dedicated Law Enforcement Squad that would inevitably arrive within minutes to secure the perimeter. The villagers placed immense trust in their local security.
Inside the fray, Kou found herself matched against a Kumogakure operative who boasted highly aggressive, physical Taijutsu. However, not every shinobi hailing from the Hidden Cloud possessed the legendary Lightning Release Chakra Mode. Without that overwhelming neural acceleration, his good Taijutsu was merely acceptable by standard metrics.
In Kou's critical eyes, his movements were sluggish, telegraphed, and truly mediocre. She could dismantle this opponent without weaving a single hand seal for Ninjutsu.
The skirmish spilled out of the house, elevating into a rapid exchange of blows across the slanted rooftops. The Kumo shinobi roared, launching himself forward in a heavy, linear charge.
Kou simply raised two fingers. She silently activated the Bringer-of-Darkness Technique.
An absolute, suffocating blackness instantly swallowed the Kumo operative's vision. His forward momentum faltered as panic disrupted his balance. In that precise fraction of a second, Kou pivoted on her heel and delivered a devastating flying kick directly to his sternum, launching him backward through the air.
She could have easily snapped his neck or pierced his heart while he was blinded, ending the confrontation in a single breath. But with Black Zetsu lurking in the peripheral shadows, eagerly observing the unfolding drama, Kou deliberately pulled her strike. She needed to stall, giving the ancient parasite enough time to set his own stage.
The Kumo shinobi sailed backward, crashing violently through the thin wooden wall of an adjacent house. Terrified shrieks and the clatter of broken dishes erupted from the interior.
Kou took her time, lightly dropping down from the rooftop to the street level. By the time the dust settled, the desperate infiltrator had already dragged a trembling civilian out of the wreckage, holding a jagged kunai tight against the man's throat.
The Kumo operative spat a wad of blood onto the dirt and sneered. "I remember you Konoha dogs always boasting about your precious Will of Fire. You preach about treating your civilians with impartiality, equality, and boundless love. Back off right now, or I will kill him."
The hostage's legs gave out, his knees buckling in exaggerated terror as he wailed, "Lord Ninja, please! You have to help me!"
'Help my ass,'Kou thought, staring at the blubbering man with absolute internal disdain.'You are a deep-cover spy from the Land of Earth. If I had not personally manipulated the Hokage into burying your surveillance file for my own future use, you would be sitting in an interrogation cell right alongside these Cloud idiots today.'
Outwardly, Kou halted her advance, raising her empty hands in a show of compliance. "Fine. I will not step any closer."
The stage was perfectly set. She had carefully arranged this script for Lord Black Zetsu's viewing pleasure. If the shadowy manipulator still refused to take the bait and make his move, he could go scour the continent for an Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan on his own. She would simply drop this tragic persona entirely and go find someone else to torment for her daily entertainment.
The Kumo shinobi panted heavily, his eyes darting toward the main house. He realized with a sinking dread that his two companions had already been silenced by the other Anbu operatives. A cold, suffocating despair gripped his chest. His grip on the kunai wavered in his hesitation.
In that fleeting moment, from an angle entirely obscured from the surrounding crowd, Kou's pitch-black irises bled into a luminous, spinning crimson.
She was an Uchiha. Distance was merely a suggestion; she could easily execute him without taking a single step forward.
Catching the bloody glow of those legendary eyes, the Kumo operative froze. He had not anticipated facing an elite of the Uchiha Clan. Raw panic seized his nervous system. His academy training screamed a single, desperate directive into his mind: do not look into the Sharingan, or fall into a fatal Genjutsu.
Operating on pure, terrified instinct, he concluded that simply closing his eyes would render her visual prowess useless. He squeezed his eyelids shut, plunging himself into darkness.
'What an absolute genius,' Kou mused dryly.
The very instant the fool blinded himself, the lethal opening presented itself. Kou moved like a phantom. She drew her short sword in a blur of polished steel and lunged across the distance, aiming a flawless, linear thrust directly at the enemy's exposed windpipe.
With her terrifying precision and speed, she was perfectly capable of threading the needle, bypassing the hostage entirely to sever the Kumo operative's vocal cords and end his life in a single, surgical strike.
However, just as the tip of her blade crossed the final inch, the terrified villager suddenly shifted. As if completely paralyzed by fear and scrambling blindly for escape, the man flailed his limbs wildly, violently jerking his torso directly into the trajectory of Kou's lethal thrust.
The movement was so abrupt, so unnaturally precise, it looked as though the man had deliberately thrown his own flesh onto the waiting edge of her sword.
Beneath her mask, Kou's expression shifted into a mask of grim horror. She desperately tried to arrest her momentum and pull the blade back, but at such blistering velocity, the laws of physics denied her.
The steel pierced the villager's throat with a sickening tear, sliding straight through the soft tissue and exiting the back of his neck to cleanly slit the throat of the Kumo shinobi standing behind him. Arterial spray painted the dirt. Both men collapsed to the ground in a tangled, bleeding heap.
Staring down at the civilian dying a tragic, agonizing death by her own hand, Kou allowed her mind to seemingly short-circuit.
She forced her posture to slacken, projecting the image of a broken operative who could not comprehend why an innocent man would throw himself onto a friendly blade. She was an elite. Her combat predictions were never supposed to be wrong. She stood frozen over the corpses, her body trembling slightly as she projected an aura of absolute panic, guilt, and crushing helplessness.
Hidden beneath the soil, Black Zetsu, who had subtly possessed the villager's motor functions to force the fatal error, drank in the sight of the shattered Uchiha prodigy. Thoroughly satisfied with the psychological trauma he had just inflicted, the ancient shadow slowly sank deeper into the earth, his twisted agenda proceeding exactly as planned.
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