𝕎𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕠 𝔻𝕖𝕧𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟

Chapter 19

Madara

No luck has come up on our end. Everyone met dead ends and no individuals have crossed our paths. I am a bit annoyed that we have come up short of the head leader and it is wasting my time. The others told me that the floors were clear, which could only mean that the shinobi had to be hiding. Something keeps telling me the man we came for was expecting us already.

I noticed Toshiko is still missing. There is a possibility that our target could have met her.

"We have to get to the woman now," I ordered. I pivot on my foot to leave and I hear a groan. My head turns to the source of sound from the pile of bodies in this hallway. Amongst the corpses, there is one barely alive; he began trying to talk having trouble breathing. One of us must have missed an organ for a direct kill, however, he was still dying.

"We missed one."

It was if Izuna read my mind when he stomps over there and yanked him by his collar. "Where is your leader?" he hissed at him.

The dying man cough as his eyes fixes on Izuna. I can see from here that his eyes were losing light of reality as he continues to slip away. "He's... h-h-hiding."

I didn't take his answer into satisfaction. This time I was the one to snatch his collar form Izuna's grasp and glowered down into his face with my Sharingan. "Where is he hiding?" I demanded but he chokes on his words in surprise again.

"You-you are...M-Madara Uch—"

"Do you recognize me? That's a start. I take it that you know what will happen if you don't tell me what I need to know, or I'll just put you out of your misery," I smirked coldly. The man nods weakly, just like anyone who cringes at the sight of me.

"Good. Now, where is he?"

...

As I have figured, the man was waiting for us. I learned the information before that shinobi took his last breath, via the Sharingan. I have learned that his name is Chunko and his whereabouts were on the fourth floor along, which is the same floor Toshiko had been assigned to. Chunko is a space-time ninja with means to disappear at any time to anywhere he pleases. Something like the Flying Raijin that Hashirama's brother used but absent the tools. His tactics on what he plans to do to overrun this small town was unsettling— pushing them out of their own home to be close to the Hidden Leaf. There were other disturbing things that play into the man's motive, but I rather not dwell on it right now.

I spotted weapons in the wall in the hallway and I stopped the group with a wave of my arm. A double door was wide open with a broken string laid over the threshold of the hallway. A frown crosses my face as I venture towards the scene and the others followed behind me warily.

"Tasume, Kasume. Search the floor for Chunko." I heard their footfalls departing shortly after.

"It seems the woman started some trouble," Izuna commented.

"Correction, Izuna: She is trouble," I sighed, briefly reminiscing the previous day we found her at the stream.

I approach the myriad of different weapons lodged in the wall and observed their conditions. There were spears and arrows, all abreast from the trap set up from within the room. It was a trigger trap of some sort and Toshiko had to have done it. Everything has trajected directly at the target, and luckily, there was no sign of blood.