Yami went and sat under a tree to rest for a few minutes and recover his lost strength. He ate a ration pill and drank some water. He didn't have any injuries as Shinzo was the only one he had fought head-on. Everyone else was either killed when he was posing as a bandit or by sneak attacks.
After 10 minutes, Kakashi came back and said "I have collected as many as I could. Hope Guy and the others have also moped up all the bodies and erased signs of battle here."
Kakashi fired a green flare-up in the sky which indicated that the mission was a success and everyone was supposed to come to the core. In a few minutes, Guy along with Neji and Lee came to Kakashi and Yami and in the next few minutes, all 5 sand shinobis came there as well.
"Sorry, Kakashi we were caught up in collecting all the stolen goods." Guy said to which Kakashi nodded. He knew that with Guy's help getting rid of the Cloud shinobis would have been a piece of cake but leaving Neji and Lee alone on their first genin mission was not a risk worth taking.
Hearing that the stolen goods were found Baki and the sand jonin looked at each other and had smiles on their faces. Their village was in a lot of trouble due to the stolen goods and now that the goods were found, they could trade freely again.
Baki looked at Guy and said "I can't thank you enough for this. Those goods will help us gain many resources for our village."
Gaara closed his eyes and sand started pouring out from his gourd. Seeing this made Lee and Neji tense, seeing this the sand jonin chuckled and said "Don't worry, he is spreading his sand in the surroundings to see whether we missed anything while doing the cleanup. We did this for our side of the valley, now let him do the same thing for the rest of the valley. Then we can leave this place. We need to reach the village before sunrise which has 3 hours left."
"Can you tell me what did you find out about Shinzo and his people?" Baki asked Kakashi. Everyone's eyes were currently on Kakashi as who doesn't love to hear gossip.
Kakashi looked around and said "Let's talk about that in the village. This isn't the right place or the time. Guy, Yami give the scroll containing the bandit corpses to them for identification. This valley is closer to their village so they might find out the identities faster than us."
'It's a good thing that I had kept the corpses and their heads separately.' Yami thought and took out a scroll from his pocket and tossed it toward Baki and said "This scroll contains all the heads of the bandits. I destroyed their corpses."
Baki didn't find that odd because those people were simple bandits. They wouldn't have anything that a shinobi would crave. So there was no reason to doubt Yami's words.
After 2 hours, everything was wrapped up and all 10 of the shinobis were rushing to the hidden sand. They had erased any existence of the bandits ever living in the bandit valley. If the Land of Lightning finds out that their shinobis were killed by hidden leaf and hidden sand shinobis then they could retaliate potentially leading to 4th great ninja war.
As they reached the village instead of going in through the main gate, Baki took them through a heavily guarded underground tunnel. The tunnel's exit was the basement of the Kazekage building. As they exited the tunnel they saw that 2 of the Kazekage's guards were standing there.
"Lord Baki, how did the mission go?" one of the guards asked.
"The mission was a success. Where is the Kazekage?" Baki asked.
"He is waiting for you all to arrive. You can go directly to the office. He said to bring all 10 of you." the guard said.
'Kazekage-sama wants to meet gaara as well? and even the leaf genins?' Baki frowned. He knew that Gaara was nothing more than a tool of the hidden sand and except Temari and Kankuro no one really cared about him.
"Let's go." Baki said and signaled Kakashi and Guy to follow.
"Come on kids you will get to meet the Kazekage." Guy said in an enthusiastic tone.
Baki and the nine others followed the 2 guards to the Kazekage's room. Before the mission Yami, Neji and Lee could only stay outside but this time they too were invited in. As they entered they saw a big oval table and a man with a red and white hat sitting at one end. The man had dark red hair and even his eyes were covered in red paint. He had a serious expression on his face.
Kakashi, Guy and his team were told to sit at the table by the guard. Rasa looked at kakashi and said "Can you tell me about your findings?"
Kakashi was a veteran at handling information so he knew how much to tell and how to do it. He only mentioned the basic things like finding the stolen goods. Guy and Kakashi himself had found many other goods looted from small merchants as well which was way more than the sand village's stolen goods. But Kakashi decided to keep that matter hidden. He told them that Shinzo was just a low level spy sent here to monitor the situations but he got greedy and looted on sand village trade route. The other cloud shinobis were sent by the Land of Lightning to punish Shinzo. He also handed over the scroll which contained the bandits' heads.
The 4th Kazekage Rasa listened to all this was stayed quiet for a few seconds. After that he said "I thank all 5 of you for coming here and helping us out. Looks like if we hadn't made a move tonight, Shinzo and the bandits would have been killed anyway. But the good thing is that we recovered all the stolen goods." Rasa kept talking for a few more minutes and then they all left the Kazekage's office.
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