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It did not take long for Naruto to spot what Dog was following. A few days ago, a rather large group of people had gone through the same trail they were now following. The majority of the traces were that of untrained civilians, many injured, yet the blond could see the proofs of the passage of grown men, armed. Some were more worrying because they were subtler, which pointed towards ninjas.
It was on guard and eyes wide open that Naruto entered in a foreign country for the second time in his life and still illegally. The Land of Rice was very different from Fire Country. Most of the Land of Fire was a plain, covered with a dense, dark forest made up of towering colossal trees, while multiple rivers cut through the vegetal maze, flowing from the north to the south, down in the Sea of Tea or spilling over in the Land of Rivers.
Rice paddies were massively concentrated in the south of the country whereas the rest of the land lived off of the exploitation of the forest, cutting down and processing all kind of exotic wood for carpentry, naval construction, pieces of furniture, fuel, matches, and so on, or on the contrary growing semi-wild orchards to collect all kind of fruits.
As such, it was a surprise for Naruto to see that the landscape of Rice Country was the opposite of what he was used to. Konoha did have rice paddies along the Naka river, of course, mainly overseen by the Akimichi. But still, it was not the village hidden in the leaves for nothing and the woods were an essential part of Konoha.
In the Land of Rice, the landscape seemingly consisted of paddies and there was nothing that could remotely be called a forest, in the blond's opinion. There were plenty enough of trees that the eight ghosts were never spotted by the rare peasants still working in the fields but the boy felt naked nonetheless.
The trees were so small, they looked so frail, and it was definitely impossible to use them to travel. The two ANBU teams were forced to progress on the ground and Naruto did not like that situation one bit. It was somewhat reassuring to stand at the top of a massive tree, like having the high ground or something like that.
Tiger pushed his men for four more hours before he allowed them to stop; the light of the sun had ceased to shine upon the world, replaced by the reflection of an incomplete moon. Once again, Naruto fought against the urge to buckle and fall and stretched to cool down. He felt disgusting; like he was bathing in his own sweat but he knew, after his first mission, that all ninja clothes were made in a fibre that easily dried.
Four hours stop. Maru, Hawk, last guard. Crane, Cat, third. Snake and I, second. Dog, Lizard, first. Eat, drink now.
Naruto gratefully allowed himself to sit on the ground with a stifled grunt of exhaustion. Not bothering to mask himself with a partial transformation given the darkness of the night, the blond wolfed down a dreadfully tasteless ration bar and took a greedy swig of water of out his canteen before he curled inside his cloak and allowed sleep to take him.
Fourteen hours ago, he had been in Konoha, receiving the second mission of his career, and the first one where he was sure to see combat and kill for the first time. He had no time to contemplate further as his exhaustion was too great to allow him to dwell on unnecessary thoughts.
Naruto awoke with a start a second before he felt Cat touch his shoulder in order to wake him up. The blond stifled a string of expletives and displaced his mask slightly to rub his sleep-addled eyes before he splashed his face with some water from his canteen. Shaking himself like a startled dog, the boy eventually replaced all his equipment as it should be and flared his chakra gently to open his tenketsus that sleep had closed off.
Acceptable, you can go faster. Next time. Cat signed, to which Naruto simply nodded, swallowing a defeated sigh. He had no idea how he would ever go on today. He hoped the bandits weren't too far away because endurance running was the invention of the devil and Tiger was its messenger, sent to spread the vile torture.
Naruto's hour of guard passed without incident and soon, the eight ANBU were up and going again, following Dog and her hounds.
It took another day of a slow hunt, the tracks being already muddied by rain and time until the ANBU caught up to their preys during the morning of the third day. Naruto was a shuddering bundle of nerves and he had decided that the worst part of a fight was not the exchange of blows but the time leading to it. Marching blind through Rice Country, following an unknown number of bandits, some possibly ninjas, all that for three days non stop without much sleep, with the added knowledge that a bunch of Fire Country citizens were counting on them was tiring, to say the least.
The sun was barely up, Tiger had sent Dog and Hawk for recon and Naruto was biting the inside of his cheek, too full of nervous anticipation to enjoy, or even consider, the possibility of rest. Just a few more hours and he would experience and hopefully live through his first fight. Despite what it meant, despite the blood that would flow, despite the death that would doubtlessly occur, he was expectant, impatient. He just couldn't wait to test how strong he was, how much better he had become. Not that he would ever wish to kill anyone of course.
He was certainly not excited to kill anyone, right? Sure he had killed dungeon monsters before but they weren't from this world, things that he could put the simple label of monster on. Even if his enemies were evil, Naruto knew they were like him ... Human.
Was he really going to kill a human ?
Those he would fight were kidnappers, after all, bandits, the scum of the earth that deserved to be punished, right? He was to be their executioner, the harbinger of their sentence, simple as that, no feelings involved.
The boy was startled out of his troubled musings by the hand of Tiger falling on his shoulders. Taking a deep breath to calm his instinctual need to jab a kunai somewhere inside the man as a defensive reflex, Naruto looked at his officer.
You are nervous. Meditate.
The blond had to try twice before his finger signed what he wanted them to sign. Acknowledged, sergeant.
Naruto was dragged out of his painfully achieved meditative state an hour later by the return of Dog and Hawk. The boy felt better, centred, and at least his mind was not clogged by questions he should not even have asked himself.
He had a simple answer: he was a ninja, and there was no rights or wrongs, only the words of his Kage. He was a ninja and there was no emotion, at least not during a mission. He would solve everything else later when they would be back in Fire Country.
Report, ordered Tiger silently with a single motion of his right hand.
Thirty-seven hostages, bad shape. Twenty-one hostiles, five ninjas, chunin max, no allegiance signs. Waiting in a clearing, camp two days old, no relief tent. Hawk signed quickly.
Tiger emitted a minute humming noise. The camp was two days old which could have meant it was the bandits' final stop but the problem was, they weren't touching the women. Twenty-four hours was plenty enough time to set up an open-air whorehouse, except if the ladies could not be touched.
That meant -Tiger was sure of that, ninety per cent- they had a client because, in his experience, outlaws and female captives de facto meant rape if the women were not reserved for something, or someone, else. And if the kidnappers were indeed waiting here for a potential buyer, the mission had just become a tad more complex. They could not lead thirty-seven hostages back to the Land of Fire securely if they were pursued. Leaving an unknown threat behind one's back was never a good idea. Tiger and his men would need to ensure the neutralization of both threats. Easier said than done given that they had no idea when the buyer would arrive if it existed at all.
The missions orders were clear, they had to recover the hostages and lead them back home. That left Tiger with two choices: he could order to attack now, start retreating and be possibly caught by a faster, unknown threat in an unknown time. Or they could wait for a bit to see if the client did indeed exist and assess its threat level. They would need to establish watch over an undetermined period of time, which would increase the chance of them being detected, if minutely. The man sighed silently so that none of his subordinates could hear him. If there was one thing he did not want to risk, it was having unknown pursuers on his tail.
Fox-hole, everyone. Observation, relay. Lizard, Cat, go. Rotation three hours, signal everything.
The two ANBU nodded and darted away while the six ninjas left followed Dog who quickly found them a place where they could dig their fox-holes.
A fox-hole was a simple hole dug underneath a sizeable bush and partly covered by a piece of cloth made of the same chakra reactive fibre as an ANBU cloak. It made for a simple yet efficient hiding spot. It was, of course, less pleasant than a good old tree but it did the job nonetheless.
The rotation allowed Naruto to sleep for nearly six hours - a luxury if anything - before he felt one of the Haimura Brothers, La, come to him. The blond silently followed the dog until he reached the hiding spot Tiger had chosen for observing the bandits' encampment. Naruto simply nudged his officer's hand lightly and settled as comfortably as possible in a shallow hole, covering himself with his cloak, leaves, undergrowth, and stifling his chakra flow.
He had learned to consciously trigger his disappearing trick after Dragon, Owl, and Tiger had explained to him what exactly it was that he was doing. Dragon had purveyed instructions on a very peculiar genjutsu in order to help the boy master and further develop his subconscious chakra cloaking. Genjutsu were difficult but Naruto knew that right now, he was as undetectable as he could get.
Taking a deep breath, the young ANBU initiate readied himself for a long wait. As he settled himself for his watch, he ignored the alien buzzing of resigned fear and greedy anticipation that pervaded the clearing.