CH_10.34 (400)

Takuma felt strange having luck on his side.

Inuzuka Yubi had managed to find a solid connection to ROOT by discovering an undercover agent or an external collaborator. It wasn't strange that they had left behind people in important positions, or those who simply existed in the village as a connection they could tap for information or missions. Those people were now extremely important because ROOT couldn't replenish their undercover agents if they were found out. They represented Shimura Danzo's limited ability to directly influence the Hidden Leaf.

And Takuma now had one of them in his sights as he gazed at an office building that served as a bureaucratic office handling grants for medical research, which was his target for the day.

"Huh, seems like it was no trouble at all," said Sonaba Yazo of the assault squad, a.k.a. Ten.

"...Don't say that in front of Three," Takuma replied, looking back at Amami, who was talking to Krait at a distance.

The poor girl had been working hard to get anything at all from the agents, who weren't cooperating, but they also were not opposing her—they had completely shut down—which, in some cases, was worse because she didn't even know what made them tick so she could exploit them.

However, it was true that it had been "easy" because the scientists had been cooperative. And that ease of finding the lead, which had evaded them for ten days, wasn't because ROOT had made a mistake or anything.

It was a series of events that simply unfolded to bring them to where they were.

The Hidden Leaf Village had a sizeable concentration of the country's best chakra academics and iryōjutsu researchers, only matched by the Land of Fire's medicinal capital, which produced a large percentage of the country's pharmaceutical and medical output—a situation aided by the city giving those industries significant concessions that saved organisations like Hidden Leaf's state-run establishments and Nara clan's pharmaceutical operations substantial money in taxes as opposed to if they had set up anywhere else including the Hidden Leaf Village.

ROOT had been careful to recruit scientists from all over the country so as to avoid suspicion and detection, but experienced and talented individuals were needed to lead the research, and the right people just so happened to work in the Hidden Leaf Village.

"As cautious as they were, they probably weren't that worried about it. I mean, if you were ROOT, do you think you would've been run out of the village?" said Takuma.

It had been years since the inception of the bunker experiment; at that time, ROOT was still at the height of its power. They didn't think someone would find a bunker hidden deep in a forest, supplied only by a small team of sleeper agents who weren't stationed at the Hidden Leaf Village.

"I guess," Yazo nodded after thinking about it. "So, what do we know about this fool?"

"Penro Juro. A genin of the Hidden Leaf, who works at the office that decides which projects get medical grants," Takuma said, referencing Inuzuka Yubi's findings. "He was an iryōjutsu trainee who dropped out because he didn't have the skill, but because he had the relevant knowledge, he was able to join the grant office. It's the perfect position to scout out talented people in the field."

Takuma looked around and saw two teams of the Police Force creating a perimeter around the block. He had lost a ROOT agent because they hadn't communicated with the local forces; he wouldn't let that happen again, so he communicated his wants clearly with the Police Force liaison.

"A genin ROOT agent?" Yazo commented skeptically.

"ANBU isn't made up of all chunin and above. And who knows, maybe he's stronger but keeps a low profile by remaining at the lower rank."

Just like the last time, the same assault squad was once again recruited to help them with a smooth arrest. Takuma didn't think they would be willing to help him after what had happened at Inahara, but they were the only squad available, and the higher-ups didn't care about their mishaps. This time around, only two from the squad were joining them. Yazo's squadmate hadn't talked to them outside of discussing the plans; Yazo had treated Krait like air. Takuma didn't think Yazo would've talked to him or Amami if they weren't friends. The prison experience had been humiliating, to say the least.

When this case was over, he intended to amend his relationships with the assault squad because it was important to be in good standing with high-ranking squads like Yazo's assault squad.

But for now, they had a job to do.

"Time to work," said Takuma, gesturing to Amami and Krait that they were ready to move out.

"Let's go," Yazo nodded, putting his mask on.

———

 .

"W-What is this about? Is this a misunderstanding?"

Penro Juro said from an interrogation room inside an ANBU blacksite. He was sitting alone and bewildered and utterly scared from suddenly having been arrested in his office in the middle of the day by ANBU. Given how easy he was to arrest and his nervous and panicky behaviour, it perfectly painted a picture of an innocent man who was wrongfully arrested.

"He's pretending. Not surprising at all," said Krait.

"Let's hope so," said Takuma, scratching his head. Even though he didn't know Inuzuka Yubi and her competence, she gave the impression that she took her work seriously, so he trusted her information.

Penro Juro's track record was airtight. He was a model employee who didn't have a single citation against him in his file. The people around him liked him as much as one could like a coworker. Going further back, people remembered him when he was training to be an iryō-nin, and no one said anything strange. The people who liked to gossip could only mention how he never went out drinking and partying with anyone, but as it turned out, he didn't drink.

He did come from outside the Hidden Leaf Village, which was a common trait in forged identities. Making someone come from outside made it difficult for people to verify the information, and if the party involved a lowly genin, a face in a crowd, no one bothered to look deep into things. Takuma had looked into Kabuto's forged identity, and it had marked him as having graduated from an academy in the middle of nowhere and then similarly stationed in the boondocks before he transferred to the Hidden Leaf Village.

But that single thing didn't mean anything because Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki had all come to the Hidden Leaf Village from outside, and if they were ROOT agents, then he would bow down to Danzo and admit that he was the greatest spymaster of all time.

The problem was that Juro didn't have a death-seal, which would have dismissed him as a ROOT agent, but they didn't want to take the risk. Not to mention, the three scientists who had named him had all said that he knew exactly what the research involved, including the human experimentation part of it.

"Give me some time... I'll find out if he's innocent or not," said Amami with a serious glint in her eye. "Let me do it," she said to Takuma.

He had intended to interrogate Juro on his own because he had experience with interrogations, but he could see that she wanted it. She hadn't taken the news that Inuzuka Yubi had managed to find a lead when she had been hitting walls well.

Takuma wanted to do the interrogation, and because he was the case lead, it was his call. But he considered her words for a moment and agreed.

She had said, 'I'll find out if he's innocent or not,' instead of something like, 'I'll make sure he fesses up the truth.' The former showed that she was open to the possibility that Juro was innocent, but the latter would indicate that she had decided that he was a ROOT agent and would do anything to make him admit it—and that would be a waste of time because they wanted a real ROOT agent who could give them more information.

He judged that she was in the right state of mind by her words.

"Go for it," he nodded.

"I'll not disappoint," Amami said firmly.

———

 .

Four days later, Takuma stared at three files on his table in his office. He was genuinely nervous as he grabbed one while Krait, sitting across from him on his desk, picked another. They both looked at a tired Amami sprawled on the couch in the corner. She had been working hard on Juro to pull something out of him, and she did—Amami had pulled a treasure chest.

"Are you sure about this?" Krait asked her.

"Same academy, same posting after graduation, same home address after arriving at the village," Amami said without getting up from the couch and even burrowing deeper into it. "That wouldn't be strange if they're all from the same village, were it not for that first home address. I looked into it, and that building is owned by a company registered in another city."

"Who's the owner?"

"Don't know. The information hasn't come back yet," Amami continued. "But I did ask around the neighbours, and all three of them lived there for exactly six months. No one lived in that house other than them, even though they had arrived at the village over a five-year period—that's three and a half years of that house sitting empty. And it's not a dump; for that house and location, you could ask a decent amount for rent."

"Has the house been empty since the latest arrival left it?" Takuma asked.

Amami nodded.

"Why doesn't he have a death-seal?"

Amami shook his head. "Didn't have much time to focus on that, so nothing yet... Maybe they removed it from all those who stayed in the village to avoid risking any form of detection."

"...You don't need a death-seal to end yourself. I'm sure the motivated could find other ways," Krait said.

Takuma nodded. Even though the Inahara ROOT agents had their death-seals removed, they were still kept under constant surveillance and even lightly sedated to ensure they didn't try to do something. Those agents still had valuable information that could be extracted from them.

He looked down at the files of three potential ROOT agents. Even though the team had faced numerous hiccups, from the carnage at the bunker, the escaped ROOT agent from Inahara, the time in prison, and the days where they didn't get any intel from the captured agents—it hadn't been that long since he and Krait had found the bunker.

If these three people from Juro were indeed ROOT agents, they would have dealt ROOT the biggest blow since they left the village.

"We can't fuck this up," he said to the other two.

The silence in the office as they looked at each other couldn't be any heavier.

They were at a turning point—it was now or never.

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