POV: Fuguki Suikazan – The Bloody Mist Hunts

He was not being paid for this shit. Having to do a 14-hour shift was not in his job description.

The shit he does for his job.

From the bottom of his heart, he truly wished that he would be fine.

But fuck no—Konoha-nin had managed to sneak their way into the village.

How? No fucking clue. He was quite thorough in his examinations. Oh well, guess backshotting the girl at the local diner would have to wait a bit.

Fuguki Suikazan was tired.

Ten patrols. That's how many he'd done today. Ten full rounds through the civilian sectors, the barracks, and the supply routes. And what had he found?

Nothing.

Just wide-eyed merchants, shitty scrolls, food carts, and horny civilians talking about fish stew and cold women. No trace of Konoha shinobi. No hint of sabotage. And maybe a dude almost smashing a Yuki guy thinking it was a chick... well, it happened to the best of them.

And Samehada?

Silent. Unfed. Pissed.

The blade pulsed irritably at his back, practically twitching to taste chakra. But there was nothing. No hint of that distinctive Leaf tang. Just more fog.

He was about to crash into bed—armor still on—when the sound erupted.

And maybe, just maybe, go into a random widow's room and bust the fattest of nuts.

WEEEEEOOOO—WEEEEEOOOO—!!

Red Alert. Village-Wide Emergency. Sector Six breach.

Fuguki cursed, the weariness sliding off him like bloody oil.

"Scroll vault?!" he barked, already grabbing his sword.

A voice crackled from the relay station:

"Intruder has breached the vault. High-speed pursuit underway. Possible Leaf Shinobi. Visual confirmation pending!"

"You're telling me someone's running through Mist territory with our sacred scrolls?!"

"Affirmative—headed west, outer cliffs."

Fuguki didn't even respond.

He moved.

POV: A Chase Through the Mist – Village Outskirts

The fog parted like silk before a blade.

Ahead, a figure darted—blurring from rooftop to treetop, dressed in deep gray. No clan markings. No village headband. But unmistakably Konoha.

A scroll clutched tightly in one hand.

Behind him?

Sixty Mist Jōnin.

All of them pouring chakra into their feet, leaping with bloodlust in their lungs. They weren't here to capture.

They were here to slaughter.

But the figure kept gaining distance.

Even Fuguki had to admit:

"That bastard is fast."

His eyes narrowed as Samehada twitched in his hand. The blade had started humming. Not softly—eagerly.

So whoever that was?

He had chakra. A lot of it.

Still, with sixty trained killers on his back and multiple sensor teams locking in—

He'll be dead in five minutes tops, Fuguki thought grimly.

That thought didn't stop him from sprinting harder.

He wanted the kill for himself.

Yet as he ran after the man, he realized something.

The man was using way less chakra than him, yet was gaining far more speed with far fewer steps.

A better way to illustrate it would be:

Every 10 steps he took, the man only needed to take one to close the gap.

His brow furrowed. This man was either really good at Shunshin, or this was another jutsu altogether.

POV: Seijuro Kurama – Inner Sanctum, Bijū Vault

Far, far away from the chase...

Seijuro Kurama stood still.

Beneath the Kiri Archives was a chamber lined in obsidian and wet stone—heatless torches flickering blue against the walls.

Before him were two towering seals. So basically, where the Bijū were sealed. He could feel their chakra.

The place seemed magnificent, like some sort of fancy cave.

Within them?

Tailed Beast Chakra.

They had no Jinchūriki, for the most part. They were just chilling there.

Cool.

He began to activate the seal on his right hand, opening the Bijū seal, and placed his hand over the seals.

As the Bijū chakra began pouring out, his seal glowed red. The absorb function on his seal was working overtime to suck in all that chakra.

The chakra was sucked in. Then spun around a bit. Then absorbed by like twenty different absorption seals.

He could feel it. He was absorbing a huge chunk of the Bijū chakra...

When he was done—

He had absorbed a good chunk of their chakra. Close to 70% of their shit was now his.

He didn't want to take too much.

Anyway, once that was done, he opened some seals—

Making them overlay with the Bijū seals, stopping the Bijū from getting out of their cages.

Though, he did put a slight timer on it.

And as for why the Hidden Mist alarms hadn't gone off yet—even though he tampered with the seal—well, he removed the seal's ability to read the inputs.

TL;DR, what he did was simple:

The seal was structured like:

If Seal is tampered with = True = Alarm.

Well, he removed the = sign. While that might seem like something minor, in coding/sealing, everything was important. So the removal of such a thing made sure the alarm didn't go off.

And as for the guards...

Kyōka Suigetsu was the way.

Now.

He had placed a 30-minute timer on the seals.

In 30 minutes, both Bijū would be summoned to the middle of the village and would wreak havoc within it.

This would be fun.

Seijuro could not wait.