Naruto: Kage of Kages

It was all going great and casual but it only went downhill from then on . . .

“The updated numbers for the bandit group in the area are around 30 but rumors of a former samurai leading them have also popped up.” Inori started.

“Samurai, while not as versatile as shinobi can wield chakra and so this mission might get reclassified as a top C rank or a low B rank mission.”

“Considering our squand’s strength, I’ll still go ahead and let you all fight it out by yourselves, only stepping in if you screw up.”

The blonde jonin looked at each of her genin, all bearing resolute expressions on their faces, all except Shinka whose expression was unreadable due to her excessive clothing.

Satisfied, Inori pulled out a map which had several red crosses marked.

“This map was provided by the village head and has the locations of all attacks carried out by the outlaws. Based on it, we can narrow down the area where their camp is likely located, enough for us to use sensory jutsu to quickly find them after.” She remarked.

The actual narrowing down was left to the genin however, this mission was a test to see how well they could perform with as little support from their jonin sensei.

Shiki looked over the map and easily figured out the general area the bandits should be caping at, it was not that he was particularly good at information analysis, it was just that the map made it quite simply, the attack locations were spread out so nicely that it left very few possibilities.

With the boy turning ponderous and Shinka being her usual initiative-less self, Mei stepped in once again and circled the target area with a red marker.

“The bandits should be based in this small valley somewhere.” The bespectacled girl declared and Inori nodded in approval.

But Shiki’s eyes near imperceptibly narrowed.

‘This location is perfect to set up an ambush, the bandits are located in a veritable killbox, anyone with even a lick of sense would not camp there.’ He thought and he was not the only one.

“But it’s strange, that is a terrible place to base yourself from, it makes it very easy for enemies to surround you from vantage points. I shouldn’t be complaining since it’ll just make our jobs easier but it’s really weird, their leader is even a samurai, they shouldn’t be lacking this bit of know-how.”

While Shiki was outright suspicious, Mei was just bewildered.

“If the samurai was just a regular foot soldier then it is understandable he is lacking in strategy, the bandits should also be pretty desperate and this position would be well hidden if not for their attacks leading us to it.” Inori gave a possible explanation.

“I suppose.” The Uchiha girl seemed satisfied.

The white haired boy, on the other hand, was only getting more and more suspicious. The alarms his intuition gave off before the mission were gaining justification in real time.

The question was . . .

‘Should I voice out my suspicions?’ Shiki asked himself.

It could give him some insight and destabilize the ambusher’s plans.

Inori would probably let nothing slip even if she was aware but Shinka might.

Then again all it might accomplish is to tip them off that he was aware something might be coming which would only make his life harder.

The boy focused on the paper tag tucked away in his clothes and sensed Tsunade’s location in the same town they were in.

‘With Tsunade-sama here, there should be no problem. Even if I meet a troublesome opponent, I’m confident I can escape long enough to reach her and overturn the situation.’

His thoughts arranged, Shiki elected to keep his suspicions to himself and casually began to discuss an attack plan for the bandit issue with Mei while Shinka just watched without interjecting.

*

Back in her decidedly crappier inn, Tsunade was having a change of heart.

“This whole thing smells off . . .” She spat out, talking to herself with a stinkface that would scare disobedient children into reforming themselves.

Rather than simply waiting around, the Senju princess had taken the opportunity to gather intel from the surroundings.

‘There is no way that bitch Inori would miss something is off, the brats are too inexperienced to notice the discrepancies but there’s no way she is.’ Tsunade thought to herself.

Clearly, Inori was not very well liked, especially by Konoha’s female population, a true mystery why that was the case . . .

A mystery for sure . . .

‘There’s nothing surprising about that whore being involved in shady business, assigning blame is not what I should be doing right now.’ The Senju princess internally declared while her address for Inori got steadily worse.

“Find out how they’re planning to mess with Shiki and set up a counter ambush.” Tsunade declared her course of action.

‘He may be a brat but he’s OUR brat! No one can mess with him without my say so.’

With that final thought, the Senju princess moved out.

But for all it was worth, no one involved, not Shiki and his allies, not the third party being used by Konoha’s shadows, not even the shadows themselves knew how everything was about to spin out of control.

*

Night had fallen and every party involved in what should have been a simple C rank mission moved with efficiency.

Team 6 led by Inori set off for the mountains, triggering a signal that reached a party hiding outside everyone’s sensing range.

Shadows trailed the team with impeccable stealth and behind them, a shadow clone of the Senju princess followed, the real one was already scoping out the bandits.

All the while, a shadow clone of Shiki’s made with so little chakra that after it was suppressed, it became nearly impossible to sense, creeped out of hiding and ran the Three Bodies Breathing method to restore its chakra to its limit, half of the boy’s capacity.

Meanwhile, Tsunade who was watching the bandit camp could not help but feel she was missing something.

After finding no real suspicious points in the bandit camp, at least none that she could observe from a safe distance, the Senju princess expanded a search radius but could not find anything resembling a plot or ambush.

By this point, she was convinced something was wrong.

Like Shiki, she trusted her gut instincts. They might not be as sensitive as Shiki’s who smelled something was off the moment he was told of the mission, but they were no less accurate.

‘The only two options are that the bandit camp is hiding a trap I can’t see from afar or that the ambushers are outside by search radius . . .’ Tsunade pondered.

It was hard to believe in the former, she was quite thorough with her investigation of the camp, even if she had to make it from a distance.

There was simply no place to hide anything, the bandits looked more like refugees, they had little to no supplies, carts, carriages and their simple tents could not hide anything.

And so the only remaining explanation was that the ambushers were beyond her search radius which only made the situation more difficult for them and complicated information transmission as well as coordination massively.

‘In this case, the only explanation is that they know that succubus is leading the brats and are thus wary of her sensory abilities.’ Tsunade concluded.

‘But up until now, things pointed to her involvement. It was her way of explaining the mission that triggered Shiki’s mental alarms. There is no way she isn’t involved!’

This kind of information analysis was not her strong suit but she was by no means bad at it. This time however, she was stumped.

‘Is she being targeted too?’ The Senju princess questioned.

It made no sense though. Tsunade had plenty of less than polite descriptives she could assign to Inori but she was one of the village’s most valuable operatives, it made no sense sacrificing her for such a small deal, Shiki was not a threat to no one yet, he wasn’t a valuable enough target.

At that moment, she felt the dispersal of her shadow clone.

“They’re close, no more time to think.”

Unable to come to a conclusion, she could only play it by the ear, hide in the vicinity and wait for the imminent arrival of Team 6 . . .

+++++

Hey, Author here!

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I’m trying to become a full time Author now and I’m not going to be starting any new novels just so I can make sure this one is properly completed.

Find those sweet advanced chapters on pa-treon.com/lusoba without the -