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Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_393
🕑 Added 2025-06-10 02:01:57 +0000 UTCTakuma's dry throat stung as he nervously swallowed. He gazed at one of the captured ROOT agents through a pane of glass, lying on a surgical table. The agent was missing one of his arms from his shoulder.
They were in the medical ward of the facility.
Down the hall, the other three agents recovered from the exact same condition.
"This... I don't understand," he said, bewildered by the sight.
"Jōnin Aramasa was decisive," Barbary said as he, too, observed the duo of iryō-nin work on the surgical injury. "When you claimed the mill workers to be ROOT agents, he verified the claim by checking for death-seals. When he got the confirmation, he immediately ordered their arms removed so they couldn't trigger them."
There wasn't much blood in the operating room because the arms had been removed the day before, when Takuma and other operatives were still imprisoned. Right now, the iryō-nin duo were accelerating the healing to close and stabilise the wound enough to reduce the chances of medical complications during their travel back to Hidden Leaf Village.
"Decisive is a word for it. He was ruthless," Krait commented with pressed lips.
None of them had any sympathy for ROOT agents losing their arms, but lopping off their arms was an extreme choice, even if it was a legitimate one to keep them alive.
When Krait and the assault squad captured the courier agent at the laboratory, they had knocked him out and sealed his chakra with suppression seals so he couldn't trigger the death-seal. At the Torture and Interrogation facility, the agent was kept sedated while Amami searched for information in his mind. It was high-risk because even high-grade suppression seals degraded over time; death seals required less chakra than a D-rank jutsu. Death-seals themselves had some internal contingencies against suppression seals. Similarly, one only needed an extended moment of clarity in the sedated haze to do the deed.
So why didn't ANBU remove the agents' arms if it was safer? Because all of them were shinobi, losing a limb meant losing everything. It was regularly observed that shinobi who suffered from injuries that reduced functionality in an arm or leg, or outright lost one of their limbs, often went into depression and shut themselves off from everyone else. From those observations, it was deduced that lopping an agent's arms would cause them to shut down and close themselves off, which was a problem because Yamanaka's hiden jutsu wasn't the end-all for interrogation. In some cases, information could only be extracted through willing participation and cooperation.
So, even though it was the safer choice, they couldn't discount the possibility that they might need the agent to cooperate in the future and removing one of their arms would destroy any chance of that happening.
"Why do you think they didn't kill themselves the moment they were captured?" asked Takuma as he subconsciously touched his left arm.
He thought about what he would do and couldn't see himself taking his life, but he also didn't know how he would react under pressure in that life-threatening situation. But from what he understood, ROOT agents were indoctrinated and conditioned into being emotionless soldiers. He thought they wouldn't have such problems.
"It's hard to hammer out the self-preservation instinct."
The three operatives turned to see Kakashi, a.k.a. Fox, standing behind them, leaning against the wall. He was dressed in full gear and wearing a fox mask. He stared at the agent through the glass pane.
"The human mind can be surprisingly weak and yet indomitably strong. Even if they're trained to ignore their natural instincts, everything in your body is built to keep you alive. Pain is part of your nervous system to keep you from harming yourself. Not to mention, triggering the death-seals means you have accepted loss or that you don't have a chance at escape. Can you accept that easily?" asked Kakashi.
Takuma thought about it and quickly concluded that he wouldn't accept loss until the last moment, when death was a second away from reaping him. He replied accordingly.
"Three years," Kakashi continued. "These agents have been away from the rest of the agents for three years. They haven't been in contact with the conditioning that would keep them in line with what ROOT would want from their agents. It's time their hold could've weakened."
Takuma thought about it. Was life as an ordinary citizen—as fake as it was—going through the motions that anyone else had perhaps shown them offerings that life had for them outside their role as agents.
"You speak as though you have experience," Barbary said, reverting to his usual jovial self.
"You might be right," Kakashi said as he stepped away from the wall and walked away.
Takuma wondered who he was talking about and tried to search his knowledge, but couldn't remember.
———
.
The return home was fortunately uneventful. Transporting ROOT agents posed no challenge because they were locked using fūinjutsu tighter than a miser's purse string. Because the agents were injured, they decided that carrying them to minimise strain was better. They bound them and carried them on chairs tied to their backs. It slowed them down, but they left at first light and barely made it to the village an hour after dark.
Even though Barbary travelled with them, he held a mission debrief the next day. Amami caught up with them on the details. Campbell wasn't part of the case but joined them because he was their squad leader. It didn't take long after they recalled events for Barbary to end the meeting with a conclusion.
"The decision not to inform the jōnin was the source of the problem that ultimately led to the agent's escape."
Barbary looked at Krait, who made the decision as the case leader.
"I'll take responsibility and step down as the case lead," Krait said with a poker face, hiding his feelings about the matter. It wasn't a decision out of a sense of responsibility. Barbary was going to remove him from the position regardless; this was simply an opportunity for him to save face.
"Ideally, I'd like Kestrel to take the lead, but she's the busiest. Especially, now that we have true agents in our custody."
None of the guards in the laboratory were branded with death-seals. According to the captured scientists, while it was rare, the guards sometimes changed. When Amami interrogated the two guards captured alive, they revealed that all the guards belonged to foreign countries. They were shinobi and chakra users who wanted to start a new life, and someone offered it to them in the Land of Fire in the form of official identities and money in exchange for working as guards for eighteen months.
She would be too busy to serve as the case lead.
Barbary turned to look at Takuma. "That leaves you, Ratel."
While the decision not to inform the jōnin was Krait's, he had asked Takum's opinion, who had agreed because he, too, thought that the captured agent going missing would alert the rest of his team.
Perhaps that's why Barbary wanted Amami as the leader.
"I'll do my best to bring in results," said Takuma.
He could've refused the position in solidarity with Krait to ensure there was no tension among the team, but Takuma wanted to be the case lead because it would give him more control over how the team approached the case. After his run-in with Itachi, he truly wanted to be part of the initiative against ROOT.
Becoming the case lead was his ticket to that.
While there were no other people who could be the leader, Takuma had an inkling that if he refused, the position would go to Campbell, even though the squad leader was busy with his case load.
"I'm looking forward to it," Barbary smiled.
Was it harsh to remove Krait as a case leader after one mistake? Yes, many would argue so. Barbary cared about the results and rewarded those who performed. He didn't explicitly punish those who made mistakes, but sometimes, when you rewarded someone, others were punished.
Campbell Squad's resources were reduced because they had fewer members, but those members were still getting the resources they did when the team was full. Only when the Takuma and Amami joined did it become a problem because the other squads had performed well and were thus rewarded with some of the Campbell Squad funding that was sitting there doing nothing.
However, Takuma didn't see it that way. At least not fully. As Barbary had said in Inahara, there were eyes on the case. This was perhaps his way of showing that he had made changes so that no more mistakes would be made. If he didn't make any changes and the team failed to produce results, he would be blamed for failing to make changes. It was his way of covering his ass—but it wasn't just that. He was taking a risk by putting Takuma as the leader. If he failed, then the obvious would be pointed out. Takuma was too young and inexperienced to be put in charge of something as important as a case with ROOT.
Whatever the reason, Takuma now had a greater opportunity.
He was going to make the most of it.
———
.
Danzo read Rui's report about what had happened in Inahara. It was a well-written piece that provided the facts as they were. Most people tainted information with their biases. It wasn't their fault. Their memories were coloured by their own biases. It was a human condition. So, it was worth appreciating when someone took the time and care to remove their bias and present a picture that was as close as possible to how it actually was.
However, although the report was well done, the contents weren't pleasant.
First, they had lost the laboratory.
He didn't care about the guards because they were outsourced labour. Every time a guard's term ended, and it was time for them to get paid, they were compensated with death. He was regretful about the scientists and their research. Because of how the shinobi society and economy were set up, those trained to become shinobi instead became highly productive labour. Most genin worked all types of odd jobs and were incentivised to take more jobs to earn more money, and thus got trapped in that cycle.
Very few people went into academia, especially those who studied chakra. Losing those scientists meant losing precious talent. Additionally, the last report he had seen from the laboratory was positive, as they were finally seeing progress with their research, so losing access to that updated research was also a great loss.
If there were a silver lining, then it would be that now that the laboratory had been raided, he wouldn't have to continue funding it. It wouldn't have been a question before, but now, he had to be mindful of how he was spending his resources.
Second, he had lost one of his sleeper cells.
It hurt because he planned to activate them soon for a series of missions that were supposed to replace the influence they had lost after his exile from Hidden Leaf. It was only going to be the start of that long journey, but he needed momentum to start it off, so that it would snowball to greater heights.
Now, not only did he need to revise some of his plans, but he had also lost capable agents—agents that took time, effort, and resources to train, which was in short supply these days.
"Yamanaka and Aburame," Danzo muttered to himself.
With just those two clues, it would be viable to narrow down the search radius, but it would take some effort because when he created the framework that ANBU followed, he hired smart and competent people to implement it. His framework made it difficult to find information because ANBU restricted the flow of information.
They needed more to make the job easier and spend less of their precious and limited resources.
"You called, my Lord?"
Danzo looked up at one of his agents, Kon. He glanced at his empty sleeves. A shinobi, who had lost his arm, lost most of his value. However, he saw rage, hatred in the man's heart, and an opportunity to harness it all for his purposes. He didn't know if he would get something out of it, but there was no harm in trying.
And right now, he had an opportunity to stoke the fire.
"Can you look at this and tell me what you see?"
Danzo handed the file to Kon, who silently read it for a calm half a second before his eyes widened, his nostrils flared, and a look of red rage flashed over his eyes. It was a rare reaction from a ROOT agent, and he would've put them through corrections to beat that burst showcase of emotion out of him. Emotions weren't unnecessary, but letting them control oneself should be declared a shinobi sin.
"It's him!" Kon's entire body shook as he crushed the file in his grip.
Danzo remembered reading Kon's file from his time at Spring City of Yu. He recalled reading the profile of a shinobi who used Water Release: Eight Tentacles. It was a niche jutsu that wasn't learned by many, and of the few that did learn it, most didn't end up using it because it was difficult to use. So when he saw the same jutsu in Rui's file and saw that the operative was a child, he remembered seeing the same combination on Kon's file. The chances of it being a coincidence were low, so he checked.
The first time, the child was involved in the deaths of multiple of his agents, the capture of one of them, and Kon losing his arm. The second time, the same child was involved in a team of his agents getting captured.
Both times, he had come in ROOT's way.
"It's Takuma", Kon hissed as though his breath had poison on it.
In that moment, Danzo decided to classify Takuma, a shinobi he had heard about once before, as a dangerous element threatening ROOT.
Comments
Xardas2995
How long would you want the timeskip to be? Just curious. I think we will have a rather tight timeline for now. I thought that Arc 10 would end if Takuma joining Itachi's iniative. The memory block cleared up and shadow clone working. Basically a really positive outlook. Yeah. Does not really fit the story, right? :) Now that he became the case lead I am not so sure but we are currently at around 50% of Arc 10. Assuming the lenght of the Arc will be similar to the previous ones.
Pedro Eugenio de Lima
Kind of hoping for a time skip soon...
Barney The Dyno
I genuinely love how you've made the ranks between ninja feel so much more real... but takuma finna be in serious danger if he doesn't pick up the pace
