Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 117 (Patreon)

The second the bomb went off, Shinji didn't even need to look. His passive sensing mapped the whole layout in his head perfectly. More than half of those lovely, hostile chakra signatures turned around and scrambled toward the noise like ants to spilled sugar. Human beings, shinobi included, remained hilariously easy to manipulate with loud noises. Since everyone was currently crowding the loud side of the building, they just slipped right into the mansion from the quiet ignored side.

"Pardon the intrusion," he muttered to absolutely no one.

He gave the porch a lazy tap with his foot, and a thick, jagged stone pillar shot out of the dirt, slamming into the mansion’s double doors with a violent crunch. The heavy wood exploded into a rain of splinters. Somewhere inside, a maid let out a high-pitched scream, but nobody was going to notice that over the absolute racket his clones were making down the road. A few civilian staff members froze in terror. Naturally, the team just walked right past them. If you aren't carrying a weapon and you aren't the target, you basically don't exist.

Shinji broke into a sprint, heading directly toward the closest signature he could feel. Since the majority of the guards were running toward the front gate to get blown up by his lovely exploding clones, any signature staying put was guaranteed to be a friendly, or at least a neutral. It narrowed down their checklist beautifully. He was actually feeling pretty optimistic that they would wrap this up and find their guy pretty fast.

Naturally, the universe took that optimism and threw it right in his face.

The first room they burst into turned out to be some kind of high-end lounge, absolutely packed with expensive clutter, velvet couches, and enough liquor to keep a small nation thoroughly hungover. A handful of richly dressed merchants were wasted, slurring nonsense to the ceiling. But more importantly, four nin with bright red, flushed faces were sitting right there. They looked up at the sudden, violent entrance with a hilarious mix of alcohol-induced sluggishness and sudden, panicked alarm.

"Well, look what we have here," Shinji said, flashing a quick grin. "Did we interrupt happy hour?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He just made a quick gesture with his left hand, and his team was already on it.

"On it," Dan muttered, already moving.

"Don't let them blink," Shinku added, flanking right.

A hail of shuriken and kunai whistled, forcing the drunken nin to duck and scatter. The squad sprinted right behind the flying steel, closing the distance for close-quarters combat. Jutsus were a total no-go here if they could help it. The motto of the shinobi is to avoid unnecessary noise and combat, after all, and throwing a fireball inside a mansion is a great way to invite the whole neighborhood to your party.

Shinji glanced around the room, taking in the scenery. Right in the center of the lounge, one particularly fat, wealthy merchant was shouting at his men to teach them a lesson. He was forcefully hugging a very reluctant, terrified-looking servant girl, using her like a human shield. How incredibly ungentlemanly.

"Hey, buddy. Catch," Shinji murmured.

He snatched a heavy bottle of imported sake from a nearby table and tossed it. The fat man saw the glass flying straight at him and pulled the poor girl right in front of his chest. It was a classic, cowardly move. But to his absolute disbelief, the bottle didn't follow a straight line. It curved mid-air.

"Huh?"

It was a beautiful, physics-defying little arc that bypassed the girl and connected right with the side of his head.

The bottle shattered beautifully. The rich man let out a pathetic scream, his knees giving out as he crumpled into a heap of expensive silk and expensive wine. The servant girl screamed in fright too, scrambling away from him on all fours. The other rich men in the room barely even registered the violence because they were so deep in their drunkenness. They just continued to babble complete nonsense to their empty glasses.

Shinji glanced toward his squad just in time to watch the room fully descend into chaos.

"Watch your left, Rei!" Shinku called out, parrying a sloppy strike.

Dan ducked right under a wild kunai swing and drove a brutal elbow into a shinobi's throat, hitting him hard enough to make the guy choke. The enemy staggered backward right into Rei, who slid across the wet, alcohol-soaked floor and stabbed the man's lower back.

The shinobi collapsed, trying to scream.

"Sorry, we don't need that kind of noise," Dan muttered, planting a kunai through his forehead before the sound could even come out.

Across the room, Shinku was fighting two guys at once with a dead serious face, clearly doing his absolute best not to get shanked. One drunk nin came flying at him with a blade while the other tried to weave hand seals right behind him.

Shinku didn't even hesitate. He kicked a heavy wooden table, flipping it sideways into the seal-user with a loud, splintering crash. Bottles exploded everywhere, spraying alcohol across the room.

Then Shinku twisted. One step, one quick slash.

CHK!

The blade-user lost three fingers and immediately started shrieking, staring at his own hand in disbelief.

The second shinobi lunged through the broken table debris with a roar.

Dan intercepted him halfway.

WHAM!

Dan slammed a forearm into the guy's jaw, spun with the momentum, then bounced him face-first off a sake shelf, showering the entire room in shattered glass and expensive liquor.

"And stay down," Dan muttered.

By now, the whole room smelled like blood and sake.

One of the enemy nin finally managed to actually complete a jutsu. "Katon—"

Shinji tapped his foot.

BLORP.

The floor underneath the man's legs instantly liquefied into a deep, swampy sinkhole. The nin dropped chest-deep into the floor with a startled yelp. "Wait, what?"

Rei immediately buried a kunai in his throat.

FWIP!

Dead.

Another enemy tried jumping backward to buy some space, but Shinji tapped his foot twice this time.

BWOOOMP!

A circular patch of mud exploded around the guy's feet and hardened like wet cement. The nin panicked, trying to wrench himself free. Dan rewarded the effort by driving a kunai straight through his ribs.

The remaining two guys finally realized they were losing badly, which was honestly pretty observant of them. One spun toward the window to escape, while the other tried forming hand seals.

Shinji raised a finger lazily.

Two stone pillars erupted from the floor.

DOOM! DOOM!

Both pillars shot upward directly between the enemy shinobi's legs.

"..."

"..."

There was a tiny, horrifying moment of absolute silence.

Then—

AAAAAAGH!!

Both men folded with identical noises of devastation.

Shinku visibly winced.

Dan physically looked away.

"Ooof, that is rough," Rei flinched, covering her own face.

The two nin collapsed sideways, clutching themselves while making sounds no grown adult should ever make in public. Shinji pointed politely at them.

"Yeah, go ahead and finish them."

His team did. A few quick slashes later, the room finally went quiet, except for the steady dripping of spilled alcohol and the muffled cries of the frightened women. Shinji casually scanned the faces of the dead ninja and the unconscious rich men before shifting his gaze toward the bleeding head of the merchant slumped on the floor.

"Too bad, it's a dud," Shinji said, already turning away as his internal radar re-mapped the remaining signatures in the building. Looking around at the state of this place, he wasn't exactly feeling optimistic that they were going to find their guy in the next room either.

Shinji glanced over his shoulder at his squad. "Shinku, wake him up and ask him where they put our guy."

Shinku stepped over a broken bottle, reached into his pouch, and pulled out a small, amber glass vial. He popped the stopper and shoved the neck right under the fat merchant's nose.

The reaction was instantaneous. The man’s eyes flew wide open. His chest heaved as he let out a series of choked, weird wheezing sounds, his limbs flailing blindly in pure panic. Terrified out of his mind, the merchant scrambled backward, trying to flee by crawling away on all fours like a frantic crab.

Shinku didn't even blink. He planted a heavy boot right into the man’s ribs, stopping his clumsy escape short, and slipped his chakra into the man's network, dragging him straight into a genjutsu.

The merchant went rigid. For ten agonizing seconds, the room echoed with his wild, blood-curdling screams as whatever horrific illusions Shinku was feeding him took root in his mind. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the genjutsu snapped. The guy blinked, collapsing back onto the floorboards as he wept uncontrollably. He whimpered and blubbered through his tears, screaming that he would answer absolutely anything, just please, please make it stop.

"Alright, let's make this easy," Shinku said, leaning down. "Where is the target?"

The merchant just shook his head frantically, sobbing that he didn't know anything about their guy.

Shinji squatted down, grabbing the man by his collar to force him to look up. "Simpler question then. Did your guards bring anyone new into the mansion tonight? A prisoner? Maybe a body?"

The merchant violently shook his head from side to side, tears and snot smearing across his flushed face. He wailed that he genuinely didn't know. He kept crying that he wasn't lying, swearing to whatever gods would listen that he was telling the absolute truth.

Dan leaned back slightly, casting a brief glance toward Shinji. "He might really not know, Taichou."

Shinji let out a dry chuckle. Yeah, of course that much was obvious. The guy looked so utterly pathetic right now, leaking fluids and trembling like a leaf on the floorboards, that if he was actually acting, the man seriously deserved an Oscar.

"Which means," Dan muttered, his brow furrowing as he looked at the weeping merchant, "our guy might have already been killed and disposed of before he even reached the mansion."

Great. Talk about the absolute worst-case scenario.

"Let's not assume the worst just yet," Shinji said, standing up and dusting off his hands. "Let's check the next spot."

Shinku nodded, simply delivering a swift backhand to the merchant's jaw that knocked the man unconscious.

Shinji took the lead, heading out of the lounge and toward the staircase with his senses flaring. They were heading up to the second floor next. If their guy wasn't up there, then their options were officially down to the basement, where that many bizarre blob of tightly bunched chakra signatures was just sitting around down at the very bottom.

On the way up, four civilian guards suddenly rounded the corner holding baton-looking weapons.

"Step aside, boys," Rei muttered.

They didn't even have time to raise them. The squad didn't slow down for a single second as Shinku and Rei casually smacked them to sleep on the way past.

They moved like shadows up the stairs, pulling up short in front of a heavy wooden door on the upper landing.

"Two signatures inside," Shinji whispered, gesturing toward the frame.

Dan took point, bracing his shoulder against the wall as he firmly gripped the handle. He threw the door wide open, his body prepared to dodge a hail of senbon, kunai, or shuriken flying out of the dark.

Except, there was absolutely nothing. No steel, no traps, not even a twitch.

Instead, the room revealed itself to be a perfectly ordinary bedroom, where two Kaigan nin were stretched out on separate beds, dead to the world and snoring rhythmically.

Shinji stared at them for a flat second, deeply amused. "Are you kidding me right now?"

Seriously, for professional ninja to sleep through an entire front-gate demolition and a screaming merchant downstairs? The comfortable, easy life of corporate payroll must have seriously dulled their shinobi reflexes.

Shinji shook his head and gestured away from the room. "Don't waste the time. Close it and keep moving."

There was no point wasting energy on guys who can sleep through getting raided. Leaving the sleeping beauties to their sweet dreams, Shinji turned on his heel and began a rapid, quiet run down the stairs, bypassing the main level to head straight for the basement.

They ignored everything else on the way down, barreling past a dozen closed doors and rounding a sharp corner before pulling up short in front of a pair of reinforced double doors. Two civilian guards were stationed out front, looking very confused and very out of their depth.

"Don't even think about it," Rei muttered, effortlessly backhanding both of them into unconsciousness in a single smack.

Shinku stepped up, grabbing the heavy iron handle, and pushed. The door creaked open with a long, agonizing whine.

Shinji crossed his fingers, desperately hoping their guy was behind this door. If he wasn't, they had just burned a ridiculous amount of time for absolutely nothing.

But as the heavy door swung fully open, the sight that greeted them made everyone frown. While it wasn't exactly surprising coming from a shady trading company like this, it still sucked to look at. Worse, they didn't find a single trace of their missing contact. Instead, dominating the center of the massive underground room was a giant iron cage. Inside it, huddled tightly together on the floor, were dozens of women of various ages and little boys, all of them strapped into heavy, oversized iron shackles that looked far too large for their wrists and ankles. The younger kids were shivering, while the older women immediately glared out through the bars, their faces twisted into masks of pure, defensive anger the moment they saw the squad.

Dan stepped closer to the bars, his brow furrowing deeply as he looked back at Shinji. "Taichou... it’s just prisoners in here. Women, a few kids. If there is anyone else down here, could he be in a hidden room or something?"

Shinji let out a long sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. "No. Unless our guy suddenly decided to switch sides, put on a Kaigan uniform, and went up to patrol the front gate during the explosion, he isn't here. This is it. These are all the signatures in the mansion."

The mental map in his head finally clicked into place. The nine stronger signatures he had picked up earlier weren't guards. Just the older Uzumaki mixed in with the rest of the clan. Everyone packed together this tightly had turned into one messy blob on his radar.

"So, what do we do with them?" Dan asked, gesturing toward the cage. "We can't exactly just leave them here."

"They aren't our problem," Shinku cut in. He glanced over at Shinji, his eyes practically screaming, 'This failed side-quest is on you, boss.' "We're already running behind. Any more delays and we risk compromising the main objective."

"Back off, Yuhi. It's not the Taichou's fault the mission went sideways," Dan argued, stepping in to defend him. "Things get messy in our line of work all the time. We just have to adapt and improvise."

Shinji appreciated Dan trying to play peacemaker, but his mind wasn't even tuned into their bickering. His attention had just been hijacked by a single, glaring detail.

The hair.

Every single one of the kidnapped victims huddled in that cage had vibrant red hair. It was the exact same shade as Kushina's.

No way. Could it really be?

Shinji ignored his squad, stepping right past them to the iron bars. He leaned down slightly, looking at the girls near the front. "Are you guys... Uzumaki?"

The women didn't answer. They just kept glaring at him, silently pulling the younger kids further back into the shadows.

Shinji let out a soft breath, deliberately softening his expression and dropping his voice into a gentle, non-threatening tone.

"Look, we're Konoha shinobi," he said. "We're actually on a mission to rescue Uzumaki refugees. We're not here to hurt you." He paused, letting the words sink in before dropping the ultimate password. "I actually know an Uzumaki back home. Kushina. We went to the Academy together." He gave a small chuckle. "Seriously, she is a total menace when she is hungry. Every single time we get ramen at Ichiraku, I have to guard my bowl or she will swipe the naruto cakes right out from under my nose."

The name worked like magic.

A teenage girl near the front, maybe sixteen, blinked through her tears and stared up at him. She looked at his face, then at his relaxed posture, before letting out a shaky breath.

"He... I think he is telling the truth," she whispered hesitantly. "He knows Kushina."

Just like that, the thick wall of hostility collapsed. A massive wave of relief and fragile hope washed over the cage, and a dozen voices suddenly started pleading, begging the squad to open the doors and let them out.

"Don't worry," Shinji told them, giving them a reassuring nod. "We're going to get you out of there."

Behind him, Shinku threw him a deeply disapproving look, but Shinji ignored it. He kept his eyes on the teenage girl. "So it is true? You guys are all Uzumaki refugees?"

She nodded quickly, wiping her face.

Shinji swallowed a curse. He knew it. There was absolutely no way you get that many redheads bunched together in a basement by sheer coincidence.

"How did you even end up here?" he asked.

"The Kaigan trading company... they set us up," the girl whispered, her hands trembling against her heavy shackles. "When our village fell, they told us they would help us escape the war zone. They promised to take us to a safe house in another country for a fee. But the second we got onto their ship, they drugged our food. We woke up in this room already in chains."

Shinji's mind started racing. He leaned in a bit closer. "Do you know if there are any other Uzumaki groups captured besides you guys? Anyone else from Kushina’s family or friends? Were they on a different transport?"

The girl shook her head helplessly, fresh tears spilling over. "I don't know... everyone in this cage was on the same ship. They separated us from the others at the docks. We haven't seen anyone else since we landed."

He stepped back, quickly counting heads through the bars. It wasn't a massive number, but it was big enough to mean there could be other holding facilities scattered all along the coast. This was getting incredibly worrying. If the population of Uzushio was currently scattering across the sea in desperate escape groups, tracking them down in the middle of a war zone was going to be an absolute nightmare.

Then again, knowing Kushina, she definitely wasn't the type to flee her burning country while her people were still fighting if she had any choice in the matter. There was a very high chance she was still trapped on Uzushio.

"Taichou."

Dan's voice finally snapped Shinji out of his spiral. He blinked, looking over at his teammate. "What?"

"What about the prisoners?" Dan said, gesturing urgently toward the padlocked iron door. "We can't just leave them, right?"

Yeah, great question. What were they supposed to do with them?

They were in enemy territory on a strict timeline, and they simply didn't have the luxury of spare manpower to escort sixteen traumatized people back to safety. But on the flip side, they couldn't exactly just turn around and abandon them to a human trafficking ring either. Especially not when this whole operation clearly fell under the category of bloodline theft. Considering the Uzumaki clan were historical, blood-tied allies of Konoha, stealing their people wasn't just a crime against the Land of Whirlpools, it was a direct act of theft against the Hidden Leaf itself.

"We have to save them, Taichou," Dan suggested, looking at Shinji. "We can't just leave them here."

"We can, and we should," Shinku cut in, crossing his arms. "I have said this already, Dan. They aren't our objective. If we compromise the mission for this, we risk everything. Including our own lives."

Shinku’s logic was straight out of the standard shinobi handbook, but Shinji wasn't really in the mood to run this squad like a soulless corporate office.

"We're saving them," he said, his casual tone instantly ending the argument before it could spiral.

Dan looked visibly relieved, but Shinku was pissed. The older jonin opened his mouth to protest, but Shinji just waved a hand to cut him off.

"Think about it," Shinji explained. "Our primary contact is gone, and we have zero leads on where he went. Instead of running around blind, this is actually our best move. We're going to liberate this mansion and turn it into our temporary base. We'll round up the rest of the muscle, squeeze them for whatever they know, and figure out a way to cross over to the Land of Eddies. It keeps the civilians safe, and it gives us some breathing room to actually map out a plan. It's a win-win, right?"

He gave a slight, meaningful tilt of his head toward the ceiling. "Besides, who knows? These guys might have a much safer way to get us across the water. Kaigan clearly has some kind of shady deal with Kiri that keeps their ships from getting blasted out of the water."

That bit of strategy actually seemed to pierce Shinku's armor. The older Yuhi jonin let out a tight breath, reluctantly accepting the idea.

Before anyone could say anything else, Shinji’s senses flared.

"Alright, heads up," he murmured, his voice dropping. "We've got company."

Dan and Shinku froze, their hands moving naturally toward their weapon pouches.

"They figured out something is wrong, and they're heading down right now," Shinji added. "Take them out in the hallway before they get anywhere near the cells."

Nobody wasted a second. They blurred out of the room, leaving the door behind them.

With the hallway thoroughly taken care of, Shinji turned his attention back to the massive iron cage. He walked right up to the thick metal bars and slapped the iron grid with a burst of force.

KRRRAANG.

The thick metal bars groaned and violently bent around the shape of his palm. He delivered another rapid, heavy smack right beside it, shoving the warped iron aside until the bars peeled back far enough to leave a clean, wide hole that was the perfect size for a small doorway.

"Alright, it's open," he said, casually shaking out his knuckles as if he had just wrestled with a stubborn pickle jar instead of tearing through reinforced iron. "Come on out."

The Uzumaki captives blinked in awe before a wave of pure relief took over. They crawled through the gap one by one, a chorus of soft, tearful voices thanking him over and over again.

"Don't celebrate just yet," he said, gesturing to the heavy iron bands still clinging to their wrists and ankles. "You're going to have to deal with those shackles for a little bit. My team is hunting down the guys with the keys. Look at the bright side, walking around with extra weight is great for training, right?"

The terrible little joke actually managed to pull a few fragile smiles from the older women.

Noticing the hollow look in the younger kids' eyes, he brushed a thumb across the storage seal inked into his combat glove. With a soft poof of smoke, a massive pile of food supplies, rations, preserved meats, fresh bread, and sweets he'd accumulated and meticulously saved in his personal stash materialized on a wooden table.

"Go ahead, dig in," Shinji said, nudging a jar of preserved fruit toward a shivering little boy. "Fill your stomachs first. You've all had a rough time, and nobody can think straight on an empty stomach. Eat until you're full."

A sixteen-year-old girl took a hesitant step forward, grabbing a piece of fresh bread and tearing it in half to hand to one of the younger kids. Within seconds, the initial hesitation dissolved, replaced by the warm, deeply wholesome sight of a starving clan finally eating a real meal in safety.

Shinji just leaned against the wall, quietly watching them eat, but his focus wasn't entirely in the room. Through his sensing, he noticed that the muffled, chaotic clash out in the hallway wasn't going as smoothly as expected. Rei and Shinku's chakra signatures were actually being pushed back step by step here and there.

Without even breaking his relaxed posture, Shinji casually tapped his foot on the ground. A violent surge of chakra traveled straight down the corridor through the stone floor, sending a cluster of jagged stone pillars erupting directly beneath the five enemy signatures. Four of the signatures dimmed and vanished from his radar.

But the fifth one? That signature managed to cleanly dodge the sudden eruption.

Oh? Not bad for a corporate hire.

Shinji tapped his foot a second time. A relentless wave of spiky stone pillars shot up in a rapid chain all along the narrow corridor. The Kaigan nin's signature flickered wildly, dodging left and right with impressive agility as they scrambled backward, completely abandoning the fight to escape toward the stairs leading to the first floor.

Shinji didn't even move from his spot by the wall. With another subtle flex of his chakra, a thick, solid stone wall materialized directly over the staircase, cleanly blocking the runner's exit route. A second later, a heavy rumble vibrated through the foundation. The guy was already using a jutsu to violently blast through the barrier.

The moment the enemy signature tried to leap through the newly destroyed slab of stone, Shinji flipped his chakra and turned the ground into a thick, mucky swamp. Surprisingly, the Kaigan nin somehow anticipated the trap, twisting mid-air to avoid the swamp. The guy vaulted straight up to the first floor, while dodging a fast hail of shuriken and kunai thrown by Dan and Shinku, who had pursued him into the stairwell.

Before the squad could pin him down, the nin signature burst out of the upper level and moved rapidly across the estate grounds, quickly putting distance between himself and the mansion until he was completely outside of Shinji's immediate attack range.

Yep. He was officially too far gone. Shinji could theoretically throw a massive, wide-range earth jutsu at him across the courtyard, but sending his jutsu that far out meant spending a ridiculous amount of chakra. Totally not worth the effort.

Shinji casually stepped over to the basement door, slid it open, and shouted down the hallway to his team. "Don't chase him! Let him go. If he’s trying to lure you into a trap, it's not worth the trouble."

He turned back around to face the cage, his expression instantly melting back into a relaxed, easygoing smile. He gave the huddled Uzumaki women a reassuring nod. "I'm going to head upstairs to hunt down those keys for your shackles. Just relax, get some food in you, and wait here for me, okay?"

The women and children smiled back, a few of the younger ones waving timidly. Just as his hand touched the doorframe, the sixteen-year-old girl who had spoken up earlier took a step forward, her oversized chains rattling loudly against the floor.

"Um... wait," she called out. Her voice was shaking, but there was a desperate, fragile kind of hope in it. "Are you... are you going to save Kushina and everyone else on the island too, Mr. Shinobi?"

Shinji paused, turning his head back to look at her. He took in her anxious expression, then glanced down at the small characters stitched into the tattered fabric of her sleeve.

"Honoka, right?" Shinji asked softly, his tone gentle as he gave her a comforting smile. "Yeah. Don't worry. I'm going to save her, and everyone else. Just leave it to us and hang tight."

Honoka’s shoulders visibly dropped, and a tear slipped down her cheek as she smiled back at him. Giving them a quick wave, he quietly closed the door behind him and stepped out into the corridor to regroup with his squad.

Dan walked back over, sheathing his weapon with a tense sigh. "Taichou, that guy got away. If Kaigan really has ties to Kirigakure like we suspect, he might bring back massive reinforcements. Or worse, he could alert Kiri to our presence before we even set foot on the island."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Shinji said. A massive grin broke across his face as he slapped Dan on the shoulder to lighten the mood. "That’s exactly why I already left a Shadow Clone chilling just outside the mansion grounds. Relax, the guy isn't going anywhere."

Dan blinked, a wave of pure relief hitting him as he let out a low chuckle. Shinku, on the other hand, just stood there staring a hole through Shinji. He was running through the timeline in his head like a madman, trying to figure out the exact moment Shinji pulled a fast one. ‘When the hell did he even have time to pop a clone?’ They’d been attached at the hip since hitting the docks. He hadn't seen the boy throw a single hand sign since the two clones he used as suicide bombers earlier.

Shinji caught him staring and blinked back, completely misreading the intense, constipated look on the older man's face.

Leaning in, he dropped his voice to a whisper. "Hey, Yuhi... look, if you need to use the bathroom, you can just go. You don't have to stare at me for permission. I mean, we are on a clock, so definitely make it quick, but I did see a restroom right next to the cells."

Shinku’s face turned bright red with a mix of embarrassment and pure annoyance, while Dan snorted loudly into his hand, trying and failing to hide a laugh.

Shinji gave the older man a comforting pat on the arm, ignoring Shinku's death glare, and smoothly kept the conversation moving.

"Anyway, our main priority right now is to quickly sweep the rest of the muscle inside this mansion," Shinji continued, getting back to business. "We need to make sure none of these guys leave this place to go spreading rumors. The cleaner we wrap this up, the easier it will be to slip into the Land of Eddies without anyone noticing. Let's move."

With Shinji’s sensory radar covering the estate, the sweep barely even counted as work. No one could hide, and absolutely no one could run from them. Within a few minutes, twelve more hired nin were either dead or severely injured.

As for the handful of arrogant, wealthy merchant guys running the whole operation… Shinji made it a personal goal to backhand every single one they ran into. Not because their frantic, elitist screaming was incredibly annoying, of course, but purely for, you know, "tactical pacification."

Soon enough, the team had rounded up the entire pathetic bunch and dragged them into a large room.

Dan wiped a smudge of soot from his forehead with the back of his hand, scanning the room. "Well, looks like that is the last of them. Upper floors are secure, right, Taichou?"

Shinji nodded, giving them a casual thumbs-up. "Yep. I can't feel anyone else. Looks clear."

And yes, they went back and tied up the two sleeping idiots too.

Instead of shutting up and cooperating, the bruised merchants immediately started losing their minds.

"Do you even know who we are?!" one of them shrieked, clutching his swollen cheek while glaring at the Konoha ninja. "You Leaf Village thugs aren't getting away with this! The Lord Overseer is going to have your heads for ruining our business!"

"We paid good money for those red-headed freaks!" another one chimed in, spitting a bit of blood onto the floor. "They are our property! You can't just barge into a private estate and steal our merchandise!"

Shinji stared down at the noisy, groveling rich guys and the half-dead mercenaries scattered across the floor. Listening to them whine about human trafficking like they had just lost a shipment of cargo made his skin crawl, but it also sparked a sudden, beautiful idea.

"Hey," he said, turning to his team with a mischievous grin. "Let's throw these guys into the iron cage with the heavy shackles. Just flip the script on them."

Dan let out a helpless laugh, a complicated smile spreading across his face. As a straight-laced Konoha shinobi, the sheer irregularity of the idea made him hesitate for a second, but looking back at the sniveling human traffickers on the floor, he couldn't deny how satisfying it sounded. "It’s definitely against protocol... but it’s brilliant. Let them see how it feels to be on the other side of those bars for once."

"I agree," Shinku said. "In fact, I think that might be your best idea so far on this entire mission, Taichou."

Shinji let out a gasp. "Wow, Yuhi. Look at you, actually making a joke! I am so proud. What happened to my stickler, ultra-serious guy?"

Shinku stiffened back up, his face souring as he looked away, though Dan couldn't help but laugh out loud at the sudden crack in the older man's rigid armor.

Rei crossed her arms, looking down at the shivering crowd with a cold, mocking smirk. "So, where exactly is this big-shot overseer you guys keep crying about? Isn't he supposed to be running this place? Looks to me like he abandoned you the second things went south."

Oh, wow, Shinji thought, genuinely amused. Look at her go. The quiet girl can actually talk after all.

The merchants didn’t take the taunts well at all. Their faces twisted into a mix of pure offense and panic, and one of the wealthier-looking men aggressively pointed a shaking finger at her. "T-That’s bullshit! The Lord Overseer is already on his way here with a massive reinforcements! If you Leaf Village bastards stop this mindless aggression right now, apologize, and give back our merchandise, we might actually consider letting you leave this estate alive!"

Rei didn't even blink at the empty threat. She simply glanced over her shoulder at her captain. "Taichou, is there any truth to what this guy is saying?"

Shinji couldn't help but let out a chuckle as he shook his head.

"You guys are painfully gullible," he said, flashing them a pitying grin. "I can sense your boss right now. He’s not out fetching reinforcements. The overseer has been hiding inside a secret room on the top floor this entire time, quietly watching his own men get taken down."

He chuckled again, shaking his head. "It‘s obvious he is just using you all as meat shields to buy himself enough time to pack up the company's valuables and make a run for it."

The entire room went dead silent. The merchants stared up at him in utter disbelief, their confidence instantly shattering.

"No... No, that’s impossible! He wouldn't do that to us!"

"You are lying! You are just trying to mess with our heads!" another one yelled, though the sheer, sweaty panic in his voice gave him away.

"Believe whatever helps you sleep at night," Shinji shrugged, gesturing to Dan and Shinku to start moving them out. "Now, let's get these lovely gentlemen down to their new accommodations. Oh, but don't worry, you won't have to miss him for long. Your boss is going to be joining you guys real soon."

As Dan and Shinku began herding the loudly protesting merchants down toward the basement, Shinji turned his gaze toward the ceiling, tracing the exact floorboard where the overseer was currently sweating through his expensive silk robes.

Evacuating a burning ship was the natural instinct of every corrupt businessman, but unfortunately for the Kaigan company, Shinji was about to make sure the captain went down with the ship, straight into the very cage he bought.