Naruto: The Outsider’s Resolve
CH_10.24 (390)

The jōnin put all of them in jail, where they were treated like high-risk terrorists. Which wasn't exactly inaccurate when looking at the results of their actions.

They were separated into different cells, stripped of their clothes and gear, subjected to cavity searches for suicide pills, slapped with chakra suppression cuffs while fūin-nin could draw suppression seals directly onto their bodies, and chained to the cell walls to restrict their movement so they couldn't reach the gate and escape.

The cells didn't have bars and were instead closed, reinforced rooms with a heavy iron gate with two slots for peering inside and exchanging things like meal trays. And as if that wasn't enough, they had a dozen armed and vigilant shinobi guards in and near their corridor to keep a constant eye on them.

"This sure is humiliating," said Hopper, the assault squad leader, sitting in the middle of his grey cell with no windows and a single bulb as the source of light. "What did he say when he saw the identification scroll?"

Even though they couldn't see each other, they could still talk with the caveat that the guards would be listening to everything.

Krait had presented the jōnin with a scroll that provided their status as ANBU operatives.

"He said it'll take him time to verify it," Krait replied from the adjacent cell. He lay on his bed, gazing at previous inmates' wall scribbles. There was everything from poems to drawing to allies. "I suspect it will take a day or three if he decides to be petty, which he probably will, given the damage."

The jōnin was deliberately going to contact the headquarters because he was pissed. They had caused a significant problem for the jōnin by conducting an operation in his territory without taking his permission or even informing him about it.

Unlike a Leaf military installation like the Maizuru Quarters, where the jōnin was the formal leader, Inahara was a city. It thus came under the jurisdiction of the Fire Daimyo, the Land of Fire's supreme ruler. The city's major and the region's governor were appointed by the Daimyo and his court, granting them total administrative power, which held true for all cities, towns, and villages in the nation—bar the Hidden Leaf Village, which was considered a special administrative region governed solely by the Hokage and his shinobi.

Inahara's jōnin was there because the city and region around it were a substantial source of business for the Hidden Leaf. Moreover, the city, like the majority of the other major cities in the Land of Fire, hired shinobi as their primary community protection and law enforcement. The jōnin had substantial power, but he was still answerable to the mayor and governor, even though he could shatter their bones before they could register pain.

Thus, they had put the jōnin in a difficult position by destroying property and endangering residents.

"What about the ROOT agents? Where are they?" Takuma asked from the cell across from Hopper.

"They're in custody. Thankfully," Yazo replied and then groaned in frustration. "I should've gone after the runaway." He specialised in hunting rogues. If he were on the runaway capture team, their success chances would've increased.

A trio of assault squad members might also have fared better. Half a dozen more scenarios might have resulted in victory, but that conversation was for mission review when they returned home.

Takuma wasn't looking forward to it.

A few hours later, Takuma stared at the ceiling from his cot. He was so agitated and disappointed that he had allowed the ROOT agent to escape that even the humiliation from getting cavity searched couldn't take centre stage. While they had captured all the other agents, the one escape changed what they would get out of it for the worse.

In the Elemental Nations, the flow of information differed significantly from the age of 24/7 news cycles, the internet, and social media. The primary source of news was still newspapers and radio news, with the majority of people lacking access to television, which only had a couple of channels with limited programming.

Most local news stayed local unless it was a significant matter. Despite how much of a spectacle was created by the river blowing up, ANBU could have buried it with the cooperation of the local administration so that it didn't leave Inahara, and if it did spread somehow, it would be an altered version to reduce suspicion.

And at worst, a rumour.

Takuma was an ANBU operative, but he only knew a small amount about the department's activities and secrets relevant to him. Similarly, it was safe to assume that the existence and locations of sleeper cells were a need-to-know form of information within the ROOT organisation that only a small few knew.

If they had captured all the agents and buried the news, it would've taken a not insignificant amount of time before someone in ROOT would've found that one of their sleeper cells had been exposed. However, having one escaped target meant that ROOT would become aware much faster, reducing what ANBU could do with the captured agents.

The mission was not a failure because captured ROOT agents still held immense value. Even if ROOT knew they'd been compromised, they couldn't uproot everything at a simple risk because doing so wasn't feasible. Simply trying would cost too much, which was a concern now because they lacked the funding from Hidden Leaf.

If an agent knew about a crucial long-term ROOT mission, they couldn't just scrap it and waste all the effort. They would have to assess the situation. If the agent only knew about the mission's existence and none of the crucial details, they would keep the mission alive in the hopes that it would still succeed and even bet on ANBU being unable to get to it because they were busy with other information they deemed more critical.

However, if too much information became available through the captured agent, then ROOT might instead advance the timeline to accomplish their goal and cause more damage in a rush. And all because there was now someone to notify them sooner than the months it would take for them to realise that they had been compromised.

"Fuck," Takuma muttered as he bit the inside of his cheek in frustration.

He had failed to catch the true culprit behind the Maizuru assassinations. The case had significant positives like keeping a competent jōnin commander to oversee a major base overhaul, uncovering a conspiracy that might have resulted in more assassinations, and shutting down an illegal shinobi job market, but none of that changed the fact that the case was still incomplete.

Takuma had made things difficult for the current case, too. If he—his clone—had been more careful while scouting the bunker in the forest and hadn't knocked out the guard, which eventually led to their detection, they could've returned at a later date with an assault squad for a cleaner capture.

In his rush to discover information about his scars, he killed too many guards in the bunker, which meant that Amami had fewer people to interrogate.

And now he had failed again by allowing the ROOT agent to escape.

He made a mistake he couldn't afford to make. Till now, his work was imperfect at best. It had worked till now, but he felt it wouldn't work forever. He had to be flawless if he wanted to advance—and do it fast at that.

Takuma sat on the cot and withdrew into himself. He rested his head between his knees and gently rocked himself. The fear of not achieving his goals was supposed to be the lamp post for his struggle for future survival. He hadn't felt that fear recently. He made ANBU, and his training was going excellently with the help of Shadow Clone Jutsu.

Everything was perfect until it wasn't. Shadow clones were eating away at his overall health, and he'd discovered something terrifying inside his mind.

And now, he was doubting his ability to work.

Campbell and Barbary were happy with his work, so he got access to B-rank ninjutsu as a reward, but that wasn't enough. If he wanted better resources, he needed to climb the career ladder, which required him to become better at his job than the best people around.

Takuma stopped rocking and got off the bed.

His body felt weak because his chakra was sealed. A deep, uncomfortable feeling made him understand and sympathise with the prisoners at Chibumi Copper Mines. His plight couldn't be compared to theirs as he only had his chakra sealed for a few hours while they had suffered for years.

It was suffocating.

He assumed the horse stance and took a deep breath. He pulled his fists to his waist and punched out while breathing out. He breathed in again as he pulled back his arm and repeated the punch routine on loop.

With the knowledge of the future, there was no way to alleviate his stress and fears without giving everything up and leaving his survival to luck, but that wasn't something he was willing to do, so the only way to ease those fears was to work towards his goals.

As long as he gave it his all, he knew there was nothing more he could do to change things.

So, he focused on the sensations of punching. Even though he was punching his arm out, the power also came from his back and lower body. The contractions and relaxations of his muscles produced the force. He felt the movement of his sealed chakra as it reacted to his moves and tried to escape through the tenketsu openings in his hand without him trying, but it was blocked by the fūinjutsu bindings.

The slot in his door opened multiple times as guards peeked inside to see what he was doing, but eventually, he tuned them out along with all the noise and conversation.  Currently, inside the cells with his chakra sealed, what he could do was limited, and that helped ease the burden of constantly moving forward to reach his goals.

His movements were practised to the point that there were no wasted movements, but a hint of erraticism arose thanks to his fretting. As he repeated the simple movements, the erraticism straightened out, and he fell deeper into his single-hearted focus on his body and chakra.

Takuma's eyes snapped open. He was breathing heavily from repeated punches for over two hours. Sweat glistened on his skin, and beads rolled off his body to darken the concrete beneath him

He was distracting himself.

Even if it was only for a day or so, the prison cell forced him to slow down and stay still—something he avoided by distracting himself by devoting himself to his work and training, so his thoughts that he pushed away wouldn't catch up to him.

But eventually, they would.

He thought about the black wall in his mind's central hub—a problem created by the boy—it wasn't his fault. But how could he solve a problem that wasn't his fault if he couldn't first solve a problem of his creation? He needed to sort himself out so he had the strength to fight whatever the boy had left behind.

Running away from himself wasn't going to work.

Takuma's face twisted in bitter reluctance, but he closed his eyes and let his thoughts wander instead of focusing on the sensation of punching.

He continued to repeat the simple punch movement, which lacked the single-minded stability from before; the strikes were still polished but lacked fluidity. His decisions, actions, morals, relationships—everything came to him and floated away, and his movements reflected how he bore those things.

All of which was counterbalanced by his failures.

Takuma continued to punch until he couldn't anymore. Until the very end, his form didn't improve. But that day, he slept just a bit better than usual despite the cell paling in comparison to his home.

At the end of it all, he realised with a pang in his chest that he missed Maruboshi despite not being away for long.

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