The Southern Border Fort's command center felt different upon their return.
The air usually smelled of boredom and occasional whetstones to sharpen shinobi tools.
When Team 11, or rather, the barely conscious body of Ryugo carried by the masked Tetsu, everyone in the camp started to make assumptions. For fifteen minutes already, they had entered the commander Batto's tent, without any information getting out.
Ryugo stood before Commander Batto's map table, his posture rigid despite the pronounced limp and the fresh, stark bloodied bandages visible beneath his torn flak jacket. Tetsu hovered a half-step behind, his arms crossed but his fingers tapping on his biceps in a regular rythm. Tension was at an all-time high.
Mumei was there too, off to the side, his face pale. He'd heard the abbreviated report from the lookouts. He saw the blood, the burns, the hollow exhaustion in Ryugo's eyes that spoke of a fight far beyond a standard infiltration. Despite not having the necessary clearance, he had been allowed since it concerned chunins who were, only two weeks ago, still his students.
[Commander Batto – Lv. 58 Jonin]
[Zenitsu Takeda - Lv. 51 Jonin]
[Kirito Shikabane - Lv. 31 Chunin]
Vice-commander Zenitsu Takeda looked them over, his scarred face unreadable. His gaze lingered on Ryugo's injuries, then on the absolute lack of a third team member. Zenitsu was never close to his younger sister, but her disappearance was a stain on the Takeda's reputation.
"Report," Zenitsu said, in a severe voice that seemed to surprise even Kirito, his own disciple.
Ryugo didn't embellish. He spoke in flat, precise sentences, laying out the facts like pieces on a shogi board.
"The dam was a prepared kill zone. Two River Samurai, ten Tanigakure shinobi. Among them, four operatives of Tanigakure: one jonin, three chunin"
The voice was like thunder to the vice-commander, his judgement soon turning into shame. They had thrown newly promoted chunins to a suicide mission.
The commander Batto asked: "Please continue"
"They were expecting an investigation team. They baited us, and used the splitting of our team to their advantage. After using some tricks, Tetsu beat the chunin ninjutsu specialist and I beheaded their captain, a certain Hubei of the Emi clan"
He did not detail the fights. Their information was classified, as the protocols of the Dark Hall Tower wanted it to be.
Batto's eyes narrowed marginally at that. He knew of the Emi's Bladed Defense. To hear a chunin, a child, speak of breaking it was… unsettling.
Then Ryugo reached Ameruyi's part. Despite being famous for their coldness, vice-commander Zenitsu showed immense emotions, his eyes filled with killing intent.
"She eliminated the taijutsu specialist 'Brawler' on the southern platform. Engaged the second chunin, identified as a Dotuki clansman. He used the Kokuen no Mai, which is how we identified his clan. We know neither her status nor the Dotuki operative's real strength. But we know he extracted her alive before we secured the area"
The silence that followed was heavier than the fort's stone walls.
"Alive?", Zenitsu insisted, as if he could not believe that fact
"Alive," Ryugo confirmed, "He retreated when he sensed his captain's death. He took her as a prisoner, not a corpse. A Takeda heir is high-value intelligence"
Jonin Batto leaned forward, his massive hands flat on the table: "And the objective? Sato Ren?"
"Secured" Ryugo said. "And interrogated."
He nodded to Tetsu. The boy stepped forward, placing a sealed evidence scroll on the map, then unwrapped a cloth bundle beside it. Inside lay items that made Batto's seasoned jaw tighten: a distinctive bladed chain with Emi clan engraving on the weights, a small, scorched ceramic gourd that reeked of the peculiar burnt-clay residue of Dotuki alchemy, and three standard-issue Tanigakure forehead protectors, taken not from the bodies, but a hidden stash they found in the dam.
"Proof", Tetsu said softly.
"More than proof," Ryugo continued, his voice dropping, losing none of its sharpness. "Sato Ren confessed. The dam operation wasn't just a border provocation. It was economic warfare. A targeted ploy"
He tapped the map on the Land of Rain's southern agricultural belt. "By controlling the dam, they could have artificially induced a flooding during the critical autumn rice germination period, right after starving the crops. They had the schedules"
Batto's brows drew together: "Starving a few border villages is one thing. Sabotaging a national harvest is an act of war. Why?"
"Leverage," Ryugo stated. "The Land of Rivers isn't the target. Sunagakure is. With our harvest crippled, Amegakure couldn't sell surplus rice. Suna, perpetually resource-starved and with tense relations with Konoha and Iwa, would have only one viable supplier left: the Land of Rivers. They could name their price. They could demand political concessions, safe passage rights, or simply bleed Suna's treasury dry. It's a river ploy to divert wealth and power. Everything", he finished, echoing his own core belief, "driven by money."
The revelation hung in the room. Mumei let out a slow whistle. This wasn't a skirmish; it was the opening move of a complex, dirty economic campaign that used shinobi as scalpels.
Batto stared at Ryugo, really looked at him. The boy was twelve, maybe thirteen by the look of him, covered in the wounds of a fight that should have killed him.
Yet his analysis was ice-cold, strategic on a level that mirrored the late-war brilliance of Hitori himself. He had not only survived a jonin ambush, he had dissected its greater purpose.
"Where is Sato Ren now?" Batto asked, his tone carefully neutral
"He didn't survive the full debrief," Ryugo said, meeting Batto's gaze without flinching. "The methods required to extract the deeper plot… were terminal."
For the first time, Batto saw something in Ryugo's eyes that wasn't calculation or exhaustion. It was a flat, ruthless finality. This kid hadn't just killed an enemy. He had executed a civilian political asset because the man had become a liability to the mission and a witness to their actions. It was a Dark Hall solution, textbook and brutal. But seeing it in the eyes of someone so young sent a cold prickle down Batto's spine.
Ryugo initially wanted to trade him for Ameruyi. But he was just an official. His value was only that of the knowledge he had. After he broke under Tetsu's interrogation, he was no longer needed.
Be it Batto or Zenitsu, the both of them thought: 'So this is the team captain, the protégé of Inspector Kosuke...'
Batto held that stare for a long moment. The unspoken challenge was there: Will you fault the mission's success?
The commander finally leaned back, the chair groaning. He couldn't. The proof was irrefutable. The intelligence was vital. And they had, against all odds, crippled a dangerous enemy cell and uncovered a major plot.
"You understand that Sato Ren was a personal advisor to a faction within the Rain Daimyo's court," Batto said, not as an accusation, but a statement of political fact. "His disappearance will cause waves. But… the waves from a failed harvest would have been a disaster for Amegakure"
He made his decision. "The mission stands as a success. The evidence will be sent to the Council. Your findings change the strategic picture entirely. I will elevate the mission's ranking to A-rank, alongside the rewards"
[Exceptional contributions have been recognized by Southern Border Fort Commander Batto. Mission 'Dam in the Mist' (B) has been elevated to A-rank]
[Mission rewards have been elevated accordingly (x2)]
[You have received 7000 EXP, 140 Dark Hall Promotion Points, 160,000 Ryô, +2+0 Reputation with the Dark Hall Tower, +200 Reputation with Amegakure Council Of the Rain, River Country Intelligence Network Unlocked, +400 Reputation with Border Commander Batto, +300 Reputation with Mumei & Tetsu]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
"Commander...Can I request one more thing?", Ryugo asked
Commander Batto paused, his eyes shifting to the empty space where Ameruyi should have been. "A prisoner exchange. You want to trade this evidence, and our silence on the broader plot, for the Takeda girl"
"It's the most efficient path to recovery. Amegakure stands little to gain from direct conflict. You said it yourself, you don't have the resources for it," Ryugo demonstrated, "A direct assault on a Tanigakure holding to extract a single prisoner is a high-cost, low-probability operation. A trade is clean. They get to save face and potentially contain the scandal of their operation. We get our teammate back. Then, it is the Council's role to ask compensation through the...regular diplomacy channels "
Batto grunted. It was pragmatic.
It also put the ball in Tanigakure's court, forcing them to acknowledge the captured operative was theirs. "I'll draft the communiqué. A dead-drop negotiation. No official channels. They have forty-eight hours to respond with a location. You two," he looked at Ryugo and Tetsu, "are on medical standby until then. Dismissed."
As they turned to leave, Zenitsu added, his voice low. "Kagutsu."
Ryugo stopped.
"That jonin you killed. Hubei Emi. He was a known entity. A veteran. What you did…", Zenitsu shook his head, a strange mix of respect and foreboding in his gaze, "This is a great feat of war. I am grateful for the extent to which you are ready to go to save Ameruyi. I truly am, on behalf of the Takeda clan. Now get those wounds seen to. You're no good to her dead"
Ryugo gave a shallow, painful nod. "Understood, Vice-Commander"
Outside, in the damp corridor, Tetsu finally spoke, his voice thin.
"Commander Batto was afraid of you. At the end, when you talked about killing Sato", he muttered, "And Zenitsu...It looked like he cared deeply about Ameruyi. How come she never mentioned him? I thought she loathed her family"
Ryugo shook his head, feigning ignorance: "Who knows? We should ask her when we save her"