NOVEL NEXT Team Rina
The old village head had proven true to his word by giving Rina and her team a wealth of information on the Nettou clan’s whereabouts, along with some rather surprising facts. For one, they weren’t the first to come to the village in search of the Nettou clan, and more importantly, they weren’t the only shinobi to do so.
The shinobi before them were not as friendly, accommodating, or patient as Rina was, in fact, the ‘suffering’ the old village head lamented the Nettou clan had brought him was due to the attention of these shinobi.
The village head had little issue harbouring the Nettou clan within the village, even going as far as protecting them from the shinobi that had come before until he couldn’t. Fortunately for him, the shinobi did not retaliate against the village, instead they simply hoisted the Nettou clan away and deep into the forest.
Rina’s team was provided a guide through the tropical, volcanic jungle that brought them to the last known location of the Nettou clan and from there on her team continued the search on their own. Once their guide left them to their search, Rina did the obvious and expected: report back to Elite Jounin Fuguki Suikazan.
While she was in charge of the mission and could just as well report directly to Yagura, there was little time to waste sending a message all the way to his desk that would surely be filled with many other priority messages regarding the progress of the war.
Fuguki, on the other hand was her direct superior on the field and commanded the closest squadron of allies that could help act against these unexpected shinobi should they prove difficult. The village head explained well and in detail that these were not Kirigakure shinobi after all, and he counted their numbers as twelve.
It was troubling information but nonetheless, Rina’s team carried on with their mission. The guide had dropped them off near the edge of the jungle, saying that the Nettou and the shinobi that carted them off might have headed for shore and true enough, a preliminary search of the surrounds found proof of activity nearest to the shore, particularly in the way of felled trees and strung up, beat up bodies.
Rina scowled at the sight of the victims, pools of blood soaked the ground beneath them and she knew that for whatever reason these few had spoken against their shinobi captors and paid with their lives for it.
“We have to help them.” Sakai, Rina’s over eager Genin demanded, his kunai the first to cut down the strung up bodies, “That’s why we’re here isn’t it?”
Rina spared a glance at the young boy, this would be the first he’d see of such unjust horrors beyond the walls of Kirigakure itself and her heart went out to him and the girls who quickly followed his example. A couple years ago she would be just as wet behind the ears and full of eager justice but right now she was their team leader and couldn’t let the enemy weigh her hand.
“We will but we have to be careful about how.” She tapped her foot with some impatience; she had sent out her fellow Chuunin to go on scouting the area, follow the rather obvious trail of terror that the Nettou clan’s abusers left behind and find them at the source. But a night and half a day had passed already since then.
Just as Rina started to fear the worst the jungle rustled behind them and out came her team medic with a grave look on. Rina quickly walked up to her, “What did you find?”
“I found them and what they’re up to but it might be best if I show you.”
Rina nodded and ordered the team to follow silently, the Genin, Sakai especially, had been a lot more compliant since coming across the corpses of what they presume are innocents and so they followed without making a noise.
The team medic rounded through parts of the jungle the team would have surely gotten lost in had they come without a guide or an updated map. She leaped onto the trees and the team followed until they came upon a rather artificial clearing. Several of the trees here were chopped down or in the process of by a handful of men and even women who weakly smacked their axes against the wet tree bark.
The medic pointed, drawing the team’s attention to four shinobi overlooking the labour of their prisoners. Some weren’t even paying attention, instead played games with dice and a board or drank as they walked back and forth between the same tree stumps.
There was only one shinobi who actually bothered to keep a good watch on the prisoners and the surroundings. However, even with the shinobi in sight Rina couldn’t tell whether they were rogue-nin or some other element, but based off just how organized they were; enough to hold prisoners into forced labour, specifically Bloodline wielders, Rina feared they might be shinobi of a hidden village.
The medic waved the team’s attention back on her as she whispered, “There’s more.” And leapt back into the jungle.
After some long hour of walking ensuring not to be caught by any of the labourers forced to chop and transport wood, Rina’s team arrived at the reason for all the timber.
Covered by an intense growth of trees and shrubbery as well as the natural mist of geysers was a fishing wharf with a ship far too big for it locked in port. The ship itself was as broken down as the wharf but the important fact was the camp of chained Nettou clan women and children working on restoring it to function at the barked orders of another four shinobi.
Sakai couldn’t take it anymore apparently because he hissed, his voice barely a whisper, “We can take them, there are at least thirty Nettou clan members here, some of them will be able to use their abilities to help-”
Rina’s hand clamped over his mouth before he could say anymore, her eyes brimming with an anger she didn’t know she had as she scolded the boy down, “We’re here to bring the Nettou clan back to Kirigakure, not to use them to fight against our enemies. Shinobi are of a different calibre, you are of a different calibre than civilians, whether or not they’re Bloodline wielders. If they could fight don’t you think they would?”
The boy seemed to calm for a moment and Rina released him as she ordered the team to withdraw back to safer space. They travelled far enough from the wharf that patrols, should there be any, wouldn’t catch them.
“The village head said they were over twelve shinobi that came knocking, we’ve only counted eight heads. So either the Nettou we cut down from those trees actually succeeded in killing four of their shinobi captors or four more are hidden somewhere we haven’t checked yet.”
Realization dawned on Sakai and he shrank, “Sorry, Rina-taicho.”
“We have to be careful from now on, I’ll send word to Fuguki and ask for reinforcements but it looks like these shinobi have the same idea we do, so we might have to act before getting any reinforcements.” Rina studied the ready faces of each of her subordinates, finding Sakai’s eagerness wasn’t an isolated incident as it even spread to the team medic. She nodded and declared, “Alright then, let’s plan how we free the Nettou clan.”
