Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve-Chapter 9.32 (347)

Harazo's spotlessly clean office was a stark contrast to the gritty labour camp he ran. The large windows that offered a view of the sprawling mines below, which were picturesque even on an average day, showed the problem at hand as the thick dust cloud obscuring the ongoing prison break was yet to clear.

As the voice over the handheld radio delivered the shocking news, the silence ballooned in the office as they stared at the dust cloud.

"It seems you have a problem on your hands, gentlemen." Takuma's words popped the silence, and the two leaders immediately barred their fangs at each other.

"What the hell was that?" Harazo exclaimed, standing from his chair abruptly.

Takuma walked to the window and stared outside. They were at the first mining node, and the dust cloud rose from the seventh node, which was the location of the prison labour camp. They would need to travel to the seventh node to gain any actionable intelligence.

"This is your mess, Shimura! Clean it up. Now!"

Bunradao glared at the samurai. "My mess? This is your damn mine! If you hadn't limited the security as a power play and to save a few coins, we wouldn't have this problem!"

"Excuses won't stop those prisoners from escaping." Harazo sneered. "Do your job, or I'll make sure you're the one breaking rocks down there."

Bunradao clenched his fists but didn't respond. He grabbed his radio and barked orders into it. "All guards, we have a Code Black. Prisoners are on the loose. Secure the perimeter and contain the situation! Do not let them reach the outer boundary of the seventh node!"

The door to the office swung open as Harazo's secretary rushed in.

"I know already!" Harazo stopped him before he could speak. "Look at this mess! If even one prisoner escapes, it will be your head that goes flying."

"Then maybe you should stop whining and help me fix this. We're short-staffed, and this is definitely an organised setup." As Bunradao bolted out of the room, he all but screamed at Harazo. "Mobilise your men! Regardless of whatever you think, this will also fall on your head if the prisoners escape or, worse, reach the civilians."

Harazo's face paled when he heard the possibility of the prisoners reaching the civilians. The operations of the seventh node being disrupted was already bad enough, but if the problem spread to the other nodes, he would all but lose his position as the emissary, and that would be nothing compared to what would be waiting for him when he returned to the capital city.

"Call the captain! I want him to secure the nodes neighbouring the seventh!" Harazo yelled at his secretary but showed no signs of suiting up to help with the situation.

Takuma decided to follow after Bunradao, but not before leaving some words. "I will extend my help here, so as you said: scratch my back because I'm going to do that and more for you right now... I hope you survive this, emissary."

He didn't wait for Harazo's response, nor did he look at his expression, but he could guess what was going through the man's mind.

———

.

Takuma quickly caught up with Bunradao, who sprinted to the seventh mining node while throwing in Body Flicker Jutsu every chance he got to hurry the process along. He didn't disturb the warden as the man was likely communicating with multiple of his subordinates simultaneously over the radio.

As they ran through the rocky terrain, Takuma felt faint tremors underground. He gazed at Bunradao, who didn't seem to notice them. Takuma had become sensitive to seismic vibrations due to one of his jutsu, so he waited until they crossed the outer boundary of the seventh node to weave hand seals and dig one of his feet into the ground while running to push a wave of Earth-natured chakra into the terrain.

Earth Release: Earth Tremor Sense Jutsu

The ninjutsu was made to locate people, but he could also roughly sense the earth itself, which wasn't very useful when the terrain was flat, but he could sometimes locate a cave inside a forest. However, when people were actively hollowing the underground, it gave him much more information.

"There has been a cave-in," said Takuma. "I can sense people inside... and I fear some of your men might be among them."

Bunradao glanced at him, his expression falling grim for a second before he tightened his brows and barked the information into his radio.

"As though we weren't short-staffed already." One of Bunradao's steps shattered hard rock as he failed to control his strength while running. "We have to manage the situation somehow until Dogai sends in his men—"

"I don't think that's going to happen," Takuma interrupted. "After you left, he ordered his men to secure the neighbouring nodes to limit the chaos to the seventh node. He's expecting your men to handle the chaos; he won't be coming here."

Harazo was trying to shed and skirt responsibility by planning to claim that he moved his men to protect the rest of the mining nodes while he trusted the Bunradao to handle the prisoners as the warden. He could later claim that he limited the damage to the seventh node which would then become Bunradao's fault.

He cursed as he ran faster. "My men are in danger!"

Prisons in the Elemental Nations were much different from those in Takuma's world.

Without the presence of chakra, even a weak woman with no training could kill a well-built man with a surprise attack if she was given a knife. Guards and prisoners, both sides were roughly equally matched if one disregarded weapons and the prison's infrastructure, which meant they posed a serious, constant threat to the guards if they failed to manage them properly—especially when prisoners always outnumbered the guards.

That was often the reason why prisoners could exert their influence inside Earth's prisons even though the guards were in charge. The prisoners in a world with chakra were much tamer. In shinobi prisons, prisoners were slapped with chakra-suppression prison seals that not only took away their ability to use jutsu but also physically weakened them by binding their bodies. This heavily skewed the power on the guard's side, who could handle the weakened prisoners despite their smaller number.

The same went for civilian prisons because their guards were almost always former shinobi. However, the suppression seals used on the prisoners at Chibumi were a special version of chakra suppression seals used only in labour camps. They allowed the prisoners to retain their physical capabilities so they could channel them towards mining, but they limited their chakra flow to the point that it was practically impossible to use even the lightest D-rank jutsu.

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That made the prisoners dangerous, as the power of raw taijutsu couldn't be ignored. Bunradao and his guards had to work them hard as they ran their labour camp. They had to make sure the prisoners were tired after a tough work day, regularly shuffling their cells and shifts to prevent alliances and even inciting conflict within the prisoners to keep them from uniting, among other things, to ensure they were kept down.

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However, the prisoners now had the opportunity to escape and take revenge against the people who suppressed them.

"I will help you," Takuma consoled Bunradao.

"Thank you."

"Just make sure my prisoner is secure."

As they reached the node's centre, they saw a chaotic mess as the prisoners sprinted away while the outnumbered guards tried to catch them, which was nearly impossible as the prisoners outnumbered the guards by more than two to one. It would've been better if they tried to fight the guards, but when they focused solely on running away, one guard could only follow after one prisoner, leaving the second prisoner unchallenged

"Some of them have weapons," Takuma immediately noticed.

And in the middle of it all, there was a giant of a man fighting two guards simultaneously, with two more guards lying unconscious or dead on the ground around them. The giant man weaved hand seals and slammed his hulk-sized fists on the ground, causing earthen spikes to burst out, impaling the guards through his leg.

Bunradao's shoulders jerked upwards. "How?!"

The prisoners should not have been able to use ninjutsu, but right here, Takuma saw one doing exactly that—effectively, too.

"No, I will take care of this," Takuma said, pulling Bunradao back as he tried to save his men. "Your men need you to lead them through this mess."

He leapt across the gap and sprinted toward the giant while pulling chakra into his shoulder and arm. The giant had his back to him but turned when he felt something coming, but it was too late as Takuma rammed an augmented body slam into him.

As the giant coughed up blood and shifted on the ground, struggling to get up, Takuma planted him back into the ground beneath his boot.,

"Who planned this?"

Takuma looked around the field and caught the eyes of some prisoners who were either frozen in fear or had started running away harder upon the sight of an ANBU-nin. He kicked the giant in the stomach, who coughed up more bloody spittle.

"How can you use jutsu with suppression seals on you?" he asked while weaving hand seals.

Visual Genjutsu: Restrain

Three prisoners who were within range and locked eyes with Takuma felt their bodies seize up, causing them to stumble and fall. It was Takuma's custom creation and was an advancement of the paralysis genjutsu he had created in Yu, which itself was a derivative of the Genjutsu: Bell Clone Jutsu. There was a pre-existing genjutsu called Genjutsu: Binding, which performed the same function, but how they accomplished it was different, making his creation different.

Takuma pulled the giant off the ground from his hair and smashed his fist into his face to get him to stop groaning.

"I won't ask again—who else is with you?"

"K-Kill me," the giant chuckled maniacally and spit on Takuma's mask.

Takuma put some chakra into his fist and then struck his chest. The giant howled as pain assaulted him. The side of his chest was already turning purple where Takuma had body-slammed him.

"Don't worry, you're definitely going to die for this. The question is whether you want to go quickly or painfully. I'll volunteer at least a week to entertain you round the clock before you get to rest forever. So, I'll only ask one more time—who planned this?"

Finally, the giant looked scared.

———

.

Ayame could hear her heart drumming in her ears as she rushed to the rendezvous point. She felt better than she had in the two years she had spent at the labour camp, and the chakra boosted by the soldier pill flooded through her body with enough force to fight against the suppression seals.

It was such an exhilarating feeling that it erased her doubts about their chances to escape and attain freedom as she cleared a path out of the east tunnels, but that all turned into anxiety when she saw Goro getting thrashed one-sidedly. The thoughts of freedom were replaced with the sludge of uncertainty and the fearful whispers of her mind telling her to go back and hide in a corner and pretend she had nothing to do with this.

But she had already taken the risk; it was too late to pull out.

She arrived at the rendezvous point to see Kaito and Rinji waiting there with weapons. Both of them had fresh blood on them, but it didn't seem to be their own. Seeing them there and leaving behind the chaos made her feel more confident.

"Where is Goro?" Katai asked with a suspicious frown while he looked over her shoulder.

"That idiot started fighting the guards!" Ayame cursed while Rinji handed her the weapons. She had an inkling that Goro had no intention to escape and only wanted to kill some guards as revenge.

"We need to leave," her voice was filled with urgency as she hastily strapped the utility belt around her waist, fumbling to tighten the clasp. "There's somehow—fuck! An ANBU-nin took out Goro!"

"ANBU?" Rinji looked bewildered.

"I saw it with my own eyes. We need to leave now. He took out Goro like he was nothing. We aren't going to stand a chance if he catches up to us."

Rinji and Ayame looked at Kaito, who had a frown between his brows as he looked thoughtful.

"Let's split up," he said finally.

"Shouldn't we stick together to increase our chances in case the ANBU-nin catches up to us?" asked Rinji, instantly disagreeing with the plan.

"I planned to split up regardless," Kaito said as he began to check his weapons, his voice calm as though he wasn't worried. "They're short on people and can only afford to send a few people to chase us. By splitting up, we increase our chances of escaping."

"You're going to leave us stranded now?"

Kaito didn't respond and instead said, "Here's some advice: don't head to the other nodes. The samurai are probably on the lookout. Get as far away from Chibumi as possible, find a road, and hitch a ride with a caravan or something." He looked at them with hard eyes. "I'll pray for your escape."

———

.

"Kaito, Ayame, and Rinji," Takuma muttered to himself. Neither of them was the prisoner he had come to meet, which was a good sign.

According to Goro, Kaito had planned it all. The plan seemed viable. Acquiring soldier pills to counteract the fūinjutsu at its weakest was obviously successful, and he wondered if Kaito had tested it before to know if it would work; if so, he had been working on the plan for a long time because everything hinged on their ability to get their chakra back.

Takuma looked at Goro kneeling before him. Even though the giant had surrendered, it didn't change the fact that he still had the drugs from the soldier pill in his system and could use chakra. He was too risky to leave alone, and the guards didn't have enough numbers to restrain him if he decided to make an escape.

"So, you took a soldier pill..."

"Yes," said Goro, having lost all of his steam. His hunched shoulders made him look shorter than he was.

"Then you're going to survive this," Takuma said before he took out a kunai and stabbed him in the side.

Goro looked shocked and tried to jump away while pushing Takuma away, but he grabbed his hand and put it on the kunai stuck into his body. Goro looked at Takuma with fear in his eyes, his body twitching as though ready to respond to any other lethal attacks.

"Don't worry, I avoided most of your organs. And your chakra, as it is now, will keep you alive, so don't worry. Just keep pressure on the wound, and you'll survive. Try to run, though, and you won't get too far without treatment," Takuma warned him.

He weaved hand seals for the Earth Release: Earth Tremor Sense Jutsu again. Ignoring everything around him, he focused on the direction Goro had said the rendezvous point was and immediately sensed three "responses" moving in different directions.

He needed to hurry if he wanted to catch them.

"Don't do anything stupid," Takuma told Goro before vanishing using the Body Flicker Jutsu.

Soon, he was standing somewhere near the rendezvous point. It was away from the chaos and was smartly located away from any nearby neighbouring mining nodes, which would mean they would avoid running into any samurai. When he tried to track again, he sensed only two of the three responses he had felt before.

He looked at the woods nearby and guessed that one of the escapees was travelling on trees, leaving the jutsu able to track them.

"I guess I'll have to find one of them the traditional way," he said, remembering the few things Daiki had taught him about tracking. He also recalled how the big man talked about going crocodile hunting upon returning home. He was also hunting today but for something more intelligent and dangerous.

Takuma weaved hand seals and again felt the anxiety-inducing feeling of his physical and spiritual energies leaving his body that he had not gotten used to. There was a puff of smoke as a shadow clone appeared next to him.

"Let's hunt, then, shall we?" said the clone.