Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve

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The next day, Takuma sat in his office, gazing at the neat set of documentation, files and scrolls he had worked hard on, all of which was basically meaningless. He thought he was helping with something of real value and the realisation that he wasn't left a bad taste in his mouth.

It wouldn't have been a problem if he had been told about it in advance, but he was led to believe that he was doing something that would be useful. Takuma didn't need to be babied. He wasn't a fresh genin or a trainee—he was an ANBU-nin, and a chunin of the Hidden Leaf.

He would rather have his work overseen and double-checked over doing something without value.

There was a knock on the door. He looked up to see Dhole standing at his threshold. In the past three days, Dhole had not once started a conversation with him, much less visited his office. He had told Takuma to hold off on his questions until the end of the last hour of the working day, but he was always half an hour late for those as well. It felt like he didn't want to deal with him at all.

"I heard from Boginori—"

"I have completed the paperwork." Takuma pushed the paperwork forward. Even though it was meaningless work, he had worked overtime the day before to complete it in case Dhole tried to use incomplete work against him.

Dhole gazed at him for a moment before sighing tiredly and sitting across from him like he was exhausted. "Listen, I have nothing against you personally, but I don't have the time to babysit someone right now," he said.

"Then what do you suggest?" asked Takuma.

Initially, he wanted to confront Dhole about assigning him work that he had already done on his own, but after taking some time, he figured it would be better to talk it out. Having managed a team before, he wanted to communicate at least once to come to a compromise before taking any other action. Even if he didn't like Dhole and didn't want to be friendly with the guy, he was fine as long as they came to a mutually agreeable solution.

"Our squad is in a bad state right now. Before you and Kestrel joined, there were only three of us, and that caused us to fall behind the other squads," Dhole said as he sank into the chair to make himself comfortable, almost lying in it.

"That's not your fault," said Takuma. He understood the pressure of meeting performance goals.

"But it's not the other squads' fault either," said Dhole, eyeing the table like he wanted to put his feet up. "Funds and resources in our unit are decided by performance. When we lost people, the funding available was cut to match the squad size, and those funds were redirected to the other squads. Now, you would think we would get our funding back when you two joined—which we did—but it's not the amount from before it was cut. The other two squads have kept a portion of our funds as part of their performance rewards."

And now that Campbell Squad was back to their full numbers, they were expected to perform like a full squad, which was difficult when they had two new operatives who would take some time to settle into their roles.

"That's why we have been working out asses off for the past couple of months to keep that performance gap low while both of you settle in." Despite his words, Dhole seemed relatively unconcerned about it, but that seemed partly of his generally unbothered disposition. "Having you help me will not be of any help; I will always be double-checking your work because I don't trust you. I know your history, and as illustrious as it is, until I see it with my own eyes, I can't work with you. If it were any other time, I would have been fine with double-checking your work while I learned to work with you—but that's not possible right now and I can't afford to slow down."

Takuma felt he better understood the situation. He didn't agree that he would slow Dhole down, but it helped him understand the justification behind Dhole's actions even though he still didn't like it any less than before.

"I don't want to do meaningless work," said Takuma. He wanted to gain more B-rank ninjutsu, which depended on his performance, and doing meaningless work was actively hurting his goals. "If you don't want to mentor me, that's fine. You don't have to take responsibility for me. I'm willing to go out on my own and be accountable if I screw things up."

"Any screw-ups will undo our efforts." Dhole sighed yet again. "Well, whatever. If you really want to do something, I might have something for you..."

———

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Takuma watched as Jotomi wheeled a trolley full of crate boxes into his office.

"That's a lot," said Takuma.

"We get a lot of tips and reports every month," Jotomi replied, unloading half a dozen boxes into a corner of his empty office.

Leaf shinobi were stationed all around the Land of Fire. There was a program that allowed them to send tips and reports to the Intelligence Division of any wrongful sightings they might have witnessed. If someone believed reporting wrongdoings up the chain of command would be insufficient or put their life in danger, shinobi had the option to mail a report to the Intelligence Division, who would forward them to the appropriate authorities, which often included ANBU.

"An overwhelming majority of such reports are false," Jotomi sighed in frustration. "You wouldn't believe what lengths some people would go to get some people into trouble; they submit reports falsely accusing someone of some heinous crimes. Then there are delusional people who think up conspiracies in their minds and take them too seriously. There are even psychos who address their letters to the ANBU and threaten us to do something for them if we don't want confidential information leaked to our enemies!"

"I'm sorry, what? People do that?" Takuma said in surprise as he looked at the crate boxes that were filled with letters, suddenly wondering if Dhole had again stuck him with something useless.

"Oh, they do all kinds of shit. That's why we call it trash mail."

"Isn't there something we can do to discourage this type of behaviour?"

Jotomi shook his head. "It's not worth it to dissuade them."

"Huh, why?"

"We don't want people to fear retaliation. Once in a blue moon, someone does send in a true report. What if that person fears that he will be punished if we cannot find a lead? People would be scared and might stop reporting. So even though it increases our work, we have to keep all channels open. And well, there was a time when we did punish some obviously false ones, but we found out that it was not worth it to waste our time and resources. Now, we just leave them be."

Takuma walked to the crates and squatted next to one of them. Each box seemed to have dozens and dozens of letters. He didn't know how long it would take to go through them all to judge their legitimacy and then decide which ones were urgent enough to give priority—and that was contingent on whether there was a legitimate report in the pile of trash.

"These five boxes have already been checked and rejected by someone in the unit. The final box is new, so we haven't gotten the chance to go through them; I suggest you start with this box." Jotomi pointed at the crates.

Everyone knew about the reputation of trash mail for being bogus, and because of that, no one liked to go through it because it was a waste of time. According to Dhole, all squads had to fulfil their quota of verifying trash mail, but because everyone was busy and no one liked trash mail duty because of its reputation, people rushed through it—but even that rushed job was unwanted.

"—Go through the trash mail properly and complete our squad's quota. If you do that, I will give you something real to work on—"

That's what Dhole had promised him.

Takuma gazed at the boxes. On the surface, it was good news that he only needed to focus on one box, but then he wouldn't have asked for all of them to be brought in. Dhole had told him that verifying trash mail was always a rush job, so there could be a narrow possibility that—

Maybe they missed something...

It was wishful thinking, but Takuma wondered if he could find something. It would be a good look if he found something legitimate in the trash mail when everyone had missed it.

If he didn't find anything, Dhole would give him something when he completed the squad's quota.

"Well, it's time to get busy, I guess," said Takuma as he picked up one of the crates.

He had been in this situation before in the Police Force. He had climbed up from the bottom to create something for himself back then; there was no reason why he couldn't do it again.

He just needed to keep working, and results would appear when it was time.

———

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The nuclear family of four sat together for supper around the dinner table at the Uchiha house.

The father and eldest son weren't chatty, so they talked even less while eating. The youngest son idolised his brother, mimicked him and stayed quiet during mealtime, leaving the mother to pick up the conversation.

"Listen to this: Takuma picked up a job," said Mikoto as she gave Sasuke a look when he tried to skip out on eating his greens. "I knew he wasn't the type to take C-rank missions with teams from the Genin Corp."

Most unaffiliated chunin who didn't belong to a department or other organisations would take on C-rank missions with Genin Corp genin.

"That kid needs to do something substantial to feel like he's doing something," she said.

"What is he doing now?" asked Fugaku. He wanted to know what Takuma was doing after rejecting his offer. He had also heard that his negotiation with Torture and Interrogation had failed, which made him curious to find out what place had finally satisfied him.

"It's a protection service called the Ironwood Protection Company."

"Bodyguards?" Fugaku frowned.

It was a common move for people who left the Police Force, but he didn't think Takuma was the type to go for it. Or was it because he rejected both the Police Force and T&I, leading him to lose his options and settle for an inferior choice? If that was the case, there was still a chance to bring him back.

"Yes, it's a unit under Aburame Seinpachi," said Mikoto. "I was surprised as well."

Two sets of hands eating food paused when they heard the name Aburame Seinpachi. Fugaku and Itachi glanced at each other. They knew what Aburame Seinpachi did. He was Itachi's peer as a fellow ANBU Captain. Fugaku, as the head of the Uchiha Clan, was privy to some confidential information, and the Aburame jōnin's true identity was one of the things he knew.

Itachi remained still for a moment before giving him a slow nod.

Aburame Seinpachi had various non-ANBU units under him. It took him a moment to confirm whether "Ironwood Protection Company" was an ANBU unit.

Fugaku sighed, "No wonder..."

"What did you say? I missed that," said Mikoto.

Fugaku set down his chopsticks. There was a problem now that he knew Takuma had joined the ANBU. He gazed at his wife. He didn't appreciate that an ANBU-nin would be in frequent contact with his wife. He barely trusted his son after what had happened, so he didn't trust an outsider like Takuma. It wouldn't be a surprise if the ANBU asked Takuma to keep an eye on his wife and subtly get information about the clan from her.

Mikoto was capable, and he didn't think she would jeopardise the clan, but he also knew that she liked and trusted Takuma—and trust was vital for any genuine relationship; it also made people blind.

"You shouldn't compromise an ANBU-nin's cover."

He heard Itachi's voice as if it had been whispered right next to his ear. It was an application of voice modulation through chakra. He knew that his son had to say that as an ANBU-nin. Even if he meant those words, Fugaku wouldn't risk the clan for Takuma's cover identity.

"What are you two talking about?" Mikoto asked, her eyes narrow in suspicion. She noticed the voice modulation usage due to how close they were sitting.

Fugaku glanced at Sasuke as he said, "We will talk about it after the meal. I have to tell you something important."

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The link is in the synopsis!