NOVEL NEXT Chapter 26: Mission Accomplished
Kira, for the first time in his life, felt the effects of using up most of his chakra. His entire body felt weak and feverish, which made it hard to do even simple things like walking and even standing straight.
'If I expend a bit more chakra, I'll fall into a state of chakra depletion huh?' he thought as he deactivated his shadow clone jutsu, gaining back most of his chakra. Just as he was about to get into the caravan behind Sachi, he got a signal from one of his bugs nearby.
"There's someone here." he alerted them and turned around to look in the direction from where the signal came from.
Raichi jumped out of the caravan and stood beside Kira, but to his surprise, the person who walked out of the woods, had a familiar mask on his face.
"Anbu?" Raichi asked as he looked at the person, the frown on his face deepening as the man continued to walk towards them without saying a thing.
Just as he was about to use his sharingan, the man silently took out a scroll and opened it for them to see.
Raichi read the contents on the scroll and glanced behind his back at the merchant who was looking at them with fear in his eyes.
"Oh well, looks like our mission here is over. Kira, can you carry Taka back to the village?" he asked as Kira seemed to be more at a better physical condition compared to Sachi who was almost out of chakra at this point.
Kira nodded and simply created a shadow clone, which did the job for him. The journey towards the hidden rain village was long and slow, but that was only because they were escorting the merchant and guarding his goods.
Now that they were going back to Konoha on their own, they could fully utilise their speed. The four of them ran for almost an hour before stopping.
Kira placed Taka on the ground before he began to patiently use his healing jutsu. Slowly, minutes passed by and once he was done healing his teammate, he rubbed both of this palms together and sent his right hand flying towards Taka's cheek.
Slap!
Taka immediately woke up and assumed a combat stance, only to find himself face to face with Raichi who was staring at him with his usual frown.
"Did... I pass out?"
"Whoa! You can actually speak full sentences! Gah Dayumn!" Kira said, acting like a hysterical mad scientist who had succeeded in attaining a scientific miracle.
Seeing him act this way made Sachi chuckle, and Raichi couldn't stop himself from smiling either.
Taka on the other hand, looked around and came to a conclusion on his own instead of responding to Kira's shenanigans. He placed his hand on his chest and then stared at Kira, "Thanks."
"You're welcome, you're welcome. You gotta treat us to some ramen once we get back hehehe."
Hearing this, Taka frowned. Not because he didn't want to pay for the meals, but because he thought that Raichi had taken care of the jonin instead of his other two team members.
Wanting to know the answer to his question, he once again, formed a full sentence, "Did we complete the mission?"
"Yeah, Kira burned that man to ashes." Sachi answered before she began to recount the entire fight.
Once Taka heard everything, he nodded and said nothing. He had gotten his answer, so there was no need for him to talk anymore.
"Now that I don't have to carry this guy, so I can increase my speed." Kira said as he activated his first and second gate after deactivating his shadow clone which disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"What's this technique?" Raichi asked as he sensed a surge of chakra from Kira's body.
Kira smirked as he deactivated his second gate. There was no need to keep it active when he simply had to answer a question.
"There's a man called Might Duy in our village and he's the one who developed this technique. It's called the Eight Inner Gates technique. Well, you probably don't know Might Duy but you should have heard about the "eternal genin" nickname flying around."
Raichi nodded, "Yeah, I did hear that name a few times. It's the weird guy running around in a green suit right?"
"Hey sensei, it's rude to call people weird. But yeah, that's him. With his technique, I'm confident that I can beat you in taijutsu after a year or two. Oh I mean I can beat you even without using my flying raijin." Kira boasted, but Raichi didn't take his words seriously.
"Sure sure, let's get back to the village then."
Since they got an order from their team leader, they followed him back to Konoha.
Kira was actually the slowest in his team when it came to raw speed, but he overcame his weakness by using body flicker his first gate and opened the second gate when he felt tired.
Such was the fate of a person with the shortest legs. Since was just 7 years old, he was shorter and his body lacked a lot of power. He had good regenerative capabilities, but not strength and speed.
All in all, it took them almost one whole day's worth of running to reach Konoha and once they did, they celebrated their first mission's completion at Ichiraku ramen before going back to their respective homes.
Everyone except Raichi of course. He went straight to the Hokage's office instead of his house.
"Raichi, you're back." Hiruzen said as he shifted his attention from the paper in front of him and looked up at Raichi.
"Yes, sir Hiruzen. The mission that I was assigned to, it looks like someone from the root is involved. That person wore an anbu mask, but if he really was from anbu, you would have known."