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———
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A day after their return from the ROOT research facility, Campbell was summoned to Barbary's office to talk about it. On his way, he ran into one of his peers.
"You sure are lucky, Campbell," said Largemouth with a sarcastic smile, one of three squad leaders of the Inquisitor Unit at Ironwood Protection Company. His codename and mask were from the Largemouth Bass, a carnivorous fish known to pull ducks underwater.
"Am I?" asked Campbell, not in the mood to bicker.
"Your rookie only managed to pull something out of trash mail by dumb luck... and now this ROOT thing; you managed to climb your way out of the dumps purely because of luck," Largemouth mocked him.
"...My squad budget is recovering," said Campbell.
"What?"
"If this case goes well, my squad might just match yours in funding. Do you know what that means? It means the only difference between our squads was luck. I fell into bad luck for a while, but now that it's back on my side, I'm about to catch up to you, and that's with two inexperienced shinobi. Think about what happens when those two properly grow into their responsibilities. My squad is going to leave yours in the dust."
He didn't know what made him say so much because he honestly found the petty office rivalries exhausting. However, he had to admit, the irritation slowly flushing across Largemouth's face improved his mood, so he left him with some more words.
"A piece of advice. My two young ones are hungry; they want to prove themselves. Right now, they're satisfied because they're new, but soon, they'll think they deserve more, and when that happens, I'm not telling my senior operatives they'll be getting less. I'm going to need to find more money, and I'll come after you just like you came after me when I was down two operatives. So you better show some good results or you're going to find yourself with light pockets."
"Yeah, that's not going to happen, buddy," Largemouth said, his eyes narrowed.
Campbell didn't bother to reply and walked past him, satisfied because, knowing Largemouth, the words would irritate him all day and sting him for the next few days.
He reached Barbary's office and was sent in by his assistant.
"Who are you putting on the case?" Barbary asked the moment he stepped in. He wasn't behind his desk, but instead lounging on his couch, reading a thick dossier that was delivered to him every week. The dossier consisted of an overview of intelligence reports that he needed to know to be on top of his job.
Campbell sat down in front of the desk. "Krait. He found the bunker, and he doesn't have other things on his plate, so he can focus on this case," he answered after a pause.
"Works for me. Who's going to be his partner?"
"Ratel and Kestrel."
Barbary looked up from the reports and gazed at Campbell with an intrigued expression. He stood up from his couch and sat down at his desk. "You want to put two rookies on a case involving ROOT?"
"They need the experience."
"And you want that to happen through this case? You understand the weight of this situation."
Campbell probably knew the weight better than everyone. He understood that this was make or break for his squad. If they were successful, they would recover and prime themselves for growth. He understood everything, and yet when Ratel and Kestrel came to him together to make their case, he found their enthusiasm and initiative to be confident and inspiring.
"My first choice would've been Caracara, but she's swamped. Dhole doesn't like to move around, and I feel this will involve a lot of footwork." He could absolutely order Dhole to move his ass, but that would create unnecessary friction; at the end of the day, everyone had their specialities and niche and Dhole was very good at what he did. "This way, there are three operatives on the case. Krait is patient enough to be a good guide for the two. I see no downside to this arrangement."
Ratel had shown what he was capable of in the Maizuru Case, and he was with Krait when they found the research facility. On the other hand, Kestrel had done something most thought impossible. She made Caracara more productive, who was the most productive operative in the entire unit. If someone compiled a department-wide ranking, she would be among the top. Kestrel had done something extraordinary because Caracara not only looked more relaxed but was also handling more work than ever before because of Kestrel's support.
"Alright, if that's what you think is the best, sure, let's go with it," said Barbary, but Campbell could tell that this decision was stretching the flexibility and autonomy he had granted to his subordinate. This case had pressure coming down on Barbary from above. For him, this was beyond petty squad rivalry, and "Honestly, I was expecting you to take the lead on this."
Campbell's real first choice was also that. He wanted to take the lead, but he was similarly busy with his case load. Though it wasn't comparable to his squad members, he also had managerial responsibilities, which filled up his plate.
"I'll support my team in whatever way they require," he replied.
"And I'll support my squads. Come to me in case you need anything," Barbary sighed.
"Thank you," Campbell nodded.
Barbary opened the drawer in his desk and fished out a red scroll branded with the official ANBU seal. "Give this to Ratel. I'm confident that he'll want it. Tell him that he's earned it, will you?" he smiled.
Campbell recognised the scroll because he had exchanged for it a few times in his career at ANBU.
It was an access pass to the ANBU's B-rank jutsu archives for a new jutsu.
———
.
Instead of resting on his off day, Takuma found himself in Yamanaka Inenpachi's clinic.
Campbell had promised him and Amami that he would talk to Barbary about their involvement with their case. While he couldn't predict Barbary's decision, he chose to be confident and assumed he was already on the case. This meant he had busy days ahead of him, and he needed to manage time properly, so he visited the iryō-nin for their first practical session.
"You don't look good," Inenpachi said the moment Takuma stepped into his office.
"I got injured on the mission. I need another day to recover," Takuma said honestly. He had checked himself in the mirror, and other than a slight paleness, he didn't think he looked any different, but he guessed it was natural that an iryō-nin could tell.
Inenpachi asked what happened, and Takuma gave him the location of the injury, which raised his brow, but the iryō-nin didn't pursue it any further because injuries weren't surprising in their line of work.
"What are we doing today?" asked Takuma as he sat straight in his chair.
"I'll start with looking at your mind to take a snapshot. Every time we meet, I'll take a snapshot so we can use them as references by comparing them to each other," Inenpachi explained while he stood beside him. "I'll now look into your mind. Are you ready?"
Takuma suddenly felt nervous. He had to be quite vulnerable in front of someone he didn't know very well. He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and got ready for the mind walker to enter his mind.
"Go ahead."
———
.
Inenpachi opened his eyes inside Takuma's mind. Every mind was unique and a representation of the person. Seeing a mind for the first time was one of his favourite things because it told him a lot about the person. He treated it like how people love to travel to new places to explore fresh experiences.
He found himself standing in an underground tunnel carved out of Earth Release ninjutsu. The tunnel was lit with yellow electric bulbs hung on rusted metal hoops hammered into the tunnel's ceiling. The tunnel's walls were covered in graffiti, posters, charts, notes, and papers. He guessed that the tunnel was somewhere Takuma had spent a lot of time in, and the things on the walls were echoes and projections of his experiences and memories. On a fleeting glance, they made sense, but on a closer look, none of them made any sense because everything was jumbled.
He started walking and found that the tunnel was part of an expansive network. He also noted that every other bulb on the ceiling was turned off—only half of them worked, which made the tunnels dim. That could mean so many things, but he guessed that it was due to some unresolved trauma Takuma was struggling with.
The tunnel network had ends that opened into large underground clearings. Inenpachi heard a crowd cheering with an infrequent clang of metal from the clearing that he couldn't see into, as they only appeared as light at the end of a dark tunnel. He didn't follow it because it was just another echo.
The human brain and a person's mind were beyond complex. Even the Yamanaka clan only understood a small fraction of its mysteries, and most of it remained a mystery to them.
If he followed everything he heard or saw in Takuma's mind, he faced the danger of getting lost, with a real risk of never finding his way back. Someone else could awaken Takuma from the outside, but if Inenpachi wasn't careful, he might never awaken.
However, the Yamanaka clan had already solved the problem.
He needed to find the central hub that was hidden somewhere in the recesses of the mind. It was the location that could be used to access everything that resided and hid inside Takuma's mind. A strong and skilled Yamanaka could see memories going back years or even decades, as long as they could fight against a person's natural defences against foreign entities.
He had promised Takuma not to look at his memories and would honour the promise. But he still needed to go to the central hub, as it had more uses than just looking at memories.
He concentrated and felt for the central hub's presence and followed it.
As he went deeper into Takuma's mind, the tunnels changed appearances frequently. Paint appeared on the walls—the lower half was painted a lime green while the upper half was an off-white. For a while, he saw what seemed like factory equipment half-buried in the tunnel's walls, which was bizarre to say the least. However, as he began to close in on the central hub, he saw things he didn't recognise.
Like always, he recognised they were echoes and projections and thus jumbled, but he could usually identify parts of the jumble. He had no idea what most of the things he was seeing were. There was a small rectangular thing that glowed, big metal boxes with wheels, strange trains, and tiny models of even stranger buildings.
"Found it."
He stood in front of a tunnel to a clearing whose entrance was covered with layers of multi-coloured curtains with patterns he hadn't seen before. They were stunning and made him wonder what all Takuma had seen for his mind to create these echoes.
As strange as it was, Takuma's mind was one of the most unique he had encountered. He wondered what his central hub would look like.
Everyone's central hub was the same, with some variations to make it unique. Everyone had a huge brain in the middle of the hub, which was connected to the walls with something—pipes, ropes, chains, crystal, lightning bolts, or dozens of other things he could recall.
As he pushed past the last curtain, he was startled to find something he had never seen before.
A huge brain was suspended in a circular space, with threads of yarn connecting it to the walls covered in cork boards. The yarn connected the brain to the boards and also connected the boards to each other, creating a complex web of multi-coloured thread.
However, that wasn't the startling thing. He was definitely in the central hub, without mistaking it. So why was there only half a brain in front of him?
The hub space had a wall going through the middle of it. This wall also had corkboards, and its presence seemed to belong in the hub. However, there was a brain-sized hole in the wall, and the brain floated in that hole with only half of it on Inenpachi's side. The problem was that he hadn't sensed any way to access the other half of the brain on the other side while he was looking for the hub, which meant there was no way to access it.
Except...
Inenpachi looked up at the middle wall, where a pitch-black, thick metal bunker door, with a large circular wheel in the middle, looked like it was made to survive a B-rank jutsu, was located.
That was the only way to access the other side of the hub and the brain.
.
———
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