Chapter 204   - Ch204. Difference

After arriving at the hideout of the Resistance, Rei, Ringo, and Mei marveled at the place. All of them spent years in the service of Kirigakure and yet, neither knew about the place. From the exquisite buildings and the crests on them, it was obvious the village in front of their eyes belonged to a clan which only made their lack of knowledge about it even more impressive. Kirigakure loved to keep track of any place the clans owned, after all.

Rei couldn't help but smirk. It was obvious that some clans didn't trust Kirigakure enough to abandon their previous compounds or reveal their whereabouts upon the establishment of the village. The entire place was quite spacious but it was also masterfully hidden by the local nature, and according to Rei's senses, some quite rudimentary but nevertheless quite effective fuinjutsu.

'Just wow. Kirigakure could run in circles around this place for months considering the serious lack of fuinjutsu experts. The seals perfectly blend with the local nature and cover the village. Quite ingenious, to be honest. Although... it wouldn't work if the clan village was bigger.' Rei wryly thought about how useless these seals would be for him if he tried to hide his own village with them.

His mind quickly stopped this contemplation as he noticed that to his right, Mei was walking with a small welcoming smile while secretly but constantly letting out a bit of her chakra seep into the air around her.

'Already taking preventive measures, eh?' Rei noted.

He was especially proud that he managed to discover Mei's subtle use of her Steam Bloodline only thanks to his Senjutsu enhanced senses. This meant that even Ao who already sported his stylish eye-patch and no doubt monitored them non-stop with his Byakugan, would not get even an inkling of Mei's usage of the chakra because to him, it would simply seem like a natural leakage of chakra into the surroundings that every person, even civilians, had. Mei simply leaked quite a bit more which could be chalked up to her massive chakra reserves.

And there laid the reason why Rei was so proud. It didn't seem as if Mei was using a technique. Not even to Byakugan. And yet, slowly but surely, the air was starting to get thinly saturated with her chakra, drifting away from Ao to different parts of the village so he doesn't get suspicious. It was not as if Mei needed a lot of her chakra in the air in order to do nasty stuff with it either.

Rei's eyes discreetly glanced at Ringo who instantly noticed and her grip on the handles of the swords on her waist slightly tightened, notifying Rei she was ready to act upon being ordered. Her eyes were set in a cold facade and Rei knew if he told her to slaughter every single person in the village, she would do so. It was... reassuring, and yet a bit disturbing. But that was Ringo. After she decided to throw everything away for Rei, her determination only strengthened through the years and not one of his girls showed such unquestioning loyalty to him as her.

Yes, his wives were loyal without a shadow of a doubt but Ringo was in the league of its own, clutching onto Rei after forsaking Kirigakure for him.

Rei simply widened his smile, giving Ringo a signal that no carnage would be happening right about now, which elicited a small, almost pouty frown from the redhead while her grip slightly slackened.

Obviously, the jonins escorting them through the clan village noticed her slight tensing and it created a quite stifling atmosphere which only somewhat eased up after Ringo became more relaxed. Nevertheless, they had no idea what exactly caused the famous assassin in front of them to get battle-ready, and that, even if they didn't outwardly show it... drove many of them scared shitless.

Rei chuckled at the mirth in Ringo's eyes. The minx clearly did it on purpose, giving the ninjas around a warning. And if the small widening of the distance between Ringo and the ninjas who escorted them was any indication, it worked spectacularly. Needless to say, Rei had no illusion that Ringo was simply playing around. She was clearly mapping out the village, remembering any escape route, any important place that could help in a fight... simply, her deeply ingrained cold calculative instincts of an assassin was in full throttle, devising plan after plan while analyzing the situation and the best way to terminate everybody around.

Rei, on the other hand, was also busy with using his chakra to form seals under the soles of his boots as he walked, causing them to sink into the earth. It was quite an advanced technique and getting it to work with his feet rather than hands took a long time but this way, he could simply walk and distribute his seals on the places he set his feet on without being noticed.

From a perspective of a normal ninja, it would be completely mind-boggling that the trio managed to do what they were doing without being noticed despite being surrounded by a Byakugan user and a village full of ninjas.

They finally reached their destination, a well-decorated mansion in the middle of the village. The mansion was the grandest building around and Rei had no doubt the clan heads of clans that formed the Resistance would be just waiting to manipulate him to help them.

Such was the disadvantage of working more with the Third Mizukage and never teaming up with other ninjas from Kirigakure. Sure, the clan heads most likely saw him as a powerful individual but they were people who had power and influence for most of their lives. Rei was really curious just how many of them would take him seriously in this little political game of theirs.

Considering the inactivity of Yozora in recent years...

'This will be a monumental drag, won't it?' Rei wearily sighed as he stared unimpressed at the lavish mansion in front of them.

The group entered and right as they passed the door, Ao turned towards Rei and started talking in an emotionless tone, "I will require you to leave your weapons here. They will be returned after the negotiation. Standard procedure, I hope you don't mind." He swept the trio with his eyes, showing a bit disgruntled expression when he saw Ringo shrug and hand her swords to the ninja slash receptionist slash guard slash whatever else required.

Ringo simply smirked at Ao, causing his eyes to narrow as a weary sigh left his lips. He knew out of the three ninjas before him, Ringo was the most dependent on her weapons and yet she was completely fine with handing her swords over? The Ringo he remembered would lash out and bring hell to the mortal plane if anybody demanded her to give her swords away.

Ao correctly assumed that what he was seeing was a whole load of trouble as his head started to hurt with a profound headache while Rei only amusedly handed over his kunai pouch to the receptionist. Ringo's swords were still the same two chakra blades he gifted her when Kiba was taken away from her. There was only one thing dearer to her in the world than these blades and that was Rei himself. Even Tsunade, Ringo's most favorite person out of Rei's wives, didn't reach the same level as the two blades. But Rei also knew that since she started focusing on her blacksmithing, Ringo made sure to improve the blades immensely.

'By now, she can summon them with but a thought in a span of a split of a second from literally anywhere in the world. It would take a quite strong seal to prevent her to get her swords.' Rei inwardly snorted, knowing Ringo had no problem with handing out her swords only because she could re-summon them anytime she d.e.s.i.r.ed.

Noticing that Mei didn't move to remove any weapons from her person, the guards spoke, "Lady Terumi, could you please hand over your weapons?"

Rei noted how polite they were but... he guessed that was given considering she was the first SS-rank to come from their village... ever.

Mei simply grinned and shrugged, "I have no weapons on my person," She turned to look straight at Ao, getting his full undivided attention, "my chakra is all I need."

The guards didn't know what to do in a situation like this. Mei was an SS-rank kunoichi and offending her would be quite... ahem. They simply turned towards Ao and waited for orders.

By that point, Ao's headache increased. For a second, he had a bad feeling he missed something but in the end, he just nodded at a guard to search Mei.

Seeing how stiffly the guard approached her, Mei chuckled. "Get it over with but make sure your hands don't wander where they don't belong. This," she gestured at her body, "belongs solely to Rei." And narrowed her eyes at the poor sod chosen to search her.

A few very, very uncomfortable moments later for the almost crying guard, the trio was amused beyond belief while Ao was now actively rubbing his temples when he saw how the guard whimpered every time his hands approached Mei's b.r.e.a.s.ts or lower body, causing her to tense up in warning.

"She is clear." The guard said and Rei would even find his even tone impressive if the man didn't have such a fearful expression on his face.

Frankly, Rei found the entire situation exceedingly amusing, especially since Mei threw Ao such an obvious clue. 'Chakra is all I need? Seriously? She couldn't have given him a bigger hint to what she was doing during their walk towards the mansion.' Rei giddily thought, 'I really, really start to see why Itachi and Kisame would stop for a snack in a Dango shop in the middle of Konoha despite both being very notorious rogue ninjas and Itachi being one of the most wanted men from Konoha. It's simply so fun to be surrounded by ninjas, especially elite jonins, the so-called cream of the crop, and seeing them utterly clueless when you do something. Ao having a Byakugan is just a cherry on the top.'

Mei even hinted that she did something right into Ao's face and the man, the former best hunter ninja of Kirigakure, simply couldn't figure it out. 'Then again, if jonins could figure our tricks out, maybe we don't deserve the title of SS-rank.' Rei conceded in his mind.

"Well, if everything is in order, I think it is time to meet the big bad boys." Rei quipped, getting an annoyed grunt from Ao who still couldn't shake off the feeling he missed something.

He was not a happy camper right about now!