Night.
"What? There's still no word?"
Tobirama Senju abruptly rose to his feet.
"That's correct. We haven't received any intelligence from the Ninja Hawks all day. Unless Lord Hokage issued some special orders, they were either delayed, or they may have met with misfortune. Please make a decision, Lord Hokage."
An Anbu member respectfully reported to Tobirama Senju.
The special messenger Ninja Hawks bred by the Anbu were custom-made, ultra-fast ninja beasts raised on various secret medicines. They sacrificed everything else in favor of speed. With such training, they could fly across the entire Land of Fire within a single day.
Even intelligence from neighboring countries could be delivered back to Konoha Shinobi Village in the Land of Fire within a day.
They could basically meet all the mission requirements of Anbu ninja throughout the Land of Fire and its surroundings. Yet now, two squads had gone an entire night without sending back the slightest report. That was enough to prove that the teams dispatched had most likely met with disaster.
"That shouldn't be possible! Even if Uchiha Ming and the two Anbu squads were only putting on an act, they couldn't have failed to send back any news by now. According to Anbu regulations, mission progress had to be reported every day. How could elite Anbu personally trained by me forget something like that? Could it really be..."
"No, impossible. With their strength, even if they encountered clan-head-level ninja, they could potentially surround and kill them. How could they have met with misfortune? After all, with one quasi-clan-head-level expert and thirty-four men, all at least Jonin-level, how many people in the entire Ninja World could rival them?"
Tobirama Senju frowned as he questioned the liaison ninja before him who had come to report on the Anbu mission. He could