Aftermath

"A member of the Hyuga Clan? Perfect timing!" Neji had been out on the street for less than two minutes when an Anbu approached him. "Use your Byakugan to find someone immediately. He's wearing a black robe with red clouds and a Tiger-Pattern Mask."

Neji nodded. "Understood."

Neji activated his Byakugan and appeared to search in earnest.

"Well? See anything?" the Anbu asked anxiously.

Neji shook his head. "No. He may have already left my Byakugan's range."

"Damn it!" the Anbu muttered, then vanished from Neji's sight.

The streets had been locked down, and shoppers were being evacuated to safety. Neji joined the effort to move Konoha's residents out of the area.

Ninja leaped from rooftop to rooftop, every one of them in a hurry.

They seemed convinced the intruder was still somewhere in Konoha.

Watching them rush back and forth across the rooftops, Neji found it almost funny.

Watching this from the sidelines feels pretty good! Neji went through the motions of helping with the evacuation. He was starting to enjoy being a spectator.

He was in an excellent mood. The operation had succeeded, and he had achieved exactly what he wanted.

All in all, it had gone more smoothly than expected, without any surprises or close calls.

Once the evacuation was complete, Neji did not return to the Hot Spring Shop on the street near Root. Instead, he wandered Konoha's streets, pretending to search for the intruder.

At first, some ninja saw that he was only a Genin and tried to send him home so he would not get in the way.

But when they saw that he belonged to the Hyuga Clan and had the Byakugan, they let him join the search.

Neji spent most of the night wandering aimlessly around Konoha. Only after things began to settle down did he return to the Hyuga Clan.

Neji was pleased with himself, but the members of the Konoha High Command led by Hiruzen Sarutobi were anything but pleased.

Someone had infiltrated and raided Root. Nothing like it had ever happened before.

When Hiruzen Sarutobi first received the news, he could hardly believe it. He suspected Danzo had staged the whole thing to ask him, as Hokage, for more funding.

But when he reached Root's underground base, he was stunned. A quarter of the entire base had collapsed.

"Where's Aburame Ryoma? Where did he go?" Hiruzen Sarutobi asked, standing in the darkness and looking at the Root Ninja kneeling before him.

The Root Ninja kept his head lowered. "Lord Ryoma went ahead of us to intercept the intruder. He's been missing ever since."

Hiruzen Sarutobi fell silent. Aburame Ryoma was most likely dead, with no remains left to recover. "Missing" was merely a kinder way to put it.

Just then, Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura, two other members of Konoha's four-person high command, arrived at Root's base.

Utatane Koharu looked at Hiruzen Sarutobi. "Hiruzen, how is it? Have you found anything?"

Troubled, Hiruzen Sarutobi took a long drag on his pipe. "Nothing. I examined the traces of the fight, but I've never seen the Ninjutsu the intruder used."

Mitokado Homura was astonished. "Even you don't recognize the Ninjutsu?"

"Hiruzen, that..." Utatane Koharu was at a loss for words.

Hiruzen Sarutobi was known as the Professor of Ninjutsu. He had mastered thousands of techniques, more than anyone else in the Shinobi World.

Yet now he was saying he could not even determine what kind of Ninjutsu the enemy had used.

Hiruzen Sarutobi sighed. "The Shinobi World is vast. There's no telling what's out there."

"How bad are Root's losses?" Mitokado Homura asked the Root Ninja standing by.

"Adviser, after taking inventory, we found that the enemy stole several techniques from Root's collection: the Four Symbols Seal, the Five Elements Seal, the Yin Seal, the Impure World Reincarnation Jutsu, and the Spirit Transformation Technique," the Root Ninja replied.

Hiruzen Sarutobi flew into a rage. "What is Danzo doing? Why were the Yin Seal and the Impure World Reincarnation Jutsu in Root?!"

His chest rose and fell sharply. Neither technique was ordinary. The Yin Seal was a medical Sealing Jutsu created by his student Tsunade; without her permission, even Hiruzen Sarutobi had no right to teach it to anyone else. The Impure World Reincarnation Jutsu, meanwhile, was an absolute forbidden technique. He had ordered long ago that no ninja in Konoha was to study or research it.

Seeing Hiruzen Sarutobi's fury, Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura did not dare speak up. They simply watched in silence.

"Danzo grows bolder by the day. He even dared to work on the Impure World Reincarnation Jutsu behind my back, bypassing me as Hokage." Hiruzen Sarutobi's voice was icy.

And who let him get this bold? He's done worse. He even got away with trying to assassinate you, the Hokage. What's a little research into forbidden techniques compared to that? Utatane Koharu thought.

They knew perfectly well that Hiruzen Sarutobi had allowed Danzo's schemes, but it was not something they could say aloud.

It took Hiruzen Sarutobi some time to suppress his anger. He turned to the Root Ninja. "What are the personnel losses?"

"Lord Hokage, Root has confirmed nine dead and nine missing."

Hiruzen Sarutobi's face darkened. There was no need to wonder what had happened to the missing.

Root's role was to train personnel for the Anbu. Though Root had become relatively independent in practice, a large portion of Anbu members were still selected from its ranks. In that respect, Root continued to fulfill its duty.

Eighteen people—one more than an entire Anbu squad. And an Elite Jonin like Aburame Ryoma had died as well.

"Those are heavy losses..." Mitokado Homura sighed.

Konoha's Anbu numbered only a few dozen. Even with Root included, there were just over a hundred. They had lost a tenth of them in one night.

The losses were not enough to cripple them, but they were far from minor.

Training a single Anbu member took considerable resources. Not just anyone could do the job. Besides being strong, they needed exceptional mental resilience, because their work involved things that could never see the light of day.

Without that resilience, even if an enemy did not kill them, the work itself could break them.

"Have you identified the intruder's face?" Hiruzen Sarutobi asked coldly.

"Lord Hokage, the intruder moved too quickly. The surveillance footage captured only a blurry image. We're still working to restore it," the Root Ninja replied.

"Restore the footage as soon as possible," Hiruzen Sarutobi ordered.