Together with Sai, Ino went out to where scrap materials were stored on the outskirts of town. They hid behind a metal drum and began their watch over the two-story wooden building diagonally across the road from them.
“That’s one of the Kido faction safe houses,” Sai told her. “I think they use it for secret talks or hiding people or locking people up.”
Sai had noted that during the course of his observation of Kido, the man had come to this safe house several times. The building itself was encircled by hedges, with one person near the gate wearing the mask and coat of the Anbu keeping watch over the surroundings.
“Ino, check and see if you can sense Sakura’s chakra in there.”
“Got it.” Ino went into detection mode. She could sense the chakra of three people inside. But none of them were Sakura’s. “She’s not there. Sakura’s chakra isn’t there.”
“It’s not?” Sai was disappointed.
“Hey, are we going to go check out all the places Kido goes to one by one like this?” Ino asked, curious.
“As if.” Sai shook his head. “That would take way too long. And if Kido has safe houses I don’t know about, it’d be game over.”
“So then what are we going to do?”
Before coming here, Sai had said they would use a bit of an “aggressive way” of doing things.
He pointed at the gate guard. “Fortunately, there’s only one person on watch. We’re taking him down.”
“Take him down? You mean, a battle? Now?”
“We’ll do it with a fast attack. Use your Mind Transmission and get inside him. And then all you have to do is get out right before my attack lands.”
It was a basic combo attack, one Ino-Shika-Cho often did. She had never done it with Sai before, but there was only one enemy and she had faith in Sai’s skill.
“Got it,” she replied, without hesitating. She wove the signs and focused her mental energy. “Okay, here I go.” She had no sooner spoken the words to Sai than she was flying out from behind the drum. At the same time, she sent her mental energy shooting out toward the shinobi at the gate.
Mind Transmission Jutsu!
Her jutsu a success, Ino made the guard stand stock-still.
Sai closed in on the guard, hands clenched into fists, and launched a single blow. Immediately before it landed, Ino shouted “Release!” and escaped from the guard’s mind.
Once again in control of himself, the first thing the guard saw was Sai charging toward him.
Sai’s fist landed in the other man’s side, and the guard doubled up. Sai then dropped a sharp strike onto the back of his exposed neck with a stiff hand.
The guard hit the ground without a cry. Sai tossed him over his shoulder before quickly returning to where Ino stood.
“Let’s ask this guy. Everything,” Sai said, and started walking, still carrying the guard.
Once they were inside the scrap material shed, Sai rolled the guard onto the ground. All around them were heaps of scrap materials, a piece of which made for a very nice blindfold.
Sai took out some rope and tied the guard’s hands behind his back before lashing his ankles together. He then sat the still-unconscious guard up and leaned him against a pile of materials before waking him up.
“Sai! You—!”
“Quiet,” Sai said, his voice calm, and took the guard’s mask off.
The man was around thirty years old. He glared at Sai and Ino in turn with angry eyes.
“I didn’t want to have to do something so rough as this to a senior ninja, but we don’t have time to fool around. You’ll answer our questions for us.”
The man stayed silent and shifted his eyes away from Sai.
“You kidnapped someone yesterday, yes?” Sai said. “Where are you hiding her?”
Face still turned away, the man kept his mouth firmly clamped shut.
“I know that you’re a member of Tsumiki Kido’s faction. Where have you stashed Haruno Sakura?”
The man remained silent. He apparently intended to stay that way.
“If you continue to say nothing, we will use methods that I would really rather not.”
“Torture?” the man asked. His mouth twisted up into a challenging sneer.
Sai nodded easily. “Yes. I’m also a former Anbu member, after all. I know any number of ways to get a person to talk.”
“That’s fine then, isn’t it?” the man said. “I’m also Anbu. I know ways of enduring torture.”
“Do you think those will be useful?” Sai asked, pulling out a kunai. Then, without hesitation, he sliced the man’s clothes open, leaving him essentially naked from the waist up. But this man was not the sort to lose his composure at something like that.
Ino started to get nervous. She had been witness to interrogations on missions. At these, she had heard angry roars and threats any number of times, but none of them had ever turned to torture.
She braced herself for whatever bloody scene she was about to face.
Sai readied the brush he used for his Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry. “Ino, you’d better not watch this.”
What was he going to do? What was he going to draw? Would he make a tiger attack? Or maybe an enormous snake would squeeze the man’s body? Or maybe…
One gruesome image after another flashed through her mind, and without thinking, she said, “Hey, Sai, don’t do anything—”
Too awful, she went to finish, but Sai was already moving his brush.
Coooochy coo, coochy coochy coo…
“Pftah! Ha ha ha!” The man began laughing out loud.
“That’s your torture?!” Ino yelped.
“When you don’t have any time, this works best,” Sai said, with a straight face.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I read it in a book.” During this entire exchange, Sai continued to tickle the man with his brush.
The man twisted his body as he laughed, wriggling and writhing, until finally saliva started to dribble out of the corners of his mouth.
After what Sai deemed sufficient time, he stopped moving his hand and asked, “Now will you tell us?”
“…Yes.” The man’s face and voice were despondent; no hint of the fearsome Anbu remained in him.
∞
On the northeastern edge of the village, there was a brick storehouse, the Anbu man told them. Sakura should be there.
Sai quickly drew a bird with his Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry, and he and Ino jumped on and headed for the storehouse.
It wasn’t the first time she had ridden on one of Sai’s birds, but it had been a while, so Ino started to lose her balance at one point.
“If you’re scared, hang on to me,” Sai said, still facing forward.
Ino felt a sweet sensation burst into bloom in her heart, but she quickly shook it off. “I’m okay.”
The bird was moving fairly quickly. The streets of the town below turned into the green of forests and fields before her eyes. They passed wild black kites and hawks.
“I see it!” Sai shouted, pointing at their two o’clock.
On the other side of a grove of trees was a parcel of open land with a brick building in one corner. The bird steadily approached it.
Just as the bird began to slow down, several people in Anbu masks came flying out of the storehouse.
They had probably cloaked the area in a field invisible to the naked eye to let them know of intruders. And the bird had tripped it.
The Anbu who came out of the storehouse let their kunai fly all at once. Sai deftly steered the bird to avoid the countless blades shooting up at them.
The bird made a large circle in the sky before approaching the storehouse once more.
“Sakuraaaaa!” Ino yelled. “We’re here to save you!”
In that moment, something suddenly broke through the roof of the storehouse and came shooting out into the sky above.
A human figure with fist thrust into the air—what came shooting out was Sakura, her entire body colored with chakra.
“Sakura?” Ino cried out wildly from the back of the bird.
Sai blinked hard. “Weird. We’re supposed to be here to save her.”