5 Sai-I

The team settled down for supper. They would be breaching the hideout in an hour, and the captain did not want them to fight on an empty stomach. Sai unrolled his storage scroll and brought out Aki's Mapo Tofu. The effect was immediate, Hana and her ninken scrunched up their nose.

"Why do you eat that thing? As if normal Mapo Tofu wasn't spicy enough. Just smelling that unholy thing sets my nose on fire," she said.

"Captain Ichigo introduced me to Aki's diner. Mrs. Aki even makes this version specifically at my request. How can I not be a loyal customer?" he stated without inflection.

That was partly true. The reason he liked the extra spicy dish was because it was something he could feel. For a defective human being whose emotions were stamped out, feeling something when eating food was a game-changer. He got addicted to the burn, especially since sometimes it felt like the seal on his tongue was burning off due to the heat.

His Root training had enabled him to go through torture with a fake smile on his face. He was familiar with poisons and all sorts of unpalatable things. All so that he could survive in the worst conditions and finish his mission. Despite all that, there was something about extremely spicy food that kindled something within him. Something that even toxins couldn't do. Maybe because it tasted good despite the heat? He needed a better book to teach him how to word what he felt.

Initially, when he was assigned to this team, he just thought of it as a conventional mission. Oh, how wrong he was. The year that he had spent with this team had changed him a lot.

Hana was a very kind individual. Initially, he didn't care that his attempts at socializing were getting under her skin, but of late, he tried his best to filter what he said. More than once, he wished that he had burnt down the books that he had read about human interactions. He was doing everything wrong, but he didn't know otherwise. Although, just watching Hana and emulating her behavior helped him often.

Yakumo, on the other hand, was someone Sai liked annoying a lot. She was a ball of angst that needed to lighten up, and this was coming from someone who was rubbish at socializing. Their main point of contention was their shared passion for art. Passion… would be the wrong term to define anything Sai was involved with. Interest would be a better word. He was interested in art, yes. Yakumo was the one passionate about art. Nonetheless, she had made it something of a competition on who could perform better jutsu with their art. Was this what they called a rival? Sai would not know. Going by the description, it did fit the bill though. Hence, he liked to rile her up. A part of him did not want to lose when it came to the only thing he was interested in.

Captain Ichigo reminded him of his dead brother Shin sometimes. He encouraged Sai to pursue his interest in art often. The captain had even introduced Sai to an art style he called expressionism. Sai was dreadful at it because understanding emotions was a hard task. But he would not allow himself to be sub-par at art. So he had been improving, trying to get better at drawing emotions. Just like his brother, the captain was aloof, but sharp when the need arose. He sometimes felt… something, when he interacted with his captain. Something that reminded him of his brother, something that he thought he couldn't feel again.

Other than that, the captain was tutoring him on conventional fuinjutsu, so that he can better his skills as a shinobi. The Haruno clan's fuinjutsu was proprietary and off-limits for him of course, and he understood that. It didn't change the fact that his growth had been more than satisfactory.

At the end of the day, he still belonged to Root. He thought so, but this again was a conflicting area for him. He was no longer in the dark, serving the light. Even though he was an asset of Root, it didn't take away the fact that he was now in the light, a visible part of the great tree that was Konoha.

The creed of Root was that you have no name. You have no feelings. You have no past. You have no future. There is only the mission.

He had a name now. He felt some things now, even though they were minuscule. The captain's existence was a constant reminder of his past, to his dead brother. The tenet about having no future might still be intact in his case, but more often than not, he imagined bettering his art, overtaking Yakumo. He imagined getting to interact with other people as Hana did. So maybe he had a future or at least a future he wanted for himself? Lastly, there was only the mission. But there were his teammates as well. It was all so confusing, and he often wanted to retreat to Root HQ and confess all these… feelings?

Brushing off his treacherous thoughts with practiced ease, he went ahead and began eating the Mapo Tofu. He really needed to thank his captain properly for introducing him to Aki's diner. As he ate, he reiterated the mission objectives in his mind. The raid was almost upon them, and he would not fail his mission.

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"All clear, captain," he said, sitting atop his creation of ink as it soared the night skies above the hideout.

"Acknowledged, awaiting confirmation from Hana," came the captain's voice from the wireless radio.

He spent the next few minutes flying in a pattern designed to imitate an actual bird in flight. Just in case someone spotted him from below and got suspicious. All the while, his eyes were glued to the binoculars, doing a sweep of the area below him.

"We finished rounding up the perimeter guard," cracked Hana's voice from the radio. An Anbu team had already been here, mapping the guard schedule. All of it had been included in the mission scroll and had helped them a lot with catching them off guard.

"Perfect. Send Yakumo to my location with one of the triplets. We'll be breaching as soon as she reaches me. I have the seal ready," said the captain.

Sai kept his eyes peeled for any stragglers as he probed the connection with his various ink constructs on the ground.

"Yakumo is here with the ninken. Sai, the moment she puts everyone inside the base to sleep, I want you to flood the place with your constructs. Wait for my signal," said the captain after a couple of minutes.

"Yes, captain," he responded as he readied all of his ink rats and snakes that were crawling outside the base.

He saw Yakumo sitting in front of the captain, painting something on a canvas. From this distance, he couldn't see what exactly she was painting, but he was sure that she was painting something similar to people inside the base falling asleep. It was something he was all too familiar with it. She would then utilize that unfair Kekkei Genkai of hers and actualize the illusion into reality, at least the parts that affected human beings. As she weaved her genjutsu, she would get to know who was asleep and who was awake. Then she would convince their brains that nothing out of the norm happened.

He saw her take out another canvas and paint on it. He was pretty sure that both of the paintings were for the two different scenarios. One for those who were asleep, and one for those who were awake. The area of effect nature and the massive range of her genjutsu were a massive asset in the field. He wondered whether Jonin Kurenai was really to be trusted with another team when she fumbled with such a talented person already.

"I'm done," she got up after a few moments and spoke on their channel.

"Do it now," captain Ichigo said and Sai responded the next second. He watched from his binoculars as the captain broke down the seal protecting the place, and installed a seal of his creation in place. He saw and felt his constructs rushing into the base.

He whipped out a scroll and painted a few small birds to make up for the constructs that had gone into the base. His job was to scout every nook and cranny of the hideout using his constructs and to maintain overwatch outside. Hana was guarding the prisoners and would assist him in case any reinforcements popped up. But then again, if someone was alerted to their presence, then this mission was a failure automatically.

Multitasking on such a massive scale was physically impossible for his brain, so he had created his scouts with some predefined directives. They would map the area and send him the information one by one based on priority, which was defined by a list that he had created with the captain's help. Previously, he just kept switching between the constructs, but that was inefficient. This method of including fuinjutsu in his creations was way more effective. If the script that the captain had created had advanced features like this, then it would be worth the hype indeed. He mused that he would be way more valuable to the cause if he had access to it. Was this what people called envy? Or was it greed? He couldn't really differentiate.

Sai spent the next few minutes relaying the information about the various rooms inside the hideout to the captain. From the information he got from his little spies, the captain and his clones were blitzing through the base, while the canine had teamed up with Yakumo to ensure that all the people inside were accounted for.

Normally, such a course of action would be risky, but Yakumo's genjutsu was one of the most potent things in their arsenal. Without a doubt, everyone inside the base would have fallen asleep unless they were significantly stronger than her. On the other hand, anyone short of Orochimaru himself would not be much of an issue for the captain. So even if some people were awake, the captain would have knocked them out within seconds. From what he gathered, her genjutsu had worked as usual, and everyone was asleep.

To sell the illusion of nothing out of the norm happening, she would then be using another potent genjutsu to convince their brains into believing that they were just going about their daily tasks. Moreover, most of them would already be asleep since it was nighttime. Meanwhile, captain Ichigo and his clones would be making copies of all the information inside the place. The captain would also be placing his seals in some clandestine spots to spy on the base remotely. Those seals were somehow concealed perfectly to all senses. Lord Danzo had wanted him to get his hands on some of those seals, but if it is one thing the captain was very careful about, it was his seals. He could not procure any samples as a result. Even if he did, it would be a moot point. The captain had once told them that most of his seals couldn't be activated by people who did not know how his fuinjutsu worked. Something about the average shinobi not having the exportable packages and libraries. Of course, he had some commercial seals that he sold to the village, which could be used by anyone. But none of those were as efficient as the ones he personally used. Any attempt at decoding his commercial seals was also a bust since they tended to just disintegrate on any tampering.

Sai sometimes did not understand Lord Danzo. Even when someone was contributing to the village, the man had an issue with them. They were told time and time again that the village was the most important thing in the end, but the one who taught them did not practice his own teachings sometimes. Such thoughts had been plaguing him recently. He understood that taking care of the threats to the village from the dark was a necessity. But he sometimes did not understand why some things were classified as a threat when they most certainly were not. Not that Lord Danzo had designated captain Ichigo as a threat. It was just that he began seeing some patterns ever since he began serving the great tree as a leaf. He had introspected some of his older missions and could see that some of them were contradictory in nature. Instead of taking out threats to the village, in some missions, they had unnecessarily taken out a few assets just because they could possibly grow to be a threat. Without an ounce of evidence pointing to the contrary.

The cursed seal on their tongues ensured that they can't disseminate information about their organization to others, but it didn't ensure their loyalty. No, the loyalty was cultivated during their brutal training. Even then, the training itself stated that the loyalty to the village took precedence over anything else. When he was absolutely loyal to the village, why did he have to fear thinking about missions that could possibly be detrimental to the village? If he was just running Root missions without reprieve, he would not have had these thoughts, or even introspected on his missions. Being a part of a high-profile team for an extended period put him under a lot of scrutiny from various avenues. Especially since the Hokage did not completely trust him and suspected him to be a part of a supposedly defunct organization. So he had been running the standard missions exclusively and only passing on information to Lord Danzo. All this had resulted in him thinking a lot instead of mindlessly doing missions one after the other.

"I got everything. Are you done Yakumo?" he heard the captain's voice over the radio. It sounded unusually clipped for some reason. Had something happened inside? He hadn't gotten anything out of the ordinary from his ink creatures though.

"Gimme another minute. Almost done here," she responded.

"Sai, did we miss any room?" captain Ichigo asked as Yakumo was still performing her task.

"No captain, you got everything," he replied.

"Good, let's get out of this hellhole post haste. Bring out all of these things and seal them inside a scroll Sai, we don't want to leave behind any evidence. I will do a final sweep of this place to see if we left behind any traces. Hana, start placing the perimeter guards back in their places according to their supposed schedule. Yakumo will rewrite their memories just like she did the ones inside," said the captain.

After a few minutes, Hana's ninken ran out of the entrance and joined his two brothers. Yakumo and the captain followed suit and they joined Hana in doing the finishing touches.

"Alright, let's move out. Yakumo, wake them all up after we are clear," ordered the captain as they all began running through the forest surrounding the base. Once they had reached a certain distance, Sai began lowering his altitude to meet up with his teammates.

In the cover of the night, his inky black mount lowered itself to the ground without any issues. They waited and watched for several moments. Once they were certain that no alarm went off, they took off towards Konoha.

"We got to pick up the pace folks, the information that I got was not pretty at all. We need to report to Lord Third asap," said the captain as he began accelerating to a speed that they could all barely keep up with. It was nowhere near the captain's top speed of course. Still, Sai wondered what the captain had read while copying the stuff inside the hideout that had spooked him so.

"I'm taking an extended leave after this," grumbled Yakumo. Back-to-back missions would have been tough on her indeed. She had always struggled with the physical aspect of things, and running at top speed would not be palatable to her.

"What are you smiling at?" she snarled as she caught him looking at her. He often wondered why she always thought that he was making fun of her. There was a long way to go before he would ever truly understand Yakumo.

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A.N: For people who can't code, let me explain how Ichigo's personal seals work. In the shinobi files, I mentioned that he has several tattoos on his body. Those are all encrypted fuinjutsu. These seals contain a lot of reusable components and functions that he has designated as packages to be exported. Copying these tattoos won't work, just like tracing Tsunade's and Orochimaru's seals would not work for anyone else unless they have the know-how. Moreover, people don't know the exact purpose of these seals.

He then has a lot of paper seals that are for specific purposes. These seals import the packages that he has on his person and then use the data from that to perform their operations. He can prime a seal, and then hand it over to someone else as well. Ultimately, these seals cannot work without direct intervention from Ichigo. He can also use the libraries on their own without any supplementary paper seals.

The commercial seals that he sells are bulkier and less efficient than his personal seals. Mainly because they have no export/import action going on. All of their functionality is hard coded on them. He uses this as an excuse to not give out some of his powerful seals as well.

Moving on, I struggled to write Sai. I hope that I did him justice. This chapter marks the beginning of the first plot arc of this fic. Hope you liked it. The tone of this chapter itself was quite bland because of Sai's muted emotions. He has been changing a lot due to the time he has spent with this team. In canon, he was able to rediscover his emotions after connecting with Naruto and his friends. Here, Sai has had four fewer years of the Root bullshit to deal with, compared to canon. So, spending time in a team that has members who have something or the other in common with either him or his dead brother would do wonders for his emotional development. He doesn't express his emotions, but he has begun to feel certain things once more.

Also, technology in Naruto always confuses me. It felt so odd writing the wireless radio into the scene.

If you want to talk to me on discord, please find the invite in the auxiliary chapter.