An Unwelcome Situation.

"Megi….look at this."

"Huh? What happened? Just tell me…." Megumi said, not taking his eyes off of the screen in front of him as he studied the code he was stepping through to debug it.

"So, Kirigakure needs us to take a few shipments to them, and we're taking them on ships from different ports. When we started earlier, I implemented the two general's solution and used scheduled letters with idempotent tokens in between stores, using the shinobi of their own countries to send these messages around, to keep track of which shipments were successfully delivered and ones that were delayed due to interruptions in transit."

"...so? What exactly is the problem? Why are you getting me involved in this?" Megumi asked without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Because I suddenly got a notice today that since yesterday none of the ports have been receiving messages from stores along with their shipments, and none of the stores are receiving their acknowledgements from the ports."

Megumi stopped stepping through code as he swiveled his chair around to look at Sakura who was standing in front of him, inside the mindscape, having paused her work to come visit him.

"How did you get the message you just received?"

"Just in case this system failed, I set up a backup plan that involved using bugs that would fly back to the Aburame clan shinobi we have hired to convey the message to us, they have an emergency postal service that uses bugs to communicate with them as the intermediary."

"Really? That took off?"

"Well…the normal population doesn't use it much, but the businesses? Well they're a hit among the businesses since they're discrete and hard to keep track of or even know if they are being used."

"Hmm….that's nice. But are you sure that the ports are not receiving the messages and haven't just revolted or gone on a strike and stopped sending products over?"

"No. Kirigakure manages these ports. They are all on an island that is a few miles into the sea from both the Land of Lightning and the land of Fire. The ninja just deliver these messages to the ports on those islands and given our relations with all the people involved there seems to be no reason to suspect anything went wrong from our treatment of the workers. The Kumo ninja work under the old mission system for which they are picked out by their own village, the land of fire ninja we hired and we treat them much better than they normally would be, while Kirigakure has no reason to be stopping our products…at least I think so given our last communications with them."

".....hmm…..have you received any news of attacks?"

"Attacks? You mean attacks on ninja?"

"Yes." Megumi nodded.

"Well…we wouldn't receive any news about them unless the ninja survived, which makes it even more unlikely that there are no messages, since that means that among the genin teams that have a jonin or a chunin leading the team if they were from the genin corps, they were all killed off quick enough that not even a single one of them had a chance to escape and deliver information to us."

".....so someone high profile is attacking us?"

"Why would a shinobi attack us out of nowhere? There is no benefit for performing such a wide scale attack."

"No. There is no monetary benefit. For some people it is not about the money. Go inform Tsuna-nee about this immediately and then ask her to go over to investigate personally. I'd urge her to take the Hokage with her as well since I have a stinking suspicion this is the start of something big."

"...really?"

"Yeah. And I want you to man down the fort here. Stay here just in case any new messages pop up here, you can communicate with me the easiest and the fastest way out of everyone present."

"Mom or Dad could just use the communication seal!"

"No. That's not private enough. And they are more likely to be busy and trying to deal with things once the storm really hits. You'll be able to be discreet thanks to your discretion until now."

"Fine. But make sure you talk to me if you're going to do anything dangerous. And if you are going to do something then call me. I want in. If it really is as you're telling me it is then I don't want to let the people who messed with us leave so easily." Sakura stated and left in a hurry, vanishing from the mindscape as quickly as she'd arrived into it.

Megumi turned around to look at the PC he was using to work once again as he whispered, "Perhaps I really need to find a new way to do debugging that takes advantage of chakra to make my life easier….."

Vanishing from inside his mindscape Megumi appeared in his small body as he rested his hand on the air right beside his waist when suddenly a katana appeared attached to a Hakama that draped around his waist and covered his legs and the short kimono he was wearing, with an obi tied to it like a Katabasmi that wrapped the scabbard of the katana in its folds.

Sparing one last glance at the position of his katana and adjusting it to get comfortable after teleporting his sandals onto himself Megumi vanished from the tall and large marble room as he appeared at the top of the castle, in the sky, looking down at the steep angled earthen walls that grew an entire forest on them.

Glancing at the position of the sun in the sky and then at the horizon in the North Eastern direction, Megumi began to teleport as far as he could toward the horizon as fast as he could, only stopping occasionally to replenish a bit of his chakra and wondering if he should find a way to gain more chakra.

Finally arriving at the shores of the larger islands with large bustling settlements on them Megumi stood in the air as he looked down on the rather large town trying to analyze the general layout and the situation.

'Hmm….'

'Hey Rura. Which ports do you guys use; the north eastern port or the south eastern port?"

'Both. Each one is for the nations closest to them and since we have everything on a timer, we don't need to wait for the parcels from the other country to arrive before they depart to Kirigakure.'

'I see. Thank you.'

'Let me know if you find anything.'

'Will do. Alright.'

Looking down Megumi began to trace the outlines of all the pathways ninjas could take from the single port on the western coast that was probably used to get to the Land of Fire and the Land of Hot Water that was on the same side.

Moving his eyes along the various mud pathways, Megumi committed them all to his memory as he began to scan through them in detail to figure out if any disturbances had occurred on them.

'Found it.'

Teleporting one last time, Megumi arrived above at a pathway that was not used by any chariots and seemed to be a little hidden in the forests to give it, not anything too much, but just a little bit of privacy.

'Rura did you guys make your own pathways to travel through the forest from one port to another?'

'Yes. Our packages kept getting interrupted on the normal paths and we kept having to hire more and more shinobi to fend off the constant attempts so we just invested in our own pathway that we made with the help of the head of the island. It was just there so that other people wouldn't get caught up in our mess and it helped reduce our burden a little bit when the shinobi on the island themselves stopped anyone else from entering our paths.'

'Hmm….I was right. They have been killed.' Megumi replied in a solemn tone as he looked at the bodies of a jonin and three genin lying in pools of their own blood with shocked expressions on their faces. 

Their urine and feces leaked due to the loosening of their muscles, mixed into the pool of blood below, soiling their clothes and the part of their faces that was resting on it.

A sick feeling welled up in his chest as he spotted the Konoha headbands on all of their heads but he rejected it and instead focused on the situation at hand as he began to adopt his style of working from when he was a coroner.

Sakura fell silent but Megumi could feel her brain working at a hundred miles an hour, and her focus took a somber shift in tone but stayed silent nevertheless and continued on with his work.

Moving closer, Megumi began to scan through the scene without disturbing anything since it could be used by Tsunade later on as evidence against anything that might come up.

'They have a single stab wound with a long weapon that has penetrated their hearts from the back and has escaped to the front.'

'Their bodies are still warm, but their lips have turned bluish. Possible poisoning?'

'Some of them have their nails snapped off, possibly in an attempt at retaliating? So it is possible that the enemy has enough resources to target a team of three recently graduated genins and one jonin. The enemy team likely followed the same structure but with rogue ninjas in the team instead.'

'Scratch that. The Jounin's instincts would've kicked in if he was up against rogue ninjas. They were probably from some country. From this island?'

'No. We are the biggest funders of the island. We built the two ports and we also provide them with the most money in taxes.'

'Then they likely took advantage of the fact that this place was not patrolled often on the grounds of secrecy and privacy to ambush with a sort of poisonous gas and only then confronted the jonin?'

'The jonin would've noticed any simple poison.'

'So a good poison? Our enemy is quite rich it would seem.'

'Are there any signs of a fight having taken place around the area?' Sakura asked.

'Not any large fights, I do spot a few footprints and a few broken twigs among the trees nearby that probably occurred while they were all working their way back after finishing their job, but nothing major. This was probably done quickly after they set up their ambush and waited for the team to arrive here. It is right in the center of the entire pathway.'

'Are you on the Konoha pathway?'

'Yes. I will go check on the Kumo one next.'

'Make sure to be absolutely careful when you do that.'

'I will.'

Teleporting to the top, into the sky, Megumi began to scan around for the pathways that were being used to travel to the other port when he soon spotted the other pathway that was hidden under the canopy of trees in the forest.

As his eyes scanned over them Megumi was about to sigh in relief when suddenly he thought of something ridiculous.

Teleporting back to the same area he had just been in, Megumi re-examined the scene once again as he looked down at the crime scene and pondered over all the details closely.

'Sakura do you have the details of the people who you hired from Konoha's side?'

'Yes. Do you need them?'

'What are their general body builds?'

'Jonin is a tall brown haired-'

'They made it look like the Konoha shinobi killed the Kumo ones and replaced their bodies for the island people to find out and inform the Haruno store in Konoha that the Kumo ninjas killed shinobi from Konoha.'

'...what?'

'The Konoha shinobi are missing. I am looking at the bodies of Kumo ninja in front of me.'

'How didn't you spot it the first time itself!?'

'They were somehow made to change their dresses before they were killed. Or perhaps, they woke up from being poisoned after they were stabbed through their hearts while they lay collapsed on the floor itself? And then their hands and legs were pressed down to hold back resistance? Possibly by a Doton jutsu so that they'd leave no traces of the assassination happening?'

'Then that means the opponent was just one person or maybe two to include a poison expert?'

'We'll know if the theory is true when Tsuna-nee comes over to check the scene and cleans up the blood. There should be small finger trenches under their hands with broken nails, that are currently covered up by blood that leaked from their chest.'

'....can you track down the Konoha shinobi? Perhaps they aren't dead yet?'

'Probably not, and if they are dead then they might've just been sealed away so I can't find them, as for the location they were killed, I think they were subdued first using the same poison gas and then had their necks snapped to make it clean.'

'Wouldn't there have been any sound from the shouts of the Kumo ninja who were killed when they woke up?'

'They probably had blood coughing up their throats and mouth….and they might've just as easily used Doton to build an earth dome around the area to stifle the noise and stop it from escaping the area.'

'.....see if you can do something. I'll inform Tsunade-sensei and update her. She's probably already talking to the Hokage since she left a few minutes ago.'

'Alright….I'll see if I can find something out.' Megumi thought as he closed his eyes to go over everytihng he had encountered, trying to turn his rusty gears to crack the unwelcome case that had appeared in front of him. 'So you've played your first move...'

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A/N: Should he increase his chakra capacity? He can currently teleport himself and things around him about thirty times before his chakra is fully depleted.

Thank you for reading!

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