End of the Mission and Shiki's Return

'Crystal Style: Crystal Prison Jutsu!' Guren shouted in her mind.

All of the shards from the crystal thorns Hidan had destroyed exploded in clouds of crystal dust that instantly solidified in a prism shaped crystal, trapping Hidan within itself.

With Guren's battle finished, Haku undid her Crystal Ice Mirror Jutsu as well, letting the immensely frustrated Kakuzu out.

"Make yourself scarce Akatsuki." Guren demanded.

Seeing the trapped Hidan, Kakuzu knew the situation was bad.

"Hand over that fool and I will . . ." Kakuzu probed.

"Looks like you don't understand your position." Haku said in a chilling tone.

"That annoying loudmouth will be coming with us. I am looking forward to finding a way of actually killing him." Guren added from the side.

"As for you . . ." She continued, only to to have Haku take over.

"Your reasonability is the only reason you're being allowed to leave . . . That, and the fact that we have a report to make and our leader just hates to be kept waiting." She said in her cold and ominous tone.

SIlently evaluating his options, and realized the two girls did not seem all too scared to face him, Kakuzu indeed thought retreating was the best option.

'Hmm . . . Their reasons for letting me go are not entirely true, I'm almost sure of it . . . But that doesn't mean I can take them both on my own at this time.' He pondered.

'Better to take the offer and retreat.' Kakuzu finally decided.

"Hmph! I'll be going then." He said.

Not sensing an sort of relief from the two girls, not even a slight easing of tension, only strengthened Kakuzu's resolve for leaving and so, the mission was finally done, ending in a resounding victory for Mugetsu and unprecedented failure for the Akatsuki.

After dealing with their clients and reporting their success, the girls returned to base, happy at having gotten a nice spoil of war to present to Shiki in the form of the captured Hidan.

Speaking of Shiki, his holiday was finally at an end and, despite his great enjoyment of this time spent without worries, he had to admit he was raring to get back into the heat of things.

After spending his last few days in a resort in the Land of Snow and Spring, well accompanied by Koyuki, Fubuki and Tatsumaki. Just enjoying what was left of his free time under the care of three illustrious beauties, he at last returned to the desert fortress so as to get back to work.

The first thing he did was to take a quick look through all the reports on accomplished missions and activities undertaken by the various members of his organization.

'Hmm . . . It seems all is going extremely well . . . I'm almost disappointed there are no problems waiting for my return so that I can solve them.' Shiki irresponsibly thought as he went through all activity reports forwarded to him by Aion.

'Oh well . . .' He resigned himself to admit he raised his subordinates to be far too competent to make serious mistakes he would need to correct but, as he reached the final mission report, he finally caught something of interest.

'Guren and Haku captured Hidan . . .' He pondered, already thinking up some experiments to run on the supposed immortal.

'Their handling of the situation was quite excellent as well' Shiki considered.

'Revealing enough of Mugetsu's power for us to be taken very seriously by even the most powerful of organizations but still keeping all of our true reserves hidden. Truly excellent.' He praised in his mind.

The girls were probably only tying up the mission with the clients and would soon return, after which he would lavishly praise them for their great work.

Shiki felt he should probably check in on the R&D division too since Tsunade and Orochimaru did not always assiduously log their results before going through the entirety of their scientific process.

After Guren and haku teleported back to the fortress, now having finished dealing with the clients for their mission, the spotter Shiki welcoming the both of them back, much to their happiness.

"Well done! I've read the reports. Not only did you both do a fantastic job, you even brought a gift." Shiki commended the girls' efforts.

"Thank you, Shiki-sama!" Guren excitedly responded.

"Thank you, Shiki-san." Haku happily replied.

After they spoke a bit, Shiki went to check out Tsunade and Orochimaru's place, just like he had planned.

His return was not that big of an occasion, he still met up with the various members of Mugetsu, even if just to relax and not to talk about work, so he didn't need to visit anyone in particular, at least for a social call anyways.

Visiting the labs, Shiki greeted Tsunade who was actually alone at the moment.

"Hey Tsuna-nee, how is work going?" He asked.

Moving away from her lab equipment, Tsunade greeted Shiki with a hug, pulling close and pressing their bodies together, after which the pair fell into a passionate kiss.

"Nice to see you back Shiki, work is going great actually. We've had a recent breakthrough on the Zetsu problem." Tsunade informed.

"Oh? I didn't seem to spot anything of the sort in the activity reports . . ." Shiki teasingly said.

"Ah! Yes, well . . . I . . ." Tsunade cutely stuttered.

"You forgot to log your discoveries into the mainframe." Shiki completed her sentence for her.

"Uhm, yes." She admitted.

*sigh* Shiki sighed with exasperation.

"I was going to do it after I've finished verifying all our results and compiling everything." Tsunade defended herself.

"Tsuna-nee . . . You know that's not protocol . . . Right?" Shiki complained.

Tsunade just looked away in guilt. Her expression was actually quite cute to behold.

"I know it's bothersome to record every step in our database but its important, and you shouldn't push all of that onto Shizu-nee's shoulders." He accused.

"!?" tsunade was surprised.

"Surprised? Come now Tsuna-nee. How long have I known you now?" Shiki teased.

"I'll do better next time." Tsunade acquiesced.

"And . . ." Shiki pressed.

"And, i'll transcribe all of my experiment notes on to the database." She added.

"Great! I'll check it out later. Right now, I've my own work to set up as well." Shiki said, after which he gave his goodbyes and left.

'Now then . . .' Shiki began planning out his next move.

'I had planned to make some moves on the larger nations the the time gap between the original series and shippuuden so I better get to work.'

'I think I'll go for Kusagakure first, namely, the Box of Ultimate Bliss hidden under the Hozuki Castle . . .'

Hozuki Castle, also known as the Blood Prison, was a criminal containment facility in the country that housed Kusagakure. All hidden villages sent some of their worst criminal shinobi there.

The castle though, was controlled strictly by Kusagakure who maintained contracts for the containment of shinobi prisoners with all other hidden villages, at least the major ones.

This however, was only the official purpose of Hozuki Castle. In truth, it was a facility meant to hide and study the Box of Ultimate Bliss, a superweapon from the time of the Sage of Six Paths.

The box required colossal amounts of chakra to open, an amount only fulfilled by Naruto in the Blood Prison Movie that was a part of the original series.

Mui, the warden of the Blood Prison, had even attempted to use his own son as an offering to the Box of Ultimate Bliss, so that it would open. It that resulted in, was the loss of his son and not a single thing to gain from it.

It was the loss of his son that led Mui to even more obsessively look for was to open the box, no longer for the power within, but only to release his son that was trapped inside of it. What he did not know however, was that his son Muku, became lost forever, the very moment he was trapped.

Still, Mui's actions, along with the actions of the four elders of the Hozuki Castle Council, did not escape the scrutiny of Kusagakure's leadership, who were troubled on how to deal with them. After all, the both the not want to expose they had such a powerful artifact in their possession.

Perhaps even more importantly, they did not want to break the hard earned trust they had from the other major hidden villages so they were extremely troubled by the current state of events.

This, was precisely what Shiki was looking forward to.

He would go to the Kusakage as the Reaper, and offer him a deal he cannot refuse, with sufficient encouragement and maybe a few threats, he was sure he could bring Kusa to Mugetsu's side.

Thus, through soft and hards methods of negotiation and a well executed plan, Shiki was intent on both securing Kusagakure's allegiance and obtaining the Box of Ultimate Bliss.

The time was ripe, and all preparations would soon be complete, all Shiki had to do now, was to merely set the events in motion . . .

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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba without the extra dots of course.

You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.

There's also my other novel Archon of DanMachi, do check it out!

I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.