Genin Days (XIII).

It seemed that the entire building, at least on this floor, was one single room, filled to the brim with weapons of all kinds. The only other notable detail was the stairs leading downwards.

'Huh,' Itachi thought. 'Seems like this is the armoury.'

Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, he took a fair amount of kunai, shuriken, some wire, a wakizashi, and some other useful-looking equipment. You never knew when such tools would come in handy. Only afterwards did he start to slowly descend downstairs, always moving cautiously but swiftly. He was on a schedule, after all.

He needed to follow the stairs for around three minutes before finally seeing its end. Itachi was just about to descend fully onto this new floor when he suddenly stood still.

There were voices.

"...new bunch didn't arrive yet..."

"...problems?"

"Nah,...Taro...never..."

"But...Kiri maybe..."

He could hear three different voices, two male and one female, which meant that there were at least three people. He had no way of knowing if there were more enemies who just didn't speak up yet because he, for some reason, couldn't feel the exact number of presences. He guessed that they must have done something to block the senses of invaders. He couldn't even dare to give a peak, because the corridor appeared, if he interpreted the echo of their voices correctly, to be straight with no turns to hide in.

They would spot him immediately.

Itachi had only a few options he could take right now, and after a short consideration, he decided to take the easiest one.

He used a Henge (Transformation Technique) to look like one of the guards from outside the building while simultaneously putting his sword, the wakizashi he had taken only a few minutes before, on his back. He then also used a Genjutsu to hide the fact that it was there in the first place.

Disguise in place, right down to the same bored expression he had seen the man make before, he calmly continued walking downstairs, not bothering to silence his steps anymore.

The people, which fortunately numbered only three, noticed him only a few seconds after he saw them, giving him the chance to determine their threat level.

There were two men and one woman, the latter apparently also being the only shinobi of the group while the other two looked more like scientists. He obviously couldn't be sure as you didn't need to wear standard shinobi uniforms to be one and it was quite easy for experienced shinobi to hide the typical signs that would give them away, but considering that they had no reason to hide their profession inside their base while surrounded by 'allies' he was pretty confident in his estimation.

"Shindo? What are you doing here? You know you can't skip your shift or you will be punished again," the sole woman of the group said, sounding exasperated and annoyed. The way she shook her head, making her brown ponytail shake with her every movement, and massaged her brows gave the impression that this wasn't the first time 'Shindo' had skipped his duty and that she was used to it by now.

He didn't stop walking when he gave a weak smile in response, raising his right hand to scratch the back of his head. Only a few more steps...

"I know, I know. But there were this crazy crows, you know, who came down from the sky to-"

He didn't finish the sentence. As soon as he was in range, he grabbed the handle of his sword with his right hand, the one he had put into position when he had started to 'scratch the back of his head', and slashed it downwards at the Kunoichi.

The woman hadn't even time to widen her eyes in surprise before she was dead.

Her two companions didn't immediately understand what was happening, and by the time their brains realized the danger they were in and gave the order to scream for help, their throats were already cut, making it impossible for them to do so.

The entire thing had hardly lasted more than a second.

Itachi looked at the two men, taking in their coats that looked that of typical medical personal. He had some very good ideas about what their work here included and didn't like it at all. Even more so when he thought about the fact that their patients were children.

Best case, they were there to treat the children after some too violent 'persuasive measures' were taken to make them their spies. Worst case, there were experiments conducted on them. This thought remembered him too much on Orochimaru for his liking.

Itachi could see a door around 200 metres from his position. Continuing to walk through the corridor, he inspected his surrounding. The walls were built from a different stone than the building above the ground and didn't look like it was battered by age yet, so he was pretty sure that this underground facility didn't exist when the base was first built and was, in fact, a recent addition. Just like he thought, there were no other corridors that were leading away from this one, and neither were there any other rooms other than the one he could see at the end of the floor.

Before long, he had arrived at the door, stretching his senses to feel if he could determine if and how many people were on the other side of it.

Closing his eyes, he started counting, finishing at eight people in close proximity to the door. Stretching his senses even farther, he could feel another number of people farther back in the room. He couldn't say exactly how many there were as whatever they did to disturb his senses still hindered him, but by the sheer amount of them, he guessed that these presences must belong to the missing children.

Itachi felt a wave of relief flowing through his body, happy that he had chosen correctly when he decided that this must be the building they were held in. He didn't think that there would be enough time to change his mind now and try to infiltrate another building before the attack began.

He opened the door and jumped into action, his Sharingan blazing. Instantly noting that five of the eight people wore clothes that identified them as medical personal, he gave them the lower priority and attacked the other three shinobi first.

The first enemy died by getting his throat cut before he managed to do more than reaching out for his weapon. The second one was faster and slashed at him with a sword, which was an attack he blocked with his wakizashi.

Itachi jumped away from his spot to evade the third enemy's shuriken, all the while defending himself from the sword strikes from the person in front of him.

"How did a damn Uchiha get in here?" one of them exclaimed angrily.

"I don't- argh" his partner tried to answer, but stopped talking when one of Itachi's slashes hit his shoulder.

Momentary distracted, Itachi gave him a roundhouse kick to the face and moved to finish the job, only to be stopped by the last enemy.

Getting some distance from both enemies he started making hand seals.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" (Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique)

The Shinobi that just had saved his comrade had been in the process of forming hand seals of his own, probably to defend himself and his partner from the attack, but was left standing to gawk at the screaming bodies of the medical personal that had tried to flee the room and had been the true target of Itachi's attack.

"Damn you kid!" he screamed and rushed at him with new drive, ignoring his partners cries to stop.

Itachi waited until his enemy was almost in front of him, with only 10 metres distance between them, to simultaneously use a low-level Genjutsu on him and throw his sword.

As he was technically a clone, his chakra reserves were more limited than that of his original self because he couldn't regenerate any chakra of his own. This meant that he couldn't risk wasting chakra by trying to use a Genjutsu on his enemies without being certain that it would bring him the kill.

Right now was such a situation.

Even if the man had the necessary chakra control, which was a likely possibility, he would be too enraged to concentrate enough to free himself fast enough to evade the sword that was flying at his head. And even if he somehow managed to break out of it before he died, the likelihood of him also evade the sword was somewhere around zero.

He didn't break free.

'Two down, one left.' he thought grimly, ignoring the smell of burned human flesh from the corner where the medical personal had died.

One second later, he had to concentrate on not falling to the ground as the earth began to shake and the sound of explosions could be heard from the distance.

The attack had begun.

His attention snapped back to the last living enemy when he saw him forming hand seals from the corner of his eyes. Realising thanks to his Sharingan what technique the enemy was preparing for, he quickly decided on a plan and rushed in his direction.

"Suiton: Mizu Kamikiri!" (Water Release: Rising Water Slicer)

A linear wave of water shot out of the man's mouth right towards him, but Itachi didn't dodge. Instead, he let the attack hit his body, piercing him right through his head. Instantly the body dissolved into dozens of crows, all of them flying in the Kiri-nin's direction. The man hadn't time to utter more than a single surprised "What-" before a half reformed Itachi pierced his head with a kunai of his own.

The entire fight hadn't even lasted two minutes.

He checked his reserves just to realize that he had barely a sixth of his chakra left. It would be enough for the Genjutsu he had planned, but he doubted he could hold it for more than half an hour, if even that long at all.

That needed to be enough.

Itachi went over to the corner where the children were locked up in the back of the room behind a row of metal bars. He counted them quickly and realized that there were over 30 of them; together with the children that were already doing spy work for the Mizukage all around the island, the number of children excelled the number of missing children at the orphanage by a large margin. This, at least, proved his suspicion that the shinobi of this hideout also kidnapped children from elsewhere than the orphanage, probably from other spots at the coast of the Land of Wood and from diverse villages of the island itself.

"Don't worry," he said while trying to sound as soothing as he could. "I'm here to help you. I will stay here until my friends come to help me get you out of this place, alright?"

None of the children, who all cowered as far away from the bars as possible, replied.

He suppressed a sigh. It made sense that they didn't trust him after they had witnessed him kill the other people in the room, even if these people were their captors. It would be great if he could use a Genjutsu to let them fall asleep, but he unfortunately wasn't in a position to do so with his low reserves because it would just cut off from the time he could hold the illusion to hide all of them.

Apropos illusion...

Itachi concentrated for a moment before making a few hand seals, creating an illusion that would make it look like the metal bars were destroyed and the children behind it were gone. This wasn't an especially powerful illusion, but it would do. He doubted whoever would be sent to check on the kids would expect a Genjutsu hiding them instead of just assuming they were gone, so they would probably not even check for one. And even if they did, it was still very likely that they weren't very capable in detecting Genjutsu -and certainly not one created by him- as every talented shinobi was needed to defend their base.

Now he had only to maintain this technique until support arrived.

.....

Around twenty minutes later and a few kilometres away from the fighting, Itachi opened his eyes with a smile, having just received the memories of his dissolved clone. Looking up, he saw Anko and a clone of Terumi Mei looking down at him questioning from where they stood to his right.

"The mission was a success." he said.