The Missing Squad 2

Chapter: Unseen Threats

As Tetsuma left the Hokage's office, the weight of the conversation still hung heavily on him. The Hokage's sharp words echoed in his mind, but there was little time for reflection. There was work to be done. The missing squads were just the beginning, and the more Tetsuma thought about it, the more a disturbing realization settled in: this wasn't just an isolated incident. Something much bigger was happening, and Konoha's ANBU operatives were paying the price.

He made his way quickly to the ANBU Headquarters, his mind focused on one thing: answers. The mission logs from the Land of Rivers were crucial, but Tetsuma knew that there was more to uncover. He needed to see the bigger picture.

Inside the headquarters, the dim lighting and the usual hum of activity seemed muted in comparison to his racing thoughts. He was already in the archives, flipping through the mission reports and logbooks of the three missing squads. Each page told the same grim story—skilled operatives ambushed and overwhelmed. No survivors, no information. The reports detailed their last known movements, but there were no leads, no explanations. Only questions.

His fingers moved quickly, flipping through pages, trying to find a clue, a pattern, something that could explain what had happened. After hours of combing through the records, his eyes landed on something unexpected—anomalies. As he went through older reports from the past year, a sense of growing dread gripped him.

There were more than just the three missing squads from the Land of Rivers. There were others—squads that had gone missing without any official explanation. His eyes narrowed as he read through the details. Ten entire squads. Ten full teams of Konoha's elite operatives, all declared dead or missing in the past six months alone. That was equivalent to an entire ANBU battalion. The scale of the losses was staggering.

The numbers were too high to ignore. What kind of force could wipe out an entire battalion's worth of operatives? This was no simple attack; something larger, more organized, was at play.

Tetsuma leaned back in his chair, feeling the weight of the discoveries settle in. A whole battalion lost. The sheer scale of it made him realize how much danger Konoha was in. The constant disappearances weren't just random acts of violence—they were part of something bigger, something that threatened the very foundation of Konoha's intelligence operations.

His thoughts raced. Had this been a coordinated strike by an enemy? Had Konoha's ANBU been infiltrated by someone from within? The possibilities were endless, but the implications were terrifying. Every missing operative, every lost squad, was one step closer to revealing something that no one in Konoha was prepared for.

His gut told him this wasn't the end. This was the beginning of something much darker. There were forces at play, pulling strings from the shadows, and Konoha was losing its best soldiers in the process.

After reviewing the mission logs for hours, Tetsuma stood up, determination hardening in his chest. There was no way he could let this continue. He couldn't rest until he found out who or what was behind these disappearances. His next steps were clear: the truth had to be uncovered, and Konoha had to be prepared for whatever threat was coming.

But as he left the archives and made his way to report his findings to the Hokage, one thought consumed him: Whoever was behind this had no idea just how far Tetsuma would go to uncover the truth…