The forest was quiet except for the steady shuffle of feet.
Kimimaro's eyes narrowed suddenly, his mind sharpening with Ashina's whisper.
However, Kimimaro eventually slowed, then spoke aloud, calm but cutting.
"Remove your forehead protector."
Emi blinked, startled. "What? Why—" Her smile snapped into place, the same dry, coy grin she always used to slip past uncomfortable moments. "Come on, that's not really polite—"
A sharp whistle cut her words.
In a blink, a bone spike flicked from Kimimaro's hand, slicing clean through the cloth and metal at her brow, including some silky brownish bangs.
The protector fell away in halves, clattering against the roots.
Emi's breath caught. Her pale eyes widened as she felt the cool air against her bare skin. Her biggest 'taboo' was now exposed.
Kimimaro's voice followed, steady, low, unhurried. "When I tell you something, don't waste my time. I don't wait. Not for anyone."
It wasn't shouted. It wasn't cruel. But it pressed down on her like a hand on her throat, domineering in a way that didn't need force.
He stepped closer, until their faces were almost level, only a hand's breadth apart.
Emi's cheeks flushed crimson, heat rising at the sudden proximity.
Her lips tightened between fear and anger, her pale eyes locked on him, trembling.
He didn't blink.
His gaze wasn't on her perfectly almond eyes, long eyelashes, nor the delicate shape of her cheekbones and nose, cherry and plump mouth, her beauty, in general, though it was there, obvious even in the forest gloom.
His attention was on the seal itself, burned into her forehead like a brand.
To him, it wasn't shame or tragedy.
It was mechanics. A system.
He muttered low, half under his breath, trading thoughts with Ashina in words Emi couldn't understand.
To Emi, it looked like he was whispering to himself.
Muttering strange things inches from her face, his cold intensity refusing to waver.
Her embarrassment spiked, shame knotting with heat at the exposure.
She wanted to snarl, to spit, to strike, but she swallowed it down, cheeks hot as fire.
'Of course. Just my luck. Dragged into a cult, stripped down like an animal, and now this bone-faced demon is staring holes into my forehead like it's a scroll to decipher. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.'
Her mouth twitched in a dry, self-directed sneer.
'I've been trying to be cheeky, mysterious, alluring. And instead, here I am, looking like an idiot while he mutters equations at my curse mark. Just kill me already.'
Kimimaro finally leaned back a fraction, the sharp focus still in his eyes.
"She'll still do," he said quietly, more to himself and Ashina than to her.
Kimimaro's eyes lingered on her face a heartbeat longer, then the corner of his mouth curved faintly. "Your face is red," he said, voice smooth and calm. "I thought only Main Branch girls blushed that easily."
Emi stiffened, the heat in her cheeks flaring hotter.
She wanted to snap back, to throw some biting line at him, but she bit it down, lips curling into a forced little smile instead. "Well… maybe I'm just flattered you're staring so hard."
Inside, her thoughts hissed. 'Flattered? Ha. More like humiliated. Keep grinning, Emi, keep grinning before you get skewered like the rest.'
Kimimaro didn't blink.
He let her squirm under the weight of his gaze, then shifted as though the blush had already ceased to matter.
His voice turned casual, almost conversational.
"Tell me about your mission. About your team. And Kumo. When did they first reach you? How did you keep in contact?"
Emi faltered a little.
The speed of it, the ease with which he cut to the marrow of things, caught her off guard.
She had expected suspicion, not blunt precision.
But she lowered her eyes, letting her lashes shadow them, and answered smoothly, obediently, like a girl who knew resistance was death.
She told him of her team's C-rank mission, of the merchant, of the small errands, and D-rank tasks before.
She admitted Kumo had slipped her information during one such outing, how she'd found ways to leave signals in nearby towns.
Her voice never shook, her smile stayed faint and agreeable.
But inside, her fury curled tighter with every answer.
'He's dissecting me like one of his bones. And I'm letting him. Smile, play along, Emi. One day you'll cut out his tongue for this.'
Kimimaro's smirk deepened slightly as he listened, eyes unreadable.
Listening to her story, Kimimaro almost felt amused.
He pieced it together quickly: the biggest reason this Hyūga girl and her little team had even been sent on this C-rank mission was… him.
Recently, he had ordered his cult to start robbing merchants more aggressively, in far larger sums than before.
Gold was necessary.
After all, what man with true ambition could move forward without resources?
Chakra was the greatest currency of this world, but coin still had some weight.
And gold was universal; it could move across borders even when hatred between nations couldn't.
So he had taken it.
Because he could.
Still, he had made sure discipline was absolute.
The cult was forbidden from openly babbling about Jashin or their rites.
Punishment was swift and merciless.
They robbed cleanly, without spreading the infection of their faith, and the operations ran smoothly.
And so, one frightened merchant, hearing whispers of organized raiders on the roads, had scraped together his coin and hired protection from Konoha.
That was the whole chain that had dragged Emi's team into his path.
Kimimaro found it a bit ironic how it seemed like it was fate itself that wanted the girl to end up in his "possession".
He glanced at her, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly.
This had been their first C-rank.
Before it, the team had slogged through the typical run of D-rank chores, tedious errands designed not to challenge but to test and instill obedience, to build and test cohesion, to give their jōnin-sensei a place to drill basics.
But Emi and her teammates weren't commoners.
They were clan heirs, Hyūga, Inuzuka, and Aburame. Talented, bred into skill.
Their civilian-born jōnin leader had little to teach them that their bloodlines and clans hadn't already carved into their veins.
Still, such clan teams were always given jōnin captains as protectors.
Konoha knew the worth of its clan children.
Civilian graduates weren't afforded that same luxury.
Most never had a jōnin "babysitter" watching their backs.
It was the difference between stock and pedigree.
Kimimaro also considered how curious this particular combination was: Hyūga, Aburame, and Inuzuka, now seen by him once again.
Was this some hidden alliance, the way the Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi had once been fused by Tobirama's hand at the birth of Konoha, an arrangement later overseen by Hiruzen and his clan? Their abilities meshed well in the framework of village teamwork.
But the Hyūga… they had never struck him as the type to build alliances on their own. Too submissive, too quiet, too content to sit in the shadows of Konoha's structure. Perhaps that was precisely why the Aburame and Inuzuka clung to them, now that the Uchiha were gone, or even earlier, when the Uchiha were being systematically suppressed. The Hyūga were simply the largest clan left standing, the safest anchor for lesser ones to tie themselves to.
Or maybe it was nothing more than utility. The Hokage needed trackers and sensory types working in formation, so they put these three together, ensuring Konoha always had a few teams designed to sniff out, pin down, and corner prey in larger multi-team operations.
Either way, Kimimaro thought, it said as much about the Hyūga's standing in the village as it did about Konoha's priorities.
Kimimaro's thoughts drifted back to how he had even managed to intercept them at all.
It hadn't been luck.
It had been another innovation.
Unlike most groups that huddled in one grand hideout waiting to be exposed, he had scattered his hundreds of cultists into cells of ten, hidden across the Land of Hot Water.
Dozens of hideouts, spread wide. A web.
A guerrilla-like style of warfare at disposal if needed.
The logistics had only been possible because of Ashina.
His wide-scale, static communication seals were still crude compared to what he dreamed of, but they worked.
They let scattered cells coordinate in ways most shinobi couldn't even imagine.
Through them, the cult had the country in a chokehold, feeding him whispers of Yugakure patrols, merchant routes, and even foreign shinobi passing through.
And each hideout doubled as a cloak.
The seals buried there didn't just connect; they suppressed, blurred chakra until the cells inside were little more than background noise.
Invisible to all but the keenest eyes.
So Kimimaro, Saya, Reika, and most of the Inner Circle, as their guards, always remained at the most protected and masked but biggest command central hideout, while the outer web carried the information back constantly.
But that alone wasn't enough.
He had also mastered one of the Uzumaki clan's stranger tricks: a nearly fully forgotten sensory clone technique, a perfect mix of the two ninjutsu disciplines, completely useless in a fight, but perfect for watching.
A blend of clone and sensing ninjutsu, layered with jamming seals so they were invisible to detection. It didn't even require much chakra.
These silent watchers spread across the web, feeding information into the network.
That was how they caught the Kumo shinobi moving.
One small anomaly, carried through the seals, relayed across the web.
The elite's speed made the margin thin, but it was enough.
Kimimaro had made the necessary preparations and plans at the moment.
Wondering whether to strike, to bring his best, to gamble on a fight that could shatter them.
And when his senses brushed not only lightning, but the clear, sharp presence of a Byakugan in the field… that was when he stopped hesitating instantly entirely.
That was when he finally pulled the trigger.
Up until that point, he might have been more indecisive.
As for Kumogakure's motivations and purpose this time, for him, it all made perfect sense.
Kumogakure had always been the most aggressive, encroaching, and expansionist of the great nations.
Even in the original series, their history was littered with proof: the ambush that killed Tobirama, the disruption of peace talks, the attempt to steal Kushina, and later, the Byakugan incident.
The so-called "treaty" that ended with Hizashi offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the Hyūga Main Branch and Konoha's own cowardice.
Would a country so ambitious and greedy like that ever truly lay down after being tricked with some cold corpse instead of a living Byakugan?
And as if the Fourth Raikage, of all people, wouldn't see it as wasted potential for his own Lightning Armor and Kumo's further rise.
No. It wasn't in their nature.
Kimimaro was now witnessing that truth firsthand.
And the way they acted here was just as logical.
They hadn't sent an army into this Hot Water Land this time.
They hadn't risked attention with a large incursion.
Instead, they had dispatched a single elite jōnin, one man fast and competent enough to be in and out before alarms could be raised, strong enough to erase a genin team and their jōnin commander without leaving a trail.
A surgical strike, not a spectacle.
That was why that specific guy had been chosen.
A pinnacle of the village's strength, sent alone.
Someone whose existence was meant to quietly solve problems others could not.
And if not for Kimimaro's own net of seals and watchers, the mission would have succeeded.