Obito's Redemption Story (CURRENTLY EDITING FIRST 15 CHAPTERS OR SO.) SEQUEL OUT

Konoha Retrieval Pt.5

"Stop here." Shino commanded his small platoon just as they were about to enter the clearing. The bug user felt something off in the area and sent one of his bugs in the see what that was.

His squad behind him was totally confused, however. "Shino, what's going on?" Sakura asked, having taken a look around the clearing herself. Unsurprisingly, she hadn't seen a thing and it only made her confused as to why he had told them to stop.

Shino chose not to speak and waited patiently for the single insect that he sent out to come back to him. It landed on his finger and he communicated with it for a short bit as his teammates looked on to see what he would say. Shino nodded to himself and raised his head up as the bug was let back into his body.

"There is a poison mist in the air. But I do not know what it does." He finally said.

"Poison." Ino copied with an inquisitive look. "Why is there poison in this area?"

"Most likely from the fight, right?" Tenten asked, wondering what their next move would be if poison would restrict them from entering the area.

"I suspect that this poison is from Rin-san. The other target of our mission."

"You do?" Hinata asked meekly.

"Yes." Shino nodded. "My insects have already neutralized the poison and analyzed it. It has Konoha based components and is a poison that is used to knockout high level opponents."

"Ok. Then what's are next move?" Ino asked.

Shino lifted a single arm and released a sizable number of his insects into the air. "My insects have already spread the poison throughout both my body and themselves. If you were to allow yourselves to become temporary host for then then you should be able to come in the poison mist without complication. If you don't want to then you'll have to wait here."

Despite the mild disgust and a high level of reluctance, they all agreed. They wanted to be able to complete part of their mission while the others were completing their own. They wanted to be able to do their part as well.

Apart from the poison mist (which was no longer a problem) they hadn't seen much of anything but the natural wilderness around them. Ino had suggested that nothing had been out of the ordinary but Shino thought better and insisted that they should continue to search, wanting to be more through. It would help if they half did their part of the mission. Nothing of excitement happened afterwards until Sakura had found a large number of trees that looked so unnaturally stacked together that it seemed unnatural. The other had all agreed to the notion and even more so when they found a large split in the middle of it that suggested it had been cut by... something.

Shino looked over to Hinata and asked her to take a look at the area. She activated her Byakugan with a nod and saw the heavy chakra that had not dissipated from the inside. She knew it was too heavy and strong to be normal as the other trees around them chakra was a lot more weaker in comparison. When she said as much Shino had released a couple more of his insects from the inside of his body and they landed in the thick branches piled atop one another. They sucked some of its chakra before returning to Shino so he could analyze it later. In the meantime, he suggested that they all should look for more evidence and also stated that he was thinking this had been some sort of Jutsu. Hinata agreed but hadn't said it, which wasn't unusual.

Unfortunately, 20 more minutes of searching the clearing proved that no more could be found out and the split group reformed once again to confirm this with one another.

After confirming that they found nothing more, Shino spoke. "I have found out from studying this chakra that it had to be from a Jounin level Shinobi. That would make my assumption of it being a Jutsu true or at least more noteworthy."