Sneaking Through

There were a bunch of guards all over this block. Izumi's clone had gotten past the gate, but the rest of the criminals hadn't caught up to her yet. She knew they'd be a long ways out, so she had to find another way to get to the castle than just fighting through. That didn't work very well last time, after all.

She took the clothes off of one of the guards that she knocked out near the gates and put them on. It was a female guard about her size, so the clothes were a pretty close match. The uniform even had a helmet, so Izumi could still maintain her cover. Now she just needed to find a way to get to the castle without looking suspicious.

Most of the guards were heading through the gate to join the fight. She didn't want to get caught up with them and run backwards, but she didn't want to run the opposite direction of them by herself, either. That would make her stick out like a sore thumb. So she looked around until she found a patrol group. There were still a bunch of those around, since the guards didn't want to leave an area totally unguarded during a break in. They had to assign patrols to specific areas of every block so that the criminals didn't get in without them noticing.

Izumi casually walked up to one of the patrols and joined in behind them. A couple of them noticed, but they didn't say anything. A couple of them had also sneaked into that patrol group to avoid dying in that crazy fight.

By walking along with them for a while, Izumi killed a lot more time than she would have by just running straight to the castle. But eventually, the patrol went right towards it. Nobody else noticed her tagging along and nobody even cared that the patrol was a bit bigger than it normally was. They just assumed that it was cause of the break in.

The patrol made its way through the gate and towards the command castle. It was about time to change shifts. They'd guard the castle in a more stationary position while another patrol covered their portion of the block. That kept the guards in tip top shape so that they were never too tired if a fight came. If they were walking around all day, they'd be too tired to stop criminals. Izumi went along with them into the castle. She wasn't really sure what she was gonna do once inside, though. There was only so far that this disguise could get her.

The are around the castle was well guarded by Mockingbird. The lack of squads around the walls meant their forces were focused on guarding the important target- Chiheisen. Raijin had managed to fly above the guards on the ground, and that had left many squads frustrated and with a wish to tighten security.

The grounds around the castle were, indeed, very heavily guarded. This was mostly because the castle was under quarantine by Akihiro's barrier, which meant no one left or entered without his explicit permission. and the squads Akihiro allowed to enter were none other than Mockingbird's, and even those could only leave their posts under very special circumstances.

"Hold!" A voice could be heard from an area between Izumi's patrol and the castle. At this point they were about 600 meters away from the castle walls. This was important because the area around which they could maneuver freely without questions got smaller and smaller as they approached the fortress. Alas, a squad had finally found them.

"Remove your helmets and state your patrol codename and individual names, please. The area near the castle is a conflict ground at the moment, and we have several targets of interest who managed to slip away through our defenses. I will double-check your identities with the records of patrol movements."

Akihiro had quickly gathered information about the patrol members, names and regular routes as soon as he found out he was going to take this mission. Originally he had been preparing for an infiltration, so gathering this kind of information was a natural move. In fact, it was his nature. He had mounted a complex network of radios and patrols which, even tho they did poorly in stopping the unexpected mass invasion (thus why only a single squad defended one of the main gates), excelled at preventing infiltrations. Izumi would need to play it smart now.