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“Oh, you know, now that I think about it, do you actually need us?” Chino muttered, an annoyed look on her face, as she slipped through the bamboo grove and the forest spread out around her. “The whole thing could be taken care of if we just left it all to Sassy.”

When the sun rose, Iou had appeared and shouted, “All of you, hurry up and find Dark Thunder and defeat them, already!”

Sasuke had planned to go out and search on his own, but then this obstacle had popped up. So in the end, he was heading toward the village where Iou’s daughter had died, together with Chino and Nowaki.

“I can go by myself,” Sasuke said.

The grumbling Chino pursed her lips. “When you basically come right out and say you don’t need us, I actually want to fight back, though!”

He didn’t recall going that far, but it was indeed as she said.

“We’ll give it our all!” she shouted, looking angry. “You’re not going to beat us, Sassy!”

“I don’t care. Stop calling me that, though.”

“The fact that you’re saying that means that you totally do care! And I’m older than you, Sassy, so I can give you a nickname!”

At first glance, Chino appeared, from any angle, to be a girl of around ten, but she was apparently older than he was. He could sense the wealth of her knowledge and experience, so she probably wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t quite satisfied with the idea, somehow.

You shouldn’t judge people by appearances or preconceptions. The words popped up in the back of his mind. They were his brother, Itachi’s. He had heard them when he was very little.

At the time, Uchiha Shisui, someone Itachi was very close with, had been pessimistic about the future of the Uchihas and had thrown himself in the Nakano River. The people of the Uchiha clan suspected that Itachi had killed him. Itachi had raised a hand against these people. They had been convinced Itachi would never lay a hand on them no matter what they said, and Itachi told them that they shouldn’t judge people based on appearances or preconceptions alone.

When Sasuke thought about it now, Itachi had probably been furious and sad at the time. Without even attempting to learn the first thing about Shisui’s feelings, after the young man had given his life for the sake of the Uchiha clan, they interpreted the situation to suit their own cause and turned it into a means of attacking someone else. The Uchiha karma.

The third Hokage, Hiruzen, had said that from the time he was little, Itachi was a sensitive child, who had noticed the signs and teachings of his predecessors that no one else paid heed to and picked up on the goings-on of other ninja and the village without anyone telling him. Rather than being a slave to the bonds of the clan, he was able to think of what lay ahead for the ninja, for the village; he considered the future and worried about it.

Are you going to join too?

He had once asked Itachi about the path he was proceeding down. The place was in front of the Konoha Police headquarters. The police force, founded by Uchiha ancestors, was a division in charge of ninja crime that contributed to maintaining the peace in the village. Their father Fugaku worked as the chief there, so Sasuke asked if Itachi would also go to work there.

Dunno, we’ll have to see … Itachi’s response was vague.

Having no idea at the time that the police was an organization to corral the Uchiha clan, or about the talk of Itachi joining the Anbu, Sasuke had innocently said, Do it! When I grow up … I’m gonna join the police force too!!

This was the dream of a foolish little brother who knew precisely nothing. But Itachi had simply answered, Yeah.

His field of view had been far-reaching and broad; he was a presence that went beyond the framework of Konoha. Still, perhaps he had responded that way because he too dreamed of the two brothers on the police force together, tackling their daily duties alongside each other.

Sasuke still had complicated feelings about the fact that this Itachi had been sacrificed for the Uchiha clan, for Konoha. There had been a time when he thought of nothing but restoring Itachi’s honor. But Itachi wouldn’t have wanted that.

Brought back to life by Edotensei, Itachi had placed his hand on the back of Sasuke’s head when they parted, pulled their foreheads together, looked straight into Sasuke’s eyes and spoken. I will love you always.

Because what Itachi wanted to leave to this world in the end wasn’t resentment or hatred toward it, but rather his feelings of love for his little brother. He could’ve cared less about restoring his honor. But apparently, Naruto was telling people that after he was brought back with the Edotensei, Itachi had helped them for the sake of the world. Naruto would have known about the coup d’état, but without touching on that, he simply offered up Itachi’s name as one of the ninja who had helped him out in the Great War.

Sasuke didn’t expect that this would make everyone simply accept it, but there was no one who doubted Naruto. Even if there had been, Naruto would no doubt have not given up, but simply continued to tell his story. Putting aside the question of whether Itachi would have wanted it, perhaps the day would come when the feeling that Itachi had some kind of reason for what he did would sprout in Konoha.

“That reminds me. So, like, Sassy, are you heading home to Konohagakure?” Chino asked him, perhaps bored with traveling.

Given that he had just been thinking about Konoha, his heart skipped a beat, but he said nothing.

“Oh! So you’re ignoring me?! Don’t you need to rebuild the Uchihas or something? I mean, there’s only the one still alive.”

He remained silent.

“Hellooooo! Hellooooo! Can you hear me?!”

“Chino, quit it,” Nowaki finally chided Chino, after holding his tongue until that point.

“Whose side are you on?!” Her shouts made his eardrums vibrate, and Sasuke quietly dropped his gaze.

For him, the village of Konohagakure was a vortex of love and hate. But perhaps the time had come when he had to come up with an answer to the question of how to deal with it.

About three hours from Takeno was the village where Iou’s daughter had lived.

“Just awful …” Chino murmured, unconsciously, upon seeing the state of the village.

The houses had been destroyed, and on the walls that were left, traces of discolored blood remained. When they entered a house through a large hole, they saw the inside was also in complete disarray. Everything of monetary value had been taken.

At Sasuke’s feet, a stuffed animal stiffened with blood lay on its side. Framed pictures had fallen onto the floor, and in one of them, a small girl clutched this very stuffed animal, grinning alongside her family.

“Didn’t the nearby ninja villages respond?” Sasuke asked.

“It seems that Yugakure is moving, but the level of the ninja there isn’t actually the greatest.” Nowaki sighed. “The other village that’s close is Shimogakure, but they’re not touching this case. Even if the villagers did set out to ask the land for a mission, it’d be a dangerous road, given they can barely use any ninja arts. To begin with, the villagers of this area are so scared of the Dark Thunder group now that they hesitate to even step out of their villages.”

“That’s why they’ve got no choice but to grab onto travelers like us who happen to pass through,” Chino added.

They meet such a terrible fate as this and yet there’s no helping hand? Sasuke felt like he was being shown a clear picture of the absurdity of the world.

“Konoha’s huge, so you’re guaranteed the basics, I guess, but most places are like this. Absurd,” Chino said, as she looked up at the traces of blood on the ceiling. “If we’re talking well known, maybe Amegakure? That place is surrounded by the Land of Fire, the Land of Wind, and the Land of Earth, so every time the great nations went to war, it got dragged into it. No matter what the era or which country, it’s kids who get the short end of the stick.” Chino picked up the stuffed animal and the photo, and set them together on the shelf.

Unless they caught the Dark Thunder group as soon as possible, a similar tragedy would likely unfold once more. He had to get information on them. “‘You fallen Dark Thunder.’”

“Hm?”

“That’s what Iou said yesterday. What did he mean by ‘fallen’?” Sasuke remembered what the old man had said because that part bothered him, somehow.

“Ohh, the Dark Thunder group, I guess they used to work as sort of gentlemen thieves.”

“Gentlemen thieves?”

“Yeah. They’d hit bad guys, take their money, and then give it to the poor. Although back then, they were called the Bright Lightning Group.”

“I guess it’s only since they changed their name to Dark Thunder that they’ve been pushing the limits of cruelty,” Nowaki added.

So then they were originally an ally of the weak? It was hard to understand why they would flip to the exact opposite position—but Sasuke knew it only took an instant to fall into darkness. No matter what you might live through, a single incident could turn the world upside down. Love into hate, kindness into curses, bonds into isolation.

The Uchihas had been a deeply loving clan. Thus, when they lost that love, sometimes, everything was painted over and transformed into hate. It had been the second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, who said that. Having been isolated and made to grow up with the power of hatred, Sasuke’s way of life had maybe proven Tobirama right. Although he had come through out of the darkness, he contained the latent potential for something similar to happen in the future. A violent impulse that ate into reason slept within his body.

In order to not commit the same error again, Sasuke needed to be alone, and have the time to reexamine himself. He would likely never in his whole life put it into words, but he couldn’t betray the trust of his friends. No, he didn’t want to betray it. Which was exactly why he had to learn how to control this Uchiha blood. Because if he made connections, then he would inevitably have to experience parting, and losing that love at some point. Naruto had said he would stop him if he took the wrong path again, but next time, he wanted to stand on his own two feet.

That reminds me. So, like, Sassy, are you heading home to Konohagakure?

He had several reasons for not returning to the village, but there was likely also a part of him that was afraid of making intimate connections with other people.

“Hey? What’re we going to do now? You wanna look around here a little more?”

Sasuke looked around the ruined village again. From Iou’s story, he could guess that they also had no mercy on women and children, but this was really too awful a torment for weak opponents who couldn’t really fight back. It made him want to ask if they had some serious grudge against this village.

Iou had probably seen the body of his dead daughter here, after she had been cruelly ripped apart. It was perhaps no wonder he sought revenge.

While he thought about this, Chino suddenly sat down on the spot. She put her ear to the ground and closed her eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

“I felt like it moved just now.”

“Moved?”

“The water underground.” Ear still pressed to the earth, Chino wove signs. Nowaki put his index finger to his lips to indicate that Sasuke should be quiet. Chino’s body was enveloped in chakra, and this began to enter the earth. “I’m connected. It is moving … Something’s closing in on Takeno.”

So was she a sensor ninja?

Karin, a member of Taka, was also excellent at sensing; she could see through to the nature of, and changes in, chakra that even Sasuke couldn’t even begin to understand. It wasn’t a surprise to find a sensor like Chino, who could feel things over long distances.

“Dark Thunder?”

“It could be.” As she stood up, Chino looked up at Sasuke.

“We’re going back.” Sasuke kicked at the ground, and charged through the village into the woods. He leapt over the tree roots and jumped from branch to branch, gradually gaining speed. Chino and Nowaki chased after him frantically.

It had taken them three hours to get from Takeno to Iou’s daughter’s village, but Sasuke had taken his time with that trip, searching out the surrounding areas for any auras or other clues. Now he was practically running in a mad dash, and he quickly closed the distance to Takeno.

When the trees finally start to open up into the bamboo grove, they heard the loud boom of an explosion.

“Sassy, I smell smoke!”

Takeno was upwind. When they saw it, there was no doubt what was happening. Sasuke ran even faster, the bamboo leaves crunching under his feet.

“Aaah! Heeeelp!”

He heard the sharp cry of a woman. When he looked in that direction, he saw a young woman fleeing from the direction of the village toward them. Behind her, men with leering grins on their faces chased after her. Nowaki shouted.

“Sasuke, it’s the Dark Thunder group!”

The men held swords in their hands and brandished them at the woman.

“Ha ha! We’re killing everyone!”

“Aaaaah!” In a single fluid movement, Sasuke pulled a kunai from his pocket and threw it.

“Aaoh?!” The kunai knocked away the sword aiming for the woman’s neck just as it was on the verge of striking. “Wh-who are you … ?”

The enemy were three in number. Without replying to their question, he pulled out three more kunai, and released them in the direction of the woman.

“Eeep!”

“Hey! You’re gonna hit—” Chino raised a voice in panic, but all the kunai slipped past the woman and plunged into the bodies of the men behind her.

“Ngaaah!”

Sasuke leapt over the woman’s head and landed right next to one of the men felled by his kunai, lying face up on the ground. Sasuke closed his eyes, focused his power there, and then opened them again. His red sharingan with the three tomoe marks. He caught the man’s gaze with these eyes.

“Ee. Kah … hah …”

Control via genjutsu. Foam spilled out of the man’s mouth. He wouldn’t be able to move for a while.

“It’s Sasuke. It’s Sasuke of the sharingan! We have to tell Lord Karyu—” the second man yelled, yanking the kunai out of his body and getting to his feet.

Sasuke somersaulted across the bamboo leaves, leaned in toward the man’s feet, pressed his right hand to the ground, and pushed his lower body up. The sole of his left foot kicked out, and caught the man on the chin. The blow gave the man a concussion, and his eyes rolled back to the whites as he dropped to the ground. And that was two.

“Ee, eep …” The last man gave a pathetic cry and tried to run. Sasuke unsheathed his sword and let his chakra flow into it. With the blade enveloped in crackling electricity, he thrust it at the man’s defenseless back.

“Gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah!” The electricity poured into the man’s body, and he collapsed from the shock. With that, all three of the men who had been chasing the woman were on the ground.

“… Scary!”

“Instant kill—”

“I didn’t kill them.” Sasuke shook off the electricity and sheathed his sword before surveying the area. It appeared other villagers were fleeing as well, and being chased by the Dark Thunder group. He moved to help them, but then, he heard another loud explosion from the village.

“Sassy! We’ll deal with the escaping villagers somehow. You go to the village!” Chino had apparently also sensed the enemies; she ran off in that direction. Nowaki pulled out a chakra blade and followed her.

Deciding to leave them to handle that situation, Sasuke ran toward the village. When he slipped through the bamboo, he found the villagers sitting on the ground, motionless. It seemed that their legs had been injured and they couldn’t move. So Dark Thunder was planning to torture and kill them, once they ensured the villagers couldn’t get away.

“Him?”

In the center of the village, a man stood, holding a ball in each hand. He appeared to be the leader.

“You! Karyu! So you finally showed yourself in this village!” Iou stood in front of this Karyu. He was already hurt in various places; blood dripped down from his forehead. All he had was his bamboo lance. But he gripped it tightly and charged at Karyu.

“As if that’s going to work!” Karyu threw one of the balls at Iou. The instant it hit Iou in the stomach, it bounced back with a crack. Iou went flying and slammed into the wall of his house behind him.

“Ngah!” An enormous amount of blood jetted out of his mouth.

“Now then, let’s go for the head, shall we?” Karyu took aim at the head of Iou—slumped down, back against the wall—and threw the other ball to strike the final blow. Iou couldn’t move a muscle.

The fierce sound of the house being destroyed echoed through the village, and once the dust settled, there was a gaping hole in the wall.

“Hmm?”

But Iou was nowhere to be seen.

“B-brat …”

Seconds before, Sasuke had grabbed onto Iou’s clothes and yanked him away.

“Hm, oh, ohhhhhh?” Karyu looked at Sasuke and blinked several times, before a look of delight rose up onto his face. “I never dreamed I’d actually get to meet you, Sasuke … !” He appeared thrilled to the bone. “Uchiha Sasuke! I’ve admired you so much! The man who burned with revenge for his clan, and stuck to his own principles, even going so far as to take on the world! I’ve wanted to meet you! I’ve wanted so much to meet you!”

Just as Nowaki had said, Karyu adored Sasuke. The Sasuke from when he was steeped in darkness. Karyu spread both arms wide as if to show his appreciation.

In contrast, Sasuke looked at Karyu with a feeling of disgust.

“What, boy? You’re with Karyu?!” Holding back the blood oozing out of his side, Iou suddenly turned suspicious eyes on Sasuke. Apparently, he had already forgotten that Sasuke had saved him.

“Ha! You really are a self-serving old man,” Karyu murmured, exasperated. It seemed they knew each other.

“Sh-shut up! Enough outta you, you evil man! Anything’s fine, boy! He killed my daughter! He’s the root of all evil! Hurry up and kill this man!”

“What’re you talking about, old man? Sasuke’s my hero, you know.” Karyu’s eyes glittered. “So obviously, it’ll be me killing Sasuke!” He brought his hands together. “I will go beyond you!!”

Hardly listening to Karyu’s proclamations, Sasuke clad his unsheathed blade in electricity and aimed the tip at the other man’s stomach.

“Whoops! Can’t let you do that!”

Earth Style! Mud Wall!

A wall of earth shot up with great force from within the ground. Karyu continued to weave signs.

Lava Style! Rubber Wall!

Karyu bent his torso back, and expelled what rose up from within his body at the wall.

Sasuke’s sword touched the wall, and the electric charge vanished.

“Rubber is resistant to Lightning Style!”

A wall of earth enveloped in rubber. It appeared that Karyu had a kekkei genkai called Lava Style that produced rubber. Hidden behind this wall, Karyu continued to knead his chakra. “Your boss is serious this time. Everyone, get back!”

The men of Dark Thunder flew out of the village like they were running away.

Lava Style! Rubber Ball!

Karyu called out the technique name, and balls of various sizes shot out of his mouth, rolling along the ground. The rolling spheres looked like traditional woven Japanese balls.

“Gah ha! And now!” Karyu slowly raised his arms. As he did, the balls bobbed up into the air. Conversely, when he lowered his hands, the balls dropped. In line with his hand movements, the balls began to bounce somewhat eerily. “Here we go!”

Karyu punched a ball close to him with his fist. He whirled his body around and hit a different ball with a backhand blow. He kicked a ball flying low to the ground in front of him before grabbing the final ball to his side, leaping up high, and flinging it at Sasuke. The four balls closed in on Sasuke, each with its own trajectory.

However, it wasn’t difficult to read those trajectories. Sasuke dodged the balls and tried to get closer to Karyu.

“We’re just beginning!” Karyu sensed Sasuke’s movements, and wove signs.

A protrusion suddenly rose up beneath Sasuke’s feet. The ground continued to rise. When he was about to lose his balance, a new ball came flying at him. Sasuke flipped backward, and twisted around to dodge it.

“Still more to come!” Karyu used Earth Style and created high walls, one after another. As he did, the balls he had released hit them and bounced back, creating even more complicated trajectories.

The balls closed in on Sasuke from all directions.

“Tch!”

One of them hit his thigh. The ball bounced lightly back, but it had no sooner hit him than a dull pain ran through the bone like an echo. The balls likely contained kneaded chakra to increase the power of a hit. He would get nowhere like this. Sasuke tried to catch Karyu in a genjutsu with his sharingan.

“C’mon, then! Try and catch me!” Karyu grabbed a villager whose legs had been broken so he couldn’t run away, and thrust him forward.

“Eee, eee! Stooooooop!” the villager screamed, pushed forward like a shield.

Sasuke shifted his gaze momentarily. “Tch!”

Karyu didn’t just say he adored Sasuke; he had actually looked into Sasuke in some detail.

When Sasuke tried to get closer, the balls got in his way, and if he used any big techniques, the villagers would be dragged into it. Or rather, the entire village might be destroyed. The techniques he could use to stop Karyu with minimal damage were limited.

“You … you monster … !” Iou shouted.

At Iou’s unthinking cry, Karyu laughed, still clutching the villager. “A monster has no right to call me a monster!”

“What did you say?!”

Karyu flung the villager down to the ground and glared at Iou. Although he had seemed to be having great fun up to that point, he turned serious for a moment. “The second things aren’t convenient for you, you toss us aside. How do you have any right to say anything to anyone?”

“Ngh, hngh …”

Sasuke hadn’t heard anything about this from Iou. But what was important to him at that moment was not their stories. The bouncing balls. The Earth Style walls that appeared when he tried to get closer. The Lava Style rubber that snuffed out electricity. And the people being held hostage.

Sasuke’s eyes, his sharingan, memorized the state of this hectic movement. And then finally, they reflected Iou and the bamboo grove. Sasuke turned his back to Karyu.

“Hm? Hey!” Karyu shouted. “Where are you going?!”

Sasuke ignored him, and stepped into Iou’s house through the ruined wall.

“… This.” Just as he grabbed ahold of the object he wanted, an enormous ball assaulted Iou’s house. Immediately escaping the building, Sasuke poured his chakra into the object he had acquired.

“Hah!” Jumping up high with the rising earthen wall as a foothold, Sasuke aimed for Karyu.

“Ha ha! I have these rubber walls!” Karyu moved to protect himself with the rubber walls as he had done throughout the fight.

However, the rubber bounced back, and the earthen wall that appeared beneath it crumbled. Not only that—the balls all around Karyu were all destroyed at once.

“Wh-what’s going on?! I don’t know this technique!” Karyu dropped his surprised gaze to his feet, and saw a bamboo skewer stuck there. One of the ones Iou had made. “A skewer?! You couldn’t possibly have kneaded your chakra into a skewer and destroyed the rubber?!”

The tapered point of the bamboo. And this was just a diversion.

“Dammit!” At the moment Karyu sensed the aura and gasped, he heard the call of a plover signaling the end.

Once Sasuke had defeated Karyu and taken care of the members of the Dark Thunder group who had been watching things play out from outside the village, Chino and Nowaki brought the villagers back. They were all injured in some way or another, but fortunately, none of them had been killed. The men of the Dark Thunder group were restrained inside of the shed in the village for the time being.

“Sassy, looks like they’re waking up.”

Evening fell, and when Karyu regained consciousness, Sasuke and the others went into the shed.

“Ha ha! Quite the sorry state, hm?” Karyu murmured, looking at himself and his comrades tied up around him. Then he looked up at Sasuke, before shifting his gaze to Iou. At the sight of Iou with bandages wound around his stomach, Karyu let out a contemptuous laugh.

Iou flushed red with anger at this challenge. “I thought I told you to kill him! So why is he locked up in here?!” Iou complained to Sasuke.

Sasuke looked down on Karyu. “You said you were tossed aside. What did you mean?”

The second things aren’t convenient for you, you toss us aside. How do you have any right to say anything to anyone? In the middle of the fight, Karyu had spat this at Iou. But Sasuke didn’t know the details behind this.

“What’s the point of asking about that?!” Iou cried. “It doesn’t change the fact that they’re evil!”

“If you’re going to yell, go outside. I can’t make any decisions until I know everything.” Sasuke’s words made Iou swallow hard.

“Can’t you just look with the sharingan?” Karyu teased, but Sasuke simply stared silently at him until he guffawed and looked away. “My Lava Style is a kekkei genkai. Although in Kumogakure, shinobi who use the same Lava Style as I do are apparently given important posts, I was born into a small country village. So every time a fight broke out with an outsider, our clan was made to stand at the very front lines. They said that it was only natural to contribute to the village, given that we had special powers. Because of that, everyone died young.”

Karyu slowly told the tale of his own past.

“I knew I’d be killed by the village one day too, so I left. The village sent ninja after me to kill me. I fled desperately, but my back was pushed up against the wall; I couldn’t run anymore. And then, the Bright Lightning Group took me in.”

That was back when they were called chivalrous thieves.

“The head of Bright Lightning Group had a kekkei genkai he was persecuted for, too, just like me. Which was exactly why he wanted to be an ally to the weak. He crushed people doing evil things, and gave the money he got from them to the poor. … like to this village, hm?”

Iou pressed his lips together tightly.

“We were treated almost like heroes. Whenever we showed ourselves, the people of the villages welcomed us. They’d give us food and lodging. Good times.”

So they had built good relationships at the time. Then how did this tragedy come about?

“Seeing how we didn’t belong to any village and yet we wielded power, ninja villages tried to use that,” Karyu continued. “They had us crush the source of capital for hostile ninja villages. It was like that then, too. During the era of the previous Mizukage, Kirigakure offered us work. They asked us to go attack the senior officials of a land that was squeezing money from the weak.”

This was the era when Kirigakure was known as the Village of Bloody Mist. The face of Momochi Zabuza as they faced off on a mission with Team 7 popped up in the back of Sasuke’s mind. He had been a man with terrible bloodlust.

“For us, Kirigakure was a valued client. However, when we attacked the group of officials they told us to, ninja from Kirigakure appeared and surrounded us, of all things. The ninja of Kirigakure, gallantly arriving to save the officials in a tight spot! So, well, Kirigakure used us to curry favor with the officials.”

Karyu let out a sigh, like he was cursing their fate.

“We knew too much. They dealt with us efficiently; they also had the ulterior motive of trying to build a channel with the officials. They had lined up their best and brightest. We lost comrades, but we just barely managed to escape with our lives, thanks to the chief’s Lava techniques. We arrived here in the village of Takeno. We said, please let us rest here, just for a little while. We had no intention of causing any trouble for the village; we planned to leave soon. The answer came back quickly enough: ‘Go somewhere else.’”

Sasuke could feel the coldness of those words. It was more than enough to make a person despair.

“I-if we had hidden you, they might’ve hurt us too!” Iou protested. “And to begin with, it’s mighty nervy of you to take on such a big shot attitude, when all you were doing was handing out money you took from someone else!”

“Such memories …” Karyu replied. “Those are the very words you said to me when I pleaded with you, with my comrade in my arms on death’s doorstep, to at least let him stay there, just for a very short while! The door to the village was very firmly closed, and we walked through the bamboo grove to another village. My comrade died along the way, you know. At every village, all the villages, the answer was the same. You wouldn’t even give us a cup of water!”

There was hatred in Karyu’s eyes. Iou trembled at the light in them.

“The chief disbanded Bright Lightning, and everyone fled their own separate ways. It wasn’t as though we had any dreams or hope. Fearing our Kiri pursuers, we lived like rats for who knows how many years … And then I heard about you attacking the summit of the five Kages, Sasuke.”

Karyu narrowed his eyes, as if remembering that time.

“I was so moved at the way you lived as you pleased, not bending before the fate of the kekkei genkai. I wanted to be like you. So I got some new comrades together, and formed the Dark Thunder group. Our objective … revenge!”

Sasuke remained silent.

“At first, there were only a few of us, but after the Fourth Great War, we gradually grew in number. With fewer battles, ninja were out of work, and they left their villages to join up with us. And now that we have plentiful strength … we’re carrying out our vengeance. On the villages that rejected us!”

“So that gives you an excuse to kill everyone?!” Iou shouted. “Some people have nothing to do with any of this, you know?! Why would you do something so awful?”

“You all were living so happily, stupid faces out in the sun, not feeling any kind of pain … that alone was annoying! So we crushed all of you!” A fierce malice bled onto Karyu’s face. “Getting revenge was fun. The way your daughter wept and begged for her life, it was magnificent!”

“Y-you monsteeeeeeeeerrr! I’ll kill you!” Iou started to fly at Karyu, and Nowaki hurried to stop him.

“Was there no other way?” Nowaki asked.

Karyu dropped his eyes. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand it any other way,” he replied.

Sasuke watched over all of this with a bitter taste in his mouth. It was almost like he was looking at his old self.

Nowaki returned the agitated Iou to his home, rather forcefully. The wall of Iou’s house was destroyed, and the building was smashed here and there in other ways, but there was a roof and a bed. Iou had a place to rest.

Sasuke left the shed, and went on his own into the bamboo grove, where he spotted a rock and sat down. He pulled out a piece of the paper he carried for communication, and wrote a concise description of the events in Takeno, before entrusting it to the hawk he called with his mind, and sending the bird toward Konoha.

How to deal with Dark Thunder wasn’t a problem Sasuke could resolve on his own. He wanted to seek the Hokage Kakashi’s judgment. Sasuke had originally been working to investigate the large number of shinobi who had disappeared, but he couldn’t very well leave Takeno before he got a response from Konoha.

Sasuke looked up at the sky. A hazy moon hung beyond the bamboo leaves.

The chain of hatred that wrapped again and again around the pillar of vengeance. Wasn’t there a way to save people from it?

“… It’s not easy.” The words slipped out of his mouth. And then he sighed, and went back to keep watch over the Dark Thunder group, to at least prevent any further tragedy.

2

Due to the sudden attack, the village of Konoha was in a state of commotion. They couldn’t see a clear motive for the enemy. On top of that, there was the possibility of something similar happening in the future. Village security was enhanced, and a peculiar tension raced through the village.

After she had used Mind Transmission to save Aoba from the genjutsu trap, the damage to Ino was greater than expected, and she was in the hospital for several days.

Sasuke and Choji bought fruit, and went to her hospital room to pay a visit to their childhood friend.

“Oh? Sai?” When they went inside, they found Sai sitting on a chair, sketching, and Ino asleep on the bed.

“Hey.”

“What? You came to visit, too?”

They peeked at Sai’s sketchbook from behind, and saw he was drawing a flower. When they looked, there was indeed a dewy fresh flower in a vase by the window of the hospital room.

“… You didn’t actually bring that, did you?”

“I guess Ino’s mom brought it?”

“Oh, ohh. She did?” Noting that it wasn’t like Sai to bring flowers, Shikamaru set the fruit down on the shelf. His gaze then shifted to the garbage can immediately next to the shelf.

“We’re not gonna have any, Shikamaru?” Choji asked.

“Hm? Oh, Ino’s sleeping. Just hold on.”

“What …” Choji’s shoulders slumped in disappointment; he pulled a banana out of his clothes and shoved it in his mouth. Apparently, he had brought some fruit for himself, too. But he had used a secret ninjutsu and depleted his chakra and his fat stores, so it was no wonder he was trying to take in some extra calories.

“But this has turned into a serious drag,” Shikamaru said, sitting down on an extra chair. “It’s not just Konoha; the same thing’s happening in Kiri and Kumo.”

The evening the shinobi under the control of a genjutsu showed up in the village of Konohagakure, Kirigakure and Kumogakure had fought similar battles. The ninja who showed up in the other two villages had been a mix of Kiri and Kumo, and many of them had exploded.

“I’m glad we managed to send information to the other villages right away, so they could minimize the damage, but even so...”

They shared information via email. There were still more than a few ninja who resisted the shift to digital, but information that normally took a few days could be exchanged in an instant.

“They said that the mind-controlled ninja were basically people who had gone missing, right?”

“I guess they can’t say for sure, though. Kumo and Kiri are supposed to send over new documents, so the investigation’ll move forward in Konoha, too.”

They had confirmed that Tadaichi and the others were ninja of the village, but they still hadn’t fully gotten a full picture of the affiliation for the other villages.

“The genjutsu still hasn’t been undone, huh?” Choji said, eating his second banana.

Considering the risk of explosion, the people under the genjutsu were being kept in a facility a little ways from Konoha. Treatment was proceeding under Sakura’s supervision, but the medical ninja were still racking their brains as to how to deal with the suspicious chakra circulating in the victims’ bodies. Just in case, they had shinobi from the Nara clan and the Hyuga clan permanently stationed there; Shikamaru himself had just come from being on duty there.

“Sakura said she could almost see a way in, though. But I mean, talking about this in a person’s sickroom, we can’t help ourselves, huh?”

What Ino needed now was rest. They couldn’t cause a commotion and interfere with that.

Shikamaru stood up and looked down at Sai, who was indifferently sketching his flowers, not bothering to get involved in their conversation. “Sai, what are you going to do?”

“I’ve got nothing going on. Once I draw a picture I’m satisfied with, I’ll go home.” Sai grinned at Shikamaru.

It was a strange thing to sit and sketch in a hospital room when you were supposed to be visiting the sick person, and even more so to say you were going to go home once you drew something good.

But as if accepting Sai’s words, Shikamaru looked at the garbage can. Several unfinished drawings had been tossed in there.

After they left Ino’s room, they walked down the hall, and Shikamaru muttered, “I just don’t get it.”

“You don’t get what?”

“Oh, it’s like …” When they had first met, Shikamaru hadn’t felt any emotion in that smile that rose up onto Sai’s face. But such an enormous change that had come over him. You never knew what was going to happen in life.

Looking at the evasive Shikamaru, Choji started laughing. “Well, you’re like that, you know, Shikamaru.”

“That? What do you mean, that?”

“Come on, I mean, you were all like, ‘flowers?!’, weren’t you?”

“You know what? Just forget it.” Shikamaru interrupted whatever Choji was trying to say, and left the hospital. As he narrowed his eyes at the dazzling sunlight, a single hawk passed across his field of view.

Shikamaru recalled how Sakura looked after many sleepless days and nights of treating people.

I wonder what we’re going to do with them.

The face of Sakura came to life in the back of his mind, empty eyes filling with tears when Danzo gave permission to eliminate then-deserter Sasuke, and the thought came to him abruptly.

“Was that thoughtless?”

“Shikamaru?”

“Hm? Oh, it’s nothing.”

The first one to notice the hawk flying directly down to the Hokage’s office was Naruto, as he took up the papers that had just arrived from Kirigakure and Kumogakure.

“Master Kakashi, it’s Sasuke’s hawk!” Naruto raced over to the window and invited the hawk into the room.

“Oh, something from Sasuke? Perfect timing.” Ever since the attack on Konoha, Kakashi had been swamped with village business and communications with the other villages, but he had been just thinking he should really get in touch with Sasuke. He took the letter from the hawk.

“What’s he say?”

“He’s apparently caught this band of thieves called the Dark Thunder group that was attacking villages in the Land of Steam. The leader has a kekkei genkai.”

Sasuke had written that he wanted the Hokage’s judgement. At any rate, it was in the Land of Steam. It was hard to decide whether to leave it to Yugakure to handle, or to have Konoha take charge of it.

“We’ll have to get in touch with Yugakure about this.” Kakashi made plans in his head.

“No word for anyone in his letters, as usual.” Naruto cackled, looking somehow delighted. Maybe he was happy with what Sasuke was up to. “Alllll right! Can’t lose out to that guy!”

For Naruto, Sasuke was an eternal rival. This had apparently lit a fire under him. He picked up the papers once more and began flipping through them.

Amongst the documents were pictures of kidnapped ninja in this case. In the old days, they likely wouldn’t have been given this sort of information. The villages would have hidden it to keep it from being leaked to other villages. Noting that it was precisely now that the squabbling amongst the five great nations had disappeared that they could cooperate like this, Kakashi shifted in his chair, and went to write a letter to Yugakure.

Naruto cocked his head to one side. “Hmm?”

“What is it, Naruto?”

“There’s nothing on this one person.”

“Nothing? What do you mean?”

“I mean, there’s no paperwork for one of the controlled ninja!” Naruto made this declaration, even though he had only just glanced at the documents. He may have been rough around the edges, but Naruto had his clever side. He often found the path to solving the issue at hand.

“Naruto, could you double check to be sure there’s no mistake?” Kakashi asked.

“I’m telling you!” Naruto shouted, and jumped out the open window.

Medical equipment had been brought to a facility a short distance from the village, and medical ninja were handling things there twenty-four hours a day.

“Naruto?” Sakura, who was continuing to treat the ninja, noticed Naruto right away when he stepped inside. He could see exhaustion in her face. In addition to being charged with these lives, if she made one wrong move, there could be an explosion, with many more lives sacrificed. She couldn’t relax her focus for even a second.

And beside Sakura was another familiar face. “Naruto.”

“Hinata. Oh, right, you were on guard today.”

“There’s that, too,” Hinata said, looking at Sakura.

“I’m trying something right now, right?” Sakura said. “So I borrowed the power of the byakugan. Anyway, what’s going on?”

“Ohh. I was actually just looking at the documents on the missing ninja.” Naruto explained to the women that there was a ninja without any documentation.

“I see. So who is it?” Sakura looked around the room, partitioned off into smaller units.

“Umm.” As if searching for an answer, Naruto peeked in on the ninja in each room, one at a time. “This guy.”

The ninja he finally found was a man in his late twenties. For some reason, he was in a room a ways off from the other ninja. Hearing this from Naruto, the look on Sakura’s face changed abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Compared with the other ninja, there’s relatively little of the foreign chakra circulating in his body. So I tried working to eliminate that, and it looks like we might succeed soon.” What Sakura was apparently saying was that she and Hinata had grasped the exact location of the foreign chakra circulating in the body, and that she was removing it with medical ninjutsu without making any wounds.

“But that this man alone would have no papers … He couldn’t possibly be connected to the ringleader?” Hinata stared at the man.

“Thinking about it, it makes sense that only he would have less foreign chakra … Because he alone didn’t need to be controlled.” Sakura exhaled as if to calm her mind, and looked at the man. “I’m still going to continue the treatment.”

“Got it,” Naruto said.

It was Sakura’s dedication as a medical ninja. If she succeeded, they might be able to save the other ninja, too. She restarted the treatment, and once Naruto had finished relaying this to Kakashi, he came back to watch over it again.

Beads of sweat popped up on the foreheads of Sakura and Hinata.

“This is the last bit,” Hinata said, chasing after the flow of chakra. “Arriving at the brachial artery.”

“Understood.” Sakura’s chakra arrived at the blood vessels inside the man, and saw the problematic chakra. Paying the utmost care to not causing any injuries, she removed the chakra, and then looked at Hinata for confirmation.

Hinata looked through every nook and cranny of the man’s body, and then nodded firmly. The foreign chakra circulating within their patient had been completely removed.

“Nice work, you guys!” Naruto said, and Sakura smiled brightly, while Hinata looked bashful.

“But now what are we going to do?” Sakura asked, wiping away her sweat. “Did Master Kakashi say anything?”

“Hang on a sec!” Naruto shot out of the room. “Hey! It worked!”

Aoba walked into the room, now finally recovered from losing consciousness when caught in the genjutsu trap.

“Aoba, are you all right?” Sakura asked.

“Thanks to you,” Aoba replied, adjusting his sunglasses.

“But what are you doing here?”

“I asked the Hokage to let me try one more time.”

“Try? You mean, you’re going to read him?”

“Yes.” Aoba probably couldn’t just let things stand the way they were.

“Um,” Hinata seemed worried. “We’ve erased all the chakra that was circulating in his body, but the genjutsu trap might still be there.”

“It’s okay,” Aoba replied. “I’ve already experienced it once, so I know what it feels like when the genjutsu trap activates. If it seems dangerous, I’ll pull out right away.”

It seemed a little uncertain, but given that he had already gone through it once, it might indeed go well this time. And they urgently needed to find out how this man with no papers was involved in the incident.

“Here I go, then.” Aoba reached a hand out to the man’s forehead, and sent his consciousness flying inside.

“Okay.”

When Aoba got inside and opened his eyes, there was an enormous brain enshrined there. He looked at his surroundings, but there was no red sea waiting to swallow him up.

“This time for sure.”

Still on guard, he reached into the brain. He began to see a scene. It was night. The man was standing on a cliff, waves crashing against it. A slender young man stood directly in front of him. The first man called to this boy, “Boss.” The boy called boss did not look back.

“It’s been a long time since Bright Lightning was disbanded,” the man said, almost talking to himself. “That Karyu, he’s made a new group, Dark Thunder, and he’s running wild. He’s maybe turning his hatred on the people in the villages. … So we can’t actually live on the straight and narrow, after all.”

The sounds of waves approaching and receding. Regret bled out onto the man’s face.

“I want to say goodbye to this world already. But … if I’m going to die, it’ll be after I get revenge on the shinobi!” The man’s fist was trembling. Revenge on the shinobi. There was no reason for a ninja of Kiri or Kumo to say something like that. They were probably right to assume that this man was one of the criminals behind this incident.

“Amuda.” For the first time, the boy spoke. Amuda. Probably the name of the owner of this memory. “Will you die for the sake of this plan?”

“Of course.” Amuda nodded. “I’ll set off a great big final fireworks!”

The boss slowly turned around. “Amuda. I will not waste your death—”

This boy was the ringleader. Aoba was convinced of it. He strained his eyes and tried to get a good look at his face.

But the blue sea spreading out before him suddenly changed color. It wasn’t just the ocean; the sky, the trees, everything started to turn red.

“Dammit!” Aoba hurriedly escaped from the man’s mind.

“Aoba!”

“Are you all right?”

Sakura and Hinata both ran over to him as he pulled his hand off the man’s—off Amuda’s forehead and stepped back, almost running away.

“It was another genjutsu trap … To read anything further is going to be hard without taking a lot of time and effort … But this time, I did get something.”

“Really?! Do you know who the enemy is?!”

“This guy’s name is Amuda,” Aoba said, getting his breathing under control. “He wants revenge on the shinobi.”

“Revenge on the shinobi?”

“Yeah.”

So was that why he had attacked the village?

“And his boss was there. I guess they used to be in an organization called Bright Lightning.”

“Bright Lightning … I wonder if we can find any information on them.”

“Also,” Aoba continued, “their comrades who broke away are working under the name Dark Thunder.”

“Dark Thunder?!” Naruto shouted, involuntarily.

“What? Do you know them?”

“No, not really.”

A blue vein popped up on Sakura’s forehead. “What? You got our hopes up and everything!” she shouted, brandishing a fist.

“No, but I mean, I’ve, like, heard that name somewhere.” Naruto pushed his index finger firmly against his forehead, and tried to remember.

“Naruto … Was someone talking to you about Dark Thunder?” Hinata asked, timidly.

Naruto gasped, suddenly finding the thread of the memory. “Sasuke!”

“Huh?! What’s Sasuke got to do with it?!”

“Sasuke’s letter! Sasuke’s hawk arrived at Master Kakashi’s, and in the letter, he wrote something about taking down this group of thieves called Dark Thunder!”

3

In the attack by the Dark Thunder Group, many of the people of the village of Takeno had been injured and lost their homes, but those who could move were working hard at rebuilding. Using the bamboo growing in abundance around them, they mended the holes Karyu’s attack had made in their homes. Having had a taste of the terror of death, they were simply grateful to be alive at that point.

In the middle of all this, Iou stayed locked up in his house, refusing to come out.

The sun was setting and the villagers were turning in for the day when Sasuke checked in on the shed where the Dark Thunder members were being held to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary.

“You look like you’re not happy about something. You okay?” Chino asked. Having been dragged into this incident, Chino and Nowaki were staying in the village and helping with the recovery.

He didn’t bother to answer her.

“You ignoring me again?” Chino shook her head from side to side, with a roll of her eyes, and tossed something toward him. Wondering what it was, he caught it, and found a rice ball in his hand.

“Nowaki told me to come give one to you.” Her business there finished, Chino waved a hand and turned around.

“Hey!”

“My name is not ‘hey’!” Chino turned around angrily.

“Tell him thanks,” Sasuke said.

Chino looked momentarily puzzled, but then replied, “Roger.”

Once she had left, Sasuke pressed a hand to his own face. Did he really look troubled? He slipped out through the bamboo grove to put some distance between himself and the village, and slumped down against the trunk of a tree with thick roots entangled in the ground.

This incident had given him pause. Karyu said he formed Dark Thunder after seeing Sasuke. People in this world were modeling themselves after dark Sasuke, and running around doing evil things. This was perhaps another link in the chain of hatred.

Atonement—a journey to atone for his sins. However, once you made a mistake, perhaps you could spend your whole life trying and still never be able to atone for it.

Konohagakure popped up in the back of his mind. But he couldn’t envision a Sasuke who could set foot on Konoha soil and live there. Perhaps this journey would never end.

“Girl.”

Iou showed himself from where he had been hiding deep inside the house after Chino returned, sat down, and started talking with Nowaki.

“You sure you should be up, old man?”

“… What’s going to happen to them?”

“Them?”

“Dark Thunder … Karyu’s punishment.” Iou seemed to be able to think of nothing else.

Nowaki looked at him apologetically. “After the Fourth Great Ninja War, there are fewer big battles, and the shinobi of the five great nations are also more lenient in all kinds of ways. And one of these, Konohagakure … I hear Sasuke’s village is compassionate.”

“It’s hard to say for sure, but you can kinda sympathize with Karyu’s situation as a ninja … And Kirigakure is also involved, so...” Chino shrugged.

“They’re not going to kill him?” For Iou, this single point was crucial.

“Probably not,” Chino answered, vaguely.

“… They’re not …” Iou was silent for a moment. “I’m going to go get some air,” he said, and walked out of the house.

“Hm?” Taking a break in the bamboo grove, Sasuke heard the familiar sound of a bird’s wings flapping and lifted his face. The hawk he had sent to Konoha was returning. Had they decided on how to handle Dark Thunder? “No, it’s too soon for that.”

After the bird settled on his shoulder, Sasuke took the letter from it. And then he checked what it said. “What?!”

The letter noted the attack on Konohagakure; the fact that the matter of the missing ninja from the other day was involved; the fact that among the attackers, there was a ninja thought to be one of the people who planned the attack; also, the fact that this ninja previously belonged to an organization called Bright Lightning, and that he knew a man called Karyu of Dark Thunder.

“Bright Lightning … That’s the name of the group of chivalrous thieves Karyu was in originally.” There was a strong possibility that the leader of that Bright Lightning Group was the ringleader behind the current attacks. Thus, Konoha wanted him to tell them about Karyu and Dark Thunder. If he used the sharingan, he could easily get the information they needed.

What concerned him was the genjutsu used on the ninja, and the explosions. Over one hundred ninja under the genjutsu had appeared at Konoha, Kiri, and Kumo. Controlling that many people at once was no ordinary feat. One of the conspirators, Amuda, had been part of it, but that was probably a persuasive-type technique. He had no doubt that there had been a ninja like Amuda among the attackers at both Kiri and Kumo as well, but they had exploded early on. Mixing ninja from the village and ninja from other villages was likely a device to prevent that irregularity from being noticed. They had been able to find it in Konoha because they had been able to save all the ninja under the genjutsu except the Konoha shinobi.

Genjutsu and a joining technique. What jutsu had they used exactly? Did this mean that the ninja they caught had somehow changed his own troops and sent them off?

Sasuke gasped. It was almost like Kaguya. The image of White Zetsu connected to the divine tree came back to life in his mind. “No, maybe I’m overthinking this …”

At the moment, at any rate, he had to get information on Bright Lightning from Karyu. Sasuke immediately stood up and then cocked his head to one side.

He heard a bang, like something popping. When he looked, he could see flames licking up into the sky from the village. Karyu and his men couldn’t possible have escaped from the shed, could they? He raced back to Takeno.

“… This.” But the sight spreading out before his eyes was different from the one he had imagined.

The village shed was on fire. Perhaps it had been doused in oil; pillars of flame rose up, surrounding the shed. The bamboo used for the shed heated up and split with successive bangs and pops.

Sasuke caught sight of Chino and Nowaki staring up at the burning shed, at a complete loss, and raced over to them. “What’s going on?!”

“S-Sassy.” Chino got a pained look on her face. “While we weren’t looking, old man Iou apparently set fire to the place.”

“What … Where’s Iou?”

“Probably with them.” Chino indicated the shed.

So Iou had gone into the shed, poured oil all over, and set fire to the whole thing, himself alongside them?

“He asked about Dark Thunder’s punishment,” Chino murmured. “He asked if they would be killed. And I said Konoha was kind to ninja, so they maybe wouldn’t kill Karyu …”

Sasuke bit his lip hard and stared at the shed.

It was already too late to do anything.

They finally managed to put the fire out, and he checked inside, but the bodies were in such a state that he couldn’t tell which was Karyu and which was Iou.

“I should have killed all the members of Dark Thunder,” Chino said, looking down on the charred corpses.

These words cast a dark shadow over Sasuke’s heart.