Five hundred meters above the ground, with a strong wind pushing up against him, Sai looked back over his shoulder.
“You sure you’re going to be okay alone, Naruto?”
“Yeah.” Naruto glared at the enemy territory far below him. “No problem.”
“But your hand’s still—”
“I can take these guys with one hand.”
The Chinese phoenix, created with the Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry, slipped through the shadows of the night, invisible from the ground. However, Naruto’s eyes could make out that ground quite clearly.
It was past midnight, but the torches of the night watch still burned brightly in the wild mountain valley where his target hid away from him. Here and there, ninjas stood watch. Bathed in the cold light of the moon, the sharply rising stone wall and the needlelike ridgeline glistened as if wet.
“A stronghold with natural defenses.” Sai voiced Naruto’s own thoughts. “So Garyo’s been running around and hiding in places like this, huh?”
“While he kills the people of the Land of Waves.” Naruto gritted his teeth.
It was a September night, a year after the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War. The powerful wind howled as it ripped through the valley.
Shifting positions, the giant bird carrying Sai and Naruto made a wide turn, and they caught sight of Garyo’s base directly below.
“Don’t think too hard about it, Naruto. It’s not like the Fourth Great Ninja War’s going to be the last war humanity fights. As much as I hate it, we’re still going to see people who sympathize with Madara’s thinking,” Sai told him, before Naruto jumped down from the large bird.
“Like Garyo, y’know?”
Krrrrrrrr!
Listening to the sound of his own body tearing through the air, Naruto intertwined the index and middle fingers of his left hand to make a cross and dropped down into the night sky. He had learned this new way of weaving signs after losing his right arm in the fight with Sasuke.
“Multiple Shadow Doppelgangers!”
Bomf! White smoke surged up, and by the time the night watch noticed anything, Garyo’s hideout was already surrounded by shadow doppelgangers.
“Enemy attack!” Angry voices sprang forth from the darkness here and there.
“Protect Garyo!”
Enemy ninja came flying out of huts arrayed along the stone wall and from the caves all around. Naruto’s shadow doppelgängers launched kunai in all directions, and several members of the enemy group fell at once. Faced with slashing attacks from behind, Naruto turned into a cloud of smoke and disappeared.
The base’s central plaza was instantly transformed into a battlefield with ninjas exchanging angry roars.
Naruto’s vision swept both sides, searching for the cave Kakashi had told him about—a cave with two pointed rocks like fangs hanging from the ceiling, the sole entrance to Garyo’s hideout, cut off from the outside world by the mountains. Or so Kakashi had said.
“So then, if he’s thinking about escaping, he’ll run straight to that cave!”
He could see it beyond the shadow doppelgangers performing their dance to the death with the enemy. The cavern, the mouth of a rock beast with fangs bared, was guarded by ninja, and the small man running inside, the hem of his long garment dragging, was—
“Garyooooo!” Naruto’s voice echoed off the stone walls. “You’re not going anywhere!”
Before the lingering echoes of Naruto’s voice had dissipated, a single enemy ninja appeared to block his way. The ninja’s costume was white like snow; the ninja’s face was hidden under a white mask in the shape of a hook.
“Get out of my way!” Naruto didn’t hesitate to launch several kunai.
But the instant the tips of the knives touched the masked ninja, their target shimmered and disappeared like mist. What was worse, before Naruto knew it, that very ninja had taken up a position behind him.
“Ice Style! Chains of Earthen Ice!”
He felt the jutsu hit his back lightly. He pitched forward the tiniest bit, but kept his balance. He braced himself and whirled around, kunai glittering as they sped toward the masked ninja—or rather, he fully intended to have them glitter and speed.
But he couldn’t throw them.
“W-what is this…?”
The sensation of reeling within his body was in the next instant transformed into intense pain.
Snap, crack…krrk krrk krrk krrk!
Countless frozen thorns sprang up from his veins and ripped through his body.
“Unnnnh…” A puff of white breath slipped out of his mouth as he fell to his knees. However cool the mountains at night might have been, it was still only September. Yet Naruto’s teeth were chattering, and his entire body was assaulted by a ferocious cold.
The ice quickly spread out from where the masked ninja had hit his back to every part of his body. The frost crawling across him wrapped itself around his arms and legs before creeping toward his face.
Krrk krrk krrk krrk krrk krrk krrk krrk!
He tried to get his body to move somehow, but only caused several thin pieces of ice to crackle as they peeled off and fell to the ground. The ice chains held Naruto firmly.
Not even sparing a glance for the frozen Naruto, the masked ninja returned to Garyo. “Lord Garyo, please, this way.”
But Garyo didn’t move, and the three ninja protecting him collapsed noisily in a pile of arms and legs.
Stunned beneath the hook-patterned mask, his enemy’s eyes scrutinized the scene.
A hand gripping a kunai slowly appeared from the darkness behind Garyo. “Y’know, Haku wore a mask like that too.” Naruto plunged a kunai into the neck of his target. “And now this ice technique… You a rogue ninja from Kirigakure?”
“So, that wasn’t the real you.” The masked ninja glanced back at the Naruto dispatched only seconds earlier. “I did think your response was not quite up to par for the Uzumaki Naruto, the man who defeated our Madara.”
The doppelganger imprisoned by ice disappeared with a pop. The ice that had bound it cracked and scattered all at once. Naruto and his opponent met each other’s eyes.
“I’ll be taking Garyo back.”
“Can’t help you out there,” the ninja said.
Naruto glared at the masked ninja. “ ’Cause of you guys, hundreds of people in the Land of Waves died.”
“For an ideal.”
“Madara’s ideal? In the war, that was already—”
“Uchiha Madara’s failure,” Garyo interrupted Naruto, “was the fact that he attempted to cast Infinite Tsukiyomi on the entire world.”
Naruto looked down on the small, dark man he had stabbed with a kunai. The unwavering ambition shrouding his entire body seemed completely unaffected by the point of the kunai being pressed into his neck. His long white hair was pulled back in a single bun, and a white beard grew from his chin. One of his long, almond eyes was clouded white.
“But Madara’s thinking was not, in and of itself, incorrect,” Garyo continued, the long hem of his garment fluttering in the wind. “To rid the world of war and realize ultimate justice, there is only the Infinite Tsukiyomi. It is true that Madara is dead. And the Infinite Tsukiyomi was also consigned to eternal oblivion by Uchiha Sasuke. However, that said, his ideal must not die. We may be forced to other methods, but we will approach Madara’s ideal step by step. I truly believe this.”
“Just what are you planning to do?”
“What is ultimate justice? It is the equality of all people. All unhappiness in this world arises from inequality. So then what should we do to realize this equality? We must control the freedom of the individual. The freedom to earn money, the freedom to possess more than others, the freedom to have it easier than others—I fight to control freedoms like these. And if our experiments go well, other lands will endorse us and our ideals. All freedoms in this world will be controlled. This is the true meaning of Madara’s ideal, a new world order.”
“So you picked the Land of Waves as the place for your experiments.” Naruto pushed his voice out from between clenched teeth. “There are no hidden villages in this land, you know. Killing people who don’t know the first thing about fighting… You’re the ones who brought hatred and sadness into this country. It used to be a peaceful place.”
“As long as there is inequality in this world, no country is without hatred and sadness.”
A sudden gust blew into the cave, and Naruto’s empty right sleeve flapped.
“There is no hidden village in this country. Thus, many rogue ninja come to live here. The rogue ninja who come to the Land of Waves have grown tired of killing each other. They hide the fact that they are ninja and try to live as normal people. What they want is a modest, humane life. But they have learned nothing but how to kill each other from childhood; what else can they do? The people of the Land of Waves despise them and think they can buy their dignity with money. They think that when they need military power, they can simply pay to hire someone like you. They think everything can be resolved with money, that they need never dirty their own hands. Money! Money! Money! Those without money are not even treated like human beings. The one you fought just now is one such unfortunate.”
Naruto cast his eyes toward the masked ninja.
“This ninja’s son was stung by a giant hornet and brought to hospital, but there was no doctor there. Nor at the next hospital, or the one after that; not a doctor to be found in the land. When some shady witch doctor was finally tracked down—a man who could hardly be called a doctor—the boy was in shock and on the verge of dying. Naturally, the spells and all the rest were of no use at all. If that poor lad had gotten treatment right away, perhaps they could have saved him. But every last doctor had disappeared from the Land of Waves. Why do you think that is?” Garyo caught himself before squeezing out in a suffering tone, “Because they had all been bought by the five great countries to attend to wounded ninja troops during the Fourth Great Ninja War.”
Naruto’s eyebrows leapt up.