“Now, you! You’re strong, right! Please! Help me!” Iou roughly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand as he asked Sasuke for his help, almost throwing himself forward.
“Whaat? Isn’t that a bit too selfish?” Chino sounded exasperated.
“Shut up!” Iou roared at her, and kept going without a pause. “I apologize for before!” He threw his head down in a deep bow, and then didn’t move to bring it up again. Was he planning to keep bowing until Sasuke said yes?
Unable to just stand by and watch, Nowaki lowered his voice and said, “I’m not with Iou or anything, but actually, the leader of this Dark Thunder group is apparently saying his master is Uchiha Sasuke. And he’s broadcasting it to the world.”
“What did you say?” Sasuke unconsciously furrowed his brow at the sudden appearance of his own name in the conversation.
“That’s you, right? Uchiha Sasuke. I guess he really looks up to you or something.”
Unlike Iou, Chino and Nowaki had an understanding of ninja. And they were traveling performers. They would be privy to information as they journeyed around the world. It was precisely because of this that they had guessed who he was right away, once they saw his sharingan.
Sasuke had never heard of anyone calling themselves Dark Thunder. He was naturally annoyed at someone using his name however they pleased, but more than that, the fact that people out in the world doing evil were openly respectful of him shot a shadow of gloom into his heart. The shadow was dark and heavy.
“That’s that, then,” Sasuke murmured, slowly. Now that his name had been brought into it, he couldn’t say it had nothing to do with him.
And it was a fact that the Dark Thunder group was violent, with many victims, and this village was exposed to that terror. The disappearance of a large number of ninja concerned him too, but he couldn’t exactly walk away from this village. The reason Sasuke was on this journey was also to atone to the world, after all.
“Huh? You’re gonna help?” Apparently, Chino didn’t think Sasuke would help them. She looked at him with wide eyes. “I figured you’d say ‘not my problem,’ or ‘fix it yourselves,’ and then flip the table before taking off.”
First of all, he would never flip a table, but the old Sasuke probably would have indeed said that. To begin with, the old him would have quickly passed through this village, and headed straight for the Land of Lightning.
“So you’ll do it! You are the man I thought you were!” Iou raised his head, and a broad grin spread across his face. The change in his attitude was whiplash inducing.
Seeing Iou like this brought another person to mind. Tazuna, the bridge-builder from the Land of Waves. Tazuna had struggled against various obstacles to build his bridge, and he had the same audacity and quick-changing attitude. Maybe it was a special characteristic of this generation.
But the paths the two men had gone down were exactly opposite. Even after his loved one had been killed, Tazuna risked his life to fight for the future of the land, while Iou was spurred by hatred to see the power of vengeance.
“At any rate, that’s enough for today, right? It doesn’t seem like the Dark Thunder Group is gonna show. Let us rest.” Chino made a show of yawning hugely.
“I s’pose. There’s rooms here. Use ‘em if you want. … And if they do come, I’m really counting on you,” Iou said, as if to drive the point home. His eyes showed that he was certain that this village was going to be attacked. And deeper in those eyes was a darkness that sought punishment for Dark Thunder for killing his daughter.
Even if Sasuke helped to resolve this incident, he had no intention of lending a hand to revenge. Although Iou likely wouldn’t accept that. Instead of answering the old man, Sasuke went into the room he had been given.
“Huh? Say that one more tiiiime.”
A small village nestled in the mountains. But there were no longer any villagers in it. Destroyed houses, people cruelly forced to breathe their last. Only the beasts that caught the scent of blood were lively.
Inside a ruined house, the man sitting on the table and tossing a ball at the wall turned up the corners of his mouth at his subordinate’s words. Bluish-purple hair tied back loosely, pale lips. Only his eyes glittered and shone.
“Yes sir! Not long after the sun had set, when we went to scout out Takeno, there was a man using the sharingan! Lord Karyu, it was most likely Uchiha Sasuke!”
The ball hit the wall and bounced off the blood-soaked floor next to a corpse, and then returned to the man’s—to Karyu’s—hand.
“Uchiha Sasuke. The sole survivor of the proud Uchiha clan. So he’s in Takeno …” Kaguya chuckled softly and jumped down from the table before throwing the ball up against the wall once more.
Thuk! There was a loud explosion, and the subordinate involuntarily plugged his ears and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was a large hole in the wall, and Karyu had stepped through it and gone outside.
Looking up at the moon hidden among the clouds, Karyu stretched out his hands. “My heart’s teacher, the man who showed the world the wonder of kekkei genkai, Uchiha Sasuke … that I would get the chance to kill him!” A look of delight came across his face, and he shouted to his subordinates on standby, “All of you, get to work! Just the right time for Takeno … smash it all to pieces!”