“Do it,” Kakashi said, tersely.
Naruto nodded, and the three flew off in the direction of the flames licking up into the air.
“Sixth, I’ll go give the order for firefighting activities!” Shizune said, and Kakashi nodded in her direction before giving the order to gather information in all areas. He glanced at the letters from Kirigakure and Kumogakure laying on his desk.
“What exactly is going on here … ?”
On the back of the enormous Cartoon Beast bird Sai had drawn, Naruto and the others hurried in the direction of the gates and the nearby fire. But when they were halfway there, Sai abruptly dropped their altitude and started flying low enough to scrape against the roofs of buildings.
“Sai, what’s going on?!” Naruto shouted in surprise, when he spotted a three-person cell ahead of them racing along the rooftops toward A-un gate. “Oh! Shikamaru?!”
Sakura leaned forward and looked down. “Ino and Choji too! Sai, I can’t believe you noticed them!”
The group of Ino-Shika-Cho had also apparently heard Naruto and Sakura.
“You guys’re heading for A-un gate, too?” Shikamaru shouted, looking back.
“Get on!” Sai called out.
The three jumped up onto the enormous bird, and although the bird staggered and nearly crashed into a building the instant Choji was on board, Sai managed to get them flying high again immediately.
Naruto and the others looked once more at the three new arrivals. Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji were childhood friends, and they had previously joined together in a three-person cell under Sarutobi Asuma. However, now they each had their own positions, and didn’t often work as a team anymore.
“Ino and her mother asked us to, so we’ve been chasing after traces of the regular customer from the flower shop,” Shikamaru explained, reminding Naruto of Sakura’s investigation and what she had reported to Kakashi.
“You find any clues?” he asked.
“We found the inn that was probably the last place he stayed,” Shikamaru replied. “The mistress there said he was on his way back to Konoha after a hot-spring treatment.”
That meant that this customer hadn’t planned to disappear.
“So then something happened on his way home,” Naruto remarked.
Ino nodded firmly. “He—his name’s Tadaichi, by the way. He lost his wife young. He’s the sort of person who’d buy flowers at our shop and offer them to his wife whenever he had the time. He used to be active in the Anbu, but now he’s fairly well on in years. He retired as a ninja this year, and when he came and said goodbye, he told us he was going to go around to the places where he spent time with his wife.” He’d been a regular customer since Ino was little, so she was fond of him, unsurprisingly.
“Look. There’s the whole thing with Kiri and Kumo right now, right? We’re worried he got dragged into all that,” Akimichi Choji interjected. “They’re also investigating in Kumogakure, but it was raining at the time, so the scent got washed away. It’s hard to find traces of him.” Choji was in contact with Karui, a female ninja in Kumogakure, so he could get independent information.
“At any rate, before all of that, we need to do something about this situation,” Shikamaru said, putting a stop to that conversation. He looked toward A-un gate. Within the gates, which were locked at night, flames licked up into the air inside of Konohagakure.
“Shikamaru, we were just at Master Kakashi’s, and apparently, there’s an intruder in the village,” Sakura told him. “Ninja from the barrier team are supposedly already on their way there.”
“So then if we can spot the barrier team, we’ll know the enemy?” Shikamaru said, and Naruto leaned far forward, straining his eyes.
“Over there!” Naruto’s gaze was resting on the barrier team. They appeared to be fighting enemy ninja.
Shikamaru spotted them at the same time. He furrowed his brow. “What? They’re totally on the defensive?”
Just as he noted, the ninja of the barrier team were retreating, almost as though they were trying to avoid actually fighting. Some were already injured, lying on the road.
“Huh?!” Ino suddenly cried out.
“What’s wrong, Ino?” Sakura asked, but Ino didn’t respond, instead moving to jump off by herself.
“Ino, that’s dangerous.” Sai grabbed her arm to stop her.
Ino’s eyes were still on the enemy attacking the barrier team. “It can’t be …”
“What’s wrong, Ino?” Choji asked, seeing all the blood drain from her face.
Her lips trembled. “Tadaichi.” She forced the name out.
“Huh?”
“It’s Tadaichi!”
A shock ran through the group. The man Ino called Tadaichi was clad in travel gear, and the look on his face was blank, like it had been scraped off.
“You’re sure, Ino?” Shikamaru asked.
“I’m totally sure! But he’s not the kind of person to turn on Konoha! Why …”
“So then …” Shikamaru looked down on Tadaichi. “Is there a possibility he’s under a genjutsu … maybe?”
This time, Sakura gasped. She looked at the faces of the other enemies. “It might be exactly that, Shikamaru.”
“What do you mean?”
The information she had just been reading on the missing people came back to life in her mind. “It’s the people who went missing.”
“What?!”
“They’re Konoha ninja! They might all be!”
Shikamaru clicked his tongue and looked at the ninja of the barrier team. “So that’s why they’ve been forced into a defensive battle!”
Someone on the barrier team had likely realized that the enemy warriors were Konoha ninja. But if it was genjutsu, then there was a chance they could be brought back to their senses with a counter-genjutsu. The barrier team was no doubt fighting with that very idea in mind. The attacks they threw at Tadaichi were too weak to kill.
“Wait, that,” Naruto said. “What’s that about?”
They felt a wave of pressure, like something swelling up and coming toward them.
Injured by the barrier team’s attack, Tadaichi fell to the ground, and his body began shaking.
“Ah! This is bad!” Naruto immediately leapt off the bird.
Shadow Clones!! As he wove the signs in midair, his shadow clones landed next to the various members of the barrier team.
“Naruto?!”
“We’re flying!” Without giving them a chance to say anything, Naruto lifted up the ninja of the barrier team, and all departed from the place at the same time.
When he looked back, Tadaichi was slowly getting to his feet. Despite the fact that he was injured, his face was still expressionless. The blood spilling out of his wounds frothed and bubbled. And that wasn’t all. Lumps popped up all over his body, almost as if there were another living creature inside him, crawling around.
“We gotta get further back!” Naruto got more distance from Tadaichi before putting the barrier ninja down in what was probably a safe place, and then starting to run back to Tadaichi to try and help him.
But the lumps seething through Tadaichi’s body swelled and grew larger, and his skin, unable to contain the growth, split. And then—
Boom!! He exploded violently like he was bursting open. The houses closest to him were unable to hold up against the impact of the explosion and were destroyed. Fortunately, Naruto’s shadow clones had gone to check on and bring out the people in the buildings nearby, so there was no human damage, but new flames rose up into the sky.
“Are you okay, Naruto?!” Sakura cried, as Sai’s Cartoon Mimicry bird landed and they all raced over to Naruto’s side.
“Tadaichi …” Ino stared dumbfounded at the scene, bits of flesh flung everywhere. Sakura placed a concerned hand on her back. “I’m okay.” She pulled herself together, and immediately ran over to the injured members of the barrier team with Sakura.
However, the threat had not ended.
“Hey, don’t they seem kinda weird?” Shikamaru’s face hardened as he stared at the ninja of Konoha, likely under someone’s control. Until moments ago, they had been baring their teeth at the members of the barrier team, but now they suddenly turned their backs to them and started running. The Konoha ninja then spread out their hands on the wall that surrounded Konohagakure, and clung to it.