“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.