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!”