In the attack by the Dark Thunder Group, many of the people of the village of Takeno had been injured and lost their homes, but those who could move were working hard at rebuilding. Using the bamboo growing in abundance around them, they mended the holes Karyu’s attack had made in their homes. Having had a taste of the terror of death, they were simply grateful to be alive at that point.
In the middle of all this, Iou stayed locked up in his house, refusing to come out.
The sun was setting and the villagers were turning in for the day when Sasuke checked in on the shed where the Dark Thunder members were being held to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary.
“You look like you’re not happy about something. You okay?” Chino asked. Having been dragged into this incident, Chino and Nowaki were staying in the village and helping with the recovery.
He didn’t bother to answer her.
“You ignoring me again?” Chino shook her head from side to side, with a roll of her eyes, and tossed something toward him. Wondering what it was, he caught it, and found a rice ball in his hand.
“Nowaki told me to come give one to you.” Her business there finished, Chino waved a hand and turned around.
“Hey!”
“My name is not ‘hey’!” Chino turned around angrily.
“Tell him thanks,” Sasuke said.
Chino looked momentarily puzzled, but then replied, “Roger.”
Once she had left, Sasuke pressed a hand to his own face. Did he really look troubled? He slipped out through the bamboo grove to put some distance between himself and the village, and slumped down against the trunk of a tree with thick roots entangled in the ground.
This incident had given him pause. Karyu said he formed Dark Thunder after seeing Sasuke. People in this world were modeling themselves after dark Sasuke, and running around doing evil things. This was perhaps another link in the chain of hatred.
Atonement—a journey to atone for his sins. However, once you made a mistake, perhaps you could spend your whole life trying and still never be able to atone for it.
Konohagakure popped up in the back of his mind. But he couldn’t envision a Sasuke who could set foot on Konoha soil and live there. Perhaps this journey would never end.
“Girl.”
Iou showed himself from where he had been hiding deep inside the house after Chino returned, sat down, and started talking with Nowaki.
“You sure you should be up, old man?”
“… What’s going to happen to them?”
“Them?”
“Dark Thunder … Karyu’s punishment.” Iou seemed to be able to think of nothing else.
Nowaki looked at him apologetically. “After the Fourth Great Ninja War, there are fewer big battles, and the shinobi of the five great nations are also more lenient in all kinds of ways. And one of these, Konohagakure … I hear Sasuke’s village is compassionate.”
“It’s hard to say for sure, but you can kinda sympathize with Karyu’s situation as a ninja … And Kirigakure is also involved, so...” Chino shrugged.
“They’re not going to kill him?” For Iou, this single point was crucial.
“Probably not,” Chino answered, vaguely.
“… They’re not …” Iou was silent for a moment. “I’m going to go get some air,” he said, and walked out of the house.
“Hm?” Taking a break in the bamboo grove, Sasuke heard the familiar sound of a bird’s wings flapping and lifted his face. The hawk he had sent to Konoha was returning. Had they decided on how to handle Dark Thunder? “No, it’s too soon for that.”
After the bird settled on his shoulder, Sasuke took the letter from it. And then he checked what it said. “What?!”
The letter noted the attack on Konohagakure; the fact that the matter of the missing ninja from the other day was involved; the fact that among the attackers, there was a ninja thought to be one of the people who planned the attack; also, the fact that this ninja previously belonged to an organization called Bright Lightning, and that he knew a man called Karyu of Dark Thunder.
“Bright Lightning … That’s the name of the group of chivalrous thieves Karyu was in originally.” There was a strong possibility that the leader of that Bright Lightning Group was the ringleader behind the current attacks. Thus, Konoha wanted him to tell them about Karyu and Dark Thunder. If he used the sharingan, he could easily get the information they needed.
What concerned him was the genjutsu used on the ninja, and the explosions. Over one hundred ninja under the genjutsu had appeared at Konoha, Kiri, and Kumo. Controlling that many people at once was no ordinary feat. One of the conspirators, Amuda, had been part of it, but that was probably a persuasive-type technique. He had no doubt that there had been a ninja like Amuda among the attackers at both Kiri and Kumo as well, but they had exploded early on. Mixing ninja from the village and ninja from other villages was likely a device to prevent that irregularity from being noticed. They had been able to find it in Konoha because they had been able to save all the ninja under the genjutsu except the Konoha shinobi.
Genjutsu and a joining technique. What jutsu had they used exactly? Did this mean that the ninja they caught had somehow changed his own troops and sent them off?
Sasuke gasped. It was almost like Kaguya. The image of White Zetsu connected to the divine tree came back to life in his mind. “No, maybe I’m overthinking this …”
At the moment, at any rate, he had to get information on Bright Lightning from Karyu. Sasuke immediately stood up and then cocked his head to one side.
He heard a bang, like something popping. When he looked, he could see flames licking up into the sky from the village. Karyu and his men couldn’t possible have escaped from the shed, could they? He raced back to Takeno.
“… This.” But the sight spreading out before his eyes was different from the one he had imagined.
The village shed was on fire. Perhaps it had been doused in oil; pillars of flame rose up, surrounding the shed. The bamboo used for the shed heated up and split with successive bangs and pops.
Sasuke caught sight of Chino and Nowaki staring up at the burning shed, at a complete loss, and raced over to them. “What’s going on?!”
“S-Sassy.” Chino got a pained look on her face. “While we weren’t looking, old man Iou apparently set fire to the place.”
“What … Where’s Iou?”
“Probably with them.” Chino indicated the shed.
So Iou had gone into the shed, poured oil all over, and set fire to the whole thing, himself alongside them?
“He asked about Dark Thunder’s punishment,” Chino murmured. “He asked if they would be killed. And I said Konoha was kind to ninja, so they maybe wouldn’t kill Karyu …”
Sasuke bit his lip hard and stared at the shed.
It was already too late to do anything.
They finally managed to put the fire out, and he checked inside, but the bodies were in such a state that he couldn’t tell which was Karyu and which was Iou.
“I should have killed all the members of Dark Thunder,” Chino said, looking down on the charred corpses.
These words cast a dark shadow over Sasuke’s heart.