Bzzz, bzzz!
Sparks burst from the high speed grinding wheel.
The young Kumogakure shinobi who had just ground out a piece of Black Lightning Crystal kept his head lowered, carefully polishing a raw stone that still carried the earthy scent of fresh soil.
His brown pupils widened slightly, the gemstone reflected inside them.
Lightning Stone was hard, but brittle. One careless touch while polishing and the entire piece would crack. A cracked Lightning Stone not only stored electricity poorly, it could also explode when discharged. The clerks who managed the Lightning Stone storage liked to call that kind of stone "trash."
"Hey, Saru, did you see Lord Yotsuki Tsuyoshi yesterday?"
The coworker polishing beside him set down his finished piece and stretched his stiff body. Clearly, he was curious about Yotsuki Tsuyoshi, the man who had been parachuted in a month ago yet kept to his tent and rarely showed his face.
Saru used to be exactly like that too.
"I saw him."
Without even looking at his nosy companion, Saru kept his head down and carefully ground away the brown yellow outer shell of the Lightning Stone. Once rinsed with water, a deep blue crystal surfaced, glossy and bright. Under today's gloomy sky, its color looked darker, heavier. Under sunlight, it would shine a brilliant sky blue.
Lightning Stones weren't only valuable for their function. They could also be worn as ornaments.
His six year old little sister would love something like this. Shiny, and actually useful.
He remembered her falling, knocking out a front tooth, then holding that tooth up with a silly grin just to show him.
Saru's lips lifted, almost without him noticing.
"Is he really that hot tempered and forgetful?"
"Pretty much."
Thinking of that powerful man sitting cross legged in the tent, Saru's eyes burned with admiration. In Kumogakure, worship of strength was carved into the bone.
"Someday, I'm going to become the Raikage!"
The boy's bold dream burst out into the air.
The moment he said it, Saru's ears perked, and he quickly lowered his head again. Usually, this was when the others would start laughing and mocking him without restraint.
Silence.
A dead silence.
Saru, already braced for ridicule, suddenly felt uneasy.
Did everyone… change?
The grinding wheel kept whining against stone. Sparks split and scattered. That lonely sound echoed around him, and the gleaming Lightning Stone in front of his eyes began to blur.
He shut off the spinning wheel and rubbed his misty eyes with the back of his hand. Then he lifted his head, confused.
Thin strands of moisture drifted like smoke.
A vast white fog filled everything.
"Kougi? Kougi!"
He called his companion's name into the fog, but no reply came back. Worse, the whole world had fallen into a strange, suffocating quiet, as if the entire No. 1 mining site contained only him.
Gulp.
His throat bobbed.
Saru finally realized something was wrong.
"Release!"
He forced chakra through his body to disrupt any illusion, his voice sharpening with panic, but the fog stayed thick, and there was no trace of genjutsu at all.
The air was damp. Too damp.
His heart hammered. The fog stretched endless in every direction. Thunder still boomed above, yet he couldn't catch even a sliver of lightning's glow.
Following the memory of where his coworker had been working, Saru inched forward.
He took two steps.
Thud!
Something caught his foot. He pitched forward and hit the ground hard.
"Tsk… that hurts!"
One hand pressed his aching forehead, but the palm bracing against the earth felt slick.
He looked down.
Crimson blood ran like a small stream across the brown yellow soil.
Kougi, the one with the tough face who was always good at slacking off, lay there.
His face had been split in two, like petals forced open. A crack ran down from between his eyes. In the wreckage of his gaze, Saru could still see a faint trace of that familiar mocking look.
How… how could this happen?
Saru sat in the blood, grief and terror twisting into numb confusion.
No.
I have to report this to Lord Yotsuki Tsuyoshi.
The image of that hulking figure wreathed in crackling lightning flashed through his mind. Saru clenched his teeth, forcing down panic and sorrow as he tried to scramble upright.
Then he realized something that made his stomach drop.
His body would not move.
His vision darkened. His head grew heavy. The world tilted, sliding sideways, until everything flipped.
Saru collapsed face first into the ground.
With enormous effort, he lifted his eyes.
In front of him stood a headless man, frozen in place, as if lost.
He… who is he?
Buzz.
The fog rippled.
The headless figure jerked, then its body bloomed with countless blood red cracks, like a porcelain doll smashed from the inside. It broke apart in pieces, scattering across the earth, mixing with Saru's severed head.
So it was…
Darkness swallowed everything.
Tap. Tap.
A small figure walked through the fog.
Threads of mist coiled around her like a living veil, like the fog women from old legends.
Konome Taketori moved calmly toward the central warehouse where Lightning Stones were stored.
Buzz. Buzz.
Fine strands of wind quivered around her, spreading outward. The fog twisted and churned, and a faint blush of pink emerged in the distance.
Blood ran down the slope.
Behind her, limbs and broken bodies soaked in pools of gore. The air reeked with heavy, rotten iron stench. Wherever she passed, no living thing remained.
The gap in strength was too vast.
Konome's Byakugan turned, locking onto everyone in the mining zone. The Wind Release bursting from her pores followed that lock and reaped them cleanly.
Wind Release fused with Rotation turned an ordinary technique into a pure "strong or weak" detector.
Those two guards who looked like elite chunin, the polishers of Lightning Crystals, the miners hauling raw stone, to her they were all the same.
If their sensing or defense wasn't enough, they were lambs for slaughter. They couldn't even get close to her before the unseen wind erased them.
Her ninja sandals left deep prints in the soil.
Blood pooled neatly inside those square grooves, painting them a sinister black red.
No resistance.
No one even discovered her.
Konome stepped over the scattered remains at the door and entered the warehouse smoothly.
Lightning Stones piled into a small mountain, their surfaces glowing faintly, boundless thunder sealed inside.
She picked one up.
The moment her Lightning Release chakra flowed in, the stored current exploded outward, crackling arcs spreading in every direction.
A good thing.
Konoha's power grid was already advanced, but using direct alternating current to temper the body would overload the lines and burn the wiring.
With Lightning Stones, every problem vanished.
With this many, she could build a training room. As long as she stayed inside, she could use external electricity to refine her body. Combined with the limitless vitality of reversing the Eight Gates, she could form a kind of perpetual engine and keep cycling endlessly.
No time to waste.
Konome pulled out the blank sealing scrolls she had prepared.
Seal!
Boom!
It took two disposable sealing scrolls to store the entire mountain of Lightning Stones.
In the center of the sealing array, the blank circle slowly filled with the character "Lightning."
Buzz.
A sudden current hissed inside the warehouse.
Konome froze.
As if a hidden mechanism had been triggered, countless secret formulas flared across the walls and the door.
Crackle, crackle!
Blue lightning surged from the inscriptions, forming a cage of thunder that completely enclosed her.
"Oh. So you had this too."
She stared at the laser like lightning prison, then calmly tucked the scrolls into her clothes. Invisible Wind Release slashed outward at once.
Zzzzz!
The instant her wind struck, the glowing lightning pillars erupted with savage current, actually rebounding the Wind Release that should have countered lightning.
Konome's eyes narrowed.
She gathered all her wind into a single point and hacked at the same pillar over and over.
Snap!
Electric arcs burst everywhere.
At last, the pillar couldn't endure the cutting. The lightning was severed.
But then…
Whoosh!
A tiny gap opened in the lightning pillar, and blazing fire spilled out from within.
Her wind threads were ignited instantly. The delicate shape and nature transformations burned away in one breath.
Crackle.
Lightning wrapped back around the fire.
The laser cage snapped shut again, locking Konome inside.
"A sealing art that combines Lightning and Fire Release…"
Konome raised a brow, surprised. Her Byakugan magnified the formulas as she read, searching for a way to break it.
Meanwhile.
Inside the underground mine.
"The fish took the bait."
Dākui closed his eyes. He could clearly sense the formula he had placed in the warehouse being triggered, and a satisfied smile spread across his face.
Before you fish, you chum the water.
The enemy didn't only kidnap miners. They also took away the Lightning Stone ore the miners worked so hard to extract. Based on those two targets, he and Yotsuki Tsuyoshi had designed this trap carefully.
They reassigned the guards to other mining zones, strengthening the defense density and forcing the enemy to strike the seemingly "safer" No. 1 zone. That was the first layer.
Dākui and Tsuyoshi entering the mine and leaving the surface "empty" was the second lure.
And if the enemy saw through it and chose the warehouse to steal Lightning Stones, the sealing art would trigger, and the third layer would snap shut.
A chain of rings, one locked into the next.
They weren't blind to the miners' safety, either.
In every disappearance so far, there were no signs of struggle or blood. That suggested the missing people might not be dead, only dragged deeper into the Thunder Drum Mountain tunnels by someone unknown. So the miners outside likely wouldn't be harmed.
But letting that person keep hiding in the mine would only increase the missing. Cutting the source was the only way to keep everyone safe. Catching the culprit might even lead them to all the people who had vanished before.
Then this mission would truly be complete.
With the Lightning and Fire double sealing art confirmed to be holding the target in the warehouse, Dākui quickly found Tsuyoshi, who was disguised among the workers, cutting into the mountain.
"Captain!"
Tsuyoshi didn't need explanations.
He released the cutter, yanked off the helmet, and tossed it aside. Lightning flared around both of them as they shoved through the crowd and sprinted toward the surface.
The wind roared past their ears as they shot through the jagged tunnels. The twisting cave did nothing to slow them. In the blink of an eye they burst out of the mine and plunged straight into the thick fog on the summit.
"What a heavy fog."
Tsuyoshi scanned the haze. Everything within sight was white. He waved a hand and felt the sticky mist cling to his palm, wet and unpleasant.
He drew in a breath.
Air damp to an unnatural degree filled his nose, thick with rust and the stench of organs.
Tsuyoshi felt like he had inhaled evaporated blood.
"Dākui."
"Yes!"
Years together meant perfect coordination. Dākui didn't need a direct order. His hands were already forming seals. As one of the rare shinobi wielding Wind, Fire, and Lightning, he knew exactly what his captain needed most right now.
Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!
Whoosh!
A violent gust blasted from Dākui's mouth. The fog that blotted out the sky was torn and swept away. Their view cleared instantly.
Boom!
A lightning snake split the sky. In the thick fog, even sound seemed muffled, but with the mist blown back, the thunder struck their hearts like a hammer.
Blood.
Endless blood.
On both sides of the mine entrance, on the slope the workers walked, beside the piles of unpolished ore, everything was drenched in searing red.
Limbs and severed parts littered the ground. Familiar heads rolled down the slope and shattered. Machines lay in pieces. Tents were ripped open. Even the hard packed earth itself had been split with strange cracks.
All of No. 1 mining site looked like a cup dropped on stone, trembling with fractures, soaked in cruelty and the intruder's unmistakable malice.
"How… how could this happen?"
Dākui's pupils shook and tightened. He stared at the scene in disbelief, emotions boiling into chaos.
He couldn't have miscalculated.
The mysterious figure hiding in the mine had never directly killed anyone before. Never destroyed the site like this.
If that person went through so much trouble to abduct people, they must have needed living hands for something. It made no sense to slaughter their most valuable "resources" like this. It didn't fit.
Was this revenge because his trap provoked them?
Dākui's chest tightened with guilt.
Hiss, hiss, hiss!
Lightning Armor crackled like a flock of shrieking birds.
Dākui jolted awake.
He turned.
Tsuyoshi was wrapped in thunder, black hair standing like steel needles, tiger eyes burning with a rage that could shatter mountains.
"C Captain…"
Boom!
The earth trembled.
That bear like body rode lightning like a cannonball, blasting straight toward the warehouse.
Dākui swept one last look across the corpses.
His blue eyes ignited.
He clenched his teeth and chased after Tsuyoshi.
All along the path, human fragments formed a twisted arrow, guiding them forward.
Neither of them spoke.
The constant thunder above was their voice.
They crossed the mud of blood in front of the warehouse.
Tsuyoshi kicked the door open.
Clang!
The iron door howled as it slammed into the inner wall. They rushed inside.
Both of them froze.
The mountain of Lightning Stones was gone.
In the empty space, layered formulas glowed. A massive lightning laser cage held the criminal inside.
A small, pitch black figure crouched within, head lowered, studying the scripts on the floor.
Silver hair fell to her shoulders. Under the lightning's glare it reflected a dull, metallic sheen.
Hearing them enter, the figure lifted her head.
On that face not even the size of a palm was a pale white mask shaped like a cuckoo.
Red and black patterns crawled along the corners of the mask. The eyeholes were filled with terrifying blackness, no whites, no pupils, nothing at all.
Paired with that eerie mask, it was horrifying.
"You're Kirigakure ANBU?"
A clear, young voice echoed in the warehouse, calm beyond reason.
"Mm. Something like that."
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