Naruto didn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the hand.
Black fingers tearing through something that shouldn't have existed in the first place, reaching toward his face as though whatever waited behind the Jashin symbol had noticed him looking.
By sunrise, Naruto had reached three conclusions.
The first was that he wasn't putting the Death Mask back on anytime soon.
The second was that Team Seven needed to find where the cult was taking people.
The third was that to complete the Jashin related quest...he'd most likely have to put the Death Mask back on. On the last conclusion Naruto pondered if the unknown entity was truly something that he should crave knowledge for. Some things were better left in the dark. He decided to return to his team.
Sakura was already awake when he returned to their room. She sat at the table surrounded by maps, witness statements and notes from every interview they'd conducted since arriving in town, while Sasuke leaned against the wall beside the window.
Both looked at Naruto when he entered.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
"Where were you?"
"Thinking."
"Outside?"
"I think better outside."
Sakura looked toward the window. "You left your clone snoring loud enough to wake me twice."
Naruto paused.
"Advanced stealth technique."
"It sounded like a dying bear."
"Exactly. Nobody investigates a dying bear."
Sasuke stared at him.
Naruto cleared his throat and sat down.
"Anyway, I have a plan."
Neither teammate looked reassured.
Naruto spread their map across the table and tapped the western district. "We've spent days trying to find where these people go after they disappear. The cult doesn't leave trails, the guy we caught killed himself before telling us anything, and the shrine could be anywhere in miles of forest."
Sakura's expression darkened at the reminder.
Naruto continued. "So we stop looking for the trail."
Sasuke immediately understood.
"We make them show us."
Naruto nodded.
Sakura looked between them.
Then understanding struck.
"No."
Naruto blinked.
"I haven't even said the plan yet."
"You're going to let them take someone."
"Technically—"
"No."
Naruto sighed.
Sakura pushed herself away from the table.
"We have no idea what these people do after they take someone. The only member we've captured bit off his own tongue and cut his throat rather than answer us."
"Which is exactly why—"
"And now you want to hand them someone?"
Naruto pointed at himself.
"Me."
Sakura stared at him.
Her face somehow became even angrier.
"That's worse!"
Sasuke remained quieter.
That worried Naruto more.
Sasuke looked down at the map for several seconds before asking, "How?"
Naruto tapped the western district.
"They know we're investigating. We stop making it look like Team Seven is constantly together."
"We've already split up," Sakura said.
"Not like this."
Naruto leaned closer.
"We make me obvious."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
Naruto continued. "I stay in the western district at night. Alone. Same streets. Same general route. I keep checking places connected to the disappearances while you two make it look like you're investigating somewhere else."
"They'll assume you're isolated," Sasuke said.
"That's the idea."
Sakura folded her arms.
"And then what?"
Naruto smiled.
"They grab me."
"No."
"Sakura—"
"No."
Naruto's smile disappeared.
Naruto looked at her.
Sakura's voice softened, but only slightly.
"We don't know what these people are capable of."
"That's why it has to be me."
"That makes absolutely no sense."
"It does."
Naruto stood.
He was taller than Sakura now, but somehow she still managed to make him feel like he'd been caught doing something stupid.
Probably because he usually had.
"I'm the hardest one of us to kill."
Sasuke's eyebrow rose.
Naruto pointed toward himself.
"Seriously. Huge chakra reserves. Uzumaki. Tough as hell. I can make clones, break restraints, use seals and reshape the ground if everything goes bad."
"You don't know where they'll take you," Sakura argued.
"Exactly."
"You don't know how many there are."
"Exactly."
"You don't know what they're going to do!"
"Exactly!"
Naruto's voice came out louder than intended.
Silence followed.
He took a breath.
"That's the problem."
Sakura stopped.
Naruto looked down at the nine names they'd collected.
Then at the two additional disappearances reported since their arrival.
"Eleven people."
Neither Sasuke nor Sakura spoke.
"Eleven people are missing, and we don't know if they're locked in a room somewhere, starving, being tortured..." Naruto hesitated as the memory of the acolyte's ecstatic expression returned. "...or something worse."
Sakura's anger faded slightly.
Naruto tapped one of the reports.
"Daichi's seventeen."
Another.
"This lady has two kids."
Another.
"This guy came here with his wife."
His finger stopped.
"If we keep waiting for another clue, somebody else disappears instead of me."
"That doesn't make sacrificing yourself smart," Sasuke said.
Naruto looked toward him.
"I'm not sacrificing myself."
"You don't know that."
"No."
Naruto surprised both of them by agreeing.
He looked at Sasuke directly.
"I don't."
The near-death experience with Kabuto hadn't disappeared just because Tsunade repaired his heart. Naruto knew exactly what one mistake could cost now.
That was why he wasn't pretending there was no danger.
"I'm scared of what might happen."
Sakura stared at him.
Naruto continued before either could interrupt.
"But I'm Team Seven's leader."
Sasuke's expression immediately soured.
"Don't use that."
"I'm not saying you have to shut up because I'm leader."
"Good."
"I'm saying this is my responsibility."
Naruto looked between them.
"If I decide somebody needs to take this risk, I'm not ordering Sakura to do it. I'm not ordering you to do it."
He tapped his own chest.
"I'm doing it."
Sakura looked away.
Naruto's voice became quieter.
"And if we're right, every person they've already taken is somewhere waiting for us."
He looked down at the map again.
"They might be having a much worse night than I will."
That ended the argument.
Not because Sakura agreed.
She very clearly didn't.
But she understood.
Sasuke eventually pushed away from the wall.
"If we're doing this, we're controlling as much as possible."
Naruto grinned.
The tracking formula took Naruto most of the afternoon.
He eventually inscribed a seal no larger than his thumbnail beneath the hair at the back of his neck. It remained completely dormant unless activated through its paired formula, meaning anyone checking Naruto for active chakra signatures would find nothing unusual.
Sakura held the corresponding tag.
When she fed chakra into it, a thin line appeared across the paper pointing directly toward Naruto.
Sasuke tested it from outside the inn.
Then from three streets away.
Then from the forest.
It worked every time.
"We lose this signal, we move," Sasuke said.
Naruto nodded.
"If I flare my chakra twice, you move."
Sakura added another condition. "If you're stationary for more than thirty minutes after they take you, we move."
Naruto sighed, he had already taken too much out of the deal with his teammates, thirty minutes it is.
Nothing happened the first night.
Naruto walked the western district alone until nearly three in the morning.
Nobody approached him.
Nobody followed him.
One drunk tried to sell him a carved frog.
Naruto bought it.
Sakura was furious.
"It was twenty ryō."
"You're supposed to be bait."
"I can multitask."
The second night was equally useless.
Naruto deliberately allowed himself to become predictable. He visited the same noodle stand, checked the same abandoned bathhouse, walked the same western road and eventually returned to the inn alone.
Still nothing.
By the third evening, Sasuke had a theory.
"They're watching us."
Naruto nodded.
"Good."
Sakura stared at him.
"How is that good?"
"Because that means they noticed."
Naruto changed their routine.
Sasuke and Sakura left town publicly shortly before sunset, carrying packs and making no effort to hide their departure toward the eastern road. Naruto remained behind and spent most of the evening questioning residents alone.
In reality, Sasuke and Sakura circled north through the forest before returning under cover of darkness.
They positioned themselves nearly a kilometer outside the western district.
Far enough that anyone watching Naruto wouldn't see Team Seven nearby.
Close enough to move.
Naruto walked alone.
Hours passed.
Midnight.
One.
Two.
Naruto began wondering whether the cult had decided blond shinobi were more trouble than they were worth.
Then he noticed the woman.
She stood beneath a lantern near the western baths.
Bare feet.
Thin sleeping robe.
Blood on one sleeve.
Naruto stopped.
The woman looked at him.
"Please."
Naruto's entire body tightened.
"Help me."
He moved toward her.
Not too quickly.
The plan existed for exactly this reason.
"What happened?"
"My brother."
She pointed toward an alley.
"They took him."
Naruto followed her gaze.
Dark.
Narrow.
Steam poured from a drainage channel running beneath the buildings.
Every instinct Naruto had developed over the last year screamed trap.
Perfect.
"Show me."
The woman hurried into the alley.
Naruto followed.
The tracking seal at the back of his neck remained dormant.
Several streets away, nothing changed on Sakura's tag.
Yet.
The woman led him behind an abandoned laundry house.
"My brother's inside."
Naruto looked toward the door.
"No, he isn't."
The woman froze.
Naruto smiled.
"You're a really bad liar."
Something hissed behind him.
Naruto turned.
Steam exploded from vents along both sides of the alley.
Not natural steam.
The smell was wrong.
Sweet.
Bitter.
Naruto immediately held his breath.
A cloth wrapped around his mouth from behind.
Three people moved from the darkness.
Fast.
One grabbed his arms.
Another wrapped something around his torso.
The third drove a knee toward his stomach.
Naruto could have stopped them.
One pulse of Sovereign's Grasp would have shattered the alley.
One shadow clone could have broken the hold.
One full-strength elbow would probably have removed someone's teeth.
Instead Naruto struggled just enough to make it believable.
"GET OFF ME!"
He slammed one attacker into the wall.
Another caught his wrist.
Dark cord wrapped around it.
Naruto felt his chakra flow distort slightly.
Interesting.
Chakra suppression.
Not enough to stop him.
Enough to stop an ordinary shinobi from escaping easily.
Naruto let his movements become slower.
The drugged steam helped sell it.
His Uzumaki vitality was already fighting whatever he'd inhaled, but he allowed his knees to buckle anyway.
The woman watched.
Her frightened expression disappeared.
"Strong."
One of the men tightened the restraint around Naruto.
"That's good."
Naruto's vision blurred deliberately as he lowered his eyelids.
"For what...?"
Nobody answered.
A hood came down over his head.
Darkness.
Naruto felt himself lifted.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then someone spoke beside him.
"A shinobi."
Another voice answered.
"Jashin will be pleased."
Naruto stopped pretending to struggle.
Not because he was unconscious.
Because he didn't want them feeling him smile.
Nearly a kilometer away, Sakura's tracking tag moved.
She immediately stood.
"Sasuke."
His Sharingan activated.
The thin line across the seal pointed west.
Moving.
Sakura swallowed.
"They took him."
Sasuke said nothing.
The line continued moving.
Slowly.
Steadily.
Sakura looked toward the dark forest.
Every instinct told her to follow immediately.
"Thirty minutes."
Sasuke nodded.
Neither moved.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Sakura was already standing.
Sasuke looked at her.
"Two minutes."
"I know."
"You agreed."
"I know."
The tracking line changed direction.
Northwest.
Deeper into the forest.
Sakura tightened her grip on the seal.
"Naruto better know what he's doing."
Sasuke looked toward the darkness.
"He usually doesn't."
Sakura glared at him.
Sasuke stepped toward the tree line.
"But he's gotten better."
Naruto counted turns.
Left.
Straight.
Downhill.
Sharp right.
Pause.
Another turn.
He'd been carried for approximately seventeen minutes before whoever held him lowered him onto something wooden.
A cart, judging by the wheels.
Naruto listened.
At least four people nearby.
Possibly six.
He could hear breathing behind him.
Someone else was in the cart.
Naruto shifted slightly.
A frightened gasp answered.
Civilian.
Alive.
His joking mood disappeared.
Naruto kept his voice barely above a whisper.
"Hey."
Silence.
"It's okay."
The person beside him trembled.
A woman's voice finally answered.
"Who are you?"
Naruto tested the restraints around his wrists.
Still manageable.
He could break them whenever he wanted.
But not yet.
"My name's Naruto, don't worry. I'm gonna get you out of here."
"Aren't you captured too?" The woman wanted a kernel of hope to hold onto, however, the given situation left that quite hard to do.
Naruto considered the question.
"Sort of."
The cart hit a rock.
Someone outside shouted for silence.
Naruto lowered his voice further.
"Listen to me."
The woman stopped trembling just enough to hear him.
"My friends are coming."
He couldn't see her.
He couldn't see where they were going.
He didn't know how many cultists waited at the other end.
And somewhere behind the symbol they worshiped, something had looked through Naruto's mask and reached for him.
For the first time since proposing the plan, Naruto wondered whether he had underestimated exactly what he'd volunteered for.
Then the woman whispered.
"There are more of us."
Naruto went completely still.
"How many?"
"I don't know."
Her voice broke.
"A lot."
The cart continued into the forest.
Naruto leaned back against the wooden wall.
The fear didn't disappear.
He simply put it somewhere useful.
"Okay."
His hands curled into fists behind his back.
"Then we're getting all of you out."