Hearing the Fourth Raikage's instructions, Dodai hesitated for a moment before raising his head.
"What about Danzo and Kakuzu? What do we do about them?"
Kumogakure had been attacked twice. The first time, Danzo and Kakuzu had struck, and the Two-Tails Jinchuriki was lost. The second time, it was the Mizukage duo.
The Fourth Raikage kept pressing on the Mizukage incident, but that didn't mean the first could simply be forgotten.
The Two-Tails had always belonged to Kumogakure. The village had nurtured and kept it for generations. It wasn't just Dodai who felt the loss; most Kumo shinobi held the Two-Tails in higher regard than the Three-Tails.
But the Fourth Raikage's expression darkened, and his answer was firm.
"This matter is connected to Konoha. I'm certain of it."
Danzo was a former elder of Konoha. That much was common knowledge. Though he had been driven from the village and stripped of his status during Hayashi's sweeping political purge, forced to become a rogue ninja, A flatly refused to believe the man had severed all ties with Konoha.
Beyond that, their investigations had confirmed something else: the Akatsuki, where Danzo now operated, was led by a disciple of Jiraiya. That connection had been verified during the Third Great Ninja War.
Danzo was a Konoha rogue ninja. He led the Akatsuki. And his leader was a student of one of the Sannin.
The Fourth Raikage saw a thread, and he followed it straight back to Konoha.
Even if Hayashi hadn't personally ordered the attack, he must have known about it.
A had already sent a formal letter to Hanzō inquiring about the Akatsuki's movements. The response had been vague at best, a vague promise that he would "handle it," and nothing more.
Hanzō had been captured by Hayashi in the later stages of the Third Great Ninja War and had surrendered Amegakure to Konoha shortly after. That kind of evasion only deepened A's suspicion. To him, the Akatsuki and Amegakure were extensions of Konoha's reach, whether openly or not.
This was precisely why he wanted to convene a Five Kage Summit. The Hidden Mist Village was one piece of it, but the other was this: A wanted to look the Fourth Hokage in the eye, in front of every other Kage, and ask him directly what he was scheming.
"It's not impossible that the Akatsuki is being managed by Konoha from behind the scenes," A said. "The Fourth Hokage is planning something. I'm sure of it."
Dodai kept his expression neutral, though he felt a quiet unease settle in his chest. He understood where A's suspicion came from. The Third Raikage had died at Hayashi's hands. Afterward, Hayashi had walked alone into Kumogakure and released the Three-Tails, leaving a trail of casualties behind him. That was not something a man forgot. That was not something a man forgave.
A's hatred was earned. But hatred had a way of coloring everything it touched.
The Three-Tails had already been released by Hayashi, and Killer Bee had been left unharmed. There was simply no strategic reason to turn around and steal the Two-Tails immediately after. The logic didn't hold. But pointing that out right now felt like a waste of breath.
Dodai shifted the subject instead.
"Speaking of which, I heard Bee wants to come back to the village?"
A's focus shifted immediately. Some of the tension left his jaw.
"He does. One of the rotation shinobi let it slip that the village had been attacked. The news reached him somehow."
"Then," Dodai said carefully, "should we bring him back for a short time? Just a visit."
"No." A shook his head without hesitation. "He stays on Turtle Island."
"The village has already lost the Two-Tails. The Three-Tails is gone. Other villages have been hit as well. There's a pattern forming, and it points to someone, whether it's Konoha or some other hidden force, systematically collecting Tailed Beasts. Bee does not return to the village. Not now."
After Hayashi's attack on Kumogakure, after Killer Bee was left alive and unharmed, A had made a decision quickly. The village was no longer safe for Bee. He had transferred his brother to Turtle Island without delay.
That decision had proven wise. If Bee had still been in Kumogakure when the second attack came, the outcome might have been very different.
"It might help if Motoi went with him," Dodai offered. "Staying out there alone is hard on anyone. Even Bee."
A was quiet for a moment. "I'll consider it."
"Understood. I'll go prepare the notifications now. A Five Kage Summit, called by the Fourth Raikage."
"Go."
Dodai turned and walked out of the office.
A said he would consider it, but the moment Dodai was gone, he had already drafted the transfer order. It was issued before the hour was out.
Motoi departed the village that same day, accompanied by a team of Cloud shinobi. They mounted their summoned beasts and set course for Turtle Island, somewhere far out across the open sea.
Turtle Island was not truly an island. It was a turtle, ancient and incomprehensibly massive, its shell broad enough to support a small landmass. A dense ecosystem had taken root across its back over centuries, forming something that looked, from a distance, like ordinary land.
Because the turtle moved and kept no fixed course, tracking it without knowing the route was nearly impossible. That was the point. It was the most secure location Kumogakure controlled.
Time passed in the hum of wind and wingbeats. Gradually, the clouds thinned. The blue line of the horizon appeared. Further still, the sea and sky seemed to dissolve into each other, soft mist drifting between them. The view was genuinely striking.
When the sea came into sight, the Jonin leading the team, Nozawa, pulled a map from his vest pocket. It charted Turtle Island's shifting trajectory, information known only to a handful of Kumo's senior officials.
He studied it for a moment, then pointed. "There."
Below stretched the open ocean, the sound of waves rolling up from far beneath them. Then, slowly, a shape came into focus through the haze. An island. Enormous. And moving.
Motoi stared at it.
Even knowing what it was, the scale of it was hard to accept. If they hadn't been high enough to see it drifting, to make out the unmistakable contours of its ancient form beneath the overgrown shell, he wouldn't have believed it. A living creature. Alive and moving beneath all of that.
The summoned beast slowed and matched pace with the island, hovering overhead.
Motoi extended one hand, blue chakra flickering across his fingertips. He pressed forward, and the air in front of him rippled. A barrier shimmered into visibility, transparent and vast, stretched across the entire perimeter of the island.
"Barrier ninjutsu," he said quietly.
It made sense. Killer Bee's chakra signature, saturated with the Eight-Tails' presence, would have been impossible to conceal under normal circumstances. A sensor-type shinobi could pick it up from considerable distance. The barrier suppressed that leakage completely.
Nozawa ran through a sequence of hand seals, and the barrier parted. The summoned beast folded its wings and descended through the gap.
Up close, the island was something else entirely. The outer edge of Turtle Island was ringed by enormous black spikes, each one jutting upward at a sharp angle, dense and uniform as a wall of thorns. Animal carcasses were impaled on several of them. Bones littered the base. The blood on some of them hadn't fully dried.
Nozawa caught Motoi's expression and smiled faintly. "Don't worry. It's perfectly safe here, as long as you don't disturb the island's wildlife."
Before Motoi could respond, a voice called out from somewhere ahead.
"Welcome, everyone. My name is Nagasawa. I'll be handling your reception today. Please follow me to the station."
A shinobi in standard black attire was standing atop one of the spike ridges, one hand raised in greeting.
Nozawa waved back easily. The two men clearly knew each other.
"Good to see you, Nagasawa. Must be a relief knowing the rotation's here."
"More than you know." Nagasawa laughed and dropped down from the spike to meet them. "That man has been yelling about leaving since before I even started my shift. He's all yours."
Nagasawa's role was logistics: meals, maintenance, day-to-day needs. The actual task of managing Killer Bee, keeping him occupied and contained, that fell to Nozawa's team.
That was also why Motoi had come.
He and Killer Bee had grown up together. They'd been close since childhood. And beyond friendship, Motoi carried something else with him: history. His father had been the previous Eight-Tails Jinchuriki.
That was why Dodai had asked him to make the trip.
If anyone could reach Killer Bee, it was Motoi. And if Killer Bee was ever going to achieve full synchronization with the Eight-Tails, to become a complete Jinchuriki, he was going to need more than isolation to get there.
He needed someone who understood what that path actually cost.