There was no question about why the clothes had been changed. The sleeves, the chest—every section was spattered with fresh bloodstains. The rips and tears across the fabric made it painfully clear what the people wearing them had been up to the night before.
"Look..."
With a resigned sigh, Kakashi slid open the bathroom door and regarded the figure sitting in the bathtub. His tone was decidedly aggrieved. "Didn't I just tell you all? No more extreme training. But it looks like none of you planned on listening."
"Urusai! This jerk came and picked a fight with me in the middle of the night! Hmph~!"
Naruto sat on the left side of the bathtub with his arms crossed, fuming at Kakashi in protest. On the right, Sasuke fired back without a shred of concession. "It's your own fault for being such a dead-last that you can't even learn an ultimate technique. I'm gracious enough to spar with you, and you should be down on your knees in gratitude!"
"What?! You wanna go again?! Stuck-up Sasuke!"
"Any time. You're nothing but a dead-last anyway!"
Watching Sasuke and Naruto launch into yet another round of verbal artillery, Kakashi pressed a weary hand to his forehead and shook his head. Even so, beneath the exasperation, the silver-haired Jōnin felt a distinct warmth stir in his chest.
The words flying between the two boys were atrocious, but the reality they reflected was something Kakashi could genuinely be glad about.
Sasuke hadn't simply written Naruto off because the blond had given up on training his ultimate technique. Instead, he'd used this combative, forceful method to drag Naruto into training alongside him. And Naruto, for all his grumbling, hadn't refused Sasuke's challenge—proof that he hadn't lost his drive to improve just because he'd abandoned his ultimate.
Given the current state of affairs, at least these two didn't need worrying about. Which left only the most troublesome one.
"Speaking of—where's Hinata?"
Looking up, Kakashi's eyes narrowed slightly. He had no intention of keeping surveillance on Hinata, but her tendency to wander off on her own was genuinely concerning. Zabuza—a dangerous rogue ninja—was still somewhere in this country. If Hinata ran into him alone, the pressure would be considerable.
"I'm right here. No need to make a fuss—what are you, straight out of daycare?"
Before either Naruto or Sasuke could answer, a clear, cool voice rang from the front entrance. Hinata was just pushing the door open and stepping inside. Walking out of the bathroom, Kakashi let out a small breath of relief. "I know this is tiresome to hear, but you're extremely valuable right now. With hostile forces in the area, you really shouldn't be going off alone."
"Reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering are part of a shinobi's duties, are they not? Among the four of us, I'm the only one with the Byakugan. That makes me the most qualified scout by default."
Hinata was completely unfazed by Kakashi's lecture. She kicked off her shoes and tossed a mesh bag full of foodstuffs onto the floor beside her—provisions clearly not available anywhere near Tazuna's neighborhood. These would have come from the capital district.
"Hah... fine. Honestly, having students like you three—I can never tell whether I'm lucky or unlucky."
Rather than pressing his authority as their teacher, Kakashi let it go with easy grace. He stooped to pick up the mesh bag and casually extracted a bottle of sake. None of his three students were old enough to drink. Who the gift was intended for was self-evident.
"Heh~ With students this capable and self-sufficient, what could you possibly have to complain about?"
A thin smirk on her lips, Hinata walked past him and settled into the sofa in the room's interior. Judging by the buoyant spring in her step, the pale-eyed girl was in an exceptionally good mood.
"Seriously—damn you, Sasuke! Next time I absolutely won't hold back!"
Naruto stomped out of the bathroom in a towel, face sour with indignation. Sasuke followed close behind, voice dripping with disdain. "Right. I beat you so thoroughly my hands went numb, and you can still say that with a straight face. Truly impressive."
There was no question—Naruto and Sasuke's late-night battle had ended with both of them battered. Without his ultimate technique Ame no Habakiri in play, Sasuke's fight against Naruto had remained at the non-ultimate tier.
Even so, the two of them had clearly gone overboard. The wounds still visible on their bodies made it obvious that shuriken, Sonic Boom, and Yami Barai had all seen liberal use.
"It's good to see your energy levels are high, but I need you both to sharpen up."
Leaning against the back of the sofa, Hinata raised her chin. A faint edge of danger crept into her voice. "Last night, a number of ronin were killed in the capital district, and the manner of death was reportedly quite gruesome. Considering there's a vicious rogue ninja like Zabuza in this country—a Bloody Mist missing-nin, no less—it's possible more dangerous elements have arrived."
"Effective immediately: we're on alert."
Zabuza was in a foul mood. Not merely because the persistent burn wounds across his body kept producing that maddening healing-itch, but because of the man currently raging in front of him.
"You swore up and down that you were one of the Hidden Mist's famous Seven Ninja Swordsmen! And then you went and got your teeth kicked in the very first engagement—and now you can't even guarantee my safety! What good are you?!"
Gatō possessed every repulsive trait of the archetypal crooked merchant, all compressed into one squat, pudgy frame. The tiny sunglasses perched on his face lent him a clownish air, and though the ornate suit and gold-inlaid cane tried desperately to project an image of refinement, the overall effect was closer to a penguin in a costume.
"Something happened. Zabuza-san's injuries haven't fully healed yet, so please tell me what's going on."
Haku stood at Zabuza's side and frowned. Personally, a loathsome creature like Gatō could die a hundred deaths without anyone shedding a tear—but for now, the man was technically their employer. Handling his messes came with the job.
"Hmph! Bring them in!"
Gatō had clearly been pushed to his limit. He wasn't, at the end of the day, a particularly brave man. For several days running, his cargo ships had been striking reefs in waters that should have been perfectly safe, and that alone had set his nerves on edge. What had happened last night was the final straw—had it not been, he'd never have lowered himself to visit Zabuza, a beaten cur who couldn't even win his own fights.
Two samurai carried a stretcher through the door. They struggled to keep their composure, but the naked dread on their faces was impossible to hide.
Haku and Zabuza exchanged a glance. Haku stepped forward and pulled back the white cloth covering the stretcher. Instantly, a pungent stench flooded the room.
The smell was a nauseating cocktail—the acrid reek of scorched protein laced with an intensely metallic blood-scent.
Zabuza, a man who'd killed more people than he could count, knew that blood had many flavors. The volume of the flow, the body part it originated from—each variation carried its own subtle signature. What he was smelling now was the sort of overwhelming, violent blood-scent you only got when you cleaved a man in half from crown to crotch and their blood sprayed out in a single massive burst.
"I've all but given up on you people, but you can at least be of some use, can't you?! Figure out how these men were killed!"
Gatō turned away, dabbing at his forehead. The cold sweat there hadn't dried once since this whole affair began.
Even Haku couldn't help but wince upon seeing the corpse on the stretcher. And for good reason—the body was horrific.
It had clearly been a tall, powerfully built ronin. But now the body looked like a balloon that had burst from the inside—completely deflated, caved in on itself. Eight savage wounds gaped across the front of the torso, each one looking as though it had been ripped open by the claws of a demon. Charred viscera and loops of intestine clung to the blackened edges of each hole in a grotesque, fused mess.
It was as though someone had shoved an incendiary charge inside the man's body and detonated it from within, blasting the organs and entrails out through those eight wounds like pressurized eruptions.
"The commoners are saying demons killed them! I don't care what it was! Just keep me safe!"
Gatō was thoroughly rattled. Cunning and ruthless as he was, he was still a merchant—and sometimes, precisely because of that, his nerve was shorter than most. The string of unexplained shipwrecks in safe waters had already left him uneasy. The whispered rumors among the Land of Waves' resentful citizens—that this was divine retribution visited upon Gatō—had genuinely begun to unsettle him. Guilt was a debt that accumulated interest.
And then, this morning: the bodies.
Nine in total. Every last one of them Gatō's hired ronin. When they'd been found, the alley they lay in had looked like a slaughterhouse. Without exception, every corpse bore the same signature: eight gaping holes punched through the surface of the torso, the insides charred and hollowed out by detonation.
"It wasn't Kirigakure's Hunter-nin, Zabuza-san. But wounds like these... I've never seen anything like them."
Haku's expression remained controlled, but in those striking eyes, a flicker of unease—something close to dread—was unmistakable. Even someone who had endured as much grief and brutality as Haku had never encountered a killing method quite like this.
"I can see that much... But I'll be fully healed by tomorrow. When the time comes, we'll deal with the old man for you."
Zabuza's gaze was cold as he studied the mangled corpse. As a shinobi, extracting intelligence from a body was second nature. But he had genuinely never seen a kill like this before.
"Hm? Hinata—why'd you bring us all the way out here? Didn't you just say we should be on high alert?"
Hands laced behind his head, Naruto strolled along behind Hinata with characteristic nonchalance. Beside him, Sasuke's brow creased slightly in thought. Kakashi wasn't with them—he'd polished off that bottle of strong sake Hinata had brought back and was presumably sleeping it off in his room.
The place Hinata had led them to was an odd choice. It appeared to be some sort of dock—though clearly not one that belonged to the common people of the Land of Waves. Hard-eyed samurai stood watch at sentry posts nearby. This was obviously a private cargo dock, and given the state of the country, it could only belong to Gatō.
"Aren't you the least bit curious about where I went last night?"
Turning to face them, Hinata swept a strand of hair from beside her cheek and tucked it back. The sea breeze caught her bangs and the hem of her jacket; combined with that faint, enigmatic smile on the pale-eyed girl's lips, a sudden rush of charm caught both boys off guard. Sasuke and Naruto instinctively pressed their lips together.
"Tch~ Where you go is your business."
Sasuke recovered first, looking away and muttering something that didn't quite match his expression. Naruto scrambled to chime in. "Y-yeah, exactly~ And also—what is this place?"
"Last night, I went out specifically to train a move classified as a forbidden technique within the Sacred Fist system. And the results of the test were... a resounding success."
Paying no attention whatsoever to their attempts to change the subject, Hinata's smile curved upward into something sharp and blade-like.
"Because you're my friends, I'd like to show you what it looks like—as a gesture of our friendship."
"Using these materials right here."