STIN: Chapter 97/98

Chapter 97: Betrayed by Their Closest Ally

The tall grass shook violently, rustling with a sharp sound. Whoever was hiding inside froze, startled. Their breathing stopped, and even their faint chakra signature vanished completely.

Nawaki and Mikoto tensed at once, weapons silently drawn.

"Someone's there?"

They waited for a long moment. Then, the grass rustled again, softer this time. A small, thin figure slowly emerged, like a frightened rabbit creeping into the moonlight.

She stopped at the border where the moonlight met the campfire's glow, head bowed, trembling uncontrollably. She looked no older than seven or eight, her tattered clothes filthy with mud and crushed leaves. But what caught their eyes most was her hair. Even through the grime, the deep crimson hue could not be hidden.

"An Uzumaki?"

Ryo's heart sank. Memories of how Kusagakure treated stranded Uzumaki flooded his mind, the horrors of living medical packs, of Karin's mother torn to death. And this little girl…

Nawaki suddenly blurted out, shocked, "Another redhead?!"

"Not every redhead is your relative," Mikoto shot back, rolling her eyes. But her expression soon softened, pity and doubt flickering across her face. How had an Uzumaki child ended up here?

Ryo swallowed the cold fury burning in his chest. He picked up a freshly roasted skewer of venison, its fat sizzling, and spoke gently.

"You must be hungry. Come here, this is for you."

A lock of his own red hair fell forward, glinting in the firelight.

The little girl, Uzumaki Kaori, looked up, fearfully watching him. Her eyes caught that flicker of red, the same as her own. For a fleeting moment, she felt a spark of connection, but fear drowned it instantly.

Her gaze locked on the meat. Its smell made her throat tighten. Hunger overwhelmed her, but terror held her still.

She had seen what happened when her clan reached for food, the screams, the biting, the treatments. She trembled harder and took a step back.

Ryo didn't move closer. He just waited, holding out the food with quiet patience, eyes soft and calm.

The fire crackled. Nawaki and Mikoto watched in silence.

Time crawled. Finally, perhaps it was Ryo's gentle posture or the irresistible scent of meat, but Kaori gathered her courage. Step by trembling step, she moved closer to the fire. Cautiously, as if handling something fragile, she accepted the skewer with both hands.

"Th... thank you..." she whispered, voice barely audible.

A second later, hunger consumed her reason. She tore into the meat desperately, too fast to chew. A chunk caught in her throat, she choked, face turning red, coughing violently.

Ryo immediately handed her a water flask. Kaori gulped greedily until the blockage went down. She gasped for breath, then looked up timidly, wanting to thank him.

In that instant, Ryo, Nawaki, and Mikoto saw her face clearly, small, pale, streaked with tears, dirt, and oil. Her skin clung to bone, her eyes far too large for her face, filled with terror carved into her soul. When her sleeve slipped down, several scars showed, bite marks, some new, some old.

Nawaki inhaled sharply. Mikoto covered her mouth, horrified.

"Those bastards!" Nawaki roared, standing abruptly. "Who did this?! The Grass scum?!"

Kaori flinched, nearly dropping her food. Terror seized her; she shrank backward, trembling.

"Shut up, Nawaki!" Ryo barked sharply. He swallowed his rage and forced a calm smile. "Don't be afraid. You're safe now. Eat slowly, there's more."

He cut another piece of venison with his kunai and put it over the fire.

Kaori hesitated, but hunger won. She ate again, slower this time, sneaking glances at the three around her.

When she finished, the energy from food and exhaustion from starvation collided. Her body swayed, and she sat down heavily, too tired to move.

"Don't move too much," Ryo said softly. "Your body needs to adjust. You've been hungry for too long."

Kaori nodded obediently, still keeping her head down.

Ryo studied her crimson hair, then asked quietly, "Child, you're from the Uzumaki clan, aren't you?"

Kaori froze. Her eyes widened in panic.

He knew? Because of her hair? Was this going to bring her pain again?

She trembled violently, worse than before. Her eyes dulled with despair, and her lips quivered. Finally, she lifted her thin arm, sleeve falling back to reveal scarred skin.

"Y-you... sir... do you want my power too?" Her voice broke. "Please... please be gentle... I-I'm scared of pain..."

Her eyes squeezed shut. Tears spilled freely, waiting for the familiar agony to come.

Nawaki and Mikoto went rigid, as if struck by lightning. Looking at that thin arm covered in teeth marks, they felt their blood turn to ice.

Now they understood. Those scars were not random wounds, they were the marks of a life devoured again and again.

Nawaki's face turned white in the firelight. He snapped completely.

"Why?! Ryo! Tell me why?! The Uzumaki were our allies! Why didn't they escape to Konoha?! Why didn't Konoha save them?!"

Ryo seized him by the collar, eyes sharp as blades.

"Why?! Because Konoha's leaders never needed those stray Uzumaki! They only wanted the Uzumaki's sealing techniques and one suitable vessel for the Nine-Tails! That's all!"

He shoved Nawaki's chest with his finger. "See now, Nawaki? This is your precious village! Your noble leaders' handiwork!"

"Allies? In the face of profit, what is an ally's life worth? They let Uzushiogakure fall. They delayed rescue on purpose. Why? Because they wanted the other villages to suffer from unstable Jinchūriki. Konoha only needed the Nine-Tails, and nothing else!"

His voice turned icy, thick with hate. "That's why, after the Uzumaki massacre, they only took Kushina. That's why the survivors didn't flee to the Fire Country, they knew. Because the ally's knife cuts deeper than the enemy's."

"And while Konoha looked away, Kusagakure swooped in, turning these survivors into living medical packs, drained until they died."

"This is your shinobi world, Nawaki. Beneath the sunlight lies rot and blood. Wake up."

Each word struck like a hammer. Nawaki's ideals, Konoha, its leaders, the Will of Fire, all shattered.

He fell to his knees, pale and trembling. His fists slammed into the dirt again and again until his strength was gone.

"You're already breaking?" Ryo scoffed. He glanced at him, then turned toward the girl by the fire, his tone soft again.

"Don't mind him, little one. I'm Kamiyama Ryo from Konoha. Don't worry, I don't bite. I won't use you as a medical pack."

He nodded toward her arm and smiled gently. "What's your name?"

"...Uzumaki... Kaori," she murmured. Her voice was fragile, but steadied under his gaze. The warmth of the fire, the smell of meat, and that familiar red hair made her believe.

"Your family?" Ryo asked softly, though he already knew.

Kaori's pupils shrank. Her voice cracked. "They're... all dead. Everyone... they bit them..."

"Enough." Ryo placed his hand on her head firmly. "It's over. Come with me to Konoha. No one will bite you again. You'll live like a person."

Take her. The thought was clear. Tsunade could handle her papers. Kushina, her last living clanswoman, would be happy. The council's outrage? A problem for another day.

"R-really...? I can?" she whispered.

"Yes," Ryo said firmly. "You can."

"I swear it!" Nawaki said suddenly, raising a trembling hand. His eyes were bloodshot, but filled with conviction.

"Me too," Mikoto added, voice small but steady. Something bright inside her shattered quietly.

"Th-thank you..." Kaori sobbed. Tears streamed down her face. For the first time in years, she trusted someone.

Night deepened. After washing away the grime and changing into Mikoto's spare clothes, Kaori fell asleep on the grass nearby.

By the fire, Ryo, Nawaki, and Mikoto sat in heavy silence. The flames crackled softly, but could not burn away the weight of truth.

Nawaki's eyes stayed fixed on the fire. Finally, he rasped, "Ryo... tell me. Why? The Uzumaki were our allies. Why did Konoha do nothing? Why did they abandon them?"

Ryo smiled faintly, without warmth. "You want the official answer, or the real one?"

Nawaki clenched his fists. "There's a difference?"

"Say it," Mikoto whispered. "The truth."

Ryo chuckled coldly. "The official excuse? We couldn't risk another Great Ninja War. We had to consider Konoha's lives first. The balance of power must be preserved."

He sneered. "Sounds noble, doesn't it? Just like the lies your sister heard from the elders. All for the greater good of Konoha."

"The greater good?! To hell with that!" Nawaki roared. He punched the nearest tree, bark exploding. "They feared saving the Uzumaki would start a war, but they had no problem turning Ame into a bloodbath?!"

The air went still. Mikoto clutched her cloak tightly, face pale.

"Well said," Ryo said, clapping once, his smile sharp as frost. "Because beneath that noble mask lies reality."

"The Uzumaki were Senju allies, not the council's. The Senju have long been discarded. Konoha now belongs to Sarutobi, Shimura, Mitokado, Utatane. Your iron alliance? Worthless."

"Why risk lives to save them when you can let them die and seize their sealing scrolls and jutsu treasures instead?" He laughed bitterly. "Much easier."

"As for Kushina, she was just a new container for the Nine-Tails. If containers ever became common, do you really think the elders would stay merciful?"

Every word struck deep. Nawaki slumped, drained of strength. Hiruzen's face twisted in the firelight, melting into shadow.

"The war in Ame..." Mikoto's voice trembled. "That's real too, isn't it?"

"Of course." Ryo lay back, staring at the stars. "Ame got too strong, too independent. So they crushed it, made an example of it. That's the greater good."

"War? Suna, Iwa, Kumo, they all want blood. It's just another feast of slaughter." He sighed long and deep. "The blood from the First Great Ninja War has dried too long. A new storm is already gathering overhead."

The fire crackled. Nawaki's face twisted in the dim light, faith warring with fury. Mikoto bit her lip, trembling.

(To be continued.)

Chapter 98: Reckoning Begins

Night pressed down like wet ink on the crowns of the towering trees, stingy even with starlight.

Mikoto kept her clear eyes slanted toward the small figure beside her. Her clean outer robe was wrapped tight around Uzumaki Kaori's tiny body.

The little girl curled on the cold ground, sunk in uneasy sleep. Even in her nightmares, her delicate brows were knotted hard, bracing against remembered terror.

Beside her, Nawaki crouched, his muscles bunched, fists clenched so tight his knuckles blanched. Shame and fury still burned from earlier. Now, looking at Kaori's fragile helplessness, a purer blaze surged up, close to consuming reason altogether. The Grass-nin lurking in the dark, this blood debt would be paid with their lives.

Suddenly, a cold aura slid through the night without a sound, the kind that seemed to freeze the soul. A figure coalesced at the edge of the firelight as if condensed from shadow itself.

Ryo stood there.

Mikoto's heart jumped. Nawaki snapped his head around, the flames in his eyes flaring with hard-to-hide anticipation.

"Plan change."

Ryo's voice was low, stripped of waste.

"Target: Kusagakure."

Nawaki's head shot up, battle heat blasting out of him. "Good. Then—"

Ryo's cold glance cut him off. The pressure alone pushed the rest of the words back down his throat.

Mikoto's brows tightened. She heard the undertone beneath Ryo's words, and her heart sank.

"Ryo-kun, what do you need from us?"

Her gaze flicked, unbidden, toward the sleeping Kaori.

"We have to infiltrate. No noise."

Ryo's eyes settled on Kaori. The meaning was obvious. Bringing a defenseless child, one who could cry out at any moment, into an enemy nest? That wasn't a mission. That was walking into a trap.

"I go alone."

"Are you insane?!" Nawaki's worry and pent-up rage burst through. He shot to his feet, voice a scraped whisper. "Alone? That's the Grass-nin's den! And Iwa's dogs are inside! And—"

He remembered the rumors, urgency rasping his throat. "Iwa! Ōnoki, that old monster! Your bounty on the black market is up to a hundred million! If you go in now, the entire village is your gallows! They'll swarm you like hounds on blood!"

"Exactly."

Ryo's voice cracked like ice, sharp enough to cut through Nawaki's doubts.

"We move before they wake from their smug little dream."

His gaze slid over Mikoto and Nawaki, a quenched blade of winter. "One strike to the throat. Root and branch, gone. You two—"

His eyes returned to Kaori.

"Take her far. Farther. Wait for my signal."

Nawaki opened his mouth, and Mikoto's cool palm pressed his shoulder down. Her hand was cold and faintly trembling.

She lifted her eyes and met Ryo's silver gaze head-on. No anger, no recklessness. Only a dead-calm chill.

An absolute will and power that would grind any obstacle to dust.

Mikoto drew a long breath. Her worry settled, transmuted into wordless trust.

She nodded hard. "Ryo-kun, be careful."

Lock. Move.

No signals needed.

Ryo's outline blurred.

"Flying Thunder God."

Light flashed. Space twisted and swallowed all four—the fire's sparks, a few leaves kicked up by the air, and a smear of water on the ground.

Wind swept through. Wet grass shivered helplessly.

By the time the hum of space died in the dark woods, Mikoto and Nawaki stood tens of kilometers away in a cold grove of jagged stones. Nawaki's fists creaked in his grip. Mikoto startled awake from the instant shock, then accepted it.

"Wait for me."

Ryo's voice etched itself directly into their minds, bloodless cold, every word a blade of killing intent scything across the clearing.

"The Grass will pay this debt."

---

Kusagakure's den.

Dozens of kilometers away, in the muddled heart of the village.

Oil lamps glowed like beans, their jaundiced light barely licking the corners, painting two petty, stupid faces.

"Boss?" Scarface licked cracked lips and darted his shifty eyes around. Relief and aftershock smeared across his features. "Those Leaf plague… they really left?"

Under a rickety watchtower, in a shack with a chair bursting its filthy stuffing, the Grass leader slouched like a smug grub in rot. He snorted through his nose, contempt and glee in one.

"Hah! Bunch of nobodies! See? Little push and they ran with their tails tucked! Good riddance, spares me the eyesore." He waggled his greasy head, slitted eyes pinched to threads. "If they'd torn the paper window and seen our guests…"

He hunched his oily neck instinctively, a blotch of fear and greed flushing his cheeks.

"Lucky brats know their place. Heh, heh…"

The laugh wheezed like a punctured bellows.

Scarface tore at a slab of cold, hard pheasant. Grease dripped onto his never-cleaned forehead protector, leaving a dirtier streak.

"Boss, the arrangements for those people, all set?"

The Grass leader wriggled into his wrecked chair like a fat rat on a trash heap. He dug lazily at the grime in his nails, tone full of scorn for Konoha.

A sly, greedy light glittered in his slitted eyes. He could hear the abacus beads snapping. What Iwa promised would pave three broad stone roads, locking the Grass Country's trade in his fist. As long as no one stumbled on the unspeakable little job Iwa was running under the village.

Grass had bowed and scraped between great nations for generations. The art of being a weathervane was in their bones. Rule one, never be the first head on the chopping block.

Leaf brats go missing? Might spark a war? Hah. They knew the game.

Push the trouble far away, keep your hands clean, your face intact, and when the wind shifts, everything is still negotiable.

Right now, the village was drunk on its own illusion. The preening Grass boss. The self-satisfied Iwa "VIPs." All snug in their dream of safety.

They didn't know a blade, tempered to pure killing, had already slipped through the gap they lived by, and now hovered over their bare throats.

Absolute darkness made the perfect cloak.

The warped palisade outside the village meant nothing to a true master of shadow. Ryo didn't descend from above. He streaked along the ground like a crimson lightning tear through night.

He was too fast.

He flickered through collapsed huts, sagging woodpiles, cobwebbed corners, and alleys, so fast he left only a smear of red, killing intent given shape, there and gone. A lazy Grass patrol passed within five meters. Dust the crimson blur kicked up tickled their captain's nose, and still those fools felt nothing. Their slack faces were a wordless welcome mat for death.

Sensory domain, full spread. Hunter's mind, engaged.

Ryo's will swept out like the finest radar, silent and seamless, the moment he crossed the line. Invisible ripples, a vast taut web, covered every inch of the rotting village.

The strongest signatures flared at once, the gray stone house in the center, out of place among the shacks, the only thing that could be called grand.

Distinct chakra pooled inside, coarse, heavy, reeking of earth and rock. Iwa-nin. Not many, but each one stank of veteran blood and cruelty.

And yet, wrong.

No hint of a disciplined field unit. No fatigue of a long raid.

Instead, a chill like a morgue. The clinical cruelty of a lab. And that gambler's fever, the sick, jittery greed before a final card is turned.

Inside, the light was low. Shadows crawled and twisted on the walls like devils whispering.

Across a low table sat an Iwa jōnin with a severe face, Kitsuchi, son of Ōnoki.

His voice rasped like grit on stone, echoing through the stifling room. His knuckles tapped the tabletop, slow, heavy, each thud hammering the Grass boss's heart.

"Time's up. Where. Are. They."

Kitsuchi lifted his lids. No warmth. Only cold scrutiny and pressure that allowed no refusal.

"Don't waste my time. Are you telling me you can't handle this trivial chore? The Uzumaki rats hiding in their holes, not one you can drag out?"

The Grass boss, so loud with his underlings, stood in the lamp's fringe, a big body trembling. Sweat trickled in streams down his fat, puckered face.

He squeezed out the most servile grin of his life, voice breaking with fear.

"L-Lord Kitsuchi! Please, calm your anger! Those Uzumaki wretches… they're too sly, deeper than the deepest burrow... But! Give me a little more time! A day! No, half a day! Half! I swear on my head! I'll mobilize everyone who can move! We'll turn every inch of Grass Country over if we have to, we'll find them, every last one for you!"

Kitsuchi snorted through his nose, disgust and impatience. He stopped looking at the nauseating coward and dropped his gaze to the table.

In the dim light lay a parchment list.

Names, scrawled but clear. Worse, each had notes, last-seen locations "procured" at great cost by Grass spies, perhaps the lives of innocents.

One stood out, in smaller script.

Girl, around seven… orphaned… hideout: abandoned mine, west of village (to be confirmed)…

So young. Not a child in Iwa's eyes, a part. A "key component."

Prey had been tagged on the map by greedy eyes. All that remained was the grab, and the furnace.

Outside, under the eaves, the shadow was ink-thick.

A figure pressed flat to stone, breath, heartbeat, temperature, everything cooled to near-nothing, like the rock itself.

Ryo.

His sweeping senses bled through the wall as if it weren't there, taking in everything inside. Iwa's mechanical cruelty, the Grass boss's obsequious cowardice barely hiding bottomless greed, the hunting list drenched in the blood and tears of Uzumaki refugees.

Uzumaki orphans. Bloodline power. Jinchūriki vessels. Breeding stock.

Cold fragments clicked together in Ryo's mind, then ignited.

Ōnoki, the hungry old fox of Iwa, never wanted a second front. He had laid traps, risked elite squads, gambled the border, for the Uzumaki bloodline.

To make perfect vessels? To power lost sealing arts? To birth a newer, worse weapon?

Whatever the aim, the means were filth.

To them, every Uzumaki in flight, ancients, toddlers, even the unborn, were consumables. Fuel to be burned. Tools to be reused. Thrown away when empty.

For that ugly desire, this village, and countless Uzumaki in exile, were offerings on the altar.

In the frozen depths of Ryo's eyes, killing intent boiled over.

While Ōnoki raved over maps in Iwagakure, "Find every Uzumaki! Bring them in! The living are vessels! The breeders breed! The dead, make more!"

He could never imagine that one of the key resource points he clawed for, a pure Uzumaki seed named Uzumaki Kaori, had already, by fate's mockery, been carried out of his reach like a guarded spark in a storm, by the very enemy with a hundred-million bounty on his head.

Reckoning descends, now.

(To be continued.)