In the Cloud Village.
Darui woke up with a stiff neck. He soon sat on the edge of his bed and ran a hand over his face as he yawned.
The last three weeks had been spent jumping from his home to the elder's office without a break. All just to tell his side of the story of one man: Arthur Bennett.
Darui would eventually push himself up, dress in his standard uniform, and grab his cleaver sword to begin more drudgery.
He just wanted a quiet day.
As he opened his front door, he found a messenger bird waiting. It dropped a sealed scroll at his feet and immediately took flight. Darui picked it up and read the short directive: the Raikage demanded his presence in the central manor immediately.
"Again?" he sighed. "How dull…"
The village leadership was paranoid, and they were pulling in anyone who had the misfortune of crossing paths with the man who broke the world.
Ever since the intelligence networks confirmed that the blindfolded mercenary known as Hoshikaze was actually Arthur, the Cloud Village had been turned upside down.
Arthur was not like the standard rogue ninja; he possessed the ability to revive the dead, commanded multiple bloodlines, and had also known how to perform Black Lightning. The entire shinobi world was actively hunting for his hidden villages.
And the fact that he was once here, right under the Raikage's nose, gave no one rest.
Finding his territories was also proving impossible, so the Cloud intelligence division resorted to squeezing their own ninjas for clues.
Darui just so happened to be one of the few, so he took his sweet time walking to the manor.
Once he climbed the steps leading to the administrative building, he could already hear A's heavy voice vibrating through the walls. The Raikage was in a foul mood.
Darui found Samui standing in the hallway outside the office doors. She had her arms tightly crossed over her chest as she stared blankly at the opposite wall. Atsui leaned against the doorframe next to her.
"Same thing?" Darui asked her.
"I… I don't want to talk about it," she said, not looking his way.
Darui let out a sigh. He simply couldn't understand a woman's emotions, much less Samui's current behaviour.
"Come on now," he tried. "Just because Arthur messed with your heart and tricked us doesn't mean you should change."
Atsui, out of nowhere, placed his arm around Darui's shoulders and pulled him back. "Ya shouldn't have said that."
"Why not?"
His answer was given immediately as Samui uncrossed her arms, turned on her heel, and marched her way down the corridor without another word.
"See what I mean?" Atsui explained, dropping his arm.
Arthur had technically proven his disloyalty to the Lightning Country the moment he dropped the Hoshikaze disguise. For the military, it was a massive security breach. But for Samui, it was a personal fracture. She had let the man in her heart. Now, she was burdened by the fact that she had befriended a tyrant who commanded ghost armies.
Like Darui knew, the two siblings had been summoned to the manor for the same reason he was: they had interacted with Arthur.
"Well, I guess I'll be heading out then," Atsui smirked. "Later, Darui."
Before he could take two steps, a booming voice echoed from inside the office. "Did I hear Darui's name?!" came A's voice, rattling the wood. "Darui, come in here now!"
Atsui flinched. "Oh yeah, I'm definitely gone now."
By the time Darui pushed the doors open and entered in, he wasn't surprised to see both Yugito and Killer Bee present.
Arthur's interaction with them was the highest priority for the intelligence division, specifically because their respective Tailed Beasts also knew who he was. The only difference between the beasts and the ninjas was that the two beasts knew of him long before their Jinchūriki were even born.
"Alright!" A began, slamming his hand on his desk. "I need you two to fill Darui in on what you just told me."
Bee stepped forward and struck a pose as he rapped, "Arthur's chakra got snatched, pulled from the now to the now. In the flow of the moment, he was lost, but he'll learn how."
Darui's expression was entirely blank. "What…?"
"Let me explain," Yugito stated, stepping in front of Bee. "From what Matatabi told me, and mind you, it took a lot from both of us to get them to speak, Arthur's chakra flowed through time."
Darui was shocked to hear that. The concept was absurd, but it filled the gaps in their intelligence.
If he understood correctly, Arthur had lived both in the before time and in the present. It explained why the man moved like a ghost who had already read the script of the world. The only thing those in the room didn't understand was how this temporal shift was biologically possible.
"Did you ever notice anything strange when Arthur was here as Hoshikaze?" A asked Darui, leaning over the desk.
"You mean apart from how dull he was?"
"Take this seriously, Darui!" A barked.
"Right, sorry, lord Raikage." Darui then rubbed the back of his neck and gave a thoughtful expression. "Let's see… Ah, yes. When we went to go save Bee in the Land of Earth, he knew all of Bee's fighting styles."
"Exactly!" A claimed, pointing a finger at him. "This village's been standing for over a thousand years. If Arthur's chakra could go back that far, that means we have to look at the past of our ancestors."
"Wait," Darui said, raising a hand. "You figured all that just from me saying that?"
"No!" A yelled. "We've been piecing together from all the info everyone's shared."
A's deduction was on track.
During the time Bee lost control of his Tailed Beast in the Land of Earth, Cloud forces had mobilized to help. Darui just so happened to be placed on the same team as Arthur. And when they found Bee, Arthur had naturally disarmed the rampaging beast without so much as receiving a scratch.
"Bee's fighting style goes as far back as our ancestors," A explained. "If Arthur lived in that time, then we'll have to check it ourselves."
"We can actually do that?" Yugito asked.
"Yes, through reading the history books. But only a select few of us have permission. That's why I called Darui here."
Darui let out a slow exhale. "And what am I supposed to do?"
"Your mission is to go to the feudal lord and tell him to give you the keys to the inner chambers of his castles," A instructed. "If I'm correct, and I know I am, there should be at least one book that could lead us to where Arthur's hidden his villages."
Darui let out a quiet sigh of relief. For a second, he thought he'd have to retell his entire story of how he interacted with Arthur again, trapped in an interrogation room.
Instead, he was being sent out on a courier mission that didn't have to even deal with fighting.
The last time he was out of the village on a high-stakes retrieval, he had crossed borders to help Bee, only to once again meet Han, who wanted his head on a platter. That was perhaps the only time Darui was genuinely happy Arthur was on their side. Because without Arthur acting as a deterrent, a bloodbath would have broken out for sure.
"The mission sounds dull, but I think I can handle it," Darui said, securing the sword on his back.
"Good," A finished. "I expect you back in four days."
A few hours later, Darui was spotted leaving the village gates.
As he leaped across a deep gorge, he couldn't help but remember what things Arthur had done after reading the compiled intelligence reports.
The man had orchestrated a massive taijutsu tournament in the Land of Waves, of which Darui partook in. It was a perfectly designed snare to gather combat data on the world's strongest fighters—a fact of which no one was aware.
"Too bad the Five-Tails host was so angry," he said to himself as the wind rushed past his ears.
Darui, with all his skills, would have loved to have fought someone like a Jinchūriki in a controlled environment. But what really impressed him was the sheer audacity of the enemy: the same man who created the tournament actually managed to infiltrate their village, drink in their taverns, and learn their lightning techniques without drawing a single blade.
Darui soon landed on a heavy branch and pushed off again while keeping his eyes on the horizon.
"I wonder what he was after here…"