That night, inside the Raikage's office in Kumogakure.
The Fourth Raikage slowly lowered the documents in his hands and said, "Samui, what do you think about..."
He paused mid-sentence, realizing that his chief advisor wasn't there. Two days ago, he had personally dispatched Samui to Konohagakure to deliver an apology letter to that old man, Hiruzen.
"Geez, looks like I really need to find myself a separate secretary or something," the Fourth Raikage muttered, smacking his lips. Being left alone to handle this massive pile of paperwork was truly pushing his patience.
Come to think of it, it was rather strange. Despite Kumogakure having a fully realized organizational system and an established Secretariat, the Fourth Raikage had not hired a single personal secretary up to this point.
Rubbing his chin as he stared at the mountain of documents on his desk, the Fourth Raikage shook his head and talked to himself, "Forget it, forget it. It's nothing urgent anyway. I'll deal with the rest tomorrow."
With that, he snatched his coat off the sofa, turned around, and prepared to leave the office. But the moment his hand rested on the doorknob, his brow furrowed, and he cast a sharp glance out the window. An ominous premonition tugged at his chest, though he couldn't quite put his finger on where this sudden anxiety was coming from.
Peering through the glass, the village outside looked exactly as it always did, calm and undisturbed.
"Just an illusion?" the Fourth Raikage murmured softly, his furrowed brow relaxing slightly. Turning around once more, he pressed the doorknob down, intending to open the door.
Yet, that single downward press felt as if he had personally flipped a catastrophic switch. The peaceful night shattered instantly.
A colossal explosion roared from outside, and the sheer shockwave blew the office windows into a shower of glass shards. Of course, this violent commotion had nothing to do with the Raikage opening his door.
The expression of A, the Fourth Raikage, twisted instantly. He whipped around to look outside. The once pitch-black night was now completely illuminated by raging infernos tearing through the village.
Continuous detonations echoed one after another, throwing the entire village into absolute chaos. In a single breath, it felt as though they had been plunged back into wartime, with the village breached by an invading force.
"What the hell is going on here?!" the Fourth Raikage, A, roared in pure fury.
Meanwhile, at the Kumogakure High-Security Prison.
This facility served as Kumogakure's penitentiary, an institutional staple found in every shinobi village. As the name implied, those confined within were the most vicious and depraved criminals. At this point in time, the cells were mostly occupied by wartime convicts who had committed severe atrocities—murdering comrades, selling classified intelligence, and worse.
The moment the explosions rocked Kumogakure, Kabuto, who had been lying in ambush nearby, let a sinister smirk curl onto his lips. He coldly commanded, "Commence the assault. Release the inmates of the Kumogakure High-Security Prison. We need to amplify the chaos and disrupt the decision-making of the Cloud higher-ups!"
At Kabuto's command, the shinobi disguised as merchants within the trade caravan charged out to kill. They weren't a massive force, only about fifty people in total.
The prison's main gates had already been blasted open, and the guard shinobi inside reacted swiftly to the breach. However, it was glaringly obvious that the men Kabuto brought were meticulously prepared. Armed with a calculated plan against an unsuspecting defense, their initial clash caught the guards completely off guard.
A prison guard crawled out from the rubble, his hands moving rapidly to form hand signs. But before he could even complete the sequence, one of Kabuto's men lunged forward and pulled out a scroll, completely bypassing any interest in a traditional ninjutsu duel.
"Die!" the attacker bellowed.
With a sharp rip, he unfurled the scroll. A puff of smoke erupted, and a torrential storm of shuriken, kunai, and throwing darts unleashed outward like a tempestuous downpour.
This method was exponentially faster than frantically trying to weave hand signs under pressure; all it required was tearing a scroll open.
Before the guard who had crawled out of the ruins could even utter a word, his body was thoroughly riddled with iron, turning him into a human sieve.
The shinobi on Kabuto's side tossed the spent scroll aside, retrieved another from his vest, and marched deeper into the facility. Whenever he encountered an enemy, he simply popped open another scroll.
Ninjutsu? It wasn't even on the menu.
He wasn't alone in this method. There were nineteen others executing the exact same tactics. Together, these twenty shinobi formed a massive squad specialized entirely in blitzkrieg breakthroughs.
And truth be told, this overwhelming assault pattern completely paralyzed the cognitive faculties of the Kumogakure prison guards. Even on the brutal battlefields of the world war, they had never witnessed a tactical doctrine like this!
One had to admit that Kabuto's strategy was brilliant. Aside from being incredibly expensive, this combat model had virtually no flaws.
Yes, it was expensive. A single scroll typically sealed around a hundred ninja tools. Under normal circumstances, a single tool was enough to claim a life. Now, an entire hundred-fold barrage was being shoved directly into the enemy's face. Average shinobi stood absolutely no chance of dodging. While the lethality was devastating, the cost of manufacturing those scrolls was astronomical.
But it didn't matter. Kabuto didn't care about the money for this mission. The tea leaf trade had generated astronomical profits anyway, so this expenditure didn't even scratch their bottom line. His sole objective was to rapidly breach the Kumogakure High-Security Prison and unleash an unmanageable wave of anarchy.
On this side, the twenty shinobi armed with a massive cache of scrolls maintained an oppressive, blanket-style bombardment, forcing the prison guards into a desperate, frantic retreat.
Right behind them, another twenty shinobi advanced. They were also armed with scrolls, but when theirs unfurled, what spilled out was a relentless cascade of explosive spheres. These explosive spheres were essentially an upgraded, weaponized variant of paper bomb tags, engineered to function like hand grenades. Many shinobi had utilized them before; it wasn't exactly cutting-edge technology.
The moment these men pulled out the explosive spheres, they hurled them indiscriminately in every direction across the prison complex, caring only that they didn't land near their own comrades.
In an instant, the entire prison's defense infrastructure crumbled into dust. The shinobi under Kabuto's command were fighting with the sheer, unbridled ferocity of hardened desperadoes!
"Chief, how are we going to retreat later?" Hanare asked in a hushed tone, keeping pace beside Kabuto.
Kabuto reached up, nudging the bridge of his glasses. "Only the two of us are authorized to retreat. The rest... have no need to withdraw. Wait a bit longer. We leave in just a few moments."
Hanare froze for a second, whispering, "Chief, it took us four whole years to train and cultivate these men..."
"Everything serves the ultimate will of Diarmuid-sama," Kabuto replied with chilling indifference. "Sacrifices are meaningless metrics. Besides, I haven't mistreated them over these past four years. They aren't our direct subordinates anyway, just a pack of wandering rogue shinobi. I provided more than enough settlement money to their families before we arrived."
It was the harsh truth. Within the entire merchant caravan, only Hanare was a legitimate, officially registered operative of the Intelligence Division from Amegakure. The rest were merely peripheral assets Kabuto had gathered and trained in his earlier years. These people were meant to be utilized as expendable pawns from the very beginning, and when Kabuto steeled his heart, he harbored absolutely no room for sentimentality.
By this time, the Fourth Raikage had finally received the report.
"What?! Someone is raiding the High-Security Prison?!" the Fourth Raikage, A, glared, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief.
"Yes, Raikage-sama! The Warden has already requested immediate reinforcements. The attacking hostile shinobi possess terrifying combat capabilities. In a mere six minutes, they have violently shattered three of our defensive lines..." a Kumogakure Anbu operative reported with rapid urgency.
"Dammit! Where the hell did these bastards crawl out from? What do they want with the High-Security Prison?!" the Fourth Raikage demanded, his temper flaring dangerously.
"We have no definitive data at this time," the Anbu operative responded, pausing briefly before continuing, "But it is highly probable that they are orchestrating a prison break!"
"Hmph! Go organize the personnel to contain the fires. I'm going to personally tear these bastards to pieces!" the Fourth Raikage growled darkly.
The moment the words left his mouth, he kicked through the already shattered window frame. His silhouette transformed into a blinding streak of lightning amidst the night, roaring directly toward the High-Security Prison.
Naturally, a prison could never be situated in the heart of Kumogakure; it was located in a isolated, remote sector of the village.
At that moment, Kabuto, with his sensory perception fully active, detected something shifting in the distance. He adjusted his glasses and said, "Retreat. Kumogakure's focus has been successfully drawn over. A massive influx of shinobi is scrambling here for reinforcement, and I suspect the Fourth Raikage is leading the charge. If we don't leave right now, neither of us will escape."
Without a shred of hesitation, Kabuto turned and vanished into the darkness. Hanare didn't waste words either, falling in lockstep right behind him.
On the other side of the village, watching the Fourth Raikage's form tear through the sky like a bolt of lightning, Kakuzu and Jūzō stepped out from the upper levels of the inn.
The streets below were a chaotic nightmare, engulfed in soaring flames. Hidden paper bombs detonated at sporadic intervals, plunging the entirety of Kumogakure's structural order into absolute disarray. Had it been daytime, things might have been manageable. But under the shroud of night, the darkness amplified the terror, ensuring that the confusion raged entirely out of control. Everything had descended into chaos.
Kakuzu and Jūzō had already donned the iconic vestments of the Yorozuya, the black cloaks adorned with crimson clouds, an attire that exuded an air of profound mystery and immense power.
Within moments, the duo materialized before the Secretariat building.
The shinobi stationed here were on high alert. Upon witnessing the sudden appearance of Kakuzu and Jūzō, the guarding forces gasped in profound shock: "The Yorozuya?!"
"Strike!" Kakuzu commanded deeply.
Lightning crackled across Jūzō's form as he hurled the massive Executioner's Blade from his back. Before the two guards at the entrance could even sound the alarm, the Executioner's Blade sheared through the air horizontally, cleanly bisecting both men at the waist.
Jūzō's speed was blistering. Before the heavy blade could even impact the ground, his body caught up to its trajectory. He seized the hilt in a fluid motion and delivered a devastating kick, blasting the main doors of the Secretariat entirely off their hinges.
"Jūzō!" Kakuzu barked. Hearing the warning, Jūzō instantly rolled out of the way.
In the very next second, Kakuzu's hands snapped shut, completing his hand signs.
"Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Jutsu!"
Kakuzu opened his maw, unleashing a colossal dragon of pure flame. Tracking the path of the breached entrance, the fire dragon surged violently into the building. Within the confines of the enclosed structure, the scorching inferno completely consumed the entire first floor, leaving the shinobi trapped inside screaming in agonizing torment.
"Hey, hey, don't go burning the scrolls," Jūzō remarked, resting the Executioner's Blade over his shoulder.
"Rest assured, I know my boundaries. The scroll is on the third floor," Kakuzu replied with absolute composure.
As his voice faded, a faint shimmer of water chakra enveloped both of their bodies, and they walked sequentially into the sea of flames.
The administrative shinobi of the Secretariat possessed minimal combat readiness to begin with. With Kumogakure currently paralyzed by widespread pandemonium, there were no reinforcements available to assist them; everyone had been successfully diverted to the prison sector.
Kakuzu and Jūzō operated at a tier of combat power that allowed them to move through the facility as if entering an empty field. They rarely utilized ninjutsu here. In a tight environment like an office building requiring high-tempo, close-quarters execution, utilizing ninjutsu was far less practical than pure taijutsu and kenjutsu.
With the Executioner's Blade carving a bloody swath from the west end of the corridor to the east, Jūzō didn't even blink. The trail of severed limbs and shattered remains left in his wake bore testament to his utterly ruthless style.
Stepping over a corpse that Jūzō had cleanly cleaved in two, Kakuzu threw open a heavy door and rapidly located the scroll containing the Heavenly Transfer Technique.
Jūzō, having slaughtered every living soul outside the room, stepped inside and smacked his lips. "Well, that was incredibly straightforward. Kumogakure isn't all that special after all."
"Do not let arrogance blind you. Kabuto's orchestration was highly effective, and he spent a meticulous six months gathering every piece of intelligence on this layout," Kakuzu stated calmly, safely tucking the scroll into his vest. "Without that data, simply locating the exact room for the Heavenly Transfer Technique would have proven to be an arduous chore."
Jūzō didn't argue. Instead, he pulled another scroll from a nearby cabinet, unrolled it for a brief glance, and raised an eyebrow. "These are all operational logs. They should contain relatively critical intelligence, shouldn't they? Do we take them? Are there any other ninjutsu scrolls around?"
"No. Only the Heavenly Transfer Technique is secured here, for reasons unknown. As for general intelligence, ignore it. We do not court unnecessary complications," Kakuzu countered coldly.
"Fine by me. Let's retreat!" Jūzō nodded, carelessly tossing the log scroll into the pooling blood on the floor.
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