Chapter 5: Hand Over the Corpse of the Murderer, Hyūga Hiashi
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Samui struggled to pull a senbon from her abdomen, her eyes fixed warily on the barely-breathing ANBU captain a short distance away.
Dawn had come, but Toroi had not returned. She and the other Kumo shinobi sent to meet them had been forced to begin their escape back to the Land of Lightning.
They were ambushed by ANBU at the border.
All the other Kumo ninja had been killed in the ensuing battle. She herself was covered in wounds, with no strength left to fight.
"Cough... cough!"
The ANBU captain coughed twice, a trickle of blood seeping from beneath his mask. He was in no better shape than Samui. But this was the border of the Land of Fire; reinforcements would arrive soon.
Rustle!
A sound suddenly came from the nearby bushes. Both Samui and the ANBU captain tensed, whipping their heads toward the noise.
A panicked-looking Hyūga Neji emerged from the foliage and ran straight toward the ANBU captain.
The captain let out a slow breath of relief. His mission was to either retrieve or kill Hyūga Neji. Under no circumstances could the Cloud be allowed to obtain a living Byakugan bloodline. Of course, bringing the boy back unharmed was the ideal outcome.
Neji's young face was a mask of fear. He looked at the ANBU captain and stammered, "Are... are you... okay?"
"I'll live," the captain rasped. "There are some soldier pills and bandages in my ninja pouch. Help me get them out."
As he spoke, the ANBU captain's eyes narrowed slightly, every muscle in his body tensing.
"Okay!"
Neji knelt in front of him, his hand reaching for the pouch.
Fwish!
A glint of cold steel flashed in the morning light.
In that exact same instant, the ANBU captain moved, flicking a shuriken held between his fingers from an impossible angle, straight at Neji's chest.
The next moment, Neji was rolling clumsily on the ground, clutching his now-bloody chest and gasping for air.
The ANBU captain, however, now had a single, thin senbon embedded in his throat.
A life for a wound.
"Incredible," Neji said, his heart still pounding with fear. ANBU were the elite. An ANBU captain was the elite of the elite. The man was already severely wounded, yet he had still nearly managed to counter-kill him during a surprise attack.
Samui sat on the ground, completely stunned, her mind struggling to process what had just happened. She had never imagined that Neji would suddenly attack the ANBU captain, much less succeed in killing him.
"Kid... do you have any idea what you're doing?"
Neji didn't answer. Instead, he walked over to the captain's body, raised his small, pale hand, and focused the little chakra he had left into his palm. He struck the dead man's chest with a Gentle Fist attack.
This action only deepened Samui's confusion.
"Onee-san," Neji explained seriously, "I used the Gentle Fist to destroy his heart from the inside. From now on, we're on the same side."
A look of surprise spread across Samui's face, followed by a bright smile. "Yes... yes, of course. We're on the same side."
Neji's actions were completely beyond her expectations. But if he was willing to return to Kumogakure with her, it was far better than having to drag him back by force.
This place was too dangerous to linger. More ANBU could arrive at any moment.
After quickly bandaging her wounds, Samui flew through a series of hand signs for a summoning jutsu.
Poof!
With a burst of white smoke, a large sea turtle appeared before them. Samui picked Neji up and jumped onto its back.
"Let's go, Neji-kun. We're going home. When we get to Kumo, I'll still be your onee-san."
The turtle dove into the ocean, swimming swiftly in the direction of the Land of Lightning.
Neji rested his head on Samui's shoulder and watched the Land of Fire grow smaller and smaller in the distance before finally closing his eyes.
With this departure, he was like a bird taking to the sky, or a fish returning to the sea. He would never be bound again.
Konoha publicly condemned Kumogakure for its despicable act of using a peace treaty as a front to steal the Byakugan.
They had expected a shamed Kumogakure to remain silent. Who could have possibly predicted that the Cloud would flatly deny ever having contact with Hyūga Neji or abducting Hyūga Hinata? They even had the gall to accuse Konoha of having no sincerity for peace, of brutally murdering the Kumo envoy Toroi, and then shamelessly demanded that Konoha hand over the corpse of the murderer, Hyūga Hiashi, or face open war.
This outrageous reversal of blame enraged countless Konoha shinobi who still possessed a shred of warrior pride.
But at the same time, public opinion within the village shifted, pushing the Hyūga clan into the eye of the storm.
"Are we going to war again?"
"It's been eight years... when will days like these ever end?"
"This is all the Hyūga clan's fault! They caught the guy, why did they have to kill him?"
"Peace was so hard-won! We can't go to war with the Cloud just for the sake of the Hyūga!"
A tide of public resentment washed over the Hyūga clan, threatening to drown them.
Caught in the center of this vortex, Hyūga Hiashi spent his nights sleepless and his days without food or water. He couldn't help but think how similar this situation was to what had happened to Konoha's White Fang all those years ago.
On this day, Hiruzen Sarutobi convened a council meeting to discuss their next move.
As soon as the meeting began, Hiashi took a deep breath and spoke. "Hokage-sama, this entire incident has been a conspiracy by Kumogakure from the very beginning. Their goal isn't just the Byakugan bloodline, but war itself."
"Hiashi, I know it's a conspiracy. Everyone in this room knows it's a conspiracy," Hiruzen said, removing his pipe and slowly shaking his head. "But from the moment Toroi died, whether it was a conspiracy or not ceased to matter."
There was a hint of resentment in the Third Hokage's heart. He was resentful of the Fourth Raikage for lacking the dignity of a Kage and resorting to such despicable means, and he was resentful of Hiashi for his heavy-handedness, for poking a hole in the sky.
After a moment's pause, Hiruzen added, "We have already made the truth of Toroi's death public. We have also confirmed that Hyūga Neji is currently in Kumogakure. But who is going to care about any of that?"
Silence fell over the council chamber. Everyone knew that when dealing with the bandits of Kumogakure, who believed only in power, reason was useless.
"Sigh..." Mitokado Homura lamented, "If only Hiashi hadn't killed Toroi, there might still be room to salvage this."
Hiashi's face stiffened. Was it his fault? In that situation, any father would have done everything in his power to protect his child.
Beside him, Nara Shikaku remained silent, his face an unreadable mask. Mitokado Homura was thinking too simply. What kind of shinobi was Toroi? He was a famed user of Magnet Release, with a record of killing several elite Jōnin during the Third Great War. In terms of pure skill, he was by no means inferior to Hiashi.
If Toroi hadn't wanted to die, Hiashi could never have killed him. And if Toroi was determined to die at Hiashi's hands, there was nothing Hiashi could have done to stop it.
There was no way around it. Konoha had been thoroughly outmaneuvered. Even Shikaku hadn't expected the power-obsessed Kumogakure to suddenly resort to such a cunning scheme.
At that moment, Shimura Danzō, seated to Hiruzen's far left, tapped his cane on the floor. His voice was cold. "Hiruzen, what are you hesitating for? If Kumogakure wants a war, then fine! We will give them one! Do those bandits truly believe that Konoha is weak and can be bullied?!"
Hiruzen glanced at Danzō, puffing on his pipe without a word, utterly unmoved by his old rival's predictable outrage.