Chapter 456: Prisoners
"Raikage-sama... that organization has appeared again."
In the Raikage's office in Kumogakure, the jounin responsible for intelligence summaries had a thin film of cold sweat at his temples. He was delivering news that had the weight of the entire shinobi world in it.
"It wasn't Menma this time. It was one of the other members. The one with the Mangekyo Sharingan."
He placed a sealed scroll and a stack of high-resolution photographs on the desk with both hands, bowing slightly as he did. "The latest intelligence from the direction of Iwagakure. The Tsuchikage has already issued a formal public statement to all nations."
The Fourth Raikage, A, was seated behind his desk. The color had gone from his face, leaving something harder in its place. He reached for the photographs. His thick fingers gripped them tightly enough to put a slight crease in the edges.
The first photograph was an aerial view taken from a distance. The background was Iwagakure itself, the immense village built into and around its great rocky cliffs. But where a tall, jagged, isolated mountain peak had once stood at the village's outer perimeter, one that functioned as a natural barrier and landmark, there was now only a crater.
The walls of the crater showed the glassy sheen left behind by extreme heat. It looked like a landscape painting from which someone had reached in and scooped out a piece with their bare hands.
The second photograph. The third. Different angles, different distances. All of them showing the same fact from every direction. A mountain. Hundreds of meters tall, composed of rock dense enough to function as a fortress wall. Gone. Erased from the terrain as though it had never been there.
Not a single building in Iwagakure had been touched. Not a single person within the village had been affected. The precision of that fact said something by itself.
The Raikage's breathing grew heavy. The knuckles of his hand tightened around the photographs and creaked with it.
Not just Menma. Even the other members of Ember carried this kind of power. The power to erase a mountain without effort. To rewrite the geography of a region. The kind of force that nature itself produced in disasters, concentrated in the hands of individuals.
And yet, somewhere in the weight of that realization, something loosened very slightly in the Raikage's chest.
He was not proud of the feeling. But it was there, and it was honest.
So long as an organization like Ember hung over every nation simultaneously, an absolute and perfectly neutral sword suspended above all of them without exception, any thought of initiating a large-scale war would be cut off before it could grow legs. Ambition, fear, desperation, it didn't matter what the motive was. The sword was there.
Iwagakure had just provided the clearest demonstration of that fact anyone could ask for. Even Onoki, that old stone-headed man who had been digging his heels in for decades, had immediately issued a public statement reframing every deliberate provocation of the past months as a matter of "management oversight," and promising in the most earnest terms that Iwagakure had never had any interest in war and cherished peace deeply.
That same sword hung over Konoha.
Jiraiya's governing style was steady, and his relationship with Uzumaki Naruto was one of genuine mutual regard. But politics was not a stable thing. Leadership changed. Personnel changed.
What if, at some future point, Konoha's internal balance shifted? What if someone rose to power who was less cautious, more expansionist, and more willing to put Konoha's extraordinary military assets to work? Uzumaki Naruto's individual strength alone was a strategic variable that no other nation could match. Add a fully resurrected Namikaze Minato to that equation, and the scenario became something that would have kept the Raikage awake at night in the old world order.
But now there was Ember.
It would not permit any nation, Konoha included, to weaponize its most powerful shinobi in an act of aggression. Naruto could be the strongest person alive, and Minato the fastest, and if Ember judged their actions as constituting an attack on the peace, they would face consequences. Konoha's most dangerous offensive capability had, in effect, been given a lock on its trigger.
From Kumogakure's perspective, from the Raikage's personal perspective, that was something he could only call security. He resented every part of arriving at that conclusion. But there it was.
He let out a long, heavy breath and set the photographs down on the desk, letting them fall and scatter.
He had spent years wishing Ember would simply disappear. An organization operating outside every established rule, wielding power that made the concept of "Kage authority" look like a suggestion. Its very existence was an affront to the traditional village system and to everything the title of Kage was supposed to represent.
But the world had also produced Konoha's current situation, a village whose power had expanded sharply in a short period of time, fast enough to throw off the balance the other nations had maintained for generations. And in that world, the Raikage found himself needing the very thing he resented to keep the more dangerous variable in check.
It was a thoroughly unpleasant way to feel. Hating the sword above your head while being grateful it was pointed at everyone equally.
"Continue close surveillance on all of Ember's movements. Nothing goes unrecorded, no detail too small. At the same time, expand intelligence collection on Konoha, Iwagakure, and the high-level combat assets of the other major nations."
The Raikage gave his orders in a low, measured voice. "Regarding Iwagakure's public statement, respond in neutral terms. Acknowledge receipt and comprehension. No further commentary."
"Yes, sir." The intelligence jounin straightened, turned, and left quickly.
---
The atmosphere inside Ember's base was not what the outside world would have imagined.
After successfully dismantling the Akatsuki's plans and capturing several of its members, the organization had prepared itself for a stretch of intensive work. Interrogations. Assessments. Deciding what to do with a group of prisoners who were both highly capable and deeply complicated.
Instead, after the naval operation, their leader Menma had given a brief set of instructions and then effectively ceased to exist. He had not been at the base for quite some time now. Short directives came through specific channels occasionally, confirming that he was fine. What he was doing and where he was doing it, no one had been told.
As a result, the prisoners held in the deepest section of the base, behind multiple barrier seals and physical containment, had entered a strange state of suspension. They received meals and water on a limited schedule. They were checked on regularly to prevent self-harm or other emergencies. Beyond that, nothing happened. No one came to question them. No decisions were made about them. They simply waited, with no information about what came next.
For the calmer personalities among them, this was manageable. For the short-tempered ones, waiting for a judgment that never arrived was its own particular kind of torment, arguably worse than any interrogation.
Meanwhile, Deidara had not returned directly to base after the naval battle. He had taken a detour of unknown origin and destination, arriving eventually on the back of one of his clay birds.
He had not come back alone. Clutched in the grip of the clay bird's talons, with a notable lack of gentleness, were two people.
The first was an older man. His hair and beard had gone mostly white. His face was weathered and lined with experience, but carried the soft quality common to people who had spent their lives in medicine rather than warfare. At this particular moment, his complexion had gone pale from pain and barely restrained fury. He was glaring at Deidara.
"I am nothing more than a traveling physician with no attachment to any village or organization! I have never had the slightest involvement with Ember! You reckless, lawless man! What possible reason do you have for attacking someone who only heals people?"
Deidara responded to this by sticking a finger in his ear and working it around with complete indifference. "Old man, you are giving me a headache. I don't care who you've healed. You were on the leader's list of targets before we left. You happened to match and you happened to be nearby. So." He spread his hands. "I extended a very artistic invitation. Any objections?"
His "artistic invitation" had consisted of hitting the old man with enough explosive clay to incapacitate him and then carrying him off without asking.
The second person Deidara had brought in was younger. She was dressed in plain traveler's clothes, her chest bound under the fabric, her hair cut short. The attempt at concealment was not particularly effective. Her features were too fine, her frame too light, and the absence of an Adam's apple too obvious. Her true gender had not been disguised so much as politely asked to stay quiet.
She was injured as well, and she had not looked away from Deidara since arriving. She had apparently tried to intervene when he attacked her teacher, with the outcome one would reasonably expect.
She had been subdued almost immediately and brought along.
"Let my teacher go!" Even as a prisoner, her voice held its shape. "Ember claims to protect peace. What justification do you have for attacking healers who have done nothing to anyone?"
Deidara's response was a yawn. He turned to the base staff who had come to see what he'd dragged in and waved a hand at the two newcomers. "Yeah, find somewhere to put these two. Wait for the leader to get back before doing anything with them."
Then he walked away from their protests and their glares and returned to his workshop outside the main base without another word.
And so the already overcrowded holding area received two more residents, both of them furious, and neither of them with any idea what they were waiting for.
***
60+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces