Catch Them Alive

Cold morning mist still clung to the ground outside the side entrance of Konoha Hospital.

When the logistics clerk burst through the door, the medicine bags in his arms spilled everywhere. Bottles rolled down the steps, their shattering unnaturally loud in the empty alley.

He did not look back.

The Konoha Military Police Force was at the hospital's front entrance, Naruto was on the third floor, and the corridors were full of shinobi. He had chosen the side entrance because it connected to the morgue and an abandoned medicine storeroom, places no one liked to go near.

He ran fast, but he did not move like an ordinary clerk.

His steps were light, his breathing steady. He lowered his shoulder before each turn. He had ninja training.

Naruto leaped from a third-floor window.

Nine-Tails Chakra spread beneath his feet like a thin sheet of flame. He landed without a heavy sound and shot into the side alley.

Kakashi followed across the rooftops. Jiraiya came down the wall on the other side, while several Military Police Force shinobi blocked the alley's exit.

Realizing his escape route was cut off, the clerk flung three pills from his sleeve.

They burst on the ground, releasing a rapidly spreading cloud of gray-green smoke.

Medical poison gas.

One breath would paralyze an ordinary shinobi's throat and limbs.

Naruto did not stop.

Nine-Tails Chakra swept out before him like a fox's paw, batting the poison cloud straight back into the clerk's face.

The clerk's expression changed. He immediately held his breath, kicked off the wall, and vaulted into the morgue's rear courtyard.

Before he landed, an orange-red chakra arm sprang from the ground, seized his ankle, and hoisted him upside down.

The clerk reacted quickly.

He drew a kunai and slashed back at his own throat.

Gold flashed in Naruto's eyes.

A second chakra arm clamped around the clerk's wrist and dislocated it with a crack.

The kunai fell to the ground.

The clerk went deathly pale with pain, but he gritted his teeth. One cheek bulged slightly.

Hidden poison.

Naruto stepped forward and touched his jaw.

Golden sealing jutsu sank into his skin. The poison sac had just ruptured, but the liquid was sealed inside the tooth socket before a drop could reach his throat.

Kakashi landed beside them, his gaze darkening.

"That's not the kind of suicide training a logistics clerk receives."

Jiraiya crouched and pulled back the clerk's collar.

A burned mark lay on the back of his neck.

It was not Root's Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal.

It looked more like a brand meant to conceal someone's identity temporarily.

Naruto looked at the clerk.

"Name."

The clerk said nothing.

Naruto pressed a hand to his forehead.

A sealing formula burrowed toward the edge of his mind, only to strike chakra like black sludge.

At the touch of Naruto's chakra, it began to corrode the formula, trying to surge back along it.

The Nine-Tails sprang to its feet inside the Sealing Space.

"Kid, it's that thing again."

Naruto did not force his way through.

He withdrew the formula and sealed the clerk's limbs, throat, and chakra points instead.

"I can't search his mind directly."

Jiraiya frowned.

"His mind's been contaminated?"

Naruto nodded.

"Same as the stone tablet."

Kakashi's gaze turned grave.

If even a logistics clerk had been controlled or contaminated by that thing, how many more agents were planted inside Konoha?

Suspended upside down, the clerk suddenly developed a black sheen over his eyes.

His mouth stretched into a grin, and a voice that was not his emerged.

"Naruto Uzumaki."

The voice was cold and clammy, as if squeezed up through an underground drain.

Kakashi drew his kunai at once.

The toad on Jiraiya's shoulder opened its mouth and began forming hand seals.

Naruto did not retreat.

The blackness in the clerk's eyes deepened.

"You're investigating quickly."

"But everything you uncover will make Konoha hate itself more."

"Everyone you save will fear that you might turn on them next."

Naruto looked at him.

"You're afraid I'll keep digging?"

The voice chuckled softly.

"I'm not afraid."

"The more you dig, the more the Uchiha will hate the Hokage, the Hyuga will hate Kumogakure, the Sarutobi will hate you, and the Daimyo will distrust Konoha."

"When the Raikage comes, when the Daimyo's Envoy comes, when all the Five Great Shinobi Villages learn how rotten Konoha is to its roots..."

"Will you still stand here?"

Naruto raised a hand.

A chakra arm gripped the clerk's neck.

"You talk too much."

The black voice paused, then laughed more darkly.

"A six-year-old body, the Nine-Tails' power, Minato's legacy, Kushina's blood."

"They all think you're a victim."

"But one day, that fox inside you will remind them what the real calamity was."

Black blood seeped from the corners of the clerk's eyes.

The black chakra tried to destroy its host.

Naruto pressed a finger down.

Golden sealing jutsu pierced the clerk's brow and pinned the black chakra to the surface of his mind.

The clerk convulsed violently, broken shrieks rasping from his throat.

Nine-Tails Chakra surged from Naruto's back and took the shape of a fox's paw, dragging the lingering black presence out bit by bit.

The black shadow thrashed like an eel.

Jiraiya quickly spread open a Sealing Scroll. "Force it in here!"

Naruto flung his arm back.

The lingering presence slammed into the scroll.

Jiraiya formed hand seals with both hands. Toad Oil and sealing runes spread over it, and acrid black smoke rose from the scroll's surface.

The blackness faded from the clerk's eyes.

His whole body went limp. He gasped for air as though he had just been pulled from the water.

Naruto crouched in front of him.

"Can you talk now?"

The clerk's lips trembled.

"I... I'm Kinoshita Shinji."

Kakashi asked, "Who told you to take the bells?"

Kinoshita Shinji's eyes went unfocused as he struggled to remember.

"I don't know his face... He always met me in the old medicine storeroom behind the morgue."

Jiraiya pressed him. "When did it start?"

"Three years ago."

Everyone's expression shifted.

Three years ago.

This had not been arranged last night.

This agent had been planted in the hospital long ago.

Kinoshita Shinji clutched his head, his voice shaking.

"He made me keep records on wounded Root members, wounded ANBU, wounded Uchiha, and... every one of Naruto's medical examinations."

Naruto's eyes went cold.

"My examinations?"

Kinoshita Shinji shook even harder.

"There's a hidden file in the hospital."

"It starts from the day you were born."

"It isn't the one in the Hokage Office."

"It's your physical data."

"Chakra, seals, Nine-Tails reactions, blood samples."

Kakashi's expression changed.

Jiraiya's gaze darkened too.

Naruto stood.

"Where?"

Kinoshita Shinji looked toward the morgue.

"The Underground Morgue."

"Behind the third row of body drawers."

Naruto turned and walked away. He had never once been to the Underground Morgue. But it held every record of his body from the past six years.