Given the Raikage's fiery temper and Kumogakure's usual way of doing things, how could they possibly let the matter go when their village had been wrecked and even the Two-Tails' jinchūriki had gone missing?
As a result, friction between Kumogakure and Iwagakure, the prime suspect, had grown intense. They were militant villages, after all, and when something happened, they usually settled it with force.
In fact, Kumogakure's sharper minds, led by Samui, had also suspected Konoha. Aside from Iwagakure, the most suspicious candidate, Konoha had the greatest strength. Moreover, Konoha had just changed Hokage: the hot-tempered Princess Tsunade had taken over, while the easygoing Third Hokage had stepped down.
Seen that way, Konoha was also a suspect. However, things there really had been perfectly ordinary lately. And ever since the village's biggest troublemaker had taken a beating from the Uchiha Clan's clan leader, he had behaved himself much better and stopped stirring up trouble. Even Root had shown no signs of activity in the shinobi world.
That was why Kumogakure had left Konoha off its list of suspects and focused most of its attention on Iwagakure instead. After all, Iwagakure had suddenly become active in the shinobi world a few months earlier, and the people who had attacked Kumogakure were all proficient in Earth Release techniques exclusive to Iwagakure.
What Kumogakure would never have imagined was that Konoha had shown no suspicious activity because only one person had invaded Kumogakure. Even after he had finished the invasion and abducted their jinchūriki, only a handful of people in all of Konoha knew about it.
As for Iwagakure's unusual activity, that was because it had suffered the same fate as Kumogakure earlier. Although it had not lost its jinchūriki, it had lost the Tsuchikage's Scroll of Seals.
However, Iwagakure had suppressed the