After leaving the Third's House, Naruto went looking for Sakura.
Shikaku had not taken Kurenai Yuhi to Kusagakure at the time. The village needed people to defend it.
Not only had Old Ma and Kurenai Yuhi stayed apart, even the Ino-Shika-Cho trio had split up.
Choza was with Shikaku, while Inoichi remained in the village.
Worried that someone might attack their home base, Inoichi was now in charge of both the intelligence and sensing teams.
Unless something unexpected had happened, Old Ma should have already left for Sunagakure.
Konoha had now deployed most of its ninja elsewhere. With the First Hokage gone too, the Second Hokage was the head of security. Besides serving as principal, Guy was also a head of security.
Hatake Sakumo and Jiraiya had each taken three squads to gather intelligence on the Land of Water and the Land of Lightning. They had only just returned before Naruto came back.
After learning that Naruto was Minato's son, the Raikage had originally planned to head to the Land of Earth and elbow Naruto, but the advance force he and Killer B led had been stopped by Jiraiya's and Sakumo's squads.
In other words, their next target was Kumogakure in the Land of Lightning.
The Land of Water dungeon was too easy. Once Naruto had rested enough, he would go elbow the Raikage first, then deal with the Land of Water.
A dusky space lay between existence and nothingness.
There was no concept of up, down, left, or right here, no tangible sense of time passing. Only an endless expanse of color lingered, like twilight frozen in place.
At the center of this strange space, an old man "sat" cross-legged in midair.
He wore a plain white robe, with a distinct Red Sun Mark on his forehead.
His