It had been two days since Taka left the Hidden Cloud Village on their pursuit of Desert Maelstrom, believed to be a Rogue Ninja from the Hidden Sand Village. Taka only needed one more day's worth of travel on Odaka to enter the Land of Wind, which was far to the south-west of the Land of Lightning. Before Taka could make it to the Land of Wind, however…
"… Could that be it?" Jugo spoke under his breath, hoping no one would hear him. Sasuke, however, saw Jugo's lip movements with his Sharingan and decided to respond.
"What's the matter, Jugo?" Sasuke asked.
"It's just… I know you said to focus on the A-Class targets first, but ever since I saw Worst Natural Gift on the list I couldn't help but think about it at the back of my mind…"
"What are your thoughts?"
"I have an idea who Worst Natural Gift might be…"
"You do?!" Karin and Suigetsu shouted together.
"Let's hear it, then." Sasuke commanded.
"I don't have any names, but I am fairly certain Worst Natural Gift is referring to someone from my clan." Jugo explained. "My clan's Kekkei Genkai forces me to passively take in natural energy. That would qualify as a Natural Gift, wouldn't it?"
"… I guess it would." Sasuke said. Karin and Suigetsu also nodded in agreement.
"Furthermore…" Jugo continued, "… when we take in enough natural energy, we explode in frenzy and kill anyone in our path until that energy is fully depleted… That is a bad gift…"
"Thus Worst Natural Gift." Sasuke concluded.
"But is there any proof that Orochimaru was in contact with anyone from your clan besides you, Jugo?" Suigetsu asked.
"I think there might be…" Jugo said. "… That woman we met in Kabuto's hideout. She had a Curse Mark, but was older than all the others…"
"Anko?" Sasuke thought aloud. "You have a point there…"
"Just who the hell are you guys talking about?!" Karin shouted. "I only joined the war after you left Kabuto's hideout, so forgive me for not being able to follow the discussion!"
"Anko Mitarashi." Sasuke clarified. "She was the proctor for the Forest of Death segment of our Chunin Exams. Remember her?"
Karin took a few seconds to jog her memory before responding:
"Oh yeah! She had that annoying tendency to exaggerate all her emotions!"
Suigetsu grinned. "Reminds me of a certain someone I know…"
"No idea who that could be!" Karin promptly backhanded Suigetsu across the face, making his head burst into water. Then she quickly regained her composure. "Anyway, you're saying she had a Curse Mark? How did Anko even know Orochimaru?"
"Anko was Orochimaru's student before he defected from the Hidden Leaf." Sasuke said.
Suigetsu re-solidified his head and stroked his chin. "And Orochimaru branded her with a Curse Mark before he left?"
"Yeah… Jugo, when did you first meet Orochimaru?" Sasuke asked.
"It was after Kimimaro. I learned about Orochimaru from Kimimaro, and when I first saw Kimimaro, he was already wearing Hidden Sound robes… I thought it was strange for Anko to have a Curse Mark at all, since Kimimaro volunteered for testing the Curse Mark before it was applied to anyone else…"
"Wait! There's a contradiction in what you said!" Karin objected, pointing forward at Jugo from her back seat. "You said Kimimaro was the first user of the Curse Mark, but he was already wearing Hidden Sound robes when it happened! The Hidden Sound Village wasn't created until after Orochimaru defected from the Hidden Leaf; before then, the Land of Sound was called the Land of Rice Fields! So that means-"
"Kimimaro wasn't the first bearer of the Curse Mark like you thought, Jugo." Sasuke interrupted. "He was only the first bearer of a Curse Mark using your enzymes. Anko's Curse Mark predates Orochimaru meeting you, so logically her Curse Mark has to have been created using the enzymes from someone else."
Karin pumped her fists. "So that's the proof then! We know there has to be a relative of Jugo's that met Orochimaru while he was still a Leaf ninja, and that person is Worst Natural Gift!"
"There are still a few things we don't know." Sasuke pointed out. "We still don't know their name, for one. We also have no idea where they might be. But the most troubling thing of all is…"
Karin, Suigetsu, and Jugo were all staring in anticipation, wondering what could be worse than not knowing Worst Natural Gift's location.
"… The most troubling thing is that we don't know why Orochimaru had to stop using that person's enzymes and halt Curse Mark production until Jugo and Kimimaro came along. Whatever happened to that person, Orochimaru deemed them too dangerous for his experiments… and it might relate to why they're S-Class instead of A-Class." Sasuke concluded.
"We can worry about that later!" Karin exclaimed. "Right now we need to head for the Hidden Sand Village and Desert Maelstrom!"
"Karin's right, Sasuke." Jugo said. "We can deal with Worst Natural Gift after Desert Maelstrom."
"Alright, we keep on course for the Hidden Sand Village." Sasuke declared.
"… Hold on, Sasuke! Aren't you forgetting something?!" Suigetsu asked.
"What would that be?"
"You said Anko was the proctor of our Chunin Exams when talking to Karin a minute ago! Care to explain that?!"
"You didn't know? Shortly before Orochimaru's attempt to destroy the Hidden Leaf, Karin and I took the Chunin Exams together. It's where we first met."
Upon the explanation, Suigetsu nearly melted in surprise while Karin got flustered, remembering the event.
"It was so romantic!" Karin exploded in ecstasy. "My teammates had already been killed and I was left alone wandering the Forest of Death… when suddenly a wild bear starts chasing me! I run away as fast as I could, but I trip on a tree branch and my glasses fall right off my face! The bear is inches away from swallowing me whole… but a blue blur knocks the bear right out in a single blow! I put on my glasses… and there he is! Sasuke, my hero, standing over the bear with the most dashing smile I'd ever seen in my life!"
Karin's expression then suddenly shifted to anger:
"… and then he leaves before I can even thank him properly! Hmph!"
"… not cool, Sasuke." Suigetsu remarked. "Men are supposed to make women happy, not ditch them to run off who knows where!"
At that statement, Sasuke froze in shock, and the Katsuyu fragment started wiggling on his upper back.
"Oh god…" Karin's rage was building. "That's not how you left things with your girlfriend back home, is it?!"
A chill went down Sasuke's spine. He couldn't respond before Karin continued.
"You did! Oh my fucking god you did! That's it: screw the Hidden Whirlpool Village and fuck training with the Raikage! The first thing you are doing when this mission is over is going right back to the Hidden Leaf and TELLING HER YOU'RE SORRY, young man!"
"Okay, okay! I'll do it!" Sasuke shouted. "Just please calm down for the moment… Odaka doesn't like loud noise…"
After that, Karin began to settle down, albeit with her posture betraying her anger. Someone, however, couldn't keep their voice down when they made a certain inference:
"Sasuke has a GIRLFRIEND?!" Suigetsu screamed.
[X-X-X]
A few hours later, Taka was in close proximity to a massive rain cloud.
"Alright… We just need to pass through the Hidden Rain Village and we'll be on the border to the Land of Wind." Sasuke said, impatient to finally get close to their next destination. "Suigetsu, can you see anything with all this rain?"
Suigetsu looked down to check and immediately shook his head. "No dice. I can't make out anything going on under us."
"What about you, Karin?" Sasuke asked. "Sense anything strange?"
"Actually… Yes!" Karin shouted. "Lots of chakras are… disappearing! Like bleeping right off the radar! One after another, with little break! … I think people are… dying by the second!" Karin's face turned to despair. "It's a bloodbath!"
"What do we do, Sasuke?" Jugo asked, his voice trembling.
"We… ignore it for now. We're already so close to the Land of Wind. I think we should stay on course to find Desert Maelstrom as quickly as possible…"
"No! That's wrong!" Karin objected. "Have you forgotten why you started this mission in the first place?!"
Sasuke's eyes started twitching. "Of course not! I want to become a better person now that I'm not consumed by hatred, and make up for everything wrong that I've done so far!"
"Then you can't ignore this crisis!" Karin shouted. "Remember the Five Kage Summit?"
Sasuke nodded.
"Good, then you remember what you did after you caved the basement in with Susano'o! Suigetsu and Jugo were injured and at the Samurai's mercy, but you didn't care! You demanded to know where Danzo was, and instead of saving your teammates, you abandoned them to chase after your hatred!"
Suigetsu and Jugo were both shocked and appalled to hear that Sasuke knew they needed help and chose not to provide it:
"I guess someone's not quite as valuable as I thought they were!" Suigetsu crossed his arms and looked away.
"I… might have been wrong about you." Jugo looked down in sorrow.
"Don't hate Sasuke for what he did in the past, guys!" Karin said. "That would go against the point of this mission! If you're going to hate him, hate him for his decision right now! Because, Sasuke," Karin shifted her focus toward the Uchiha, tears beginning to form in her eyes, "if you let innocent people die to pursue your own agenda, then you'll prove without a doubt that despite all your apologies, you haven't changed at all!"
Sasuke was taken aback in shock and disbelief at Karin's accusation, but he couldn't argue against it; he knew that what Karin said was the unmistakable truth. It may not be in the name of 'hatred' anymore, but Sasuke was about to sacrifice many people he didn't even know in order to find someone that might not be causing any trouble. In the meantime, people would be suffering for real, and Sasuke would have chosen not to do anything when he could have stopped it. That was the sort of choice Sasuke would have made when he was lost in the darkness, and it was sort of choice he never wanted to make again.
"Sasuke?" Suigetsu and Jugo called for him, their leader having been silent for a nearly a minute contemplating Karin's rant.
"… Change of plans." Sasuke spoke up. "We head down to the Hidden Rain Village and see what's going on! Karin, keep sensing; we'll need to land safely in order to do anything, so find a spot with no nearby chakra!"
"Yes sir!" Karin nodded as she made the seal for her Mind's Eye of the Kagura technique while Odaka started to descend.
[X-X-X]
When Taka landed, it was at the base of a skyscraper with a river running underneath it. Sasuke figured there would not be much solid ground at the base of the village considering how much rain the country received, so there weren't many people nearby, at least not horizontally. What he was not expecting to find, however, was what was surrounding his team.
They were surrounded by stone statues of people, most of which were toppled over.
"I didn't know the Rain Village was into sculpting! From that one time we saw Konan I thought they were more into origami…" Suigetsu remarked.
"I don't think that's it…" Karin objected with worry. "A lot of those disappearing chakras… they were coming from right here."
"So you're saying these aren't stone statues of people but people turned to stone?" Sasuke asked.
Karin nodded. "I think so… But I don't know how that's even possi-"
"Hey, you down there!" someone shouted from far above them as loudly as they could, interrupting Karin and forcing all of Taka to look up. "Come up here! It's not safe below!"
Sasuke could see the source of the voice was someone with long, dark green hair, and from the tone of the voice seemed to be an adult woman. At their instruction all of Taka sent chakra to their feet and began running up the building's wall toward the woman who called them.
All of them except for one.
"What's keeping you, Jugo? Come on!" Suigetsu shouted as he looked back.
"Go on… without me…" Jugo pleaded. "Ever since coming here… I felt like… I could explode… at any moment… and it's approaching that time! I won't have the control to follow you up after I do! So… leave… before I destroy you all! … GRRRAAGGHH!"
Sasuke nodded. "We'll be back to save you, Jugo. I promise!"
The Uchiha then turned away and headed up for the one calling them with Karin and Suigetsu at his sides.