Chapter 87: The Missing Cure

Tsunade placed a heavily reinforced, completely empty delivery case onto her brushed steel desk.

"I got the base serum stable," Tsunade said. "Your blood worked, and Orochimaru’s notes were useful for once. But I still need the binding compound that was inside this case."

She tapped the empty container.

"The escort disappeared on the eastern road, a few hours outside Konoha. A patrol found the case in a ditch this morning. Open and empty."

Ren stepped closer and examined the lock. The physical mechanisms were untouched. The security seal had been bypassed completely.

"Take it to the estate," Ren told Kakuzu. "I don’t want tower investigators touching it."

Kakuzu closed his ledger. "They would lose the evidence and charge us for the box."

An hour later, the empty transport case was sitting on the low table in Ren’s private study.

Kushina leaned over it, her red hair tied back. Naruto was asleep in the neighboring house under Mikoto’s watchful eye, allowing Kushina to focus entirely on the lingering chakra residue burned into the metal.

Pakura leaned against the bookshelf while Kurenai watched from near the door.

Kushina traced one of the burned lines without touching it.

"It’s copied," she said.

Ren leaned closer. "How can you tell?"

"This line is backward." She pointed near the center of the seal. "An Uzumaki wouldn’t draw it that way. Whoever opened the case knew enough to copy the lock, but not enough to hide the mistake."

She looked at the untouched compartments around it.

"They came for the compound. The other medicine wasn’t even searched." Kushina wiped a spot of ink from her finger. "Whoever did this learned from a book."

Ren looked at her. "Can books be arrested?"

"Only yours," Kushina replied smoothly.

By mid-afternoon, the study was covered in open scrolls.

Ren and Kushina were sitting side-by-side at the mahogany desk, comparing the altered seal from the transport case against dozens of archived Uzumaki barrier patterns. Kushina had changed into a loose, comfortable house dress, leaning over the parchment to trace the variations in the ink.

She reached across Ren to grab a reference scroll on his left.

Ren shifted back slightly in his chair. "You keep moving."

"You keep leaning," Kushina countered, pulling the scroll closer.

"The scroll is on your side."

"A serious design flaw," she muttered, unrolling the parchment.

She leaned forward again, her shoulder pressing against his arm.

Ren stopped writing.

Kushina noticed but did not move. She kept reading the seal, close enough that a loose strand of her hair brushed his sleeve.

Ren turned slightly toward her.

The study door opened.

Kakuzu walked into the study, completely ignoring the atmosphere, and dropped a single sheet of paper directly onto the seal they were studying.

"Are you finished?" Kakuzu asked. "The case is still missing."

Kushina leaned back. Ren picked up the cost report.

"Did Kurenai find a match?" Ren asked.

"Yes," Kakuzu confirmed.

Kurenai entered with the strip of cloth she had cut from the fleeing inspector’s sleeve.

"The chakra left on the transport seal matches this," she said. "Same man, or someone trained closely enough to leave almost the same pattern."

Ren looked at the empty case. "So the man who planted the combat seal at the Academy was involved in this too."

"Looks that way."

"Did you find where he went?"

Kurenai placed a map on the desk and tapped an old supply station east of the village. "The trace leads here. The property belongs to a company that stopped operating years ago."

It still was not proof against Danzo, but Ren had stopped believing in coincidences.

Ren stood up, reaching for his charcoal suit jacket. "We are retrieving it immediately."

Ren stood and pulled on his jacket. His damaged eye gave a faint, irritating pulse.

"We’re getting it back tonight."

He looked at Pakura.

She cracked her knuckles. "Finally."

Kakuzu flipped open his ledger. "Do the prisoners have resale value?"

"No," Ren said, adjusting his cuffs.

"Then avoid damaging their equipment," Kakuzu instructed Pakura. "We can liquidate the weapons to cover travel expenses."

By the time Ren came out to the front gate, night had fallen.

Kakuzu and Pakura were already waiting beside the perimeter wall. Ren was about to leave when Kushina crossed the courtyard and caught his arm.

She held a freshly inked Uzumaki sensory tag.

"Give me your wrist," Kushina said.

Ren held out his arm. Kushina wrapped the tag around his wrist and pressed two fingers against the ink to activate it.

"It will react when you get close to the copied seal," she said. "Follow the pull."

Her fingers remained against his wrist after the ink lit up.

Ren looked down at her hand.

Kushina released him.

"Useful," he said.

She looked up at him, her violet eyes entirely serious. "Don’t use the Mangekyō."

"Tsunade already threatened me."

"I’m not Tsunade."

Ren looked at her. "That sounded worse."

Kushina almost smiled. Then she noticed his collar had folded beneath the strap.

"Hold still."

She reached up and fixed it.

Ren went quiet.

Kushina’s hands paused near his neck before she lowered them and stepped back.

"Bring the case back," Kushina said.

Ren adjusted his cuff over the tag. "That’s the plan."

She caught his wrist again before he could turn away.

"And come back with it."

Ren looked at her hand, then at her face.

"I’ll try."

The "abandoned" supply station had six men patrolling its walls.

A seventh stood outside the warehouse wearing a blank mask. He moved differently from the hired missing-nin—quiet, controlled, and familiar with Konoha formations.

Pakura crouched on a branch beside Ren. "Still think this is a civilian company?"

"Their hiring standards are suspicious."

Ren dropped into the compound, his three-tomoe Sharingan spinning to life.

Every incoming blade looked like something the Black Vault should have swallowed. Ren drew his sword instead.

A missing-nin lunged at him with a crackling lightning blade. Ren sidestepped the strike, his Sharingan perfectly tracking the movement, and drove a kunai into the mercenary’s shoulder.

He swept the man’s legs and threw three explosive tags toward the warehouse doors.

BANG.

The doors shattered. The masked operative blurred into motion, throwing a volley of shuriken attached to thin razor wire.

Ren twisted, bringing his short sword up to deflect the barrage, but his right eye throbbed violently with the sudden spike in chakra usage. His reaction time lagged by a fraction of a second. He ducked, but a secondary trap seal hidden in the dirt detonated.

The blast wave threw him backward. A sharp, burning sting flared across his side as a piece of shrapnel grazed his ribs.

Ren landed hard, his instincts screaming at him to activate the Mangekyō and warp the next incoming volley into the Black Vault. His right eye flared, the tomoe threatening to merge.

No.

Ren cut the chakra before the pattern could change.

Pakura landed in front of him. A wave of dry heat blasted two mercenaries off their feet and melted the razor wire before it reached Ren.

"Tsunade would kill you," Pakura called back, throwing another sphere of heat.

"That is exactly why I stopped," Ren muttered, checking the shallow, bleeding cut on his side.

Kakuzu dropped from the warehouse roof and drove a hardened fist into the nearest mercenary, sending him through a stack of empty crates.

Before the man hit the ground, Kakuzu had already taken his customized sword.

"Imported steel," he noted.

Across the courtyard, Pakura knocked another mercenary from the outer wall. Kakuzu’s black threads caught the last man around the ankles and dragged him off his feet before he could reach the rear gate.

The masked operative saw the fight turning and threw a smoke bomb into the warehouse.

By the time Ren forced his way through, the man was already at the rear wall. He threw one last fire tag toward the medical cooler before disappearing through the smoke.

Ren knocked the tag aside with his sword. It detonated against the desks instead. Fire raced across the shelves, burning the ledgers and ownership seals.

Kakuzu kicked dirt over one of the flames, but the page beneath it had already turned black.

"Nothing useful," he said.

In the middle of the warehouse, untouched by the fire, sat the reinforced medical cooler containing Orochimaru’s stolen compound.

The Uzumaki tag on Ren’s wrist pulsed faintly in response to the residual chakra on the cooler’s lock.

Ren walked forward and picked it up.

They moved through the forest toward Konoha well before dawn.

The cut along Ren’s side burned every time he landed on another branch, but he kept pace and held the medical cooler tightly beneath one arm.

He looked down at the Uzumaki tag around his wrist.

The edges of the paper were slightly scorched from the explosive trap, but the ink was still perfectly intact.

Ren adjusted his cuff over the scorched tag and kept walking.

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