Chapter 11: True Konoha

Arata calmly assisted Isuke, pressing one hand against Hibari's forehead. A soft blue chakra began to glow in his palm.

"…It's you…" Hibari murmured in a daze.

"You know him?" Isuke asked casually as he carefully put on his gloves.

"Yeah. I partnered with him once, two months ago."

"Then you should know what needs to be done even more clearly. He might've overheard some of our conversation earlier. 

When the time comes to make a decision, you can't hesitate. That's the basic quality of a competent shinobi." Isuke meticulously fastened his protective gear.

Hibari wanted to struggle, but he found himself utterly powerless. Despair flooded his face, not just the agony of death, but a soul-crushing disillusionment.

This was Konoha? This was what a Konoha shinobi did? Was this the reward for all his life or death battles on the front lines?

Yes. It was all real.

"Hibari Suzumebachi, welcome to the shadow beneath the great flourishing tree, the place where sunlight barely reaches. This… is the real Konoha."

And this was during one of Konoha's more "benevolent" phases.

After all, this was the late Second Great Ninja War. The fighting was brutal. Some extreme individual cases were understandable.

But after the war ended, during the so-called peacetime before the Third Great Ninja War, Konoha, under the tacit approval with personal nods of the Third Hokage, would commit far more outrageous and perspective-shattering actions.

It wouldn't be until the Naruto and Sasuke era that Konoha's atmosphere would begin to noticeably improve. 

Only then would the sunlight that had once shone under the First Hokage again reach every corner of the village, casting the twisted and mangled Will of Fire into the hearts of its people.

Arata spoke, "Your fate is sealed. This is an order from above. I don't have the privilege to resist. If I don't do it, someone else will. If I do it, maybe I can make it a little less painful for you."

The dust of an era, when it settles on individuals, becomes a mountain. And in the world of shinobi, it presses down in even crueler ways.

Just using Hibari's body as a live sample to analyze poison from Sunagakure, to give Tsunade some reference data, was already a B-rank mission, merely one piece of a broader assignment.

That meant creating the antidote for the poison Tsunade was working on could easily be ranked as A-rank, or even S-rank.

An S-rank mission, normally, would involve confronting multiple Jonin or even fighting a Kage-level enemy.

"Sunagakure, huh… I've heard they're especially skilled with poisons, especially their puppet masters," Arata remarked.

Isuke responded, "You don't want to face Sunagakure's shinobi. The Land of Wind has the weakest overall strength of the Five Great Nations, and Sunagakure is the poorest of them all. 

But they're masters at making up for their lack of manpower with vicious poisons. Every new toxin means more shinobi will die without an antidote."

Developing a cure took time. And it often took the lives of Konoha shinobi to pave the way. Without sacrifices, how would they even confirm that Sunagakure was using a new poison?

Without sacrificing lives to identify the basic traits of the poison, how could the medical team develop an antidote faster?

Were they supposed to rely on someone like Tsunade to always be on the front lines, personally examining every new toxin Sunagakure deployed? 

That was absurd. There was only one Tsunade in all of Konoha.

Take now, for example. If the life of a mediocre shinobi like Hibari could save Tsunade even a little time, the higher-ups would consider it a worthy trade.

It would let her produce antidotes faster and distribute them to the front lines, saving more lives.

Perhaps what looked like a simple, unremarkable decision by the higher-ups was built on the desperate work of low-level shinobi like Arata.

The results of countless lower departments piled up layer by layer, until they finally earned the privilege of a glance from someone like Tsunade, or a few seconds of her thought, before becoming an insignificant sentence in a policy affecting many.

"I'm starting."

Arata channeled chakra from his hand into Hibari's dying brain. He watched the light slowly fade from the eyes of a comrade he had once fought alongside. The eyes gently closed.

Moments later, Hibari's corpse twitched slightly. A low moan, like the dying cry of a swan, escaped his mouth.

One colleague jumped in surprise. "Whoa, is that another effect of the poison? I thought it just paralyzed nerves. This seems to stimulate them."

Isuke's expression shifted slightly as he glanced at Arata. 

"Now's not the time to test your jutsu on corpses. Even if you've improved or modified it, this body is too important."

Arata remained calm. 

"Maybe some of the nerves haven't been completely eroded by the toxin. The stimulation caused a reflex. I said I'd lessen his pain. 

That's one of the few things I can do… Mercy, in a department like ours, is a luxury."

He continued his work with focused precision, burning through what little chakra he had left. 

He threaded tools with the care of one preparing the Dead Soul Technique, meant to mislead Isuke and the other Root shinobi.

Then, with a scalpel, he sliced open the chest cavity. 

The rest of the team sprang into action. One member began documenting everything, compiling the data into a clean, easy-to-read report.

The cold glare of the surgical lamp fell over Hibari's bluish face. 

Arata's rubber gloves passed over the dark, purplish hole at the neck. Thick, venomous blood dripped into a glass dish from the dissection channel, hissing as it corroded the surface.

"This poison… it's like someone blended several chemical compounds into a perfect mix… It was probably developed by someone at the level of the Third Kazekage, Chiyo, or Ebizo."

Isuke lifted a decaying piece of liver with tweezers. The tissue fluid visibly corroded the metal, leaving faint pits. 

"The poison targets glands first, salivary glands swell while the tear glands dry up like a snake's shed skin left under the sun for three days."

Arata's scalpel opened the thoracic cavity. Black, cotton-like masses poured from the lungs. 

This wasn't typical necrosis, the toxin was transforming the organs into fibrous cocoons. 

He dabbed some poison onto a slide. Under the microscope, the cells looked like insect pupae strangled by webs. The chakra pathways shimmered with unnatural hues.

"It's primarily a neurotoxin, laced with fine grains of magnetic sand crystals."

He sliced a chunk of necrotic heart tissue. A nearby shinobi took detailed notes.

Everyone present was a veteran. The autopsy was carried out with swift efficiency.

Soon, the completed analysis report was delivered by a Root shinobi to the relevant department, and it wouldn't be long before it landed in Tsunade's hands.

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