The sealed kunai

Chapter 55: Up in Smoke

It had only taken one more day for the Suna party out to collect Gaara, including Kankuro and Temari, to make it back to Sunagakure itself. With his own role in stopping Gaara from rushing off to try and rip Amegakure into ruins, Naruto was along for the ride and thus he bore witness to the devastation that Pein was capable of.

Buildings were rubble, not a single thing in the valley that the village sat in was untouched. Many shinobi, chunin rank and higher, had been killed with Pein's one Shinra Tensei. Luckily many civilians were able to reach safe points in the valley walls before the catastrophic attack was launched. There were still a great number that hadn't made it however, and the death toll had reached upwards of seven thousand and was still climbing as more bodies were being discovered even then.

Naruto himself had been helping with the unearthing process and had seen his share of disturbing sights in Root, but the sight of several dead children and one Suna genin probably on their way to an evacuation safety point was what that stuck with him for the three days he had been in Suna trying to do what he could for the time being.

It hadn't taken too much longer than one day for Konoha to mobilize a relief group to head to their ally's aid to try and assist any way they could. Copious amounts of medic-nin were sent along with a few doton ninjutsu specialists and a lot of genin to assist in trying to bolster what they could of Suna's defenses in the meantime while things were being sorted out.

It had also come with a message for Naruto himself; to get his ass back to Konoha at the earliest convenience so that they could begin preparing for the war appropriately. He would head out in the morning as it was then sundown in the ruined desert village and he hadn't received his marching orders until that afternoon.

He was currently sitting on a crate outside of one of the medical tent that had been set up as a makeshift hospital until the grounds could be cleared and another hospital could be built soon. Inside he could see all of the medics from both Suna and Konoha, including Sakura and Shizune, both of whom were sent and had been invaluable for their skills in healing injured survivors.

Barely paying attention to the footsteps coming his way, Naruto turned his head to see Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon walking up to him, all three of them frowning deeply and looking rather haggard from the work they had been doing since being dispatched to help, "What kind of person could do this Boss?" Konohamaru asked, "I heard it was done by one guy."

Udon chose to follow up on his teammate's statement, "From the sky... he squashed everything down here with just his chakra. How are there people like that in the world?" They had been around for two days and had borne witness to exactly what certain people were capable of. It seemed more like the work of monsters or a sort of divine punishment than the acts of a man. Of course the fact that they had never personally seen exactly what lengths a ninja's skill could reach also added to this.

The fact of the matter was; with enough chakra, the right hand-seals, and the appropriate blood running through one's veins... pretty much anything was possible.

"I wish I could tell you." What was Naruto supposed to say to a bunch of kids about what they were observing firsthand? They weren't him. This was the first any of them were seeing of the actual destruction that could be wrought by a man that was powerful enough. Hearing the stories and seeing them firsthand let them know that most stories of shinobi legends were not exaggeration, "Some of us can cut through a bolt of lightning with our jutsu, some of us can create an entire forest with a single move, and then there's things like this."

The sorrow on Moegi's face, he wished that he didn't have to see it. But he knew that she wasn't the only one and she wasn't the worst off at all. There were kids her age all over Suna that had one hundred times the anguish that she did, "What's the point? What did Sunagakure ever do to Amegakure?"