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Chapter 95 – The Thunder That Hesitates
🕑 Added 2025-07-08 01:27:55 +0000 UTCChapter 95 – The Thunder That Hesitates
The war room of Kumogakure was silent.
Not the kind of silence that came from meditation or peace, but the silence that followed loss. Thick, heavy, bitter.
The Fourth Raikage stood at the head of the war table, shoulders squared like a mountain about to crack. But he said nothing. Not yet.
Across from him stood Cee, Mabui, Killer B, two village elders, and several high-ranking jonin. Their eyes were tired. Their faces pale.
A special courier scroll lay on the war table, delivered not by a survivor, but by a border recon unit sent to check on the northern compound after all contact was lost.
They had returned quickly.
And shaken.
“The outpost,” Cee said slowly, “was reduced to rubble. The seals were burned off the gates. The weapons vaults were looted. Not a single body remained intact.”
He unrolled a second report. “No survivors. No messages left behind. The entire perimeter was wiped clean.”
“The patrol reports described it as… desolation,” Mabui added. “No chakra residue. No signs of retreat. No indication of when or how the assault began.”
The Raikage’s jaw clenched.
He didn’t need to be told what that meant.
Toroi and his strike team were gone. Two squads of elite shinobi, wiped out. And the compound itself had been stripped of every valuable asset.
Scrolls, chakra seals, intel caches.
Gone.
But worst of all
“No sign of Yugito Nii,” Cee said. “No evidence of her corpse either.”
Raikage’s hands curled into fists. “Then she was taken.”
Mabui nodded tightly. “It seems so.”
Silence followed.
A thundercloud of rage built behind the Raikage’s eyes. His biceps bulged as his arms trembled with fury.
But before he could speak, one of the elders raised a hand.
“We must speak plainly,” the elder said, voice firm. “This is a disaster.”
“You dare call it that to my face?” the Raikage growled.
“I do,” the elder said without flinching. “Because this did not happen from simple misfortune. This happened because you escalated first.”
Cee stepped in quickly before the room erupted.
“We need to think, Raikage-sama. You acted on intelligence that Konoha was weak after Danzō’s death and the loss of the Uchiha. You sent teams to provoke their response. You assumed their new Hokage was not ready.”
Cee exhaled. “But now, we’ve lost an entire forward base. Elite shinobi. A jinchūriki. And we don’t even know how.”
“Yugito…” Raikage muttered. “She wouldn’t fall easily. Not to any team.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” Mabui said. “That’s why this is even more terrifying.”
She tapped the second scroll, a rough sketch from one of the recon shinobi. Burn patterns. Impact craters. Crushed stone. Collapsed towers.
“From the scale of the destruction, some of the officers believe the invader teleported directly into the base,” Mabui said. “There were no signs of infiltration, only entry and chaos.”
A grim pause.
“Teleportation,” the elder muttered. “Flying Thunder God?”
“That was our first thought,” Cee said. “The speed of the strike. The precision. The base’s barrier seals weren’t even triggered. But there are differences.”
Mabui added, “The damage wasn’t caused by kunai or normal jutsu. Most of it was… physical.”
Cee nodded. “Walls crushed, not exploded. Bodies, what few bits remained, were shattered, not burned. Armor was bent inward. Trees uprooted. Some believe it was Tsunade herself.”
Raikage’s eye twitched. “Tsunade?”
“Or her apprentice,” Cee said. “You’ve heard the reports, of a boy in full armor who killed Danzō, wiped out Root, and now commands Tsunade’s forces directly.”
Raikage growled. “You’re saying that boy”
“Not a boy,” Cee interrupted. “Not if he did this.”
Killer B, silent until now, raised his shades and leaned on the table.
In a low beat, he spoke:
“Yo, big bro, we took a blow.
Konoha played us, they ain’t slow.
Yugito gone, the base is ash,
If we charge now, it’s gonna clash.
Everyone looked at him.
B shrugged.
“I’m just sayin’. That ain’t no normal jutsu. ”
Raikage turned sharply to his inner circle with veins on his forehead, trying not to punch his stupid brother.
“You’re saying we just sit here and do nothing?”
“No,” Mabui said. “We’re saying we act smart.”
“We don’t even know if Yugito is alive,” Cee said. “They may use her to negotiate. And if we march now, they’ll kill her to make a point.”
“We’ve already lost the battle,” the elder said. “Let’s not lose the war too.”
Raikage’s shoulders tensed, his muscles twitching with restrained wrath.
He wanted to fight.
To punch something until it broke.
But even he couldn’t ignore the facts.
The forward base was gone.
Their Two-Tails jinchūriki was captured.
And the attacker was still unidentified.
Mabui stepped forward again.
“Konoha might offer a ceasefire. If they do, we should accept, but make it seem like we are being merciful, not weak. Say we are buying back Yugito’s life. That it was a tactical retreat, not surrender.”
“And what if they don’t offer one?” Raikage asked, voice low.
Cee answered. “Then we prepare. Quietly. We rebuild our forces. We watch them. And when the time comes… we strike where it hurts.”
Raikage looked down at the scorched battlefield map. The northern line was now nothing but a void. A stain of failure.
He hated it.
But he didn’t argue.
Not yet.
He raised his hand.
“Send scouts. Offer a channel. Try to confirm Yugito’s condition.”
Cee and Mabui nodded.
“And find out more about that armored bastard,” the Raikage growled. “If Tsunade has a god of war, I want to know where he came from… and how to kill him.”
No one answered.
They just got to work.
Kumogakure would not forget.
But for now…
The thunder would hesitate.
End of Chapter 95 – The Thunder That Hesitates.
