Chapter 51: Humanitarian effort

To say that Sunagakure was a mess was an understatement. You couldn’t even call it a village anymore. It was now a huge crater with not a single building standing up. Temari had left the group at the sight of her destroyed home with an expression of horror, distress and anger on her face.

“It’s awful.” whispered Hinata by his side.

She and Ino, because of their medical knowledge (especially Hinata), were among the medic-nins that Tsunade had dispatched. They were not the only familiar faces that had joined the Suna relief group. The rest of Team 10 had volunteered to no one’s surprise. Ino was joining Riku and Shikamaru was showing support to Temari who he was dating. With Asuma and Hinata present, Team 8 came along too. While Kurenai’s skills in genjutsu wouldn’t be that useful, Kiba and Shino would be invaluable to help find people. Little Sarutobi Mirai, Asuma and Kurenai’s two years old daughter was more than happy to spend time with her grandfather and her cousin Konohamaru. Sakura, one of the best medic-nin in Konoha was also present and with Naruto here, Kakashi had tagged along which in turn made Team Gai tagged along. In other words the whole ‘Konoha eleven’ as they were called was on the operation.

Riku opened his book of seals and pulled a page out of it. Separating himself from the group to have a lot of space, he put it on the ground and unsealed the huge wooden… room that Yamato had created. He deactivated the barrier covering it and Signaled Yamato to retract the wood, which he did. Thirty Konoha-nin were revealed.

“Is something wrong?” asked one of them.

“We’ve arrived.” stated Riku.

“Already?!”

“It’s been three days though to you it’s only been a second.”

“Man, that’s neat.”

Signaling everyone to gather in front of him he gave them instructions. Trackers were to go help immediately the Suna-nin in charge of finding survivors, Medic-nin where to go to the injured and to treat as many as they could while the medical tents and equipment were being installed. The shinobi who were neither of those types were to relieve the sunan-nin in charge of Security. That left Naruto who was making clones who will join the group security and the group tracking along with Kushina’s clones. Riku and Kushina themselves were to put up seals

“Alright everyone, if at any moment you have a question on what you should do, ask a jonin from Suna.”

Everyone scattered and Riku let out the Botib. And took from it all the materials necessary. Tents were quickly set up, the beds added. A shelf with medicines inside of it in each medic tent, while the normal ones were used for the simple rest of exhausted Shinobi or used as a mess. On Riku’s orders Yamato created closed rooms inside the tents to convert them into operating rooms. Had he got the time; Riku would have just expanded the space inside but he didn’t. Kushina had come up with an idea and repurposed the seals for waste in the Botib for sterilizing the operation rooms and the inside of the medical tents.

After asking for a huge wooden floor on the sand from Yamato, Riku began to draw the resurrecting seal on it. Should the person being dead still warm, it was still possible to use remnants of the chakra inside their body to bring them back. In the meantime his clones were applying a Time seal on the operating rooms and putting in place a self-creating seal for healing tags. He quickly made a new one for sterilizing the tool used for surgery or any healing in general by copying Kushina’s seal. In half an hour they were ready to receive people and he sent one of his clones to warn everyone.

Patient never stopped coming and the Time seals were a godsend. People were able to rest a full eight hours of sleep in a few seconds in the outside world. While the situation was grim, seeing people at death’s door entering a room and coming out ready to work and help an hour later was raising the morale greatly and gave hope to everyone. When the first resurrection happened, everyone had looked at Riku weirdly. He didn’t care, he didn’t have the time for that. Way too many people to save. He kept going and going without stopping and it was Kushina that forced him to take a break. She had dedicated a clone to the study to the time seal to recreate it herself. It was not perfect because it was done in haste but good enough to allow some hours of sleep to everyone that wasn’t directly involved in the medical tent.

“Thank you.” Riku heard from the side as he let himself fall down on the bed. Turning his head to the side he saw a dead tired Temari sitting on the edge on their own bed, ready to lay down and rest too.

“You’re welcome. Konoha couldn’t let their only ally in such a situation.”

“I wasn’t thanking Konoha, I was thanking you. If everything is going so smoothly and so many people end up surviving…  That’s all thanks to you and your seals. Heck! You brought back people to life! How crazy is that?!” she exclaimed and made Riku chuckled tiredly.

“I dream of being the greatest medic in the world. Death is just another challenge to overcome to reach that status. You’re welcome nonetheless.”

“Temari-sama!”

A Suna-nin entered in a hurry inside the makeshift barracks, panic obvious in his voice. On the spot the dirty blonde Kunoichi was on her feet. Dead tired but on her feet. Riku was listening attentively.

“What is it?”

“We have reports from scouts! It’s Iwa! They’re invading!”

“They what?!” she shouted in disbelief and horror.

“A force of a thousand ninjas have crossed the border with the Land of Birds. As we speak they’re probably only three hours away North!”

“Damn it! We don’t have the-”

“I’ll take care of it.” Riku said as he pushed himself up from his bed. “I’ll have to take a bed from a patient under one of my Time seals to be at one hundred percent though. Who am I kidding? They’ll only be waiting eight seconds, ten at best.”

“That’s one thousand ninjas! You’re mad if-”

“It’s alright I have a surprise for them, they won’t cause any problem. Make sure everyone keeps doing what they are doing.”

“I… But…”

“I've got this. You, make sure she rests, she can’t lead if she’s tired.” Riku said to the Suna ninja and left the room for another one with better Time Dilation. The one he had just been using was only doubling the speed of time. Iwa would have arrived before he would be ready to fight. There was no doubt in his mind that the stone village wasn’t coming here to help, not when Iwa and Suna had been bitter enemies for decades.

He went to one of the medic tents, picked a patient that was close to being released and switched places with them for ten seconds before switching back. Now fully rested he joined the command tent where a few jonin were making a plan.

“I need someone to show me on the map where they are.”

“Where is-” began an uncooperative sand jonin.

“Temari is resting, she has no time to deal with Iwa. I do, however, now where are they?”

“There. They made a detour to avoid the blood worms area.” Shikamaru pointed to a red zone on the map and Riku got a good look.

“Alright. I’m on this, get back to the relief effort.” he announced and began to leave.

“Alone? What are you going to do?” a chunin asked.

“Take a page from my father’s book.”

“Oh.” Kakashi let out as he looked at Riku’s disappearing back. He let out a chuckle that confused and unnerved most shinobi in the tent.

“Kakashi?” Gai asked.

“Riku is going to make the second rendition of the battle of Kanabi bridge.”

“Oh. Oh?!  Oooooooh.” Gai laughed nervously.

“Can one of you enlighten us suna-nin?” a young chunin asked, clearly too young to know.

“Riku’s father is the Yondaime Hokage who killed a thousand Iwa-nin in a matter of minutes at Kanabi bridge during the Third Shinobi War. It was such a slaughter that Iwa retreated and seeked for peace.” he explained and left the tent to follow his former teammate.

Riku was already on the move across the sand. He shushined away as far as he could without the continuous use of the jutsu eating too much at his chakra reserves. From his calculation he stopped to rest a bit when he knew that Iwa was only a quarter an hour away. He also made preparations. He had unsealed a hundred wooden shurifuin and used the Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu to create as many clones as he could. Once the sand field was littered with them he used the bit of chakra he had left for a Great breakthrough and hid the shurifuins in the sand. He sat down and began to meditate to recover his chakra a bit faster. Not like he would need much of it, what he had now despite being a little was more than enough but you never know.

“You shouldn’t have come.” He said when he felt two presences arriving behind him.

“We’re Leaf-nins, we move in teams even when only one of us is needed for the job.” the silvered hair jonin replied nonchalantly.

“Kakashi’s right. We’re just here in case something goes wrong. And It’s not like we’ll be missed for the effort. We’re part of the security group to begin with.” Gai added.

Riku said nothing but he appreciated the gesture and the words. That didn’t stop him from feeling all alone. He was about to commit mass murder and they were not. They couldn’t understand. He could choose to not go through with it of course. Kill only a few. Showed them that with the Hiraishin in play they had no chance. He couldn’t take the risk however. Konoha needed to make a statement of strength and solidarity. Not just to Iwa but to every shinobi village in the Elemental Nations. Fucking with Konoha and her allies was not an option they could take lightly without being ready to pay the price. The message needed to be completely ruthless as a result.

When the Iwa troops showed themselves, he shushined right before the first line.

“Look at that! A tree hugger lost in-”

He didn’t say anything more. He couldn’t. Riku had teleported right beside him in a green flash and swiped the man’s head with one of his hands. In less than a second the Iwa-nin’s head expanded and exploded in a rain of blood, gore and brain matter.

“You shouldn’t have come. Now you die.”

The iwa-nins were too shocked by what just happened to move. Both by the sudden gruesome death of one of their own and by the green flash that happened just before it. The veterans of the Third Shinobi War were reminded of a yellow flash and dread gripped their hearts. Before they could order the retreat or the all out attack, Riku was already teleporting away. So fast that he didn’t even appear in their eyes. All they saw was green flashing and someone exploding. Every second three ninjas died then Riku began using shadow clones thinking it wasn’t going fast enough. In 37 seconds everyone was dead with one exception. Riku had let one shinobi live.

“I’m Senju Riku. Son of Senju Tsunade and Namikaze Minato. Go back home and tell your Kage that one more move like that against Konoha or her allies and I’ll personally come to wipe out your cesspool of village, like he did Uzushiogakure. Got it?”

The shaking iwa-nin nodded in fear so fast that Riku thought his neck would break.

“Go.”

He didn’t need to tell the defeated man twice who miraculously found strength in his legs and ran away as fast as he could. Looking around, Riku witnessed the carnage he had made with his bare hands. There was more red than brown. Body parts everywhere. He wanted to vomit. It was messy. He never could handle messy like this. Even when he had to practice surgery he felt squishy when it looked really bad. Taking a deep breath, he channeled his chakra and all the real wooden shurifuins teleported right into his hands. Sealing them back into his BoS, he went back to Kakashi and Gai. They said nothing and just were there, waiting for him to do something.

“Let’s go back.” was all he said and grabbed their shoulders before teleporting them back to the camp.

He didn’t say anything more. He just left them there and he went back to work as if nothing ever happened, under the two jonins eyes.

“Kakashi.”

“I know. Only sensei could help him with… this. Come on, let's report to the others.”

When Riku arrived at the main medical tent, he saw a huge influx of wounded. Catching an able shinobi he was able to learn that the tracking and rescue team had found a lot of people in an underground cavern right under the village. Not all people died in the crush of Suna, there were many who were just buried with the building and some Shinobi used earth jutsu to protect everyone by going underground, the problem was that maintaining the sand away had cost lots of chakra and they were too weak to bring the people out. And that was not even considering the tones of rubbles above their heads. As a result the medical staff, even with the help of Time seals were overworked and couldn’t deal with everyone.

Riku resolved himself and activated his Byakugou. Using natural chakra he poured as much of it as he could into summoning Katsuyu in her biggest form.

“Ri-kun?”

“Katsuyu-chan I need your help! All those people need to be healed!” he shouted from her head.

“I’ll help.” were the few words the slug said as she divided into smaller slugs and began to reach people to heal them.

Riku landed softly on the ground and sat down. After using that much chakra his reserves were almost dangerously empty and he decided to take a nap here and there.