They ran for a while in the direction of the first kidnappings, which were curiously close by. They had occurred in small neighbouring villages with populations ranging from 500 to 1,000 people. Finding the affected families was quite easy. They only had to ask someone on the street, and as soon as the villagers saw their ninja headbands, they pointed them in the right direction.
The first family they interrogated let them in quickly. Apparently, they were among those who had alerted Konoha along with other families.
"We've been expecting you! Come in, come in," said the lady of the house. "I'll prepare something to eat and drink and call my husband. Excuse me for a second."
She let them settle around a Japanese-style table with comfortable cushions. Naruto, Sasuke, and Seina scanned the house for clues, but nothing stood out. They focused on the family photos atop a chest of drawers. From what they could see, it was a family of four: the parents, a small boy around ten years old, and a five-year-old girl.
"When did you realize your son was missing?" she asked after they had all exchanged greetings and accepted a cup of tea.
"Fifteen days ago. My son brought lunch to my husband every day. That day, he left home with the prepared meal but never reached his destination," Himeko said in a trembling voice. "That's how I know exactly when he was taken."
"Do you have any idea who it could have been? Any enemies? Anyone suspicious? A stranger lurking around in the days before?"
"No. We all know each other, so if a stranger had appeared, we would have noticed."
"We don't have enemies either," her husband, Takeshi, shook his head. "As my wife said… we all know each other, we've been neighbours for years. Who could do such a thing?"
"Where exactly do you work, Mr. Sakai?"
"I'm a carpenter. Some days we work inside the village, in the workshop, and other days we go a couple of kilometres outside the village to cut trees for materials. That day, I was working outside the village."
The man gave them the exact location where he had been working in the forest that day. The Sakais couldn't provide any further information. Seina asked for a photo of the boy, duplicating it to include in the report Sasuke had been compiling with everything they had discovered. Meanwhile, Naruto examined the perimeter of the house but found no clues.
They questioned several villagers, as well as the missing boy's friends and acquaintances. Most couldn't provide new or relevant information. According to his friends, Yuji Sakai had no new friends, hadn't met any strangers, had no plans to run away, and had no secret hideout in the forest…
After that, they headed to the neighbouring town, where they received a similar reception. The only one available to speak to them was the missing boy's mother, who couldn't stop crying.
"I know my son didn't run away. I know something happened to him. Someone must have kidnapped him right here in the village!"
"Do you know anyone who might have been interested in him? Any new friends? A boyfriend or girlfriend…?"
"No. Of course not. My son had just turned ten. He wasn't interested in those things and always played with the same children. If anything had changed, he would have told me."
They asked for a photo of her son and his details before leaving. Friends and acquaintances had no useful information either, so they left empty-handed. Seina blinked as she looked at the black-eyed, smiling boy in the picture and handed a copy to Sasuke for his report.
They left the village in search of the next family. They spent a couple of hours running back and forth, interrogating the relatives of each of the kidnapped children. When they left the fifth house, Seina had the nagging feeling that she was missing something. She made them stop in the middle of the forest to go over what they had so far.
"We know practically nothing. None of them are ninjas," Sasuke frowned. "Even if they believe they didn't see a stranger watching their children, that doesn't mean it's true."
"Teme has a point. But it's strange that so many people agree that no one new arrived in the village at the time of the disappearances."
"That only means two things: either they didn't notice because whoever it was is skilled enough to go unnoticed, or the kidnappers are people they know," she summarized. "Mmmm… Let me see the reports we have so far."
Seina laid out each report side by side in chronological order according to the date of disappearance. As soon as she stepped back to analyse them, she noticed a common denominator. Beside her, Sasuke made a sound of surprise as he realized the same thing.
"There seems to be a pattern," she mused aloud. "Look at their physical appearances."
"And their ages."
"Are you saying the kidnapper likes small children with dark hair and eyes?" Naruto asked. Her new brother and she exchanged glances before turning to him. "Huh. Like the bastard."
"We should question the other families. If we're right, all eighteen kidnapped children will have similar features and be of a young age."
They spent the entire day asking the same questions to thirteen more families, as well as their friends and acquaintances. Everyone agreed that the children hadn't run away, hadn't met anyone new, had no enemies, and had seen nothing unusual. It was a real mystery—or everyone was as blind as a mole.
That night, after setting up camp on the outskirts of the last village they had visited, they ate while discussing the case.
"We were right. Someone has a very specific taste," she said, looking at the eighteen profiles with duplicated photographs of children who shared similar features.
"The youngest is ten, and the oldest is fourteen," Naruto mused aloud.
"Actually, most of them are between ten and twelve," Sasuke corrected, sorting the files by age.
"Do you think that's just a coincidence?" Naruto asked innocently.
"Naru… I think they're being kidnapped because they haven't yet developed adult male characteristics," she explained as briefly as possible.
"Charac—Like beards and stuff?"
"Yeah. Whoever is behind this… must prefer children who look like this. Look at the ones who are thirteen or fourteen. They don't have a single facial hair, and their appearance is still very childish."
"He's a paedophile," Sasuke interjected, his expression severe and cold.
"I'm afraid so…"
Naruto's disgusted and shocked expression made her sigh. Her brother was still quite innocent at times. Seina, who knew all the tricks for investigating these types of cases and many other police situations, began explaining her plan.
"First, we need to organize the reports in the order the kidnappings occurred. We'll mark the locations on the map where they were taken. That will show us the direction the kidnapper has moved over the past few weeks," she told them. "Also, all of them mentioned that there was no new person in the village. So, we have two options for the kidnapper: either a ninja or someone familiar. To rule out the second option, we'll have to reinvestigate which people left the village a couple of days before and after each abduction."
"Do we have to go village by village again?" Naruto asked. "Why do we need to know that?"
"Naruto, think about it. Every family said they didn't see anyone 'new' in the village, and I quote," she explained. "That doesn't mean there wasn't someone familiar who could have kidnapped the kids. If it was someone known, it would make sense for them to pretend they weren't in the village or leave a few days after the abduction to create an alibi."
"That would mean they have a place to keep the children for a few days before leaving the village," Sasuke said. "That's actually a solid hypothesis."
"Honestly, the idea that a ninja is behind this is hard for me to believe," she shrugged.
"Why?" Sasuke asked, looking at the files. "What have you noticed?"
"Eh? Is there something else in the reports we can deduce?" Naruto asked.
"Look at this," she said, pulling out 12 of the 18 files. "In all these cases, the kidnappings happened in isolated locations. The kidnapper waited until they were alone, away from the places they usually frequented. That tells me two things: 1) they knew them and had been stalking them beforehand, and 2) they preferred to wait because it made the abductions easier."
"Hn. Damn. You're good," Sasuke admitted with admiration as he realized what she meant. He glanced at Naruto, who was frowning in thought. "Dobe. Why would a ninja need to stalk them so much when they could just take them from their own room without anyone noticing? They're civilians. They wouldn't have resisted any ninja. Not even a genin."
"Exactly. The fact that they went through so much trouble to make the kidnapping easier strongly suggests that it was a civilian who took them," she nodded firmly. "Plus, no one noticed the abductions that happened inside the villages. A ninja wouldn't be so reckless as to carry out so many kidnappings, knowing that Konoha would investigate sooner or later."
"Which means the kids knew the kidnapper. They likely followed them somewhere secluded or something similar."
"They either knew them or it was someone they were supposed to trust. Maybe even someone who was supposed to be harmless."
By the time they finished marking the locations, organizing the files chronologically, and reviewing all the information, it was already midnight. The three of them stared at the map in confusion. Then, she remembered how her spell had behaved when she had tried to locate the missing children with her magic.
"I think it's possible they have an accomplice," she said. "Do you remember my spell? It seemed like they weren't being held in the same place, yet the kidnapper was heading west. Look at the map."
She pointed to the route the kidnapper had been taking—it was almost circular.
"You're right. Someone has to be watching over the children and feeding them. Otherwise, how could they have kidnapped 18 kids in less than 22 days?"
"You know what this reminds me of?" Naruto asked aloud. "A mission I had where I had to escort some merchant bandits. They stopped in each village along a trade route every one or two days. They sold their products in an improvised shop and then left with their caravans."
Seina and Sasuke exchanged glances.
"That's very possible. If they're merchants who visit these villages repeatedly during certain seasons, it would mean the villagers have known them for a long time."
"And wouldn't suspect them. But why start kidnapping kids now?"
"Interesting question..." Seina murmured to herself. "We should leave that for tomorrow. We're not going to solve anything else tonight."
At dawn the next day, Seina was quietly thinking about a plan while eating breakfast.
"Today, I'd focus on finding the kidnappers. Even if they're not near the accomplices or the missing kids, they must have information on where the children are being held and why they're being taken."
"Why not rescue the kids first?"
"Because if we do that, we'll alert the kidnappers, and they'll go into hiding for as long as necessary until we leave, only to start again later. Besides, they might try to… get rid of the evidence before we go after them"—and part of the evidence was the children themselves.
"I don't like it," Naruto clicked his tongue, "but you're right."
She used her spell to guide the team and shorten their travel time, now that they had a clearer idea of the modus operandi. The kidnappers weren't keeping the children; they were handing them over to an accomplice. No wonder her spell had gone haywire. However, as she had told Sasuke and Naruto, the kidnappers should know where they were delivering the kids. That would lead their team straight to the missing children without having to search the entire map with magic, saving them a lot of time.
They ran at full speed westward, following the arrow of her spell. It didn't take them long to reach a small town filled with children playing and shouting outside under the watchful eyes of their mothers. Before anyone could notice them, Seina grabbed her brothers by the arms.
"Look," she said, pointing at some wagons entering the town at that moment. "It could be one of those traveling merchants."
"What do we do? We need solid proof, right?"
"I have a plan," she grinned, eyeing Sasuke from head to toe. He looked at her with slight concern.
Minutes later, they snuck into the village unnoticed. Sasuke, dressed as a civilian, sighed before stepping onto a dirt road under a compulsion spell. Naruto and Seina followed him silently.
"You think this will work?" her brother whispered.
"Of course. Not only is Sasuke more attractive than most civilian kids, but he also fits the kidnappers' profile—he's alone and under one of my spells. If someone is looking for a child with these characteristics, they'll be drawn to him."
Sasuke wandered around the village as if distracted. He ignored the curious looks from some villagers who were probably wondering who he was and casually strolled through the more secluded areas of the village. It took hours before they finally saw something interesting.
"Look," Naruto nudged her with his elbow.
He subtly nodded toward a couple of wagons strategically placed under some trees, a bit removed from the main streets. They moved closer, watching as two men were handling one of the carts. They seemed to be stacking large pieces of leather hides. She observed them curiously. Then, as if it were fate, Sasuke walked by with his hands in his pockets, staring at the birds like a complete idiot.
Both men's heads snapped up instantly, as if by magic. At that moment, she knew they had their targets. She watched as they subtly scanned the surroundings. One of them caught Sasuke's attention, lifting a piece of leather as if trying to sell it to him. Sasuke approached with a blatantly fake smile, which fooled no one—except the kidnappers.
"Let me show you my merchandise," one of them said jovially. He stood up as if he had all the time in the world and walked to the other side of the cart.
The other man remained standing, working on something while looking the other way. Clearly keeping watch. Sasuke approached the back of the wagon, which was right under the large tree, hidden by the second wagon. If she hadn't been watching them closely, she wouldn't have seen how they struck Sasuke on the head with an iron tool and quickly shoved him inside the wagon before covering him with a pile of furs.
Naruto and Seina exchanged glances. They had sensed Sasuke's genjutsu, so they knew he was awake and conscious. She gestured to Naruto to follow her. Once hidden among the branches of the tree, watching as they continued selling some leather goods and handcrafted ropes, she cast the Imperius curse on both men, forcing them to stop what they were doing and follow her.
"Don't move. I'm leading them out of the village."
"Great," Sasuke muttered. Seina held back a laugh upon hearing how fed up he was with the smell of leather.
It took them half an hour to leave the village again and head toward a nearby clearing where no one was around. As soon as they were alone, Sasuke shot out from under the leather. Naruto and Seina silently chuckled at the sight.
"Let's start the interrogation," Sasuke said as he changed clothes right there without a hint of shame and strapped his weapons back in place.
"I just have to order them to tell me everything," she interjected. "It'll be a piece of cake."
And it was. The two kidnappers told them their story. Apparently, neither of them was a paedophile nor had any particular desire to kidnap children, but according to them, they had no choice. A couple of months ago, they had met a man—someone who supplied them with materials. This person had irrefutable proof of both merchants' infidelities, so he started blackmailing them, threatening to reveal their extramarital affairs to their wives. One of those affairs had even resulted in a bastard child whom one of them secretly supported by sending money to his lover. At first, the men had accepted the blackmail, thinking it would be an easy exchange. However, the blackmailer wanted them to use their position as traveling merchants to deliver to him a ten-year-old boy with black hair and black eyes, whom he had become obsessed with during one of his trips to another village.
"Obviously, we refused!" one of them answered, his face twisted in disgust. "We're not the best husbands in the world, but we're not kidnappers or paedophiles!"
"We told him no and that we were going to report his perversions to the authorities, but Morio didn't like that at all..." the other man said, his face filled with pain. "The next day, our children disappeared, and they sent me a basket with my daughter's hand. There was a note saying that we had forced his hand, and if we didn't accept his request, the next thing he'd send would be her head."
"But why didn't you ask Konoha for help?" Naruto asked, his voice filled with anger and disbelief. "We could have rescued your families without you having to accept the blackmail!"
"Don't you see, kid? He had already sent us a hand! If we hadn't delivered the first child that very same day, he would have sent us one of our children's heads! Would he have been arrested? Yes, but he would have killed our children first."
"At that moment, we didn't have the money to pay for a ransom with the help of the ninja, so I did what I had to do," he sobbed, his voice a mix of guilt, regret, and pain. "But then… then it was too late to turn back. I knew what awaited those kids. And it was my fault for being his accomplice. Once he tasted the first one…"
"He didn't want to stop."
Sasuke looked at them with disgust, watching as they cried on the ground. Naruto, pale as snow, was silent, processing the realization that the kidnapped children had most likely been raped—or worse. Seina finished interrogating Morio Urayama's accomplices, the true mastermind behind the whole scheme, and then knocked them unconscious. Now they knew where the rapist was, so they would go after him and rescue everyone still alive.
"We will hold them in my suitcase's cells for now and go meet Urayama. According to them, he's waiting for the next boy, so we'll confront him and interrogate him as well."
That's how Naruto and Seina transformed into both men using a henge while Sasuke travelled invisibly to avoid detection. It took them almost an hour to reach the meeting point—a neighbouring village where another boy had already been kidnapped. Urayama was waiting for them in one of the inns, unhurried, accompanied by a carriage he used for travel, where he kept the boys bound and gagged until he took them wherever he had them hidden.
Urayama saw her enter alone, without the wagon, so he got up from the terrace where he had been drinking tea and, without speaking to her to avoid drawing attention, paid his bill and gathered his things, ready to leave as soon as possible. Seina, waiting for him outside alongside Naruto, saw him appear with his own carriage and a pair of horses.
"Ah, Kijuro… I knew you wouldn't fail me," he said with a malicious smile. "I want to see him."
Sasuke suddenly deactivated the bracelet and punched him in the nose. Naruto looked like he wanted to land one on him too, but he settled for watching, just like Seina, as Sasuke tied him up and sat him on the ground, blood dripping from his nose. He seemed stunned to have been caught, though he couldn't help but leer at Sasuke with a lustful gaze. Seina realized in that instant that he wasn't right in the head. His perversions had rotted his brain so much that he didn't care about getting caught as long as he could rape a few more children.
"Did you really think we wouldn't find out, Urayama?" Sasuke hissed. "You're scum."
"I'm not telling you anything," he spat, blood dripping onto the ground.
"There's no need," she said calmly. "Imperius."
Urayama sang like a canary. He told them how his obsession had started with the son of a noble family he did business with. He met the boy when he was young, but his victim was so well-protected that Urayama never dared touch him, despite craving it, until he became an adult. When the boy became a teenager and no longer looked like a little child, he stopped paying attention to Urayama, focusing instead on girls his own age. Enraged, the impossibility of having that boy, combined with his carnal desires, drove him mad, sparking an obsession and an insatiable hunger. Then, by chance, he saw a ten-year-old boy who looked strikingly similar to the one who had slipped through his fingers.
He also confessed that he quickly realized the child was heavily protected because everyone in the village knew each other. For a while, he thought about how to take him without anyone noticing until he realized there were people with easy access to the boy without raising suspicion: the traveling merchants.
"I personally paid that whore to sleep with Kijuro over and over again. I gave her a hefty sum to get pregnant by him. The slut accepted because she knew he was married, that he had a family, and that besides my money, she could squeeze Kijuro for money in exchange for her silence," Urayama laughed maliciously. "The funniest part of it all was realizing she wasn't the first whore he'd slept with. So, with that information and photographic evidence, I knew I could blackmail them."
"Why did you think they wouldn't report you?" Sasuke asked.
"Why? For two reasons: Kijuro and Fujioka weren't exactly the right people to be pointing fingers at others for their supposed sins. And besides, I had direct access to their families."
"But why?! You knew you were going to get caught sooner or later!"
"I know. Haven't you ever had an uncontrollable urge to do something, kid? Maybe you're too young, but I didn't care as long as I could fuck that boy who got away from me. You can arrest me now, it doesn't matter to me," he reiterated without a hint of fear, "but I've already gotten what I wanted."
Seina squeezed her brother's shoulder, seeing his face turn green with nausea. Sasuke, though disgusted, looked more furious than sorrowful.
"Who said anything about arresting you?" she asked in a low voice. "You're going to suffer the way your victims did, I'm afraid."
She cast a karma curse on him and knocked him unconscious. Naruto couldn't hold it in any longer and vomited at the base of a tree. She placed Urayama inside her suitcase, locking him in a cell, and returned. She shrank the wagons and all the supplies while Naruto and Sasuke pulled themselves together. Neither of them had ever undertaken an A-rank mission like this before. Lower-rank missions had nothing to do with the kinds of tasks expected of ninjas in higher-ranked missions. It wasn't just about protecting, spying, or killing other ninjas anymore...
Sasuke, sensing her thoughts, sat down on a log.
"Have you ever had another mission like this?" he asked, seeking reassurance.
"I'm afraid so…" she sighed. "Not all high-rank missions are about the ninja world. Sometimes they're about the capabilities of the ninja hired to carry them out, despite whatever they might… encounter along the way. Rape, torture, slavery, kidnappings, blackmail… These things aren't exclusive to the ninja world, you know? That's why not all chunin are equipped to handle missions like this."
"But why do something like that?" Naruto asked again. "It's like nothing mattered to him as long as he could—he could… rape them."
"Because nothing does matter to him," Sasuke answered. "He's sick."
"Exactly. People like that… shouldn't be allowed to live in society."
"I don't know if I could've done this A-rank mission without you," Sasuke admitted. "I would have killed them in my rage."
"It's your first A-rank mission. That's why I'm here."
Otherwise, a pair of chunin wouldn't have been sent alone. Still, she understood why Tsunade-sama had given them such a brutal mission as their "band-aid" mission. With her, someone they trusted, they could face the reality of being jonin and high-ranking ninjas more gradually. That was exactly what had been done with her. She had been placed on a team with Tenzou, one of her senseis, for her "first" A-rank mission as a tokubetsu jonin. That's why the first A-rank mission was called the "band-aid mission": once it was ripped off, it was easier to move forward.
"Let's go rescue those kids," she said, standing up suddenly. "We still have a lot of work to do."
With newfound determination, Naruto rinsed his mouth, and Sasuke got up from the log. They took off running toward Urayama's hideout to rescue the kidnapped children and any others who were still alive.