The Way Into Mist Village (Naruto)

24: Examining Evidence

[OP: "Second Child, Restless Child"--The Oh Hellos]

"They're gone!" Shine cried, when they'd told her after they had time to wash their eyes out.

She blinked some more. "Crap. Everything is still a huge blur..."

"Let me see." Sakura moved and then took a light and shone it in her eyes. "Your pupils are dilated too much... Hmm." She infused chakra into her hand and felt Shine's eyes--well, sort  of.

"Is that going to work on her?" Shoto asked.

"She still had the same body parts, right?" Karin said. "It should."

"But they're gone." Shine wasn't paying attention to Sakura that much.

"We checked everywhere," Dabi said. "Those dirty ninja must have taken them. Neji too. But only the three of them. They were clearly after Sasuke, but of course he's always so lucky."

"I wouldn't call it luck that Shine got to him first," Wally said. "Just Shine being good at her job."

"How good can I be if I lost three of my students in a few minutes?" Shine said, dejected.

"Likstar-san," Mei said, "I'm certain it was not your fault, because, from my assessment, I believe they must have been taken before we even arrived. Hinata-san found some traces of chakra around the walls outside that indicate they were walked on longer ago than the ones who just ran for it. And as I understand it, the exploding one stopped attacking sooner than that, which suggests he was incapacitated."

"That's what I remember," Sai confirmed. "I couldn't see a thing."

Though all of them had had stinging eyes, only Shine and Sasuke still couldn't see effectively now that they rinsed.

Sakura checked Sasuke too, since he couldn't see her to stop her.

"Well," she said, "I don't sense any damage to your optic nerve, but it does seem like it's a little... jarred, maybe? Shock can do it. But I think if it was this fog, it'll probably pass. Your vision isn't totally gone, so it can't really have fully worked. It'll probably heal itself, but I can speed it up. Still not sure I can fix it in less than a few hours... It's delicate work, and I can't touch it exactly, so I'd be more of speeding up it healing on its own."

"That's fine," Shine sad.

"Maybe I can do it," Momo said.

But nothing happened when she tried.

"It's just not serious." Shine put a good spin on it. "I find if it will heal on its own, often a miracle doesn't happen. It still burns though."

"That's because your eyes are inflamed," Sakura said. "Better just ice it or something for now... I wish we had a sample of this fog. It has to be some kind of toxin. I might be able to nullify it if I got a sample, but the water would have taken it off..."

"Even if you could make an antidote for it," Momo said, "if we couldn't diffuse it, it wouldn't matter."

"I could," Mei said. "But it takes time. I've sent people out to try to detain these people, but it may be too late. We have no idea where they went. Apparently no one saw them leave. Their fog is certainly an effective disguise."

"You'd think people would notice a big cloud around the kage house," Dabi said.

"But at the time the guards said they didn't see anything at all," Temari said. She'd grilled them while the others were in the bathroom. "Must have been a genjutsu or something. A very clever one if they didn't notice."

"I can heal Sasuke faster," Karin said to Sakura. "I have a way."

"What way is that?" Sakura asked suspiciously.