Jiraiya was the first to arrive at the scene, followed by the ANBU along with Kakashi.
"What happened here, Shizune?" Jiraiya asked gently, his eyes searched for Tsunade but when he didn't find her he showed a puzzled expression, "Also, where's Tsunade? Didn't she go with you?" Jiraiya asked while looking straight at Haruto.
"Tsunade-sama vanished." Haruto said in the most comprehensible way he could.
"Huh? What?" Jiraiya asked looking now at Shizune but Shizune could only nod frantically as she spoke with worry, "Tsunade-sama was about to cure these people but then… then there was that earthquake before we entered the room… and she wasn't here anymore."
Jiraiya frowned.
He tried piecing the words Shizune said together and found himself utterly confused.
He quickly infused his chakra into the floor and the walls of the room and began to inspect it carefully for any signs of altercations.
If Tsunade had left the room without anyone knowing how, she could've only used something similar to the subterranean voyage jutsu to escape.
But…
…there were no signs that the floors or even the walls had been altered in any way.
Jiraiya's frown deepened.
He bent low and began to study the seals on the floor quietly but it was quite hard to picture the new seals entirely with all the people in the way.
Seeing Jiraiya looking at the seals on the floor, Shizune produced a scroll from her pocket, "Jiraiya-sama, this is the seal that Tsunade-sama asked me to draw on the floor."
Jiraiya looked at the scroll for a second and found that the seals seemed completely new and quite complex for him to decipher in a short period of time when Tsunade's life might already be in danger.
"Where did you get these seals from?" Jiraiya asked Shizune, causing her to clench her fist with worry. "Tsunade-sama told me that she deciphered the sealing technique on her own… but I suspect that to not be the case…"
Jiraiya caught the wording that Shizune left hidden in front of the ANBU and quite nodded before turning towards the ANBU and ordering them.
"Don't move anyone in or out of this room. Let the patients here lay inside, they won't know anything since they were unconscious but they might be part of whatever happened unintentionally."
The ANBU nodded and began to cordon off the entire area leaving Shizune to begin sobbing as she repeated the same words over and over.
"I made a mistake… that's why Tsunade-sama is gone… it's all my fault… all my fault…"
Jiraiya tried to console Shizune but she simply turned around and ran away to the Senju compound leaving Jiraiya, Haruto and Kakashi standing there not knowing what to do.
In the end, after watching Jiraiya focus on studying the scroll with Kakashi, Haruto too left the room to go to the Yamanaka compound where he tried to focus on his research with Anko.
The research hadn't been paused, because the tremors earlier in the day had simply been explained away as an earthquake to everyone, and since there were no advanced seismograph instruments in this era there was no way to disprove the fact as well.
However every few minutes into the research, Haruto's focus shifted back to Tsunade and her strange disappearance.
'What exactly happened?' Haruto wondered.
He'd already compared the seal on the ground that Shizune had drawn with the seal he'd given Tsunade using Occlumency to remember every part of both.
But what he couldn't find was a mistake in either.
'Was it really because Tsunade performed soul transmutation that she was kidnapped away?'
'But I do that everyday when I split my soul into Ultra Fighter…'
'Unohana-san… Korosensei… did the two of you feel the presence of any other person in there when Tsunade asked us to leave the room?'
'No… unfortunately not.'
Haruto's frown deepened.
Haruto mindlessly worked with Arakawa to create a receiver for the electric current that would be generated by the clone in the same way it was passed on information in binary by its counterpart.
And after a while they succeeded in recording the first ever message transmitted from one computer to another.
The message was "Hello World!"
But in spite of the technological jump, Haruto wasn't satisfied in the slightest.
If anything he felt a strange sense of discomfort and responsibility towards Tsunade.
'How did Tsunade simply up and vanish?' Haruto thought, controlling the flood of emotions he was feeling against Tsunade's sudden disappearance using Occlumency.
'But who was involved in this?'
'Madara?'
'I doubt he has the free time to be going about kidnapping people so thoroughly right now. He probably has his Eye of the Moon plan to look at.'
'Then Black Zetsu?'
'No… I doubt he has free time… he's probably busy with Madara.'
'So who else is left who might want to kidnap Tsunade?'
'The Sage of Six paths?'
'Nah… who am I kidding… he didn't even step into the world of the living until Kaguya was about to show her face once again.'
Haruto frowned but easily took on the resolve that he would find a way to solve this troublesome situation once and for all.
So Haruto split his soul into Ultra Fighter to send to Jiraiya to give him a hint regarding the possible solution to finding Tsunade.
After which, throughout the day he advanced the internet technology further by changing the fixed rate of information transmission to a variable rate which would be stated before each packet of information was sent.
Now for each packet of information that was transmitted in between two machines, there would first be a handshake packet that would be sent to describe the packet that was about to be sent after which the actual packet would be sent.
It was a little slower but more reliable.
However Haruto was no longer interested in this.
As soon as the day's research quota was finished Haruto rushed to the Senju compound where he looked for Jiraiya first.
"Jiraiya-sama… did you figure out something?" Haruto asked Jiraiya who was sitting on the balcony drinking sake.
Jiraiya looked at Haruto listlessly before speaking softly with a hiccup.
"I do have a lead Haruto-kun… but you must promise me that while I leave… you'll take care of Shizune-nee san… she's feeling quite lo-"
"Where are you going! Have you found a way to bring Tsunade-sama back!? I'm coming with you!" Shizune suddenly said, revealing herself to have been spying on Jiraiya from behind a pillar after having emptied all her chakra to appear like an inanimate object.
Jiraiya sighed.
"Shizune, you need to stay here in case Tsunade comes back here when we're gone." Jiraiya said while trying to make a blatant excuse that didn't even fool Haruto.
"I'm coming and that's final!" Shizune said righteously with fury in her eyes.
Jiraiya looked at Haruto wondering if the boy would also want to come along but thankfully Haruto made no such demands.
In the end Jiraiya nodded while looking at Shizune. "Fine… but you will be listening to my every command during the mission since this one will be quite risky."
Shizune only nodded before rushing off to pack supplies for leaving.
Haruto looked at Jiraiya for a minute before sighing and then shaking his head and leaving to go to his room to study the mutually multiplying exploding tags scroll he'd left there.
With no Tsunade left all he could do was grow stronger for when she returned before they could go attack Madara and finish the problem at its source.
Jiraiya on the other hand looked at Ultra Fighter who was hidden from everyone's gaze and spoke softly.
"Will it be wise to mess with forces beyond human limits? I'm sure Minato sealed up that place for a reason."
***
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