Dark Thunder Group

The Dark Thunder Group is a collective drawn largely from missing-nin, united only by the pursuit of their members' individual vendettas. Its roots trace back to a very different organization and a very different set of ideals.

Its origin lies with the Lightning Group, a crew that once devoted itself to aiding the downtrodden, robbing criminals and handing the spoils to struggling settlements such as Bamboo Village. When that group ran afoul of Kirigakure and its people needed a place to hide, not one of the towns they had helped would take them in. Forced to break apart, its members scattered, and among them was Karyū, who scraped by on leftovers to keep from being hunted down and killed by the Mist.

Everything changed when Karyū caught word of Sasuke Uchiha's assault on the Five Kage Summit. Stunned that a kekkei genkai wielder could defy the hidden villages so brazenly, he resolved to live by the same creed: seize whatever he pleased and take revenge on all who had wronged him. Gathering other embittered rogues around him, he founded the Dark Thunder Group, whose ranks ballooned once the Fourth Shinobi World War drew to a close. They began menacing entire regions, and although recruits are lured with promises that their own grudges will be answered, Karyū cares only for his own and treats the rest as expendable muscle.

After wiping out several villages near the Land of Hot Water, the group turned on Bamboo Village, one of the places that had once turned the Lightning Group away. There Karyū met his match in Sasuke, who defeated him and saw the others taken prisoner. Sasuke meant to deliver them to Konohagakure for imprisonment, but that outcome did not satisfy Iō, a Bamboo Village man whose daughter had died in one of the group's earlier raids. Refusing to let them keep their lives while his child was gone, Iō set fire to the shed holding them and perished alongside his captives.

Karyū is the driving force behind the group, a former Lightning Group survivor who twisted his hardship into a campaign of self-serving vengeance. The remaining ranks are filled out mostly by fellow missing-nin, whom Karyū regards as little more than tools for his own ends.