At an Akatsuki meeting several days later.
Pain, the leader of Akatsuki, announced two pieces of news. First, Itachi and Kisame's commissioned mission had failed. Second, Orochimaru had attacked Itachi Uchiha and had now defected from the organization.
Few paid much attention to the former. It was nothing more than a poor little country.
But Orochimaru's defection drew the Akatsuki members' attention, sparking a round of discussion.
After all, Orochimaru had once been one of the Konoha Sannin, and the person he attacked was Itachi Uchiha, another Konoha rogue ninja. It was hard not to speculate that Orochimaru had his eye on Itachi's Sharingan.
At that moment, the newcomer Tobi raised his hand to speak. "First, the operation to investigate Kirigakure failed. Now Orochimaru attacked him. How come the organization's recent failures all have something to do with Itachi? That's really strange..."
Hearing this, Itachi and Kisame glanced at Obito. Obito quickly pulled his head back. "My apologies, seniors. I wasn't trying to make fun of you two, but it really is very strange."
Ignoring Obito's over-the-top acting, Pain slowly said, "Orochimaru betrayed the organization and should be punished. Who is willing to eliminate Orochimaru and uphold Akatsuki's rules?"
Sasori stepped forward and said, "Leave Orochimaru to me. There's some bad blood between us that has yet to be settled."
Pain swept his gaze over the members present, his expression turning somewhat grave. It was not because too few people were willing to hunt Orochimaru down, but because the organization simply had too few members.
Especially after Orochimaru's defection, the organization could not even scrape together five teams. How were they supposed to gather the tailed beasts in the future?
After the Akatsuki meeting ended.
Obito found the Heavenly Path and Konan. Under the latter's watchful gaze, he brought up