"Long time no see. I'm back again."
Late at night, in the Leaf cemetery, Jin looked at the Fourth Hokage's gravestone, a faint smile flickering across his face.
After setting down the dango and sake he'd prepared in advance, he chatted on and on for a while.
He'd been doing this for three years.
Ever since he could use the Flying Thunder God Technique to travel more than two hundred meters, he'd started openly evading the Anbu and coming here to pay his respects.
Of course, "paying his respects" was just a nice way of putting it. What he was really doing was—touching corpses.
Because of the corpse cooldown, he could only come once a year.
This was his third time.
After paying his respects, he bowed his head and clasped his hands in prayer, like a devout young man who had completed a ritual. "Big Brother Minato, you've got to give me something good this time, right?"
Three years.
And all he'd gotten were two lousy Green Traits.
For the Fourth Hokage, that was practically a disgrace!
As he spoke, he quietly slipped both hands in front of him when no one was looking.
A faint golden glow gradually surfaced across his palms.
Golden Body of Light!
After six years, he'd made tremendous progress in mastering the skill.
He could even transform parts of his body into golden light.
But this time, when he reached his hands into the ground, he was baffled.
He rummaged around.
Nothing.
He tried the neighboring grave, Kushina's, too.
Still empty!
Where were the bodies?!
Jin was stunned.
The bodies had been there the last few times. How had they suddenly—disappeared?
"Orochimaru?"
"Did that guy come this early...?"
He sighed and shifted his gaze from the gravestones of Minato and Kushina to the others.
The First and Second Hokage weren't buried here.
Though they had gravestones, he'd touched them three years ago. They were empty.
As for the other shinobi...
Most of their corpses had rotted away so badly that there was nothing left to touch.
At the edge of the cemetery.
In a tree.
Kakashi watched Jin's small figure, his heart full of mixed feelings.
"Paying his respects?"
"Sensei... I never knew you had such a young admirer."
"Maybe he really is an outlier among the Uchiha?"
"Seen that way, it makes sense that he treats Naruto so well."
At that moment, the string in Kakashi's heart was plucked once more.
After all these years since the Nine-Tails' attack, he'd visited Minato's grave pitifully few times, despite being his student.
Without thinking, he looked in another direction.
A small figure stood there, looking quite resolute.
But when Kakashi looked closer, his eyes suddenly narrowed.
"Rin's favorite flowers? They're fresh..."
"But Rin's family died long ago. How could anyone in the village know about this?"
At that moment, Kakashi was shaken even more deeply.
He had a vague feeling that he was on the verge of grasping something.
But it was stuck just below his lips, almost ready to come out.
And yet it wouldn't.
His own breathing grew slightly uneven as a result.
In the cemetery.
Jin sensed the unsettled Chakra behind him.
His eyes curved into an inscrutable smile. "So he finally noticed something was off about Rin's grave..."
He really wanted to see what might change if Kakashi and Obito met sooner.
Jin had absolutely no fondness for Obito.
There were few villains in Naruto who were purely evil. Most simply held on to different ideals.
Even One-vs-Seven could sometimes be redeemed.
But!
Not Obito!
He could blame others for his lover's death.
But!
Killing the couple who had saved him from death time and time again was much harder to excuse.
Most importantly...
During the Nine-Tails' attack, he'd even tried to go after newborn Naruto.
Those two things had nailed him to the pillar of shame.
"Just you wait. Once I copy Kamui from Kakashi, I'll throw poop into it every day!"
He muttered to himself and was about to get up and try another grave when a faint sound reached his ears.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
A procession of nimble figures suddenly swept past outside the cemetery.
They moved extremely fast.
And made hardly any sound.
If his five senses hadn't been greatly enhanced through the fusion of various traits, he wouldn't have heard them at all.
Puzzled, he turned his head and murmured, "More than a dozen figures? There shouldn't be anything around here—wait, Danzo?! Root?!"
In a flash, he realized that the cemetery was near Root, the organization said to be the foundation of the Leaf!
He'd discovered this by chance three years ago.
Who would've thought Root had a base here?
"What's Root making such a fuss about in the middle of the night? What are they up to?"
Suspicious, he activated the redness in his eyes and the bulging veins around them almost simultaneously.
Sharingan + Byakugan!
In short—Red-White Eye!
Through these eyes, he clearly saw the masks on their faces, each painted with a different animal design.
"It really is Root..."
After confirming their identities, Jin quietly followed them.
They definitely weren't up to anything good in the middle of the night.
What was wrong with secretly touching a couple of corpses while he was at it?!
As he went farther and farther, the trees on either side first grew sparse, then gradually thickened again.
Clearly, they'd traveled from one side of the village to the other.
Unlike the unfamiliar area around the cemetery, Jin knew this place well.
The cliff!
More precisely, the woods atop the cliff!
More and more Root Ninjas swept into the woods atop the cliff and hid themselves.
Some gripped kunai, others shuriken or samurai swords, their hands clenched tight.
All eyes were fixed on one spot.
An old man in a deep purple kimono, with short gray-white hair and bandages, was slowly making his way toward them.
His steps were slow and heavy. Each one fell silently, yet crushed the leaves beneath his feet.
Like a lurking snake, he radiated a wordless menace.
"Danzo? So it really is you!"
By now, the situation was obvious.
That old bastard Danzo was planning to hurt someone again.
Who was his target?
Jin glanced at the woods around him and twitched his lips. Shisui, please remember what I told you.
But on second thought, it didn't seem likely.
Aside from Itachi, the Uchiha weren't exactly known for their brains.
Even the Laughing Madara had gotten his heart ripped out by Black Zetsu after Obito had already ripped it out.
His strength was impressive, but apparently his brains weren't.
"Looks like I might get exposed in a minute..."
"My days of slacking off may soon be over."
Anticipating the battle that was about to break out, Jin drew a shallow breath.
Shisui was a pure, naive idealist. Jin had hinted and spelled things out for him countless times!
But now that he'd stumbled across this, he didn't mind stepping in to help.
He'd make sure to beat Danzo to death!
This was key to delaying the Uchiha clan's extermination!
As for how Itachi would awaken his Mangekyo...
They could worry about that later.
But just as he was about to step in, Danzo suddenly went "poof" and vanished in a gust of wind.
The next second, nearly all the Root Ninjas seemed to receive some kind of signal and quickly darted off in another direction.
Watching the "clone" disappear behind him, Jin frowned.
"So they've already plucked it?"
"Then this isn't where they took his eye?"
Damn it!
Kishimoto, your flashback misled me!
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