At the edge of a clearing in the woods, Tobi crouched on a horizontal tree branch.
He was neither too high nor too low. The shadow of the canopy concealed most of his body, revealing only the spiral pattern at the upper right corner of his mask. He neither moved nor made a sound. The Sharingan visible through the mask's eyehole tracked the movements of the two people on the forest path below through gaps in the leaves.
"It's always good to observe first," Tobi said slowly.
Deidara threw a spider bomb at him first, but Sasuke Uchiha cleaved it apart with a single sword strike.
Sasuke Uchiha was starting to get annoyed.
"Do you even know where Itachi is?"
"No." Deidara's left hand clenched again, a trace of white clay powder seeping from between his fingers. "But I know how to find him."
Sasuke Uchiha did not ask again. He placed his hand back on the sword hilt, but did not draw it. "You only came looking for me because you couldn't beat Itachi. Your plan was doomed from the start. You're not even worthy of being my opponent."
"Fine, Sasuke Uchiha. You've successfully pissed me off."
Deidara gave up on tangling with Sasuke Uchiha at close range, but in doing so, lost some of his initiative.
Deidara was half a beat faster than usual, forced into it by Sasuke Uchiha.
Tobi noticed a detail—every time Sasuke Uchiha evaded, he would naturally return to a fixed position, with an error of no more than half a meter.
It was not a habit. It was a tactic.
He was using the terrain of this woodland to confine Deidara's attack range to a narrow strip.
Deidara had not noticed this detail.
He was attacking faster and faster, but the more he