The Intelligence Network Takes Shape

By the second month of the silent period, Shinichi discovered a problem.

His intelligence sources were too limited. Previously, he had relied on intelligence from Root's outer contact network—Snake Face's memory fragments had provided the locations of numerous bases and communication codes, Crow Face's experience in setting traps had allowed him to reverse-engineer Root's key security points, and Dog Face's Sensory Tracking Technique had taught him how to extract information from residual chakra. But these sources all shared one problem: they were dead data. Once Root changed its contact codes, more than half of Snake Face's intelligence became outdated. Once personnel at a base were reorganized, the patrol routes Cat Face had provided became worthless paper. What he needed were living, continuous intelligence sources that could update information on their own.

In the language of his previous life, he needed to establish a distributed real-time data collection system. In the language of shinobi, he needed informants. Not shinobi informants—hiring shinobi was too expensive and too dangerous, and they could easily be traced back to him. He needed informants no one would pay attention to. Such as stray dogs.

There were actually quite a few stray dogs in Leaf Village. After every Shinobi World War, ninja dogs would retire. Some were adopted by the Inuzuka Clan, some were assigned to genin as summoning beasts, while others, too old or injured, simply found a corner and lived out their days in peace. Most descendants of those retired ninja dogs had no contracts. They drifted between the back alleys of vegetable markets, the rear doors of barbecue shops, and the trash bins of Ichiraku Ramen, surviving on handouts from kind people and the occasional bone they managed to snatch. They knew the village as well as any patrol squad, while the villagers had long grown accustomed to their presence. Even Root would not spare a second glance for a mongrel sleeping in a corner.

Shinichi decided to recruit a group of unofficial intelligence agents.

The first step was choosing a location. He selected the fixed feeding point for the strays behind an old shrine in the western part of the village. It was not on Root's patrol routes, far enough from the orphanage that it would not implicate the matron, and far enough from the Ninja Academy that he would not run into his classmates. Behind the shrine lay an overgrown clearing. At its edge, the roots of an old camphor tree jutted above the ground, forming a natural little platform that was perfect for placing food. He named the clearing behind the shrine the "Kennel"—although it had neither doghouses nor fences, the name looked more official in his notebook.

The second step was supplies. The leftover bones from the matron's kitchen were the first choice. In addition to occasionally receiving an extra multigrain bun for helping wash the dishes, he would quietly wrap chicken bones and fish bones in oil paper. Every time the matron finished cleaning up after dinner, she would kick him before sweeping the bones into the trash, meaning, "If you want them, take them already." Sometimes, he saved half a piece of bread from his school lunch, added a short strip of dried fish, wrapped it in oil paper, and tucked it into the inner compartment of his schoolbag. Naruto Uzumaki contributed as well—before Ichiraku Ramen closed, Teuchi would clear away the bits of chashu left in the soup broth and generously pack them for him in small paper bags. Teuchi's reason was, "Naruto, you're already this skinny, and you're still feeding dogs?"

The third step was the key—which dogs had intelligence value? Ordinary strays could only provide the simplest reports of unusual activity, such as, "Someone in a black cloak passed through this alley last night." But the descendants of retired ninja dogs were different. They inherited ninja dog bloodlines, possessed intelligence far beyond ordinary dogs, could understand more complicated commands, distinguish the chakra differences between shinobi and ordinary villagers, and even remember the chakra scent of specific shinobi. The Inuzuka Clan's training system had a basic scent-recognition method that taught ninja dogs to distinguish target types by sniffing the chakra residue on different ninja tools. Shinichi did not have the Inuzuka Clan's official training manual, but he had Crow Face's experience in trap placement—which included extensive knowledge of using animal behavior patterns to design warning systems. From it, he extracted a simplified training method based on field observation: use different types of small meat chunks to establish connections between scents and behaviors, pair kunai carrying chakra residue with specific jerky, and repeat the process for several weeks to make dogs develop conditioned responses to specific chakra types. At present, they could reliably identify Root's marked chakra. They could also distinguish between patrolling chunin and security duty based on the scent of jerky sticks they had been fed many times. It took an entire winter to train the first dog capable of distinguishing Root shinobi chakra from ANBU shinobi chakra. It was an old black-and-white dog—medium-sized, with a slight limp in its right hind leg and an old scar over its left eye. He named it White Paw.

White Paw was the first among the earliest fed dogs to let down its guard around him. It took nearly a month for the dog to go from wary to accepting him, and another half month before it went from eating only unseasoned dried fish to accepting jerky from his palm. It seemed to be the leader of a retired old ninja dog's pack. Most of the dogs appearing around the shrine followed it, and more and more were willing to accept his training.

The intelligence White Paw brought soon proved the value of this unofficial intelligence network. One evening, Shinichi set down a basin of bones behind the shrine. After White Paw finished eating, it did not lie down to sleep as usual. Instead, it carried over a small kunai fragment and placed it by his feet. The fragment was new, its edge still bearing traces of fresh soil, and an extremely faint chakra fluctuation lingered on its metal surface. Shinichi picked it up and scanned it with chakra perception—the frequency of the fluctuation perfectly matched the chakra signature of Root's hidden sentries marked in Snake Face's memory fragments. Furthermore, the scent of soil could only be found around the abandoned warehouses in the northwest of the village. Those warehouses had never been included on the hunting map, but the scrap of metal White Paw had brought pushed them into the center of his attention.

The intelligence network expanded from points into a web. Among the Iron Tail members at the second fixed feeding point, there were more dogs capable of searching outside—such as Bean, a small dog that could squeeze through the narrow gap beneath the iron doors of abandoned warehouses, and Chaluo, a mixed-breed dog whose sense of smell was keen enough to detect the bitter scent of explosive tags through walls and distinguish new tags from old paper charms. Bean confirmed that the warehouse had been changing guards frequently over the past four or five days. Chaluo, meanwhile, smelled alternating traces of old and new explosive tags at the base of the rear wall of the abandoned warehouses in the northwest. From then on, whenever Danzo added even one more person to rotate through the hidden sentries, Shinichi could probably get the information from the dogs before the shift change even happened.

By the time the first school year at the Ninja Academy was nearing its end, the Kennel's permanent members had expanded to more than ten dogs, several of which could reliably identify and report unusual circumstances. Shinichi created dedicated profiles in his notebook for every dog with intelligence value—their names, physical features, areas of activity, chakra types they were skilled at identifying, and training progress. White Paw was the leader and main force for frontal patrols, Bean excelled at infiltration and reconnaissance, and Chaluo specialized in scent tracking. There was also a newcomer called Three-Leg—it had only three legs, but exceptionally sharp ears, and could warn them in advance of any unusual footsteps approaching the alley entrances near the orphanage. All the dogs followed one ironclad rule: never eat food given by strangers. The method of teaching that rule was simple—Shinichi had Naruto take a kunai and pretend to offer them food, only for the entire pack to ignore him. Naruto angrily went to borrow chashu from Teuchi for another attempt, but Teuchi said, "If you're feeding chashu to dogs, why don't you eat it yourself?"

By then, his intelligence-gathering channels had divided into two paths: he handled human clues by running around at night himself, while animal warnings came from the dog pack scanning the outer perimeter. During the nights of the silent period, he no longer needed to go out personally to gather intelligence—White Paw would punctually carry a small cloth pouch to the space beneath the kitchen's rear window before dawn. Sometimes, the pouch contained a dead leaf with chakra residue, sometimes a scrap of fabric, and sometimes only a small stone stained with unusual mud. Shinichi reconstructed these scattered objects into usable pieces of information.

At the end of the school year, he drew an entirely new intelligence network map in his notebook—with the Kennel at its center and lines radiating outward, marking every dog's patrol route, Root's latest hidden sentry positions, and several secure passages Root had yet to discover.

"The intelligence network is operating normally. Next step: bring Root's northwest base under continuous surveillance and continue tracking Elephant Face's activity patterns."

After writing that, he closed his notebook. Outside the window, the moonlight shone bright.