There was a traitor!
As the thought surfaced, his eyes narrowed slightly. This was serious trouble. An infiltration team's size might be limited.
But none of the patrol checkpoints along the way, which should have covered the entire Land of Fire, had sounded an alarm.
That meant more than one stage of the procedures at those checkpoints had been bypassed or shut down.
Following that trail could lead to more than one person in the upper ranks.
And he had already fired his signal flare and activated the Flying Thunder God Kunai. Yet even now-there had been no response.
His master had not come either.
Itachi stood beneath the tree, his gaze fixed ahead as several possibilities flashed through his mind.
Perhaps something had held up the main force. Perhaps the Flying Thunder God Kunai had been blocked. Perhaps his master was dealing with something else, or someone had tied him down, leaving him unable to come to their aid.
His breathing quickened slightly, and his fingers clenched. The Kirigakure Ninja's tactics, the scale of the simultaneous infiltration across four countries, the bypassed patrol system, the communications that had received no reply-
All that information piled up in his mind.
"No... I can't wait any longer."
He turned and made several preparations nearby, setting sensory traps and Explosive Tags in the forks of branches and at the bases of bushes to cover the main approaches.
Then he took a blank scroll from his ninja tool pouch and quickly sketched on it, marking his current position, the direction, and a summary of the intelligence that needed to be passed on after he left.
He left the scroll beside Kabuto, then leaped onto a branch once everything was done.
He formed hand seals-
A Shadow Clone appeared beside him. They nodded to