Grandfather Versus Granddaughter

Hearing Deidara's words, Kurotsuchi rose and walked over to the enormous holographic map of Iwagakure. Her fingers drifted across the intricate lines of light marking mountains, buildings, and pipelines, her brow furrowed.

Deidara sat nearby, molding a small clay sculpture, though he kept glancing at the map.

"An outright question won't work, and a routine search would be a waste of time," Kurotsuchi murmured. "Grandpa is meticulous. Wherever he chose, it'll be well hidden, with a plausible reason to keep anyone from looking too closely."

Deidara snorted. "We can't exactly turn the whole village upside down, hmm!"

"Of course not." Kurotsuchi turned, her eyes bright with thought. "But we have a few leads."

She stepped up to the map and pointed to several areas.

"Any experiment, especially one he'd call a 'trump card,' would consume a lot of specialized resources. Procurement and transport couldn't have happened without leaving a trace."

"Especially now that I control the village's finances and allocation of supplies."

She looked at Deidara. "I'll have my trusted people audit every approval and transfer of specialized supplies from the past five years, particularly projects listed as 'old equipment maintenance' or 'strategic reserve renewal.' They'll focus on anything sent to restricted research areas."

"And then there are the people involved. Grandpa has been contacting older-generation ninja. They may move discreetly, but they can't leave no trail at all."

"Most of them have families and established social circles."

"We can assign ANBU to quietly track where they've been lately and where they've been gathering, without alerting them."

"With that many people, they can't all slip around unnoticed every time."

Kurotsuchi ran a finger over several red-marked locations on the holographic map. "Iwagakure was built among the mountains. There are plenty of abandoned mines, secret shelters from the village's early days,