The grounds for combining the cases were not written as a lengthy indictment.
Gen merely had Che compile a comparison table.
Four columns.
Old seals.
Sealing wax.
Blank receipt acknowledgments.
Pressure toward a sole witness.
Three investigative threads were aligned across them.
The Nine-Tails old records thread.
The Root outer network's old fronts thread.
The Shisui's eyes thread.
The table looked cold.
There was not a single angry word.
Yet the colder it was, the harder it was to refute.
In the Nine-Tails old records thread, the old authorization channel had been bypassed, and the receipt acknowledgment for the supplementary register pages was blank.
In the Root outer network thread, sealing wax had been collected under a dead person's identity, and retired seals were still being used to access old records.
In the Shisui's eyes thread, vague hints had guided Itachi into assessing Shisui alone and attempted to restrict the scope of witnesses.
The three incidents had occurred at different times.
They had targeted different people.
Yet the methods were consistent.
All kept the person truly giving the orders in the background.
All left a seemingly reasonable front on paper.
All attempted to place critical judgments on a single individual.
After reading it, Fugaku made no revisions.
"Leave it as it is."
Uchiha Jun was somewhat dissatisfied.
"We're not naming Danzo?"
Gen shook his head.
"No."
"We've come this far, and we're still not naming him?"
"The further we get, the more important it is that we don't."
Gen pointed at the comparison table.
"What we need to establish now is grounds for combining the cases. We're not using this table to pronounce guilt."
Uchiha Jun gritted his teeth but said nothing more.
He already knew that writing something too satisfying often gave the other side an opening to strike