The descriptions in the intelligence were vague.
An Uchiha missing from an old battlefield.
One eye.
Space-time traces.
Possibly mentioned by people along the old border line.
Putting those terms together, Gen barely needed to think to know whom they pointed to.
Obito Uchiha.
But he could not say it.
Not yet, at least.
Once the Uchiha were the first to speak Obito's name, the situation would immediately take on a different cast.
Danzo would seize the opportunity to frame it as a case of the true culprit being within the Uchiha.
The leadership would grow uneasy again.
The village would start debating whether the Night of the Nine-Tails was still inextricably linked to the Uchiha.
And the issues they were forcing onto the table-the old shell of Root, the Core Sealed Archive, surveillance of minors, and emergency exceptions-would all be overshadowed by the Masked Man's identity.
Gen pressed the intelligence report onto the table.
"We don't name names."
Uchiha Jun froze.
"You know who it is?"
"I know who it might be."
Gen looked at him.
"But we can't rely on what I know."
That statement had become the baseline for every review the Uchiha had conducted lately.
They could not rely on the future.
They could not rely on guesses.
They could not rely on emotion.
They could only rely on evidence others could believe.
Itachi handled the old battlefield records.
He retrieved the lists of those who had gone missing during the Third Shinobi World War.
Obito Uchiha's name was on them.
The records showed a battlefield collapse and confirmed death.
But verification of the body had been incomplete.
There were gaps in the recovery of personal effects as well.
Such things had not been uncommon during wartime.
But now, they became sensitive.
Shisui reviewed the space-time