The Man Behind the Mask Made His First Probe

After nightfall, the outskirts of the Uchiha Clan Compound were quieter than they had been during the day.

The silence was like a sheet of thin paper.

Wind swept through the treetops, the distant footsteps of patrols skirted the area, and the lights in each home gradually dimmed.

Shisui stayed out of sight.

He set up three observation posts along the edge of the Clan District.

One was outside Naka Shrine.

One was at the Konoha Military Police Force's old training ground.

The last was near the shadows of the trees where the spatial anomaly had appeared the night before.

He stationed very few people at each post.

Too many would be easy to detect.

Too few would be easy to slip past.

In the end, Shisui kept only himself and Uchiha Gen.

Uchiha Toru had wanted to come along.

Gen had made him stay behind.

"You're responsible for the inside of the Clan District."

Uchiha Toru was displeased.

"You two guard the outside, and I guard the inside?"

"If the enemy wants to draw all our attention outward, something will happen inside."

That shut Uchiha Toru up.

So when darkness truly settled, only Gen and Shisui remained beneath the trees.

Shisui leaned against a broken stretch of wall, his breathing almost blending into the wind.

Uchiha Gen stood farther away.

He did not try to scrutinize every inch of darkness with his Sharingan.

That would make it far too easy for someone to detect him in turn.

Instead, he thinned his chakra to the finest threads and spread it like a veil of mist over the nearby ground, tree trunks, and cracks in the walls.

This was a change brought about by the system's recent rewards.

It was not powerful.

But it was finer.

Fine enough for him to distinguish the slightest difference between wind rustling leaves and a ninja stepping on bark.

Time crept by.

Around midnight, the last lights in the distant Clan District went out.

Shisui suddenly raised a hand.

It was not a warning.

It was a signal for Gen to stay still.

The next instant, the air in the deepest shadows of the trees dented slightly.

There were no footsteps.

No landing.

None of the gusts an ordinary Body Flicker Technique should have produced.

It was as though someone had opened a slit in the darkness from within.

Uchiha Gen's heart sank.

Here he comes.

Shisui vanished from where he stood.

He did not rush toward the distortion.

Instead, he appeared diagonally behind it.

This was the approach they had agreed on beforehand.

Do not pursue head-on.

Do not gamble on speed.

Only record the boundaries of the disturbance.

Even so, they had only an instant.

Space rippled gently, like water touched by a fingertip, then quickly smoothed out again.

Shisui's kunai sliced through empty air.

No blood.

No scrap of clothing.

Not even a shadow from which they could discern a figure.

Only a faint trace of chakra remained, and it dispersed almost immediately in the night wind.

Uchiha Gen did not pursue.

He pressed a hand against a tree trunk and slowly drew back the chakra he had spread out.

A faint tingling reached his fingertips.

It felt as though someone had left an invisible scratch in space.

Shisui landed beside him.

"Did you get a clear look?"

Uchiha Gen shook his head.

"I only saw the disturbance."

Shisui's expression was grave.

"That wasn't ordinary ninjutsu."

"No."

"And it wasn't Root."

Uchiha Gen looked at him.

Shisui continued, "No matter how good Root is at hiding, they still have to move. They have to infiltrate, reposition, retreat. That person just now seemed to take himself straight out of this place."

Hearing that, Uchiha Gen felt calmer instead.

Shisui had never seen Kamui.

But his assessment was already close enough.

The man behind the mask had made his first probe.

He had not actually entered the Clan District.

Nor had he attacked.

He had merely checked the Uchiha's perimeter, their observation posts, their response speed, and whether Gen had truly begun changing the clan's direction.

This was a probe.

More troublesome than an assassination.

An assassination left a target.

A probe left only questions.

Shisui asked quietly, "Should we tell the clan leader?"

"Yes."

Uchiha Gen said, "But we can't tell the entire clan."

"Why?"

"Because making it public now would only turn it into another letter meant to sow discord."

Shisui quickly understood.

The clan had only just reined in its despair.

If they announced now that an unknown enemy wielding strange Space-Time Ninjutsu had scouted the Clan District at night, the hardliners would seize on it and say: See? The Uchiha are already being targeted. Waiting any longer means waiting to die.

Then the unknown enemy would become a pretext for war instead.

Uchiha Gen looked into the depths of the darkness.

"Root is manufacturing evidence."

Shisui listened in silence.

"False accounts, authorization slips, witnesses, timelines. They want the village to believe the Uchiha are guilty, and they want the Uchiha to make mistakes while trying to explain themselves."

Gen paused briefly.

"But that person just now is different."

"He's manufacturing despair."

Something shifted in Shisui's gaze.

Uchiha Gen continued, "He doesn't need to prove the Uchiha are guilty. He only needs to make the Uchiha believe that nothing they do to prove themselves will matter."

The shadows beneath the trees were silent.

This was the danger that ran deeper than Root.

Root wanted to turn the Uchiha into criminals.

The Masked Man wanted the Uchiha to admit for themselves that they had no future.

Both seemed to be forcing the Uchiha into a corner.

But their methods were entirely different.

If the Uchiha lumped the two together, they would lose both their evidence and their sense of direction.

"File a confidential report."

Uchiha Gen spoke.

"Record the spatial anomaly, the time it appeared, and Shisui's observations and conclusions. Don't disclose our assessment about the Masked Man yet, and don't include speculation about his identity."

Shisui looked at him.

"You already have someone in mind?"

Uchiha Gen did not deny it.

"Yes."

"You can't say?"

"No."

"Because there's no evidence?"

"Because the evidence isn't strong enough yet to bear the weight of that name."

After a moment of silence, Shisui nodded.

He did not press further.

That, too, was trust.

Not unconditional faith in Gen's judgment.

But faith that Gen would not thrust an unfounded fear upon the clan.

When the two returned to the Konoha Military Police Force, Uchiha Makoto was already waiting in the records room.

He had laid out the document envelope to be sealed, the anomaly report form, and a sketch of the observation posts.

"What should I write?"

Uchiha Gen said, "Spatial anomaly on the outskirts of the Clan District, second occurrence. Around midnight, in the area beneath the trees outside Naka Shrine. Shisui detected a brief disturbance. No physical presence confirmed. No traces of an ordinary Body Flicker Technique found."

Uchiha Makoto wrote it down word by word.

"And the conclusion?"

"Leave it unclassified for now."

Uchiha Gen looked at the paper.

"Enter it into the confidential records."

"Does the clan leader need to sign it?"

Uchiha Makoto asked.

"Yes."

Uchiha Gen said, "But only the clan leader, Shisui, I, and the recorder responsible for sealing it may see it."

Uchiha Makoto's pen paused.

"What about Itachi?"

The question briefly silenced the room.

Itachi had already been added to the list of those attending clan meetings as observers.

In principle, he ought to learn by seeing more of the process.

But this report was different.

Uchiha Gen looked out the window.

"Don't let Itachi see this one for now."

Shisui did not object.

Uchiha Makoto, however, hesitated.

"Will he think we don't trust him?"

"It's not a matter of trust."

Uchiha Gen said, "This report doesn't have enough evidence behind it yet. It would only give him a fear he has no way to deal with."

Itachi was too clever.

So clever that simply seeing the words "spatial anomaly," "unknown probe," and "not for public disclosure yet" would make him connect them to the Uchiha's future faster than anyone else.

Letting a child observe clan meetings was meant to show him how disagreements were handled.

But a child should not have to shoulder an enemy so early-one whose existence could not be proven, whose nature could not be explained, and against whom nothing could be done.

Uchiha Gen could not say he wanted to keep Itachi from walking alone toward self-sacrifice, only to burden him ahead of time with an even heavier unknown.

A short while later, Fugaku was summoned to the records room.

After reading the confidential report, his expression grew grimmer than before.

"Space-Time Ninjutsu?"

Shisui nodded.

"I can't fully identify the technique, but I can confirm it wasn't an ordinary Body Flicker Technique. It didn't resemble the Root's usual concealment methods, either."

Fugaku looked at Uchiha Gen.

"You think these aren't the same people as the Root?"

Uchiha Gen answered cautiously.

"For now, all we can determine is that their methods differ. The Root's peripheral network is constructing a chain of evidence. This unknown enemy is creating psychological pressure."

Fugaku remained silent for a long time.

Finally, he signed his name on the confidential report.

"Keep this confidential for now."

He raised his head and looked at Gen.

"But if it happens a third time, you must notify me immediately."

"Yes."

Fugaku set down his pen.

"Also, don't let the younger members of the clan learn about this too soon."

Uchiha Gen nodded.

"That was my assessment as well."

Fugaku gave him a look and said nothing more.

There was no approval in that look.

Only a heavier burden of responsibility.

Outside the window, the night wind blew.

The next instant, the system's voice sounded in his mind.

[Spatial anomaly observation complete.]

[Reward: Minor enhancement to spatial anomaly perception.]

[Notice: The second external source of interference has begun actively probing.]

[Difficulty of rewriting increased.]

Uchiha Gen briefly closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the ink on the report had yet to dry.

Suddenly, he realized one thing with absolute clarity.

The Night of the Nine-Tails was only the beginning.

Those who truly wanted to drive the Uchiha toward annihilation had already begun turning their attention to him.