Danzo soon understood one thing.
Fugaku was hard to peel away.
Shisui was hard to peel away.
Itachi was becoming hard to peel away, too.
Uchiha Gen had bound those three together through records, witnesses, and clan meetings. Taking any one of them away with an unnumbered mission or a private interview was becoming increasingly difficult.
But the Uchiha still had a weak point that was all too ready to explode.
Their young people.
They were angry.
They refused to accept things as they were.
They had only just learned to put down their blades, but had yet to learn how to put their anger to real use.
That half-understanding was exactly what Danzo wanted.
Underground at Root, a new assessment was written into the briefing.
The objective was no longer to seize Shisui's eyes directly.
Nor was it to isolate Itachi immediately.
Instead, it was to make the young Uchiha prove that the clan meeting's rules could not keep them in check.
At the same time, inside the Uchiha Clan Compound, Uchiha Jun sat at the edge of the training ground.
He did not join the training.
Nor did he go looking for someone to complain to.
He simply stared at his hand.
The day before, that hand had nearly delivered a purge list to his companions.
Had he not turned back at the last moment, he might already have become what others called an "Uchiha radical."
The fear that struck him afterward left him seething.
He would rather be yelled at.
Anything was better than being moved around like a pawn.
Uchiha Gen walked over to him.
"Feeling useless?"
Uchiha Jun looked up, his expression sour.
"Are you here to lecture me?"
"No."
Gen sat down beside him.
"I'm here to give you something to do."
Uchiha Jun