With the commission personally entrusted by the clan head and his wife last night, Uchiha Shisui had plenty of free time ahead of him. He had no reason to refuse... Besides, that crow was quite interesting...
That morning, Uchiha Shisui sat in Itachi's home, drinking three rounds of tea before Kitahara finally appeared, still bleary-eyed.
Uchiha Itachi stood at the door holding Sasuke as he saw them off. "Shisui, I'm counting on you! If Kitahara gets willful, please be patient with him..."
"Ha, I can't beat him anyway. It's not like I can do anything to him..." Shisui chuckled and held out his arm for the crow to perch on. "We're leaving!"
Konoha ninja generally could not leave the village casually, but there were still plenty of ways around that rule, such as going to the mission hall and accepting an assignment outside the village.
Moreover, the main purpose of forbidding ninja from leaving freely was to restrict the jonin class. After all, a powerful jonin could receive orders from the village higher-ups at any moment.
The Third Hokage was not on duty at the mission hall. Shisui casually picked up a nearby bandit-suppression mission... As a ninja slated for the ANBU, the hall did not give him any trouble.
"Let's finish the mission first. There's a lively little town nearby, so we can take a look around afterward. How does that sound?" Shisui tucked the mission scroll into his ninja tool pouch.
"Caw..."
Shisui could not tell whether the crow agreed or not, but it did not seem to react strangely.
Only after leaving the village did the crow on Uchiha Shisui's shoulder suddenly spread its wings and fly away...
"...Hey! Where are you going?!" Shisui leaped onto a tree and watched Kitahara fly farther and farther away. Helplessly, he clapped his hands together and formed seals.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
"Caw... caw... caw..."
The flock of crows Shisui had raised emerged from the summoning script, circling and swooping around him. It looked quite bustling...
"Stop that crow and bring him back immediately!"
The summoned Ninja Crows obediently flew toward Kitahara. Not entirely confident in the summoned flock's abilities, Shisui could only create a shadow clone and send it after the mission.
As for himself, he could only spring from branch to branch, hurrying after the missing Kitahara.
Two minutes later, Shisui stared at Kitahara with a complicated expression. He was eating fruit atop a tree...
Watching his flock dart through the woods picking wild fruit, one after another delivering it to Kitahara, Shisui no longer knew what expression he should wear as their owner...
"...Caw..."
Seeing his bodyguard and guide, the crow loyally brought over a piece of fruit in his beak...
The boy shook his head. "...I don't really want to eat it."
"Caw... caw... caw..." The flock suddenly stopped, circling over Uchiha Shisui's head and calling out.
As the flock's owner, Shisui understood what they meant. Apparently, in the span of two minutes, these little fellows had devolved into Kitahara's translators...
"...The Land of Fire's Daimyo Palace is quite a distance from here, but at our speed, we can definitely make it in time..."
"Caw..."
Kitahara secretly rejoiced that Shisui had come with him this time... He had been in the ninja world for over a year, yet he had never left Konoha and had no idea where the Daimyo Palace was.
His main purpose in coming out... was to visit the Land of Fire's Daimyo Palace. The position of Konoha's leader, the Hokage, was only being provisionally held by Hiruzen Sarutobi. He needed to go to the Daimyo Palace to complete the formalities for taking office.
The Hokage's movements outside Konoha were secret within the village, but not at the Daimyo Palace... After all, no matter how powerful the Hokage was, he could not make the daimyo keep his mouth shut.
And when it came to matters like the Konoha Hokage reporting for duty or assuming office, given the Land of Fire daimyo's personality, the whole Land of Fire was too small for spreading such news... If even the Daimyo Palace could find no trace of it, Kitahara would just treat this as a sightseeing trip and look for another opportunity.
The reason he had chosen today was mainly because Hatake Kakashi had shown his hand yesterday... As the most capable ninja in Konoha's ANBU at present, shouldn't Cold-Blooded Kakashi's missions all involve killing people and stealing intelligence or the like?
Ordinary ninja could have escorted important information held by an intelligence agent, at most with ANBU protecting them in secret... So most likely, the person delivering that intelligence had been Kakashi himself!
The chick was too innocent to think that much... Sasuke was such a stupid little brother that he did not even have a brain yet... Only someone as clever as him could work backward from the known outcome and deduce the process.
The known outcome was that Danzo had dispatched Root to assassinate the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, in an attempt to seize the Hokage position, only to strike the wrong target and hit Hatake Kakashi instead...
Of course, they had not even managed to deal with Kakashi... The failure had been caused by Hatake Kakashi suddenly turning against them, as well as Root being far weaker than advertised.
What he needed to do was add fuel to the fire... If Root's strength suddenly increased significantly, the Uchiha clan's problems would most likely be set aside for the time being, right?
Both Fugaku's burden of responsibility and Itachi's growth could gain a fairly long period of respite... As for how to accomplish that, it would depend on his methods...
And when he had accompanied Shisui to the mission hall today... the normally diligent Third Hokage had unexpectedly not shown up to be on duty at Konoha's mission hall!
...Hiruzen Sarutobi was most likely not in Konoha today, or rather, he was not officially in Konoha. As long as they went to the Daimyo Palace to gather information, they could confirm it.
The only problem was the useless tagalong beside him who knew the way... Kitahara glanced at Shisui, who was hopping through the woods, and gave a disdainful caw. "Caw..."
"Caw... caw... caw... caw..." A hundred crows cried in unison, translating Kitahara's words.
Uchiha Shisui felt a headache coming on as he listened to his summoned beasts. "...I understand. Let's pick up the pace!"
Since he had brought along this teenage chunin, he might as well let him see Root's true face, lest he be deceived in the future by his forebear's so-called friend...
The Land of Fire's Daimyo Palace.
No matter how one looked at it, it could not compare to Konoha's prosperity, because the creativity brought by Chakra was limitless. In some ways, the Daimyo Palace was more like a market gathering. It appeared economically prosperous, but that was really only because people congregated there.
Kitahara's guess had been correct.
"Hey, I heard the ninja leader of the Hidden Leaf Village came today. He's at the Daimyo's residence meeting the daimyo right now!"
"Those ninja are always fighting wars..."
"At least they protect the Land of Fire!"
"Apparently, they're appointing a Hokage today..."
The Hokage's whereabouts, which Konoha had tried so hard to conceal, spread here without restraint. The people around the Daimyo Palace discussed it eagerly. It was nothing more than the daimyo's lofty status, and the one who had leaked the news...
The most likely culprit was that daimyo himself...
Kitahara: "..."
Uchiha Shisui: "..."
Why did this feel just a little strange... The information they had worked so hard to protect was worthless in other people's eyes, even spreading everywhere in a frenzy.
The Land of Fire daimyo currently held the upper hand. The disdain the people around the Daimyo Palace showed toward the Hokage gave Shisui, proud to be a ninja, a real eye-opener.
Please vote with recommendation tickets... I don't think tonight's chapter turned out very well, but it was needed as a transition. I'll see whether to post another chapter at midnight.
Before you continue