"Well, well~ Sorry to keep everyone waiting."
Tobi walked out, scratching his head with one hand.
"I think that seafood feast last night upset my stomach. Then, halfway through taking a dump, a pack of drooling wolves with glowing green eyes surrounded me. I was so scared I almost couldn't pull my pants up..."
This time, even Shinji's expression darkened, never mind Hidan's.
Could a carbon-based life-form really come up with such an outrageously flimsy excuse?
Did he take them for idiots?!
"So that's what happened! I knew you must've gone to take a dump! Hahaha, and you even ran into wolves! Just how unlucky are you? Tell your senior Hidan-what did you end up wiping with?~ (waggles eyebrows)"
"Oh, stop~ You're the worst, Hidan~ (bashful) Um... wolf fur is a little stiff."
"Really? I'll try it sometime if I get the chance."
Shinji stared in utter shock at the two of them comparing symptoms.
Then he sighed, his expression complicated.
He had been wrong. Tobi wasn't treating them like idiots-there actually was an idiot among them!
He wrapped the Kubikiribōchō back up in white cloth. This was the Land of Water, after all. It would be troublesome if someone saw it. Members of Kirigakure's Anbu might come asking about Zabuza's whereabouts and demand the Kubikiribōchō back while they were at it.
"Where to next?"
Shinji glanced at the snake corpses littering the ground. "Forget the mission. We'll keep heading deeper in."
After learning what the whole affair was about, the mission no longer mattered, and there was no way to explain the truth.
Besides, someone was bound to have seen Manda's enormous body. Kirigakure ninja would probably be coming to investigate soon.
Going back would just be asking for trouble, so they might as well leave it alone.
He