Chirp chirp chirp.
The sparrow hopped along the corner of the desk, its cry thin and piercing.
Sawada Fuka, her whole body damp with sweat and wearing only a light summer outfit, tilted her neck and listened carefully.
She pressed down on the spray bottle.
Psssh.
A fragrant mist of perfume sprayed out and covered the heavy, metallic smell clinging to her.
Sparrows were the most common creatures in Konohagakure.
Common meant nobody paid attention. Which made them perfect eyes and ears.
"You're saying some girl monster with her eyes wrapped in cloth tore up your friend's house?"
Fuka frowned and tried to make sense of the birdspeak.
It was not so much that she could not understand. Bird language just ran on a completely different system from human speech, and their chirping always carried too many curse words. It really was not easy to translate.
Chirp.
The sparrow called twice more. Its emotions seemed to settle and its voice was not so sharp now.
"Then a human with white eyes ran over and handed that girl monster two scrolls, and the two of them started dancing in the forest?"
Once she heard the key phrases, Fuka wrote them down and began sorting through them.
A human with white eyes was very obviously someone from the Hyūga clan.
A girl monster with a cloth over her eyes who could slap a tree trunk apart. Konoha did not have that many blind people, and the only one who matched that description was that genius, Sun Chasing Konome.
Sawada Fuka quickly remembered the silver haired blind girl she had seen at the administration building, the one Might Guy had taken in.
Rumor said that on her first day at the Academy she had beaten a jōnin instructor so badly he had to be hospitalized.
A genuine prodigy.
As Kumogakure's spy, Fuka had been quietly keeping track of everything about that girl. During her previous report on the Uchiha situation, she had already sent part of that information back to the Cloud.
That intel should still be mid flight right now.
"White hair?"
Chirp.
The sparrow nodded like a woodpecker.
That confirmed it.
Fuka crossed out the word "monster" on the paper and replaced it with the character for "Grey." She replaced "white eyes" with the character for "Sun."
Then she drew a line between Grey and Sun.
Sun Chasing Konome met a Hyūga, that Hyūga gave her two scrolls, and then the two of them danced.
Fuka circled both "danced" and "scrolls" and thought for a moment.
Suddenly her eyes shone.
The two of them were practicing some kind of technique.
If it was "dancing" and not hand sealing, then it could only be taijutsu. And the Hyūga clan's unique taijutsu was only one thing.
Gentle Fist.
Which meant Sun Chasing Konome might be training in the Hyūga clan's Gentle Fist.
And since the training spot was the Forest of Death, someplace hidden far from people, there was a very good chance she was secretly learning it.
That realization honestly startled Sawada Fuka.
Gentle Fist was a secret taijutsu that only people with the Byakugan bloodline could learn. Everyone in the shinobi world knew this.
Sun Chasing Konome practicing Gentle Fist meant two possibilities.
One, she had found a way to bypass the Byakugan requirement and still learn Hyūga taijutsu.
Two, she herself was a bearer of the Byakugan bloodline. The blindfold and blind girl act was just a disguise.
Fuka's gaze flickered and her thumb kept rubbing the pen.
Reason told her this.
The first possibility was the most likely.
The Hyūga valued the Byakugan in a way that bordered on sickness. Even real siblings had to be branded with the Caged Bird. There should not exist a Hyūga drifting around outside.
The chance of a wild Byakugan appearing was close to zero.
But what if it really was the second situation?
Fuka's heart began to pound.
Because that would mean her long, dark life as a spy was about to see light. That freak who had destroyed her home village, the one called Jugo, was finally going to pay for what he had done.
Thump thump.
The excited sound of her heartbeat echoed in her chest.
A flush rose to Fuka's pretty foxlike face.
She yanked open the drawer under the desk.
She took out a big bag of wriggling mealworms and spilled them all over the table.
Chirp.
The sparrow cheered.
Its beak pecked down again and again, knocking on the tabletop. In the end it still felt that was not enough, so it plunged headfirst into the pile of worms and rolled around.
The yellow grubs wriggled over its eyes.
Once the sparrow had eaten its fill and flown off, Fuka tidied up the table and started drafting a new report.
Whether Sun Chasing Konome actually had a Byakugan was not something she could confirm.
She did not have to.
The meatheads in Kumogakure were desperate for the Byakugan bloodline. As long as there was even a sliver of possibility, they would not let it go.
If the capture succeeded and she really did have a Byakugan.
Then Fuka's mission was done.
And if not, Fuka would not lose anything.
Because in the end she was just an ordinary person without chakra. She did not have the ability to capture a monster who could slap a banyan tree in half.
Scratch scratch.
The pen tip flew across the paper.
The twisted cipher text all seemed to be jumping with excitement.
This time.
Her intel contained neither Uchiha nor Hyūga.
Holding the "front page" spot as the highest priority target was a bloodline ninja named Sun Chasing Konome.
...
Konoha Memorial Stone.
The night wind was especially noisy.
A mysterious masked man in a black cloak with red clouds knelt on one knee and gently laid fresh flowers before the stone.
Behind the orange spiral mask, his single red eye gleamed with a strange light.
Gurgle.
It was as if something was growing up out of the ground.
In just a moment.
A withered flytrap slowly poked out of the soil.
"Obito."
"Call me Madara."
Uchiha Obito turned slowly. He looked at the flytrap that had opened without him noticing. Power surged in his scarlet eye.
"I said it wrong again."
White Zetsu's tone rose just a bit too cheerfully, making it impossible to tell whether it was a mistake or on purpose.
Obito, lost in the memory of the woman he loved, could not be bothered to correct him.
"Report."
"The Uchiha patriarch, Uchiha Fugaku, can no longer hold back the radicals. Those idiots have already decided in private to launch a rebellion against the village."
"Heh. Good news."
The three tomoe spun.
Obito's chakra seemed to boil for this perfect piece of news.
The Mangekyō of the Uchiha clan was too full of unknowns. If some genius awakened the Mangekyō by accident one day, it could ruin the Eye of the Moon Plan.
The more he used this eye, the more Obito felt the threat the Uchiha posed to him.
Annihilating the Uchiha would guarantee that the power of the Sharingan would not stand in his way.
He had already killed his teacher and his teacher's wife. There was no way back.
The Eye of the Moon Plan had to be executed flawlessly. If it failed. Obito did not dare imagine it. That would mean his whole life had collapsed.
I am doing this for Rin. I am doing this so everyone can have a beautiful future.
Obito hypnotized himself in his heart.
"What about Uchiha Itachi?"
"He is still hesitating."
Black Zetsu's hoarse voice sounded slowly in the dark.
Its pitch black body was almost invisible in the deepening night.
"Heh. Wasn't he the one who said he wanted to preserve the final honor of the Uchiha? Why is he losing his nerve at the crucial moment?"
"After all, killing your entire clan with your own hands, getting soft is very understan"
"Shut up."
Black Zetsu shot White Zetsu a look and cut him off.
If Itachi hesitating is normal, then you being so calm must be abnormal.
This guy really could not talk.
Obito did not bother with the two freaks in front of him.
"Tell him to hurry. My time is limited."
Space rippled around his mask.
His voice turned distant and hollow.
"Understood."
Once Obito's figure disappeared, Black and White Zetsu looked at each other.
The flytrap slowly sank back down.
And vanished into the earth.
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