Jiraiya had already sneaked away without a trace. Shindai stood on the spot, his mind in chaos.
Obito remarked sarcastically, "Some people's ass-kissing skills aren't even that great."
Shindai scoffed and turned his gaze toward Rin Nohara. "Rin, let me tell you, just now Obito wanted me to..."
"Ahh!!!"
Realizing what Shindai was about to say, Obito screamed loudly, rushed over, and covered Shindai's mouth. "You're not allowed to say it! If you do, I'll kill you!"
Rin looked at both of them in confusion, completely clueless about their antics.
She turned to Kakashi with a puzzled expression, but Kakashi just shrugged. He also didn't understand what those two—Shindai and Obito—were up to.
Clever Shindai soon came up with another brilliant idea.
Suddenly, he rolled his eyes back and dramatically collapsed onto the ground.
Obito jumped in shock. "Why did he suddenly faint?! No—it's got nothing to do with me!"
Rin started to move forward and check on Shindai, but Kakashi stopped her.
Kakashi gave Shindai a deadpan stare with his fish-like eyes and said to Obito, "Obito, carry him. We've got a mission to complete."
Obito exclaimed in disbelief, "Huh? He's already fainted! Should we really bring him along too?"
Inside his "unconscious" act, Shindai felt thrilled!
Obito was truly cooperating perfectly!
However, Kakashi—who had already seen through everything—gave Shindai absolutely no chance. "Exactly! He might wake up on our way anyway. Besides, even if he dies this time, we still have to drag his body along. There's no room for negotiation!"
Obito recalled Minato Namikaze's instructions and the fact that Shindai was actually a spy. He nodded reluctantly. "Fine... then I guess that's how it is."
Just as Obito was about to pick Shindai up, Shindai suddenly sprang back to his feet, pointing angrily at Kakashi. "Don't you have any humanity left?! I was already unconscious!"
Kakashi gave him an eye-roll in response. "Now that you're awake, we leave immediately!"
Obito and Rin stared blankly at the energetic Shindai. Of course they both realized by now that Shindai had been faking all along.
Obito didn't know what to say about Shindai anymore. After struggling for quite some time, he finally muttered, "Shindai... you really are... persistent."
Rin shook her head helplessly, clearly exasperated.
All of Shindai's plans ended in failure, leaving him no choice but to slink away with Kakashi's team from Konoha's base camp.
Led by Kakashi, the group—including Obito, Rin, and a reluctant Shindai—headed southwest, fifteen kilometers outside Konoha's stationed camp.
...
After traveling for some time, Team Kakashi arrived at their destination.
However, the area was completely deserted. No one was around.
Shindai felt a sudden surge of hope as he saw this scene. "Looks like Jiraiya-san's intelligence report was wrong. There isn't even a single person here, let alone any Cloud Ninja. Can we go back now?"
Kakashi ignored Shindai and jumped down from the branches, landing softly on the grass.
Then Kakashi squatted down on the grass, appearing focused on something unseen.
Obito, Rin Nohara, and Shindai also jumped down.
Rin asked curiously, "Kakashi, have you discovered something?"
Kakashi pointed at the grass while analyzing, "Look, the grass here has been bent down, and there are very obvious footprints. This means these plants were trampled by people.
Moreover, the grass stems have been bent at multiple points, and the varying sizes of footprints indicate that many people were here recently. And these footprints are still fresh, which means they arrived here quite recently."
Shindai gave a strange look, saying doubtfully, "Footprints are fresh? Did you actually smell their smelly feet?"
Under his mask, Kakashi's lips tightened slightly, but he chose not to respond to Shindai.
Obito guessed, "So Kakashi, do you think these footprints were left by Cloud Ninja?"
Kakashi nodded seriously and said, "Exactly. This place is deep in the wild, right around where Jiraiya-san said our mission site would be. We can nearly confirm that these footprints were indeed left by Cloud Ninja.
If Cloud Ninja really set up camp here, then it should be somewhere nearby."
As Shindai listened, he felt amazed. He had to say, Kakashi's brain really worked well—his observation skills were sharp, and his analysis was spot-on. No wonder he was the team leader.
Kakashi started forming Hand Seals with both hands, then pressed them onto the ground.
[Summoning Jutsu]
A puff of smoke appeared, and after it dissipated, a ninja hound emerged.
"Guruku, pick up the scent here and lead us to them."
The ninja hound named Guruku lowered its head to smell the scent on the grass, then barked once at Kakashi before running off in one direction.
Kakashi said to the three others, "Follow me!"
Shindai's group followed Guruku closely. Not long later, Guruku stopped, barked twice towards the front, and halted.
Kakashi stared ahead intently: "Found it!"
Up ahead was a small hill, and at the base stood a cave entrance guarded by a ninja wearing a Cloud Village forehead protector.
"Good job, Guruku."
Kakashi scratched Guruku's head. With a puff of smoke, Guruku vanished from the spot.
Shindai found it hard to believe — was the mission really completed that easily?
That was way too easy — practically no challenge at all!
A wide grin spread across Shindai's face: "Alright then, our mission's done! Let's head back."
Kakashi, Obito, and Rin didn't move and remained in place.
Shindai's right eyelid twitched violently as a sense of foreboding surged within him. "You three… you're not planning to stir up trouble, are you? Hey, no way! Our mission is just to verify the intelligence. We don't even know how many Cloud Ninjas there are or how strong they are. Going after them would be like walking into a death trap!"
Kakashi said seriously, "We haven't completed our mission yet. Our task is to confirm whether there really are Cloud Ninjas stationed here. But right now we've only seen one single Cloud Ninja. A single individual doesn't meet the definition of 'stationed.'
It's possible this was just someone placed here to confuse us, deliberately luring Konoha ninjas into a trap. If we reported vague intelligence like this and something went wrong, we'd end up taking the blame.
So we have to confirm their numbers. At the very least, we need to know if there's more than one enemy!"
Obito grinned eagerly, "Kakashi's right! We've come this far—let's get to the bottom of it before we leave!"
Rin didn't say anything, but her support for Kakashi and Obito was obvious.
Shindai scratched his head in frustration—it was really exasperating.
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