Sunlight filtered through the thick canopy of towering trees, scattering mottled shadows across the ground.
Between trunk and shade, two figures and a dog sprinted along the branches at high speed, leaving streaks of afterimages in their wake.
Hikaru and Kakashi had been on the move for a full day now, steadily closing in on the area where their target was supposed to be.
For efficiency, Hikaru had Kakashi summon a ninken to lead the pursuit.
The man they were hunting was called Kashiwagi Kawa. On paper, he was a Konoha shinobi—war records, a clean résumé, the whole thing.
But that was only the surface.
The real file said he was actually a Sunagakure ninja.
War didn't just kill people—it also tore holes in intelligence networks, gaps big enough to slip an entire identity through.
On the battlefield, bodies weren't always recovered. Sometimes you didn't even know whether someone was truly dead.
Just look at Obito.
In Konoha, he'd become a "Sharingan hero."
In reality, the bastard was alive and breathing—and getting played like a fiddle by Uchiha Madara.
So Kashiwagi Kawa was likely the same kind of case: dead during the war… or captured, interrogated until every detail of his identity was squeezed out… and then replaced.
For ninja, disguising yourself wasn't hard.
Especially for Suna's puppet masters—those people were masters of makeup, masks, and stolen faces.
Just then, the dog abruptly halted.
Hikaru immediately threw up a tactical hand sign.
Behind him, Kakashi stopped on a dime and drew a kunai, posture tightening into a guarded stance.
"The smell of blood is strong," the ninken said after sniffing carefully, voice low. "And it's your target's scent."
A pause.
"But that guy seems to be dead already. There are other human scents nearby."
"Other people?"
Hikaru frowned.
He didn't remember this mission being a shared contract.
ANBU assignments were typically issued one-to-one. Either an individual received it, or a single squad did.
If this job had been handed to them, then under normal circumstances nobody else should've touched it—unless command reassigned it, and if that happened, they would've been notified.
Hikaru kept his voice steady, gentle as always.
"The scent trail we're following… it's heading that way?"
"North," the dog answered quickly. After a day together, he'd taken a slight liking to Hikaru. "And it's obvious he isn't going back to Konoha."
North?
Hikaru turned and met Kakashi's gaze.
Both of them understood immediately: this wasn't a small problem.
They had headed toward the Land of Rivers, which lay to Konoha's west. If someone were returning to the village, they should be moving east.
This direction was completely wrong.
There was only one conclusion.
"Our mission got intercepted." Hikaru let out a quiet sigh. "And that means things are probably ugly."
"Captain," Kakashi asked in a low voice, "do you want to abandon the mission?"
Even though Hikaru had told him to just use his name, Kakashi still called him Captain in the field. To him, switching forms of address mid-operation was sloppy.
Abandon the mission?
Hikaru hesitated.
To be honest, he wanted to.
Who knew what kind of person they were walking into?
But he couldn't.
And he definitely couldn't say it out loud.
He wasn't Kakashi—he didn't have the Fourth Hokage standing behind him.
Even if Minato was, in essence, just a figurehead propped up by Konoha's politics… the title still carried weight. People wouldn't easily move against Kakashi.
Hikaru was different.
A shinobi with no backing had only one path: keep your head down, execute orders, and be a good tool.
For a second, a bitter thought slipped through him.
Sometimes it feels like the Senju falling into decline… is even worse than the Uchiha.
The Uchiha were being isolated to the brink of suffocation—Tobirama and Hiruzen's policies had all but pried them away from the village's core.
The other great clans had either been pulled in or pressed down by the Third Hokage—recruited, pacified, absorbed. With no external allies, the Uchiha were practically cornered beasts.
And now that the war was ending, Konoha's upper ranks would inevitably turn their eyes back inward.
Worse, the Uchiha themselves were splitting—one faction pushing for peace, the other pushing for a coup.
Still… no matter what, as one of Konoha's biggest clans on paper, they could at least shield their own.
Hikaru shook his head, then spoke firmly.
"We'll catch up and take a look. That corpse has secrets. And some of those secrets belong to Konoha."
"I understand." Kakashi nodded without hesitation and signaled the ninken.
The dog got the message and immediately resumed tracking, leading them onward.
To be fair, the ninken wasn't fearless. In the original timeline, he'd run from danger before.
But as a summon, he always had an escape route—he could return to the summoning realm whenever things turned deadly.
As they chased, Hikaru's mind raced.
Who would intercept an ANBU kill-and-retrieve mission halfway through?
Iwa?
From the direction, it wasn't impossible.
But going north opened up far too many routes.
The Land of Rain, the Land of Grass, the Land of Waterfall—all of them lay in that general direction. Places that had been battlefields, turned upside down until the sky and earth blurred together.
And ever since the ceasefire with Iwa and Minato's rise to Hokage, Konoha's borders had been plagued with attacks—ninja posing as Iwa, or Kumo, striking and vanishing like smoke.
Who they really were… no one could say.
Small countries seeking revenge?
Arms dealers who didn't want the war to end, because peace meant no more profit?
And if you ignored the small countries altogether, there was still Kumogakure to the north—
A village that had never actually signed a formal peace agreement with Konoha.
So who is it?
Hikaru kept running, thinking, but it was too tangled to untie with guesses alone.
And soon, he didn't have the luxury to keep guessing.
He sensed movement ahead.
Not far away, a lone figure was walking at an unhurried pace.
A corpse was slung over one shoulder.
Hikaru focused his senses—and instantly felt it.
Chakra.
A massive amount of it.
Just in raw volume, it was far beyond chūnin-level, and even more oppressive than most jōnin.
The stranger was wrapped head to toe in a black cloak patterned with red clouds, face covered as well.
Then, as if he'd noticed something, the man turned his head.
A pair of calm, indifferent green eyes met Hikaru's direction—
And in that instant, Hikaru felt like prey being stared down by a beast.
His expression darkened under the mask.
He recognized him.
No way…
"This guy… is Kakuzu?"