Chapter 559: The Villagers Know Which Way the Wind Blows

"Hm?"

"What just happened?"

After killing Hoshigaki Shizuma with a Flying Raijin Slash, Senju Tobirama did not linger for even a second. He immediately used Flying Raijin again and vanished.

The villagers present did not even have time to process what had happened.

Most of them had not seen so much as a blur before Shizuma suddenly collapsed to the ground.

Of course, there was another major reason for that.

Shizuma was still a child.

He was too short.

For Tobirama to land a proper Flying Raijin Slash, even crouching would not have been low enough.

He had essentially been forced to slide across the ground.

So from everyone else's perspective, all they felt was a sudden gust of wind near their legs.

Then they looked down—

And found Shizuma lying on the ground with blood spraying from his neck.

"What happened?"

Even Kisame, who had been secretly monitoring the villagers, froze in confusion.

He had not seen what happened either.

Part of that was because the villagers were so weak that Kisame had allowed his attention to wander slightly.

The other part was because Tobirama had practically performed a sliding tackle beneath the crowd and disappeared while everyone blocked the view.

BOOM—!

After a brief delay, the house containing Hoshigaki Chinrei exploded under the chain reaction of Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags.

The explosions went off one after another with deafening cracks, like tens of thousands of firecrackers being set off during New Year celebrations.

The villagers immediately stopped caring who had died.

Survival came first.

Those who ran quickly merely got battered by chunks of shattered wall.

Those who reacted too slowly were hit directly by the blast wave and scorching heat.

Some were even set on fire and had no choice but to dive straight into the surrounding water.

Kisame looked even more confused.

If he remembered correctly, Hoshigaki Chinrei had been inside that house.

And the corpse left behind after everyone scattered—the one that had just been blown into the air by the explosion—seemed to be Chinrei's son, Hoshigaki Shizuma.

Weren't those two the main targets of his mission?

So…

He had done absolutely nothing, yet more than half the mission had already completed itself?

Since the father and son identified as the primary instigators were apparently both dead, Kisame saw no reason to remain hidden.

He simply walked over.

Chunks of stone and debris flew toward him from the ongoing explosions, but Kisame casually swung Samehada and knocked them aside.

By the time the chain explosions finally ended, he had reached the ruins of the house.

Shizuma's body, now blasted into something resembling a charred chicken carcass, fell from the sky.

Kisame did not even look up.

He casually backhanded Samehada through it and sent the corpse flying away.

A villager who had just lifted his head was immediately knocked back down by the incoming body.

Kisame looked at the hilt of the Sword of the Thunder God lying on the ground and fell into thought.

If someone had deliberately come here to kill the father and son…

Why had they left this behind?

"Who are you?"

The villagers slowly gathered around Kisame.

Eventually, one of them found the courage to speak.

"Why did you kill Lord Chinrei and his son?"

"My name is Hoshigaki Kisame."

As an unusually straightforward man, Kisame had no interest in hiding information when there was no need.

"They weren't killed by me."

"Hoshigaki Kisame?"

"That name sounds familiar…"

"I remember Lord Chinrei mentioning him before! Lord Kisame is supposed to be the strongest member of the Hoshigaki clan—the wielder of Samehada."

"That's right. I heard the Hoshigaki baby girl Lord Chinrei took in years ago was even raised with Kisame in mind. He named her Nanami because he wanted her to conquer the seven seas.

"That was the scale of Lord Chinrei's ambition~"

"Isn't Nanami working as a spy beside the Mizukage now?"

"Yeah. Lord Mizukage already trusts her. She's only behind Chōjūrō and Ao in status, and since she's a woman, the Mizukage is probably even more comfortable around her personally."

"What a shame Lord Chinrei and Shizuma are dead. Otherwise, sooner or later we could've attacked from inside and outside at the same time…"

"Oh, right! I heard the name Shizuma was also chosen because Lord Chinrei wanted his son to inherit Lord Kisame's ideals."

The villagers had naturally heard of Kisame.

One person spoke, then another joined in, and before long the grief over their leaders' deaths had almost completely disappeared.

That was simply how a disorganized mob worked.

What frightened them most was not having anyone to follow.

Without someone taking the lead, they lost the sense of security people naturally craved.

Now Kisame had appeared seamlessly after the previous leaders vanished.

The villagers immediately felt reassured.

"…"

Kisame did not interrupt their chatter.

Instead, he listened carefully.

This was all useful intelligence.

When he heard about Hoshigaki Nanami, a powerful sense of familiarity immediately struck him.

Good grief.

Wasn't this almost exactly the same as Mr. Itachi's past?

She really had been sent out as a double agent, only to ultimately side with the village instead?

As for giving a girl the name Nanami because it symbolized conquering the seas, Kisame did not see anything strange about that.

The current Mizukage was a woman, after all.

And Kirigakure was famous for producing feminine-looking men.

Clearly, Kirigakure had no reason to care much about gender distinctions.

Besides, Nanami sounded perfectly normal as a girl's name.

It only made Kisame keep thinking about something Strategist Makoto had once mentioned—

The Seven Warlords of the Sea.

Before Kisame came here, Makoto had even joked that everyone connected to Hoshigaki Shizuma looked like they had wandered over from the set of One Piece to make a guest appearance.

Then there was the name Shizuma itself.

Shi could be associated with demons or death.

Zuma suggested clearing away murkiness and reaching the truth.

In a roundabout way, it actually suited Kisame's own pursuit of truth quite well.

The strange part was that Kisame's obsession with truth had only really been known to the masked man—Uchiha Obito.

How had Hoshigaki Chinrei somehow known enough to give his son a thematically similar name?

Obito did not seem like the kind of person who kept a diary.

Oh, right.

The villagers had said "I heard."

It was only a rumor.

Maybe this was another one of those coincidences caused by the mysterious force of destiny Makoto kept talking about.

Kisame felt as though his brain was starting to grow.

He decided not to think about it any further.

Instead, he sent out a signal and called Itachi over.

Itachi had already spent quite some time preparing for what came next—calming the villagers after Chinrei and Shizuma were removed and guiding them back toward normal life.

For Uchiha Itachi, who had once exterminated his own clan, what he was doing now was partly an attempt to give himself some peace.

Keeping these villagers alive felt almost like saving the Uchiha clan he had failed to save back then.

…

"The person who acted was most likely the Second Hokage."

After persuading the villagers to return to the Mizukage's authority and promising that Kirigakure would provide them with legitimate work, Itachi and Kisame moved into a room the villagers had vacated for them and spoke privately.

"The Sword of the Thunder God was his weapon. If he deliberately left it behind, he probably doesn't want it anymore."

Based on Kisame's description of what had happened, Itachi had already guessed the likely explanation.

During the Ōtsutsuki Urashiki incident, Itachi had spent some time around the Second Hokage and personally experienced what Flying Raijin felt like.

"?"

Kisame slowly produced the mental equivalent of a question mark.

As a Kirigakure shinobi and one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, he found it nearly impossible to imagine someone willingly abandoning their own sword.

"There was… something dirty on it."

Itachi chose his words carefully.

"Something dirty?"

Kisame still could not understand.

"Even if Samehada fell into a septic tank, I wouldn't abandon it."

Hearing such a heartfelt declaration, Samehada affectionately rubbed its hilt against Kisame.

Unfortunately, the honest and loyal Kisame had no idea that Samehada itself was an absolute two-timing drama queen.

In the original story, it switched allegiance to Killer B almost instantly.

And by the Boruto era, it had sunk even lower, allowing the utterly useless Hoshigaki Shizuma to handle it—

And even merge with it.