Chapter 179: The Missing Scroll

Kabuto watched the eagle dwindle in the sky. Even if a creature that size stood still and let him work, how long would it take to kill it with a chakra scalpel?

He pushed his glasses back into place. Orochimaru needed to know how much stronger Tonbo had become. Their plan would require an adjustment: they must draw him out of Konoha first, or risk facing another enemy on the Hokage's level. Kabuto had not obtained the result he wanted at his last meeting with Orochimaru. Perhaps this explained why.

A short distance away, Konohamaru had scrambled backward onto the stone seats. His mouth hung open, showing the gap where his front teeth had been.

"Such a big bird..."

Hiruzen laughed. "When you're older, I'll teach you a summoning technique of your own. The strongest in the shinobi world."

"Stronger than that?"

A bird like Tonbo's would surely let him beat Tenyu. Then Konohamaru remembered whose father had been standing on its head. He would need something stronger still.

"Enma, the Monkey King," Hiruzen assured him. "The strongest creature on earth."

Konohamaru's alarm vanished. "Then teach me that one!"

The Academy students carried the examination home with them. For days their conversations returned to the fights, the enormous cat, and the eagle rising from the arena. The world they meant to enter had grown larger in an afternoon.

If Captain Tobitake was that strong, Naruto reasoned, the Hokage must be stronger. When Naruto became Hokage, he would surpass him too.

Kiba had a more immediate ambition. "You'll grow that big, won't you, Akamaru?"

Akamaru could only whine. Kiba kept asking as though determination might turn a small dog into a different breed.

Sasuke measured the same spectacle against a different man. Tonbo had led the pursuit of Itachi and returned without him, but alive. To Sasuke, that suggested neither had been able to kill the other. Before he could take his revenge, he would have to surpass the man he had seen in the arena.

Nine months passed after Tonbo collected the contestants' physical information. Fūma Shikun and Izuno Saiji received their promotions. Special jōnin would probably be the limit of their advancement, he thought, but that was a worthwhile return on the effort their families had invested in them.

Kurenai became a jōnin as well. Asuma's courtship now had to compete with her preparations to lead a team from the next graduating class.

Tonbo continued his research into techniques and the human body, with intelligence work filling the spaces between. Reports from the Land of Lightning described stable government and rapid technical development. He could see the beginnings of scientific ninja tools in them.

The Land of Earth was almost as settled. Iwagakure had circulated an S-rank notice for Deidara, making his defection known to the other countries and disowning responsibility for whatever he did next. Konoha had done much the same with Orochimaru and Itachi.

News from the Land of Water came in fragments. Yagura appeared to have vanished. The elder Genji, whose standing rivaled the Mizukage's, was handling the village's political affairs with the assistance of its jōnin.

Sunagakure's troubles were easier to see. The Land of Wind had cut both military funding and the missions reaching its hidden village. Poverty had been bad enough before. Remembering what lay ahead, Tonbo could understand why the Sand would soon be willing to cooperate with Orochimaru.

He set one report aside and rubbed his forehead. Who, in his former life, had persuaded him that the Third Hokage was a brilliant politician?

From where Tonbo sat, Hiruzen compared poorly with the Raikage and the Tsuchikage. Cloud had produced no S-rank traitors since Kinkaku and Ginkaku in the Second Hokage's time; even ordinary desertions were rare. Stone had Deidara, but the boy seemed more interested in his explosions than in harming his own village. Only Sand and Mist made Konoha's leadership look competent.

Tonbo had once thought the Will of Fire remarkably effective. Perhaps Cloud's version of loyalty worked better.

He put down his pen, swallowed one of the special military ration pills, and turned his perception inward. Months of Contact Evolution, supported by information gathered from many shinobi, were changing him more noticeably now. He learned physical skills faster and endured increasingly severe training.

Ayame had noticed the difference before anyone else. He was already using Contact Evolution to improve her condition, but his growing stamina could still leave her exhausted in bed. Fortunately, the appetites of his youth no longer ruled him. They had learned to make allowances for each other.

His chakra had more than doubled in the past year. That meant more than twice the margin for mistakes, and small conveniences he once would have considered wasteful. These days a shadow clone could collect the children while he stayed home. He was no longer the newly arrived shinobi who had to account for every scrap of chakra.

His genjutsu had advanced as well. Memory Scaffold was complete at last, though by the time he finished it, he had little need of it in battle.

The technique used chakra to insert fabricated memories into a single mind. If the victim failed to dispel it promptly, ordinary experience would gradually weave the false recollections into real ones until the distinction was lost. It could make a useful agent of a weaker shinobi. A strong opponent, however, was likely to break free before the memory took hold.

It was no absolute command over reality, and it affected only one person. Against those Tonbo needed it for, it was unreliable; against those it could overcome, he had simpler methods. Still, completing an old idea satisfied him. Someone who learned it after him might find more use for it.

He had also brought his separate sensory illusions together. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell could now be controlled within a single technique. Shape, substance, the apparent weight of an object—none of it had to betray the illusion to another sense. Until an opponent broke the genjutsu, Tonbo could govern everything that opponent experienced.

Memory insertion, control of the five senses, deceptive weather: the three ambitions he had set himself were now within reach of his hands. The last amounted to only one technique, but one was enough.

A shinobi appeared in front of him.

"Captain Tobitake. Uzumaki Naruto has stolen the Scroll of Seals from the Hokage's restricted area."

 

"I understand. Go and help them."

"Yes, sir."

When the messenger had gone, Tonbo stroked his chin. Hiruzen had told him about the arrangement a few days earlier. Naruto needed to graduate, and the Hokage wanted the boy to learn a lasting lesson about whom he could trust and where he belonged. So he had laid a trap.

Why go to all that trouble? Why not simply give Naruto the technique?

Hiruzen had offered Tonbo concern and a place in the village when he possessed little else. A jinchūriki evidently made the old man less certain that kindness alone would hold. He wanted Naruto's attachment to Konoha driven deeper.

 

Tonbo considered staying where he was. Then he rose and went out.