Kenji's life was now a dual existence. By day, he melted into the crowd, an ordinary face no one noticed. But when night fell, he became a hunter, and his prey was the most powerful and mysterious man in the village: Danzō Shimura.
This was much harder than he had imagined. Danzō was like a spider, sitting at the center of an invisible web. His Root members had no faces, no identities. They moved like ghosts, and all of Kenji's attempts to track them with Shadow Clones led to dead ends. They seemed able to sniff out the presence of foreign chakra and vanish without a trace.
Kenji realized he couldn't hunt a ghost by chasing it. He had to go to the source of the crime.
One rainy night, Kenji made his way to the outskirts, to the area where the safe house in which Kushina gave birth to Naruto once stood. The place was now just a sealed-off empty lot, a scar that no one was allowed to approach. The downpour was a perfect cover for his infiltration.
He avoided the Anbu patrol's traps and barriers and slipped inside. The place had been cleaned up. Too clean. There wasn't a single trace of the horrific battle that had taken place. Danzō had done a very good job of covering his tracks.
Kenji knelt, pressing his hands onto the muddy ground. He closed his eyes, focusing all his chakra into his senses. He wasn't looking for what was on the surface. He was searching for what had been buried.
After several minutes of intense concentration, he felt it. A very faint chakra signature, nearly erased by time and rain, lay deep beneath the earth. A chakra that carried the stench of death and a specific type of sealing jutsu.
He began to dig with his bare hands. Mud caked his body, but he didn't care. Finally, his fingers touched something hard. He pulled it out.
It was a kunai. It was charred and deformed by an extremely powerful ninjutsu, but its shape was still recognizable. It was not a standard-issue Konoha kunai. Its hilt was engraved with a small symbol: a closed eye.
Kenji froze. He had seen this symbol only once before, in a top-secret Anbu file he had accidentally read years ago. It was the symbol of a special assassination unit that specialized in carrying out the village's dirtiest "cleanup" missions. That unit had been officially disbanded long ago. But there was a rumor that its remaining members had been recruited... by Danzō and the Root organization.
This was it. Physical evidence. A thread connecting Danzō to the night of the Nine-Tails' attack.
At the same time, in the Hokage's office.
Minato stood before a large map of the Leaf Village, on which were marked the Uchiha clan's strategic locations that Kenji had brought back. The Third Hokage sat behind the desk, smoking his pipe, his expression thoughtful.
"Are you certain about this, Minato?" Hiruzen asked. "Confronting Fugaku directly at this time... could be the straw that breaks the camel's back."
"We have no other choice, Master," Minato replied, his voice firm. "I will not let this village live in fear and mutual suspicion. I will not let Fugaku be manipulated by his hatred, and I will not let Danzō continue his schemes. This wound must be treated, no matter how painful."
He believed in Kenji. He believed his loyal Jounin would find the evidence he needed to move against Danzō. But first, he had to extinguish the fire smoldering within the Uchiha clan.
He took out a small scroll, wrote a single line on it, and sealed it with a jutsu. He summoned an Anbu wearing an eagle mask.
"Take this to Uchiha Fugaku," Minato ordered. "It must be delivered directly into his hands. No one else."
"Yes, Lord Hokage!"
The Anbu vanished. Hiruzen exhaled a cloud of smoke. "What did you write?"
Minato turned to look out the window towards the Uchiha district.
"An invitation," he said. "To the Naka Shrine. Midnight, tomorrow. I told him we need to talk, not as Hokage and Captain of the Police Force. But as two men who both want to protect this village."
The time had come to show their cards. Minato had made his move. And elsewhere in the village, Kenji had found his ace.
Two fateful confrontations were about to take place, and the Leaf Village, whether it knew it or not, was holding its breath.