Sai began his monitoring of Kido.
He learned that the man often acted together with the medical ninja Magire and that he would sometimes make the rounds of safe houses and training facilities, but he didn’t know what Kido was actually doing at any of those places.
Detection tags had been placed around some of the facilities, preventing Sai from casually approaching any of them. It wasn’t impossible for him to infiltrate the bases, but then Kido would know he was investigating. And chasing the man too obviously was not a good plan; Kido would only work harder to hide the evidence. Still, if Sai simply watched him from afar, he wouldn’t make any headway at all. He needed some kind of entry point.
Three days after he began targeting Kido, Sai noticed a small sign attached to a telephone pole on the side of the road on his way back home; a message from Sai’s informer. The meaning of the sign was known only to Sai. The informer wanted to meet with him.
Given that he was currently focused on Kido, there was nothing he particularly wanted to know about the top-level people in the Bingo Book he had asked the informer to investigate. But he had to at least pay for the investigation the man had done.
The next day, Sai met with the informer. This time, it was on the roof of a building in town, rather than in the forest where they had met before.
“The three people you asked me about, Sai? I checked into them, but seems they’re all clean,” the informer said. “The rogue ninja Tenzen from Kiri has been getting up to no good near Kumogakure this whole past year. And Baraki from the Deceased has been absorbed into a different organization, where he apparently doesn’t have the same clout he used to. As for Genba the Soul Remover, he got sick and died about six months ago.”
“Right. Thanks,” Sai said, and paid the promised fee. “Anything else catch your attention?”
“Oh, you know, actually.” A meaningful smile spread across the informer’s face. “If you’re asking about big rumors, then I’ve got one. But it’s probably got nothing to do with what you’re looking into.”
“That’s fine. Just tell me.”
“And is there something in it for me?” The informer rubbed his index and middle fingers against his thumb and grinned.
“Depends on what you know,” Sai replied.
“To investigate the whereabouts of the three people you mentioned,” the informer said, “I went round to all sorts of places. And this little tidbit happened to grace my ears: a story about seeing Uchiha Sasuke.”
“Sasuke?” Sai furrowed his brow slightly. “It doesn’t matter if people see him. He’s on a journey right now to atone for his sins.”
“Mm, I know he’s traveling the world right now. But, you see, the story I heard was not that peaceful.”
“Meaning?”
“For instance, things like he attacked a black-market arms dealer in a cave somewhere, or that he was in contact with a criminal organization in the secret village of a certain nation.”
“Why would Sasuke attack an arms dealer?”
“I don’t really know, myself. But according to the person who told me this tale, Sasuke told this arms dealer he was plotting a terrorist attack on Konoha and demanded a lot of ninja tools for cheap. And, well, obviously, his interlocutor refused. I mean, a demand like that. So Sasuke launched an enormous fireball and killed him. Things like that. With the criminal organization too, negotiations broke off in pretty much the same way, with basically the same ending.”
“When was this?”
“I believe it was a week or two ago.”
Sai shook his head. It couldn’t be. “Sasuke would never do anything like that. It’s some kind of mistake.”
“I completely understand. I’m simply telling you what I happened to hear. Ooh, don’t give me such a threatening look.” The informer ran his hand over his shaved head. “Oh! That and apparently the majority of the next village budget is going to the Anbu.”
Perhaps thinking he had displeased Sai, the informer smiled ingratiatingly and continued. “So I suppose someone brought up the matter about the advisor being attacked you’re looking into now and made a big speech about the Anbu, hmm?”
“You’re a capable informer, you know? Even those details made it to your ears?”
“Heh heh, well, I get around.” The informer’s eyes turned up at the corners.
Sai wanted to leave the place already, but the informer had more to say.
“However, those Anbu, I don’t really understand that organization. I’m sure they do all those assassinations and secret missions implied by the name, but it seems they also do guard duty for important people, as well as investigating the way you are when something happens, right?”
“I’m not on the Anbu register anymore. But, well, it’s true the Anbu is tied up in mystery. I mean, I was in it and I don’t really understand it.”
“And there’s this too, right? Once the fighting’s over, they go to the battlefield and gather all sorts of documents and things?”
Sai’s face pulled into a doubtful frown. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t they have a database of battle records and things? Every now and then, I hear things from people in my line of work, you know. Almost as soon as the Great Ninja War was over, people were seen wearing the masks of Konoha’s Anbu around the Final Valley. Apparently, they were taking earth and bits of rock from the area home with them.”
Sai cocked his head to one side.
It was true that the missions handled by the Anbu covered a lot more ground than simply assassinations, but he had never heard anything about bringing dirt home from a battleground.
“You said this was right after the Great Ninja War?”
“Mm-hmm. And what was the name of that bridge? The bridge where Sasuke and Master Danzo—who didn’t quite manage to become the sixth Hokage—fought that person? I’m not talking about the time where the Anbu were investigating around that bridge, either. Which is why I was wondering if the Anbu people also do work like that.”
Sai crossed his arms and kept his silence. Something the informer had mentioned in the flow of his chatter caught Sai’s attention in a strange way.
“Er, Sai?”
“I’ll be in touch,” Sai said, pushing more money into the informer’s hand before leaving.