November 4th. 3 : 00 am.

The Hokage Monument was by far the best spot to watch all the chaos unfold.

Flames danced over the village, lighting up the early morning sky like lanterns in a festival; buildings collapsed and faded into ashes; and bodies dropped to the ground as if they were mere flies. It was a chaotic sight to behold, but  what Obito loved the most, were the screams.

He hadn't heard screams of anguish like that since...the Third War, he believed? (Back then all he wanted was for the screams to stop and for the dying to comply because seeing his enemies in pain only made him feel guilty and ashamed and scared of how karma would repay him–)

(This time it was different. So wonderfully different.)

He heard a snap and a shrill scream nearby and his eyes lit up; he listened to the wails and it made him feel good inside; he heard someone's loud cries before they were no more and he laughed.

People were dying in Konoha and to him it was nothing more than a joke.

"It wasn't meant to be like this," Fugaku had wrote to him in one of the letters exchanged between the two. They were just going to attack the corrupt shinobi from jounin up, leaving the innocent and purging the government. It was supposed to be a small war, with little involvement with civilians and children...it wasn't supposed to be this destructive.

Until Konoha retaliated by attacking Uchiha civilians–innocent men, women and children, who were not involved in Shinobi politics and who didn't deserve to die.

Obito didn't know what Konoha was thinking when they planned that massacre. Did they think the Uchiha would be warned, and they'd raise the white flag in surrender? Did they think they would be too sad to go on?

Did Konoha truly believe that angering the Uchiha was actually a good idea?

It wasn't. Because now the Uchiha weren't holding back. They were raiding houses, slaughtering families, burning down buildings, reducing enemy shinobi to nothing in this sea of blood, ash and flames.

All because Konoha made a wrong move.

That's what made it so funny. The fact that the bloodshed could've been easily avoided if the Konohan government wasn't so damn stupid.

A ripple in his chakra diverted his attention to what was lurking behind, and Obito straightened as the chakra moved close.

"Fugaku san."

Fugaku tipped his head slightly in acknowledgement, keeping his eyes on the scene below. "You are finally here."

"Forgive me for being so late." Obito drawled, eyes crinkling under his mask as he smirked. "But it seems like your forces already have things covered."

Fugaku's focused gaze moved to the family who were trying to jump down from a burning building, only to end up dying anyways. "Mere destruction is not our goal– it's more of a personal vengeance." Obito raised a brow under his mask, and was about to comment how predictable before Fugaku continued. "Our forces are dwindling. We need to do something about the Fourth and Third Hokage–as well as ANBU forces and the Hyuuga."

"Hn? Those are a problem indeed."

( Obito idly wondered what the Uchiha would do after all this destruction. Would they rebuild? Leave Konoha?)

( What was next for the Uchiha clan? )

Fugaku turned his head, eyes furrowed to slits as he set his eyes on his fellow clansmen, making Obito finally notice that the look in his eyes were not the same as the last time they met.

Last time, his eyes were calculating, distant, one might even say emotionless. This time his Sharingan looked like it was burning. The red in them were as crimson as blood, glowing in the under the moonlight and reflecting the light of the village's flames.

Obito had never seen Fugaku look so angry.

"Where are your forces, Obito?" Fugaku's sharingan moved around like a switch, trying to detect any other chakra that might be lurking.

Fugaku's impatience amused him.

Everything amused him, actually.

"My forces?" Obito closed his eye, and opened it again to reveal his mangekyou. "In a pregnant Uzumaki's stomach. I believe she is in labor right now. We may have to hurry before they reseal the demon fox."

: :

November 4th, 3 : 56 am.

"My mother had the sweetest voice." Red rested her head against the wall. "She sang to me every time she got the chance to, which wasn't a lot." She chuckled at the last sentence, but Sasuke noticed her jaw tense a little.

"My mummy–my mother wasn't a good singer." He cringed at saying "mummy" aloud, but if it made Red's frown disappear, then maybe it wasn't so embarrassing. "She was a good storyteller though."

Red perked up, whatever anger she was showing disappearing into nothing. "Really? What kind of stories did she tell you?"

"Uhm..." Sasuke blinked, trying hard not to think of his mother covered in blood and instead of her smiling as she lulled him to sleep with a tale. "Sometimes they were from books...but she made up most of it."

After they had finished the ramen, they went upstairs to her room (which was just as plain as Sasuke's, except filled with books and books and more books) to talk more. Red told him about her mother, only hinting at her death once, and rather telling him of how she was before she died.

Sasuke told her about his mother too. At first Red did most of the talking, but after a while he too began to open up, slowly, but surely; and now they sat next to each other on the ground for no particular reason with their backs against the wall, talking.

Sasuke picked at a loose thread at the ends of his shirt, wondering why he was in this village, in this room, with this girl.

But Red seemed nice. It wasn't the forced kind of kindness he felt around Konohans where they'd try to smile like it was almost painful to. Red was that subtle kind of nice he liked, sending soft smiles his way and asking him questions with genuine interest, like his mother, really.

"PLEASE WAKE UP!"

"My mother couldn't read." Red spoke, pulling Sasuke out his thoughts and out of the pain. "I came home with books one time and asked her to teach me how to read, and she said she didn't know how either."

Red's face was blank, devoid of any emotion for Sasuke to analyze, so instead he focused on her words. "She never learned how?"

Her hair swayed as she shook her head. "No, she lived her entire life running."

"From what?"

"Everything."

Then he noticed Karin's bottom lip wobbled, and he realized she was sad that he mother had to run her whole life.

He didn't get it (in a way, he was running as well ... was that a bad thing?) , but he probably would be sad too if his mother didn't have time to learn how to read because she was running from things.

Nobody taught Sasuke how to comfort people and that would be his excuse for his next words for years to come. "Hey, don't cry. At least now your mother's dead–so she doesn't need to run again!"

There was a deadpan of absolute silence.

Red blinked rapidly, tears disappearing into a completely blank stare. She stared and stared at Sasuke for a good one minute, making the boy uncomfortable.

"What's–"

Then she whacked him across the head.

"Ow!" Sasuke flinched away, covering his head with his arms. "What was that for?!"

"What do you mean 'what was that for', you absolute buffoon! What kind of useless consolation was that?!" She yelled, hands balling into a fist again.

"I'm sorry!" He held his arms up as a shield to protect himself from Red's anger. Where did her anger even come from? In Sasuke's head she was supposed to be as calm as an Uchiha–not glaring at him with her teeth clenched and hair flaying like...Kushina.

"'aT leAsT yoUR mOM's dEAD nOW.'" She mocked Sasuke's voice. "What is wrong with you?"

"I didn't know what to say!"

"A hug might've sufficed!"

"I don't even know what sufficed means!"

"You're literally an idiot!" She shouted.

"And you're literally crazy!" He screamed back.

"Give me a hug, you imbecile!"

Sasuke recoiled, "Why? What would that do?"

"Make me feel better! Didn't your mum give you hugs?"

Sasuke's smile faltered as he pondered, "Yeah, but... that's my mummy." He shrugged. "You're not my mummy. Why would I want to hug you?"

"Because I'm sad!"

"So a hug will make you unsad?" Sasuke cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy.

Red tried to ignore how squishy he looked, trying to stay mad. "I–yes!"

"Okay then."

Sasuke wrapped his short arms around her, catching Red off guard as she flinched. His head rested on hers, and he was enveloped in the refreshing scent of her red hair.

What was this situation? Sasuke wondered. In another village running from the shark man who probably kidnapped him, finding a red haired girl who seemed calm but could actually smack him, holding a friend in his arms as she cried softly, and feeling...a bit selfish as he held her as his comfort too.

: :

November 4th, 4 : 20 am.

"Who's your caretaker?" Sasuke asked out of curiosity, as he idly read through a page about the skeletal system.

They were surrounded by a pile of open books on the floor, searching for the answer to a question Sasuke asked out of the blue. "What do blind people see when they dream?" He wondered, and Red got curious as well, and she thought that they could somehow find the answer in the biology textbooks that Red never bothered to read before.

Sadly, they were wrong, and now they were still flipping through pages of the books before them, mindlessly rather than really searching for the answer.

"Uhm, I don't think he'd enjoy me talking about him." Still, Red leaned in and whispered, as if her caretaker was around and watching them. "But between you and me, he's a big jackass."

They stared at each other for a brief second with their lips pursed, then split their cheeks as they burst into laughter.

"A jackass!" Sasuke rolled on the floor, hand slapping against an open book.

"It's true!" Red giggled. Sasuke had never heard someone laugh like that around him–a giggle? Uchiha could never. "He's so penurious! He's always tries to threaten me. 'If you litter this place with your books one more time I'll rip your heart out and feed it to dogs'" She mocked his deep voice.

"He does sound like a jackass." Sasuke let out a final laugh as he calmed down, resting his weight on his elbows. "My care–the man that lives with me me, is like that too."

"Really?" Red scooted closer to him. "What does he do?"

Sasuke didn't know how to feel about Kisame at the moment. Before all he wanted to do was to get away from the man that made him see blood again, but after he calmed down and rational thought came back he realised that running from Evil Fish was a bad idea on so many levels.

He didn't know anyone in this strange village apart from Red and Kisame–and unlike Red, Kisame had answers to the different questions that swarmed through his head. 'Why am I here? What do you want from me? Why can't I go back to Konoha? Who actually brought me to this place?'

So in a way, he actually needed Kisame, but he wanted an apology for the way Kisame treated him–but he was too scared to go back, so staying with Red worked as well.

"See this?" Sasuke pointed to the band aid on his cheek that Red had given him, referring to the cut underneath. "He did it."

She reached to poke his band-aid, but stopped midway, cringing at herself. He noticed but didn't think much of it.

"Why?"

"He got mad because I said I don't want to use a kunai." Sasuke shrugged. 'Weirdo.'

"Huh, Really? That sounds like my caretaker as well. He's very strict about training me."

"Oh? So it's like an Ame thing to be crazy about training?"

"Well..." She thought about it for a second. "...actually, yes. Amegakurans start training children at very young ages. I know a lot of kids that joined the Academy at four years old."

"Wow." Sasuke thought Kisame had some sort of ulterior motive, but maybe it was just in his nature to be crazy. "In Konoha we start at like, eight."

"That's such a late age."

Sasuke frowned as he thought of Itachi. "Kids should get to be kids you know, without school and stuff."

"But this is..."

They both grew quiet when they heard the front door slam shut.

"Oh no." Red jumped up, and quickly began to clean up the mess they had made.

"Who's that?" Sasuke asked, confused at her panicked state. He passed her the book that was beside him, and she snatched it from his hands, placing the books on the shelf sloppily.

"My caretaker, he's gonna get angry if he sees the mess on the floor. Pass me the book beside you!" Sasuke did as told, heart thumping as the footsteps echoed through the hall.

"He's getting close! Help me out you idiot!" Red hissed, causing Sasuke to scramble to his feet and try to help his friend prevent...whatever she was trying to prevent.

The footsteps grew louder, and Red quickly shoved the last book into the shelf, sighing in relief.

"By the way, don't answer anything stupidly." Sasuke nodded, brows furrowing a bit. What could be classified as stupid? Confusion maybe? Alright, he wouldn't look confused. "He may not kill you, but there's a chance he might cut off a finger or two."

Sasuke paled. "What?"

"Just be yourself."

All of a sudden the door slung wide open, and in a blink of an eye Sasuke was being held by his shirt, face to face with the pure green eyes of the creepiest-looking man he had ever seen.

(Creepier than Kisame –and he thought that was impossible.)

"Your name." His deep and harsh voice rung through Sasuke's ears, making him shiver.

"Are you deaf?" He growled, eyes narrowing ever slightly. "I said what is your your name, boy?"

"S-sa–" The words couldn't come out under the crushing glare of the creepy man's eyes. The tension and fear was downright choking him.

"Don't make me cut out your tongue; stop stuttering and speak!"

"Sasuke!" He cried out finally,  legs writhing in the air.

"Kakuzu san! Drop him now!"

His gaze moved down to Red, who was glaring daggers at him with a deep scowl on her face. Her fierce tone made him smirk through his mask, but his words held no amusement. "I don't take orders from you, girl."

Still, he let go of Sasuke's shirt, not caring that he fell roughly to the tile floor with a yelp. Red went to his side to help him up, whispering "stay calm" as she noticed his shivering under her fingers.

But how could he stay calm when there was a literal giant of a man glaring down at them?

Just when Sasuke thought he had seen it all, a new anomaly came into the mix to frustrate the hell out of him. This was a man that had red sclera and green eyes, with no black cornea.  The cloak he wore reminded him of someone–a hazy figure towering over him as he cried over his mother's dea–Sasuke shook away the thoughts and forced himself to focus. Red said he was a jackass and so far he had lived up to that name, and Sasuke just wanted to get out of here without losing a finger.

"Welcome home." Red didn't bother to bow, Sasuke noticed. Was being disrespectful normal in Amegakure?

She raised a brow, her demeanor changing entirely. "Got any money?"

Kakuzu's smirk widened as he pulled out a generous sack from his coat, making it jingle by shaking it. "Eighty thousand."

Sasuke blinked confused, trying to process what was happening.

She nodded and pushed her glasses up, calculating. "How much work do I have to do to get at least five thousand?"

Kakuzu didn't skip a beat. "All the chores, six hours of training, and cook me dinner for the next two weeks. And I pay you after."

"Done." She had no qualms with it.

"You're not even going to haggle for it? Pathetic." Kakuzu shook his head and  sat on the edge of the bed, keeping his eyes on the boy that looked like he wanted to shit himself. "We'll discuss your poor negotiation skills later. Right now I want to know exactly why an Uchiha is in my house."

With that question, Sasuke saw the Red's personality shift (once again) from a fierce haggler to an anxious girl, as she averted her eyes to the window by the bed, chewing on the inside of her cheek. 

Sasuke, feeling bad that she was nervous because of him, spoke up. "She...helped me." His voice was so small he didn't even think Red heard it.

Kakuzu's bored expression turned to a cold glare, and the young boy cursed at himself for opening his mouth.

"There is no point in speaking if your voice is not loud enough to hear, boy." He growled, making Sasuke shudder once again. Like Red, he averted his eyes to the window to avoid Kakuzu's icy glare.

"I'm s–" he was about to make the mistake of apologizing, until Kakuzu's earlier words sunk in. Sasuke's head snapped to his, eyes as wide as saucers. "How do you know my last name?"

Kakuzu's face scrunched up, annoyed by his slow reaction.  "Kisame gave me a briefing."

At this point Sasuke's eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets. His reaction angered Kakuzu even more, and the man boomed, "Stop staring at me like I've got two heads or I'll pluck those googly eyes out with my bare fingers!" The room shook under the power of Kakuzu's voice–or maybe it was Sasuke who was trembling so much.

"Kakuzu san!" Red snapped out of whatever nervous haze she was in before, glaring at her caretaker with anger on par with his. "Stop with the threats for God's sake!"

"Raise your voice at me one more time..." He challenged.

"What are you going to do? Kill me? Come on then! I'm all open!"

Sasuke, once again, blinked confused at Red's sudden switch in personality.

"Karin."

"I dare you."

"Wait...how do you know Kisame san?" His voice was overshadowed by the two, who kept yelling at each other.

"Wanna fight, old man?"

"That's it. No amount of money is worth looking after you. You die today."

"Please, you'd do anything for money. Besides, I'm the best damn thing that's ever happened to you."

Sasuke blinked at Karin. What happened to her old diplomat voice? Everything was just so confusing. Karin was confusing. "Please, someone answer me. How do you know Ki–"

"You're really pushing it, girl." Sasuke jumped in his skin when Kakuzu pulled out a kunai, arm swiftly moving so the blade touched Karin's neck.

Unlike Sasuke, who was shitting bricks, Karin didn't look a tad bit fazed. "Come on, old man. Do it! Kill me now!"

"Wait..."

"You really have a death wish don't you?"

"Please–"

"I don't have a death wish. I just know when someone's bullshitting."

"Can you just..."

"You little–I oughta rip your heart out right n–"

"STOP!"

Both of them stopped yelling, heads snapping to stare at Sasuke, who had covered his mouth for being so loud.

"So he can speak aloud." Kakuzu mindlessly moved his kunai back into his pouch, to which Karin grinned triumphantly. "What do you want, boy?"

Kakuzu was so intense and scary, Sasuke could pee himself (and he thought he did). He rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers discreetly. "H-how do you know Kisame?"

"He's my colleague."

'Colleague? So I ran into a guy that knows the guy I'm running away from?!'

Kakuzu stood up abruptly, startling Sasuke. "Now that I've answered your question, you answer mine." He towered over the young boy once again. "What do you mean Karin helped you?"

"Ah..." The room felt too hot even for a village that rained on a daily basis. "I was–" Sad? Crying? Those didn't sound like good answers to give someone who pulled a knife on a kid. "–hurt, and Red–Karin found me and helped me."

He turned to Karin, quirking a brow. "And how much did you charge?"

Karin shrugged. "Friendship."

There was a long  silence, and Sasuke was sure he could chew on the tension if he tried. Kakuzu's glared at Karin like he wanted to pierce her face with his abnormal eyes, and though she had the same glare, Sasuke saw her legs wobble a bit.

The silence shattered when Kakuzu's voice shook the very earth once again, making Sasuke yelp like a goat.

"So you're telling me you charged him nothing? How stupid can you be?!"

: :

November 4th, 10 : 00 a.m.

After Kakuzu and Karin had their second pissing contest over the lack of monetary value of friendship, he left without a word for a meeting with his colleagues and boss. Kisame did not mention anything about his missing kid, so Kakuzu didn't either, until they were out of the building and out of earshot and Kakuzu informed Kisame that his kid was currently at his house.

"So the kid ran into your kid and is now at your place." Kisame snickered, amused at the change of events. "How coincidental."

Kakuzu let out a huff, which turned into a growl when a passing villager bumped his shoulder as he walked. He hated crowded areas with a passion, why Kisame wanted to walk through the streets instead of transporting  was beyond him.

"More like ironic."

Kisame snickered again, "True."

He didn't know what was more surprising; Sasuke managing to run right back into the arms of the Akatsuki, or the fact that he wasn't the only criminal in the organization that was grooming a kid.

The more he thought about it, the more the surprise of the latter grew. Of all people in the organization, he chose Kakuzu? The man who would slaughter an entire village for a bit of extra ryo?

A heartless murderer with absolutely no sense of morality was taking care of a child–a female child.

It sounded like a recipe for absolute disaster. Kisame almost felt bad for the girl who would most likely die by Kakuzu's hands. Almost.

"That Uchiha is nothing more than a pile of pillows." His tone was gruff and full of contempt. A villager tried to squeeze in between him and Kisame but ended up shoving through in the process. Kakuzu grit his teeth. "It took all of my self control not to rip the boy apart."

"Kakuzu, you ought to–"

Another villager bumped into Kakuzu, and this time he let his anger out, grabbing the unsuspecting villager by the hair, slamming her to the ground and startling the other villagers around him. The lady screamed out in pain, clutching her head.

"Watch where you're going, woman." If his voice wasn't frightening enough, his eyes were petrifying enough to do the trick.

Kisame deadpanned as he watched the scene unfold. 'Can't go one day without a bit of violence. Pathetic.'

"Move out of the way or it'll be worse for you!" His voice boomed over the rain, scaring everyone else into scurrying out of the way without a word being said. Kisame rolled his eyes at their meekness–that was the problem with District Six, it was full of cowards.

(It was probably why Kakuzu chose to live in such an area. He fed off fear of other people.)

"That wasn't necessary."

"I cleared the way, didn't I?"

"Sasuke is a traumatized kid." Kisame continued their last conversation, pushing aside his irritation with Kakuzu and his typical rage. "His soft and naive nature will be gone eventually when he understands the reality of this world."

"He better understand reality fast." Kakuzu grumbled as they took a left. "Do not let him come anywhere near me until then, else I will dispose of him immediately."

Then both parties entered the run down apartment, transporting to the sixth floor with a poof!.

"You speak of the kid like he's an object."

Kakuzu turned to Kisame with a smirk under his mask as he fished for his keys.

"Aren't we all, though?"

"Hm," Kisame's shark teeth caught a bit of a light from the window, glistening as he grinned. "you're not wrong."

They entered the apartment a slam of the door–Kakuzu's way of announcing he was home–and Kisame took a discreet sweep of the area, like shinobi normally did whenever they entered a room. Kakuzu's feet stomped against the wood, making it creak loudly and irritating Kisame. Why couldn't he just walk normally?

When they reached a door–the bedroom door, Kisame assumed–Kakuzu once again slammed it open, sending some wood chinks flying in the process.

In the plain bedroom, Sasuke was sitting cross legged on the bed, with another kid sprawled out over it, who stirred in her sleep over the noise.

(Kisame blinked at the strange scene, and from the corner of his eye he saw Kakuzu's eye twitch.)

The red hair was a dead giveaway of where the child was from–but that wasn't what Kisame cared about. The boy that flew off the bed upon seeing him and tried to run towards the window to make a jump for it was who he put all his attention on.

Sasuke had one foot on the window pane when Kisame grabbed him by the back of his shirt and held him up in the air. He punched and kicked the air wildly, black eyes glaring right at Kisame.

"What exactly is wrong with you?"

"Put me down!" He whisper-yelled, confusing Kisame for a second until he remembered the sleeping girl. He didn't want to wake her up? "Put me down and go away!"

"No can do, kid." In his peripheral vision he saw Kakuzu throw a blanket over the sleeping girl then leave the room without a word. Strange.

"Put. Me. Down!" The boy repeated as he swung wildly in the air once more.

'Is this what a tantrum looks like?'

"Stop acting like a brat, kid. We're going back to my house." And Kisame didn't feel like walking all the way there, so he put two fingers up and transported out of Kakuzu's house with a poof!

They reappeared at the door of Kisame's house, with Sasuke still writhing in the air but this time screaming louder than before.

"LET ME GO!"

It was hard trying to open a front door when a child was kicking at your face. Kisame shut the door behind him with his foot and held Sasuke at arm's length. "Why are you so loud and annoying all of a sudden?"

The boy's scowl deepened. Kisame wondered, 'When did he learn how to scowl like that?...oh, Kakuzu.'

"I said put me down."

"Only if you stop being a brat."

"Fine!" Sasuke crossed his arms, staying as still as a statue.

Kisame dropped Sasuke gently on the ground and said, "We resume training from where we left off, and this time if you run off I'll break both of your legs." He crouched down till he was eye level with Sasuke, eyes narrowed to slits. "And that's not a threat, that's a promise."

Sasuke's eyes held more ferociousness than Kisame had seen in them before, and he had to blink twice to confirm if those angry eyes belonged to Sasuke. They did.

"Fine." He seethed, voice just above a whisper. "I dare you."

"Excuse me?"

"I dare you to break my legs." Sasuke repeated, shoulders squaring up as if preparing for a fight. In a way, he was.

Kisame was at a loss of words, to say the least. 'Where did all this stubbornness from from?' he wondered. 'Is this how kids really act?'

After a long staring contest from the both of them, Sasuke finally spoke up. " I get that I'm stuck here now, and I get that I have to train, but I don't like seeing blood." He said firmly, but his eyes seemed faraway for a second. "And if you don't get that, then you can break my legs. I don't care."

There were many things Kisame didn't appreciate in the world; unnecessary rage, naivety, stupidity, optimism, fear...the list could go on and on. But one thing he could appreciate, was honesty.

So Kisame sighed, and matched Sasuke's honesty with his. "Look kid, you're a shinobi, you need to act–"

But Sasuke cut him off, face red and eyes blazing. "I'm not a shinobi!" He screamed.  "I'm just a little kid!"

For a moment, they simply stared at each other in complete silence. Sasuke kept his eyes narrowed, while Kisame kept his blank as he pondered.

What could he tell Sasuke?

'You're a shinobi first, a child later.'

'Thinking like that is only going to get you killed.'

'There is no way you survive if you refuse to see blood.'

But he didn't want the kid to run away again, so instead he came up with a compromise. "If it'll make you feel any better, for now we'll work on stuff that don't require blood."

Sasuke cocked his head to the side, "Like?"

Kisame shrugged, "Simple sparring, Genjutsu, ninjutsu basics, theory, stuff like that."

'What a strange situation. Here I am haggling with a kid over training. Just when I thought I've seen everything this dreary life has to offer.'

Sasuke contemplated it for a moment. "That's ok." He nodded finally, lips stretching into a small smile. "Thank you

Kisame inwardly sighed 'finally'. "But you do realize you'll have to get over this fear soon right? If you ever want to become shinobi."

(Because what else would an Uchiha be?)

Sasuke's smile became sad–bitter even, and his voice could barely be heard over the growing rain.

"Yeah," Kisame thought he might cry. 

"I know."

: :

November 4th, 12 : 32 p.m.

There was a piece of paper on the window pane of Sasuke's bedroom when he came in.

He padded towards the window, picking up the crumpled note.

It is always useful to see the spark before the fire–this is a proverb Konoha failed to heed.

Signed O.

: :

Author's note (old note)

Big shoutout to my beta reader -sayachaan- /sayaminie_ for her in-depth help in this chapter. Also special thanks to its-amani-kin for her help with revamping some scenes as well. ❤️

👁️👄👁️ Also it's been officially one year since I published this book so happy one year anniversary to Masters Of Deception! And thank you guys for 1k reads

Thanks for reading, I appreciate every single person who clicked on this :D ❤️❤️❤️