Chapter 42: Gossip and Itachi
Outside the sushi restaurant, Ino held her father's hand and waved.
"Goodbye, Big Brother Tonbo."
"Goodbye. When you enter the Academy, I'll teach you how to turn things into flowers."
"Promise!"
Her delighted shout followed Inoichi down the street.
Ayame watched them leave. "You really do love children."
"That's why we need to work hard. Ino is adorable. If we have a son soon, perhaps he can marry her and bring her into our family."
"You cannot say things like that in the middle of the street!"
Ayame's face reddened as she struck his chest without force. Tonbo only laughed.
That night, they pursued the matter of starting a family with appropriate dedication.
Several days later, the Analysis Team had little work and an abundance of gossip.
"Have you heard?" Hijiri Shimon asked. "The Uchiha produced another genius. As if that clan needed more talent."
Tonbo joined the loose circle of analysts. Apart from study and time with Ayame, village gossip was one of his favorite diversions. Familiar names let him measure the timeline he remembered; unfamiliar ones reminded him that Konoha contained far more lives than his borrowed knowledge had ever revealed.
The Analysis Team was particularly good at collecting rumors. Its members handled fragments from missions across the village, knew shinobi in several departments, and spent long quiet hours in the same room. By the time a story reached them, privileged information and something overheard at lunch were often impossible to distinguish.
Dokuraku Meguri looked over his glasses. "What have you learned this time?"
Shimon lowered his voice theatrically. "Do you know Uchiha Itachi?" Everyone stared at him.
"Who doesn't?" one analyst asked. "He graduated from the Academy at seven last year."
The story had spread throughout Konoha. Itachi had used shadow clones to attend lessons, concealing the extent of his ability until a confrontation with older students and the sudden arrival of an instructor divided his attention. The discovery caused a sensation surpassed only by Kakashi's graduation at six.
Some versions claimed Itachi had mastered the entire Academy curriculum before enrolling. Others insisted he had corrected an instructor during his entrance examination. Tonbo trusted none of those embellishments, but graduating at seven required no exaggeration.
"A few days ago, one of Itachi's teammates was killed," Shimon said. "The grief awakened his Sharingan."
"Did he kill whoever was responsible?"
Shimon raised both hands. "I don't know." The circle groaned.
"Then why present it like a secret? Most talented Uchiha awaken the Sharingan eventually."
Tonbo nodded. For shinobi of that clan, awakening the eye was exceptional only in timing and circumstance.
This tale has been pilfered from NovelPhoenix. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"The details are classified," Shimon protested. "I heard it from a distant relative whose daughter married into the Uchiha clan."
"Useless."
Tonbo turned to Meguri. "Sergeant, you teach at the Academy now. You must have seen Itachi. How good is he?"
Like Tonbo's occasional duty leading squads, many Analysis Team chūnin held secondary posts during peacetime. There was not enough intelligence work to occupy everyone every day, and shinobi still needed income. Meguri had begun teaching after the Nine-Tails' attack.
He adjusted his glasses. "An extraordinary prodigy. Potentially better than Kakashi. And call me Captain Meguri, not Sergeant."
His subordinates had awarded him the nickname because of his merciless training standards.
"Understood, Sergeant."
"Better than Kakashi?"
"As expected of an Uchiha."
"A kekkei genkai really is unfair."
The civilian-born analysts sighed with collective envy. Bloodline abilities raised a shinobi's potential in ways training alone often could not match.
A clan child inherited techniques, teachers, political protection, and generations of accumulated experience. A kekkei genkai added an advantage no amount of careful study could reproduce directly. Tonbo understood their frustration, even if envying the Uchiha meant ignoring the burdens that accompanied their eyes.
Someone glanced at Tonbo. "I wonder whether Itachi could withstand one Hell Viewing Technique—Modified." Every person present swallowed. They had sparred with Tonbo, and nearly all had experienced the lingering taste of the food they hated most.
"Impossible," another declared. "That technique is inhuman. Not even the Sharingan could stop it."
Tonbo frowned. "It merely reproduces an unpleasant flavor. You all exaggerate."
"Then Captain Tonbo is Konoha's strongest," Shimon announced. "Kakashi and the Uchiha are nothing beside him."
"Captain Tonbo is unmatched!"
"The Analysis Team rules Konoha!"
Laughter filled the room as the entire group joined in. Tonbo did not appreciate being praised so loudly that someone important might mistake the joke for ambition.
"Continue," he said, smiling beneath his bandages, "and I will test Hell Viewing Technique 2.0 on all of you. This version doesn't use the flavor *you* consider worst. It uses the most disgusting taste I have collected personally."
The room emptied.
"I remembered an assignment."
"Inoichi-sama needs my report."
"He invited me to dinner."
Chairs scraped, doors slammed, and within seconds Tonbo stood alone.
"Cowards. How will you resist enemy interrogation if a little flavor defeats you?"
Shinobi received extensive conditioning against pain. Whips, pressure points, and many conventional tortures could be endured through discipline. Taste was different: intimate, immediate, and difficult to ignore.
It also bypassed the pride that helped prisoners endure visible injury. A hardened operative might refuse to scream under a blade and still lose concentration when every breath carried a flavor that provoked instinctive nausea. That observation had inspired the second generation of Tonbo's technique.
The original Hell Viewing variant found the flavor a target most hated and reproduced it. Version 2.0 carried a prepared sensory memory chosen by Tonbo. His current favorite came from a rancid medicinal tonic he had once tried in his former life—an odor and taste so aggressive that the memory remained vivid years later.
When triggered, the illusion stimulated the target's facial and glossopharyngeal nerves within a fraction of a second. Dispelling the chakra afterward could weaken the experience, but the sensory signal had already reached the brain. The victim continued to taste it even after breaking the genjutsu.
That persistence distinguished Tonbo's work from an ordinary illusion. Most genjutsu ended when released. His left an effect behind.
The technique had limitations. Tonbo needed firsthand experience and a detailed sensory memory before he could reproduce a flavor convincingly. Rotten eggs might prove more effective than the fermented drink, but improving the technique required tasting them himself.
He had standards. Its study also demanded precise knowledge of the gustatory nervous system. Even with his enhanced mind, thick medical texts could give him a headache.
Tonbo's thoughts returned to Itachi. The boy had awakened the Sharingan. Soon, his relationship with Shisui would deepen, and Obito's attention would turn toward him. The path leading to the Uchiha massacre was beginning to take shape.
Tonbo possessed no exact calendar for every event, but the milestones were recognizable. Itachi's graduation, the death of a teammate, and his awakened eyes placed the village on a road Tonbo knew ended in blood.
Once again, Tonbo felt grateful he had not been born into that clan. An Uchiha reincarnator with knowledge of the future would spend every year racing against an approaching catastrophe.
Tonbo had been free to study, work, marry Ayame, and plan for children. Among the shinobi of his age in the future he remembered, almost none had managed to marry.
By that measure, he had already won.