"Two months ago, a newly appointed member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, an Anbu Jonin named Hoshigaki Kisame who wields the Samehada, assassinated the blade's previous owner and leader of the Seven Swordsmen, Suikazan Fuguki," Kabuto reported smoothly.
Diarmuid took a slow sip from his teacup, smacking his lips lightly. "Didn't Jūzō mention a long time ago that watermelon-pig-thing Fuguki or whatever his name was wasn't a good person? He got what was coming to him."
"Diarmuid-sama, it's Suikazan Fuguki," Rin corrected gently, sounding a bit helpless.
"Well, same difference," Diarmuid dismissed with a casual wave of his hand.
It was entirely natural for Kisame to eliminate Fuguki. Kirigakure was traditionally isolated from the mainland, and since the end of the Third Shinobi World War, they had rarely interfered with the affairs of the Great Shinobi Nations. Thus, even with Diarmuid stirring up storms across the continent, his butterfly effect had barely rippled out to those distant waters.
It was no surprise that Kisame had still taken that life.
Kabuto waited for Diarmuid to set his teacup down before continuing, "Ordinarily, this wouldn't be considered an anomaly. Given Kirigakure's brutal traditions, internal infighting and mutual slaughter are practically routine. However, immediately following the assassination, Kisame executed a far more shocking move."
"What did he do?" Diarmuid asked.
Did the guy move on to assassinate the Daimyo?
If he recalled correctly, Kisame became an S-rank rogue ninja precisely because of a failed assassination attempt on the Daimyo of the Land of Water, which eventually led to his recruitment into the Akatsuki by Obito.
Could it be that Kabuto had intercepted the prelude to that exact sequence?
"Five days ago, Kisame assassinated Genji, the Elder of Kirigakure. Rather than branding him a traitor, Yagura actively shielded him. Yagura has since consolidated the village's traditionally bifurcated leadership and is poised to execute a radical, systemic restructuring," Kabuto stated solemnly.
Diarmuid paused, his mind racing. Genji?
Right, it clicked now. Unlike the other Great Shinobi Nations, Kirigakure operated under a dual-authority structure. The supreme governance of the village was split between the Mizukage and Genji, the Elder. Should the Mizukage perish unexpectedly, Genji even possessed the ultimate authority to appoint the next successor. In the original timeline, the Fifth Mizukage, Terumī Mei, had received her mantle directly from Genji's hands.
But now Genji was dead?
Assassinated by Kisame? And instead of being hunted down as a rogue ninja, Kisame was being placed in a position of immense authority by Yagura?
It seemed his butterfly wings had finally generated a massive storm in the Land of Water after all.
"Why is everyone so alarmed? Isn't this just a standard political coup within Kirigakure?" Diarmuid inquired.
The moment the words left his lips, Jūzō interjected sharply, "Absolutely not, Boss Diarmuid. You only say that because you don't truly understand what kind of man Yagura is. In reality, this behavior is completely inverted from his true nature!"
"Oh? Enlighten me," Diarmuid invited, smacking his lips with renewed interest.
"Yagura is undeniably powerful. As the Fourth Mizukage, his combat prowess easily rivals any of the Kage from the Great Shinobi Nations. You... well, uh..." Jūzō trailed off, coughing awkwardly.
He suddenly remembered that Yagura had once been utterly ragdoll-handled by Diarmuid...
Well, to be fair, Yagura hadn't really committed to a full engagement back then. After a brief clash of testing the waters, the Mizukage had immediately unleashed his Tailed Beast form and beat a swift retreat.
"Ahem, Kakuzu and I can both attest to his strength," Jūzō added quickly to cover his slip.
During that past encounter, he and Kakuzu had teamed up, only to be completely dismantled and ragdoll-handled by Yagura. Yagura's mastery over Water Release was truly sublime, and even without being a perfect Jinchuriki at the time, his ability to execute Tailed Beast transformations was top-tier. Excluding an anomaly of nature like Diarmuid or individuals wielding literal visual prowess cheats, Yagura Karatachi was undeniably a high-ranking powerhouse on the global stage.
"Get to the point, ignore the ancient history," Diarmuid chuckled.
"Right. Yagura's strength is absolute, and within Kirigakure, no one can match him in a straight fight. But fundamentally, Yagura is not an aggressively tyrannical individual. It is completely out of character for him to suddenly enforce such a brutal iron fist upon the village. If he truly wished to seize total dictatorial control through raw violence, he never needed Kisame to act as his blade; he could have dismantled Genji himself years ago. Yet, for all these years, he did nothing of the sort, dedicating himself entirely to pursuing peaceful reformation. In that regard, he was practically indecisive! How could a man like that suddenly pivot to political executions? I strongly suspect he is either being heavily coerced or there is an underlying force pulling the strings!" Jūzō explained rapidly.
Though he had abandoned the village long ago to operate within the Yorozuya, his psychological profile of Kirigakure and Yagura remained exceptionally sharp. After all, during his tenure as one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, he had served as Yagura's direct subordinate.
Following Jūzō's analysis, Kabuto smoothly added his intelligence brief: "While we lack immediate physical evidence, my network has confirmed that during this precise window, Black Zetsu and the entity claiming to be Madara have been highly active within the Land of Water. Their primary objective appears to be the total subjugation of Kirigakure. Furthermore, with the assistance of several embedded intelligence assets secured through Sasori-sama, I have verified that Yagura's psychological alignment and operational patterns underwent a massive, overnight shift. The moment he eliminated Genji and consolidated absolute authority, he immediately turned on his inner circle, executing multiple high-profile members of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, including Kurosuki Raiga, Hōzuki Mangetsu, and Ringo Ameyuri. To our knowledge, Momochi Zabuza is the sole survivor to have successfully fled the village. The entire sequence defies standard geopolitical logic."
Diarmuid blinked blindly. Kurosuki Raiga?
He remembered that name. Back during the Third Shinobi World War, Might Duy had unleashed the Eight Inner Gates and obliterated the majority of the original Seven Ninja Swordsmen, though Jūzō, Fuguki, and Raiga had managed to survive that catastrophic encounter.
As for Ameyuri, she belonged to the second generation of the Seven Swordsmen.
Thinking of this, Diarmuid couldn't help but feel a fleeting sense of irony. He hadn't realized that so many members of the second generation had already met their demise; time truly moved like a fleeting shadow. Ameyuri had been celebrated as a prodigy of the Mist, though the girl was natively plagued by a terminal illness and had very few years left to live anyway.
What puzzled Diarmuid slightly was that, according to his hazy memories of the original timeline, Ameyuri was supposed to have inherited the Lightning Blade: Kiba after Raiga's death. How had she managed to join the ranks while Raiga was still breathing? And now, they had both been taken off the board together... Which sword was she even wielding?
Well, those were minor historical discrepancies, hardly worth deep analysis.
However, Yagura executing Mangetsu was a genuinely wild development. This single detail completely validated Kabuto's deduction—Yagura was undeniably compromised. Synthesizing the data with his own meta-knowledge, Diarmuid was ninety-nine percent certain that the Mizukage was currently being micro-managed by Obito's Sharingan.
Compared to rogue operators like Raiga and Ameyuri, Mangetsu wasn't some minor player; he belonged to the prominent Hōzuki clan, a premier nobility within Kirigakure!
While the Hōzuki clan couldn't quite match the millennium-old prestige of titans like the Uchiha or the Senju, their geopolitical leverage within the Land of Water was highly analogous to the Sarutobi clan's status inside Konohagakure. They carried immense institutional weight. The Second Mizukage, Hōzuki Gengetsu, was a direct product of their bloodline. Though they hadn't produced a subsequent Kage since then, they remained an undisputed pillar of nobility, distinguished by their absolute mastery over the Hydrification Technique, a closely guarded secret of the Hidden Mist.
Furthermore, Mangetsu was a pivotal and uniquely gifted figure among the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. He was the only virtuoso capable of flawlessly mastering all seven legendary blades, and the Hōzuki clan historically bore the solemn responsibility of safeguarding the summoning scrolls for the swords. In essence, the entire arsenal fell under his direct stewardship.
For an operator of that stature to be executed?
The moment Yagura eliminated Genji and seized supreme dictatorial command, instead of immediately stabilizing the volatile factions within the village, his very first move was to execute Mangetsu? Unless the Mizukage had suddenly suffered a catastrophic brain aneurysm, he was indisputably under external mind control!
However, what truly intrigued Diarmuid was the current trajectory of Zabuza.
The man famously known as the Demon of the Hidden Mist was, under conventional history, supposed to inherit the Executioner's Blade only after Yagura's regime forced Jūzō out of commission.
A few years down the line, as Obito's proxy control drove Yagura to escalate the village's brutality, transforming the already terrifying "Bloody Mist" into an absolute living hell, Zabuza was supposed to launch a desperate coup to overthrow the tyranny, culminating in a failed assassination attempt on Yagura that forced him into S-rank exile.
Yet right now, the timeline had been heavily warped. Zabuza was apparently still a trusted member of Yagura's inner circle, only to be suddenly hunted by his own commander, barely escaping the Hidden Mist with his life.
Who knew what his ultimate trajectory would look like now? Furthermore, with the physical Executioner's Blade currently resting in Jūzō's possession within the Yorozuya, which specific sword had Zabuza even been wielding?
In any event, the legendary Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist had effectively been dismantled before they could even fully form.
As for why Yagura had lost his mind and targeted these specific powerhouses, Diarmuid already possessed a clear blueprint of the answers. Obito was undoubtedly pulling the strings via genjutsu, and to prevent Yagura's highly perceptive inner circle from detecting the subtle anomalies in the Kage's chakra network, the orchestrators had chosen to strike first to eliminate any loose ends.
It was a standard, preemptive silencing campaign.
Granted, the execution of this strategy was remarkably clumsy. The sheer lack of political finesse was so blatant that Diarmuid could sense the glaring inconsistencies from a continent away. This definitely wasn't the work of a master manipulator like Black Zetsu; it had all the hallmarks of Obito acting on an impulsive, personal tangent.
Yet, regardless of how crude the opening gambit appeared, Obito had successfully maintained his absolute grip on Yagura, thereby securing total proxy dominion over the Hidden Mist. The village simply lacked the structural capacity to mounting any meaningful domestic resistance. With their senior leadership systematically slaughtered or driven into exile, figures like Terumī Mei currently lacked the baseline strength and institutional prestige required to openly challenge Yagura's supreme authority.
Kisame certainly possessed the raw power, and the leverage of the Hoshigaki clan within the Mist was formidable. But Kisame had already made his personal choice to align completely with Obito, the man he believed to be 'Uchiha Madara.'
Consequently, instead of acting as a barrier to Obito's shadow regime, Kisame would transform into the premier enforcer helping him police the Hidden Mist.
Piecing the variables together, Diarmuid fully grasped Obito's strategic intent. If the Uchiha's sole motive had been basic vengeance against his homeland, he wouldn't have rushed to eliminate assets like Mangetsu; he would have followed the original script, utilizing a slow, agonizing process of attrition to bleed the village dry from within.
The sudden shift toward total political consolidation indicated that Obito intended to utilize Yagura's authority to fundamentally re-engineer the Hidden Mist, transforming the entire hidden village into the primary operational base for their Eye of the Moon Plan!
Fascinating. I wonder if this aggressive consolidation was engineered by that absolute liability Obito, or if Black Zetsu managed to map out the macro-strategy? If it's Obito's brainchild, it proves the kid has finally developed a shred of strategic foresight... Heh. Diarmuid smiled silently to himself.
Ultimately, it was of little consequence. These geopolitical shifts could not affect his position, and he had zero intention of playing the part of a meddling savior. In the face of absolute, unadulterated strength, all calculated conspiracies and shadow plays were rendered utterly meaningless.
The moment he stepped out of dormancy, regardless of what eccentric concepts Black Zetsu and Obito had engineered, the global landscape would ultimately be reshaped entirely according to his own sovereign will.
"Very well. There is no need to over-analyze this geographical shift. Simply maintain an active surveillance eye on their trajectory, Kabuto. Do not execute any extraneous movements or interventions," Diarmuid instructed after a brief moment of consideration.
"Understood, Diarmuid-sama," Kabuto responded crisply, bowing his head in absolute obedience.
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