"Was that smart?" Temari asked Ren as they were walking through the halls of the Kazekage Tower after leaving the council meeting.
After Chiyo's little performance, Ebizo got enough of an excuse to adjourn the meeting, and he had happily done so, considering they were not going to reach any useful new conclusion anyway.
Turning toward Temari, Ren gave her a questioning look, making her elaborate. "Telling them that one of them is the culprit, I mean." She said with a frown. "Even if you are right, wouldn't that just alert them?"
Ren stopped by a window and chuckled in amusement. "Temari, whoever was responsible, we aren't catching them without them making a mistake. They know we are onto them. Especially if they are on the council. Every single person on there didn't get their post by being careless, and this would not be their first assassination rodeo."
It was a pain in the ass, but that's how it was. Those were some of the best and oldest ninjas in Sunagakure. One could wish, but they were not going to make an amateur mistake.
"The only way they make a mistake is if they are forced to react." Ren finished, looking out of the window. His eyes found Nagara Shizumu just as she turned around and looked up, locking her green eyes with his blue before shooting him a provocative, knowing smirk.
Ren did not reciprocate it. He was weary from acting so jovial in the council chambers. Unfortunately, his efforts turned up empty, but at least he tried.
No matter. That attitude also served as a sort of social shield for him. Admitting a fault there would have been a grave mistake. In politics and situations like these, it didn't truly matter who was responsible for what. It didn't matter that Ren did not ask to have assassins blow themselves up next to him, alongside half the street, after spreading poisoned smoke.
What these people wanted was a convenient scapegoat for the disaster. Somebody they could point at. Ren could not show guilt. If he gave them an inch like that, they would try to take his entire arm, and before he knew it, he might have been blamed for the entire situation.
No, thank you. He'd rather pretend that it did not piss him off that somebody blew up a street to get at him.
But that was then and there, and this was here and now. Ren was not in the mood to pretend that everything was fine. So, his blue eyes stared at Shizumu with a quiet coldness and suspicion until she got the hint, and with a polite nod, she turned around and started walking away.
Ren didn't look away from her back, though. He knew the woman felt his gaze until she turned over the corner. He hoped it bothered the old witch at least a little bit.
While Ren was having his staring contest with the councilwoman, Temari's brain was quickly working through the information he gave her. The girl was smart, and she soon came to the correct conclusion.
Temari's eyes widened and her frown deepened as her head snapped toward Ren with a shocked expression, "The assassin's family that survived. They are bait, aren't they?"
Ren glanced at her before he looked away with a sigh. He could easily see how much she disapproved of using them like that. But then again... Ren slightly shrugged. "Ebizo gotta do what he gotta do."
Temari opened her mouth, ready to argue, "And we are just going to let that happen? They are a target now!"
"That's kind of the point." Ren huffed and blankly looked back at Temari.
"They could die!" She exclaimed in outrage, giving Ren an admonishing look for his attitude. And it wasn't as if he didn't understand where she was coming from. But...
"And what do you want me to do about it? Hmm?" He exasperatedly asked, crossing his arms on his chest.
"You could-!" Temari started, but suddenly stopped with her mouth still open as her brain joined the discussion. Ren had patiently stared at her, waiting to see if she would come up with something sensible.
But seconds slowly passed, and Temari stayed silent, her eyebrows scrunching in frustration. She had realized the simple fact that Ren was still not out of the 'suspect list' for this disaster. Victim, he might be, but he wouldn't have been the first ninja smart enough to arrange his own failure of an assassination to achieve something while coming out of it smelling like roses.
In fact, Ren was one of the bigger suspects the investigating people had right now. He could just ask to be let in to see the supposed key witnesses, duh.
Ebizo believed that Ren was innocent, and that was the only reason why Sunagakure was acting so courteously toward him right now. Why, he was even allowed to be in that council meeting.
But Ebizo was just one man. Even as the head of the council, he didn't have supreme authority. He could have his way, but only up to a point. And letting Ren close to his supposed key witness, slash bait, would have been too much.
Hell, even trying to come into contact with them could be misunderstood as Ren attempting to get rid of them in fear that the assassin slipped something substantial about his mission.
"Exactly, Temari." Ren said after he let Temari stew in her thoughts for a minute, and shook his head. He was an S-rank ninja, but that didn't mean he was omnipotent.
His specialty was blowing things up or changing them into different substances. Solving crimes... that was so far out of his lane that he wasn't even confident to improvise.
"What are we going to do?" She grimly asked, and Ren smiled.
"We are simply going to go home, cook a nice dinner together, eat it, and go to bed. The moon is almost already up in the sky, young lady."
"This is not the time to be joking." Temari annoyedly huffed, giving Ren a look, but he snorted, surprising her.
"I wasn't joking." He blandly said and gripped her shoulder.
"Wh-" Temari started only to disappear in a forced body flicker, leaving behind only a bit of swirling sand in her place while leaves gently floated in the air where Ren previously stood.
...
Much later into the night, Detective Clone-kun, whom Ren had set to tail the delinquent Jonin, was still on the job. It was a boring job, too! All those Holmesean detective shows lied to him! He only took solace in the fact that the original was going to be bombarded with the memories of his boredom after he was done here.
The delinquent Jonin, who had almost managed to put the blame for the attack squarely on Ren's shoulders, simply helped with the aftermath of the explosion after Ebizo defused the conflict between him and Ren. It took him a few hours, and by the time he was done, it was firmly dinner time. Then, he went to a restaurant for dinner.
Seriously, dried goat meat? Yuck.
After that, the man spent the rest of his late evening in a brothel with a green-eyed middle-aged woman. The tailing mission went from bad to worse right there for the Detective Clone-kun.
But it was not for nothing!
The woman was apparently called Shizumu, and from the context of their pillow talk, the clone understood she not only owned the majority of the brothels in the village, but was also on the council.
All clues pointed to the fact that this was some top-tier Sugar Grandma!
It also sounded like a good first suspect to the Detective Clone-kun.
The woman almost discovered him, too. But intangibility for the win! He phased into the rooftop outside their room and stayed undetected as she abruptly threw the window open at some point on a vague suspicion that she felt like somebody was watching them.
The woman had good instincts. But Detective Clone-kun really didn't need to see her wrinkled, saggy chest. He wondered if the original would suffer trauma from the memory.
His suspicions about her only deepened when the original finally remembered to send him memories of the council meeting shortly before he went to bed.
The stupid bastard. Withholding critical evidence was a crime!
Detective Clone-kun almost smugly thought he had this investigation in the bag when the delinquent Jonin finally left the brothel with a wide smile and turned into a side alley. He blinked, his amazing, super deductive capabilities interrupted for a brief second... and he lost his target!?
His jaw dropped, but fortunately, he shook off his shock quickly and instantly started using wind sensing, covering a sizable part of the village with it as he desperately looked for his mark.
It took him a very embarrassing ten minutes to find him again. If Ren wasn't such a good sensor and the Detective Clone-kun wasn't on the job... The Jonin definitely deserved his rank as he gave slip not only to him but also to the Suna ANBU that were watching him, most likely on Ebizo's orders.
Observing the panicking ANBU from a distance as they covertly swept the surroundings, the Detective Clone-kun used one of the seal markers Ren had put around Suna to get closer to his target.
He eventually caught up to the Jonin on the other side of the village, just in time to see him enter a rather affluent-looking house. The Detective Clone-kun frowned. From the way the guards greeted the ninja, it was clearly not his house.
It was time for some Nin-Nin!
Sneaking around, the clone managed to get past the guard sentries and used the light bending via wind release to become invisible, fading into the surroundings as he phased through the roof, only enough to be able to see and hear what was going on in the meeting the delinquent Jonin had with...
'Akito!?' The clone stilled as the last councilman he would have expected stood with his hands clasped behind his back in front of the kneeling Jonin.
Looking closer, the clone frowned as the man whose wife died in the bombing didn't look that much in grief anymore. Nor was he anywhere near as furious as he seemed in the council chambers.
'Of course, during the night is the biggest darkness.' The Detective Clone-kun thought, 'That's elementary, my dear original! We have suspect number two!' An excited smirk appeared on his shadowed face.
The case began to get twisted like Danzo's personality.
---
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