In truth, Setsu herself had never been more confused by a target.
She knew exactly who Fugaku Uchiha was.
Sixteen years old.
Recently promoted to a more active role.
Almost certainly a future Chief of the Military Police, and far more importantly, the likely future patriarch of the Uchiha clan.
The strongest clan still capable of resisting the increasingly suffocating grip Danzō and the Hokage held over the village.
Perhaps the only one.
Setsu would never have admitted that thought aloud.
She barely liked admitting it to herself.
So when she had been ordered to test Fugaku, she had not known what she wanted the result to be.
She certainly had not wanted mediocrity.
That much was obvious now.
The boy would eventually inherit a position that placed him directly against men like Danzō.
Against the Hokage.
Against the village administration.
If relations with the Uchiha continued along their present course, that was.
He could not afford to be ordinary.
Maybe that was why some stupid part of her still cared.
Setsu had long since stopped expecting freedom for herself, yet the Uchiha remained the largest autonomous force in Konoha that Danzō had never properly brought under control.
Against better judgment, she had apparently placed some small amount of hope there.
Which made Fugaku's apparent performance all the more miserable.
At first glance, it had been humiliating.
No Sharingan.
No visible resistance.
One light spiritual intrusion of hers, one physical strike, and the future Uchiha patriarch had gone down like an Academy student who had forgotten there was a fight happening.
Except that was not actually what Setsu had felt.
And that was the problem.
She had already explained as much to Danzō.
"The resistance itself is difficult to classify, sir."
Danzō watched her carefully.
"Explain."
Setsu chose her words.
"It was not strong resistance."
A pause.
"Nor weak resistance."
Danzō's expression changed slightly.
"Then what was it?"
"Something more abnormal."
That was the most accurate word she had.
Normally, once a fragment of her spiritual power entered a target, there was structure.
Resistance.
Instinctive rejection.
Mental instability.
Some recognizable interaction between foreign spiritual pressure and the target's own, depending on their spiritual awareness and power.
Fugaku had given her none of those.
"Once the fragment penetrated deeper, his spiritual state seemed to... shift."
Danzō said nothing.
Setsu continued.
"The internal structure became difficult to perceive properly. It felt as though the depth beneath the surface suddenly expanded beyond what I had measured on entry."
"Expanded?"
"That is the closest description I can give."
It had lasted barely an instant.
One moment, her fragment had been moving through an ordinary spiritual structure.
The next, the scale of what surrounded it no longer made sense.
Not greater pressure.
Not exactly.
More like the boundaries she had been using to orient herself had ceased behaving normally.
"There was no focused counterforce," Setsu said. "Nothing struck the fragment directly."
"Yet you lost the connection."
"Yes."
"How?"
Setsu paused again.
"It was expelled."
Danzō's expression hardened slightly.
"By Fugaku?"
"I cannot confirm that."
That was the problem.
If Fugaku had consciously rejected the Hollow Needle, Setsu would have recognized it.
If the Sharingan had reacted, there should have been some corresponding change.
If his spiritual defenses had simply overwhelmed her fragment, she would have felt pressure building against it.
None of those things happened.
Instead, his entire internal state seemed to become unstable at once.
The fragment was caught inside that change and forced outward with it.
Not attacked.
Not crushed.
Simply thrown out by something Setsu could not identify.
"Then the forward operative's strike connected," she continued. "His condition deteriorated immediately afterward."
Danzō's fingers rested against the desk.
"And the second impact?"
"The collision with the cabinet made further observation impossible."
Silence settled between them.
Setsu lowered her head slightly.
After all, Fugaku was hardly her first target.
Her abilities were almost perfectly suited for killing with a borrowed knife.
A subtle spiritual disturbance, no obvious physical injury, and very little anyone could later trace back to her.
Exactly the sort of method Danzō valued.
Perhaps the Hokage did too.
Setsu had long since lost count of how many people she had helped remove over the years, inside Konoha and beyond it. Influential civilians. Political obstacles. Troublesome shinobi.
Dissidents whose continued existence had become inconvenient.
Different names, different excuses.
The result was usually the same.
More influence for the Shimura clan.
More reach for Root.
More control for the Hokage's administration.
Setsu had seen minds break in every conceivable way.
But with all her "practical experience", her track record, her mastery of Yin Release, and years spent refining various "spiritual-based" techniques, Setsu had genuinely never encountered anything quite like what had happened inside Fugaku.
However, privately, though, Setsu suspected her small spiritual intrusion had triggered some bizarre chain reaction inside Fugaku, something she had not been aware that a human soul was capable of doing.
That was her best working theory right now, anyway.
But she would not tell Danzō that part, of course.
She had already felt like she had given him enough of the truth to make her report credible.
And when the physical blow landed immediately afterward, that reaction seemed to intensify.
For one brief moment, whatever was happening inside him became even more violent.
Then her fragment was expelled.
Fugaku collapsed.
And Setsu was left with no idea what she had actually disturbed.
However, there was also another "small" part Setsu had no intention of including in her report.
Because the Hollow Needle carried a fragment of her own consciousness, its return had brought something back with it.
Only for an instant.
The fragment had been tiny, the contact chaotic, and whatever happened inside Fugaku had expelled her too quickly for any proper observation.
Even so, Setsu had seen things.
Disconnected images.
Machines unlike anything she recognized.
Impossible structures.
Smooth artificial surfaces, strange lights, unfamiliar constructs whose purpose she could not even guess.
None lasted long enough to understand.
They simply flashed through her awareness as the fragment snapped back into her, incoherent and completely out of place.
That was precisely why Setsu had not dismissed Fugaku as entirely "useless" despite how clumsy his performance had looked from the corridor.
She had no explanation for what she experienced.
But experience and instinct both told her the same thing.
There was something extraordinary about that guy.
Not extraordinary in the sense that he had simply failed in some unusual way.
Something else.
Something she could not yet place.
Which was also why Danzō would hear none of this.
Setsu had already given him enough truth to keep the report believable.
There was no reason to hand her "greatest enemy" every interesting detail about someone who might, however distantly, someday become useful against him.
That would just be considerate.
Setsu had spent fifteen years being many things for Danzō.
Considerate was not one of them.
After all, the wretch had yet to invent anything resembling a reliable "truth serum".
And with Setsu's current level of spiritual strength and control over her own consciousness, there was probably no one in Konoha capable of reading her mind accurately against her will.
That was not arrogance.
It was simply an assessment.
And now, against her better judgment, Fugaku Uchiha had her attention.
Especially because those brief, impossible images had possessed one quality she found difficult to dismiss.
However strange they were, they had not felt entirely imaginary. They had also felt "real".