Chapter 158: Uchiha Kou is Dead, What About Jiraiya?
'Little leeks, sweet little leeks,'Stelle mused inwardly, a faint, utterly shameless smirk tugging at the corners of her lips.'Since you two are about to generously donate a massive sum of mood values to my survival fund, consider this a little advance payment. Just to keep you happy.'
With a flick of her wrist, she produced two carefully patterned sealing scrolls from her pouch and slapped them onto the polished mahogany desk with a satisfying thwack.
"Everything you need is right here," Stelle announced, leaning back in her high-backed chair. "Take them and split the contents between yourselves. Oh, and Tsunade? Bring me one of your research scrolls later. You asked for my help before, and I brushed you off because my schedule was packed. But now..." She waved a hand airily. "My schedule has miraculously cleared up. Let me break down the formula first; maybe I can figure out the underlying matrix."
The two Sannin didn't need to be told twice. Moving with the synchronized speed of elite shinobi, they each snatched up a scroll. The moment they unsealed them, thick stacks of crisp ryo cascaded out, piling high on the desk. Tsunade's amber eyes widened into saucers, while Orochimaru's serpentine gaze gleamed with rare, unrestrained delight.
A delightful string of chimes echoed in Stelle's mind as their mood values skyrocketed, flooding her system with a beautiful harvest.
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the Hokage's office slammed open. Kato Dan stood in the doorway, completely bypassing the standard protocol of knocking or waiting for an Anbu escort. His usually immaculate silver-blue hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his flak jacket coated in a thick layer of road dust. He braced a hand against the doorframe, his chest heaving violently as he dragged in ragged breaths.
His gaze swept the room. Seeing Tsunade and Orochimaru standing by the desk, the calm composure in Dan's eyes fractured. A storm of intense, conflicted emotion swirled in his pupils for a fleeting second before he forcefully clamped down on it, forcing his expression into a mask of professional stoicism. He swallowed hard, his voice hoarse from days of relentless travel.
"Hokage-sama," he rasped. "I carry an S-class intelligence report regarding Uchiha Kou. I must report this directly to you. Please... clear the room."
It was a massive breach of protocol. A professional shinobi of his caliber should never announce the subject of an S-class secret in front of unauthorized personnel, effectively leaking the core of the intel before the briefing even began.
But Dan's jaw was set. He had made a conscious choice. This truth was too heavy, too tragic to be buried in the dark archives of the village elders. Tsunade and Orochimaru were Kou's friends. They deserved to know the sheer magnitude of the sacrifices Kou had made for Konoha in the shadows. If he could ensure even one or two more people remembered her true legacy, he would gladly face the court-martial and accept whatever punishment awaited him.
The joyous atmosphere in the room evaporated instantly. Tsunade and Orochimaru dropped the scrolls, the piles of ryo entirely forgotten. They exchanged a sharp, bewildered glance.
"Kou?" Tsunade repeated, her brows knitting together.
Wasn't Kou supposed to be training in isolation at Mount Myōboku? The extraction plan they had carefully crafted with Jiraiya had been a complete success. Jiraiya himself had swaggered into the village just weeks ago, boasting about it.
A cold knot of dread tightened in Tsunade's stomach. Her fingers twitched. What kind of catastrophic situation would suddenly elevate Kou's status to an emergency S-class report? She opened her mouth to demand answers, but the grim, unyielding look in Dan's eyes stopped her. Biting her lower lip, she turned on her heel and marched out the door. Orochimaru followed silently, his golden eyes narrowed in calculation.
Yet, just as the pale-skinned Sannin crossed the threshold, a tiny, almost translucent white snake slithered out from the folds of his long sleeve. Moving with absolute silence, it dropped to the floorboards and swiftly coiled itself into the deep shadows beneath a corner chair, its forked tongue flicking the air.
Once the door clicked shut, Stelle didn't hesitate. With a subtle hand sign, she dispatched her hidden Anbu guard to summon Hiruzen Sarutobi, Danzo Shimura, and Uchiha Kagami to the office immediately. The stage was finally set. It was time to drop the bombshell regarding the Rinnegan. It was far more efficient to feed them the narrative all at once, and besides, she fully intended to dump the emotional baggage of comforting Tsunade and the others squarely onto Hiruzen's shoulders.
Minutes later, the three elders arrived, taking their respective seats with grave expressions. Sensing the barrier seals activate around the room, Dan finally stood at attention.
He began his report, detailing his harrowing encounters in the freezing tundras of the Land of Frost. Slipping back into the flawless persona of a Konoha elite, he delivered the intelligence with clinical precision, stripping away all personal bias and emotion. His voice remained a steady, monotonous drone—until he reached the final, fatal climax. When he recounted the moment Uchiha Kou chose to end her own life to protect the secrets of the Rinnegan, his voice cracked. He had to pause, taking a shuddering breath to steady himself.
The sheer weight of the information slammed into the three elders like a physical blow.
Point One: From the very second Uchiha Kou defected from Konoha, her treason had been an elaborate ruse. Every bloody action she took was a calculated move to go deep undercover, infiltrating the inner circle of a shadowy mastermind known only as Black Zetsu to siphon critical intelligence.
Point Two: During this agonizing undercover operation, she successfully secured and concealed a legendary artifact—a true Rinnegan. As a direct consequence of this theft, she endured unspeakable torture at the hands of the non-human entity, Black Zetsu, and the original owner of the divine eyes.
Point Three: Pushed to the absolute brink and refusing to let Konoha's enemies reclaim the intel, Uchiha Kou chose suicide. Because her origins lay beyond the boundaries of this world, her physical form disintegrated upon death, leaving absolutely nothing behind. Not even ashes.
A suffocating, dead silence descended upon the Hokage's office. The air grew thick, heavy with the crushing realization of what had truly transpired. The brutal assassination attempt, the merciless interrogation in the Anbu cells—it had all been a carefully orchestrated theater. A grand, tragic play designed solely to fool the enemy.
Uchiha Kagami slumped back in his chair, his fingers pressing deeply into his temples. The lines on his face seemed to age a decade in seconds.
"Jiraiya..." he murmured, his voice thick with deep sorrow. "That boy came to me time and time again, begging for ancient clan records. He was desperately searching for a way to forcefully evolve her Three Tomoe into the Mangekyo Sharingan. He just wanted her to have enough power to protect herself when she finally returned to her home dimension." Kagami let out a bitter, hollow laugh. "And now? She awakened the Mangekyo. She returned to her world. But she had to cross the threshold of death to do it?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi, ever the pragmatic tactician, was the first to snap out of the emotional stupor. His mind immediately raced to the collateral damage.
"If she was a deep-cover operative," Hiruzen began, his brow furrowed, "what about the Konoha shinobi she slaughtered during her defection? Did she execute our own men just to solidify Black Zetsu's trust?"
"Hiruzen, hold your tongue. Do not ask such naive questions at a time like this," Danzo snapped, his single visible eye cold and unyielding.
To the leader of Root, the arithmetic of war was simple. If spilling the blood of a few dozen shinobi was the price of admission to infiltrate a mastermind like Black Zetsu, it was a bargain. They had died for the village. The administration would simply double their families' pension. In the grand mix of Konoha's survival, their deaths were a worthy, necessary sacrifice. Danzo himself would gladly lay down his life—or the lives of his men—so long as the return on investment was absolute.
"Shut your mouth, Danzo. I need the full tactical picture," Hiruzen fired back, slamming a hand onto the armrest. He refused to back down. For months, Jiraiya had been drowning in guilt and grief over the comrades Kou had supposedly butchered. As his sensei, Hiruzen had watched the boy tear himself apart from the inside out. He had to know the absolute truth, if only to give his student some semblance of closure.
Stelle leaned forward, resting her chin on her steepled fingers. Her expression was a mask of serene, unbothered calm.
"It was all fake," she stated flatly.
The room froze.
"I personally reassigned those 'casualties' to highly classified, long-term black ops missions far beyond our borders," Stelle continued, her tone conversational. "They haven't been home, and they are completely oblivious to the narrative we spun here. The massacre was nothing more than a theatrical performance choreographed by Kou and myself. I've already dispatched the recall orders. They will be returning to Konoha within the month."
She paused, letting the revelation sink in. "Once they arrive, I will integrate them into the Anbu under new codenames. Aside from their immediate families, the village will remain ignorant of their survival."
A massive, visible weight lifted from Hiruzen's shoulders. He exhaled a long, shaky breath, the tension bleeding from his posture. But the relief was agonizingly short-lived. The grim reality of the present crashed back down upon him.
If the betrayal was fake, if the murders were a hoax... then Kou had truly been a loyal hero of the Leaf until her very last breath. And now she was dead.
His heart ached fiercely. What is this going to do to Jiraiya?
Hiruzen looked up, his eyes locking onto Stelle with piercing intensity. "What exactly happened out there? I want the entire timeline. Explain everything to us, right here, right now."
Feeling the heavy, expectant gazes of the village's most powerful men fixed upon her, Stelle allowed a perfectly calculated sigh to escape her lips. She began her explanation, her voice slow and deliberate.
"You are correct. Kou was my personal deep-cover operative. But to truly understand the scope of this operation, we have to rewind the clock. We must go back to the entity known as the World Destroyer—the very threat that the First and Second Hokage sacrificed so much to eliminate." She paused, letting the historical weight settle. "What the archives failed to record is that the World Destroyer was never a single individual. It is an entire organization."
"When Teacher Tobirama fell in battle, his eyes were not plundered by the World Destruction Organization as history suggests. I secured them." Stelle tapped her own temple lightly. "During that era, I intercepted intelligence indicating that this shadow syndicate was aggressively hunting for the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. Returning such a volatile asset to the Uchiha compound would have painted a massive target on the clan's back. So, I made an executive decision. I sealed them away and kept them hidden on my own person."
She let her gaze drift toward Danzo and Kagami. "That brutal assassination attempt years ago? The one that nearly put me in the ground? That wasn't a standard political hit. It was a targeted strike by the organization to rip those Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan from my possession."
"The situation escalated at the border of the Land of Lightning. When I broke through enemy lines to rescue Teacher Tobirama, I was intercepted. A high-ranking operative of the organization—the entity known as Black Zetsu—held Teacher Tobirama hostage. He gave me an ultimatum." Stelle's eyes darkened, playing the part of a burdened leader flawlessly. "To ensure the Second Hokage's survival, I surrendered the eyes."
"Then, five years ago, the nightmare returned. Black Zetsu infiltrated the village, and this time, he set his sights on Kou." Stelle leaned back, her expression hardening into a mask of ruthless tactical resolve. "The moment I detected his presence, I knew the perfect counter-offensive had presented itself. I approached Kou. Together, we drafted the ultimate deception. We allowed Black Zetsu to believe he had successfully manipulated and brainwashed her, turning her against the Leaf. We fed her directly into the maw of the beast, planting her as a sleeper agent at the very right hand of the enemy."
As Stelle's masterful web of half-truths and fabricated lore settled over the room, the missing puzzle pieces violently snapped into place in the elders' minds. The sheer, terrifying scale of the conspiracy left them breathless. Uchiha Kou's solitary undercover mission wasn't just a rogue operation; it was a generational war involving three generations of Hokage.
The theft of the Second Hokage's eyes. The tragic demise of the Third Hokage. The near-fatal ambush on the Fourth Hokage. Every single catastrophic event in Konoha's recent history bore the dark, venomous fingerprints of this World Destruction Organization.
"Stelle..." Uchiha Kagami's voice trembled, a deep wave of helplessness washing over him.
He looked at the young woman sitting behind the desk, seeing not just a Hokage, but a martyr bleeding out in the shadows. Why? Why had she never breathed a word of this to them?
His heart twisted with a sickening mix of guilt and awe. She was always like this. Always keeping her silence. Never offering excuses, never begging for help. She simply identified the apocalyptic threats looming over the village and stepped into the abyss to solve them on her own. She bore the crushing weight of the world in absolute solitude, presenting them with a flawless, confident smile while her own shoulders carried the agonizing pressure of Konoha's survival.
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