There was no trace of poison, at least none that wasn't perhaps mixed with the black sludge that had seeped out of the man's hand and was smeared from the basement all the way to the top of the stairs. The same couldn't be said about probable motive, but Hound was still having trouble finding enough cause for outright elimination.
There was some motive for abduction though, at least if one were a member of certain organisations that may or may not be explicitly going against the Hokage's direct orders to salve their leader's pride.
Probably not the same motives that the victim assumed, though. The electro-mechanic fuuma shuriken brought nothing new to the table.
The attempt in the basement to replicate lightning ninjutsu with technology was so amateurish and impractical that Konoha's science division would laugh the man out of the room. And while the flare shooter was admittedly cute, it was so loud that it might just be the most useless tool to ever land in ninja hands.
And that was without getting to the issue of the custom-built, too small flares themselves that the man clearly hadn't gotten around to creating, seeing as the black powder was still lying around unused. Not the worst way for a civilian to call for help though, he'd give him that.
If he could get it to work.
No, the real draw were the notebooks.
Hound swept away the paperweights – using steel rivets in place of paperweights and tags, the man was every bit as cheap as reported – and looked through the papers on the desk, hoping they, at least, might provide a cypher for the unfamiliar letters he'd seen so much of today. No such luck.
He pondered the notebooks. There were dozens of them, written in a completely foreign language.
Or several, if Crow was to be believed. Hound couldn't begin to guess what they said.
He didn't even know what languages they were, they all used an alphabet entirely unfamiliar not just to himself, but also to Lizard who came from the cryptanalysis division. And there was nothing around that could serve as a key, so there was no way to even begin decrypting anything, let alone do it in any time less than, oh, a decade maybe.
At least.
The only intelligible papers were the schematics for miniature flares that the shooter was lying on, which were essentially fireworks writ small. Presumably so they could actually be read by whoever wound up handling the commission.
For Crow' sake, Hound was deliberately not going down the 'what if Root has a point' rabbit hole. For the moment.
Clunk, clunk, clunk.
Hound turned his head to see Lizard bring a few of the odd dozen rivets close to the board on the wall. They flew out of her hand to stick to it with a dull sound.
A display board with magnetised strips. So it wasn't just that the man was a skinflint, he was creative in how he used resources.
Hound spun one of the rivets between his fingers. It was shorter and thicker than the usual, but otherwise similar to other 'invisible' rivets that lacked a tail but had a case that could be removed after insertion, making it easier to conceal.
Construction D-rank missions were among the most popular because genin could stick the rivets in by hand, and then practice their chakra control by removing the cases manually and covering the holes with earth manipulation.
Hound blinked, suddenly having a realisation. Picking up the 'flare' shooter, he turned it around and slipped one of the rivets into the loading chamber.
Click.
It was a perfect fit.
Huh. So it wasn't for shooting flares, at least not yet.
It was a nail shooter.
Well, now he just felt silly. The man was a handyman living off commissions in a village that was no longer recovering from disaster, why wouldn't he make a tool to save him the money he'd otherwise have to spend on D-ranks? Now that Hound thought about it, the reports said the man was planning a home expansion.
"Captain?" Came Crow's voice.
You were right, Shisui, a killer can't hope to understand a creator's mind. "We're done here.
" Hound put the nail gun back in the drawer and closed it. "Put everything back were you found it, then you're dismissed.
Hound double-checked the sludge samples, left the others to get back to their downtime, didn't comment on Crow going to run surveillance on the hospital, and went to the Hokage tower to report. But the Third wasn't there anymore, so he inquired with Rooster and doubled back to where the Third actually was, namely the same aforementioned hospital.
He found the Hokage in the middle of receiving a report in the head medic's office.
"- so we have managed to avert a complete kidney failure. However, his kidneys still need help regenerating, and his ureters and urethra walls are half as thin as before after being almost destroyed from the inside.
We have been unable to isolate the poison, whatever occurred has either already been flushed from his system, or was designed to break down into base components after it took effect. We are certain it was contact-based, however, and must have entered his body through the skin on his right hand.
The appendage in question is now the part of his body in the best shape, I'd even say perfect shape if not for what it caused. Whatever compound it was, it somehow overcharged the tissues' purgative processes to the point where Mr.
Masanari's blood literally became the poison, due to the sheer amount of toxins that flooded it all at once. Somehow, his circulatory system coped.
Unfortunately, this was only because his kidneys went into panic mode trying to rebalance his blood's pH and osmolarity. The toxins coming in were so many for long enough that his nephrons were destroyed in droves and the toxins clogged his renal corpuscules until the kidneys almost lost filtration capability entirely.
A number of the medullas outright ruptured in places. Even with our best application of the Mystical Palm technique, I am surprised he is not dead.
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