This time, when Kiba angrily threw out that conclusion, nobody bothered refuting him.
There was really no helping it. The evidence was piling the hell up.
"Looks like we're heading in the right direction. The real culprit is deliberately covering their tracks so no one can find the owner of that flying ass-fragment. And that right there proves it's the key."
Shikamaru clenched his fist, looking legitimately excited.
He was so close now to becoming the one true king of the Nara clan—the King of Slacking Off!
Sleeping, drinking tea, playing shogi, retiring in absolute peace… that sweet life was practically waving at him.
"It's a shame that Akatsuki guy startled the target just now. Otherwise, Akamaru could've followed the scent right to them."
Shino nodded.
"Heh. Who says he startled anything? The one who got transferred was Deidara. That detached Edo Tensei body part probably wasn't moved at all.
Once Deidara got warped away, there was no longer anyone threatening that flying ass fragment. If that's the case, Uchiha Sasuke would have had no reason to use his ability again.
And if I'm not mistaken, using that power costs him quite a bit, too."
At some point, Shigaraki Tanuki had reappeared behind them, his arms folded over his chest.
"Mr. Shigaraki Tanuki, you're back?"
"Mm."
Tanuki gave a calm nod.
But inwardly, he was ecstatic.
Just now, he had handed over every scrap of research he had for the Gozu Tennō Plan to Orochimaru, receiving a massive chunk of contribution points in return.
Enough that he could call his wife over at any time, hand over some of their cells, and custom-order a daughter.
As for why he hadn't handed the Gozu Tennō material over to Konoha instead?
'Wasn't it obvious?'
In the original timeline, Shigaraki Tanuki had already been thinking about defecting.
Konoha had changed a bit now, sure, but all the bastards from Danzo's faction who deserved to die had still died.
The only real difference was that before biting it, Danzo had caught one more bizarre scandal involving Sai.
Tanuki wasn't going to flip his whole worldview just because of some weird shit like that.
On the contrary, Orochimaru had once worked with Danzo.
And in Tanuki's eyes, Orochimaru and Danzo were exactly the same kind of "shadowy" creeps.
They had way too much in common!
If he handed the Gozu Tennō Plan over to the current Hokage, Tsunade, he wouldn't be rewarded for his honesty—he'd most likely just get punished even worse.
Besides, the Gozu Tennō Plan was the result of years of his own blood and sweat.
If it stayed in Konoha, knowing Tsunade's temper, it would probably just gather dust on a shelf.
Better to pawn it off to Orochimaru.
Tanuki had been absolutely sure the snake bastard would be interested.
And sure enough, Orochimaru highly valued the Gozu Tennō Plan and threw him quite a few contribution points—enough to custom-make a daughter and still have plenty left over to summon someone with Edo Tensei if he felt like it.
Of course, Tanuki didn't actually have anyone he wanted to reanimate.
Not even Danzo, the guy he had once served so loyally. He had no desire to disturb the dead.
So those leftover contribution points might as well be treated like cold hard cash and used to upgrade his quality of life.
"If I'm not mistaken, Uchiha Sasuke has mastered some kind of space-time ninjutsu. That's how he pulled off so many unbelievable stunts.
And this should be one of the Sharingan's visual techniques. He can activate it with his eyes alone, without touching a damn thing, meaning it leaves no trace of contact or scent."
Now that he had turned in the Gozu Tennō Plan and scored his contribution points, Shigaraki Tanuki wasn't hiding shit anymore and directly brought up the core issue—the concept of space-time ninjutsu.
...
While Tanuki was busy lecturing the younger generation, Orochimaru, now happily in possession of the complete Gozu Tennō Plan materials, called Makoto over.
"Makoto-kun, take a look at this."
Orochimaru smiled, gesturing for him to read it.
"…"
Makoto looked at the core of the Gozu Tennō Plan and immediately felt speechless.
Tanuki really had tracked Orochimaru down and handed over every last scrap of his research.
It was just that…
In the original story, the Gozu Tennō Plan was framed as something Danzo had assigned Tanuki to research after discovering Kaguya's ruins and lifting space-time ninjutsu technology from them.
That magical beast, Nue, normally chilled in the special dimension linked to the Gozu Tennō seal.
Unfortunately, that dimension couldn't be freely opened and closed, otherwise Class Rep Sumire would've had a way more busted toolkit.
But there had always been a massive plot hole here.
Sumire was around the same age as Boruto, meaning she had been born several years after the Fourth Great Ninja War ended.
Sasuke didn't find Kaguya's major ruins and bump into Momoshiki and Kinshiki until way later.
Even if some random ruins had been found before that, it couldn't have been that early on.
Something like this, which Sasuke would've definitely kept under wraps, would only have been shared with Naruto, not some guy like Shigaraki Tanuki.
Most importantly, the Gozu Tennō Plan was explicitly said to have been established under Danzo's orders.
Danzo didn't even know who the hell Kaguya was.
So how would he have found her ruins and developed space-time techniques from them?
Now, after reading the actual raw materials, the answer was finally glaringly obvious.
Makoto was genuinely speechless.
So the whole "Danzo investigated Kaguya's ruins and obtained space-time ninjutsu" shtick was really just a later summary—a conclusion pieced together from Naruto and Sasuke's perspective during the Boruto era.
Danzo himself had no idea until the day he died that any of this involved Kaguya's ruins, nor did he know Kaguya's true identity.
If he had, he would never have treated the whole thing so lightly or casually dumped the research onto Tanuki.
He would've personally micromanaged that shit.
What had actually happened?
Danzo had indeed found some ruins tied to Kaguya.
But definitely not the advanced kind Sasuke found later on.
These were just leftover ruins from the period after Kaguya first dropped down to Earth and before she became the progenitor of chakra and got sealed away.
In other words, Danzo had basically been digging around somewhere and just stumbled blindly across them.
There were also some murals there depicting the so-called progenitor of chakra.
After a solid thousand years, those murals had been beaten to hell, and their artistic style already looked pretty weird to modern eyes.
Danzo recorded the key info related to the space-time sealing technique, took one look at the mural of "Ōtsutsuki Kaguya," noticed the two horns on her head, and arbitrarily decided they looked like ox horns.
Combined with the mural's creepy, demonic aura, Danzo simply took it upon himself to name Kaguya Gozu Tennō—the Ox-Head Heavenly King.
And just like that, the project to study that space-time sealing technique became the Gozu Tennō Plan.
'Unbelievable.' Makoto could only think that it was a good thing Danzo was dead and Kaguya wasn't around.
If both of them were still breathing, the second Kaguya found out she had somehow been saddled with the nickname "Ox Bro," Danzo the eternal scapegoat would've gained yet another mortal enemy!
...
Meanwhile, after Shigaraki Tanuki finished spelling out the connection between space-time ninjutsu and the current mess, the group, led by Akamaru, navigated their way to the area near the love shack where Naruto, Sasuke, Hashirama, and Madara had been crashing.
Now that the Chibaku Tensei was gone, the house had been patched up, and Senju Tobirama was finally able to move around normally again.
All of that was purely thanks to Hashirama sweating his ass off after he returned that same day.
Naruto and Sasuke were nowhere to be seen.
It was highly likely that Sasuke, wanting to stabilize his Rinnegan and replenish himself, had slapped Naruto under a genjutsu again.
"Woof woof."
Akamaru barked and bolted straight toward Senju Tobirama.
"?"
Tobirama stared at the dog charging toward him in utter confusion, having absolutely no clue what the hell was going on.