In the next instant, both of them vanished at the same time.
Meanwhile, after wandering around the nearby back alleys for a while, Kitsujiro discovered something very strange.
"This isn't right. Something is seriously off, meow!"
Kitsujiro shook his head. In a normal town, maybe you wouldn't see cats everywhere, but it shouldn't be possible to search this long without finding so much as a single strand of cat hair.
And maybe it was just his imagination, but Kitsujiro felt like the humans' eyes were weird too. Every time they looked at him, it was like a litter of starving kittens spotting a mouse—pure delight.
Unfortunately, Kitsujiro was in the middle of a "secret investigation," so he couldn't casually interact with these suspicious humans. Every time someone started getting close, he ran off without hesitation.
And because of that, Kitsujiro never noticed how furious those people looked after he "escaped."
"Meow?!"
Just as Kitsujiro was wondering why he couldn't find any of his own kind in Seagull City, he turned his head and came face-to-face with a black cat crawling out of a rat hole.
"Oh, finally found one, meow…"
Kitsujiro cheerfully greeted the black cat in cat-speak, just about to ask about Seagull City's situation, only for the terrified black cat to clamp a paw over his mouth.
"Meow your head! Hide, now!"
The black cat was first startled by this absurdly fat orange cat, then hurriedly glanced around. After confirming there were no humans nearby, it tried to drag Kitsujiro into the rat hole with it.
"Wait, meow! That hole's too small, I can't fit, meow!"
Kitsujiro tried squeezing into the rat hole, but never mind his ridiculously oversized body—even his round, chubby head blocked the entrance completely. He couldn't get in at all.
"Idiot, idiot, idiot! How did you get this fat, meow?!"
The black cat instinctively glanced at Kitsujiro's enormous belly, which almost dragged on the ground, and looked like it had suffered some kind of mental shock. "Any other cat that weighed even half as much as you would've been caught and eaten by those two-leggers already!"
"Eaten? These two-leggers eat cats, meow?!"
Kitsujiro's eyes flew wide open. The expression on his furry cat face twisted dramatically, like he'd just heard something utterly horrifying. "How evil! Chizumi-sama was right after all! Seagull City… no! The Land of Water is a land steeped in sin, meow!"
"What's so strange about that? When those two-leggers get hungry enough, they'll even fight cats over rats."
The black cat looked completely unsurprised. If anything, it found Kitsujiro's reaction way too dramatic. "Come on, let's find somewhere to hide. If the two-leggers spot a cat as fat as you, it'll definitely cause a scene."
While Kitsujiro nervously followed the black cat in search of a place to hide, Biwa Jūzō, following the route he remembered, arrived at a muddy district that had fallen into total ruin.
But before he could head toward the black market itself, a man with green hair and a mouth full of sharp teeth stepped into his path.
"Huh. I was wondering who'd been snooping around. So it's you…"
The man crossed his arms and glanced at the slash mark on Jūzō's forehead protector. The hostility in his eyes eased slightly. "So you couldn't stand those bastards either and ended up defecting too, Biwa Jūzō?"
"…Kurosuki Raiga. So you've been hiding here all along."
Jūzō instinctively gripped the hilt of the Executioner's Blade. He thought he might have just found the reason Seagull City had decayed into this state. But remembering Izumi's instructions, he ultimately held back and didn't attack rashly.
As fellow members of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, Jūzō had no absolute confidence that he could take down Kurosuki Raiga. If they started fighting here, the noise would only make the investigation harder.
For Seagull City's underground black market to survive for so many years right under Kirigakure's nose, even if some Kirigakure shinobi had been working with them, it still showed just how alert those sewer rats really were.
If Jūzō started fighting Raiga here, the people running the black market might grab the money and run immediately, only returning after things quieted down.
"I get along pretty well with the Funaya family. Want to come with me? Yūjirō would definitely welcome you."
Kurosuki Raiga didn't seem to care much about the bit of hostility Jūzō had shown. Kirigakure shinobi were already used to drawing blades at the slightest provocation and treating human life like dirt.
Especially the two of them—once elite Kirigakure shinobi, members of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, and now both rogue ninja. The fact that Jūzō had only grabbed his sword instead of cutting him down on the spot already counted as remarkable restraint.
"I haven't decided yet. Let me think about it."
After just a few exchanges, Jūzō realized Raiga's intel source was probably faulty. Otherwise, he wouldn't be acting like Jūzō had only recently defected, when in reality Jūzō had gone rogue much earlier.
"Oh? Fine, then. Once you've thought it over, come find me."
Raiga didn't suspect a thing. Compared to the other former Seven Ninja Swordsmen, he actually got along with Jūzō relatively well.
Not that they were especially close. It was just that Raiga's relationships with the others were even worse, which made his relationship with Jūzō look decent by comparison.
After casually brushing Raiga off, Jūzō gave up on trying to keep infiltrating for more intel. If Raiga had been able to find him, that meant the black market people had already noticed something was off.
Trying to keep snooping around now would only alert the enemy. Better to pretend to leave and let them relax their guard. Besides, it wasn't just him—Izumi and that ninja cat were gathering information too. A ninja's job wasn't just fighting alone. A lot of the time, you had to trust your teammates, because that was the only choice you had.
Compared to Kitsujiro and Jūzō, whose investigations hadn't gone too smoothly, Uchiha Izumi's investigation ended up going unexpectedly well.
That obviously wasn't because her ninja skills were somehow better than Jūzō's. She was simply benefiting from Uchiha Chizumi's power.
The ability to see every sin a target had ever committed was basically a cheat code when it came to gathering intelligence.
Against good people or ordinary civilians, the effect wasn't that obvious. But the people running the underground black market were practically all red-names with sin levels off the charts. All Izumi had to do was follow the trail of a red-name and trace it all the way back. Without much effort at all, she managed to uncover the entire state of Seagull City's underground black market.
By the time the two humans and one cat regrouped, Izumi's face had turned grim.
The notebook in her hand, which she'd been using to keep records, was densely packed with one crime after another.