Amamiya Kenichi froze for a moment.
He really hadn't expected Zetsu to open with "pay up."
But looking at him now, with that half-amused, half-creepy expression, Kenichi had a feeling this guy really did know things no one else did. Which meant…
It was probably worth it.
"I'm not asking much. Thirty million ryō," Zetsu said, raising three fingers, chuckling in that grating, weird way of his.
Kenichi didn't even hesitate.
Thirty million was a lot—almost the bounty price of a competent jōnin—but the value of the intel could easily surpass that. He and Sasori had already discussed the idea of building an airborne test base; if Sky Ninja Village really held the key to flight technology, then this was a long-term investment.
And long-term investments were worth bleeding for.
He handed over the cash.
Zetsu, in turn, passed him a small, thin folder. Just three sheets of paper.
Kenichi looked down at it, then at the money he'd just lost.
"…This is some expensive stationery," he muttered.
Three pages. Ten million per page.
He'd blown up one quarter of Kumogakure and seriously injured the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki, and even that had only earned him six hundred million. Intelligence work really was where the profit was.
"You'll find it well worth the price. Heh heh heh…" Zetsu slipped the money away and melted into the gloom.
It wasn't like he actually cared about money. But casually handing out detailed intel for free would look suspicious as hell. So he always took something—just enough to make it feel "normal."
Nagato didn't interfere.
Deals and trades between members weren't his concern, as long as they didn't hurt Akatsuki's interests. And Kenichi's last operation had brought in massive returns for the organization—money, reputation, and fear.
Before this, most of Akatsuki's war commissions had been mid-tier jobs, nothing too eye-catching, and Nagato had no intention of exposing his true power yet. Most of the time he took work under aliases.
Now, though, the big villages had started quietly reaching out to Akatsuki, trying to make contact.
Nagato played the game with them—thin smiles, vague answers, never a hint of his real plans.
Kenichi looked over the first page… and his eyebrows climbed higher and higher.
"Sky Ninja Village was wiped out by Konoha during the Second Shinobi War."
He let out a low whistle and shook his head.
"Konoha really doesn't leave much good karma behind, huh…"
Another village, erased.
No wonder that in the future, once Naruto grew up, people kept coming out of nowhere to settle old scores with the Leaf. With this much cause and effect piled up, it was practically a miracle that every other month someone wasn't showing up to scream "Konoha, you bastard!" and start throwing jutsu.
Nagato razing Konoha with Shinra Tensei later?
Honestly… totally on-brand.
Of course, if Sky Ninja Village had truly been erased from existence, then there wouldn't be enough here to justify a thirty-million intel fee.
Sure enough, the next lines explained:
There had been survivors.
Zetsu's digging had turned up that the remnants of Sky Ninja Village still held onto a "secret weapon" left behind by their ancestors—something called Ankor Bandian.
One survivor, under torture, had described it like this:
"Ankor is a city in the sky."
A floating fortress. A hidden aerial city.
He'd said it was a top-secret trump card of Sky Ninja Village, and even he only knew of it as a rumor, a story overheard from his parents.
Zetsu had gone on to check the old site of Sky Ninja Village himself.
Beneath the ruins he'd found traces of a buried complex—subterranean buildings, a strange underground structure. But no trace of a flying fortress, and no solid leads.
So he'd left it at that.
Kenichi finished the third page and scratched his head.
"Sky Ninja Village… Ankor… I don't remember any of this. So this must be from a movie or some arc I never watched…"
In his past life, half the filler arcs and most of the movies had been "I'll get around to it someday" content. Apparently, that "someday" had never come.
Still, it didn't matter.
He knew where the ruins were now. That was enough.
He didn't necessarily have to go himself—he could send Sasori first. After all, the guy was the one who'd started daydreaming about airborne bases.
Kenichi tucked away the intel and headed out into the rainy streets.
He found Sasori exactly where he expected him to be: in the middle of Rain's market district, arms full of boxes.
Kenichi's eyelid twitched.
Those were… computers.
Stacks of them.
"…You really are loaded," he muttered internally. "Who buys machines by the stack?"
"Scorpion, got a minute?" he called out instead.
Sasori glanced over. "You needed something?"
Kenichi walked up, pulled out a storage scroll, and held it out with both hands.
"This is the bounty Konoha paid. We only finished the job because you backed me up. Take it."
Inside: fifty million ryō.
Past-life corporate wisdom had taught him a crucial lesson—
If there's money to be made, you make sure everyone who helped you makes some.
Eat alone and sooner or later someone poisons your bowl.
At first Sasori refused, frowning.
He didn't care much about money for its own sake; the only thing that really excited him was art. Kenichi insisted, though—hard, over and over—until Sasori finally gave in with a sigh and tucked the scroll into his cloak.
Once that was settled, Kenichi handed over Zetsu's three sheets as well.
Sasori read them in silence.
"Sky Ninja Village still has survivors…" he murmured. "But this 'Ankor'… who knows if it's real."
He sounded skeptical.
But his eyes were bright.
Kenichi could tell.
"We've got, what, a fifty percent chance this is legit?" Kenichi said. "But even that's worth gambling on. If Sky Ninja Village's flight tech really was as good as they say, they might have something ridiculous buried down there."
If he didn't already have a full plate—hybrid rice, chakra explosives, lab construction—Kenichi would've gone himself.
"I'm busy right now," Sasori said after a moment's thought. "Once I finish modifying Prototype Unit-01, I'll go take a look."
That was good enough.
You couldn't rush this kind of thing. Push too hard and people closed up. Kenichi knew better than to nag.
They chatted for a bit longer. Kenichi threw out a few ideas for how Sasori could integrate new metals into his puppet frame, then headed back out into the drizzle.
This time, he wasn't going on a mission.
Before leaving, he'd specifically asked Nagato for a period of downtime, dedicated to research—particularly on food production and high-yield crops. Nagato had agreed without much fuss.
Kenichi strongly suspected it had something to do with the mountain of cash he'd just hauled in for Akatsuki.
"Now that I think about it…" he murmured as he walked. "Sensei's still out on that mission with Kakuzu, isn't she?"
Orochimaru was away.
Which meant…
Kenichi's eyes lit up, and he rubbed his hands together slowly, a grin creeping onto his face.
"If Sensei's not around…"
"Doesn't that mean I can do whatever I want for a while?"