Neji leaves.

Intel division

" Did no one see anything?" asked Ibiki, as he stood before the corpse of Kabuto.

He had received the message that a spy was caught and he was needed to make him speak. Upon reaching the cell he found the sentries were killed and the spy poisoned. He didn't know what he would report the Hokage.

" It seems that someone didn't want him to talk. Show me his personnel belongings" ordered ibiki

All the items on him where laid out on Ibiki's desk. It included a scroll, a standard set of ninja tools, a stack of empty cards and some food pills.

Ibiki looked through everything but found the scroll empty. It was the scroll that Kabuto used to pass information to Orochimaru by using the scroll communicating technique. Ibiki had been in the intel gathering field for a long time so knew that this scroll was not an ordinary one and if he tried to tamper with it the enemy might come to know that his spy had been caught. Ibiki decided to pass on the scroll to the sandaime.

Next he took the stack of empty card and injected some chakra into one out of curiosity but the card just burst into flames. Ibiki now confirmed that Kabuto's chakra is the key so he immediately ordered his subordinates to extract the remaining chakra from Kabuto's corpse.

"Well atleast we now have some leads." sighed Ibiki.

**************************************************

Hyuga residence

Neji made up his mind to leave the village so he wanted to spend some time with his family and friends, he invited Hinata, Lee, Tenten to eat lunch at the barbeque shop where they had a blast and Neji even got to see Choza and Choji competing with each other.

Neji posts a letter at the konoha postal department to the hokage without a return address. He wanted to give a heads up to the hokage of the coming battle.The message in the post was cryptic.

He practiced for sometime with his father and they had a family dinner together.

Later that night when all the people in the house hold slept a lonely figure sneaked out of the house to the nearby woods. It was Neji.

Neji performed the hand seals for the summoning jutsu.

"Long time no see brother" Enza replied.

" Yes brother, i need your help with something, i need to visit the shikkotsu forest to train and learn senjutsu, can you reverse summon me from your village?"

"I can but why do you to want to learn Senjutsu? It is very difficult to learn and you should have a large internal chakra too." said Enza.

" Yeah i know ,that's why i wish to practice there for some time before learning senjutsu." said Neji.

" Okay if that's what you wish" said Enza and he disappeared.

Neji turned back to look at his house , he would be gone for sometime so he was feeling some reluctance. Poof... he disappears.

*****************************************************

Next morning, Hokage's office.

Ibiki had made a report of everything, he also included everything he got from the autopsy.

Kabuto had died from the poison derived from the venom of an Salamander.

Hokage smoked his pipe while he looked over the personal items that were confiscated from kabuto. Ibiki also collected the chakra that remained in the corpse and stored it in a bunch of paper talismans.

Sandaime placed one of the talisman over the scroll and said " Kai"

the talisman burnt and the chakra in it seeped into the scroll. Once the scroll absorbed the chakra it revealed a jutsu formula which the 3rd recognized as scroll communicating jutsu, that was invented by the 2nd. The only other person who knew about it apart from himself was Orochimaru.

Sandaime did the same with the cards and found that they all contained data on the current shinobis of the village including himself and Uchiha Itachi's was very detailed. Surprisingly Danzo's card had some interesting comments. It read " Hashirama's cells have adjusted to Danzo's body, visible effect- subject has shown slowed aging. "

In the original plot Danzo hands over the stolen sharingans to Orochimaru who implants them into Shin and then provides Shin's right hand to him. But now he only had the hashirama cell infused right arm due to the delay in the clan annihilation. Danzo was utilizing the data he confiscated from Orochimaru's lab to do the implantation himself.

Sandaime had long known that Danzo did some dirty work for the village but he didn't know the details. He always felt bad for friend and ended up making several compromises with him.

" What have you done this time Danzo?" thought Hiruzen.

Sandaime was disturbed from his thoughts when someone came in to deliver a letter for him. He opens the letter to find a message that looked like a poem, but it was not poetic in the least bit.

" Beware old man beware,

there is a friend who betrays in the dark,

there is a wounded snake waiting for revenge

and a young sapling dyed in hate,

You crush the eye to break the illusion,

you pluck the fangs to escape the bite,

you tell the truth to weed out the hate,

beware old man beware."

Sandaime didn't know what to make of it, but its arrival at this time was no coincidence thought Hiruzen.

He was currently dealing with Orochimaru and there is suspicion on Danzo. As for the sapling Hiruzen had a few ideas.

**********************************************

Hyuga residence

Neji hadn't been spotted since morning, he missed his morning practice and he didn't return that night, the entire household was searching but no avail. After 2 days Hiashi and Hizashi informed the third privately of Neji's disappearance.

" Why is there so much trouble this week ?. Where did the brat go?. Is he the one who sent me the letter, did he come to know of something and had to flee for his life?" thought Hiruzen.

He told the Hyuga family to not tell any one of Neji and he made arrangement with the academy granting Neji a long leave. The Hyuga too shut out visitor who came to meet Neji.

The hokage sent some of the best ANBU he had in search of Neji.

But after a month they came back with no information.

Hiruzen then decided to believe in Neji and tried to investigate the leads in the spy's death.

He also instruct the medical team to identify if the poison is derived from the venom a black salamander found only in Amegakure.

Since Hiruzen had doubts about Danzo he decided to dig up all the dirt that was hidden under the roots of konoha.