Ishiki had once again found a secluded spot deep within the forest.
The Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu—a technique Ishiki had long wanted to master—was now his, learned directly from Orochimaru. With Orochimaru's personal endorsement, using it carried no risk, no suspicion.
A hidden benefit of being Orochimaru's "disciple."
Now, as long as Ishiki didn't go overboard with forbidden techniques, no one in the village would question what jutsu he practiced.
No one except Danzō.
Between Danzō and Ishiki, suspicion had already mutated into open hostility. They were one step from revealing their hands and drawing steel.
Ishiki held back, mindful that the old snake hadn't yet slithered out of the village.
Danzō, meanwhile, was being circled by Hiruzen's investigation.
So Ishiki endured the backdoor sabotage—for now. He had none of Danzō's political clout.
Training the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu was the easy part. The real grind was in mastering Tandem Paper Bombs and the Darkness Walking Technique.
The former demanded a mountain of paper bombs and a deep understanding of space-time ninjutsu.
The latter required intricate knowledge of genjutsu effects and the nature transformation of yin chakra.
Ishiki didn't know how long mastering both would take.
But he wasn't in a rush. Especially for the Tandem Paper Bombs.
That technique only unleashed its true potential when paired with Edo Tensei, and there was no way Orochimaru would just hand over that particular kinjutsu.
So even if Ishiki mastered Tandem Paper Bombs, there weren't many places he could use it.
What did catch his curiosity, though, was the space-time aspect of it—specifically the method of summoning wave after wave of explosive tags through a single specialized seal.
If he unraveled that secret, it might just accelerate his understanding of the Flying Thunder Technique.
With that in mind, he threw himself deeper into his research.
Beside him, Matatabi lazed about, most of her body sealed again but not yet returned to the Presidential Room.
The issue was… the President had glimpsed the Rainbow during a summoning mishap.
Ishiki had no choice but to remove the key from his back and send it to Uchiha Shisui for treatment.
Matatabi, though, despite seeing the Rainbow, had shown no change.
Asked about it, she simply shrugged, feline tail flicking: "I'm just a lump of chakra. You like snails? You're looking for the wrong tailed beast. Try the Six-Tails. He fits your tastes."
Ishiki responded with a deadpan eye-roll.
He knew damn well what the Six-Tails was—a giant slug-hound, Saiken.
Not related to the Wet Bone Forest's slug, but still damp and disgusting. Ishiki loathed moist things.
At the moment, Ishiki was poring over scrolls while Matatabi counted rainbows with theatrical boredom.
Until her line of sight was blocked by Ishiki stepping in front of her.
"What?" she asked, rolling over.
"Something just entered the Gale Deluge field," Ishiki's voice sharpened, his posture still.
"So what? Give it a minute and it'll turn into a snail." She yawned.
"It didn't." Ishiki's reply was clipped.
"What do you mean it didn't?" Her cat face scrunched in confusion. She jabbed a paw at herself. "So… I go?"
"No. Run." Ishiki pointed in a direction completely opposite the intruder.
"Pfft. I'm not helping." Matatabi stretched lazily, then vanished like wind through leaves.
Ishiki didn't care.
Whoever had entered the rainbow-blanketed zone and remained unsnailified must've found a way to resist the transformation—just like Orochimaru.
But the form they took surprised him.
Using the Right Eye of the Saint in tandem with The Fool, he conjured the Eye of Sand, manipulating terrain to expand his awareness like an omniscient sentinel.
Within the ripples of his Hamon detection range, he saw it clearly.
Lean, sinewy, agile—an entity that didn't belong in this era.
A dinosaur.
No—more precisely, a raptor.
The only thing that came to mind, after having seen The Fool, was a Stand ability:
Scary Monsters.
Ishiki's eyes lit up. He'd considered the idea that "Stand users attract each other," that the Saint's Corpse would seek itself—but he hadn't expected the next fragment to walk right to his doorstep… bearing exactly the kind of power he liked.
Scary Monsters. A brutally simple Stand. It turned any creature it touched into a dinosaur under the user's control.
The transformed became apex predators—razor sharp vision, powerful limbs, armored hide, beastly senses, and lethal force.
And best of all—any target injured by a dino would also transform.
A zombie virus, but Jurassic.
Now it made sense. The intruder had already been turned, thus registered by the field as a dinosaur.
The Rainbow only reacted to non-transformed beings. It didn't see a human. It saw a raptor.
"Saint's Corpse. Scary Monsters," Ishiki murmured, licking his lips. His eyes glittered with resolve.
Around him stood three more Ishikis—two in deep meditation, absorbing natural energy.
Beside them, The Fool toiled in silence, liquefying earth into sand, prepping for stealth.
. . .
Diego.
A Jonin of Iwagakure. He had two passions: studying fossils… and enjoying good coffee.
Both tied to his past.
In the east of the Land of Earth, a mountain loomed. From its cliffs, strange rocks could be dug—rocks that sometimes hid the remains of long-dead creatures known as dinosaurs.
As a child, those stones were Diego's toys.
While others lusted after ores and metals, he yearned for prehistoric bones.
Even his brother Deidara ignored the fossils—he only cared about the explosions that sometimes echoed in the mines. To him, detonations were the highest form of art.
But to Diego, nothing rivaled the frozen elegance of dinosaur fossils.
His obsession reached a new height the day he snuck into a deeper shaft and unearthed a singular, alien eye.
That eye gave him power.
The power to transform any living thing he touched into a dinosaur.
Art… had evolved.
Diego believed this was fate itself.