Kakashi continued to collect whatever information he could over the next few days.

But it seemed a lot easier than how it had been at the beginning.

He began to see a lot more of the buildings in the estate from the inside, and therefore learned more about what exactly Daraku was doing in his experiments. From what Kakashi could tell, Daraku was developing jutsus in the people he'd kidnapped, increasing their endurance, stamina; their speed and strength. He was also trying to create new jutsu and combine different nature transformations together to create advanced transformations. Why they had to be civilians and not ninjas, Kakashi still didn't know, however—it would make more sense if he had kidnapped ninja. It was the reason why so many had died already. In a way that was similar to organ transplants, there was always the possibility that the recipient would reject the organ, seeing it as a foreign presence within the body and trying to destroy it; and it was essentially the same with this. Daraku was forcing their bodies to take in chakra of all different transformations; sometimes more than one at the same time. Their bodies just couldn't handle it.

He'd seen the results.

So far he hadn't seen Daraku himself, however. He had to be keeping an eye on things, considering he was in charge of all this, and he would no doubt want to make sure it all went to plan. But he hadn't spotted him at all—though even that was probably to help keep things under the radar and try and avoid blame for everything he'd done. Not to mention Kakashi was pretty sure Daraku was a ninja, but not a high level one. If he ever thought there was a chance of him being caught out and ninjas from Konoha coming to take him down, he wanted to stay out of the way so he wouldn't have to fight, no doubt knowing he wouldn't have much of a chance in battle. Well, at least on his own, anyway; that assassin was something else entirely, and someone who also remained a big question mark in the mission. A shadow, and nothing more. Though it seemed they remained a mystery to everyone at the estate as well as Kakashi, as even though the guards and workers there knew Daraku to some extent…this assassin practically didn't exist, and it did nothing to ease Kakashi's worries.

But he tried to shake it off for now. He kept himself in good shape while he was here—just surviving was an effort in itself, anyway—and he would do whatever was necessary to complete his mission and keep Konoha safe from Daraku and whoever was working for him. He would pinpoint Daraku's location and get rid of him for good later on; and who knows? If Daraku had hired him, the assassin might back off with his death, not wanting to get involved in any trouble with a ninja village, least of all one as strong as Konoha. And if not…well, it was what he had to do, and he wasn't about to back down. But that possible confrontation wouldn't come until later if he kept up his guard, at any rate, and so Kakashi would just concentrate on getting all the information on what was going on and how he could stop it.

Though it was going a little quicker than he had expected. In the amount of time it had taken him just to find out one good piece of information, Kakashi had discovered so much about the estate and Daraku's actions. The security was still tight, yes, that hadn't changed in the slightest, but there were openings and opportunities that arrived and allowed Kakashi to find out things and get out before anyone saw him. He hadn't noticed anything the first time, as he'd been too focused on everything he'd found out in the room and how he was finally making progress with his mission, but now it was happening more often and he had the time to think about it, Kakashi was starting to see patterns in what was going on here.

It just all seemed very…coincidental, and that wasn't always good in the current set of circumstances. Why was it that when at the beginning, he couldn't get in anywhere at risk of being seen by someone and caught, but now suddenly that was no longer happening? Why was it that before he had had to simply make guesses as to which building to go into, going through a process of elimination as to whether they were important or not, and now every time there was an opportunity for him to go inside, it was always somewhere that was important and he could get information? Information that was useful to him, and never the kind he discarded? This couldn't be occurring by accident—and it confused Kakashi. Because although at first he had become watchful and cautious with everything he did, wondering if Daraku was trying to lead him into a trap, the more he thought about it, the less that idea made sense.

Surely if Daraku knew he was there, he would want to get rid of him as quickly as possible—for all he knew, Kakashi could have sent word back to Konoha by now. Allowing him to continue snooping around was only disadvantageous to Daraku, and with how much effort he had made to kill any ninja who had come within 10 feet of the estate, Kakashi doubted he would be so lenient with him. There was absolutely no purpose to letting him live—he was finding out more about the experiments he was carrying out and gradually would learn enough to put a stop to what he was doing. Hell, he was going to kill Daraku in the end. If he had really been trying to lead Kakashi into a trap to kill him, it would have been right at the beginning; when Kakashi barely knew anything and was still figuring out the layout. Not now, when he knew enough to separate the necessary information from the insignificant, and was more aware of the people involved in the experiment.

But there still had to be a reason for why all this was happening. However, the more he considered it, the less Kakashi could think of how it could be a malicious one. The only way this could all work—leaving Kakashi clues and opportunities to find information but never telling anyone he was here or affecting the mission for the worse—was if they actually wanted to help him. The very moment he first acknowledged the idea, Kakashi almost didn't believe it; that in itself didn't seem to make sense. But there was no other way to explain it—and there was still the question of what Kakashi was going to do about it now. The idea he could trust someone who was working for Daraku and living in the estate seemed almost stupid…but they'd helped him so much already, and there was no point to a betrayal—if they knew he was here all that had to do was tell someone and that would be it.
So…maybe Kakashi could team up with them.

They had to be higher up than just a guard; the guards never went inside the buildings where the experiments were going on and didn't have a clue what was really going on. So the fact that they knew which buildings were important meant they had to be working on a closer level with the experiments. But if that was the case, Kakashi could find out quite a lot if he got closer to them—whoever they were. Just because they were working here didn't mean they automatically agreed with what Daraku was doing. Maybe they'd seen the experiments and realised they didn't want to be a part of it—that they wanted out. Kakashi was more than willing to help them out if that was the case; it had to be hard seeing what was going on day after day and not wanting to do it. The only problem being that Daraku would no doubt dislike the idea of anyone leaving—to the point of never letting it happen, in case they ended up telling someone.

How he was going to find out who his newfound 'friend' was and meet them face to face along with an actual conversation about what would happen about the things going on in the estate, Kakashi didn't know, but as it turned out, he didn't need to do a thing. He soon began to discover more the next day—and it would lead to more than he ever could have anticipated. Not only that, but it would be for the best.

Hell…it might even be more than that.