The Hokage Is Also an Enemy of Justice

Sarutobi Hiruzen left with two Anbu squads, leaving Kakashi and six Anbu operatives behind to deal with the aftermath.

"Lava Release Kekkei Genkai... That kind of destructive power is truly absurd!"

Breathing in the sulfurous stench that even his mask could not block out, Kakashi's gaze swept over the surroundings.

A flash of shock passed through his dead-fish eyes.

Ahead of him, the ground was covered in slowly cooling magma. The earth had been scorched full of pits, some large, some small, some deep, some shallow. Half a street's worth of houses seemed to have been erased from existence, and the heat filling the air made even Kakashi feel uncomfortable.

Magma still dripped from the edges of many ruined buildings. Anyone unaware of the situation might have thought they had arrived at the mouth of an active volcano!

Kakashi also saw the corpses of two Root Ninjas.

One of them only had half a body left. The other half was nowhere to be found.

The second had a gaping hole blasted through his chest and had been cut in half at the waist.

Kakashi stood with his hands in his pockets, deeply troubled.

Those two corpses would be easy enough to handle... They could simply be cleaned up and handed over to Root.

But how was he supposed to deal with this devastated street before him?

Uchiha Chisen had really gone too far!

Still...

Perhaps he was one of the few ninjas in the village who still remembered the Fourth Hokage.

Kakashi recalled what Uchiha Chisen had said.

—"Only this can make the Fourth Hokage's sacrifice worthwhile."

Absolute Justice...

It was not so bad, either.

Just as Kakashi fell into thought, he suddenly saw a petite figure staggering to her feet in the distance. She appeared to be wearing the uniform of the Konoha Military Police Force as well.

After watching that Uchiha Clan girl hurriedly head in the direction Uchiha Chisen had left in, Kakashi gave it some thought.

Then chose to ignore her.

Elsewhere.

"I... I'll never dare do it again... Could you put me down first? I can walk by myself, you know."

"Um... Could you not lock me up for too long? If Iruka-sensei finds out, he'll be really disappointed in me."

"I really know I was wrong..."

Naruto's words grew less and less confident, his voice quieter and quieter. By the end, he was already choking back sobs.

Large tears slid uncontrollably down his little face.

Naruto truly regretted it.

He knew he had caused a huge disaster this time. One prank had caused half a street in Konoha to be wiped away out of nowhere!

That meant a lot of people had become homeless because of his prank.

It seemed people had even died because of it!

But he realized that the man carrying him did not even bother responding to him!

"Ch-Chisen-senpai, wait for me!" A weak cry came from behind Uchiha Chisen and Naruto.

Uchiha Chisen slowed his pace, and a girl hurriedly caught up to him.

Her face was pale.

Her steps were unsteady as well.

"I'm sorry, Senpai. I... I used my Sharingan earlier, and the consumption was too great. I accidentally passed out..." Izumi was so ashamed that she wanted to crawl into a crack in the ground. She felt that she had held him back too much.

During Nine-Tails Night, she had awakened her Sharingan at the age of five—and it had immediately been a Three-Tomoe Sharingan. Her talent for awakening it was absolutely unprecedented in the Uchiha Clan.

But...

What was astonishing was that Izumi had far too little Chakra. Her Chakra and ocular power simply could not support her Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

If Chakra were measured in units of "one Kakashi," Izumi had at most 0.01 Kakashi.

Among peers who had graduated from the Ninja Academy, even if her Chakra reserves were not at the very bottom, they were still on the lower end.

"Uchiha Izumi."

"Here!!!" Upon hearing Chisen-senpai call her name, Uchiha Izumi instinctively snapped to attention.

"I'll test you with two questions. What do you think about what happened just now?" Uchiha Chisen glanced at the weak girl beside him.

"Just now?"

Izumi froze.

In a daze, she recalled the conflict between Chisen-senpai and Konoha's Root before she had accidentally passed out. Then she remembered the conflict between Chisen-senpai and the Hokage after she woke up.

The cause of the conflict had only been a child playing a prank, sparking a minor disturbance in the village.

Yet in the end, it had developed into so many contradictions and clashes.

Was this...

Worth it?

When that question flashed through Izumi's mind, she suddenly recalled the [Absolute Justice] Chisen-senpai always spoke of. She recalled the many evils she could not understand, born from the sickness of the Shinobi World.

—A father who killed his daughter; a son who killed his mother.

Those two incidents alone, which shattered her worldview, were enough to completely transform Izumi's view of the Shinobi World.

They also gave her a deeper understanding of Chisen-senpai's [Absolute Justice].

"I think... Senpai did nothing wrong." Izumi took a deep breath and spoke with a serious expression. "No matter how minor an evil is, if it is not restrained and punished, if it is blindly tolerated, then one day it will inevitably grow into a greater evil."

Having sorted through her thoughts, Izumi continued, "Senpai, I have always wanted to protect Konoha. But in the past, I didn't know what method I should use to protect Konoha."

"Not until I met you did I roughly understand what I should do. As long as I do everything I can and use my own strength to purge the evil within Konoha, Konoha will surely become better one day."

"This is how I understand [Absolute Justice]!"

Uchiha Chisen said calmly, "Rookie, you're no longer at zero points. At least you've got ten."

Izumi asked weakly, "Senpai, what's the full score?"

"One thousand."

Izumi: "..."

Well, as long as it was not a negative score.

"Senpai, what about the second question?" Izumi cautiously asked again.

Uchiha Chisen said, "What do you think of my 'retreat' just now?"

Izumi was stunned.

"Senpai, I don't think that was retreating!" Izumi gritted her teeth, her little face serious. "In all of Konoha, I'm afraid only you have been silently upholding [Absolute Justice]. Even the other seniors in the Konoha Military Police Force have always misunderstood you, yet from beginning to end, you alone have defended justice."

"If you had insisted on physically clashing with the Hokage and the others, then Konoha's [Justice]..." Izumi took a deep breath, gradually gathering her courage. "There might have been no one left to protect it. The village would probably find it difficult to produce a second person like you, Senpai."

"You're being too roundabout."

Uchiha Chisen interrupted her. "To carry out [Absolute Justice], absolute power is required. Otherwise, it will be just like what happened earlier."

"You must remember this humiliation, remember this rage, and remember how the 'evil' of the Shinobi World revels above our heads."

Izumi nodded heavily.

"One day, in the name of [Absolute Justice], I will purge them all." Uchiha Chisen openly and straightforwardly said something that left Izumi dumbfounded. "Including the Hokage!"

"This is the third lesson I am teaching you. Politicians care only about their power and their so-called balance. In their eyes, the word [Justice] is dispensable."

"The Hokage is also an enemy of justice."

Izumi's mind crashed.

While carrying Naruto, Uchiha Chisen temporarily turned his attention to the "rewards" for killing three Red Name sinners.

Yes.

Three!

Danzo, who had used "Izanagi" to rewrite an unfavorable reality, counted as having already been killed once by Chisen's Golden Finger.