This was...
Chiba?
Looking at the familiar figure before her, now suddenly strange because of the killing intent, Nao's eyes widened slightly, and a trace of shock flashed through the gloom in them.
At this moment, although she knew Chiba would never hurt her—and even if he did, it would be useless, since this body was merely a manifestation of her ocular power, something akin to a thought-form—she still could not stop a chill from running down her back.
The madness beneath the icy killing intent in Chiba's eyes left her chilled to the bone, shocked into silence!
Darkness...
At the same time, these two words suddenly surfaced in her heart. The coldness and madness in Chiba's eyes made her heart pound heavily! So...
Chiba cared about us this much...
Yet, for some reason, a faint warmth rose in the heart of this ocular-power incarnation of Nao.
As a member of the Uchiha Clan who had awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan, she understood the madness and coldness in those eyes better than anyone!
If she had not possessed the Mangekyō Sharingan, her own eyes would probably have held that same coldness and madness.
And the reason Chiba was showing such an expression was clearly because of Hirohiko and her.
It was precisely because he cherished Hirohiko and her that Chiba now revealed the look an Uchiha Clan member would show after losing something important.
It could be said that the colder and madder Chiba's eyes became, the more frigid his killing intent, the greater the weight she and Hirohiko held in his heart.
And now, Nao could tell that she and Hirohiko mattered so much to Chiba that, if he were a member of the Uchiha Clan, his feelings for them would have been enough to become the key to awakening