Instant Kill

The standoff dragged on.

The two powerful figures stared each other down, both hoping the other wouldn't make a move.

They were both trying to stall, but neither knew how long they ought to keep it up.

At that moment, Danzo regretted how single-mindedly he had pursued his career when he was young.

Maybe I should've gotten married and had a child when I was young. Then, at my age, I'd have a kid about as old as the boy in front of me.

And raising a child would've given me more experience dealing with brats, wouldn't it?

What on earth makes these youngsters willing to risk their lives over a petty grudge?

And why are so many people willing to support this immature young man's ridiculous behavior?

Could Uchiha Kei have some secret jutsu that lets him control people?

It was all too hard to understand.

The longer it went on, the harder it became for Danzo to keep his composure.

He had pinned his hopes on the Hokage, but he knew his old comrade too well. Sarutobi was surely watching everything from somewhere, but he wouldn't show up until the very last moment.

Danzo couldn't tell whether the passage of time benefited him or hurt him.

Who knew if the Hokage was planning to sell him out? That old do-gooder had pulled stunts like this before.

Uchiha Kyō, Yakushi Nonō, Hatake Sakumo, the entire Uzumaki Clan. Wasn't that enough?

With precedents like those, who would trust their life to someone like him?

People with dark hearts found it hard to give others the benefit of the doubt. For Danzo, this was pure torture.

Second by second, the time dragged on. At last, Danzo couldn't take it anymore and spoke first.

"Kei, you're a promising young man. Do you know who I am? Do you understand what you're doing?"

"Go back. Don't drag your clan into this!"

He couldn't win a fight, and intimidation hadn't worked. Danzo thought he might as well try to soothe Kei.

Perhaps children responded better to kindness than force. If he placated the boy and calmed him down, there might still be a way out.

That was the gentlest thing Danzo had managed to say in years. He'd spent so long bullying others that he'd never been bullied like this before.

It was humiliating to back down in front of a child, but losing face was better than losing his life.

Everyone had regrets in life. Better to have regrets than to leave behind a corpse.

At his age, did he really have to fight a child in the wilderness? His body couldn't take it.

He'd caved. Danzo had caved.

The moment Danzo finally spoke, Kei knew the old man had run out of steam.

Pathetic. He has no stamina at all.

Kei breathed a quiet sigh of relief. So Danzo really was acting out of desperation.

Good. If he'd backed down, this would be easy to settle.

"Who do you think you're dealing with?"

Since Danzo had caved, there was a way to resolve this without a fight.

Danzo didn't want to die. Could the Hokage, who hadn't even shown up, really force him to?

Danzo wasn't some hot-blooded protagonist.

Since Danzo had spoken first, Kei could at least show him some respect.

Danzo was glad there was room to talk. Whether Uchiha Kei truly didn't know who he was or was pretending not to didn't matter.

For once, they could both play dumb and give each other a way out.

Danzo thought Kei had backed down too, pretending not to know who he was in the hope that they could defuse the conflict.

He couldn't believe anyone would be about to raid someone's home without knowing whose home it was.

"I'm the leader of Root and an elder of Konoha! Kei, I think there may be some misunderstanding between us. Do you realize how difficult you're making things for me? Attacking Root's headquarters isn't something that can easily be covered up. Think of the clan behind you, if not yourself! They still have to live in Konoha."

Hearing Danzo, Kei realized there really had been a misunderstanding. Whether it was the misunderstanding Danzo had imagined was another matter.

As it happened, Konoha, Naka Shrine, and Root's headquarters all lay on the same straight line. Kei had been leading his people toward Naka Shrine, which made it easy for Danzo to jump to the wrong conclusion.

Thank goodness. Konoha hadn't joined forces to wipe him out, as Kei had feared.

Now that he had his answer, there was nothing to worry about.

Sure enough, when a conflict broke out, whoever backed down first was the idiot.

Kei had no reason to explain the misunderstanding to Danzo.

"So they're just a bunch of brats with no names or ninja registration. Take them out!"

Kei had been smiling a moment ago, but he suddenly turned hostile.

A cloud of blood mist billowed up, spreading across the entire battlefield. Then came a chorus of screams. The ninja were only Genin and had no way to fight back. They died in no time.

Of course, "in no time" referred to how quickly it happened, not how it felt.

Uchiha Akeginu was a beautiful, fragrant woman of the Iga Clan. She could spray blood from every pore, turning it into a crimson mist, then hide within it and wait for a chance to strike.

In the world of Basilisk, her jutsu was already terrifying. After she came to the world of Naruto, with chakra to empower her and the Sharingan to aid her, "terrifying" no longer did it justice.

The blood mist she created not only boosted her speed but also slowed anyone caught inside it. Those weaker than her could give up resisting once the mist enveloped them and simply wait for the Death God to come.

[Uchiha Akeginu, Ninjutsu A+. Taijutsu A. Genjutsu B]

Uchiha Kagerō was a legendary beauty who had made countless men fall for her. She had a special constitution: when she got close to someone, her breath was lethally poisonous, allowing her to kill them.

With chakra and the Sharingan, Kagerō no longer needed to get close to anyone. At this point, she could even compete with Hanzo of the Salamander in the art of poison.

[Uchiha Kagerō, Ninjutsu S, Taijutsu C, Genjutsu A]

One of these two beauties had a crush on Uchiha Koshiro, and the other on Uchiha Gennosuke. They had belonged to two factions under the Uchiha Clan, but their shared love for men they couldn't have had brought them together as close friends.

The combination of their jutsu was definitely more dangerous than the demigod Hanzo of the Salamander. After all, as long as you were fast enough, you could at least run away from Hanzo's jutsu if you couldn't endure it.

But when these two worked together, there was nowhere to run—and no way to endure it.

Until someone found a way to counter them, their combination was a battlefield weapon on the level of Minato Namikaze.

In short, a weapon of mass destruction.

If Minato Namikaze was a precision-guided missile that blanketed the battlefield with fire, then these two were a devastating poison gas bomb.

A strong fighter might easily kill either of them in a one-on-one fight, but on the battlefield, their destructive power was no less than that of a Tailed Beast—especially when it came to killing people.

As the blood mist rose, a flock of white doves circled together and flew into the air.

There weren't many living creatures left in the circle they formed.

Danzo and the few elite Root ninja still with him were trapped in a tree.

The bodies of Root ninja covered the ground below.

What Danzo hadn't expected was that the reason he'd survived was his past encounter with Hanzo of the Salamander in the Land of Rain.

He'd needed a gas mask to approach Hanzo and work with him. The mask he'd developed for that purpose had now saved Danzo's life.

But it had only saved his life. The mask could protect him from the poison Hanzo released casually, but not from the focused damage inflicted by the jutsu before him.

It had reduced the harm enough to keep him from dying, but it couldn't prevent him from being injured. Half of Danzo's body had been exposed to the air, and now it was covered in blisters. At least one of his arms was useless.

Hiding in the tree, Danzo stared at the scene below in disbelief.

The battle had ended in just a few seconds.

It was so fast that Danzo hadn't even had time to react. What had given Kei the reason—and the nerve—to attack? Danzo couldn't understand.

It seemed he knew far too little about this young man. He hadn't realized Kei possessed a power capable of changing the tide of battle.

But that wasn't the point. The point was, how had Uchiha Kei dared to do it?

How had he dared to try to kill him?

He was an elder of Konoha, practically second-in-command!

How could Kei just decide to kill him, especially so close to Konoha?

"Uchiha Kei! Are you really going to kill me?"

Danzo screamed the words in desperation.

Below the tree, Kei toyed with a gas mask one of Danzo's subordinates had dropped. His playful mood took over.

He even put the mask on, then shouted up at Danzo, who was fuming in the tree. His voice came out muffled.

"Lord Danzo, after all these years of throwing your weight around in Konoha, you've forgotten that standing above others isn't so easy! Only those who've been through the crucible of battle can grow into 'adults.' You'll never win with luck and gifts alone."

"What do you mean?"

For years, Danzo had lectured other people. Now, being lectured by a child was more than he could stomach.

Uchiha Kei casually tossed the mask aside and spoke in a solemn voice.

"Lord Danzo, how do you still not understand? The Hokage who granted you power gave you the strength to stand above others, but he also stripped you of your identity."

Danzo's face turned ashen at Kei's answer. It seemed he'd realized something.

Kei turned away, unwilling to look at Danzo's face, twisted even further by the pain of the poison.

"Lord Danzo, the moment you became the master of Root, you and your Root became a group of dead men—men without names or traces."

"And killing people who don't exist isn't against the law."

Danzo froze.

Yes. The moment they entered Root, they severed ties with their families and erased their traces from the world. They ceased to exist.

Only if they had never existed could their actions abroad go wrong without dragging Konoha down with them.

So killing a group of people who didn't exist wasn't murder.

"Uchiha Kei, you can't do this. The Hokage won't let you get away with it."

That was the last thing Danzo could do to fight back.

Kei shook his head.

"Danzo, you've disappointed me. Is this the extent of your capacity? If I were you, I wouldn't waste time with useless talk."

"If I were you, at this very moment, I'd spend every word I had left trying to stay alive. Think carefully, Danzo. No one's going to argue with me over a dead man."

Before he finished speaking, a kunai marked with the Flying Thunder God Mark came flying toward him.