Please Step into the Trap: Shadow White Fang's Slaughter

Danzō's roar caught in his throat.

The Wood Dragon dove from the clouds half a second faster than he could shout the word "retreat." Its head smashed through the top of the Amaterasu Cage barrier, punching a hole through the dark-red curtain of light as fractured sealing patterns spread in every direction.

But the Amaterasu Cage did not shatter.

The hole healed within three seconds.

No—Danzō's gaze swept over the bottom of the barrier.

The Amaterasu Cage was his barrier. An all-encompassing seal that cut off inside from outside. Yet the chakra source maintaining the barrier was no longer entirely his sealing scrolls.

At the four corners of the barrier, four wooden stakes two meters tall had sprouted from the earth the instant the Wood Dragon struck. A glowing chakra crystal was embedded at the top of each one.

Four Red Yang Formation.

A Four Red Yang Formation wrapped around the Amaterasu Cage.

Danzō had enclosed the Senju Clan Compound with the Amaterasu Cage. Nawaki had enclosed the Amaterasu Cage with the Four Red Yang Formation.

A double-layered barrier. Those outside could not enter, and those inside—could not leave.

Danzō turned his head. At the northwest corner of the compound wall, behind half-collapsed roof tiles, stood a man. A plain white mask, a gray cloak, and a short blade in his right hand.

The blade was white.

Danzō recognized that weapon. Fewer than fifty people in the entire shinobi world recognized it, but none of them could ever forget it.

White Fang.

Sakumo Hatake's White Fang short blade.

Danzō's left hand trembled. Not from fear. From rage.

"You—"

"Lord Danzō." The voice behind the mask was so calm that it scarcely seemed to belong on a battlefield. "Please stay where you are."

Sakumo Hatake.

He had faked his death and vanished from the world. He had become Senju Shadow. He was the one maintaining the Four Red Yang Formation.

At that moment, Danzō understood everything.

When had Nawaki learned that he would strike on the day of the finals? It did not matter. What mattered was that Nawaki had not merely known—he had deliberately played along. Tsunade leaving the village had been an act. The compound being cleared out had been an act. Withdrawing from the finals and rushing back—

That had been an act too.

From beginning to end, the only one being toyed with like a monkey was Shimura Danzō.

The Wood Dragon landed in the center of the compound courtyard.

Its body smashed a shallow crater into the earth. Dust rose, then settled.

Nawaki jumped down from the dragon's head, landing ten meters directly in front of Danzō.

Kushina Uzumaki flipped off the left side of the dragon's back. As she landed, she bent her knees slightly, her right fist clenched as a thread of red light leaked between her fingers.

Mikoto landed soundlessly on the right, her short blade already drawn. The crimson glow of her Three-Tomoe Sharingan was especially piercing in the dusk.

Three people.

Opposite them stood eighty-six Root suicide operatives, two Wood Release experimental subjects, and Danzō, whose severed right arm had been replaced with something else.

The disparity in numbers was enormous.

But the momentum had completely reversed.

Danzō took a deep breath. He had commanded the Anbu for thirty years; controlling his expression came naturally to him.

"Nawaki Senju." His voice regained its calm. "Do you know what you are doing?"

Nawaki tilted his head.

"You are drawing your blade against Konoha shinobi." Danzō straightened, raising his voice just enough for every Root operative behind him to hear. "I, Shimura Danzō, am a Konoha advisor appointed by the Hokage. The one you have surrounded is not merely one man—it is Konoha's order."

Nawaki said nothing. He was waiting.

Seeing no reaction from him, Danzō pressed on. "When your grandfather Hashirama Senju founded this village, what rules did he establish? Shinobi obey the village, and clans obey the greater good. If you attack me today, you are attacking Konoha's system itself—"

"Finished?"

Danzō's speech was cut off.

Nawaki took a step forward. Just one step.

"Lord Danzō, I can't find anything wrong with what you just said." Nawaki sounded as though they were having an ordinary conversation. "Shinobi obey the village, and clans obey the greater good. Very well said."

He took another step forward.

"Then let me ask you something."

Nawaki stopped and pulled his right hand from his pocket. Between his fingers was a thin slip of paper—the intelligence White had sent back.

"You transferred two sets of Amaterasu Cage-grade seals from the southeastern base. The last time seals of this level were deployed was to wipe out a village twenty years ago. So tell me—did you bring nearly a hundred men, two monsters, and village-destroying seals to my home today in the name of Konoha's order?"

Danzō's lips pressed tightly together.

"Or are you saying—" Nawaki tossed the note into the air. The wind carried it around twice before it fell into the mud. "—that you, Shimura Danzō, are order itself? Whoever you want dead deserves to die? Whichever clan you want destroyed is a clan of traitors?"

The Root operatives behind him did not move. But the hands of several people in the front row tightened slightly around their blades.

Danzō's gaze flickered.

"...Nawaki, you are twisting my intentions. I came here today—"

"You came here today to wipe out my Senju Clan, seize the Nine-Tails jinchūriki, and drag my corpse back to carve it up for experiments." Nawaki took over, his voice never rising. "You have done this before. How many monsters have you fed with the cells of my dead clansmen?"

He tilted his head toward the two experimental subjects before Danzō.

Deformed wooden tissue spread from their right arms across half their bodies, while the patterns beneath their skin twisted into something barely human. It was the rejection reaction caused by forcibly implanting First Hokage cells into ordinary human bodies.

"And you call that protecting Konoha?"

Nawaki smiled. It was the smile of someone who genuinely found something hilarious.

"Lord Danzō, compared to my grandfather Hashirama, you are a hundred and eight thousand miles behind. The only thing you learned from him is that his cells are really useful."

Danzō did not respond.

He could not.

The red light of the Four Red Yang Formation shrouded the area. No one outside could see or hear what happened within. Danzō glanced back—Sakumo's White Fang short blade blocked the northwest corner, while eighty-six Root suicide operatives were trapped inside the barrier, unable to advance or retreat.

He thought for three seconds.

Then he smiled.

This was the first time Danzō had truly smiled before Nawaki. Not the hollow smile he wore on political occasions. It was the smile of a gambler shoving every last chip onto the table.

"Nawaki." He raised his left hand and slowly pulled open the right side of his black robe.

Underneath, Danzō's right arm was not severed.

It was a complete arm. Grayish-white skin was covered in dark patterns stretching from the shoulder to the fingertips. The right arm was thicker than the left by a full circle, and the texture of its muscles did not resemble a human's—

It resembled tree roots.

Three Sharingan were embedded beneath the skin along the outside of his forearm. Their pupils turned as a dim red glow flickered within them.

At his shoulder joint, a long vertical stitch scar split open. Green fluid seeped from the gaps in the scar, carrying an intense woody scent.

First Hokage cells.

Sharingan.

Hashirama's power and the Uchiha Clan's power had been forcibly crammed into the same arm.

Mikoto's Sharingan saw the chakra flowing through that arm. Chaotic, violent, and contradictory. The two bloodlines barely maintained a balance even as they rejected one another.

"Disgusting," Mikoto spat.

Danzō ignored her. He raised his right hand and spread his fingers.

"You say I am unworthy." His voice sank. "But some things have nothing to do with worthiness. If you obtain them, they are yours."

His right hand slammed onto the ground.

Chakra poured into the massive sealing scroll behind him. The runes on the scroll lit up at once, and white light shot into the sky.

Boom—

The ground exploded.

One, two, three—

Deformed bodies broke free from the seals. Each was three meters tall, its torso covered in twisted wooden armor. They had no faces, only cracked mouths that opened and closed without stopping.

Four. Five. Six.

Their "mouths" released hoarse howls. Their chakra fluctuations were utterly chaotic, but each possessed no less chakra than a jōnin.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

The ground continued to cave in. The tenth experimental subject crawled from the largest fissure, twice the size of the other nine. The wooden tissue in its right arm had mutated into a three-meter-long, branchlike giant limb.

Ten deformed Wood Release monsters.

Together with the previous two experimental subjects.

Twelve.

They stood behind Danzō, their howls blending into one as the earth trembled.

Danzō straightened amid the monsters' howls. The three eyes on his Sharingan arm opened wide at once, their red glow dazzling in the dusk.

"Nawaki Senju." His voice carried through the howls. "You said I fed monsters with your clansmen's cells. That is right. The blood of the Senju Clan flows through every one of these monsters."

He raised his right hand and pointed forward.

"Let your clansmen send you on your way."

All twelve experimental subjects turned toward Nawaki.

Twenty-four empty eye sockets fixed upon the twelve-year-old boy.

Nawaki stood where he was.

He lowered his gaze to the soil beneath his feet.

Four thousand seven hundred seeds.

"Kushina."

"Yeah!"

"Mikoto."

"Here."

Nawaki slowly brought his hands together in a seal. The instant his palms touched, the ground throughout the entire Senju Clan Compound began to glow.