Torrential rain hammered down on the shattered bluestone slabs of Hokage Square, splashing up a pallid mist of rain.
Danzo's shrill wails had gradually weakened. Like a mangy dog with its spine torn out, he struggled to wriggle forward through mud and blood. His cloudy left eye remained fixed on the aged figure ahead, while his shriveled lips opened and closed continuously, releasing incoherent pleas for help.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stood in the rain, his graying hair whipped into disarray by the gale.
He looked at his old friend of decades, dragging a long trail of blood across the ground. He looked at that grotesque severed arm, now reduced to dead wood, once embedded with the eyes of Hidden Leaf comrades. His hands clenched tightly around the Adamantine Staff, trembling violently. The veins bulging across the backs of his hands seemed ready to burst through skin covered in age spots.
Rage, grief, fear, and a profound sense of helplessness at the inevitable collapse of everything churned wildly in his chest.
Senju Sosuke stood only a few steps away, dressed in white as pure as snow. The emerald Yang Release aura flowing over his body kept out every drop of rain and trace of filth. His dark green eyes held no respect for the Hokage—only the aloof indifference of someone looking down upon the dead.
"Hiruzen... save me..." Danzo's fingers dug desperately into a shattered stone slab. His nails had completely peeled away, leaving them bloody and raw.
Hiruzen Sarutobi drew a deep breath of cold air thick with the stench of blood, then slowly closed his eyes.
Countless images flashed through his mind. The First Hokage's original purpose in founding the village. Tobirama-sensei's dying charge. The youth he and Danzo had spent fighting side by side amid the flames of war.