My shout carried far through the night sky.
Beside me, Shikamaru, who had been pacing in panic, suddenly shuddered.
He stared at me as though he had seen a ghost, the corners of his eyes twitching.
"Sen, have you lost your mind? Provoking that guy in the middle of the night!"
I picked at my ear and pointed at the little black speck overhead.
"Hanging up there instead of sleeping. Real classy. Guess he fed his common decency to the dogs."
Deva Path Pain paused in midair, then slowly lowered his head.
His Rinnegan, ringed like the growth rings of a tree, fixed on me.
Even from that distance, I felt a bone-chilling cold.
"You're Sen Senju of the Senju Clan."
Pain's voice drifted down, hollow and buzzing, as though he were speaking from inside a well.
"You saved Jiraiya-sensei's life with that worthless card."
I stood on the stone head with both hands in my coat pockets.
"Yeah, that was me. What of it? Your black iron rods were shoddy. Couldn't take a little rough handling."
Deva Path Pain looked deathly pale in the moonlight, without a trace of living color.
"Mortals always waste their brief lives on futile struggles."
"God shall grant the world pain. You are merely the first step."
I spat in disgust and rolled my eyes.
"God this, god that. Aren't you embarrassed, wearing someone else's face?"
"Puppets without bodies of their own are the kind I hate most."
At those words, Deva Path Pain's gaze suddenly turned vicious.
The black rubble floating beside him crumbled into powder.
"So you do know something."
Pain's voice grew colder, as though edged with shards of ice.
I muttered to Shikamaru, "See? Hit a nerve, and now he's pissed."
Shikamaru wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, black