Izanagi? Did I give you permission to come back to life?

The black markings on Danzo's chest had barely begun to spread when the entire corridor seemed to be soaked in ink.

Reverse Four Symbols Seal.

This was Danzo's last means of survival, and his most ruthless way of destroying all evidence.

Once activated, it would draw everyone nearby into the seal, taking bodies, evidence, and enemies with it.

The Third Hokage knew this jutsu.

So when he shouted for everyone to get back, his voice lost control for the first time.

But Naruto's hand was already pressed against Danzo's chest.

Golden sealing formulas burrowed from his palm into the black markings, slicing straight through the seal's not-yet-complete circuit like a red-hot blade.

Danzo's lone eye widened.

He tried to force a detonation with his remaining chakra.

It was useless.

The formula was locked back inside his body.

The black markings stopped at his shoulders, then rolled back toward his chest inch by inch.

It didn't feel like a failed jutsu.

It felt more like someone had sewn a poison capsule back into his throat just as he was about to bite through it.

Naruto withdrew his hand.

Danzo swayed and dropped to one knee.

He had lost his right arm, the seal in his chest had been locked down, and his remaining Root forces had been scattered, yet there was still no plea for mercy in his lone eye.

"Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, do you think crippling me will make Konoha any better?"

Naruto kicked him in the face.

Danzo slammed into the wall and lost two teeth.

"Did I ask you?"

No one in the corridor spoke.

The kick had been brutally decisive.

There was no declaration, no debate, and no chance for Danzo to keep preaching about the supposed necessity of darkness.

Naruto walked over, grabbed Danzo by the collar, and hauled him off the floor.

Blood trickled from the corner of Danzo's mouth, but he still tried to sneer.

"Without Root, the other ninja villages would have torn Konoha apart long ago. Hiruzen is weak, the Uchiha are dangerous, and the Nine-Tails is uncontrollable. Someone has to do all the dirty work."

Naruto raised his hand and slapped him.

Danzo's head snapped to the side, and half his face rapidly swelled.

"By dirty work, do you mean gouging out the Uchiha's eyes?"

A second slap.

"Abducting orphans and brainwashing them?"

A third slap.

"Skimming my living allowance, then sending people to watch me?"

The fourth slap splattered blood from Danzo's mouth onto the wall.

Still holding him, Naruto turned to face the Third Hokage.

"Did you hear that?"

The Third Hokage stood midway down the corridor, his face the color of burned ash.

He had heard.

Everyone had heard.

Danzo hadn't merely lost control for a moment, nor had a few subordinates overstepped their bounds.

He had said, "Someone has to do it."

That meant he saw everything Root had done over the years as darkness Konoha needed.

The question was, had the Hokage known?

Uchiha Tekka bent down and picked up the Sharingan-covered arm, his fingers trembling.

It wasn't as though he had never seen a corpse.

But seeing his clansmen's eyes embedded in an arm belonging to the Hokage Advisor was harder to bear than any corpse.

"Where did these eyes come from?"

Tekka's voice sounded as though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper.

Danzo looked up at him, contempt in his eye.

"The Uchiha Clan possesses power, yet knows nothing of sacrificing for the village. Those eyes only breed arrogance in your hands."

A vein throbbed at Tekka's temple.

Several Uchiha behind him could no longer hold back and surged forward.

Naruto raised a hand to stop them.

"Not yet."

He threw Danzo beside a metal chair.

It was a chair Root used for interrogations. Blood stained its armrests, and restraint rings marked with cursed seals lay beside it.

Naruto forced Danzo into the chair.

Chakra arms clamped down on his shoulders, wrist, and knees.

"You people in Root love interrogations."

"Today, it's your turn in the chair."

Danzo's gaze turned cold and sinister.

"You dare torture the Hokage Advisor?"

Naruto didn't answer.

He picked up a steel needle engraved with a cursed seal from the nearby table.

Dried blood still clung to its tip.

Naruto glanced at the label on the filing cabinet beside him.

"Group B experimental records. Ages seven to ten."

He set the needle against the flesh beside the wound where Danzo's arm had been severed.

"Did those children sit in this chair?"

Danzo kept his mouth shut.

Naruto pressed down with his fingers.

The steel needle pierced flesh.

Sweat beaded on Danzo's forehead, and he clenched his teeth.

The Nine-Tails sneered inside Naruto. "This old bastard can take it."

Naruto pulled out the needle and looked at the surviving Root ninja.

"Talk, and I'll let you live."

No one moved.

Root's training had certainly worked.

They were afraid, yet they could still keep their mouths shut.

Naruto was in no hurry either.

He walked to the filing cabinet, tore off the chain, and took out the topmost scroll.

"A-San. Orphan. Seven years old. Failed to adapt to the cursed seal. Disposed of."

He took out a second scroll.

"B-Nine. Orphan from a branch family of the Uchiha Clan. Eye transplant failed. Disposed of."

Uchiha Tekka's head snapped up.

An orphan from a branch family?

The Uchiha Clan kept a record of every missing child. But some orphans from the war years had indeed vanished after the village took them away under the pretext of resettling them.

Naruto tossed him the scroll.

"Identify them."

Tekka caught it and turned two pages. The Sharingan in his eyes immediately shifted to three tomoe.

"Uchiha Maki."

His voice trembled.

"He didn't die in the aftermath of a mission. He was only eight that year."

Danzo finally spoke.

"Experiments always have failures."

Killing intent erupted through the corridor.

This time, it wasn't just the Uchiha.

The expressions of several Konoha jonin changed as well.

They could accept sacrifices in war and deaths on missions, but it was much harder to accept the village sending children underground for experiments, then recording the failures as casually as throwing away a tool.

The Third Hokage swayed.

"Danzo, just how much have you done behind my back?"

Danzo lifted his eye to him.

"Behind your back?"

He coughed up a mouthful of blood, his lips twisting in mockery.

"Hiruzen, you say that every time you don't want to know."

Those words cut like a knife.

The Third Hokage's face instantly turned deathly pale.

Naruto watched it all.

He didn't need to condemn the Third Hokage himself. Danzo would tear away that veil of respectability for him.

Just then, one of the eyes on the Sharingan-covered arm Naruto had sealed suddenly began to ooze black blood.

A system notification sounded.

[Residual Izanagi detected. Not fully deactivated.]

[Target attempting to transfer consciousness through a remote backup formula.]

The golden light in Naruto's eyes turned cold.

He looked at Danzo.

A faint trace of triumph flashed through Danzo's lone eye.

An instant later, Naruto reached out and seized the severed arm. Golden sealing formulas pierced every Sharingan.

"Izanagi?"

He stepped up to Danzo and pressed his hand against his forehead.

"Did I give you permission to come back to life?"

The triumph in Danzo's eye froze.

Deeper inside the underground base, in a secret chamber, a backup cultivation tank that had just lit up suddenly burst apart.

The open, solitary eye of the body prepared to receive his consciousness went dark in an instant.

Naruto turned toward the end of the passage.

"There's another secret chamber."

"Tekka, take some people and open it."

Behind that chamber's door lay not only corpses, but also the Konoha High Command's original decisions concerning the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.