Standing at the center of the village, now reduced to rubble, Oto Uchiha looked up at the demon fox, the Nine-Tails.
The Nine-Tails was an even larger monster than Orochimaru's summoning beasts. Before its towering, dozens-of-meters-tall frame, the entire shinobi village was little more than a spacious backyard.
At that moment, everyone capable of confronting the Nine-Tails was a jonin-level ninja, one of the village's elite.
Yet before the Nine-Tails, a creature comparable to a natural disaster, those elite jonin seemed utterly insignificant.
Neither the ninjutsu, genjutsu, nor taijutsu these jonin took such pride in could accomplish much.
For one thing, most ninjutsu were as harmless as fireworks against the Nine-Tails' enormous body, and no one was brave enough to charge in first and fight it hand to hand.
As for genjutsu, the Nine-Tails' eyes said it all: it was already under genjutsu's control.
Reluctant as they were to admit it, the village's strongest genjutsu practitioners belonged to the Uchiha Clan. They could not wrest away control.
It was precisely because of the Sharingan that the jonin turned their gazes toward the newly arrived female jonin.
Her three-tomoe eyes were impossible to ignore under these circumstances.
Sensing the distrust and suspicion in their gazes, Oto Uchiha stepped forward and identified herself. "I'm an ANBU serving directly under the Fourth Hokage. I've come to help stop the Nine-Tails' invasion."
"You're an Uchiha?" A portly old man approached and looked at Oto. "Where are the other Uchiha right now?"
Oto Uchiha did not answer, merely looking at the old man before her.
She recognized him. He was one of the Third's friends, Torifu Akimichi, the Akimichi clan head.
After a brief silence, Torifu Akimichi recognized that this was no time to lose his temper and asked quietly, "Since you have three tomoe,