"Everyone fall back! Stay out of his landing zone!"
Sasuke's order had barely gone out when the Raikage's knife-hand strike was already above his head.
Held back by two Uchiha ninja, Fugaku still wrenched himself half a step free. "Sasuke, dodge!"
Kakashi's Lightning Blade crackled in his palm as though out of control. He stared at Sasuke's eyes, but Shikaku's shadow binding caught him mid-charge.
Shikaku's expression darkened. "He said not to go in."
"That's the Raikage's killing move!"
"This is exactly the scene he wants."
Kakashi understood. Veins bulged on his forehead, but in the end, he stopped struggling.
Lightning bore down. The earth around Sasuke was blasted away first, and Wood Release vines burst from underground, winding layer upon layer around his arms, shoulders, and back, forcibly anchoring his body in place.
Seeing this, the Raikage's expression grew fiercer. "Pinning yourself down? You're asking to die!"
Sasuke did not raise his sword.
He merely looked up at the descending palm as pieces of sealed-away evidence flashed through his mind.
Danzo's secret letters, the Advisory Council's ledgers, the Hokage Building's old seals, Orochimaru's experimental records, Kumogakure's secret accounts of hiring killers to steal eyes, and Itachi's perpetually self-righteous face.
None of that malice was merely talk.
He had torn it out page by page and laid it in the sunlight.
Now, the Raikage would become another of those pages.
The trails of blood at the corners of Sasuke's eyes ran down his cheeks. The three tomoe spun to their limit, their tails connecting as a six-pointed, pinwheel-shaped pattern formed in his eyes.
Watching the close-up in the water mirror, Yamada Naoto choked up, his hands nearly slipping from the Array Disc.
"M-Mangekyo..."
Fugaku froze in place, his hand still resting on his sword hilt without drawing it.
Hiashi activated