"Shing-"
The blade tore through the curtain of rain. There was no wasted movement.
One moment the blade was still in its sheath; the next, the cold metal was pressed firmly against Hiruzen Sarutobi's neck.
The rest of Hiruzen's roar caught in his throat.
Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, every muscle in his body went rigid.
A cold wind swept past, carrying rain with it.
Hiruzen felt the hairs on his neck stand on end.
The blade was only half an inch from his carotid artery.
He could even smell the pungent stench of Kinkaku and Ginkaku on the blade.
Hiruzen swallowed hard.
His Adam's apple bobbed, accidentally brushing the curled edge of the blade.
A sharp sting followed. His skin had broken.
A warm bead of blood seeped out and rolled down the cold blade.
Hiruzen didn't dare move. He even kept his breathing as shallow as possible.
Beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead, quickly mingling with the rain and running into his eyes.
They stung. But he didn't even dare blink.
"The Will of Fire?"
Shu Shiraishi's voice struck through the curtain of rain, cold and hard as rusted iron.
He pressed forward half a step, his boot sinking into the mud.
The blade pushed forward a fraction with him.
Hiruzen was forced to crane his neck back. He stumbled and nearly landed on his backside in the mud.
"Y-you... what are you trying to do...?" Hiruzen's voice trembled like an autumn leaf. "Drawing your blade on a comrade is an act of rebellion..."
"Comrade?"
Shu cut him off.
He flipped his wrist, turning the blade so its blunt back faced Hiruzen.
"Smack!"
The back of the blade, still crusted with blood, struck Hiruzen hard across the left cheek.
The crisp sound was especially grating in the deathly silent ranks.
Hiruzen's head snapped to the side. A purplish-red welt rose on his left cheek at once.
His head rang.
He was the future head of the Sarutobi Clan! A genius who had been cherished since childhood!
Now, in front of hundreds of Konoha's elite, he had been slapped like a dog being trained!
Hiruzen jerked his head back around, his eyes so red they looked ready to bleed.
He clenched both hands into fists, the veins on his arms writhing like worms.
"How dare you..." Hiruzen's teeth ground together. He bit through his lower lip, filling his mouth with a metallic, salty taste.
"I hit you. What are you going to do about it?"
Shu looked at him without a flicker of emotion in his eyes.
"Draw a Kunai. Make some Hand Seals. Where's your Chakra?"
Shu patted Hiruzen's cheek with the back of the blade, making a soft "tap, tap."
"You don't even have the guts to swing a blade at me, yet you're standing here talking to me about the Will of Fire?"
Hiruzen's chest heaved.
He wanted to fight back. He truly wanted to make Hand Seals and burn the bastard in front of him to death with Fire Style.
But when his gaze met Shu's eyes, it was as though a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head.
There was no anger in them, no killing intent, only the indifference of someone looking at a dead man.
Hiruzen's fingers twitched twice, but in the end, he did not raise them.
"This so-called Will of Fire is just a fig leaf for you great clans as you carve up the village's spoils."
Shu withdrew his blade and flicked it casually through the air twice, shaking off the droplets.
"The First Hokage captured the Tailed Beasts, but instead of sweeping through the Shinobi World, he handed them out to the other ninja villages like a fool."
"And what did that get us?"
Shu pointed at the stretcher behind him.
"The First Shinobi World War. The Second Hokage gravely wounded and on the brink of death."
All the Anbu Ninja around them held their breath.
No one dared respond. It was the most direct insult to the First Hokage.
But Kagami Uchiha and Torifu Akimichi lowered their heads slightly, a flicker of agreement passing through their eyes.
"Garbage like compromise can't buy a single day of peace."
Shu reached back and slid his Ninja Blade into its sheath.
It locked into place with a click.
He walked up to Hiruzen. Less than a foot separated them.
Shu stood half a head taller than Hiruzen. The broad Hokage hat blocked most of the light.
Hiruzen was completely enveloped in shadow.
"Truth lies only within reach of my blade."
Shu spoke each word distinctly, his voice striking Hiruzen's chest like a heavy hammer.
"Hiruzen, put away that weak act of yours."
"From now on, what I say goes in Konoha."
Overwhelming martial pressure accompanied the icy declaration.
Hiruzen's legs went weak. He wanted to argue, but his throat felt as though it had been sealed shut with cement.
All he could do was keep his head down, staring at his own bedraggled reflection in the muddy water.
Utterly defeated.
"Move."
Without another glance at him, Shu turned and strode forward.
The column began moving again.
Aside from the rain and footsteps, not a single cough came from the hundreds of people in the column.
Everyone moved aside on their own, clearing a wide path for Shu.
Konoha's towering main gate appeared through the curtain of rain.
The two heavy, iron-bound wooden doors were shut tight.
"Open the gate!"
At the front of the column, Kagami drew a breath and shouted.
A night watch ninja leaned out from the gatehouse.
He saw the dense crowd below, and Tobirama Senju lying bloodless on the stretcher.
"Lord Second!"
The guard scrambled down in fright and fumbled to remove the massive gate bar.
"Creeeak-"
With a grating scrape, the two ten-meter-high wooden doors slowly opened inward.
The village's dim yellow streetlights shone out.
Their light fell across the flagstone street, glinting on its wet surface.
Shu stopped at the threshold.
He raised a hand and straightened the Hokage hat on his head.
Then he took a steady step forward, his military boot landing on Konoha's flagstones.
It was the first footprint of a new era.
Behind him, the Anbu and the medical squad filed in.
Hiruzen followed at the very rear. Like a walking corpse, he kept his head bowed, his left cheek swollen high.
The gate guards he passed looked at him with suspicion and uncertainty, then at the unfamiliar figure in the hat at the very front.
No one dared ask.
The column soon crossed the main street, hurrying toward Konoha Hospital.
The shops lining the street were all closed. Now and then, a window opened a crack, revealing a pair of terrified eyes.
At the edge of the village.
In the shadows beneath an abandoned watchtower.
Rainwater trickled down the moss at the corner of the wall.
A figure in a soaked kimono hunched in the darkness.
Half his body was submerged in murky standing water.
It was Shimura Danzō.
He had not entered the village with the main force. He had taken shortcuts all the way, keeping his eyes fixed on the column from the darkness.
To be precise, he was watching the white hat at the very front.
Danzo stuffed his left thumb into his mouth.
His teeth gnawed frantically at the nail.
Crunch, crunch.
The nail had long since been chewed down to nothing. The mangled flesh had turned white in the rainwater, with thin streaks of blood seeping out.
He tasted no pain, only the taste of iron filling his mouth.
He raised his head.
His gaze passed over the layers of rooftops to Hokage Rock at the far rear of the village.
The faces of the First and Second were carved into it.
Soon, there would be a third.
Why him?
Danzo's chest heaved like a bellows.
A civilian without even a clan. A beast who knew nothing but killing.
Just because he was lucky enough to kill Kinkaku and Ginkaku when they were at the end of their strength?
The great clans were Konoha's foundation! How much blood had his Shimura Clan shed for the village?!
That hat, that power.
It should have been Hiruzen's. Even if Hiruzen didn't want it, it should have been his, Danzo's!
Now, it was all ruined.
Danzo's breathing grew heavier.
His eyes were shot through with scarlet veins. Jealousy ate away at his reason like poison.
He couldn't stand the way Shu looked down on him.
That gaze treated him like a rat in the sewers.
A gust of cold wind blew past.
The leaves on the great tree beside Danzo shook violently.
A drop of water struck a puddle.
A figure wearing a blank mask and a black bodysuit landed silently behind Danzo.
This was a deathsworn raised by the Shimura Clan, who answered only to the clan head.
"Lord Danzo." The deathsworn knelt on one knee in the muddy water, his voice hoarse.
Danzo took his bleeding thumb out of his mouth.
He wiped it carelessly on his soaked clothes.
His eyes fixed on the Hokage building like a venomous snake's. The lights there had just come on.
"Go notify Team A in the clan."
Danzo kept his voice extremely low, a note of madness in its rasp.
"Bring the strongest poison."
The deathsworn kept his head lowered. "The target?"
Danzo crushed a bit of tartar between his teeth and spat bloody saliva onto the ground.
"Tonight, I want him dead in the Hokage's office."