I broke yet another neck of a shinobi ensnared by Akahebi's genjutsu, swiftly working my way through the forces that would make a nuisance of themselves once the actual fight started.
I have come a long way since my first murder in a tent. I mockingly praised myself as I tapped the base of a man' spine with a chakra scalpel swiftly forming in my hand.
I had never been more aware of the difference between S-rank and normal shinobi. Pushing aside my considerations about what brought some shinobi to the top of the food chain, which included but were not limited to sheer creativity and drive usually born from a trauma of some kind, I was struck by the memory of a D-rank that had required my team to rip the weeds from a garden.
The difficulty, then and now, was mostly the same. Itachi should already be fighting with Jiraya. I considered distractedly as I kept moving.
With Akahebi enforcing the illusion upon any that could hear the rattle of its tail mixed with the sound of shifting sands, added to the control and techniques I had learned while facing Tobirama Senju, it was a matter of time before I managed to destroy the forces guarding Danzo Shimura.
Of all the people that I knew from my metaknowledge, it was easy to say that I'd kill him with no remorse whatsoever. I had come a long way since my first assassinations. A long way since I had looked for solutions that didn't include murder. Whatever guilt I used to feel for erasing those that had been raised as killers was... muted.
I couldn't fault the shinobi for being what they had been raised as. I couldn't even fault Danzo for his Machiavellan attitude and casual disregard for human decency. But most importantly, I couldn't fault myself for the quiet satisfaction that came from the application of my hard won skills.
So, when my Kage Bunshin died after Danzo's abuse of the Uchiha Bloodline in order to preserve his head on his shoulders, I smiled at the memories, and I kept cutting through his forces, leaving my remaining clone to buy time and study my opponent, obtaining information that he would rely to me once he dispelled.
I had taken down another two shinobi when the tent I was crouching behind got torn asunder by an invisible blade of wind that forced me to summersault backwards, the memories of my clone reaching me just as I found my feet again.
A kunai appeared in my hand as I deflected two incoming shuriken, only to jump parallel to the third when I heard the telltale whistling of Air Natured Chakra surrounding it.
There weren't words exchanged, no taunts, no platitudes.
Chakra was moulded and shaped in a split second while my free hand reached for the ground: so the follow up hail of projectiles encountered only a two teet thick wall of compacted dirt, reinforced with chakra that granted it the strenght of concrete.
In the time I needed to move from behind the wall, leaving two tsuchi bunshin behind to act as a decoy, I felt the tug on my chakra that signified the dispelling of Akahebi, and then the tags tied to his last distance assault exploded with outrageous force, my clone broke under the pressure and the sharpnel, maintaining its form for a split second while I blitzed the one-eyed shinobi.
In the echo of the explosion, without missing a beat, his eye-endowed arm snapped up, a tanto in hand, and he swung, ready to accept a puncturing wound to the heart if that meant that he could remove my head.
His blow landed while mine was deflected with the ease of the truly experienced, so that instead of a killing blow, I only opened a shallow gnash on the right side of his torso.
When his blade reached half-way trough my neck, the second tsuchi bunshin I had created unraveled while I exploded from the ground, a hand closing on the left ankle of my opponent while I pulled.
Danzo reacted, wind chakra covering a kunai that was flung straight at my head, which was deflected with a similar application of Futon channeled through my free hand.
Still with his ankle held in my hand, I moved, my body completely leaving the ground, my head impacting the chin of the elder with strenght enough to break his jaw, and in the split second that followed, I let go of his ankle, my left forearm turning in a counterclockwise motion to keep his eye-endowed arm from me while my right hand crumpled my opponent's trachea with a wet, cracking sound.
The body of Shimura Danzo fell to the ground in relative quiet, the exchange had lasted barely half a minute, and in that moment, I resumed my blitz through his forces, which were only now returning to their senses.
I eliminated two shinobi bypassing their defences before I was forced to abruptly change direction, twin shuriken coated in air natured chakra tearing through the man that I was about to kill, a man that tried to stab me with a standard tanto even as he died.
Root. I identified him while the remainin forces of the one-eyed Elder rearranged themselves in a loose circle around me, some faces openly displaying outrage and rage at seeing me tearing through their forces.
A few meters behind a couple of stone-faced ninja, my main target was looking at me, Hashirama's arm in full view of the ANBU and regular forces that he still had under his command.
"You are not surprised." Danzo's voice cut the white noise of the desert, his lone, dark eye staring at me with no hint of what he was actually thinking.
For the first time since I had started the conflict, I felt a sile pull at my lips while I broke through the Genjutsu that one of the soldiers around me tried to put me through: "Your control isn't good enough to put me under, honey."
The blonde kunoichi in question almost bristled at my carefree comment, but she was too well trained to let me menipulate her.
"I am surprised why nobody here is wondering how you have Hashirama's face on your shoulder and an eye collection in your arm." I returned my attention to Danzo, who was... buying time?
I slammed my foot in the ground, chakra breaking through the clone that had just attempted to assault me while we were at this particular standstill, and my eyes briefly landed on the responsible shinobi.
And it was then that I realized it.
Fear.
They were scared of me.
There were 9 ninja from Tokubetsu Jonin, to full Jonin surrounding me, a few that had made their careers in ANBU, I could tell from how controlled their chakra was, and other 6 shinobi that were clearly Root. Their presence felt as hollow as Danzo's conditioning had made them.
But while it made sense for the to casually poke at me through meaningless genjutsu or easily dispatched clones, hoping to either force me to reveal a weakness or overextend, it didn't make sense for Danzo to make this encounter last longer than it should. I was young, I was experienced, and while his Hashirama-infused arm granted him strenght, I was both faster and stronger, to not mention my taijutsu, which had been lethal since my chunin exams.
"We all make sacrifices for Konoha." the dry voice of the Elder spoke again, his lone eye never leaving my form.
Danzo knew, as the shinobi surrounding me suspected, that he was the only one with a chance in hell to strike a lethal blow. Given my proficiency as a healer, it meant that their main target was the top of my spine or my head. I'll have to use their fear against them, won't I? After all, I never let go of an advantage.
I opened my hands while I took a step forward, and I spotted how the normal shinobi surrounding me shifted their holds on their weapons, their chakra almost flaring in alarm: "The weak who court death, often find it."
Then, with a familiar rush of chakra, the memories of a clone slipped into my mind.
...
Invisible to the senses of any shinobi or kunichi, I stood perfectly still in a circular room I had shaped deep into the ground with Doton manipulation. While my life signs were halted, and I accomplished the paradox necessary to store Natural Chakra into my coils, I perceived the world with a clarity that none but a Sage could conceive.
In the distance, I felt the original-self fighitng with the gaggle of weaklings that surrounded the twisted existence of Danzo Shimura. The steely presence of Itachi tried to cut through the blazing chakra of Jiraya, who had not hesitated in summoning two Toads to help Naruto, who clearly hadn't had the time necessary to mature meaningfully in order to keep up with a clash among S-rank.
Much closer, a familiar existence was being pursued by a kage bunshin of Itachi, who leveraged Karin's sensing ability in order to push her where was needed.
The fight between Itachi and Jiraya had started a full ten minutes before Daiki's clash with Danzo's forces, time enough for the true blooded Uzumaki to be pushed to her destination.
I lacked the instinct-driven synaesthesia that allowed Karin to read personalities withing the chakra flow of those she sensed, but the toxic bloodlust that tinged the chakra of a Biju stood out in the otherwise dim perception I had of the desert.
My attention returned to Danzo briefly, who flickered in and out of existence a couple of times, only for the light representing his twisted existence to split while the Original-me... stalled?
Karin narrowly kept her advantage on Itachi's pursuit, fear and the tiredness from days in the desert after escaping her captors blinding her to the fact that if the Kinslayer wished to blitz her, he could at any time.
When her reserves started to lag behind her necessities, she inevitably slowed down, her movements more sluggish as she tumbled down a dune, only for her to sudden change direction, turning west as if she had spotted salvation.
And given what I knew, she did.
I lacked the Uzumaki's egendary sensing to feel what she was going through, but I could imagine her thoughts as her hands uncovered the large summoning scroll from the sands, the faint traces of chakra surrounding it enough to point it out to her senses.
In that moment the clone of Itachi flared its chakra, the flavour of his disinterested killing intent soaring through the air as if yelled.
Karin, aware of her position between a rock and a hard place, picked her poison, and vanished from my senses.
With that objective completed, I smiled, and dispelled myself.
...
The rush of memories and Narure chakra made me take an istinctive deep breath, thick, black bands blossoming over my face while my sclera and iris turned golden, my presence blossoming around me with the weight of the Elephants, and immediately I understood the seamless substitution that Danzo had performed.
"Picking up tricks from Orochimaru, are we?" I asked the elder, whose expression remained blank while his chakra abandoned the construct he had used to stall for time, letting it crumble into pieces on the ground.
My attention spread outwards as far as it could, but Danzo's presence vanished as surely as Orochimaru's had done during Shikamaru's chunin exams.
Then I felt it, in a single istant, echoing and mirroring my own chakra, a Sage taking the field of battle, toxic bloodlust skyrocketing, and Itachi's chakra turning colder, exploding outwards in a towering presence.
I didn't even feel it when I barrelled through the two shinobi in my way, their bones giving up in the same moment the Root members turned on their fellow countrymen, likely following the orders of keeping the modifications of Danzo a secret.
I dismissed the brief thought of dismantling Root, Itachi's safety had the priority, and the end result of the mission would allow me to be ready to rip apart Tobi when the time came.
...
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