The cup clicked against the wooden table. The room was mostly quiet, except for the low whispers of the people in the shop.
Hikaru did not care about the gossip at all. He just stared at his warm tea, his dark eyes looking completely crazy and wild.
He began to talk out loud to himself. At first, it was just a low mumble, but then his voice became clear. He wasn't even trying to hide it.
He was having too much fun planning his next move.
"So many fun choices..." Hikaru whispered, letting out a creepy laugh. "Which plan will be the most exciting when this whole village burns down? What should I do next?"
A few tables away, an old man stopped eating. His chopsticks froze in the air as he heard those terrifying words.
"Choice number one..." Hikaru said, tapping his finger on the table. "I can walk right into the HOKAGE COUNCIL OFFICE building. I will break the necks of all those old ministers and elders. Then, I will leave clues to blame those fools who followed me from the border. Yes... let them take the blame."
The old man's face turned totally white. He looked at the shopkeeper in pure horror. The shopkeeper froze too, holding a towel in his shaking hand. They were both too scared to move.
"Or maybe... the little scarecrow—" Hikaru muttered with a giant, crazy smile.
"Maybe I should follow Kakashi. Give him a good death to thank him for helping me get into the village so easily. And the blame? I can easily blame Orochimaru from my own timeline making a mess... it fits perfectly."
A young woman sitting nearby suddenly stood up. She quickly grabbed her child's hand, her chest heaving with fear.
She backed away toward the door, terrified of this strange man who was casually talking about murder.
Hikaru did not even look at her. He just stared at the steam rising from his cup, his thoughts getting darker and meaner.
"No... the best part will happen inside the Uchiha compound—" he said, his voice turning fake-sweet and soft.
"I could slip inside tonight. Find my dear Mikoto... and destroy the baby growing inside her. The little baby Sasuke of this era. I will give Mikoto a lovely, gentle death. After all... she was my very first love."
Across the room, inside the dark window booth, the second raven-haired man did not move a muscle. But underneath his heavy black cloak, his single visible eye narrowed with absolute, killer rage.
The air around his table grew incredibly heavy. The wooden table began to crack quietly under his hidden hand because he was forcing down so much anger.
Hikaru had no idea a predator was watching him. He tilted his head, thinking of another evil plan with an excited grin.
"Or wait... a better trick," Hikaru laughed quietly to himself. The sound made the remaining customers run for the exit in fear.
"What if I bring the Mikoto from my own world here? I can force her to kill the baby inside the version of herself from this timeline! Two versions of the same woman destroying each other... beautiful."
The shopkeeper was shaking so hard he dropped his cloth. He backed up slowly into the kitchen, his eyes wide with terror. He realized a literal monster was sitting in his shop.
"But then there is that brat of Sakura—" Hikaru grumbled, his voice turning angry and sharp.
"If I put the boy under my genjutsu, I can force him to march right into the house and kill Sasuke's wife who is also not born yet but is in the womb. Security is tight, yes, but who suspects a random child walking in? People barely notice a kid until it is too late."
He paused and took a slow sip of his tea. His eyes flashed with a scary, dangerous look.
"But why choose just one?" Hikaru whispered into the now empty shop.
"A giant fox monster rampage will destroy everything nicely. I will just control the Kyubi with my powerful eyes. Let it tear the village to pieces. And while everyone is panicking... I will walk right into the Uchiha compound and finish the job."
By the window, the dark figure of the second raven-haired man stayed completely still. But the invisible anger around him had reached a boiling point. The stranger sat in the shadows, listening to every single crazy word, silently preparing for the absolute bloodbath that was about to start.
The tea in the ceramic cup had gone completely cold. Inside the dango shop, the air felt thick, heavy, and suffocating.
The stranger sat perfectly still in the shadowed window booth, his head tilted down so his long, raven-black hair covered his face.
His knuckles were white. Underneath the table, his hidden hand was gripping his robes so tightly the fabric was on the verge of tearing.
Every single word spilling from the far end of the counter was like a drop of poison in his ears.
'He wants to kill the elders...' the stranger's mind raced, a cold, familiar anger burning deep inside his chest.
'He wants to target the compound. He wants to touch my mother... destroy everything before it even begins. I can't let him leave this room alive.'
But the stranger forced his body to stay
seated on the seat. He knew the monster he was dealing with. He needed to wait for the absolute perfect time to strike.
"A plate of Dango, please—" Hikaru's voice rang out again from the counter, sounding completely cheerful, as if he hadn't just casually plotted a village-wide massacre.
The shopkeeper's hands shook so violently he dropped his washcloth right into a puddle of spilled water. He didn't even bother to pick it up.
His eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated terror. He took a slow, trembling step backward, his boots clicking softly against the floorboards as he tried to slide toward the kitchen door.
He wasn't the only one.
At the tables near the center, a group of local Konoha village ninjas exchange sharp, panicked glances. They didn't know who Hikaru was, but they knew a threat when they heard one.
Their hands slowly dropped beneath the wood, fingers wrapping around the cold steel grips of their kunai.
'Fools!' the stranger thought, his eye narrowing as he watched the ninjas losing it. 'They think they can handle him. They don't understand what he is.'
Around the rest of the room, the civilian customers couldn't take the pressure anymore. A woman gasped, knocking her chair over as she grabbed her child's arm.
That single sound broke the silence. Everyone stood up at once, a chaotic scramble of bodies rushing toward the front exit, desperate to escape the madness radiating from the table.
Hikaru didn't even turn his head to look at the fleeing crowd. He just stared enthusiastically at the fresh plate of dango the shopkeeper had placed in front of him.
"Ah, magnificent—!" Hikaru whispered to himself.
To the stranger watching from the window booth, everything looked completely normal. Hikaru casually reached out his hand, picked up a sweet dango stick, and brought it to his lips to take a calm, slow bite.
Seeing the man's attention completely occupied by his food, the ninjas seized the moment. They kicked their chairs back, drawing their sharp blades with a loud, metallic ring that echoed off the walls.
They leaped forward, their faces filled with absolute confidence. They truly believed they had caught him completely off guard from behind.
In the window booth, the stranger's heart stopped. His eyes widened in sudden, violent panic.
"Shit!" the stranger hissed under his breath.
He slammed his foot flat onto the floor, his body instinctively rising halfway out of the booth.
He knew what was coming. He knew the ninjas were walking straight into certain death, and he needed to move—
But before his muscles could even fully extend, a horrific shock struck his senses.
It was a single, brief second. A simple fragment of time.
To his eyes, Hikaru was still sitting on that stool, chewing his food. The ninjas were still mid-air, swords raised. The civilians were still crowded at the doorway, their hands literally pressing against the wooden frames to push their way out into the street.
And then, in the literal next frame of his consciousness, reality shattered.
There was no sound of a struggle. There was no flash of steel. There was no movement at all.
But suddenly, the entire room erupted into a synchronized, violent spray of red.
'What... what just happened?!' the stranger's mind screamed, his brain completely short-circuiting as his vision tried to process the horror. 'He didn't move. He was right there! How did—'
Before the thought could even finish, the physical damage caught up to the crowd. The deep, invisible slices across their throats burst open all at once.
Blood didn't just drip; it sprayed like a fountain from the neck of every single ninja mid-leap. It sprayed from the throats of the shopkeeper, the women, the children, and the men who were just a millimeter away from stepping out of the shop.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A sickening, heavy chorus of collapsing bodies echoed through the room. The entire crowd fell to the floor at the exact same moment, landing in a tangled, lifeless heap.
The bustling dango shop was silenced in a flash. Not a single person had managed to escape past the threshold.
The heavy mist of red blood hung in the air, drifting across the room. It splattered violently against the stranger's dark traveling cloak, the warm, wet blood soaking deep into the fabric.
The front of Hikaru's cloak was completely painted in the same horrific red.
The stranger stood frozen in his booth, his lifted foot trembling slightly as he stared at the view.
His teeth ground together so hard his jaw ached. The sheer speed—the sheer impossibility of what had just occurred—sent a wave of furious, helpless rage crashing through his soul.
He hadn't seen the weapon. He hadn't felt the chakra shift. It was as if death had simply chosen everyone in the room by default.
Hikaru stood calmly by the exit, looking down at his own stained sleeves. He let out a soft, thoroughly annoyed sigh, completely unbothered by the sea of bodies at his feet.
"Oh, good god—" Hikaru mumbled, shaking his head with a careless shrug. "Look at this mess. I really need to get a change of clothes now."
Hearing that casual, mocking voice over the fresh corpses of Konoha citizens, the stranger's remaining sanity snapped.
The rage exploded from the depths of his chest, completely erasing his caution. His hand gripped the edge of the wooden table so fiercely the thick wood groaned, split, and shattered into splinters under his bare fingers.
He fiercely turned his body around, his face twisting into pure, uncontrollable fury as he bared his teeth and screamed at the top of his lungs:
"HIKARUUUUU, YOU BASTARD—!!!"
"DON'T YOU DARE SCREAM AT ME, SASUKEKEEEE!!!!!"
Hikaru's voice didn't just interrupt him—it violently slammed into the room, matching Sasuke's volume with an unhinged, mocking intensity that completely stole the air out of the shop.
Hikaru threw his head back, his face twisting into pure evil, wide-eyed grin that looked completely insane.
He pointed a blood-stained finger directly at the window booth, his eyes wide and unblinking as he laughed right in Sasuke's face, treating the Black Devil's legendary wrath like a hilarious joke.
"Look at you! Look at your face!" Hikaru taunted, his voice dripping with an evil, playful delight as he took a mocking step forward over the corpses.
"You sit in the dark, playing the quiet protector, and the moment things don't go your way, you bark like a dog? Don't ruin my good mood with your crying!"
The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating. The name Sasuke hung in the air, dripping with a historical weight that made the fresh blood pooling on the floor feel completely ice-cold.
Hikaru threw his head back and let out a sharp, evil laugh. It was a cold, mocking sound that echoed off the blood-stained walls of the shop.
"Ahahaha! Look at you, Sasuke—" Hikaru sneered, his eyes spinning with a wild, dangerous light.
"The terrifying Black Devil, reduced to screaming in an empty tea shop. You should actually be thanking me. I am going to kill you personally, right here in the shadows, where no one can watch you fail. It is the only way to keep the grand honor of the 'Black Devil' alive. Consider it a mercy."
Sasuke didn't waste another breath on words. The psychological taunts faded into absolute, white-hot focus.
The silence inside the small tea shop became so heavy it felt like it could crush the wooden floorboards. Outside, a soft wind began to blow through the empty streets of the village, but inside, the air was completely frozen.
The two men stood at opposite ends of the room, separated by a sea of fallen bodies and pooling crimson. Neither of them moved a single muscle.
They just stared directly into each other's faces, letting their hatred fill the space between them.
Sasuke's long hair drifted slightly as he tilted his chin up, revealing his true face to the light. His eyes looking back at Hikaru was a masterpiece of cold, sharp precision.
It was Sasuke's Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, a striking, vivid red six-pointed star overlapping a black, pinwheel-like center with three distinct tomoe symbols tightly circling the pupil. It was the eye of an absolute predator, burning with a quiet, murderous focus.
At the other side of the room, by the exit, Hikaru stared back with a terrifying, divine madness in his gaze. His own eye was completely different but equally horrific.
Hikaru's eyes was a massive, overlapping crimson design shaped like a multi-layered star, with multiple black tomoe symbols curved deeply into the center around a pitch-black pupil.
Two legendary pairs of eyes, each capable of breaking the world, were locked onto one another.
Sasuke's chest heaved with a slow, controlled breath. He didn't let the rage completely take over his senses. Instead, his lips parted slightly, and he whispered in a low, chilling tone that barely carried across the room.
"Let's see how you attack first... Would it be with Takemikazuchi ? Yup... that's gotta be it."
Hearing the whisper, Hikaru didn't pull a weapon or take a defensive stance. He just kept that manic, wide-eyed grin fixed on his face, his star-shaped eye spinning slowly.
'Perfect...' Hikaru thought to himself, a wave of dark satisfaction washing over his mind.
'I have annoyed him enough by killing those strangers right in front of his face. His anger is boiling over now. He's emotional. He's furious. And the moment his anger takes over, his legendary tactical intelligence will completely disappear. He will make a mistake, and I will catch him.'
But Hikaru was wrong. Sasuke was not a normal ninja. Even in his deepest rage, his brain was already calculating the distance, the wind, and the exact angles of the room.
The tension stretched so tight it felt like a thin wire about to snap. Seconds felt like agonizing hours. Both men stood perfectly still, waiting.
Neither of them wanted to make the first move.
They were waiting for each other to blink, waiting for a single microsecond of weakness to launch a fatal strike.
Then, a sudden, sharp gust of wind blew open the front door of the shop, rattling the wooden frame and sending a chill through the air.
CRASH!
At the exact same millisecond the wind hit the room, reality blurred.
There was no sound of a hand reaching for their weapons. There was no visible movement of an arm swinging through the air. Neither man even realized when the other had drawn their weapon. It happened at a speed that crossed beyond human sight.
In a fraction of a blink, both men vanished from their spots and reappeared right in the absolute center of the shop.
CLANG!!!!!
A deafening, metallic shriek exploded through the room as their two steel katanas smashed together with brutal force.
The impact of the clash sent a violent shockwave through the air, blowing the blood on the floor outward in a perfect circle and cracking the wooden walls around them.
The steel groaned under the pressure, sparks flying off the sharp edges, lighting up the darkness of their faces as they stared into each other's eyes from mere inches away.
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⚡ NEXT CHAPTER⚡
The battle inside the ruined dango shop has reached a point of no return.
After unraveling the secret behind Hikaru's mysterious eye technique, Sasuke finally launches a successful counterattack. But victory is still nowhere in sight.
The Black Devil and the Mad Prodigy stand amidst blood, dust, and shattered wood, each refusing to take a single step backward.
As the clash escalates, both warriors are forced to reveal more of the power hidden beneath their legends.
Who will break first? Who will make the fatal mistake?
And when two monsters refuse to fall...
What remains of the battlefield when the dust finally settles?
👉 Next Chapter: An Inverted Battle
NEXT CHAPTER💬
"The great, terrifying protector... scrambling around on the floor like a broken doll.... "
"....We need to watch from the shadows and see exactly how much Hikaru-kun has improved under pressure.... "
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—With love, one forehead poke away from collapse,
Sakura Shinomiya 💫
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