Chapter 574: Settling Accounts
"What -- what is the meaning of this?!"
The panicked shout erupted from the center of the clearing out of nowhere. Shimura Danzo's one uncovered eye was stretched wide open.
One moment he had been deep inside ROOT's underground base -- inside that fortified, impenetrable facility -- and then a hand had come reaching out of a black crack in the air and hauled him out by the collar like a man lifting a chicken.
Naruto had chosen an open clearing for this. A black portal appeared soundlessly in front of him. He reached his hand into the tear in space, felt around briefly on the other side -- and pulled Shimura Danzo out of the depths of ROOT's base without encountering a single obstacle.
In the moment his feet left the ground, Danzo's mind was still scrambling to process what it could not process fast enough.
He wanted to struggle. To resist. But his body could not move a single finger.
Naruto tossed his catch aside carelessly. Danzo's body arced through the air, but decades of ninja conditioning had formed reflexes that operated without conscious thought. He adjusted his posture mid-flight and landed cleanly on his feet.
"Well, well. Danzo."
Adult Naruto's voice came from the other side of the clearing. "Didn't expect we'd end up meeting like this. I personally have no interest in seeing you, and you don't know who I am -- but the person who needs to find you isn't me."
That relaxed tone. That complete absence of any regard. Danzo's brow tightened slightly, then smoothed back into its habitual heaviness.
His shoulders drew in just a fraction. His breathing shallowed. He pressed down the internal panic and forced himself to think clearly. Analyze the situation.
That technique from just now -- was it a space-time jutsu? Danzo's mind was moving fast.
But there had been no hand seals, no marker, no precondition of any kind. The hand had simply come reaching through a black crack in space and seized him with perfect accuracy. He had never encountered a space-time technique that operated this way.
And that face. Was this the Nine-Tails? Danzo recognized it immediately. The adult's face was almost identical to the jinchuriki the village was holding -- close enough to have been made from the same mold.
But that was impossible. The jinchuriki's age didn't match. That one was still a child, still in his teens. This was a grown man who looked roughly nineteen -- standing there radiating a pressure that sent cold crawling up Danzo's spine. Was this a disguise?
Danzo made no distinction between Naruto and the Nine-Tails. As far as he was concerned, the jinchuriki's only relevance was the Tailed Beast sealed inside his body.
He shifted his gaze to the other two figures standing nearby.
Uchiha? And was that Uchiha Sasuke?
Satsuki and young Sasuke had not bothered concealing their chakra signatures -- the specific quality that belonged to powerful ocular power was clearly present in both of them.
Danzo recognized it at once. Uchiha chakra. The presence of the Sharingan.
"Go ahead."
Satsuki did not turn her head. The words were directed at young Sasuke. "He's your enemy."
Her tone held no anger, no hatred. She knew exactly what Danzo had done, knew he had been one of the architects of that night. But she had no personal drive to be the one who killed him. Whatever hatred she had once held for this matter had been resolved, in another world, through other means.
"...Yes. Thank you."
Young Sasuke gave a small nod. His fingers tightened slightly at his side. His gaze fell on Danzo -- on the one eye left visible above the bandaging, on the arm wrapped entirely in white cloth, on this man who had operated in the shadows and pulled the strings over the Uchiha clan's fate like a rat hiding in the dark.
But he did not rush forward. He breathed in slowly, then took one step.
"Which country do you two belong to?"
Danzo's voice carried across the clearing. "I don't know how you managed this or why you're wearing the jinchuriki's face, but be aware -- raising a hand against me is the same as declaring war on the Leaf."
His eyes had already moved to young Sasuke, who was stepping toward him. There was something burning in those eyes.
"And you -- Uchiha Sasuke."
Danzo's gaze fixed on young Sasuke. "Why are you standing with these two? Have you chosen to betray the Leaf? Are you making the same decision as your brother?"
Danzo had wanted to make a move against Sasuke for some time. The Third Hokage's interference and Itachi's threat had kept him from finding the opportunity. If Sasuke admitted to defecting from the village, he could take the boy's Sharingan in full view of the law.
"Danzo."
Young Sasuke stopped walking. "Answer me. Was it your order? Did you -- order Uchiha Itachi to destroy the Uchiha clan?"
The single visible eye snapped wide open. Then Danzo forced it shut again, compressing his expression back into stillness by sheer will.
"...The man in question is still alive, isn't he. He would never have told you something like this. Who told you? Those two invaders?"
He did not deny it. He did not say "I don't know what you're talking about." He did not say "that's a baseless accusation." He simply asked two questions.
That reaction was its own answer.
"...So it was you."
Young Sasuke's pupils began to tremble.
"Step back. If this is truly your position, I must eliminate these two. For the sake of the Leaf, I cannot allow this secret to spread."
Danzo's voice shifted into the cadence of someone giving orders.
He was clearly not taking young Sasuke seriously. A child who had barely graduated from the Academy was no more than an insect in front of him. The two standing behind were the real concern.
"...!"
In the next instant, the answer he had received detonated everything young Sasuke had been holding back. The hatred that had been accumulating for years came crashing through every wall at once, all of it flooding him in a single moment. It swept over his brief elation at the new power he had been given. It swept over the shock of what those eyes could do.
His pupils changed.
In the instant Danzo saw those two eyes, he froze completely. His breathing stopped for one full moment.
A Mangekyo Sharingan. And the other one -- the eye that the oldest records called the eye of a sage -- did such a thing actually exist?
He stared at those eyes. Fear moved through him.
And then, immediately, something else replaced it.
Greed. Hunger.
His pupils dilated -- not the contracted pinpoints of fear, but the wide, wanting, ravenous dilation of a predator that had been starving for a long time and had finally spotted its prey.