"…We've been found, haven't we?"
Mei Terumi's voice carried a faint tremor even she didn't notice.
It felt like an invisible hand had clenched around her heart—each beat heavy and frantic. She could hear it thudding against her ribs like a war drum, the blood humming in her ears, as if her heart might tear free of its cage at any moment.
As a Kirigakure elite jōnin, she'd lived through countless brushes with death, even the Shinobi World War, and carried out any number of near-suicidal missions… but never—not once—had she felt her mental limits stretched this close to breaking.
The muscles in Mei's face seemed to stiffen against her will. She tried to keep calm and found she couldn't even form a natural expression.
Deep inside, a primal, animal warning screamed at her to turn and run, to use every means to flee this suffocating place.
But the sliver of reason left to her pierced that instinct.
She knew all too well: once a being like that—like a god or a demon—had you in its sights…
running was just a stupid way to die faster.
So she could only stand there, rigid, with a hard-to-describe sense of embarrassment.
"Yeah…"
Ao beside her was worse off. He swallowed with difficulty, Adam's apple bobbing, mouth so dry it felt parched. His face was as stiff as a puppet on strings.
His right hand, almost of its own accord, slipped into the pouch at his waist and closed in a death grip around the cold hilt of a kunai. That chill against his palm was the only scrap of security he could find.
"Mei-sama… what do we do now?"
Ao had always seen himself as Mei's strongest confidant and strategist, the one who could offer something useful whenever this future Mizukage candidate hit a wall.
Right now his mind was blank.
What plan, what strategy could mean anything in the face of such a gap in power? After all…
The Fourth Mizukage led more than thirty elite Anbu and even drew on a tailed beast's power—and how did that end?
Total annihilation. A Kage Fallen.
Even the tailed beast defeated.
He, Ao—just a Kirigakure elite jōnin—even staking his life, what could he do?
Pull a kunai from his pouch and try to stab that "Lava Giant" taller than a mountain?
What kind of joke was that!
"…Hah."
Mei forced out a long breath, as if squeezing every ounce of fear and pressure from her chest. She lifted her head with effort, making herself face that cold gaze that, even across a kilometer, pressed on her heart as if it had weight.
"Since he's already noticed us—and there's nowhere to hide…"
Her voice carried a break-the-boats resolve, tight but steady. "Then we go to him. We ask him, face to face, what Uchiha Chizumi wants in the Land of Water."
Ao's brow jumped; he blurted, flustered, "Mei-sama! Isn't that far too reckless? It's too dangerous!
"What if Konoha uses this as a pretext to declare war on Kirigakure? If we go, aren't we walking into the net? Uchiha Chizumi might cut us down without a second thought!"
Mei snapped her head toward him, eyes sharp. "And if we don't go, you think he'll just let us walk away? Do you really believe we can outrun him?"
She paused, her tone heavier. "Don't forget… Jūzō Biwa has likely already defected to Konoha.
"With a defector who knows Kirigakure inside and out leading the way, even if we make it back to the village, where exactly do we hide? There may be no secrets left in the entire Land of Water."
Ao opened his mouth to argue and found every word useless. He could only watch as Mei, steps heavy but steady, walked toward the Susanoo's position.
In the end he grit his teeth, a doomed resolve settling on his face. Right hand still clenched around the kunai in his pouch, he quickened his pace to follow, his taut posture and darting eyes betraying the panic he couldn't suppress.
…
Under crushing psychological pressure, Mei and Ao finally reached the heart of the battlefield.
The suffocating perfect Susanoo was dissolving like a mirage, breaking into specks of crimson chakra light that drifted away on the air. The oppressive weight ebbed with it, but the lingering heat and stink of sulfur—and the hellscape of scorched earth before them—never stopped reminding them how real, how terrifying, the last moments had been.
Their eyes locked at once on the figure standing at the center of the wasteland.
Konoha's police uniform edged with the Uchiha fan crest like tongues of flame, short black hair, a young face honed to an icy edge…
Neither Mei nor Ao found that face unfamiliar.
After Uchiha Chizumi's "assassination" of the Fire Daimyō and his fame shaking the shinobi world, his dossier and a clear likeness had long since landed on the desks of every village's leadership.
But pictures and words weren't one percent of the impact of facing him in person.
Especially today—after he killed Kirigakure's Fourth Mizukage.
Mei stopped a dozen meters from Uchiha Chizumi. For shinobi, that was a dangerously close line. The ground underfoot felt scorching, the soles of her sandals giving off a faint burnt smell. She forced herself to bear it and focused everything on the young man.
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted three more figures—at some point they had come to stand behind him to one side: Jūzō Biwa, an unfamiliar Uchiha girl, and a plump orange ninja cat.
So… Jūzō Biwa really has thrown in with Konoha. Mei's last sliver of wishful thinking broke.
The scene sank into an eerie silence. Only the "glug-glug" of magma in distant trenches and the wail of wind over the ruins made any sound.
Uchiha Chizumi's eyes—calm, deep as a cold pool—rested on Mei and Ao with a detached, indifferent focus, as if he were appraising inanimate objects. Her skin crawled.
Mei braced herself and met his gaze without flinching. Ao, beside her, clearly couldn't bear the pressure; his eyes slid aside of their own accord, cold sweat trickling down his temple.
At last—
"Take me to Kirigakure."
Uchiha Chizumi's voice was flat as still water, yet it hit the silence like a boulder. Mei and Ao's hearts both skipped a beat.
It didn't ease them. If anything, their throats tightened.
"Why?" Mei forced herself to stay cool; she knew she must not be the one to mention the Mizukage's death. She could only push out the questions that mattered most, keeping her tone as even as she could. "If I take you to Kirigakure… are you going to destroy it? Is Konoha using this to declare war on us?"
She stared at his face, trying to read anything in those cold eyes.
"My actions have nothing to do with Konoha."
He cut the tie in a single, simple line. Mei faltered.
Acting alone? And what does that imply?
He went on. "As for whether I'll destroy Kirigakure—that depends on whether the village is beyond saving."
"Beyond saving?" Mei blinked, thrown by the choice of words.
Ao couldn't hold back. Stung by confusion and a hint of indignation, he snapped, "What do you mean 'beyond saving'? Since when does a Konoha shinobi get to judge what happens to Kirigakure?"
He had barely finished when—
"Meow~ Because from top to bottom, your village is crawling with sin!"
The odd voice made them both glance over. The speaker was the fat ninja cat perched on the Uchiha girl's shoulder.
"…Sin?" Mei echoed, not understanding.
"In Kirigakure, a lot of people's sense of right and wrong has long since been warped and twisted by the Bloody Mist policy," Jūzō Biwa said then.
"That policy is like a vicious plague. It spreads not only in the village but across the Land of Water, breeding a countless number of scum whose morals have rotted through.
"In their hearts there's no line between right and evil anymore. Power is everything. Killing is truth."
He paused, as if dredging up bad memories. After a few seconds he drew a long breath and went on. "Killing without cause. Taking by force. Raping women and children. Slaughtering bloodline-limit kin in the name of 'removing instability'…
"Maybe you can find such crimes elsewhere in the shinobi world, but nowhere—nowhere—are they as common and as rampant as they are in the Land of Water.
"The tragedies here are counted in tens of thousands. Every number is a living life."
"The ones whose souls have been twisted by the Bloody Mist—what they bring is more chaos and pain. They're tumors clinging to the body of the nation, spreading and eating away at everything."
"I became a 'Kirigakure missing-nin' because I couldn't stand to watch the Land of Water become this. I ran—to chase a different possibility."
His rough palm unconsciously stroked the cold, familiar handle of the beheading blade. The slabs of muscle on his face tightened; his expression was more serious than ever.
"After I left, I chose a path I thought might turn this ship—adrift far off course—back to its proper heading.
"That is: let 'Absolute Justice' scour clean this country already fouled beyond recognition."
It was the first time Jūzō had laid his heart bare like this in front of others.
Mei listened in silence. She knew from intel about Uchiha Chizumi's creed of "Absolute Justice," so none of it was unfamiliar. But hearing such idealistic words from a former member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen—a man known for his coldness—still hit hard.
Ao couldn't hold it in. Eyes wide, he glared at Jūzō. "Bringing a Konoha shinobi into our lands to kill the Fourth Mizukage—this is your way of putting us back on course?"
Jūzō's face didn't change. "From the Mizukage down, many shinobi's souls and hands are rotten to the root with the Bloody Mist's stain.
"Cutting down a Fourth Mizukage who pushed that policy without hesitation—severing the most critical link in that chain of rot—is that wrong?"
The audacity of it left Ao gaping. He couldn't find a word to answer.
Mei was pulled from her thoughts and looked to Uchiha Chizumi's unreadable face. "So… Uchiha Chizumi, the 'Lava Beast'—your purpose in coming to the Land of Water…
"isn't to lead Konoha's invasion, but to help us—help this country purge itself? To end Kirigakure's Bloody Mist policy?"
The conclusion left her dizzy. It was the polar opposite of her worst expectations—"Konoha's full-scale invasion; Kirigakure in flames." It even…
carried a twisted hint of "goodwill"?
Chizumi met her searching look without a ripple. "You can put it that way."
A few simple words, and Mei was left completely at a loss.
This flipped her understanding of inter-village politics and shinobi behavior on its head.
A top fighter from another village crosses your border, kills your Kage, and then tells you—he's here to "help" with your housecleaning?
"W-Why?" Mei's thoughts tangled. She blurted the core question—the one she could least reconcile. "What do you gain from this? What does Konoha gain? Without profit, why meddle in the Land of Water?"
To her, a shinobi's actions always traced back to interest: the village's, the clan's, or the individual's. Any one of the three could explain things.
Uchiha Chizumi's answer doused every guess. "To carry out Absolute Justice. To win justice for the countless innocent victims. To personally cast the unpardonable—the trampled-on lives' tormentors—into the hell they deserve…"
His tone stayed level.
"Why would something like that need a 'benefit' to motivate it?"
"…"
Mei had no words.
This Uchiha from Konoha—his logic…
felt…
absolutely not normal.