Chapter 225: A Swift and Merciless Judgment
"Uchiha Ren!"
The ANBU who had been carrying Tsunade was the first to break the stunned silence. He recognized the face of the young man standing at the entrance, the architect of Konoha's ruin. His initial exclamation was one of pure shock, but years of brutal training swiftly clamped down on his emotions. His mind, though screaming in alarm, began calculating odds and signaling his teammates through subtle, almost imperceptible hand gestures. Enemy contact. The target is here. Prepare to engage. But he did not move. To move first was to die first.
His cry had a ripple effect. The commoner ninjas and aides, who had only heard the terrifying name in panicked reports, now saw its embodiment. They recoiled as one, huddling together like sheep before a wolf, their eyes wide with primal fear fixed on the young man and his blood-touched blade.
Koharu Utatane, her voice a shrill, trembling thing, found her tongue. "Uchiha Ren! You… you are the Uchiha rebel! How dare you defile this sanctuary! Do you truly believe you are invincible? That Konoha has no one left to stop you?" The words were bold, but they were undercut by the way she shrank behind the line of ANBU, her body trembling.
Ren's lips curled into a cold, mocking smile that never reached his eyes. "Oh? Weren't you just screaming for your hounds to find me?" he asked, his voice deceptively soft. "I've saved you the trouble and delivered myself. And yet… this is the welcome I receive? You look terrified. It's almost… disappointing."
His gaze swept over them, and under that cold scrutiny, the Konoha shinobi could only lower their heads in shame and fear. He was right. They had wanted the monster found, but now that it stood before them, they had no idea what to do.
It was Homura Mitokado who finally stepped forward, his aged face a mask of strained dignity. "Uchiha Ren," he began, his voice steadier than Koharu's. "What is the purpose of this carnage? What could you possibly hope to gain by slaughtering the very village that raised you?"
"Purpose?" Ren's smirk vanished, replaced by an expression of absolute zero. The air grew heavy. "Go ask the Shinigami."
He moved without a tell, without a flicker of intent. One moment he was standing at the entrance; the next, he was a blur of lethal motion, the Ryūko
aimed directly at Homura's heart. The old advisor's eyes widened. His hands, stiff with age and disuse, fumbled to form a seal—a pathetic, delayed reaction.
"Raiton: Rage," Ren murmured.
A concussive blast of sound, sharp and deafening as a thunderclap, erupted in the confined space. Homura cried out, his hands flying apart, his concentration shattered. His ears rang, his balance failed.
"Pathetic," Ren's voice cut through the din, cold and clinical. "A member of the Hokage's council, reduced to this. You spent your life clinging to power and forgot what it means to wield it."
Homura looked up, his vision swimming. Ren was already upon him. But something was wrong. Ren's movements weren't just fast; they were impossibly so, leaving afterimages in the stale air. It was because Homura's own perceptions had been slowed to a crawl within the invisible field of Ren's Mangekyō. He saw the pattern spin, a beautiful, hypnotic prelude to death.
"You… Konoha traitor… what is your goal…?" Homura gasped as the cold steel punched through his chest, the pain a bright, shocking flare.
"I told you," Ren whispered, his face inches from the dying elder's. "Ask the Shinigami."
With a brutal twist, he yanked the blade free. In the same fluid motion, he pivoted, his leg sweeping up in a vicious arc to connect with Homura's head. The sound of shattering bone was sickeningly loud in the sudden silence. The old man's body was flung sideways like a discarded doll, crashing through a window and vanishing into the darkness outside.
"HOMURA!" Koharu's scream was a raw, grief-stricken thing. In a single day, Danzo and now Homura—her entire world, the pillars of her power, were crumbling into graves.
"Two down," Ren said, his voice flat and devoid of triumph. He turned, his chilling gaze locking onto Koharu. "And now, just you." His eyes seemed to suck the warmth from the room, and Koharu felt her heart stutter, her breath catching in her frozen lungs.
"Quickly! Protect Lady Advisor!"
"We'll hold him! Fall back, my lady!"
The ANBU, to their credit, surged forward, placing their bodies between Ren and the cowering elder. Seizing the desperate opportunity, Koharu turned and scrambled toward a hidden exit, her robes tangling around her frail legs.
"So utterly ridiculous," Ren laughed, a short, harsh sound. His left eye blazed once more.
Time, slow.
The world for everyone else turned to thick mud. The ANBU's heroic charges became slow-motion lunges. Koharu's frantic escape became a pathetic, drifting stumble.
And Ren moved at normal speed.
He simply walked past the frozen defenders, a ghost among statues, and appeared directly in Koharu's path. She looked up, her eyes bulging with incomprehension. He didn't even look at her as he swung the Meteor Blade in a clean, horizontal arc.
There was a sharp, precise sound.
Koharu felt a strange, hot line across her neck. Her vision jolted, then began to tilt erratically. From the corner of her swimming sight, she saw a headless body, dressed in familiar elder's robes, slump to the floor. A final, fleeting thought, more confusion than horror, flickered through her mind.
That… that body… it looks like… mine…
Then, nothing.
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