Chapter 44: The First Kill in the Moonlight
Swoosh!
Just as Shinra was deep in concentration, a sharp sound tore through the night—the whistle of a kunai cutting air.
Observation Haki flared to life instantly. Shinra's eyes snapped open, gleaming with sharp focus. His head tilted to the left almost on instinct, the cold metal whispering past his ear before thudding into a tree trunk behind him.
"Who's there?!"
Shinra snapped back to full alertness, his expression grim as he stared into a specific patch of darkness. He had expected assassins to come for him eventually. But he hadn't expected it so soon, and certainly not inside Konoha's walls. The sheer audacity!
Seeing his attack miss, Miyamura Ichiro showed no surprise or frustration. He simply stepped out from the shadows, his posture arrogant as he faced Shinra down. In his mind, with his strength as an experienced, if mediocre, chunin, dealing with a snot-nosed Academy brat—even a talented one—would be as easy as squashing a bug.
"Little outer-village bastard! It's your granddaddy!"
"I've had enough of looking at your face. If I don't kill you today, I'll off myself right in front of you!"
Ichiro's face was a mask of naked hatred and desperation, his killing intent leaking out unrestrained.
"Oh? So it's you. Trash."
"You really think you can kill me?"
The corner of Shinra's mouth lifted in a cold sneer, his eyes dripping with pure contempt.
"Enough talk! Killing you will be like butchering a dog!"
Ichiro knew he couldn't afford to drag this out. His target was a genius personally favored by the Hokage. If the Anbu caught wind of the disturbance, he'd be dead where he stood.
The moment he finished speaking, a kunai appeared in each of Ichiro's hands. In the next instant, he moved—a basic but well-practiced Body Flicker. He vanished from his spot, reappearing like a pouncing tiger right in front of Shinra, the cold blades aiming straight for his throat.
Die!
Yet, just as the kunai were about to pierce Shinra's flesh, the boy smiled. It was a deeply sarcastic, utterly dismissive smile, his eyes filled with scorn.
Then, before Ichiro could process it, Shinra's hand shot out. Not with blinding speed, but with terrifying, deliberate certainty. His palm, sheathed in a faint, wavering white aura, clamped down directly on Ichiro's wrist, stopping the lethal thrust dead.
Ichiro's eyes bulged.
What?!
He stared at the hazy light around Shinra's hand, his pupils contracting to pinpricks.
"You bastard!"
With a furious snarl, Ichiro poured all his strength into his arm, muscles straining to wrench the kunai free or drive it forward.
The next moment, panic truly set in.
Because no matter how hard he struggled, the boy in front of him didn't budge an inch. The blade in his grip was held fast, as if locked in stone.
CRUNCH-BOOM!
A slight pulse of vibration traveled from Shinra's palm. The finely-forged steel kunai didn't just bend—it exploded into shrapnel, disintegrating into metallic dust.
At that moment, Miyamura Ichiro's mind went blank.
The eyes he fixed on Shinra were filled with utter horror and disbelief, as if he were staring at a monster from a nightmare.
"You… how did you get so strong…?"
In Ichiro's memory, Shinra was still just that talentless orphan brat. Consumed by humiliation after the Uchiha Masaki incident, he'd wallowed in drink at home, never even venturing out to watch the Academy finals. He was completely unaware that the Shinra before him was no longer the boy he remembered.
Killing him would now be as simple as crushing an ant.
"Hmph."
In response to Ichiro's stunned, foolish question, Shinra merely offered a cold snort.
Then, his index finger shot forward like a gun. The power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit condensed to a needlepoint at its tip, shrouded in that same distorting white light. It moved with thunderous speed, aimed directly between Ichiro's widening eyes.
"You… you're a… MONSTER!!!"
Ichiro couldn't believe, even in his final moment, that he would die at the hands of the very "waste" he had once despised most. But in that instant, he understood true, soul-deep terror. That final, choked accusation of "monster" became his last words.
Pfft—THUMP!
A wet, dull sound. Shinra's finger pierced straight through Ichiro's forehead like a hot knife through butter. The concussive force didn't stop at penetration; it detonated inside the man's skull.
SPLAT!
Ichiro's terrified head erupted like an overripe melon. Crimson blood and pale matter burst forth in a grisly shower, blooming under the cold moonlight like a horrific, sanguine lotus.
The bloody mist hung for a second before settling.
GUSH…
Then, a torrent of scarlet blood pumped from the headless neck, pulsing onto the forest floor with a sickening rhythm. Against the silver moonlight, the scene was surreal and macabre.
The headless corpse swayed for a moment before collapsing with a heavy, final thud.
Shinra's face remained impassive, devoid of joy or anger. His dark eyes were as deep and unreadable as a still pond. He knew. With his current standing and strength, a nobody like Miyamura Ichiro wouldn't dare act so brazenly on his own. There was a larger, more powerful force pulling the strings behind this pathetic assassin.
And that force wasn't hard to guess.
"Uchiha… I'll remember this 'gift'."
His icy whisper seemed to freeze the very air around the clearing.
A chunin—a seasoned, if not elite, shinobi—had been reduced to a headless corpse in the blink of an eye, killed by a single finger.
Blood still flowed. The body twitched in its final nervous spasms.
The bright, peaceful moonlight spilled down, illuminating a scene that had turned the tranquil night into something utterly grim and sinister.
(End of Chapter)
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