Minato didn't hesitate.
His hands moved in a blur, drawing kunai from the pouches strapped across his body. Dozens of them, each one engraved with the distinctive markings of the Flying Thunder God Technique. They left his hands.
Thunk thunk thunk thunk.
The kunai embedded themselves in walls, dirt, tree trunks, scattered across the entire perimeter of Root's base. Within seconds, the battlefield was saturated with teleportation anchors.
He started walking toward where Danzō's body had fallen.
Then a figure materialized on the opposite side of the clearing.
Danzō stood there, completely unharmed.
"When did you mark me?"
Minato did not answer. Instead, he reappeared directly behind him, a kunai already in motion. The blade cut across Danzō's throat, moving too fast for most ninja to even perceive.
Blood sprayed as Danzō's body collapsed to the ground.
It stayed that way for about two seconds. Then his corpse faded like smoke, and he stood whole and healthy in a completely different part of the battlefield, already forming hand seals. His eye tracked Minato warily.
"Wondering why the mark's still there even after using Izanagi?" Kenji's voice came from the side. "See, that's the funny part. We didn't agree to let you 'prove your innocence' because we actually cared about your feelings. We just needed you to waste time slowly unwrapping those bandages. It gave the Flying Thunder God seal enough time to properly anchor itself. Izanagi can reset a lot of things, but there's a temporal limit to what it can undo. The mark's been on you too long now. Even if you reset your physical state back to before you got hit, the seal stays. So yeah, you're pretty much fucked."
Danzō's expression didn't change outwardly. Then something else seemed to click in his mind. His visible eye narrowed dangerously as it fixed on Kenji.
"Shisui's Sharingan..." he said slowly. "That was you as well, wasn't it?"
Kenji just smiled.
"Danzō," Minato said. Another marked kunai left his hand, forcing Danzō to dodge. "Surrender now and submit to judgment."
"No!" Danzō snarled. "I am the darkness of Konoha! Everything I've done was for the village! I won't be arrested as a criminal by children who don't understand what it takes to protect this place!"
His hands flew through seals.
"Wind Release: Vacuum Wave!"
A blade of compressed wind chakra screamed across the battlefield. It carved through everything in its path like it wasn't even there. Trees split cleanly in half, their tops crashing to the ground. The Root base's outer wall developed deep gouges where the technique scored across it. Even the earth itself cracked under the pressure.
Minato vanished before the attack reached him, teleporting to one of his scattered kunai. He reappeared directly in front of Danzō, already forming a Rasengan in his palm.
The sphere of rotating chakra slammed into Danzō's back.
"AGH!"
The impact launched Danzō forward. His body tumbled across the ground before going still.
Two seconds later, he was standing again twenty meters away. Another Sharingan in his arm had gone dull and lifeless, the eye closing as Izanagi consumed it.
He reached up and tore the bandages from his right eye, revealing yet another three-tomoe Sharingan.
"Where the hell is he getting all these?" Kenji muttered, staring at the fresh eye.
What he didn't know was that this particular eye had an interesting history. After Kenji had disguised himself as Obito and stolen Shisui's Mangekyō, Obito had approached Danzō about it. To maintain their alliance and keep using Danzō against the Uchiha, he had given him this three-tomoe Sharingan from Madara's old stockpile. From his perspective, it was a small investment. Once the Uchiha were eliminated, there'd be plenty more eyes to harvest.
"Minato," Kenji called out, his tone turning more serious. "Including the one in his right eye socket, he's got four three-tomoe Sharingan left. Each time he uses Izanagi, it lasts about one minute before the eye burns out. So you've got maybe four minutes total before he's out of options. Also, Sharingan below three-tomoe can't use Izanagi at all, so those one and two-tomoe eyes won't help him."
He paused, tracking Danzō's movements.
"Important part: there's a gap after each Izanagi ends. He has to form the seals again to activate the next one. That's your opening. And watch out for genjutsu from his right eye. The eyes in his arm are probably just fuel for the technique, they don't have vision or other abilities. The one in his socket is the real threat."
"Understood," Minato replied, his gaze never leaving their opponent.
Danzō's fury finally boiling over. Having to constantly dodge Minato while Kenji calmly dissected all his secrets and fed the information to his enemy was pushing him past the breaking point. "Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere!"
He compressed massive amounts of wind chakra and fired them from his mouth like a machine gun. Dense projectiles of cutting air filled the space between them, dozens of them, targeting not just Minato and Kenji but also catching Hiruzen in the area of effect.
"Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!"
Hiruzen's hands blurred through seals. Chakra-infused earth erupted from the ground in front of him, rapidly hardening into a thick defensive barrier. The vacuum bullets hammered into it, chipping away chunks of stone, but the wall held.
Kenji watched the casual display of elemental mastery and couldn't help but acknowledge it. The Third Hokage's reputation for mastering all five chakra natures really was well-earned. That wall had been formed in seconds with perfect structural integrity. Kenji himself simply used his enhanced speed to dodge, weaving between the projectiles without bothering to defend. This wasn't his fight to interfere in.
Minato activated Flying Thunder God again, appearing right in front of Danzō. The kunai in his hand flew directly toward Danzō's exposed right eye.
Danzō's three-tomoe Sharingan spun. He twisted his head to the side, the kunai missing his eye by centimeters. His hand came up, coated in wind chakra that formed a blade, and stabbed toward Minato's abdomen.
The strike hit empty air.
Minato vanished, teleporting to the kunai he had just thrown. His hand closed around it in midair as he spun, slashing horizontally across Danzō's neck.
The blade cut cleanly through flesh and bone. Blood sprayed outward in a wide arc, and Danzō's head separated from his shoulders, spinning through the air.
Then both the head and the body dissolved into nothing. Several meters away, he stood whole once more. One of the Sharingan embedded in his arm had turned grey and closed.
Three remained.
"You're just delaying the inevitable," Minato said evenly. He made no move to attack. "This is pointless resistance."
He knew exactly what he was doing. Right now, Danzō was in his one-minute window of Izanagi's protection. Any attack would just waste chakra. Better to talk, run down the clock, and wait for the technique to end.
Then strike in the gap before Danzō could activate the next one.
Danzō saw through Minato's stalling tactic immediately and chose not to engage. Instead, he bit down hard on his finger, drawing blood, and his hands flew through seals before slamming his palm against the ground.
"Summoning Technique!"
Smoke exploded outward in a massive cloud. When it cleared, a grotesque creature stood at the center of the battlefield. The summon was enormous, easily four meters tall at the shoulder, with a long elephant-like trunk extending from a face that looked wrong in ways that were hard to define. Its body was a chimeric mass, parts of different animals fused together into something that shouldn't exist. This was Baku, his personal summon.
The creature's appearance alone was enough to make most people uncomfortable.
"ROOOOAAAAAR!"
Baku let out a deafening trumpeting roar that echoed across the battlefield. Then its massive mouth gaped open and an overwhelming suction burst forth. Loose stones on the ground tore free from the earth and flew toward that gaping maw. Broken tree trunks lifted into the air. Even the dust suspended in the atmosphere began swirling into a visible vortex, everything getting pulled toward its mouth in a spiraling torrent of debris.
"Wind Release: Vacuum Wave!"
Danzō pressed his advantage immediately. He expelled another sharp blade of compressed wind chakra from his mouth, sending it screaming toward Minato. The attack came in from an angle that would force Minato to dodge directly into Baku's suction field.
Minato's body vanished before the wind technique could reach him. Danzō immediately spun around, his Sharingan tracking for the expected counterattack from behind.
But Minato didn't appear behind him.
Instead, he materialized next to one of his marked kunai positioned far across the battlefield, well outside Baku's effective range. His hand moved in a blur, grabbing the kunai and hurling it toward Baku. Caught by the summon's powerful suction, it accelerated dramatically, shooting through the air like a bullet.
Then he activated Flying Thunder God again.
He appeared beside Danzō in the same instant, already in motion. His leg came around in a kick that connected with Danzō's abdomen, right below the ribcage.
The impact drove the air from Danzō's lungs. He staggered backward, his body carried by momentum straight toward Baku's gaping mouth.
The suction vanished as Baku forcibly interrupted its own jutsu. If Danzō died, the summoning contract would sever instantly and it would be sent back. But the moment that suction stopped, the Flying Thunder God kunai Minato had thrown was already there. It had been pulled to within a meter of Baku's head.
He appeared beside the kunai, one hand closing around its handle. His other hand held a fully formed Rasengan that was already in motion toward Baku's skull.
"Rasengan!"
The sphere of rotating chakra slammed into the side of Baku's head.
BOOM!
Baku shrieked as its body crashed sideways into the ground. Dust billowed up in a cloud.
Before the summon could recover, it dissolved into white smoke. The summoning had been forcibly dispelled, either by the damage or by Baku's own decision to retreat.
Minato didn't pause. Still in midair from the Rasengan strike, he activated Flying Thunder God once more and his figure vanished.
Danzō had just hit the ground in an awkward roll. He was trying to regain his footing when pain exploded through his chest. He coughed violently, blood spraying from his mouth.
Minato stood behind him, one hand holding a Flying Thunder God kunai that had been driven completely through Danzō's torso. The blade had torn straight through his chest cavity, likely piercing a lung.
Danzō gritted his teeth against the agony and threw himself forward, tearing free from the kunai. Blood poured from the wound. He spun around, trying to grab Minato or at least create some distance.
Minato simply sidestepped. As Danzō stumbled past him, his kunai flashed out again in a quick slash across Danzō's throat.
Blood sprayed across the dirt. Then Danzō's body faded like smoke. Two seconds later, he stood whole and healthy several meters away. Another Sharingan in his arm had turned grey and lifeless.
Danzō's abilities weren't weak by shinobi standards. In a normal engagement, he'd be a serious threat. But against Minato, the combination of Flying Thunder God's instant teleportation and his superhuman reaction speed created what amounted to dimensional superiority. Danzō was being slaughtered with no opportunity to mount effective offense.
Sure enough, within the next few exchanges, the last two three-tomoe Sharingan embedded in Danzō's arm closed one after another.
Now Danzō was down to just the Sharingan in his right eye socket. Without any other three-tomoe eyes to fuel Izanagi, even using that final eye would only buy him one more minute of protection. And once it was gone, he'd lose the Sharingan's enhanced perception entirely. Killing him would become trivially easy.
But something else was happening.
His right arm was starting to malfunction.
He leaned against the damaged wall of a Root building. His left hand clamped down on his right arm. The prolonged combat, repeated use of high-consumption Wind Release techniques, and the frequent activation of Izanagi had pushed his chakra reserves to the breaking point.
He no longer had enough chakra to suppress the Hashirama cells.
The change was visible. The muscle tissue in his right arm began to twist and bulge unnaturally. The Hashirama cells were spreading from his shoulder, rapidly invading and corrupting the rest of his body. The arm that had given him access to Wood Release was now trying to consume him.
Minato appeared again. The kunai in his hand drove straight toward Danzō's chest, aiming for the heart.
This time, Danzō managed to react. The Sharingan in his right eye tracked Minato's movement. He twisted his body at the last possible instant, taking the strike on his shoulder instead of through a vital organ.
The kunai still tore through flesh and bone, but it missed his heart.
In the same motion, his hands shot forward. His fingers locked around Minato's wrist.
"Got you."
Minato's expression shifted slightly. He pulled back, trying to break free, but his body suddenly went rigid. Black curse markings spread from Danzō's palms, crawling up Minato's arms and spreading across his entire body in seconds.
"Self-Cursing Seal," Minato said quietly, recognizing the technique.
Once bound by the seal, the target's body would be completely paralyzed. It was a suicide technique, designed to take an enemy with you.
"Such an exceptional ninja," Danzō said. His eye tracked sideways toward where Kenji stood. "Yet so trusting."
He was clearly wary that Kenji might intervene. But Kenji remained where he was.
His mind worked quickly. If Kenji wasn't helping Minato...
"The person you trusted most has already betrayed you, hasn't he? He's just waiting for you to die so he can take the Hokage position for himself."
It made sense from Danzō's perspective. Kenji, like himself, had always coveted the position of Hokage. This was the perfect opportunity to eliminate a rival while keeping his hands clean.
Minato's eyes shifted to Kenji. "That's... impossible..."
"How unfortunate for you," Danzō said, and now there was satisfaction in his tone. "Wood Release: Great Spear Tree!"
The skin on his right arm split open. Thick wooden spikes erupted from the wounds, bursting forth with explosive force. Dozens of them, each one as thick as a man's arm and sharp as spears. They pierced through Minato's paralyzed body from multiple angles.
Within seconds, Minato looked like a pincushion. The spikes had impaled him completely, some of them extending a full meter beyond his body.
But Danzō felt no triumph.
He looked down at himself and assessed the damage. To trap Minato with the Sharingan, he hadn't activated Izanagi for the most recent exchange. That meant the kunai wound through his chest was real. His lung was punctured, blood filling his chest cavity. Breathing was becoming difficult.
Worse, forcing the Hashirama cells to activate Wood Release had pushed them into complete berserk state. The cells were no longer just spreading, they were actively consuming his body mass to fuel their growth.
On his right arm, a small green sapling sprouted from the mutated flesh. It grew at a speed visible to the naked eye, expanding from a tiny shoot to a sapling to a tree trunk as thick as a man's torso in the span of seconds.
If this continues, the cells will consume me completely, he thought.
He gathered wind chakra in his left hand, shaping it into a blade of compressed air. Then he swung it at his own right shoulder without hesitation.
SHLK.
The entire arm separated cleanly, severed at the shoulder joint. Blood fountained from the wound, spraying across the ground. He staggered backward, putting distance between himself and the arm that was still transforming. The severed limb hit the ground and the tree growing from it accelerated, roots burrowing into the earth as branches sprouted upward.
Within seconds, it had become a full-sized tree.
He pressed his left hand against the stump of his shoulder, using chakra to slow the bleeding. He was breathing hard now, each breath sending spikes of pain through his punctured lung. His vision was starting to blur slightly from blood loss.
But he was alive.
He looked at Minato's impaled body, still held upright by the wooden spikes piercing through it. A smile crossed his face.
"Looks like... I won..."
Minato's body suddenly dissolved into white smoke.
Danzō's expression froze as shock flashed across his face. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but that was all Minato needed.
Pain exploded through his right eye socket.
He jerked backward instinctively, his hand coming up to his face. Blood poured between his fingers. Minato had already materialized behind him via Flying Thunder God, and in his hand was a three-tomoe Sharingan, still dripping with blood and vitreous fluid.
Danzō stayed on his feet, his remaining left eye tracking Minato's position.
"You're done," Minato said simply. He pocketed the Sharingan and took a step forward.
"No. I haven't become Hokage yet. I refuse to die here."
His gaze shifted past Minato toward where Hiruzen stood watching. For a moment, something flickered across his face.
"Hiruzen," he said calmly.
Hiruzen's expression didn't change. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. But Kenji, watching from the side, saw his weight shift slightly forward. The old man was considering it.
"Don't."
Hiruzen's eyes moved toward him.
"You're seriously thinking about intervening? After everything we just witnessed?"
"He did serve Konoha for many years. Whatever his methods, his loyalty to the village was never in question."
"Loyalty?" Kenji gestured toward where Danzō stood. "The Sharingan he was using belonged to Konoha ninjas. Uchiha who died serving the village. Or did you think they donated their eyes voluntarily?"
Hiruzen's mouth pressed into a thin line, but he said nothing.
Minato was already moving. He closed the distance to Danzō in three quick steps, his kunai flashing out in a precise strike across the throat.
Blood sprayed as Danzō dropped to his knees, then pitched forward onto the ground.
But even as he fell, his hands were moving.
Curse markings erupted across his body as black seals spread. His skin split open, and thick streams of chakra-dense black blood poured from the wounds. It sprayed outward in every direction, coating the ground, the walls, and everything within a ten-meter radius.
"Reverse Four Symbols Sealing!" Minato's eyes widened in recognition. "Everyone back!"
Kenji had anticipated this. Danzō's last-ditch suicide sealing technique had been a possibility from the start. That's why he'd ordered ANBU to accelerate their operation earlier. Not only were all ANBU deployed, but his puppets had joined in the effort to capture Root members and strip the base of anything valuable.
Any Root operative who'd tried to resist had been subdued and sealed. By now, Root's headquarters had been completely gutted. Not a single useful document remained.
The ANBU and their prisoners were already at a safe distance, having pulled back during the final stages of the fight.
But Minato didn't run. Instead, his hands blurred through seals.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
Two perfect copies materialized on either side of him. All three moved simultaneously.
The real Minato reached into his pouch and pulled out a thin metal disc about the size of his palm. It was made of chakra-conductive metal, perfectly circular, with a Flying Thunder God seal inscribed on one side. He pressed it flat against his right palm.
The first clone's hands flew through a different set of seals. Fuinjutsu markings appeared at his fingertips, glowing faintly blue. He touched the metal disc in Minato's hand, and new sealing formulas inscribed themselves across its surface. Complex characters layered over each other in concentric circles.
At the same time, the real Minato began forming a Rasengan around the disc. The sphere of chakra enclosed the disc completely, rotating around it like a planetary core.
The second clone stepped in and placed his hands over the Rasengan. Wind chakra erupted from his palms, wrapping around the blue sphere in visible currents of cutting energy. The chakra flowed in a specific pattern and created a vortex effect, the wind currents spiraling inward toward the Rasengan's center.
The entire process took maybe three seconds.
Kenji watched with rapidly growing comprehension and disbelief.
The completed technique looked like a Rasengan wrapped in a shell of wind, but the behavior was all wrong. Instead of the chaotic cutting currents of a Rasenshuriken, the wind chakra moved in organized streams.
Minato threw a kunai straight up into the air. It arced high, easily clearing thirty meters of altitude before beginning its descent.
Then he vanished.
The Flying Thunder God seal inscribed on the metal disc at the heart of the Rasengan activated. He reappeared at the kunai's position, and the technique came with him. The instant it materialized high above the battlefield, the Rasengan's suction effect intensified dramatically.
Danzō's body, still kneeling as the Reverse Four Symbols Sealing neared activation, jerked violently upward. The seal on the disc acted as a fixed marker, and the wind vortex locked onto it. Because Danzō had already been marked, he was pulled toward the Rasengan like iron toward a magnet.
The black blood spreading across the ground reversed direction and streamed upward into the air.
The Rasengan began to collapse inward.
Its wind chakra shell compressed with immense force, and the rotating chakra sphere at its core followed suit. The metal disc at the center fractured under the pressure, and the instant it broke, the fuinjutsu seal carved into its surface activated.
A sealing barrier erupted outward from the disc's position before snapping shut. All foreign chakra within a five-meter radius of the Rasengan's center was caught inside the field. Danzō's Reverse Four Symbols Sealing, which had been milliseconds from activation, halted completely. The chakra sustaining it was torn apart and sealed away.
The implosion reached its peak.
BOOM!
The explosion was silent at first, with all sound swallowed by the sudden vacuum. A heartbeat later, the shockwave arrived and cracked through the air like thunder directly overhead.
Countless invisible blades of cutting force tore through Danzō's body. They severed nerves, shredded muscle fibers, ruptured blood vessels, and obliterated cellular structures from the inside out. At the same time, the sealing barrier ripped through his chakra network, tearing apart every pathway and destroying his ability to mold chakra entirely.
What remained struck the ground in a crumpled heap.
---
Minato had already reappeared on the ground using the Flying Thunder God technique. He landed in a crouch moments before the implosion began. His two shadow clones dispelled themselves, and he straightened slowly, lifting his gaze toward the sky where the technique detonated.
Kenji arrived beside him and stared in silence.
He had just watched Minato execute a technique that fused shape transformation, nature transformation, fuinjutsu, and the Flying Thunder God into a single, seamless attack. The metal disc had acted as both a structural anchor for the Rasengan and a delivery system for the sealing formula.
The mechanics were insane. The chakra control required was absurd.
"What the hell was that?"
Minato turned toward him and smiled. "It's the complete Rasengan Inspired Spiral Sphere Jiraiya-Sensei Wind Style Ball."
"That's still a terrible name."
They stood in silence for a moment.
Then Minato pulled the Sharingan from his pocket and tossed it over.
"I don't have any use for it. Keep it."
Kenji caught the eye and examined it briefly. The three tomoe were still visible, although the tissue had already begun to deteriorate. To him, the Sharingan itself was not particularly valuable. He already possessed multiple pairs obtained from other sources.
Homura had his own Sharingan. In addition, he still had two other pairs that Danzō had given him years ago, back when they had still been working together.
After the Third Great Ninja War ended, Kenji had devoted time to studying the evolution of Obito's Mangekyō Sharingan. He combined those observations with Yamanaka clan research into brain function and neural patterns. Through trial and error, he eventually worked out the principles that governed Sharingan evolution. Using that methodology, he had successfully developed both Homura's Mangekyō and Izumi's three-tomoe Sharingan.
All four pairs of Sharingan in his possession had now evolved into Mangekyō Sharingan. In that respect, the outcome was a success. Every evolution had completed without failure.
The problem lay elsewhere. All pairs had awakened with identical abilities.
Each one possessed the same Mangekyō technique: Kokū and Kawarimi Saisei.
The left eye, Kokū, created an intangible clone and allowed instant position-switching with the original body. The right eye, Kawarimi Saisei, let the clone absorb one fatal attack before dissipating. Homura had used this ability to survive Itachi's Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu during their previous encounter.
Either eye could summon the clone by consuming ocular power. After each summon, there was a thirty-second cooldown before another clone could be created. The cooldown didn't distinguish between left and right eye, once a clone was summoned, both entered the cooldown period. The chakra cost was significant.
However, the advantage was that the clone itself was universal. Regardless of which eye summoned it, the clone could use both Kokū and Kawarimi Saisei. And as long as no new clone was summoned, simply using those two abilities consumed very little ocular power.
Kenji had been satisfied with the Mangekyō's capabilities. But when he realized all pairs had awakened with identical powers, he'd finally understood what "the Sharingan is an eye that reflects the heart" actually meant.
No matter which puppet or which pair of eyes he used, the core consciousness was always his own. The abilities that awakened were projections of his will, nature, and fundamental approach to combat. Once he'd understood that, he'd stopped obsessing over collecting more Sharingan. There wasn't much point when they'd all just develop the same way.
Still, he pocketed the eye. He'd store it with the blind Sharingan he'd taken from Danzō earlier. That one had been kept out of curiosity, he wanted to understand why it had gone blind and whether restoration was possible. After all, Madara's Sharingan had lost its light after using Izanagi, yet it had still evolved into the Rinnegan and regained vision.
"We should take Danzō's body back," Minato said. He looked toward Hiruzen, who had slowly walked over to them. "He was the head of Root, and he carried too many of Konoha's secrets. This needs to be handled properly."
Hiruzen nodded in response. His gaze remained fixed on what was left of Danzō's corpse, and his expression was difficult to read. A man he had worked alongside for an entire lifetime, someone he had known since childhood, had met such an end.
Whatever he was feeling, he kept it to himself.