The killing intent around Ryo, receded in an instant as if it had never existed, leaving only a wrecked room and the hammering heartbeats of everyone present.
His playful smile returned, tinged with a mocking curl at the corner of his mouth, as though he had just finished an amusing game.
"Much obliged, Danzō-sama." He tipped a hand in a lazy salute, so casual it bordered on insolent, then turned toward the command post door. His footsteps rang unnaturally clear in the hollow, dead-still room.
Just as his hand touched the warped, squeaking wood, the one already stamped with Danzō's palm print and veined with cracks, Ryo seemed to remember something entertaining and paused.
His voice, carrying an unmistakable mischievous bite, cut cleanly through the silence and rolled across the room.
"Oh, right. Almost forgot one thing."
Ryo tilted his head slightly, expression all harmless innocence, and all kinds of infuriating, his gaze pinning the still-stiff Danzō.
"A friendly reminder… that little gift your men dragged away… his name's a touch on the long side."
Danzō's heart seized. A cold premonition coiled around him like a venomous snake.
Ryo enunciated, slow and clear, each syllable a trigger wire.
"…His name is, Kitsuchi—"
He deliberately paused, savoring the way Danzō's pupil shrank to a pinprick, the blood draining from that weathered face until shock and fear twisted it into something corpse-pale.
"—oh?" Ryo drew out the sound, feigning sudden realization. "You might not remember it that way. He has a louder title."
"Iwagakure's Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki of Both Scales' only living son."
Boom.
The name detonated in Danzō's mind like a real paper bomb. His vision went black for a beat.
Kitsuchi. Ōnoki's sole heir.
Ryo saw everything he had hoped to see. Danzō's sullen, iron-blue face turned chalk white, then ashen. Wrinkles jerked like a thawing mask.
Tsk tsk. What a performance, Ryo crowed inwardly.
"Alright, now I'm done." Satisfied, Ryo lifted a hand in farewell. He ignored the petrified head of Root behind him, and the two elite operatives likewise stunned, breathing ragged at the thunderclap revelation.
As if nothing had happened, he slipped out through the battered door.
"See you, Danzō-sama."
His easy farewell still echoed in the door's crack when his silhouette vanished into the rain.
For a breath, silence, tomb-deep.
Then a ragged shriek, warped by boundless fury, humiliation, and naked panic, erupted from Danzō's throat, so sharp and wild the rafters seemed to vibrate and the plaster flaked from the walls.
"Ka… mi… ya… ma… Ryo!!!"
The table's oil flame whipped and nearly died.
Danzō went berserk. He kicked the hardwood desk. It flipped with a crash. Scrolls, cups, ink, maps avalanched to the floor, shattering. Tea and ink, mingled with the corridor's wet-dog reek of rain, spread across the boards.
"Damn you. Damn you. May you die screaming." He swung his fists, breath tearing in his chest.
But the rage lasted only three seconds before icewater terror doused him to the bone.
"Wait… wait. Where is he? Where's that Iwa-nin just now? Kitsuchi. Where is Kitsuchi?!"
Lightning-struck, Danzō whirled, bloodshot eye drilling the two Root jōnin still stunned into statues, his face a mask of panic he had never shown in his life.
"Where is he?! Speak. Where did they drag Kitsuchi?!" His voice shook.
The two snapped back to themselves. One swallowed hard. "R-reporting, Danzō-sama … per standard procedure… he should have been sent straight to the temporary underground interrogation—"
"Interrogation?!" The word burned his nerves like a brand. He nearly leapt. "You fools, who told them to start?!"
Root's efficiency was legendary.
Its interrogation tempo, bone-deep reflex.
From the moment they had hauled the man away to now, more than enough time for Root, with their habitual severity, to run a full first pass on a critically wounded but high-value, high-profile captive.
"Stand down. Call them off, now." Danzō howled, bolting toward the direction he had just sent the gift, blind panic flooding his eyes. He dashed like a scorched, half-plucked old duck.
"Danzō-sama, wait—" "Kitsuchi, he—"
"I know who he is. Stop them. Don't cut him. Don't hit him. Don't force drugs into him. Damn idiots, move faster or we're all dead." Danzō's frantic, broken bellow ricocheted down the corridor, leaving behind a wrecked room, and Root shinobi wide-eyed, slack-jawed, utterly at a loss.
The command post dissolved into utter chaos.
(To be continued.)