"Minato? Minato?"
A companion's call sounded beside his ear.
Namikaze Minato, who had been sitting there in a rare haze of distraction, blinked—then shook his head as if trying to fling the scattered thoughts away. He looked up at the man frowning at him and forced out an awkward smile.
"H-Haruto…? What's wrong? Why all of a sudden—"
"You're the one who should be answering that." Yamanaka Haruto's brows were knitted so tightly they practically formed a knot. He reached out and pressed the back of his hand against Minato's forehead, his tone heavy with worry. "Why did you suddenly start spacing out like that, Minato?"
Haruto's expression softened for a moment, as if he were trying to be patient.
"I can understand being on edge because of Kaguya Ren. Honestly, even I—someone who's never even met him—feel pressure just knowing there's a shinobi that monstrous wandering around the Land of Fire."
His voice sharpened again.
"But Minato, Ren's already gone to the Land of Rice Fields. Can't you treat your own body a little better and go back to the village to rest for a while? Don't forget—you don't have the Uzumaki physique. If you don't recuperate properly after being injured, you'll end up with permanent internal damage. The kind that never goes away."
"It's not like I'm alone, though." Minato scratched his cheek with a sheepish laugh, then looked at Haruto with open trust. "If I'm getting treatment every day exactly according to your plan… the recovery shouldn't be much worse than lying in bed, right?"
"Take that line and go say it to Kushina!" Haruto snapped. He knocked Minato lightly on the head—more exasperated than angry—then bent down to change the medicine and rewrap the bandages.
He pulled the wrap tight.
Minato sucked in a sharp breath.
And Haruto, clearly not in the mood to be gentle, kept tightening as he grumbled.
"And because I've been stuck babysitting you on the front lines, I've fallen behind on several other patients. If you had even a shred of awareness as a Hokage candidate, you'd hand off the surveillance mission to someone else and go back with me to rest properly!"
"Ahahaha… about that…"
Minato was still trying to think of a way to play dumb and slip out of Haruto's scolding when a Konoha shinobi—another member of the monitoring and sensory team—burst into the room, panting.
"Minato-sama—this is bad!"
Minato's expression changed instantly. The warmth and sheepishness vanished as if they'd never existed. In the span of a heartbeat, he was the Minato everyone relied on in missions.
"What happened?" he asked, voice steady and low. "Calm down."
The messenger took two breaths—quick, controlled—and then reported rapidly, words clipped and precise.
"Just now, our squad received an urgent message from Orochimaru-sama. He ordered us to deliver the intelligence carried by this summon snake to you immediately. Since Orochimaru-sama isn't assigned to the same mission as we are, we judged this is most likely an emergency request for reinforcements…"
As he spoke, he raised his arm. A small snake was coiled around it like a band. The shinobi carefully brought it over.
Minato took the snake, and from its mouth drew out a sealed scroll.
He opened it.
His eyes swept over the contents.
And in the next moment, Minato stood up so abruptly the chair scraped the floor. He grabbed his uniform and his weapons pouch and moved as if he meant to head out immediately.
"Minato—wait!" Haruto caught his sleeve, grip tight. Fear flashed through his usually composed face. "What's going on? Why are you suddenly—"
"Root's capture mission against Kaguya Ren failed," Minato said, every word like a blade. "Ren is hunting them down instead."
Haruto's pupils shrank.
"And Danzō-sama is with them."
Haruto inhaled sharply.
Even more tightly, he clutched Minato's clothes, refusing to let go.
"If even Danzō failed… what do you think you can change by going there, when you're still injured?"
"I can try to bring Danzō-sama back," Minato replied, gaze hard as tempered steel. "Konoha can't lose Root right now. If Ren kills Danzō, the village will fall into chaos from the shock alone."
Haruto's knuckles turned white.
Minato looked at him once, then spoke with quiet finality.
"Get ready, Haruto. I'll be back."
The moment the words left his mouth, Minato's body vanished from the room.
…
Minato traced the Flying Thunder God mark on Kaguya Ren like an anchor in the void.
Space folded.
The world lurched.
And he arrived at the battlefield.
But in the same instant he manifested, Minato used Body Flicker to shift again—escaping the immediate range of Ren's ordinary strikes. At the same time, he flung several Flying Thunder God kunai in a wide arc, embedding them around the area with practiced ease.
Only after he'd set up the foundation for a drawn-out battle did Minato finally allow himself to look around.
The forest was gone.
Or rather—what had once been forest was now a drowned ruin. Water still roared through broken terrain like an inland sea that refused to remember it was never meant to exist here.
And standing atop the crest of a still-surging wave, Kaguya Ren looked down at him with an expression so relaxed it was almost insulting.
"This time," Ren said, voice light, "you're late, Namikaze Minato."
Minato's eyes snapped to the side.
And his heart dropped.
A figure lay on the ground not far away—severed at the waist, blood spreading into the wet earth, breath thin and ragged like a candle in wind.
Shimura Danzō.
"How…?" Minato's voice came out hoarse.
"How not?" Ren turned his head slightly, the purple of his eyes catching light in a way that made them seem colder than water. He smiled faintly. "You didn't seriously think someone like Shimura Danzō—who can't really pull any tricks—could fight me the way you do, did you?"
The truth was simple.
Before he had his "revival coins," before he began stockpiling Sharingan like disposable lives, Danzō's fighting style was… narrow.
Taijutsu.
Wind Release.
Sealing techniques.
And a single three-tomoe Sharingan of unknown origin.
That was all.
Taijutsu could not compare to someone who had made it his craft—and whose Shikotsumyaku turned his body into a fortress of blades.
Wind Release might cut, might wound, but to dream of killing Ren through repeated wind techniques was nothing but delusion.
Sealing techniques could be dangerous against fragile enemies. Danzō's Self-Curse Seal Binding could lock movement on contact.
But to bind someone whose raw strength already eclipsed some tailed beasts?
Not possible. Not even a one-in-a-billion miracle.
And that lone three-tomoe Sharingan?
It wasn't meant to be pushed that far.
So Danzō, with no single field where he surpassed Ren, fell into an irrecoverable disadvantage in the very first exchange.
He had hoped Orochimaru—who was also being targeted—would share the pressure. But after watching Orochimaru get dismantled into a nauseating shed snakeskin and vanish without resurfacing, Danzō finally understood.
He was alone.
No matter how vast his ambition.
No matter how bitter his regret.
No matter how desperate his unwillingness.
It could not change the fact that he would die here, his death becoming the stepping stone beneath Ren's rising name.
"Damn it—at least bring Danzō-sama's body back—!"
Minato clenched his jaw and flicked several Flying Thunder God kunai toward Danzō's remains.
But the instant the kunai left his hand, Ren's fingers snapped forward—
A storm of bone bullets screamed through the air.
Minato evaded them all by a hair's breadth, but the split-second loss of momentum cost him the only opening he'd had.
He could only watch.
Ren's bone blade flashed.
Danzō's head rolled.
And Ren calmly pulled out a blank scroll, sealing both head and corpse away as easily as packing tools.
"Kaguya… Ren," Minato said, the name forced through clenched teeth.
Ren tossed the sealing scroll lightly, catching it again as if it weighed nothing.
"Don't call me like that," he said lazily. "I'm doing you a favor, you know. I'm clearing obstacles from your path once you become the Fourth Hokage."
Minato didn't respond immediately. His chest felt tight.
Ren's expression remained almost conversational as he spoke again.
"If I told you that at the start, I only wanted to distract Konoha and you—to relieve pressure on the front line—and I didn't actually intend to touch your higher-ups…"
Ren's smile sharpened.
"Would you believe me, Namikaze Minato?"
"…I would," Minato said after a long pause.
Ren blinked, almost genuinely surprised.
Then he shrugged.
"If you believe it, then take the message back to Konoha. Why keep staring at me? Waste of time."
Ren slipped the sealing scroll into his weapons pouch and turned as if he truly meant to leave.
Minato's voice rose behind him.
"Then what is your purpose? Why leave the main battlefield? You know better than anyone—after what you did to me, I can't cut into your lines freely with Flying Thunder God and slaughter your Mist shinobi the way I used to!"
Ren stopped.
He thought for a moment, as if weighing how much to give away.
Then, slowly, he replied.
"Sharp. But even if you ask, I won't answer."
He glanced over his shoulder, voice soft.
"Rather than worrying about what I'm planning, worry about Konoha. Danzō's death will shake your village."
He started walking again.
"Don't forget—there's more than one village watching you."
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