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The forest went dead silent.
Every Uchiha fighter in the clearing stood frozen. Mouths open. Eyes bulging. The kind of collective shock that hits a group of people when reality stops making sense and nobody wants to be the first one to admit it.
That's not possible.
Uchiha Senichi. Their clan head. The acknowledged strongest shinobi alive. The man who had only one equal in the entire world, and that equal was Senju Shūichi. Everyone else was background noise.
And some random old man in a plain robe had just swatted him like a fly. Casually. Without visible effort. Without even trying.
Worse than that. Every Uchiha present had been running three-tomoe Sharingan at full power. The dōjutsu that could track a hummingbird's wingbeat from across a canyon. The eyes that predicted movement before it happened.
Not one of them had seen the old man move.
Not a blur. Not a flicker. Not even a residual afterimage. Nothing.
Senju Shūichi couldn't do that. Nobody in the shinobi world could do that.
"WHAT THE HELL IS HE??"
"Is that thing even human??"
And the part that made their skin crawl most: the old man had zero chakra output. From start to finish, his body hadn't emitted a single detectable pulse of energy. He read the same as a civilian. A baker. A farmer. Someone who'd never molded chakra in their life.
Manji stood where he'd been standing since the beginning. Warm expression. Relaxed posture. Not a single thread of his composure disturbed.
He'd lived long enough that getting angry at children wasn't in his repertoire anymore.
What the Uchiha didn't know, couldn't know, was that even Hagoromo at his peak couldn't detect Manji's presence. His Sage Arts had been refined so far past the point of mastery that the concept of "mastery" no longer applied. His body existed in perfect equilibrium with the natural world. Trying to sense him with conventional means was like trying to find a specific drop of water in the ocean.
Manji looked at Senichi. Spoke gently.
"Young man. There's no need for violence. Do we have a deal, or don't we?"
Watching Senichi's sharp, proud face, Manji felt a twinge of nostalgia. The arrogance. The set of the jaw. The eyes that burned with the certainty that the world owed them something. Indra's ghost, wearing new skin.
The resemblance stopped at temperament, though. Indra at this age had already broken into Beyond-Kage territory. Senichi was Kage-level at best. He hadn't even figured out how to evolve his Mangekyō into the Eternal variant.
Not his fault. Indra had never experienced the Mangekyō's side effects, so he'd never documented the progression path or left instructions for his descendants. A dead end nobody knew was dead.
Senichi glared at Manji. Several seconds of silence. Then his chakra erupted.
Three tomoe spun, reconfigured, became the jagged, predatory geometry of the Mangekyō.
"One more time." His voice was a blade wrapped in ice.
Manji's brow lifted a fraction. 'This kid doesn't know when to quit.'
"Let me show you what the Uchiha call divine power!" Senichi poured everything into it. Every drop of chakra. Every ounce of willpower.
A bone-rattling hum filled the clearing. Blue-green chakra exploded outward and began condensing into a towering skeletal frame that wrapped around Senichi like divine armor. Ribs. Arms. Shoulders. A spectral colossus taking shape, its oppressive weight pressing down on everything in range.
Susano'o.
The Uchiha fighters erupted into frenzied cheering. Eyes blazing with fanatical pride.
'THERE IT IS! THE CLAN HEAD'S ULTIMATE WEAPON! THE POWER THAT WOULD CARRY THE UCHIHA TO DOMINANCE OVER THE ENTIRE SHINOBI WORLD!'
"Come at me, old man!"
Senichi stood inside the Susano'o's chest cavity, arms crossed, posture radiating absolute confidence in his defense. If he couldn't outspeed the old man, he'd outlast him. Force him to attack, then see the technique, analyze it, break it down.
Off to the side, Kurama glanced at the Susano'o with the expression of someone watching a toddler build a sandcastle on a beach during hurricane season.
'That's cute. Master's going to pop that thing like a soap bubble.'
Manji looked at Senichi's defiant stance. Let out a quiet breath.
"If you insist."
White light.
Not gradually. Not with buildup. Just there, erupting from Manji's body in a blinding pulse that forced every Uchiha in the clearing to slam their eyes shut and throw their hands up.
Two seconds. Maybe less.
The light faded.
Every head turned toward Senichi.
He was on his knees. Gasping. The Susano'o was gone. Every trace of it. His clan robes hung off him in tatters, shredded like they'd been through a wood chipper. He looked like a man who'd been hit by a natural disaster and left behind by the evacuation team.
Sixty seconds. Two encounters. Both ending the same way.
Their clan head. The strongest shinobi alive. Demolished twice in a single minute by a man who looked like he should be drinking tea on a porch somewhere.
"How... that's..."
Senichi knelt in the dirt, staring at his own hands. His voice came out flat and disconnected, the words of someone whose understanding of the world had just been dismantled and rebuilt without his permission.
Manji walked over. Leaned down slightly.
"Are you alright, young man?"
"Who... who ARE you? Are you the Third Leader of Ninshū? Sarutobi?"
In Senichi's mind, the only being capable of this kind of overwhelming power was the legendary Sarutobi, the man who'd single-handedly torn through the first and second generation Uchiha elite in a battle that was still whispered about in the clan's war councils.
Manji shook his head. Internally, he found the comparison absurd and oddly flattering.
Being mistaken for his own student's student. The Sage of Six Paths, reduced to a footnote so ancient that the living world had promoted Sarutobi to the position of "strongest old man anyone could imagine."
It was like meeting the creator of the universe and asking if he was the town mayor.
Senichi read the denial on the old man's face and felt the last of his pride crumble. The gap between them wasn't a gap. It was a geological feature. Fighting this person again would accomplish nothing except adding to his humiliation.
He swallowed everything. The rage. The shame. The burning need to win. Forced it all down and bowed his head.
"Grandfather, the Uchiha were out of line. I apologize for our disrespect."
Grandfather now. Not "old man." Not "geezer." Funny how a sixty-second beating could upgrade someone's honorifics.
Manji tossed the Crimson Fan in a gentle arc. Senichi caught it on reflex, fingers trembling around the handle.
"A deal is a deal. It's yours. Take care."
Senichi clutched the fan, mind still reeling, and blurted out the only thing he could think of.
"Grandfather, today's lesson won't be forgotten. Please, leave me an address. I'd like to... repay your kindness someday."
Repay was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Manji could hear "find you and settle this score" hiding behind every syllable.
He smiled. Said nothing.
Senichi's jaw tightened. The old man wouldn't even give him a trail to follow.
'Fine. I'll remember this day. And I WILL find you.'
"We're leaving!"
Senichi turned on his heel and marched out of the clearing, the remaining Uchiha scrambling to follow. The forest swallowed them within seconds.
.....
Silence settled over the clearing like dust after an earthquake.
Then a massive fox head descended from above, two crimson eyes sparkling with barely contained glee.
"Old ma— I mean, MASTER! It's been forever!"
Kurama flopped onto the ground and wriggled closer, nine tails wagging behind him like an overgrown puppy reuniting with its owner.
"Good to see you, Kurama."
Manji stepped forward and scratched the Nine-Tails between the ears, right at the base of the soft fur near his forehead.
"Master, the world's gone completely sideways out here! Killing everywhere. Clans fighting clans, armies burning villages, nobody following any rules. If you don't step in and straighten things out soon, civilization's going to eat itself!"
Kurama pressed his chin flat against the earth, looking up at Manji with the most pitiful expression a building-sized fox could produce.
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