[Three Minutes Earlier]
The heavy stone door thudded shut behind the Tsuchikage, sealing off the chamber and its grim occupant. Kenji, the attendant tasked with preparing Jiro's body, let out a slow, shaky breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
The Tsuchikage's presence, even diminished by rage, was like standing near a dormant volcano – you never forgot the potential for cataclysm.
Kenji turned towards the stone slab where Jiro's form lay. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, a habitual gesture of exasperation.
'Shinobi honors… and generous compensation…'
He wasn't even a field medic. He was a glorified clerk, a keeper of scrolls and schedules for the Tsuchikage's administrative needs. Preparing bodies for burial? That was the purview of the Funeral Division, or, in cases requiring investigation, the cold, meticulous hands of the Intelligence Division.
The village was understaffed with the recent mobilisation against Suna, and orders were orders.
Kenji wheeled a cart towards the slab. He positioned it beside a cupboard as he retrieved some equipment necessary for the task ahead.
"Twitch!"
Kenji was too busy to realise Jiro's left hand twitching. He was even humming a familiar tune that he had heard the last time he had gone out for sake.
"Twitch. Twitch."
This time, it was Jiro's leg. A distinct, jerking motion beneath the shroud. Then suddenly the shroud erupted. Not with violence, but with a silent, sickening and organic flow.
Jiro's eyes snapped open beneath the cloth – but they weren't human eyes. The corpse bulged grotesquely, then seemed to melt into something else. It briefly turned into White Zetsu before it began dissolving into a viscous, pale sludge the colour of spoiled milk.
The sludge poured through the solid stone slab like water through a sieve. Where Jiro's body had lain, a grotesque effigy remained. It was a crude, life-sized sculpture woven from gnarled, greyish wood, vaguely shaped like a human form.
The wooden effigy began to pulse. From deep within its twisted grain, glowing red symbols emerged. Not drawn, but welling up like blood seeping through bandages. Explosive tags. Dozens of them.
They pulsed with an inner, ominous light, "Thrum… thrum… thrum…" The sound was a low, building vibration that resonated in Kenji's bones.
His eyes snapped as his instincts screamed at him.
DANGER.
The warning screamed through every fibre of Kenji's being, louder than any conscious thought. His body reacted before his mind could process. Survival instinct, buried deep, took over. He threw himself backwards with all his strength, not towards the main door where the Tsuchikage had exited, but towards a heavy stone lectern near the wall – the sturdiest cover he could reach in a split second.
"KRA-BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!"
The world dissolved into sound, heat, and violent motion. The detonation wasn't just loud; it was an entity. It swallowed sound, replacing it with a physical pressure that slammed into Kenji like a giant's fist, even behind the lectern.
"WHUMPF!"
The stone structure shuddered violently, dust and chips raining down on him. Intense, blinding white light seared through his closed eyelids. A wave of superheated air, thick with the smell of ozone, burnt wood, and pulverised stone, washed over him, stealing his breath.
The concussion rattled his teeth, made his bones vibrate, and left a high-pitched, deafening ring in his ears that drowned out everything else.
The chamber was gone. Utterly transformed. Where the central bier had stood was a jagged crater, smoking and radiating heat. The stone slab was pulverised. The walls were blackened, scarred by shrapnel, and veined with new, deep cracks. Small fires licked hungrily at scattered wooden debris – the remains of the lectern's top half, chairs, and tapestries. Dust hung in a thick, grey fog, swirling slowly in the disturbed air.
"THUD! SCRAPE!"
Kenji flinched violently, scrambling further back. Through the swirling dust and smoke near the ruined doorway, two figures emerged. The Tsuchikage, Onoki, his small form radiating palpable fury, and the chunin messenger who had summoned him moments before the blast. The chunin looked dazed, his eyes wide with shock as he took in the devastation.
"Kenji-san!" the chunin yelled, his voice muffled and distant in Kenji's ringing ears. He rushed forward, skidding to a halt near the attendant. "Are you alright? What happened? What was that explosion?" He reached down to help Kenji up.
Kenji tried to speak, but only managed a dry, hacking cough. He gestured weakly towards the smouldering crater where Jiro's body had been.
Suddenly, the air changed.
It wasn't the settling dust or the fading heat. It was pressure. Subtle at first, like the drop in barometric pressure before a storm, but rapidly intensifying.
It settled over Kenji like a physical weight, pushing down on his shoulders, making his breath catch. The chunin helping him stiffened, his hand tightening on Kenji's arm. He looked around, confused.
'Wha… what is this?' he wondered.
The pressure deepened. It became oppressive, suffocating. It felt less like air and more like the crushing weight of the mountain itself pressing down from above.
Kenji's knees began to tremble. The chunin gasped, his own legs buckling slightly under the invisible force. He instinctively flared his chakra, a faint brown aura flickering around him, but it did nothing to alleviate the crushing sensation.
'What the hell is happening?' the chunin thought frantically, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chamber's ruined state.
'Is it… an attack?'
Then, Kenji noticed something bizarre. The small fires scattered around the chamber were behaving strangely. Their flames didn't dance or leap. They shrank. Dimmed. As if starved of oxygen. One by one, with faint, pathetic hisses, they simply… winked out. They just ceased to be.
The pressure intensified further, becoming unbearable. The chunin cried out softly, his knees finally giving way.
"Thump." He collapsed to one knee, bracing himself with a hand on the scorched floor.
'Can't… breathe… feels like… the mountain… is sitting… on my chest…'
His wide, terrified eyes darted around the ruined chamber, searching for the source of this impossible force.
His gaze landed on the Tsuchikage.
Onoki stood just inside the ruined doorway. He wasn't looking at Kenji or the chunin. His eyes were fixed on the smouldering crater where Jiro's body had lain. His face… Kenji had seen Onoki angry before, but this was different. This was a darkness Kenji had never witnessed.
The chunin followed Kenji's gaze. Understanding dawned, washing over him with icy dread.
'The Tsuchikage… It's HIM.'
He looked down, unable to bear the intensity radiating from the small, ancient figure.
"CRACK."
The sound was sharp, brittle. Beneath the kneeling chunin, the stone floor splintered. A single, thin fissure snaked outwards. Then another. And another. Like ice under unbearable pressure, a spiderweb of cracks exploded across the chamber floor, radiating outwards from where Onoki stood.
Then, as suddenly as it had descended, the pressure vanished.
"Whoosh."
It was like the release of a vacuum. The chunin gasped, sucking in a huge, ragged breath of dust-filled air. He slumped forward, trembling. Kenji sagged against the broken lectern, his own chest heaving.
"They didn't just kill him," Onoki stated. His voice was deceptively calm, "They mutilated his corpse. Turned it into a vessel for that…"
He finally turned his head, his obsidian eyes sweeping over Kenji and the chunin.
"You," Onoki's gaze pinned the chunin. "Get Kenji to the infirmary. Now."
The command brooked no argument, no delay. The chunin scrambled to his feet and helped the trembling attendant stand and then left.
Onoki was alone.
The cold fury that had compressed the air now turned inwards, a white-hot forge melting the stone of his composure.
'Jiro.'
The name echoed in his mind. He hadn't known the man well. Jiro was a capable jonin, loyal, a cog in the mighty machine of Iwagakure. Onoki had signed his mission scrolls, acknowledged his reports, perhaps exchanged a dozen words with him in total over the years. He wasn't a friend. He wasn't family.
But he was Iwa.
He was one of the stones upon which the Village Hidden in the Stone was built. He was under Onoki's protection, his command, his care. And that care extended beyond life, into the sacred duty owed to the fallen. To see them honoured. To see them rest with dignity. To ensure their sacrifice was remembered, not defiled.
'This…' His eyes traced the jagged lines of the crater.
This was a calculated act of sacrilege. Turning a warrior's corpse into a puppet, a bomb, a piece of grotesque theatre. It spat on his final moments, on his desperate, bloody journey to bring warning. It crossed a line not written in any treaty, but etched in the unwritten code that separated shinobi from mere butchers.
The rage wasn't just political now. It wasn't just about Konoha's deception or the threat to Iwa's security. It was personal.
'Minato Namikaze.'
The name was a curse, a brand seared onto his soul.
'Hiruzen Sarutobi.'
The mastermind hiding behind his title and his village's walls, sanctioning atrocity under the banner of the Will of Fire.
"You will pay," Onoki whispered, the sound like grinding stones.