The next morning.
A piece of news suddenly swept through all of Konoha—several elite Uchiha had left the village, and Uchiha Chizumi was among them!
It caught the major ninja clans completely off guard.
Everyone in the village already viewed the Uchiha as extreme and arrogant. On top of that, Konoha's leadership had long been whispering about how "dangerous" the clan was while squeezing them out. That made the other clans pay even closer attention—afraid the Uchiha might stir up trouble.
"They left the village?" Koharu Utatane frowned. She headed straight for the Hokage building and found Hiruzen Sarutobi.
"Hiruzen, did you assign them a mission?" she asked without preamble. "You understand how 'risky' it is to let Uchiha go out on missions, right? Most of them are hotheaded. Plenty of Uchiha commit crimes while on assignment, and then Uchiha Chizumi kills them when they return…"
"No." Hiruzen cut her off, frowning in thought—clearly he'd already been briefed.
"Chizumi left too. Looks like he took them," Hiruzen sighed. "There are four in total, all Uchiha jōnin, including Chizumi himself. And his ninja cat is gone. If I'm not mistaken, they left to hunt Orochimaru."
Koharu posed another possibility: "What if Chizumi took three elite Uchiha to split off and carry on the Uchiha bloodline outside of Konoha?"
She instinctively chose the harshest interpretation of Chizumi's actions.
Hiruzen gave her a look. "If that were the plan, why not take Uchiha Izumi? Or Uchiha Sasuke? Why not take Naruto? Or Neji?"
Koharu had no answer.
Hiruzen exhaled. "What we should really worry about is that Chizumi's pull inside the Uchiha is growing. In the past, no one would've followed him out of the village to go after Orochimaru. Back then he was an isolated outlier—much like Itachi."
At the mention of Uchiha Itachi, Koharu said, "Hiruzen, I suspect Fugaku isn't on our side anymore."
Hiruzen lifted his eyelids. "Why?"
"If he were, why isn't he doing everything he can to stop Chizumi? He looks powerless on the surface, but who knows if it's deliberate? Absolute Justice got this big—maybe Fugaku planned it all along. Maybe he's in league with Chizumi."
Hiruzen couldn't immediately defend Fugaku. Lately he'd been disappointed; under Fugaku, the Uchiha had become unpredictable.
"I'll find time to meet him and apply some pressure," Hiruzen said quietly. "I don't bear the Uchiha much ill will, but we can't let them spin out of control—and we certainly can't let Chizumi forge them into an impregnable fortress."
Koharu's expression finally eased. At least on this point, the two of them were aligned: they would not indulge the Uchiha. After all, they'd both been the Second Hokage's students.
Just then, an Anbu ninja burst in without knocking. Before Hiruzen could frown and ask, the Anbu blurted out at high speed, "Hokage-sama! Your daughter-in-law—Sarutobi Shinnosuke-sama's wife, Sarutobi Nadeshiko—she… she was killed at home!"
The Anbu even stumbled over the words.
Hiruzen froze as if struck by lightning, his face going rigid. The report detonated in his mind like an explosive tag, throwing his thoughts into chaos. His gaze went unfocused; his mind seemed to stall.
Koharu reacted first, her grim face flashing with shock. "What happened exactly? Details!"
The Anbu took a breath and bowed his head. "A Sarutobi clansman brought a meal to Nadeshiko-sama, but no one answered. They smelled blood through the crack of the door, pushed it open, and found Nadeshiko-sama's body, covered in blood."
Hiruzen stood up stiffly, took a step, and nearly stumbled. Koharu caught him.
"Take me back to the Sarutobi compound," Hiruzen rasped.
Both the Anbu and Koharu could hear the rage and killing intent straining his voice. The Hokage was furious—murderously so.
"Yes, Hokage-sama!"
…
When Koharu arrived at the Sarutobi compound with Hiruzen, the whole clan was seething. Anger burned on every face.
"Hokage-sama!" The Sarutobi rushed in around him, surrounding him, shouting over one another until the scene turned chaotic.
"Hokage-sama! I'm the one who found Shinnosuke's wife's body!" a kunoichi from the clan said through clenched teeth. "Besides the smell of blood, there was a strange scent."
"I couldn't place it at first. Later it hit me—it was sulfur!"
Another Sarutobi, eyes red, cried out, "Hokage-sama! This was Uchiha Chizumi! Only that magma monster's bloodline leaves such a sulfur stench! Another of our clan has died by his hand!"
Sulfur? Uchiha Chizumi?
Koharu narrowed her eyes and kept listening, picking through the noisy details.
"I heard Chizumi left the village with a few Uchiha today—he must've done something guilty and slipped away while no one was watching!"
"Isn't that bastard all about 'Absolute Justice'? Nadeshiko-sama was famous for never doing evil—if she had, that self-righteous freak would've killed her long ago."
"She hasn't even left the house lately—how could she be some criminal?"
"The only possibility is that Chizumi killed the wrong person! Overcome with shame, he fled Konoha!"
Koharu arched a brow. Could those two events really be connected? On second thought, it wasn't impossible. No ability is infallible; those eyes of Chizumi's that "see others' evil" have to be wrong someday—otherwise he'd be a god.
And with his obsessive moral purity, if Absolute Justice got stained, he'd never forgive himself. That could be a reason to leave the village—if one ignored the Orochimaru intel.
"Hokage-sama, we can't back down anymore!" a Sarutobi shouted, neck veins bulging. "If that magma bastard keeps running wild, your line will die out—you'll only have Konohamaru left!"
"And that child… we haven't told him yet; he's completely in the dark. But one day he'll learn both his parents died at Chizumi's hands. That hatred will drive him to strike—and a three-year-old going after that monster can only end one way: with the child's death, Hokage-sama!"
Amid the furious cries, Hiruzen closed his eyes. After a long moment, his voice trembled. "Take me… to see the body."
Surrounded by his clansmen, Hiruzen entered a house—his eldest son Shinnosuke's home. He trudged inside and saw a woman lying on the floor, clothes disheveled. She must have just finished bathing and was getting dressed; the clothes were only half on when she was ambushed and fell into a pool of blood.
Sarutobi Nadeshiko had been an Anbu elite. Before Shinnosuke's incident, she'd been Hiruzen's right hand. To kill her instantly, the culprit had to be at least an elite jōnin—and even then would need a sneak attack.
Of course… if the attacker were Kage-class, they could have done it head-on. And as luck would have it, Uchiha Chizumi did have that kind of power.
"Hiruzen, there's definitely a strong sulfur smell," Koharu finally said. "Some wooden furniture is scorched too, as if baked by extreme heat."
She stepped past Hiruzen, crouched, and pinched a bit of black residue from the floor, then handed it to him.
"Solidified magma," she said, tone strange. "That sulfur reek is coming off this. There are lots of these fragments near the body."
"I might be the only calm one here," Koharu went on. "Hear my initial take: there's about an eighty-percent chance the killer is Uchiha Chizumi. But his leaving the village today is unrelated."
"Because a man like him won't feel guilty after a kill. Unless he truly realizes he was wrong, he won't admit fault."
"To use an unflattering analogy—killing Sarutobi Nadeshiko is a small side dish to his 'Absolute Justice,' not worth his attention. Hunting Orochimaru is the main course."
"So he killed her and then left without hesitation to hunt Orochimaru."
Her analysis wasn't exactly her specialty and came out a bit messy, but everyone got the gist:
— The odds are high that Uchiha Chizumi is the killer.
— There's only a small chance it was someone else.
The Sarutobi overwhelmingly favored the first conclusion. Absolute Justice had already tormented their clan enough. Chizumi had "priors"—how many promising young Sarutobi had died at his hands? How many heirs perished under his judgments? So many it was hard to count.
As for the "Sarutobi Sakurako" incident, the outrage had long since pushed it from most minds.
"…Dispatch the Anbu," Hiruzen said after a long, deep breath, voice heavy, face hard. "Have Kakashi and Yamato each lead a squad to catch up to Uchiha Chizumi and those three Uchiha jōnin. Bring them… all back to Konoha."
"Root."
He glanced at Koharu and gave another order: "Interrogate Uchiha Izumi, Uchiha Sasuke, Mitarashi Anko, and Hyuga Neji. I want to know whether this is connected to Chizumi."
He deliberately omitted Naruto, then added, "Bring his ninja cats to Root for questioning too."
Koharu looked at Hiruzen, almost consumed by the fire in his chest. She could tell someone had touched his reverse scale. After swallowing it again and again, the Third Hokage had finally snapped—returning to the hardline of his youth. This was the backbone the Hokage should show.
Steadying herself, she asked with a taut face, "They might not cooperate. In that case, can Root employ… firmer measures?"
"Yes." The two-syllable answer settled her further.
"Understood." Koharu nodded and left.
Hiruzen didn't see her out. He stood staring at his daughter-in-law's body, at the blood-drenched gash across her back. From the look of it, the wound matched a standard Konoha ninja tantō—the same kind Uchiha Chizumi favored.
…
Not long after, at the Academy.
"Ugh… I'm so bored…"
While Iruka droned on about general studies at the lectern, Naruto propped a book in front of his face, buried his head on the desk, and let out a muffled, miserable groan.
Sasuke glanced at him, said nothing, and went back to staring at the ceiling—mind miles away. Like Naruto, he hated dull lectures. Whatever Iruka said went in one ear and out the other.
Just then, a sudden voice cut Iruka off—and every student's attention snapped toward it.
"Uchiha Sasuke, you here?"
Sasuke blinked back to himself and looked toward the classroom door to see a masked ninja standing there, the door already open without anyone noticing.
"That's me—" Sasuke raised a brow and started to stand, but Naruto suddenly shoved him back into his seat. Sasuke shot him a puzzled look—and froze at the sight of Naruto's grave expression.
"That's not Anbu. It's Root," Naruto warned in a low, wary voice. "I've seen that mask."
Root…
A chill shot through Sasuke.
Iruka hurried forward, stepping between the Root ninja and his student. He coughed twice, forced a smile, and asked, "What business does Root have with my student?"
"None of yours." The Root ninja shoved Iruka aside. When Iruka moved to brush his hand away, a blade kissed his throat—one wrong twitch and his head would roll. Cold sweat broke out down Iruka's back.
"Don't get in the way."
The Root operative lowered the blade and loomed over Sasuke. Looking down at the short boy, he said, "By order of the Hokage, you're to come to Root."
"Why?" Naruto cut in.
"No reason." The Root ninja snatched Sasuke up in one motion—so fast Sasuke didn't even react.
"Wait!" Iruka shouted, but the Root operative flickered away in an instant—vanishing along with the dangling Sasuke.
Iruka bit down, anxiety surging.
"…I smell trouble," Nara Shikamaru muttered, suppressing his shock. "If Root took him, something big happened."
"S–Sasuke-kun…?" Sakura still hadn't recovered.
Yamanaka Ino frowned, stood, and said to Iruka, "Sensei, I'm going to find my father. Please approve a half-day leave."
Before Iruka could answer, she was out the door.
The next second, a loud crash boomed in the hall. Ino turned—and saw a small figure blasted through the classroom window and slammed into the corridor wall.
"Hyuga Neji?" Ino recognized him immediately.
"Kh… kh—" Neji coughed in pain. Before he could get up, a big hand seized him by the hair and hoisted him up. A cold voice followed: "Don't think that just because Uchiha Chizumi's backing you, I won't lay a hand on you, brat. And don't think you can resist. This is a top-priority order from the Hokage. Even your patron, Uchiha Chizumi, gives the Hokage some face."
"Heh. And you're just a kid. Looks like throwing the Hyuga main house elders in jail has gone to your branch house's head."
—Another Root ninja!!!
Terror flashed across Ino's young face. She forced herself to stay calm instead of charging in to rescue Neji. That would be reckless; she couldn't possibly beat an adult shinobi—much less one from Root. She could only watch as Neji, powerless to resist, was carried off.
"I have to notify my father, fast!"
…
"Jiraiya-boy, something's off! Why did that Sasuke kid get taken? And Hyuga Neji—the one we already ruled out as the Child of Prophecy—he was snatched too."
Perched on Jiraiya's shoulder, Elder Fukasaku sounded puzzled. "Those two Konoha shinobi were pretty rough. I get the feeling they aren't good sorts."
"…They're Root," Jiraiya said from a tree branch, his face tightening.
These past few days he'd been watching Uchiha Sasuke to see whether the boy might be the Child of Prophecy—and while watching Sasuke, he could also keep an eye on Minato's kid, Naruto. Two birds with one stone.
He just hadn't expected a twist like this today.