Shock froze in Orochimaru's golden, slit pupils. Clutching the Kusanagi blade, he stared hard into the sky.
A thousand meters up, the thick cloud bank—lit through by molten glow like dark-red blood—suddenly sparked with countless pinpoints of scarlet light.
Like a scatter of crimson stars across the night.
No… not stars—something far more terrifying.
The next instant—
Riiiip!
Riiiip!
Riiiip—
A shrill, ripping cacophony—like vast bolts of brocade being torn apart—slashed through the raging night! Gaping red "wounds" were violently opened across the face of the clouds!
They're here!
Orochimaru's pupils needled to pinpoints. Through the ragged tears in the cloud deck, a torrent came sheeting down like waterfalls, like cloudbursts, like raging floods—volcanic lava meteors, calamity itself descending from the skies!
Each molten boulder—seven or eight meters across—carried the blistering heat of an eruption and crushing, unstoppable momentum.
They shredded the sky, dragging long red tails behind them, and came down in a sky-blotting barrage.
In an instant, uncountable lava meteors drowned everything within ten, fifteen kilometers in a hellish red glow that twisted and boiled across the land.
Even the air, rammed to a breaking point, popped with physical detonations.
"A ninjutsu on this scale…"
Even Orochimaru—who had lived through brutal shinobi wars and felt the Nine-Tails' rampage firsthand as one of the Legendary Sannin—could only force a hoarse, disbelieving whisper from his throat, the words dry and rasping.
"This isn't a battle anymore. It's a natural disaster. How can that brat have this much chakra… Is he a tailed beast in disguise?!"
Fweeee—
A needle-sharp screech raced toward him; Orochimaru's eardrums thrummed. A single lava meteor with a blazing red tail hurled down like a spear thrown by an angry god and smashed into a base building barely two hundred meters away.
RUMMMMMMBLE—!!!!
The impact might as well have set off a bundle of explosive tags. The deafening blast kicked the ground under Orochimaru's feet, and the ringing in his ears spiked toward deafness.
A heartbeat later, a world-ending heat blast—hot enough to carbonize hair on contact and loaded with shockwave, shrapnel, and spatters of molten rock—roared in from the right like a doomsday gale.
His long hair whipped backward in a frenzy; his clothes snapped and fluttered, seams threatening to tear. The skin on his face prickled and burned under the heat.
He snapped his head toward the blast—at ground zero, a fire-red mushroom cloud, choked with stone shards, twisted metal, and still-glowing lava, was boiling upward. A ring-shaped shockwave spread visibly through the air.
Anything in its path—reinforced bulwarks or delicate instruments—was flung aside like toys.
A-rank ninjutsu?
S-rank?
Orochimaru's heart thudded like a hammer. This was the power of just one meteor.
RUMBLE!!!
Another lava meteor crashed down. The shockwave instantly obliterated the bog Uchiha Chizumi had created with Earth Release, flashing it to white steam.
The heat alone silently liquefied the hundreds of cursed-seal black snakes still writhing at the swamp's edge—blades clamped in their jaws and all.
The base's main structure, rock-solid as it was, groaned with tooth-aching strain.
Massive alloy beams twisted and tore like pretzels under the lava-driven shock.
Rivers of red magma coursed everywhere, a bloodthirsty beast licking its chops—
—and began devouring everything.
At last Orochimaru understood why, back in the Third Great Ninja War, so many enemy villages had given Uchiha Chizumi a nickname: the Lava-Release Beast.
What else would you call this?
And yet…
This was only the prelude.
Fweee—BOOM!
Fweee—BOOM!
Fweee—BOOM!
As if hell had opened every floodgate, the whistles and explosions overlapped in a relentless drumbeat of thunder, pounding a violently trembling earth.
The entire human-experimentation complex shook, groaned, collapsed. Overhead, the sky was a pure "meteor shower" of destruction: streaks of red screaming down in every direction.
Everywhere he looked—towering firelight, rolling smoke, and rivers of lava.
The end of the world, painted in flame.
Fweee— A single lava meteor, its tail-keening even harsher, locked onto the air above Orochimaru's head. The blast-furnace wind and the stench of death prickled his scalp numb.
"Damn it…!"
He spat a curse, kicked off hard, and arrowed sideways. The Kusanagi traced a flash of silver as he hacked open the onrushing heat wave.
KRAAASH—!!!
A giant fireball detonated where he'd been standing a heartbeat before.
The shockwave caught him mid-leap and flung him several meters. The remaining alloy floorplate melted through in an instant, collapsing into a churning, blistering pit of molten metal.
"Kh—!"
His qi and blood roiled; a copper tang rose in his throat. He forced himself upright and caught the smell of scorched hair.
He started to move—
"Sss—"
A tiny, wrong sound froze him. He glanced down. He was standing on a half-melted metal slab—basically with his foot planted on molten iron.
The searing metal worked like the world's cruelest eraser; at first touch it wiped away the soles of both feet.
No blood.
No scream.
Only a curl of thin blue smoke—and veins bulging across Orochimaru's brow as he swallowed the pain.
The bone-deep agony and a killing-cold sense of danger surged straight up his spine.
"What a reckless little 'justice' brat…"
Gone was any hint of elegance or composure on his contorted face—only raw, inflamed fury. The killing intent in his eyes felt almost tangible.
He yawned his jaws wide—far past human limits.
From deep in his throat came a skin-crawling gagging sound, flesh tearing wetly—
Hrrkk—splorch!
A brand-new "Orochimaru," slick with mucus and perfect as a newborn, forced his way out through his own gullet and chest cavity, tumbled, and landed lightly.
The discarded shell—feet gone and much of the torso charred—slumped like a shed snakeskin onto the blazing floor, where the flowing lava swallowed it without mercy.
Melted. Vaporized.
BOOM!!!
Another lava meteor slammed down nearby and pitched Orochimaru through the air again. Scowling, he finally accepted the obvious: he couldn't stay in this research base. With ninjutsu on this scale, one lapse would be fatal.
…
Konoha Village, Police Force Headquarters.
Uchiha Fugaku had been silent for who knew how long. He could clearly feel the anger in the eyes turned on him—his own clansmen's.
Their undisguised resentment and disgust crept up his spine like cold.
He wanted to invoke his authority as clan head and ask for "understanding," to plead the village's "greater good." But anything he managed—or failed—to say only poured oil on a bonfire that had already been blazing for a long time.
Fanning the flames of discontent higher.
Fugaku's era…
Was truly ending.
The thought struck with unnerving clarity.
He felt wretched—like the rag-cloaked, misunderstood savior from some novel—not defeated by an outside enemy, but abandoned by the very people he most wanted to protect, many of them once his supporters.
Loss and absurdity clamped down on him, laced with the bitterness of betrayal—and a pulse of almost uncontrollable anger.
Corner a man this far…
How could he not be angry?
But he also knew that unleashing that anger on his own clan would only stain the Uchiha name and shred what little "stability and balance" he'd strained to preserve all these years.
It would also cost him the last shred of dignity.
He drew a long breath in, and let it out.
Face tight, eyes complicated, he finally spoke. "If everyone believes it's time I stepped off the Uchiha stage, then as of today… I, Uchiha Fugaku, am no longer clan head of the Uchiha, nor Captain of the Police Force."
"Both roles will be filled by successors chosen by the clan and Konoha's leadership. I'll draft my resignations for both positions tonight."
He had no idea how much courage—or how much swallowed fury—it took to say it.
Who resigns under pressure without anger?
But he also knew he could not dump that anger on the Uchiha.
He only let his gaze rest, deep and steady, on Izumi.
That twelve-year-old Uchiha girl had ridden the wave of "absolute justice" and, by herself, whipped the clan's emotions into a fever, forcing him to abdicate.
Hah…
Chizumi really "trained her well," didn't he.
"…" Izumi hadn't expected him to capitulate so quickly, but she recovered at once, met his cold stare without flinching, and said, "Fugaku-senpai, I hope you mean it. Don't cling to power—don't say this today and pretend you never said it tomorrow."
Fugaku's fist tightened.
"I'm not that kind of man," he shot back, stiff as a board.
The other Uchiha traded dazed looks.
They hadn't expected the timid clan head who'd helped isolate them from the village to finally step down. It meant the Uchiha might at last be free of his meddling.
"Then…"
Just as elation was about to break out, Tsunade's words splashed over them like cold water: "Who's going to lead the Uchiha? Who's going to run the Police Force? Those vacancies need to be filled fast, or you're going to have a whole lot of trouble."
Fugaku blinked.
Was the Legendary Sannin… actually speaking up for him? She'd clearly taken Izumi's side. Had she changed her mind? Realized absolute justice was a dead end?
But she was an outsider.
Not much she could do for him anyway—
Her voice cut back in. "I do have a candidate you could consider. Uchiha Chizumi—how about him? You'd be happy with that one, right?"
Fugaku: "…"
"Though from what I know of that brat, he won't take the job of clan head—too much hassle. But Police Captain? He won't turn that down. It's a perfect match for his current role."
Arms folded, Tsunade kept talking to herself.
Others might tiptoe around Uchiha business.
Tsunade couldn't care less. She said what she pleased.
She was in her "let it all burn" era anyway.
"Tsunade-sama, recommending Chizumi-sama for Police Captain seems to have really set this guy off, meow," Jujiro's voice murmured by her ear.
Tsunade arched a brow and looked at Fugaku.
"Tch. It's not like it'll cost him a pound of flesh," she said blandly. "Does this mean that justice brat owes me one? I did get him a cushy post. Make sure he hears it—debts have to be repaid!"
Jujiro saw right through her. "You're planning to rack up gambling debts and have Chizumi-sama cover them, aren't you?"
"…Ahem." Her skin was thick as armor. Dropping her voice, she said, "More precisely, I want Chizumi to investigate the casino owner. I refuse to believe those money-scooping sharks are clean."
Jujiro: "…"
The cat updated its assessment of Tsunade's shamelessness.
No wonder Chizumi-sama once said Princess Tsunade had the makings of a Hokage.
You do need skin that thick to wear the hat.