Chapter 196: The Deadly Dance
"Amaterasu? It's been a long time. You truly are Itachi's brother. Did you inherit his eyes?" Danzō mused, standing calmly as if they were having a casual conversation.
Hearing Itachi's name from this man's lips again was like pouring oil on the fire of Sasuke's rage. "I told you not to mention him!" he snarled, his composure shattering.
"Even if you brothers share the same powers, what you see is entirely different," Danzō continued, his voice dripping with condescension. "To you, the truth about Itachi is irrelevant. You merely seek a target for your hatred. You render the Uchiha clan's sacrifice meaningless." As he spoke, he raised his grotesque, Sharingan-studded arm.
That arm was a symbol of everything stolen from Sasuke. With a guttural cry, Sasuke drew the Kusanagi sword from his waist and charged, a blur of lethal intent.
Danzō's hands moved in a flash. "*Wind Release: Vacuum Wave!*"
This time, the wind chakra didn't scatter. It coalesced into a single, whip-like blade of compressed air that swept horizontally, aiming to cut Sasuke in half at the waist.
Sasuke's Sharingan tracked the attack perfectly. At the last possible second, he launched himself into a high somersault, the deadly wave passing inches beneath him. While still airborne, he reversed his grip on the Kusanagi sword and brought it down in a devastating slash toward Danzō's head.
Seeing his jutsu evaded, Danzō slammed the Vacuum Wave into the ground in front of him, kicking up a thick cloud of dust and debris to obscure Sasuke's vision, then leaped backward to safety.
Sasuke's sword cleaved only empty air. He landed, eyes scanning the dust cloud frantically.
Danzō didn't give him time to recover. He produced two shuriken, spinning them on his index fingers. Wind-nature chakra enveloped them, creating a high-pitched whine like a miniature version of Naruto's Rasenshuriken. With a flick of his wrists, he launched them. They shot through the air with a terrifying shriek, carving arcs toward Sasuke's position.
Sasuke, his sight clearing, saw the projectiles incoming. His Sharingan mapped their trajectories. As the first shuriken arrived, he leaned his body back at an impossible angle, letting it whistle past his face. The second was already upon him. Instead of dodging, he acted with precision. He thrust the tip of his Kusanagi sword perfectly into the shuriken's central hole. The wind-chakra-infused star continued to spin violently against his blade. Using the impaled shuriken as a shield, he deflected the second one, sending it spinning high into the air.
In that split second, Sasuke's fingers twitched. A nearly invisible chakra thread, a technique of refined control, shot from his fingertip and attached itself to the deflected shuriken. In one fluid motion, he swung his sword, hurling the shuriken on its tip back toward Danzō while simultaneously launching himself forward, his body a shadow behind the returning projectile.
Danzō saw his own weapon flying back at him. He quickly imbued another shuriken and threw it to intercept. The two wind-enhanced stars collided mid-air with a sharp clang, both ricocheting upward.
But Danzō had no time to relish the block. Sasuke was already there, the Kusanagi sword a silver streak aimed at his heart. Instead of retreating, Danzō surprised him by surging forward. His speed was shocking. He moved inside Sasuke's swing, his right hand—the one covered in Sharingan—shooting out to clamp around Sasuke's throat like a vice.
The grip was crushing. Sasuke gasped, his attack halted, the sword tip freezing mere inches from Danzō's chest.
A mocking smile touched Sasuke's lips.
Danzō had no time to process it. The shuriken he had deflected moments ago—the one Sasuke had tagged with a chakra thread—suddenly reversed its course, swooping down from above like a predatory hawk. It was too fast, too unexpected.
SWISH!
A sharp pain. Danzō's eyes widened in disbelief as his right arm, from the elbow down, was cleanly severed by his own weapon. It fell to the ground with a dull thud, the Sharingan eyes staring sightlessly.
Freed from the chokehold, Sasuke didn't hesitate. The Kusanagi sword, no longer restrained, completed its arc.
A cold light flashed.
Danzō's body was cleaved in two.
He fell to the floor in separate pieces. For a moment, there was silence.
Then, just as before, the scene seemed to waver. The severed arm on the ground, the bisected corpse—they dissolved into nothingness, as if they were merely a bad dream.
Izanagi had been invoked once more.
Sasuke stood panting, his eyes scanning the room again. The cost of the exchange was clear. Another of the ten Sharingan on Danzō's arm had closed forever.
The deadly dance continued, but the number of steps was finite. Sasuke was counting.
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