Chapter 576: ROOT's Fall 2.0
The impact was clean.
The moment the last Sharingan had been stripped from Danzo, Naruto yanked him free from the golden chakra claw and tossed him aside without ceremony.
"Alright. Fresh start."
Adult Naruto brushed his hands together, then tilted his chin toward young Sasuke.
"Sasuke. He's yours."
He said it and looked away. He turned, crouched down, pulled a storage container from his ninja pouch, and began picking the Sharingan eyes off the ground one by one, placing them carefully inside.
Danzo hauled himself upright from the ground, every muscle in his body seizing with a rage that his frame could barely contain. His single exposed eye was locked on adult Naruto, burning with undisguised hatred.
"What did you do?!"
"What have you done to me?! Give them back! Those belong to me!"
He wanted to throw himself forward. He wanted to take them back, every single one.
But young Sasuke was already in his way.
Young Sasuke didn't fully understand what adult Naruto had done, didn't know what Danzo had intended to use those eyes for -- but those eyes were finally free of the man who had been using them as tools. That thought gave him a small, quiet sense of relief.
Satsuki crouched beside Naruto and began helping him pick up the scattered eyes, placing them into the container one by one. The fight itself held very little interest for her. Adult Naruto could work out the ending with one hand behind his back.
Danzo had gone far too long without fighting with his own strength. Too long since he had stood in open ground and faced an opponent properly. He had chosen, over and over, to chase after power that wasn't his. Chosen to hide behind stolen eyes. Chosen to buy his own survival with other people's lives.
He had called it a shortcut. The fastest path to power. Enough Sharingan, enough Izanagi activations, and he would be untouchable.
And the years of operating from the shadows had rotted his combat instincts into something barely recognizable. His judgment was slow. His reaction speed had deteriorated. His body no longer kept pace with his mind.
This was not the Shimura Danzo who had fought on battlefields under the Second Hokage -- decisive, ruthless, effective. This was an old man hollowed out by greed, corroded by power, spoiled by abilities he had stolen from others.
No Sharingan to fall back on. None of those eyes capable of letting him "die ten times and stand back up." He no longer even knew how to fight without them.
The battle would probably be over in five minutes.
Danzo lunged furiously toward the container, trying to seize back what had been taken, while at the same time a cold question rose up his spine -- why hadn't Izanagi activated? Why hadn't reality rewritten the fact of losing those eyes into something that simply hadn't happened?
"...Susanoo."
Young Sasuke drew on something he hadn't reached for consciously -- it came from deeper than thought, from the bloodline itself, from the new eyes. A purple skeletal frame began to solidify around him. Ribs, spine, arms, the arch of a skull -- a half-transparent luminous outline taking shape in the air.
It was only the first stage. Only a skeleton. But for someone who had held these powers for less than an hour, this was no small thing.
"Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere!"
Danzo's hands moved fast through the signs. He opened his mouth and discharged a rapid stream of compressed wind release projectiles from deep in his throat, driving them into young Sasuke's Susanoo framework.
The shots struck the purple skeleton with a series of dull concussive sounds.
The skeleton shuddered almost imperceptibly. That was all.
A Susanoo produced by Rinnegan and Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan was not something Danzo's Wind Release could compete with. The gap was too wide -- wide enough that his attacks left no cracks at all.
Danzo watched the enormous purple skeletal hand reaching toward him. He drove his pale arm into the earth.
A deep rumble.
Massive tree trunks erupted from the ground in front of him, weaving into a dense wooden barrier.
The Wood Release shattered without resistance.
Young Sasuke was a genuine vessel of Indra's chakra. Danzo's Wood Release was something stolen from Hashirama Senju's corpse. Those thick trunks were compressed to powder in the grip of the Susanoo's hand before a single second had passed.
The skeletal fingers closed around Danzo's body. Five purple fingers locked around him from shoulder to knee and held.
"Urgh... you little--"
Danzo's voice came out broken, coming in fragments. His body fought uselessly against the grip. His strength was not sufficient. He could only feel the pressure converging on him from every direction, feel himself being slowly, steadily compressed.
"Danzo. Do you have anything left to say?"
Young Sasuke's voice was cold. He hadn't ended it cleanly -- not yet. He still wanted to see what expression Danzo would wear at the end. He wanted to know whether this man, who had kept "for the sake of the Leaf" and "necessary sacrifice" permanently on his tongue, would wear that same hypocritical, self-righteous face in the final moment.
"Uchiha Sasuke... do you have any idea what you're doing?!"
"If you kill me -- the Leaf will give you no place to stand from this day forward! You need to understand -- everything Uchiha Itachi did, everything he sacrificed -- it was all to protect you! And now you're going to destroy everything Itachi built!"
"...Die."
The word came from young Sasuke's throat flatly, drained of everything. He was done. He didn't want to hear any more.
The Susanoo's hand began to tighten.
Danzo looked at the killing intent in young Sasuke's eyes. Looked at those two eyes -- one purple, one red. Looked at the closing hand.
His mind went blank. He couldn't hold onto a single thought. He knew only one thing: he was going to die. In the moment when there was no room left for calculation, his body reached for the sealing technique -- the insurance he had embedded in his flesh --
A wet sound.
The sound of flesh and blood under pressure.
No final speech. No dramatic last words.
Danzo was crushed by the Susanoo.
His body rested still inside the skeletal hand, making no further response.
His face held the expression he had worn at the end -- desperate, savage, clawing for a way out that wasn't there.
No revival. No Izanagi.
He simply died. Died cleanly and completely, died the way any ordinary person he had ever discarded had died -- quietly, without sound, with a face full of defiance and fear, departing this world.