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One Piece Breaking the Gene Lock
Genshin Impact: I am King Arthur
Naruto: Reviving the Fourth Hokage from the Start
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Minato's voice tolled across the death-still plaza like a bell of judgment.
"Certain people's responsibility."
Those six words turned Koharu's and Homura's faces chalk white atop the platform. They shuffled half a step back, instinctively trying to edge out of the storm's eye.
In the crowd, a shard of frost hardened in Danzo's lone eye—nearly solid.
He knew who Minato's target was.
Cradling Naruto, Minato's blue eyes locked onto him with surgical precision.
"Shimura Danzo."
He spoke the name bare.
No honorifics.
Contempt, distilled to its purest form.
Danzo's body went taut. Several Root shinobi ghosted a half-step forward around him, forming a living screen.
"Namikaze Minato," Danzo rasped, voice dry and cold, "you may have returned, but you are no longer Hokage. Konoha's affairs are not yours to meddle in."
He tried to crush Minato under rank and rules.
Minato—who had died once—had long since stepped outside such laughable shackles.
"I'm no longer Hokage?" Minato's mouth curved with icy humor. "True. Right now, I'm only a father who lost his wife and just reclaimed his son."
He glanced down at the sleeping Naruto—warmth softening his eyes for a heartbeat—then that warmth tempered into a keener edge.
"So, as a villager of Konoha—as someone who lost loved ones in this disaster—I'll ask you a few questions."
With chakra thrumming through his voice, every syllable rang clear across the square.
"Danzo!"
Minato's voice cracked like thunder.
"When the Nine-Tails struck and Konoha stood on the brink—when countless shinobi and civilians bled—where was your vaunted 'Root'?"
The first question.
Negligence—laid bare.
Yes—where was Root?
The underground arm rumored to carry out Konoha's filthiest work—the elite in the shadows—where did they go when the village needed strength most?
A thousand eyes snapped to Danzo.
His pupil narrowed to a pin. "Root's duty is to guard Konoha's roots—to act in the dark and eliminate all potential threats. Our actions do not require explanation to anyone."
No explanation required, is it?
"Well said," Minato nodded as if in agreement—and then hurled the second question, even sharper.
"Then what about the Uchiha?"
At the name, the district not far off stirred like a struck hive. Fugaku's face went iron-heavy.
"The Uchiha Police Force is one of Konoha's strongest security units. Yet the instant the Nine-Tails appeared, they received an order to be pushed outside the village barrier—to focus on evacuations—barred from the core battlefield!"
Minato's words rang with accusation.
"Who issued that order?! Who, at the village's most perilous moment, still nursed suspicion of our own strength?! Who deliberately widened the rift between Konoha and the Uchiha?!"
The second question.
Division—named and nailed.
Uchiha fists clenched across the crowd, fury kindling in a hundred eyes.
That order was the splinter in every Uchiha heart. They had watched their village burn and their comrades die—while one command locked them out. The humiliation and helpless rage had nearly driven them mad.
And the Fourth had just said it aloud before all of Konoha.
Fugaku looked up at Minato, eyes complex with feeling.
Danzo's expression finally shifted.
He could stonewall Root's movements—but he could not justify that order against the Uchiha. It reeked too strongly of private malice.
"That was a joint decision of the senior council!" Danzo tried to smear the blame thin. "To prevent greater influence from the Nine-Tails' Sharingan genjutsu upon the Uchiha—"
"A council decision?" Minato's scorn deepened. "To my knowledge, I—the Fourth Hokage—did not sign off on any such decision before my death. Third-sama, did you agree to it?"
He flung the question to Hiruzen.
Hiruzen's face flashed green, then white. Words tangled on his tongue.
He had, in truth, permitted it. He too had harbored misgivings about the Uchiha.
But to admit it now?
To admit it was to stamp the charge that he and Danzo had suppressed the Uchiha.
Watching Hiruzen flounder told the crowd enough.
Minato didn't press him further; he had what he needed.
His voice dropped—murder simmering beneath the calm.
"Danzo—these are small matters compared to the last."
"My final question."
"After my death, your collusion with Konoha's S-rank deserter, Orochimaru—conducting inhuman experiments—this matter…"
Minato enunciated each word like a death-judge's sentence.
"Did you truly think no one knew?!"
The third question.
Collusion with a traitor.
A capital crime—unforgivable for any shinobi.
If the first two questions were the ebb and flow of factional strife—
The third was naked betrayal—war against Konoha itself.
"What? Danzo-sama and Orochimaru?!"
"Impossible—Orochimaru is a traitor!"
"Experiments… I remember—those missing children back then…"
Murmurs surged into a wave of horror.
Danzo's reaction was the truest proof.
The practiced calm on his face evaporated.
Shock and fear bled through the cracks.
His lone eye bulged, fixed on Minato as if on a demon.
How could he know?!
This was the core secret between him and the already-defected Orochimaru. Even Hiruzen had only suspicions—no proof.
How did this Minato know?
"You… you…" Danzo jabbed a shaking finger at Minato, trembling with fear and rage. "Lies—slander!"
"Namikaze Minato, you defame me!"
His voice sharpened—thin with guilt.
"You're a dead man—some imposter from who-knows-where. You have no right to meddle in Konoha's governance. You're shaking the village's very roots!"
He tried to drown panic in a roar—to slap on labels like "imposter" and "agitator." If he could brand Minato, perhaps the tide would turn.
Against Minato's concrete charges, the squirming sounded hollow.
Minato's eyes were glacial as he stared at the tumor that had festered in Konoha's dark—dragging it deeper into rot after his death.
"Whether I live or die is irrelevant. To protect Konoha, everything was worth it."
"You, alive, have no worth—beyond corroding Konoha."
"Danzo, your crimes are written to the heavens."
"Today, before the whole village, I'll seek justice for the souls you murdered."
Golden chakra flared from Minato like a sunrise unsheathed.
A blade of killing intent split the sky.
Danzo knew there would be no clean end—no more talk.
Only fists—and whose strength was harder.
He barked the last—and stupidest—order to the Root shinobi coiled at his side.
He bellowed:
"Kill him!"
"He's an imposter—kill him!"
(End of Chapter)
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