"Stop!!!" A sudden voice in the room interrupted everyone.
An ANBU wearing a dog mask appeared at the entrance of the secret room that had yet to be closed.
"That's Kakashi…" Haruto instantly recognised the voice of the ANBU member.
Hiruko paused and turned around, looking at the ANBU who had just appeared with confusion.
"What happened? I was just about to finish the job… is there something else that the Hokage needs from me? I will be there, give me a minute. Haruto-kun you can carry on, finish off Tatsuya Uchiha."
"Yes-"
"No! Stop!! There are new orders from Hokage-sama!" Kakashi said with urgency in his tone.
The plan was for Hiruko to move Tatsuya to another more secretive lab, but if Hiruko was never going to do so, then there was no point in letting Tatsuya die.
Hence Kakashi made the single handed decision to save Tatsuya under the guise of the Hokage's orders.
After all irrespective of what he had experienced today, Tatsuya would surely appreciate life if he could live a single day more.
Hiruko narrowed his eyes.
"And you expect me to believe that without a formal seal of approval, Kakashi?" Hiruko asked with a sharp glare.
Kakashi narrowed his eyes too.
He didn't have a personal scroll from the Hokage since he had never informed the Hokage! This was a unilateral decision.
But Kakashi didn't give up, he was sure that if the Hokage had been in his spot, he would've taken the same action.
And so, Kakashi gave a signal that caused all the other three ANBU to reveal themselves at the entrance of the secret room.
"Unless you wish to incur the wrath of the Third Hokage I suggest you give up Tatsuya Uchiha to the ANBU, Hiruko-san."
Hiruko looked at the four ANBU and smiled. "Is this all of you here?"
Kakashi's visible eye widened. He understood that an enemy asking that wasn't for surrender, but trouble! "Get awa-"
Before Kakashi's shout could finish Hiruko raised his right hand, the hand with the karma mark, and activated the seal.
Almost instantly, Kakashi and the three other ANBU froze. Their chakra rushed out of their body in hoards before gathering into Hiruko's palm.
Any jutsu they were going to cast out was disrupted, the three ANBU who were about to use the body flicker jutsu collapsed mid way because of the chakra imbalance within their system, with chakra missing where they expected it to be while activating the jutsu. One of them immediately also started to bleed from his legs because of the severe backlash.
Kakashi on the other hand clutched his left eye.
The chakra drainage was too strong. Almost instantly he began to feel the burden of his left eye, the sharingain gifted to him by Obito, starting to deplete his body of his remaining physical and mental energy just to stay active.
A needle-like pain clutched his left eye as he tried not to buckle under the pressure.
Hiruko smiled when he saw Kakashi at his end.
He turned around to look at Haruto and spoke casually. "Haruto-kun… why don't you finish off those ANBU members there… I still have an experiment to finish."
Cleaning his hands on a wiping cloth, Hiruko arrived in front of the operating table where Haruto was just about to finish off Tatsuya Uchiha.
His order to kill Tatsuya Uchiha had been a bait.
Hiruko had known that the ANBU were watching him, and hence he wanted to get rid of them before he absorbed Tatsuya Uchiha's three tomoe sharingan into his own body by absorbing his soul using the Chimera Technique modified to suit the Karma Seal.
He'd known that they would never allow him to kill an innocent like Tatsuya Uchiha. It was just that he'd expected the ANBU to stop him from torturing one of the shinobi of the village a lot earlier. It turned out Kakashi was a lot more indecisive than he'd expected, so he had to do something as drastic as order Haruto to kill Tatsuya.
Haruto stood beside Hiruko for a second, as if processing the order before turning around and walking up to the ANBU that had collapsed onto the floor with the lack of any chakra or physical and spiritual energies in their bodies.
Kakashi couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"Haruto-kun!!?" Kakashi shouted desperately to wake himself up from what he expected to be a dream. "What's happening!?"
Panic and a sense of dread settled in Kakashi's chest as he watched Haruto walk over with a scalpel in his hands.
Hiruko suddenly laughed sharply looking at the scenario. "Ha! Surprised Kakashi-kun?" The laugh was cathartic. And it should've been since Hiruko desperately loathed Kakashi for his inherent talent and his luck to have obtained a sharingan.
"You obtained what I wanted so desperately without even paying a price for it… now I must exact a price from you as the new becoming of the divine of this Shinobi Era."
Kakashi, whose mental state was rapidly deteriorating, looked at Haruto with blurry eyes.
"Have you chosen your side, Haruto-kun…" Kakashi mumbled softly, collapsing to the floor as he lost his strength.
Haruto walked normally as he reached Kakashi and then slashed right at his neck without any apparent emotion!!
Blood poured out and soaked his ANBU armour and jacket as Kakashi collapsed fully to the floor with a look of surprise frozen on his face.
He repeated the motion for all the three ANBU before turning around and waiting while looking at Hiruko.
Hiruko nodded.
"Excellent job Haruto-kun!" Hiruko was excited once he saw the blood pooling at the base of Kakashi's body.
He then quickly turned his focus on Tatsuya Uchiha whose eyes had regained their fire after he realised what was happening.
He tried to mobilise chakra to free himself to no avail. The seals placed on him were perfect with no chance of him mobilising anything without a tremendous burning sensation to follow throughout his chakra pathways system as if lava was poured into it instead of chakra.
Hiruko, with a clear smile on his blood stained face, brought his right hand over Tatsuya's face and activated the karma seal fully once again.
The effect was immediate.
Tatsuya's chakra along with his soul began to be pulled right into the Karma seal on Hiruko's hand!
"AAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
The pain seemed to be intense and Hiruko seemed to revel in it immensely.
All of a sudden however, Hiruko felt chakra fluctuate behind him!
"Multiple Fireball jutsu!" Haruto shouted inside his mind as he formed the handseals to launch three fireballs. One of them flew directly towards Hiruko while two flew towards Tatsuya, aiming to put Hiruko in a pinch to decide if he wished to save Tatsuya or himself.
But Haruto calculated wrongly.
Hiruko smirked and raised his hand calmly, pointing it at Haruto as he spoke, "Oh! You broke out of my genjutsu Haruto-kun… how interesting… I hadn't expected that… was it the strong emotions generated by killing your comrades? I will make sure that it is accounted for in the future."
Hiruko's karma marking absorbed all three fireballs right from the air before he launched them right back at Haruto without any delay!