Mamoru walked toward the noise, gravel crunching beneath his feet.
Closer, the bulky silhouette grew distinct: dragging himself by one arm and his chin, each movement scraping blood and dirt, leaving a long crimson trail.
Hearing the steps, Tosuke shuddered, tried to rise, collapsed, and whimpered.
"P-please… please… don't… please…"
The words tore out with blood-frothed breath.
Mamoru's face showed neither pity nor joy. He drew a Kunai from his pouch, cold steel glinting in the moonlight. He planted a foot on Tosuke's back and leaned the tip toward the heart.
"Any last words?"
"N-no… don't… don't kill…"
Terror scattered his speech, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
Mamoru said nothing, the Kunai slid home, ending Tosuke's final breath. He pulled the blade free, straightened, and lifted his gaze to the bright moon overhead.
Pale light washed over a calm, expressionless face and night wind stirred his raven hair.
Tosuke's death stirred only a ripple within him.
The man had ambition and cunning. Against anyone else tonight, the ending might have changed.
Mamoru released a quiet breath. With the fight over, he finally looked around.
The road beyond the wall lay ruined—rubble, stone, snapped branches everywhere. Blast-wrack stretched farther than expected, trees felled in half.
Mamoru tried hoisting the corpse across his shoulders, but the weight made him stumble.
Rubbing his temple, he mocked himself. Relying on the Six Eyes too long had made him forget his own limits.
The body's weight dug into his shoulder, the stench of blood thick in his nose.
Without the eye, he felt almost feeble.
Had he grown too dependent?
He pushed the thought aside, steadied the load, and picked his way through the wreckage, each footstep crunching on grit and twigs.
Though surprised by the blast's reach, he didn't linger, hurrying along the wall to the road's end and slipping into a side alley.
He vaulted atop the wall, scanned the compound, confirmed it wasn't Kurenai's sector, and sped along.
—
As the distance closed, the clamor grew clearer.
In the mansion's courtyard, a crowd was frantically grappling with enormous branches spreading from the tatami room.
The eerie cherry-blossom limbs writhed like living things. Swords hacked at them, Fire Release scorched them, wind blades sliced them, yet every severed part sprouted back in an instant, endless and unrelenting.
All of it was an illusion Kurenai had woven with exquisite care.
In reality, the men flailed at empty air—rolling on the ground, slashing at nothing, spitting at phantoms, even clenching one another and howling in anguish.
Crouched on the wall, Mamoru watched the scene and privately sneered, 'Battling the air? Truly endless amusement.'
He shifted the corpse on his shoulder, hoisted it overhead with both arms, and shouted, "Here's a present for you! Catch!"
While the gangsters wrestled with the illusion, a dark shape plummeted from the sky.
Thud!
Tosuke's body slammed into the center of the yard, rolled several times, and stopped at the feet of a man cowering in the corner.
"Aaaah—""
A shrill scream split the air.
The effeminate fellow who first spotted the corpse scrambled backward, face white as paper.
He'd thought a comrade had simply fallen, but when he looked down at that ashen face he froze solid. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked again—Tosuke's dead visage still stared back.
More shouts erupted as others noticed the sudden corpse.
"Hey! You call yourself a henchman when you scream like that at your beloved boss?"
A bright young voice rang across the yard.
Some froze mid-motion and turned toward the sound.
Even the phantom cherry branches stilled, as if awaiting orders.
A boy lounged atop the wall, one knee cocked, the other leg dangling. Head tilted, he gazed down at the chaos below. Shadow masked most of his face, only the mocking curl of his lips visible.
"Impossible! Boss can't lose!"
"I-iit's just genjutsu!""
"Who d'you think you're fooling, brat?""
"Right, another Genjutsu!"
The yard erupted in denial, anger laced with rising panic.
"Fools." Mamoru smirked. "That's the real Tosuke, dead by my hand."
Had he any Chakra left and his right fingers not been broken, he'd have swept these minions aside himself.
Several who'd attended the banquet recognized Mamoru as tonight's attacker. Pair that with the earlier explosion and the corpse at their feet, and the truth was obvious.
"Could that really be Tosuke-sama?"
"Shut up! If he hears you cursing him—"
"So… he's finally dead?"
Amid the babble, Mamoru covered his mouth and piped in falsetto, "Oh! It's Tosuke, he's dead."
"It really is him!"
"Yeah, that's Tosuke!"
"Tosuke is dead…"
Having survived the Third Great Ninja War, Kurenai had long grown used to every kind of grisly corpse. Still, she hadn't expected Tosuke to earn such high praise from Mamoru. She had never heard of the man before, he might be a talent buried by some hidden village.
"Let's not talk about that." Mamoru leaned sideways against a pillar under the eaves and asked lazily, "Where's that guy… uh… Hitomi? "
"It's Hiroshi, not Hitomi." Kurenai corrected wearily, pointing toward the tatami room. "He's inside, out cold."
She added softly, "And Komatsu's father… I don't know if he's still alive."
Using his Six Eyes, Mamoru had carefully scanned the mansion. From Komatsu's earlier description, he quickly located a middle-aged man who matched the profile in a side room at the southeast corner. The man lay on the couch on the verge of death, his breath as faint as a candle in the wind.
"The old man's alive." Mamoru cut her off, indifferent. "He's not in great shape, but he's still breathing. Should make Komatsu happy."
"He's alive?" Kurenai's eyes widened slightly, surprise in her voice. "How did you find him?"
"Sharingan." Mamoru answered curtly, eyes still shut.
"Sharingan can do that?" Kurenai shot a thoughtful glance at Mamoru resting with closed eyes.
As the team's Jōnin instructor, she had naturally studied the Uchiha clan's Kekkei Genkai, but she knew little of its specific abilities.
"Byakugan can do something similar." Mamoru off-handedly used Byakugan as his shield.
Kurenai tactfully let it drop. "Then where is he now?"
"Somewhere in this house." Mamoru sounded exhausted. "Luckily not near where Tosuke and I fought. Would've been ironic if he hadn't died by Tosuke's hand but got caught in our battle instead."
"Stop the nonsense." Kurenai shook her head lightly. "Shall we go look for him now?"
"Tosuke's no longer a threat." Mamoru sighed. "No rush. Right now I don't even want to move a finger."
After the fierce fight with Tosuke, Mamoru felt empty from drained Chakra and brain-fatigue from over-using the Six Eyes, but he could still move if he had to. Yet the moment he relaxed, exhaustion swept through him like a tide. He couldn't even bother to lift an eyelid.
Kurenai pondered a moment, moonlight brushing her faintly furrowed brow. At last she relented. "Fine. Rest here, I'll go back and bring Hinata and the others."
In this mission, her role had mainly been diversion and harassment, so she hadn't spent much stamina or Chakra.
Before leaving she cautioned, "I'm leaving this place to you, okay?"
When Mamoru gave a nod, she finally turned and vanished under the cold moonlight.