Thank you all so much for your support!!
--------------------------------------------------
Manji's expression tightened for half a second, then smoothed back to nothing.
No anger. Not even a flicker of irritation. A man who'd lived for centuries didn't get ruffled by some kid with a sharp tongue and a sharper kunai. If a few rude words were enough to break his composure, then every one of those centuries had been wasted.
He'd chosen this disguise on purpose. White-haired elder. Forgettable face. The kind of traveler you'd pass on a road and never think about again. The last thing he wanted was to waltz into the mortal world wearing his real face and trigger a global pilgrimage.
He was here to visit the Tailed Beasts. Not host a fan meet.
"OLD MAN, YOU GOT A DEATH WISH? MOVE IT! UCHIHA BUSINESS. CIVILIANS GET LOST!"
One of the Uchiha fighters snarled at him, chakra flaring with casual menace. Didn't even bother looking twice. Just another geezer in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But Uchiha Senichi wasn't so quick to dismiss him.
The clan head's eyes locked onto the old man and stayed there. Something cold and electric crawled up his spine.
Wrong. Something is very wrong.
He'd been running full Sharingan perception the entire fight. Three-tomoe, then Mangekyō. The most advanced sensory Dōjutsu in the shinobi world. He should have detected a mosquito landing on a branch three hundred meters away.
And this old man had appeared in the middle of the battlefield without triggering a single alert. No chakra signature. No footsteps. No disturbance in the air. As if the forest had grown him like a mushroom.
And he's just standing there... Nine-Tails raging twenty meters away. Dozens of armed Uchiha with killing intent thick enough to cut. Any normal human would be on their knees from the pressure alone. This old man looked like he was waiting for a bus.
"Wait. Those eyes—"
Senichi's breath caught. His pupils contracted so fast it hurt.
The old man's eyes were wrong. No iris. No white. Just concentric rings, layered and turning with a slow, hypnotic gravity that made Senichi's Sharingan want to look away.
He'd seen those rings described once. In the oldest, most deteriorated pages of the Uchiha clan's sealed archives...
..............
Meanwhile, Kurama had spotted Manji the instant he'd appeared.
The Nine-Tails' crimson eyes went wide. The volcanic fury that had been pouring off him in waves dropped by half in a heartbeat. His massive fox mouth split into a grin so broad it looked deranged.
His tails swept the ground behind him with smug, lazy satisfaction. He turned those enormous eyes toward the Uchiha formation and looked at them the way a man looks at ants trying to climb his shoe.
Backup has arrived.
'Your precious Indra used to kneel for this guy. ALL of you would.'
"Old man. Who are you?"
Senichi forced the tremor out of his voice. Barely.
Manji stepped forward. One step. Unhurried.
"Young man, the Nine-Tails here is an old friend of mine. Taking him down will cost you dearly, and he won't come out of it unscathed either. Why not save yourselves the trouble? Let him go. Consider it a favor..."
Manji's tone was warm. The voice of someone asking you to keep the noise down after ten.
The Uchiha stared at him like he'd grown a second head.
An old friend of the Nine-Tailed Fox. The single most destructive force on the planet. And this wrinkled old codger was calling it a friend.
"Old man, the Nine-Tails is critical to our clan's strategy. We're taking it. I suggest you leave while you still can."
"No amount of sentiment will make us release the Nine-Tails. The Uchiha don't negotiate."
Senichi's voice could have frosted glass.
Manji nodded mildly. His hand reached back and drew the Crimson Fan from its harness, holding it at his side. The ancient patterns etched into its surface caught a stray beam of light filtering through the canopy.
"Then how about a trade?"
"This fan is a rare artifact. It has a certain... connection to your ancestor, Indra. I'd say that makes it a fitting piece for the Uchiha collection."
"The fan for the fox. What do you say?"
The Uchiha fighters exchanged baffled glances.
But Senichi heard something that turned his blood to nitrogen.
Indra.
This stranger had just spoken the founding ancestor's name. Out loud. Without honorifics. Without reverence. Like he was talking about someone he'd had dinner with.
"YOU DARE SPEAK OUR ANCESTOR'S NAME SO CASUALLY??" Senichi's Sharingan erupted. Three tomoe spun, blurred, reformed into the jagged geometry of the Mangekyō. Killing intent flooded the clearing like a ruptured dam.
"What exactly is your relationship to our ancestor? This level of disrespect is something the Uchiha do NOT forgive!"
Before Manji could respond, Kurama decided to be helpful.
The Nine-Tails threw his enormous head back and let out a howling laugh that scattered birds from trees half a mile away.
"HAHAHAHA! What relationship? Your precious Indra would've dropped to his KNEES in front of this man and called him 'Grandpa'! You have no idea who you're talking to! This is the Six Paths—"
His throat locked shut. An invisible hand clamped down on his vocal cords with surgical precision.
Kurama looked down. Met Manji's gaze. The old man's expression hadn't changed at all, but those Rinnegan carried a message that was perfectly clear.
Shut. Up.
Kurama's ears flattened. His tails drooped. He closed his mouth and suddenly became very interested in a patch of dirt near his front paw. 'Right... the Master didn't want to be recognized. And he'd just been three words away from blowing the whole thing.'
Bad fox. No biscuit.
Manji had no interest in revealing his identity. No interest in getting dragged into the Shinobi world's endless power struggles. The Crimson Fan was something he'd originally planned to give Indra as a parting gift but had never gotten around to it. Handing it to the Uchiha now was just tying up a loose end.
Besides, one war fan wasn't going to tip any balance of power. Compared to what Hagoromo had pumped into Asura, this was pocket change. A trinket.
Can't count as favoritism if the gift barely registers.
Manji looked at Senichi again. Same mild expression. Same gentle voice. "So, young man. What do you say?"
Senichi stared at those concentric rings. His mind raced through the clan archives at maximum speed, cross-referencing every fragment, every footnote, every half-destroyed passage he'd ever read.
And a thought detonated behind his eyes like a paper bomb.
Rinnegan.
The RINNEGAN.
The archives had mentioned it only in passing. The eyes of a certain disciple of the Sage of Six Paths.
POWER BEYOND MORTAL COMPREHENSION!!
Senichi didn't care who this old man was. Didn't care about his history, his connections, or his relationship to Indra. None of that mattered.
What mattered was those eyes.
If he took them, he'd stand at the summit of the shinobi world. Senju Shūichi would be nothing. The Uchiha would dominate everything. Forever.
"Old man. Keep your fan." A smile crept across Senichi's face. Cold. Predatory. The kind of smile that precedes something irreversible. "But those eyes of yours... I'LL BE TAKING THEM."
He exploded forward.
One instant he was standing fifteen meters away. The next he was a blur, chakra detonating under his feet, Sharingan locked onto the Rinnegan, right hand shaped into a claw aimed directly at Manji's eye sockets.
Got him!
Senichi's heart surged. His fingertips were already close enough to feel the warmth radiating from the old man's face.
Then the world turned white.
FLASH!
..............
A burst of light so intense it bleached the color from everything. One frame. That was all it lasted. Faster than a blink. Faster than thought.
When it faded, Senichi was standing in the same clearing, facing the same direction he'd been charging.
Except he was now facing away from the old man.
His body was unharmed. His stance was intact. But his orientation had rotated one hundred and eighty degrees without his muscles, his chakra network, or his Sharingan registering a single microsecond of the transition.
'What.'
'Where am I.'
'Why am I looking the wrong way.'
He spun around.
Every hair on his body was standing straight up. Every survival instinct he possessed was screaming at a frequency he'd never heard before.
"What was that?? What technique did you just use??"
His fists clenched until the knuckles cracked, voice shaking with something he refused to call fear.
Manji stood exactly where he'd been standing before. Same posture. Same gentle expression. Same grandfatherly warmth, as if he hadn't just performed something that violated every law of combat that Senichi had ever learned.
'What technique? Should I tell him that was just a basic attack? Not even a jutsu. Just... a regular hit. The kind you throw between actual moves.'
'A jab. An auto-attack. The filler between combos.'
Manji kept the thought to himself and said nothing.
He smiled.
--------------------------------------------------
~ Every 100 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~ 15 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon!
https://p-atreon.com/dragonnx
(Just remove the hyphen to access Patreon normally.)