Hearing the word "lesson," a sudden, cold flicker of panic ignited in Shisui's chest. He brutally clamped down on the emotion, forcing it deep into the recesses of his mind. He told himself this time was different.
This time, he had spent days meticulously observing the shadows. He had scoured every rotting alleyway in the slums and found no one with the motive, means, and proximity to match Kei Hyuga.
Therefore, Shisui rationalized, it was not his deduction that was flawed; it was simply that the blind doctor was a terrifyingly skilled actor. If Shisui could just apply enough pressure, he was certain he could shatter that infuriating mask of placid gentleness and expose the monster underneath.
Desperate to turn the tables and wash away the suffocating humiliation of their previous encounter, Shisui hardened his resolve. He gripped the hilt of his drawn tanto.
"Spare me your psychological games," Shisui warned, his voice vibrating with lethal tension. "I have already seen through your verbal traps."
Kei merely shrugged, the gesture exasperatingly casual given the drawn steel pointed at his chest. "It seems I have no need to explain myself, then. Because even if I laid the unvarnished truth at your feet, your mind has already chosen to reject it."
Kei leaned his weight onto his metal cane. "Once a man like you fixates his paranoia onto a target, his worldview simply refuses to adapt."
A dark, knowing smile touched Kei's lips. "Let me guess... if I were to confess to the abductions right now, you would be elated. You would feel entirely vindicated because your brilliant suspicions were proven correct."
Kei took a slow step forward. "But if I insist I am innocent, you will only grow more furious. Your anger has absolutely nothing to do with justice, Shisui. You are simply enraged that I refuse to validate your fabricated 'truth.'"
"No matter how eloquently you twist your words, I will not let you walk away tonight!" Shisui interrupted forcefully, raising his short sword into a high guard. "I do not wish to draw the blood of a Konoha comrade, but I can say with absolute certainty that you are no comrade of mine!"
With a burst of pure, kinetic speed, Shisui launched his assault. He aimed a blindingly fast, non-lethal strike toward Kei's shoulder, intending to sever the muscle and incapacitate the doctor before he could weave a single hand seal.
The steel blade bit deep.
Yet, as the tanto sliced through fabric and flesh, Kei's expression remained entirely impassive. There was no spray of blood. There was no resistance against the metal. In the blink of an eye, the figure of the blind doctor simply dissolved into mist, vanishing into the damp night air.
An illusion? Shisui's eyes widened in shock.
"You possess the physical capability to overwhelm me in an instant. Yet, you couldn't even see through a basic phantom clone."
The voice echoed clearly from the darkness directly behind him. Shisui violently twisted his body, his blade raised, only to discover Kei standing completely unharmed a few paces away.
"Did you not notice?" Kei asked softly. "Your perception of reality was compromised from the very beginning. From the exact moment I uttered the word 'destruction' in my clinic, you stopped seeing me."
"That night in this very alley," a second voice chimed in from the left. Shisui spun again. Another perfect copy of Kei Hyuga stood in the shadows. "You were profoundly humiliated, weren't you? To realize that what you violently ripped from a blind man's coat was not a scroll of corpses, but a wad of civilian currency."
"You could easily soothe your bruised ego by claiming you were tricked by parlor tricks because you underestimated me," a third voice echoed from the right.
Shisui didn't even need to turn his head to know a third phantom was standing there.
"But if you were facing a true enemy, Commander... how many times would you be afforded the luxury of being so spectacularly wrong?" The voices spoke in perfect, overlapping synchronization, echoing off the narrow brick walls. "Perhaps a single miscalculation is all it takes to plunge you into an inescapable grave. Perhaps one mistake is all it takes to utterly annihilate your entire clan."
Shisui stood frozen in the center of the alley, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
He was completely surrounded. He had been too careless, too blinded by his own prejudiced assumption that a crippled psychologist was incapable of fighting back. He had not activated his Sharingan or utilized his full speed, and he had paid the price.
What was even more terrifying, more utterly inconceivable, was the jutsu Kei was currently maintaining. It wasn't just a standard clone technique. The seamless blending of physical movement and auditory misdirection... it was identical to his own signature Phantom Body Flicker Jutsu!
"How did you do that?" Shisui demanded, his voice cracking slightly. "That is my technique!"
"Just assume I am a genius," Kei's voices replied smoothly.
"A genius?" Shisui gritted his teeth. "Can't you formulate a better lie?"
"It is not a lie, Shisui. It is a fact," Kei stated, the three phantoms stepping forward in unison. "But you refuse to believe it. Just as you summarily decided I was a serial kidnapper, you decided from the start that a blind doctor could not possibly possess true shinobi power. That is why you reject everything I say."
Before Shisui could formulate a retort, all three phantoms raised their metal canes, pointing them past Shisui toward the mouth of an intersecting, pitch-black alleyway.
"Instead of interrogating a civilian," Kei instructed coldly, "why don't you go see what is actually dragging your villagers into the dark?"
Shisui's crimson eyes snapped open, the three tomoe of his Sharingan spinning furiously as he locked his gaze onto the real Kei, trying to decipher if this was another elaborate trap. He still deeply suspected the Hyuga, but Kei had just handed him a tangible, immediate lead.
"If you continue to paralyze yourself with hesitation, Uchiha, you will miss the show entirely."
The taunt broke Shisui's paralysis. Sheathing his tanto, he erupted into a full-speed Shunshin, blurring past the phantoms and tearing down the intersecting alley Kei had indicated. He didn't want to follow the doctor's directions, but his shinobi instincts overrode his pride.
Reaching the deepest, darkest dead-end of the slum block, Shisui's Sharingan pierced the gloom.
He froze.
Slithering rapidly out of the shattered window of an abandoned hovel was a massive, unnaturally pale white snake. Its jaws were unhinged, its thick coils tightly wrapped around the unconscious, emaciated body of a homeless villager. It was dragging its prey toward a rusted, open sewer grate.
In a fraction of a second, Shisui drew his short sword and hurled it like a javelin.
The blade cut through the air, striking true. It cleanly severed the final two feet of the serpent's thick tail.
However, the white snake possessed a horrifying, unnatural vitality. It didn't even pause. Ignoring the massive wound, the creature violently contracted its remaining muscles and vanished down the narrow sewer pipe, dragging the villager into the subterranean darkness below.
Shisui lunged forward, but he was too late. He knelt by the grate, picking up the severed, writhing mass of bloody white scales. His brow furrowed in deep, troubled thought.
The rhythmic tap-tap of a metal cane echoed behind him. Kei approached unhurriedly, moving through the shadows like a ghost.
"Now," Kei asked, his voice entirely devoid of gloating. "Do you still believe I am the mastermind behind your missing persons case?"
Shisui stared down at the bloody snake tail in his hand, the last pillars of his absolute certainty crumbling into dust. Yet, his stubborn pride forced him to seek an out. "Someone is clearly utilizing snake summons to harvest the villagers. As for who is pulling the strings from the shadows... that is still uncertain."
"Do you truly not recognize the signature summon of the Sannin?" Kei asked, tilting his head. "Or are you simply terrified to admit the name of the man you are actually hunting?"
Shisui pressed his lips into a bloodless line, refusing to acknowledge the implication of Orochimaru. Instead, he deflected. "How did you know it was striking here tonight?"
"My physical strength may pale in comparison to the Shunshin no Shisui," Kei replied evenly, "but my sensory perception is absolute. That is why I can always see the truth of this village far more clearly than you."
"If you possessed the sensory range to track the beast, why did you not report it to the authorities earlier?" Shisui demanded, refusing to concede the moral high ground.
"Why don't you just abandon the pretense and accuse me of commanding the snake myself?" Kei countered dryly.
"Is that not a tactical possibility?"
"It is," Kei nodded, offering a mockingly agreeable smile. "But we arrive right back at the fundamental issue: where is your evidence?"
Kei stepped closer, his voice dropping into a chilling, authoritative register. "I have explained my presence to you multiple times, yet you continuously chose to ignore it. Even if I broke down the exact mechanics of my sensory web right now, would you believe me?"
Shisui subconsciously began to shake his head, but he caught himself, realizing he was stepping directly into another of the psychologist's traps.
"If an explanation is grounded in reasonable logic, why wouldn't the village believe it?" Shisui argued defensively.
Kei stopped walking. He 'stared' directly into Shisui's Sharingan.
"Then what of the Uchiha?" Kei asked, his words striking like physical blows. "Has no one from your clan ever stepped forward to reasonably explain your innocence regarding the Nine-Tails Attack? Has your Hokage truly listened? Did the village believe you?"
Shisui felt the breath leave his lungs.
"What you have done to me tonight, Shisui, is the exact, mirrored reflection of what Konoha has done to your clan," Kei stated, his voice ringing with absolute, damning finality. "You judged me on paranoia. You condemned me without evidence. You ignored my truths because my existence made you uncomfortable. You are no different from the oppressors you claim to fight."
Kei leaned closer. "In fact, you are infinitely more pathetic. The villagers hate the Uchiha because they are manipulated by the propaganda of their leaders. Your bigotry tonight was entirely self-inflicted."
"No, that's not—" Shisui started to protest, but the words died in his throat. He looked at the snake tail in his hand, and then at the blind man he had repeatedly assaulted and accused.
"It seems you already know the answer, even if your pride refuses to voice it," Kei said, turning away. "You can certainly keep fabricating desperate reasons to suspect me. You could even use your legendary speed to physically coerce a false confession from me. It would be incredibly easy for you."
Kei paused at the edge of the alley, pointing his cane back at the bloody scales dripping onto Shisui's boots.
"But Shisui, no matter how much force you apply to me, you will not find the salvation you are looking for. Because I am not your villain." Kei began to walk away into the darkness. "The true answer is literally bleeding in your grasp. If you possess the courage to track that beast into the dark, the truth of this village will finally emerge. I eagerly await your diagnosis... once you discover what kind of monsters truly wear the leaf."
Left entirely alone in the damp alley, Shisui was once again rendered utterly speechless.
He had initiated the confrontation absolutely certain that he would break the psychologist's composure. Instead, his own ideology had been flawlessly dissected and laid bare. He had secured the physical evidence he needed to crack the case, but he had only done so because Kei had handed it to him.
By every conceivable metric, the prodigy of the Uchiha had suffered another catastrophic defeat. And once again, he was left standing in the mud, entirely at the mercy of the blind doctor.