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It worked.
Danzo felt it through Susanoo's structure before the visual confirmation arrived. The spiral blade, carrying all three properties of the Vacuum technique simultaneously, sharpness and piercing force and speed woven into a single release, found its way through the Lightning Armor.
The Lightning Armor. The strongest shield in the shinobi world, by general consensus of everyone who had tested the claim and survived to report the result.
The scarlet stain that appeared on the Raikage's body confirmed what the technique's feedback had already communicated. There was no absolute protection. Not Susanoo. Not the Lightning Armor. Every defense had a limit, and the right technique applied at the right moment could find it.
The wound was not deep enough.
Danzo had known this before the smoke cleared. The Wind Release at his current level, even perfected to the degree he had developed it, had not produced a fatal strike. The Raikage was still standing on the other side of the dissipating smoke, and the quality of his stillness was the stillness of someone absorbing damage rather than someone who had been stopped.
The last time, Danzo sacrificed an eye to survive a single direct exchange with this man.
The memory surfaced with particular clarity. In the original's experience, that moment had been the closest approach to death in a lifetime defined by proximity to it. Danzo held the memory without flinching and used what it contained.
One of the four diamond-shaped tomoe in his right Mangekyō began to fade.
Shisui's Susanoo, held in the eye's storage through Mata Furui Toriku, had a duration. That duration was approaching its end.
.....
The smoke cleared fully.
The spiral blade, carrying the Vacuum enhancement, had penetrated the Raikage's right shoulder and lodged in the shoulder blade. Not through. Lodged. The Raikage's skeletal density alone would have been insufficient to stop it at that depth. What had stopped it was the three fingers of his right hand, folded into the blade configuration, concentrating black lightning chakra at the fingertips into a dazzling electric discharge that had caught and held the translucent blade at the critical depth.
He had shifted to Three Fingers in the moment of contact.
Susanoo. The third force. Named in the old mythology for the god of storms and destruction, capable of splitting mountains and draining seas in the texts that described it. Shisui's left-eye dōjutsu had been named after that force, and its defining property was that it allowed its user to manifest Susanoo with minimal chakra expenditure. With sufficient eye power, a shinobi carrying only a single Mangekyō could access the technique.
Which was why Danzo, operating with a left eye whose power was nearly exhausted, could still use it.
"Ha."
The sound came from somewhere deep in the Raikage's chest. His black lightning flared at the fingertips with renewed intensity, focused rather than dispersed, and the shimmering structure of the Vacuum-enhanced blade began to unravel. First the edge dissolved. Then the blade's length followed. The enormous bone hand holding the sword became translucent, then ghostly, then absent.
"Susanoo bypasses eye power restrictions," Danzo thought, working through the situation with the cold efficiency of a practitioner who had spent decades learning to calculate under pressure. "But in the end it relies on my chakra reserves."
Four A-rank techniques used consecutively. Continuous defense of the Susanoo structure against the Hellspear. This body was old. Its reserves were not what a younger vessel's would have been, and it was communicating that fact with increasing directness.
He removed the Self-Curse Seal from the Raikage.
His figure blurred, and a hundred meters of distance appeared between him and the Raikage in the space of an instant.
.....
Without the chakra maintaining it, the weakened skeletal arm came apart under Three Fingers, collapsing into shapeless dark energy that dispersed into the air as though it had never been solid.
The Raikage moved.
The black lightning discharge carried him across the hundred meters with the speed of its namesake. The crushing blow that followed distorted the air in the space it passed through, the force of it making breathing difficult within its radius even for shinobi who were not its target.
It found no target.
Danzo had created the distance in advance. A hundred meters to a Raikage in speed mode was not meaningfully different from standing arm's reach away. But to an experienced fighter with Sharingan tracking every movement, it was the difference between having time to think and having no time at all.
He responded.
The shinobi watching the battle saw only the result. The Raikage was thrown backward at a velocity exceeding what he had used to close the distance. He hit the rock formation behind him with a sound that shook the ground, leaving the impression of his body in the stone face.
.....
In the rear observation position, Uchiha Fugaku activated his three-tomoe Sharingan.
He was one of two people on the battlefield capable of tracking the detail of the exchange at those speeds. What he had seen was incomplete, but the key element was clear.
"At the moment of the Raikage's attack, Danzo released a repulsive force of enormous density. He threw the Raikage back without a single seal."
Yamanaka Inoichi, monitoring the battlefield's complete picture through his sensory range, confirmed it simultaneously from a different angle.
With Kurodai eliminated, the pressure on the supporting positions had shifted. Akimichi Chōza was handling what remained of the Raikage's personal guard alongside two jonins, the Lava and Magnet Release Kekkei Genkai users unable to break through Konoha's formation and reach the main engagement. This freed Inoichi to maintain full battlefield awareness.
"Contact Minato," Shikaku said, his voice carrying the flat precision of a man issuing instructions that have been thought through to their end. "Have him place a mark on Danzo-sama. Then create an opportunity for Raikage."
Inoichi released his awareness outward and found the specific signature of golden chakra threaded with blue lightning. The instruction moved.
.....
"Understood. Hopefully after the battle, given the contributions today, Danzo-sama will consider reducing my punishment."
Minato dodged Ay's punch by not being where it arrived, appeared behind Danzo, and touched his shoulder. Four fuinjutsu characters settled into the fabric of Danzo's vest in the instant of contact.
Danzo had already received Shikaku's relay. He looked at the young blonde shinobi beside him with an expression that contained the specific quality of someone who had assessed a situation and formed a position on it.
"Unnecessary movement. I am sufficient alone."
Ay did not pursue Minato as he retreated.
Partly because of what Danzo had done to his father with an empty-handed gesture. Partly because a group of Konoha shinobi had appeared in Killer B's sector that the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki was finding difficult to manage independently.
.....
"Delightful chakra." Aburame Tatsuma released his insects across the battlefield with the particular note in his voice that emerged only when the Kikaichu were genuinely pleased with their work. "They are very satisfied."
The black swarm wrapped around the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki in darkened streams, coiling around the emerging tentacles of Gyūki with the thoroughness of people who had studied this exact target type in advance.
"Eight-Tails after the Nine-Tails." Shisui, standing at the short end of the Root formation, drew the blade that matched Danzo's standard Root issue. Three black tomoe turned in his scarlet eyes. "The variety is notable."
"Hold formation." Kyō's voice was controlled, her breathing slightly elevated from exertion. "We arrived quickly and the three of us do not have your chakra absorption capability. Do not extend beyond the position."
"Then I will serve as the primary striking force this rotation. The three of you restore your reserves."
Tatsuma had absorbed one of Gyūki's tentacles and felt the immediate benefit move through his system. He stepped forward and regarded Killer Bee, who was fighting against the insect cocoon with the particular frustration of someone whose power was being drained rather than opposed. His expression was the expression of someone who has placed themselves between their squad and a Biju-level threat and found the position acceptable.
"Senpai." Shisui, calculating his remaining reserves, chose caution. Two or three tenths remaining. He and Kyō and Shin reached into their pouches and swallowed soldier pills without ceremony. The boost moved through them quickly, the chakra replenishment beginning its work. "Danzo-sama seems to be managing well."
"We may see the technique this time," Kyō said.
Shin, who maintained stillness in most situations without visible effort, showed a reaction that was noticeably different from his usual baseline. He straightened.
"You mean he has actually completed it? The absolute Wind Release technique? Superior even to the Vacuum Blade?"
Kyō said nothing further.
The answer was somewhere in the quality of what was happening on the main battlefield, in the way Danzo was moving through the engagement, in the specific patience of someone who is waiting for a moment rather than fighting toward one.