Shimura Hōki had come to the Uchiha compound expecting to gather intelligence and, if the opportunity presented itself, claim a bit of political credit for his father. A quick reconnaissance mission. In and out. Simple work for a shinobi of his caliber.
He had been inside the compound for approximately four seconds before everything went catastrophically wrong.
The first thing he registered was the impact — a blur of motion, a body hurtling through the air at inhuman speed, slamming into him with the force of a collapsing wall. Obito's battered form had been the projectile, launched by Sasuke's latest vector-enhanced strike, and Hōki had simply been standing in the flight path. The collision drove every molecule of air from his lungs. His ribs cracked. Blood sprayed from his mouth.
Before he could process the pain — before his training could kick in, before his body could execute the substitution or the defensive stance that his muscle memory demanded — an enormous hand of translucent indigo chakra closed around his entire body.
Susano'o's grip.
The spectral fingers contracted, pinning his arms to his sides, compressing his torso with a steady, inexorable pressure that made his bones groan. His head — the only part of his body left exposed above the spectral fist's grip — jutted out from between two massive chakra knuckles like a grape about to be squeezed from its skin.
He looked down.
A child was standing on a charred roof beam below him. Small. Thin. Wearing the dark high-collared shirt of the Uchiha clan, the red and white fan crest barely visible beneath layers of ash and dried blood. Two spectral arms of dark blue Susano'o extended from behind the child's shoulders, one of them holding Hōki aloft like a doll.
And in the child's eyes — those terrible, spinning, blood-streaked eyes — the six-pointed star of the Mangekyō Sharingan rotated with lazy, predatory precision.
Sasuke Uchiha. The second son of Fugaku. Seven years old.
"I am a member of Root," Hōki snarled, clinging to whatever authority his father's name still carried. His voice came out strained — compressed lungs, compressed ribs, the spectral grip tightening with each passing second. "Who do you think you are? Release me immediately! If you lay a hand on me, you'll die without a burial place — not even your precious brother will be able to protect you!"
The threat hung in the smoky air between them.
Sasuke tilted his head. The Mangekyō spun.
"Root," he repeated, and the word came out soft, almost contemplative. Then, slowly, the corners of his mouth pulled upward. "Shimura Danzō's organization?"
The smile that spread across his young face was not pleasant. It was the smile of a predator that had just discovered its prey was not merely food, but interesting food.
Root. Danzō's private army. The shadow organization that operated outside the Hokage's authority, answering only to the old warhawk himself. The same Danzō who had pressured the village council into authorizing the Uchiha massacre. The same Danzō who had stolen Shisui's eye. The same Danzō who kept a collection of harvested Sharingan embedded in his bandaged arm like a war criminal's trophy case.
And this man — this arrogant, struggling, frightened man dangling in Susano'o's grip — was Danzō's son.
"Then," Sasuke said, his voice dropping to a murmur, "let's see what secrets Root has been keeping."
The Mangekyō blazed.
Vector Manipulation activated — but not in the way it had been used throughout the night's combat. This was a different application entirely. Subtler. More precise. Instead of redirecting kinetic energy or amplifying physical force, the super-brain processor reconfigured its calculations to target a different kind of vector: the electrical impulses running through Hōki's nervous system.
The human brain communicated through electrochemical signals — tiny currents of electricity traveling along neural pathways, carrying information in patterns of voltage and frequency. Those currents were vectors. They possessed magnitude and direction. And anything that possessed a vector could be read.
Sasuke's palm pressed against Hōki's exposed forehead. The contact point established. The super-brain, working in concert with the Mangekyō's perceptual capabilities, began intercepting the electrical signals racing through Hōki's neural pathways — not all of them, that would have been an incomprehensible flood of data — but selectively, targeting specific memory clusters, scanning for keywords and associations, filtering the incoming data through a search algorithm that prioritized intelligence related to Root's operations, Danzō's secrets, and the political machinations behind the Uchiha massacre.
The process took less than three seconds.
The information that flooded into Sasuke's consciousness was a treasure trove.
Root's operational structure. Agent identities. Mission logs. Safe houses. Communication protocols. The location of Danzō's private armory. The roster of stolen Sharingan eyes embedded in his arm. The details of the curse seal placed on Root operatives' tongues to prevent them from speaking about the organization. The names of the village council members who had voted for the Uchiha extermination. The agreement between Itachi and Konoha's leadership — the exact terms, the exact promises, the exact conditions under which Itachi had accepted the role of mass murderer in exchange for Sasuke's safety.
All of it. Laid bare. Ripped from Hōki's mind like pages torn from a classified dossier.
Sasuke's eyes widened fractionally as the data processed. Then a grin — savage, delighted, hungry — split across his face.
What a surprise.
What an absolute, magnificent surprise.
He hadn't expected this when he'd grabbed the Root operative. He'd intended it as a minor indulgence — roughing up one of Danzō's dogs, sending a message. But the intelligence haul was far beyond anything he had anticipated. Hōki, as Danzō's son and a high-ranking Root operative, had access to information that most members of the organization would never see. The man's memories were a map of every dirty secret the old war hawk had buried over decades of shadow operations.
I came looking for a punching bag and found a goldmine, Sasuke thought, his mood lifting despite the exhaustion eating at his body. Thank you for the gift, Danzō. Your son has been very... forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the information had also confirmed something Sasuke already knew but hadn't possessed concrete evidence for: the full scope of the conspiracy behind the Uchiha massacre. Not just Danzō. Not just the village elders Homura and Koharu. The Third Hokage himself — Hiruzen Sarutobi, the so-called "Professor," the "God of Shinobi" — had sanctioned the operation. He had tried to find peaceful alternatives, yes. He had agonized over the decision, yes. But in the end, when Danzō had forced his hand, he had nodded his head and let it happen.
He had allowed Itachi to be turned into a weapon. He had allowed an entire clan — men, women, children, elderly — to be slaughtered in their beds. And then he had issued a gag order forbidding anyone from ever speaking the truth, burying the genocide beneath layers of classified seals and political euphemisms.
So much for the Will of Fire, Sasuke thought, and the bitterness in the thought was old and deep and cold.
Sasuke looked down at Hōki. The man's eyes were glazed — the neural extraction process had left him disoriented, his thoughts scrambled, his consciousness flickering like a candle in a draft. He was still alive, still breathing, but his mind was reeling from the invasion.
"If you were anyone else," Sasuke said quietly, "I might have let you go. A random Root agent following orders — that's a tool, not a person. I don't waste energy on tools."
He paused.
"But you're Shimura Danzō's son. And I am not inclined to show mercy to the Shimura bloodline."
Hōki's eyes snapped back into focus. Horror replaced confusion.
"What are you — what do you want to do?! You're insane! Let go of me! Let go of me!" He thrashed in the Susano'o's grip, his body writhing, his remaining chakra flaring in desperate, futile bursts against the spectral fingers that held him immobile. "I'm an Elite Jōnin! I'm the son of Shimura Danzō! You can't—"
"You keep saying that name like it should mean something to me," Sasuke interrupted. His voice was perfectly calm. Almost bored. "As if being Danzō's son makes you untouchable. As if your father's authority extends to me."
He leaned closer, his Mangekyō blazing centimeters from Hōki's terrified face.
"Let me educate you, Shimura. Your father helped murder my entire clan tonight. My mother. My father. Every aunt, uncle, cousin, and neighbor I've ever known. He didn't even have the courage to do it himself — he manipulated my brother into doing it for him, like the coward he is." A beat. "So when you invoke his name as a threat, all you're really doing is reminding me why I should squeeze harder."
The Susano'o fist tightened. Hōki's ribs groaned.
Sasuke straightened, seized the Root operative in the spectral grip, and launched himself into the air.
In the distance, fleeing through the outskirts of the compound toward the safety of the perimeter, Obito glanced back over his shoulder.
And immediately wished he hadn't.
Sasuke was airborne — a small, dark silhouette against the smoke-choked sky, the twin spectral arms of his partial Susano'o blazing with indigo light, one of them clutching a struggling human figure. The boy was moving toward the compound's edge, toward the perimeter where the Third Hokage's forces were gathered.
He's coming this way.
Obito's blood ran cold. The panic that he had been suppressing through sheer force of will surged back like a tide. He dove into the Kamui dimension without thinking — phasing through reality, his body dissolving into the swirling vortex of his dimensional pocket — and fled at maximum speed, keeping just enough of his form visible in the real world to navigate, while the rest of him hid in the safety of the pocket dimension.
"Monster," he whispered, and even in Kamui, even in the absolute isolation of his personal dimension, the word came out as barely more than a whimper. "What is that ability? Is it his Mangekyō? Why is it so terrifying? Why can he reach me inside Kamui? What IS he?"
The questions had no answers. Only fear.
The perimeter was close. He could sense the chakra signatures of the Hidden Leaf's response force — the Third Hokage's vast, steady presence, the sharp killing intent of Danzō, the organized patterns of ANBU patrols. Obito slipped past them like a ghost, invisible in Kamui, undetectable by any sensor, and made for the open countryside beyond the village walls.
"The boy said the Third Hokage was right there," Obito told himself as he fled. "He won't attack in front of the Hokage. He won't risk exposing himself. I'm safe. I'm safe now."
He almost believed it.
Almost.
Outside the compound, the gathering at the perimeter had reached a tense equilibrium.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stood with Itachi in the shadow of the compound wall, the injured young ANBU leaning against the stone for support, his blood-streaked face barely illuminated by the distant firelight. Danzō waited nearby, his single eye fixed on the burning compound, his cane tapping an impatient rhythm against the cobblestones.
Itachi's lips moved. He was trying — struggling — to explain what had happened. But the words refused to come in any order that made sense.
How did you explain to the Third Hokage — the man who had signed off on the massacre, who had placed his trust in Itachi's ability to control the situation — that the seven-year-old survivor had not only fought back, but had won? That Sasuke had beaten Itachi to a pulp, shattered his Susano'o, stolen Shisui's eye, detonated the entire compound, and then proceeded to use the masked man claiming to be Madara Uchiha as a personal punching bag for twenty straight minutes?
How did you phrase that in a way that didn't sound completely insane?
"Hokage-sama," Itachi began, his voice raw. "The situation inside — it wasn't that Sasuke was in danger. It was..." He faltered. Swallowed blood. Tried again. "Sasuke wasn't the victim. He was the—"
He never finished the sentence.
A sound split the night air above them — the sharp, whistling shriek of something descending at high speed, displacing air with the ferocity of a falling meteor.
Every head snapped upward.
A figure appeared in the sky directly above the perimeter. Small. Child-sized. Silhouetted against the blood-red moon, descending from the smoky heavens with the casual grace of a bird settling on a branch. Behind the figure's shoulders, two arms of translucent dark blue chakra extended — the selective-manifestation Susano'o limbs, blazing with ethereal fire, one of them gripping a struggling human form.
The figure touched down on a rooftop overlooking the perimeter with the lightness of a falling leaf.
The moonlight caught his face. Young. Blood-streaked. Mangekyō Sharingan spinning in eyes that were far, far too old for the child's body that housed them.
Sasuke Uchiha.
And in Susano'o's grip — dangling like a ragdoll, his mask cracked, his body battered, his face contorted in naked terror — was Shimura Hōki.
Before anyone below could react — before Hiruzen could speak, before Danzō could move, before the ANBU could form defensive positions — Hōki's voice shattered the silence with a scream so raw and desperate that it cut through the night like a blade.
"FATHER! HOKAGE-SAMA! SAVE ME!!!"
The cry echoed across the rooftops, rolling through the streets of Konohagakure, reaching every ear within a hundred meters.