The air over the collapsed cliffside burned with the acrid stench of ozone, charred stone, and scorched flesh. Suna's defensive lines were gone, crushed under the Kyūbi's wrath. Kagami's vengeance was achieved. The Kuchimose clan's clandestine primary distillery was reduced to a smoking crater of shattered masonry and splintered wood.
Yet the victory was far from clean. Even with the Konoha forces keeping their distance, suffered unwarranted casaulties. The sheer force of another Bijūdama explosion during the assault had sent shockwaves tearing through the valley, vaporizing the frontline and burying dozens of Konoha and Senju shinobi under tons of falling debris. Worse than the rubble was the mist. Broken pipes from the distillery and shattered glass from the research labs had unleashed a pale violet haze of Suna's raw chakra poison across the battlefield, choking the survivors.
But amidst the screams of the dying and the frantic shouting of the Iryonins, a silent operation was executing perfectly.
Ten Senju Shadow Guards, wearing the dark, dirt-stained desert cloaks of fallen Suna shinobi, moved like ghosts through the smoke. Unnoticed by the distracted Konoha forces, they slipped deep into the crumbling subterranean vaults of the Kuchimose facility. They did not stop to help the wounded or engage the remaining resistance. Instead, they moved with mechanical efficiency, breaking into the burning archives. Their hands moved in a blur, sealing crates of rare alchemical scrolls, botanical research documents, and poison data into storage scrolls. By the time the main camp even realized the facility had fully breached, the deepest secrets of the Kuchimose clan were already safely in Senju hands.
On the surface, the colossal, orange-furred beast let out a final, world-shaking roar as it ripped the ceilings apart, exposing the inner parts of the base to the sun.
The last of the poison orchards had been trampled into ash. The central distillery was reduced a molten slag heap. With the destruction of his target, the sharingan pattern spinning in the Kyubi's pupil began to fade.
The Kamiyonanayo had reached its end.
As a dōjutsu, the technique was absolute: it could unconditionally force any target to execute a single, achievable command within a seven-day window, but the moment that specific command was fulfilled, the compulsion evaporated. The target's free will instantly snapped back into place.
"Hahahahaha. Ahahahahahahahhahahaha!"
On the beast's head, Kagami laughed maniacally as he reeled in the pleasure of avenging his beloved sensei. And gradually, the cold, unfeeling haze that had been gripping his mind for the past few days slipped away, replaced by a liberating sensation as if a great burden has been lifted off his shoulder. However, it did not take long for another burden to find its way in his mind as reason and clarity assessed his past actions.
"Mito-sama!" Kagami gasped, his breath hitching.
With his consciousness clearing, he immediately attempted to release the genjutsu gripping Uzumaki Mito and re-establish a suppressing seal on the Nine-Tails. But the delicate balance of the Jinchūriki seal had already been catastrophically disrupted.
The process succeeded only halfway. The beast's form disappeared, but a sickening, dark-red chakra suddenly erupted from Mito's shaking form on the battlefield below, forming a boiling, translucent shroud. Deep within her own mental realm, Mito's consciousness was already locked in a desperate, bloody struggle to pin the tailed-beast back down, but she was fighting alone and she was exhausted.
Kagami dropped down, his boots hitting the sand as he ran toward her. "Mito-sama! Hold on! I'm coming to—"
Thud!
A massive hand slammed down into the sand right in front of him, shattering the ground. Akimichi Torifu stepped into his path, his face grim and darkened by soot. Right beside him, Senju Ayame materialized, her spear firmly planted in the earth, her old eyes flashing with fierce hostility as she shielded the thrashing, chakra-coated form of Mito behind her.
"Step back, Uchiha!" Ayame barked, her voice cutting through the wind. "You have done quite enough damage today."
"I can reseal it!" Kagami shouted, panic finally bleeding into his voice as he looked past them. Behind the two, Senju's specialized barrier and sealing teams were already scrambling forward, desperately throwing down ink-covered scrolls and tools to cage the leaking, malicious energy. "Let me help! Her seal is failing!"
But it was already too late. Mito's body, already severely weakened from her efforts to heal Tobirama and further fractured by the trauma of the Mangekyō's genjutsu, simply could not hold the line.
ROAR!
The crimson shroud boiling around Mito exploded outward. The bubbling chakra rapidly condensed, growing denser, darker, and infinitely more malicious. A single tail split into three, then violently multiplied. Four. Five. Six.
A skeletal framework of white bone manifested over the boiling, blood-red skin of the miniature beast. It slammed its front paws into the earth, creating a shockwave that blew the sealing teams backward like ragdolls.
"Hold the line!" Shikasuke roared from the rear. He and his clansmen immediately activated their Shadow Possession Jutsu to arrest the beast's forward momentum, but chaos erupted instantly.
The Jinchūriki tore through the encampment, completely blind to ally or enemy. It swatted aside Senju guards, shattered Shimura defenses, and trampled straight through the Nara-Yamanaka-Akimichi vanguard.
"Mind Transfer Jutsu!" a Yamanaka captain screamed, his hands formed into the signature seal as he targeted the rampaging form.
An instant later, the Yamanaka captain let out a blood-curdling shriek. He collapsed to his knees, blood pouring from his nose and eyes as his mind was violently repelled by the malice of the Kyūbi's conscious thoughts. The mental backlash left him instantly comatose.
The sealing teams tried to rally, throwing up heavy iron chains of chakra, but the six-tailed beast targeted them with terrifying intelligence, biting and clawing them into the dirt.
Kagami's teeth ground together. He couldn't wait any longer. Channeling chakra into his feet, he bypassed Torifu and Ayame, blurring toward Mito's thrashing form to force his way back into her mental space. Because he was completely surrounded by the familiar chakra signatures of Konoha shinobis, his sensory perception dropped its guard for a fraction of a second.
He never saw the blades coming.
Slash!
Three figures clad in Suna cloaks materialized out of the smoke directly in his blind spot. Kagami ducked instinctively, but the lead attacker's kunai caught him across the left side of his face.
A agonizing, white-hot pain exploded in his skull. Blood sprayed across the sand as the attacker's blade gouged directly through his left eyelid, ripping the Mangekyō Sharingan from its socket.
"Argh!" Kagami roared, stumbling back, his right hand clutching his bleeding, empty socket.
"You bastards!" Kagami screamed, his remaining right eye bled tears of blood.
A torrent of black flames erupted from his right eye, slamming directly into the lead assassin. The man didn't even have time to scream before the Amaterasu reduced him to ash on the spot. Kagami swung his gaze, sweeping the black fire in a desperate arc to incinerate the ambushers. The flames consumed six more of the hidden attackers, their cloaks burning away to briefly reveal standard, unmarked armor beneath before they turned to dust.
Through the haze of his bleeding right eye, he watched as the remaining three ambushers retreated into the chaotic smoke of the battlefield, vanishing without a trace. Kagami fell to one knee, the black flames flickering out as he clutched his chest, gasping for air against the sudden pain taking root in his heart.
A burning sensation began to rapidly spread from his heart through his nervous and circulatory systems. Not only his chakra, but his physical and spiritual energy were rapidly draining out of his system. His remaining eye widened in horror as he recognized these symptoms. It was the exact same specialized chakra poison that had claimed the life of his beloved teacher, Senju Tobirama.
Kagami fell to his knee as he watched rushing figures of his clansmen from the corner his failing vision.
***
"Kagami!" Naka yelled, diving forward to catch the Uchiha's collapsing figure.
Fukashi rushed to follow but quickly turned toward the devastating chaos spreading across the valley. The Kyūbi was still in its chakra-coated state, its tails now multiplying to seven. The Konoha shinobi were in a full, disorganized retreat, completely abandoning their efforts to contain the beast.
Fukashi had assumed the Senju planned this entire scheme. But looking at the meat grinder before him, he began to doubt himself. This was not the scene he had expected to find upon arrival. He had anticipated that Mito and the rest of the village shinobi would already have Kagami in custody, waiting for the Uchiha at a highly disadvantageous negotiation table. Even without Hashirama or Tobirama, this level of raw, uncontained chaos was not something he expected from the Senju old guard—unless this truly hadn't been their plan from the start. This was entirely Kagami's voluntary, rogue act.
Confusion filled Fukashi's eyes as he questioned his next move. 'Should I just let this play out and let the Kyūbi break free? Our primary objective was only to save Kagami...'
He rapidly scanned the perimeter. Kenji was currently rushing onto the field with his six Anbu escorts, aggressively rallying the retreating Senju squads to attempt another sealing array. Torifu was still wrestling the Kyūbi. Shikasuke and the Nara shinobi were using everything they had to halt the beast's momentum and assist Torifu. However, they couldn't stop the creature; its boiling chakra shroud continuously dissipated and materialized, slipping right out of the Nara's Shadow Possession Jutsu. Meanwhile, the Uchiha vanguard stood completely stationary on the sidelines, far more concerned over Kagami's horrific condition than the fate of the battlefield.
Then, Eisuke approached him through the dust.
"Uncle Fukashi... Kagami... he..." Eisuke's voice trembled as he lowered his head. Kagami, his little brother, was rapidly reaching his final moment.
Fukashi walked over to where Kagami lay. The Seventh Division members silently parted, letting him through.
Kagami was stretched out on a rough canvas cloth, visibly withered, his breathing only barely stabilized by Shinichi's meticulous Medical Ninjutsu. Fukashi stared hard at the jagged, bleeding crater of Kagami's gouged-left eye before kneeling directly beside him.
He grabbed the dying man's hand. "Who did this to you, Kagami?" Fukashi demanded in a low, dangerous growl. He stared deep into Kagami's right eye—his only remaining eye, which could no longer even muster the strength to maintain the Sharingan.
Kagami's pupil darted slowly before his eyelid fluttered shut. He swallowed hard, forced his eye open again, and answered with conviction. "It was Sunagakure. I was careless."
Fukashi's grip tightened on Kagami's hand.
"It is Sunagakure," Kagami emphasized once more, his voice fading. "It must be."
Fukashi slowly loosened his fingers and prepared to stand up. But before he could fully straighten his back, a firm, desperate tug pulled him back down.
"Fukashi-sama! You must save Mito-sama!"
Fukashi's eyes twitched.
"For Konoha," Kagami added.
"For Konoha?!" Naka erupted from the side, his face contorted in fury.
"It is also for our clan," Kagami muttered weakly, violently gasping for air as the pain relapsed.
"Kagami, our mission was to bring you back safely, and we have—"
"If we do not resolve this situation right now... huff, huff... we will never be able to clear our name and honor... huff, huff..."
"And whose damn fault is that?!" Naka roared.
Kagami lowered his head in sheer shame, tears mixing with the blood on his cheek. "I know I am at fault here... but... cough, cough, cough!"
Kagami couldn't finish his sentence. His grip went limp, and his eyes rolled back as he finally lost consciousness.
The Uchiha ranks immediately erupted into a chaotic murmur of arguments the moment Kagami passed out. Some fiercely argued that they should honor Kagami's final wish and intervene. Others yelled that they should ignore the situation entirely and refuse to risk Uchiha lives for a village that hated them. A few radicals even muttered that they should use this chaos to wipe out the remaining Senju forces on the spot.
Shinichi silently continued his treatment, stabilizing Kagami's vitals before passing his unconscious body to Uchiha Komei—the division's medical ninja and Kagami's wife—who was silently weeping as she took over.
Shinichi stood up and calmly observed the shouting clansmen around him.
'The greatest weakness of our clan isn't our lack of Mangekyō Sharingan or our inferiority complex against the Senju,' Shinichi thought coldly. 'It is the rampant division tearing apart our leadership and our ranks.'
Though he kept his mouth shut, Shinichi knew that Fukashi bore a significant share of the blame for this ideological fracture. As the former leader of the radicals and indisputably the strongest shinobi in the clan, Fukashi's lack of decisive action and his unwillingness to directly oppose Sosuke, the clan head, had caused the radicals to split into loose, erratic factions while the rest defaulted to a conservative, neutral stance. Fukashi might have willingly stepped back from the leadership council to allow the clan to unite around Sosuke, but the hearts of the frontline shinobi still belonged to him. As Uchiha Madara's sole disciple and the strongest warrior alive, Fukashi commanded infinitely more respect than Sosuke or any of the sitting elders.
Yet Shinichi couldn't entirely blame Fukashi's past decisions. Sosuke had been strategically chosen by the elders to send a clear signal to Hashirama and Tobirama that the Uchiha had no intention of executing a coup. Empowering a moderate like Sosuke over an aggressive choice like Fukashi was a harsh political choice the clan had made for survival.
Moreover, ever since accepting Madara's final will to safeguard the clan—a mantle Madara had originally inherited from Izuna—Fukashi had been forcing himself to suppress his natural aggressiveness. Now, with a massive world war raging on a national scale, Fukashi had zero desire to escalate an internal conflict that would destroy both the clan and the village. He wasn't just acting to safeguard the Uchiha name; he was acting to protect his own family members waiting back in Konoha. There were still young Kaito and Ran at home, and they desperately needed a village to return to.