Chapter 47: The Pursuit of Power
A single, unadorned swing of his sword, and the three Rain shinobi were reduced to a fine crimson mist. Until their final moment, their eyes were frozen wide, filled with a terror that spoke of an incomprehensible truth. They had died realizing that the humble, unassuming boy possessed a depth of power they could never have imagined.
From the moment he had stepped into Classroom 301, Aizen had cultivated an image of gentle modesty. He had let them believe he was just another talented genin, his true nature hidden beneath a flawless facade. He was the flower in the mirror, the moon in the water—an illusion. The unassuming exterior concealed the true demon within.
After their deaths, the "Heaven" scroll they carried clattered to the blood-soaked earth. Any other genin would have seized it, a guaranteed ticket to the next stage.
Aizen did not even glance at it. He merely flicked his finger.
"Hadō #4: Byakurai."
A thin, precise beam of white lightning lanced from his fingertip, striking the scroll dead-center. It erupted into a small puff of smoke and ash, utterly annihilated. He felt no need to collect trophies. If he desired a scroll, he could take one from any team in this forest. They were all, ultimately, his to command.
Is that the tower? he thought, looking through the dense canopy towards the distant, soaring structure in the forest's center. Arriving so quickly would be... tedious.
He suddenly changed direction, his body pivoting towards the east. Relying on his impeccable memory of the forest's layout and the faint, malevolent energy he had sensed during their earlier confrontation, he deduced the Sand siblings' most likely path. He was intensely curious about Gaara. He needed to understand the secret power slumbering within that boy.
During their brief standoff at the academy gates, Aizen had sensed it—a force coiled deep within Gaara, fundamentally different from normal chakra. It was ancient, bestial, and saturated with a pure, chaotic malice. Aizen, an eternal seeker of ultimate power, found this new variable profoundly interesting. He did not yet know it was the One-Tailed Beast, Shukaku, but he was determined to unravel the mystery.
"An interesting specimen," Aizen murmured to himself. "Let us uncover the secret you carry."
His body blurred.
"Shunpo."
He vanished. One moment he was there, the next he was simply gone, reappearing several hundred meters away in the blink of an eye. If Mitarashi Anko had witnessed this, her blood would have run cold. This level of instantaneous movement surpassed even her own capabilities as a seasoned jōnin.
Just seconds after Aizen's departure, three new figures dropped silently from the trees.
They were dressed in strange, grey attire, and the headbands they wore were defaced with a distinctive, eight-note musical scrawl.
The Otogakure trio.
Kin, Zaku, and Dosu.
They scanned the small clearing, their brows furrowed. The air was thick with the metallic tang of fresh blood, and the ground was stained, yet there were no bodies.
"We heard the conflict from a distance. It must have ended less than three minutes ago," Dosu stated, his voice muffled by the bandages covering his face.
The implication was chilling. If a fight had started and concluded that quickly, it meant one side had been annihilated with overwhelming, brutal efficiency.
"Strange," Zaku muttered, flexing the sound-emitting devices implanted in his arms. "Aside from the Gaara team, who else here has that kind of power?"
They had briefly crossed paths with the Sand siblings upon entering the forest and had wisely chosen to avoid a confrontation. They were certain this carnage was not Gaara's work.
"Regardless, there are tracks here," Kin said, pointing to a set of footprints that seemed to have been made with an unnaturally light tread. "We follow them. This unknown variable must be eliminated. It could interfere with Lord Orochimaru's plan."
With grim determination, the three Sound ninja set off, following the trail Aizen had so casually left behind.
Half an hour later, Aizen's high-speed travel via Shunpo had brought him to the eastern sector of the Forest of Death. The environment here was bizarrely different. The dense, humid jungle gave way to arid, open ground covered in patches of yellow sand, as if a piece of the Wind Country desert had been transplanted into the heart of the forest.
In the center of this sandy clearing, three figures walked with an air of bored confidence. The boy at the front, with the massive gourd on his back, was unmistakable.
Gaara.
They had already easily dispatched one team and acquired the scroll they needed. Their only goal now was to reach the central tower and set a new record for the fastest completion of the exam.
They believed their path was clear, their victory assured.
It was at that moment that Aizen Sōsuke appeared directly in their path, not with a dramatic entrance, but simply as if he had always been standing there, waiting for them.