"Hehehe… I just love taking cranky old men for walks!" A sinister, chilling smile spread across Sasuke's face, his Sharingan spinning with cold vengeance.
The moment he saw Danzō's arm—stolen Sharingan glaring blindly from the flesh—the final piece of the puzzle clicked. The Uchiha clan's massacre, the vanished eyes… This man wasn't just involved; he was a prime beneficiary. (Kakashi-sensei was the exception; his eye was a noble gift, a story his father had told him.)
"Come on, ojii-san! Let's go for a stroll!" Sasuke's grin widened, showing too many teeth. Chakra crackled to life in his right palm, coalescing into the brilliant, shrieking blue of Chidori.
Danzō, feeling the lethal intent and the searing pain from his self-inflicted wound, stumbled forward in a desperate, pathetic scramble. Armless and unbalanced, every jolt was agony. He tripped, plunging face-first into a reeking puddle of filth.
"Pah! Ptui!" He spat out foul mud, writhing like a worm to get his legs under him, and lurched forward again.
"You're a bit slow, ojii-san! Let me help you pick up the pace!" Sasuke declared cheerfully. He thrust his right hand forward. The Chidori elongated, morphing into his newly perfected Chidori Sharp Spear.
"Oh ho ho…!"
The spear of lightning lanced out, not aimed to kill, but to punish. It pierced the fleshy part of Danzō's left buttock, sinking in precisely three centimeters—a deep, cauterizing sting. Raimon-sensei said to keep him alive. Sasuke would obey… creatively.
The electric shock spurred Danzō like a cattle prod. He yelped, his pace involuntarily quickening.
"I must… survive! I cannot fall here!" Danzō's mind, clouded by pain and madness, spun grand delusions. He shot a venomous glare at the silhouettes on Konoha's distant wall. "Konoha is corrupt! Decadent! Only I… only I can restore its true will! I am the rightful Hokage! The true inheritor of the Shodai's dream! Hiruzen… YOU WILL REGRET YOUR BETRAYAL!"
His rant was cut short as his speed flagged.
ZAP! Another precise, searing stab to the other buttock.
Yelp! Faster stumbling.
It became a horrifying, grotesque rhythm. Danzō would slow, Sasuke's lightning spear would extend—stab-cauterize—spurring him on. The repeated strikes tore his trousers to shreds, leaving both cheeks a horrifying mosaic of charred, weeping flesh.
Each step pulled at the wounds, fresh blood welling, only for the next lightning strike to sear it shut again in a puff of acrid smoke. It was a cycle of torment—poke, burn, run, bleed, repeat.
"Am I… to die like this? In a ditch… like a dog?" Danzō's consciousness began to fray. The relentless physical agony, the psychological humiliation, the blood loss—it was too much. His vision swam with grand, feverish hallucinations: Tobirama-sama naming him successor, the Five Great Kage bowing before his might, Konoha's banner flying over a unified world…
Thud.
He collapsed again, this time not even trying to rise. The cold, stinking mud was almost a relief. He lay there, breath rattling, muddy water trickling into his slack mouth.
"Oi, ojii-san~! You can't nap now! We're not done with our walk!" Sasuke's voice was singsong, demonic. He stood over Danzō, his shadow falling across the broken old man.
"Get up. I said, GET UP!"
When Danzō only twitched, a frightening frenzy ignited in Sasuke's eyes. The Chidori Sharp Spear in his hand began to pulse with a rapid, jackhammering motion.
THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM!
Danzō's buttocks visibly… deflated, the tissue pulverized under the high-frequency assault. But Sasuke wasn't satisfied. His chakra spent, he drew shuriken, stabbing them with brute force into the ravaged flesh, his face a mask of feral, tear-streaked rage.
"That's enough, Sasuke."
A calm voice cut through the red haze. Namikaze Raimon's hand settled on his student's trembling shoulder.
"Sensei…!" Sasuke's voice hitched, the dam of emotion breaking. Hot tears threatened to spill.
"Tch. Hold it together," Raimon said, his tone firm but not unkind. "Uchiha Itachi drove a sword through your father's heart without blinking. Control is power. Losing yourself is weakness."
The words were a bucket of ice water. Sasuke's breath hitched. With a visible, almost physical effort, he sucked the tears back—a truly bizarre and impressive feat of emotional constipation. Raimon raised an eyebrow. 'Kid's got unique talents.'
"Good. Now, go back to the wall." Raimon gave his shoulder a final pat. The violent catharsis, though concerning, had clearly strained and thus strengthened Sasuke's mental fortitude. The Sharingan thrived on such extreme emotion, but the line between fuel and self-immolation was thin.
"Hai, Sensei." Sasuke nodded, his expression once more schooled into cool detachment. He turned and walked back towards Konoha, his steps lighter, as if a terrible weight had been partially… transferred.
"Heh. Kids. Always so dramatic," Raimon murmured, shaking his head. He looked down at Danzō, who lay in the muck, eyes glazed over, barely conscious. In this state, even the dreaded Drill might not elicit a reaction. But one could never be too careful with a cornered rat like Danzō.
As Raimon took a step closer, a final, desperate spark ignited in Danzō's hollow eyes.
"For… the Ninja World…! For Konoha's future…! YOU… MUST PERISH!"
With his last ounce of strength, Danzō jerked his head, tearing his shirt open with his teeth. Intricate, black sealing formulae were tattooed across his chest and torso, already beginning to glow with ominous light.
"Reverse Four Symbols Seal!"
"Predictable." Raimon didn't flinch. In the instant before the suicidal technique could fully activate, space twisted around them. Hiraishin!
They vanished from the muddy field, reappearing high atop a ruined, rain-lashed tower in the heart of Amegakure. Raimon unceremoniously dumped the glowing, writhing Danzō onto the wet stone.
"Enjoy your final contribution to 'peace,' you old fossil."
He was gone in another flash of yellow.
KABOOOOOM—!!!
Behind him, a sphere of pure annihilation erupted, consuming Danzō and a significant portion of the tower in deafening, compressed silence before vanishing, leaving a perfectly spherical void in the structure.
***
Raimon reappeared on the edge of the Konoha battlefield. The scene had devolved further. The field was now a shallow, reeking swamp. Ōnoki and Chiyo lay groaning in the mud, having long since lost their dignity.
"You demon! Just kill us and be done with it!" Chiyo rasped, clutching her abdomen.
The real horror, however, was unfolding among the rank-and-file of the Allied Shinobi Forces. Raimon's diabolical quartet of jutsu had created two classes of sufferers. Those who had relieved themselves early were in 'merely' excruciating pain from passing microscopic, jagged kidney stones.
The others—the stubborn, the disciplined, those who had tried to 'hold it' on their commanders' orders—faced a far worse fate. The thousands of tiny stones had completely blocked their urethras. Their bladders, swollen to near-bursting under the Bladder Retention Technique, were prisons of unimaginable pressure.
Faces turned deep purple, veins bulged at temples, eyes rolled back in silent, breathless agony. They couldn't even scream; the sheer, catastrophic fullness stole their very breath.
"G-god… I can't… I'M GOING TO BURST!" a Cloud shinobi gasped, his body rigid.
"That idiot captain… told us to hold it…!" another wheezed, tears of pain mixing with the rain.
The solution, when it came, was swift, brutal, and born of sheer, unendurable desperation.
"SCREW THIS! I'D RATHER BE A EUNUCH!"
One Iwa chūnin, his face a mask of insane resolve, drew a kunai. With a guttural roar that was equal parts agony and liberation, he slashed downwards.
"JUST A FEW INCHES! WHO NEEDS 'EM?!"
The dam broke. A hot rush of relief, so profound it was ecstatic, washed over him, instantly eclipsing the new, sharp pain. He slumped, sobbing in gratitude.
It was a contagion of desperation.
One by one, then in groups, then in waves, thousands of shinobi made the same horrific, pragmatic choice. The night air, already foul, was filled with a new chorus—not of battle cries, but of roars of decision, followed by sighs of unbearable release and the soft, terrible sounds of severing.
Kunai and shuriken flashed in the moonlight. It was a scene of mass, self-inflicted mutilation on a scale never before witnessed in the history of warfare.
From that day forward, a new, dark legend was born in the shinobi world. They called it the Night of the Severed Thread, and the largest, most well-staffed covert agency specializing in 'alternative personnel'—the Ninja World's de facto Eastern Depot—found its ranks inexplicably swollen with grim, highly motivated applicants.