Chapter 18 — His Cowardice
Corpses.
Blood.
The stench of iron and decay.
And the cold air that came with death.
The Root captain stood motionless among the ruins of his squad, his severed arms leaking their last threads of blood. The numbness creeping up his body was nothing compared to the emptiness hollowing out his chest.
It had taken only a moment.
Or perhaps he'd already lost the sense of time entirely.
The four Root teams that had encircled the cloaked figure—dozens of trained assassins—were now reduced to nothing but shredded limbs scattered through the moonlit forest.
Only one man remained standing.
The one draped in the black cloak.
The blade in his hand still dripped, drop by drop, onto the forest floor.
How… is this possible?
He, a child of the Yamanaka clan, wasn't particularly gifted, but he and every man here had survived Root's merciless culling process—handpicked elite shinobi. Even against the Third Hokage himself, they could at least buy time for Lord Danzō to escape.
And they knew they were facing a Uchiha. From the start, they'd avoided direct eye contact, taken every anti-genjutsu precaution.
Yet even with all of that… they had been butchered before he could even understand how.
If such a monster truly existed among the Uchiha, he thought, trembling, then how could they have stayed silent until now?
Fear. Confusion. Disbelief.
They all tangled in his chest as he watched the figure approach—slowly, deliberately—as though walking through a nightmare made real.
At last, the blade's cool edge lifted his chin, forcing him to meet the gaze beneath the hood.
In that instant, he saw it—
a pair of eyes gleaming with pure, burning crimson.
"You… what are you?" he whispered.
Aizen Sōsuke smiled faintly. Beneath the calm curve of his lips was an unhurried amusement, a quiet disdain. His words didn't seem directed at the dying man, but rather through him—toward someone far beyond this place.
"Even when facing an Uchiha, you still rely on little tricks that sacrifice your own men."
"Danzō… you are exactly as Lord Tobirama once judged you—"
"A coward."
The insult pierced deeper than any blade.
The Root captain's eyes flared wide in fury.
In an instant, his cloak whipped open, revealing layers of explosive tags strapped across his chest and stomach. With one desperate surge of chakra, he lunged forward, body trembling, ready to end his enemy—and himself—in one final detonation.
But when he struck, there was nothing.
He passed through an empty space where his target no longer stood.
For one breathless moment, the world spun upside down.
Then his head hit the ground.
The body staggered a few steps, still driven by momentum, before collapsing heavily. The seals burned out without exploding.
Aizen stood behind him, turning his blade with a flick to cast away the blood before sliding it back into its sheath. He looked over the field of carnage, expression as calm as ever.
"That should be enough," he murmured, and disappeared into the darkness.
---
Though the slaughter had taken place right on the Uchiha border, the first to arrive were not the Uchiha—but Root.
When the assigned team failed to report back on schedule, Danzō's scouts quickly traced their path and found the scene. They recorded the details, then hauled the bodies back to headquarters.
Soon, the Root morgue was filled with the broken remains of its own soldiers.
But Danzō's expression didn't shift.
Not even slightly.
He had expected this. If the target truly possessed the Mangekyō Sharingan, heavy losses were inevitable. The only thing that mattered now was what those deaths had bought him—information.
"Search their memories," Danzō ordered coldly.
"Yes, sir."
Several Yamanaka moved forward and placed their hands upon the corpses, eyes focusing, chakra threading deep into ruined minds. This was their clan's specialty—reading memories from the dead.
But before long, one of them froze.
Then came the scream.
A raw, tearing howl ripped through the room as the Yamanaka collapsed to the ground, convulsing violently, eyes rolled white.
Medical-nin rushed in at once, restraining and soothing him with practiced efficiency. Even so, the fit lasted several minutes before the man finally began to calm.
Through it all, Danzō's face never changed.
He simply watched in silence—
as if he'd already expected this too.
At last, the trembling Yamanaka operative managed to speak, his voice hoarse and uneven:
"L–Lord Danzō… it was the Sharingan. I could feel it—"
"But I couldn't see clearly. Just… a flood of red light."
"He must've been trapped in a genjutsu before death. His mind was… completely destroyed."
Shimura Danzō's single visible eye gleamed with a cold, reptilian light. He let out a quiet grunt—half irritation, half calculation.
So there was nothing concrete to extract.
That was fine.
He had never placed much faith in the competence of these expendable corpses anyway.
Danzō crouched beside a headless body, rummaging briefly before retrieving a small, metallic device no larger than half his palm. With a practiced motion, he flipped it open.
Modern shinobi were no longer the rough killers of the Warring States. For intelligence operatives like him, technology had become another indispensable weapon. Before this mission, every "decoy" squad had been issued one of these miniature recorders. The memory capacity was small, and the footage grainy—but even a few seconds of real combat data could prove invaluable.
That was what set Root apart: foresight.
They always had one more contingency than anyone else.
"Retrieve the footage," Danzō ordered coolly. "Refine it, and use sealing barriers to isolate chakra interference. I want every frame as clear as possible."
"Yes, sir."
Researchers hurried to comply. Within minutes, the small screen flickered to life, replaying the last images captured by the fallen captain.
The grainy footage showed a black-robed figure standing motionless at the center of the clearing. Around him, the Root operatives—his own men—were moving like lifeless marionettes, blades rising and falling upon each other with mechanical precision. Every stroke landed with surgical accuracy, splitting armor, flesh, and bone.
And yet, there were no screams.
No cries.
Only the rhythmic, metallic chhk of steel biting into bodies.
Then—silence.
One by one, they simply dropped.
Every Root agent present watching the playback felt their stomachs knot.
They, too, were elite—hardened by merciless conditioning, their mental fortitude and genjutsu resistance far beyond ordinary shinobi.
But what they saw on-screen crushed any illusion of control.
Before this man, their comrades had been ants—nothing more.
Soon, only two figures remained standing.
The hooded figure.
And the Root captain.
Even through the poor quality of the recording, the eyes beneath that hood were unmistakable—brilliant red, rotating slowly like four-bladed pinwheels.
The Mangekyō Sharingan.
And not just any pattern—this one was distinct, its four angular commas forming a windmill cross.
The room fell into stunned silence.
Every man who had studied Root intelligence files recognized it instantly.
Uchiha Shisui.
The captain on-screen appeared frozen, utterly motionless within three steps of the man. The video captured Shisui leaning forward slightly, saying something softly—too quiet for most to catch.
But Danzō, wearing an earpiece linked directly to the recorder's residual sound trace, heard every word.
And at the last phrase, his hand clenched into a trembling fist.
The veins bulged across his thin wrist, his one eye narrowing to a slit of hatred.
"...Still so cowardly."
That final line echoed like a curse.
In that instant, a memory struck him—a scene burned into the deepest part of his mind.
The battlefield of the First Great Ninja War.
The moment he had faltered behind his teacher, Senju Tobirama.
The moment his hesitation had branded him weak.
The moment that had defined his entire life.
BOOM!
The screen exploded under his fist, fragments scattering across the room. The reinforced wall behind it cracked under the impact.
Smoke and silence hung heavy.
Danzō drew back his bloodied hand, his face livid and trembling with rage. His words, when they came, were cold and deliberate, each one bitten out like steel:
"Uchiha Shisui…"
"Very well."
His single eye gleamed with killing intent—
dark, restrained, and murderous enough to chill even the air around him.