Kazeo's body jolted into motion. Without a second thought, he picked the fallen cloth, shoved the bloodied wire back into his pouch, and with shaking hands formed a shadow clone. His breath was uneven, his chest tight.
"Distract them," he whispered hoarsely..
The shadow clone nodded, its features already shifting into someone else—someone Kazeo didn't bother looking at. His mind was already foggy and there was no time.
Without looking back, Kazeo exhaled slowly, then extended his chakra field outward for two meters. It wasn't much, but enough to sense any immediate threats and then with a blur, he vanished, flickering toward the blocked wall of the alley and jumped. In a blink, he was gone.
He expanded his chakra field to as far as he could and flickered again and then once more. Each jump was smoother than the last, chakra flowing through his body like wildfire.
He finally landed on a narrow rooftop near the edge of the district, panting but not daring to waste a breath. He transformed into a random twelve-year-old and broke into a light jog toward the orphanage.
Despite the fatigue clawing at his limbs, his body moved like a machine. His chakra pool, which had grown two weeks ago, from high genin to low-chunin—was what kept him moving. It wasn't a sudden leap like before, but a steady growth fueled by relentless training. That progress… it was saving his life now.
Even so, his mind was a battlefield. He couldn't form a proper thought, couldn't grasp what had just happened. The murder. Grandma's body. His first kill.
It all came crashing in like waves, one after another—his brain simply refused to process it. If all this had happened over weeks, maybe he would've had a chance to breathe. But now? It was too much and too fast.
His legs moved out of sheer adrenaline. If not for that, he would've collapsed in that alley, crying and broken, curled next to Mantis corpse.
But he couldn't. He didn't have the luxury to break.
He reached the orphanage's rear gate, climbed over and expanded his chakra field to 37 meters, he checked for signs of movement. No one was awake.
Good.
He sprinted inside, heart hammering as he made it to his bed, the one assigned to him today. Without wasting a moment, he changed into a fresh pair of clothes and sealed the old, blood-soaked ones into a storage scroll. His hands trembled, but he worked quickly.
Then he sat on the bed. Only then… only then… did his mind begin to crash.
The floodgate opened. The memories from his clone poured in—what it had seen, what it had done. His pulse spiked. His vision blurred. And suddenly, the adrenaline that had kept him stitched together evaporated.
His body gave out. Whether it was sleep or unconsciousness, he didn't know. Maybe he didn't care. All he knew was that the moment he finally let go… everything went black.
-------
The clone left behind by Kazeo stood in the shadowed alley, still for a heartbeat—then, an idea struck. A reckless, insane and utterly perfect idea for distraction.
A smirk twisted his lips despite the deadly situation. In a burst of chakra and smoke, his form shifted and solidified… into Shimura Danzō.
Yes. That Danzō.
The clone chuckled under his breath—dry, too calm and amused.
Why was he smiling? Even now… after that old woman died… after his original's hands were stained by blood… why did he feel this?
The answer didn't come easily. Maybe it was the trauma. Maybe his fractured mind had passed that brokenness into the clone—maybe it was the Yin chakra, amplified and distorted by raw emotion. Or maybe… just maybe… it was a part of him he hadn't yet acknowledged. But in that moment, as he stood cloaked in the skin of a monster, wearing Danzō's face like armor, the clone felt alive.
Unhinged. But alive and smiling.
A second later, two masked figures appeared before him, flickering into view with silent precision. Their footsteps were soundless, their arrival like phantoms. They had just returned from their grim task, the blood of their target barely dry on their gloves but their eyes held no emotion or guilt. The scream they'd heard earlier? They dismissed it. Just another rat flushed from the dark, they thought.
But then they saw it. Mantis lies there lifeless, his upper body mangled into pieces. And yet, neither flinched. Instead, as if responding to an unspoken command, they dropped to one knee in perfect sync—reverence and fear blending into one.
Because standing before them was him—the leader of ROOT. The man some whispered should have been Hokage. The man they served with unquestioning loyalty, the man they believed would make Konoha powerful again.
Shimura Danzo.
"Danzo-sama," the bear-masked ninja began, his voice emotionless but edged with confusion, "why are you here? And… why is Mantis dead?" There was a pause for long.
Because 'Danzo'… couldn't speak.
He didn't know how. The Academy hadn't yet taught Kazeo's class how to mimic voices.
Behind the cold mask of stoicism, the clone was slightly sweating.
'They really are Danzo's dogs. Shit.'
He didn't regret the transformation, yet. It was the only way to buy time. Buy exactly one minute. That's all the original needed to reach the orphanage.
'Just one. I have to stall. Somehow. Come on, brain. Think.'
Pulling from everything he had learned in the Deception classes, the clone focused. First rule: posture. He straightened his spine more, squared his shoulders and set his jaw into that infuriating "I'm-always-right" expression Danzō wore like a second skin. He let his eyes drift, not carelessly but with precision.
First, at the bear-masked ninja who spoke earlier. Then, at the black haired cat-masked of similar height beside him. Like his comrade, Cat masked was a genin serving under the bear-masked Special Jounin—a man known for his deadly precision and deep expertise in poisons.
The fake Danzo narrowed his eyes at the cat-masked ninja and tilted his head subtly—Come here.
The cat-masked ninja glanced briefly at his superior, then obeyed without hesitation. That was how ROOT was trained—Danzo's will was law. Obedience had been branded into their bones since the day they were recruited. In Danzō's world, hesitation was weakness. Doubt was betrayal.
Danzo had ensured this loyalty—engineered it. Every ROOT operative carried a photo of him at all times while inside the village, a silent reminder of who they served. Some even bowed to the tiny statue he'd erected in their underground base, an idol carved by fanatics who believed he alone could restore Konoha's strength.
As the cat-masked genin stepped forward, even jumping over his comrade's corpse without a twitch of emotion and stood before the clone, head bowed. 'Danzo-sama only went silent… when furious.' he rationalized inwardly.
The clone felt a dark chill run down his spine. 'These people… they're machines.'
But the moment their eyes met—snap. The clone had casted a genjutsu. With no hand signs, just raw control.
Kazeo had trained in genjutsu for nearly two and a half years, every week without fail. His chakra control had grown and with his naturally high Yin affinity, his illusions weren't just clean—they were suffocating. Right now, he had casted Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique. With years of practice, he had refined it to the point where he could cast it silently and instantly.
The cat-masked ninja froze, eyes locked in a nightmare only he could see.
Ten seconds passed. The clone—now Danzo, stood motionless but panic crept up his throat. What now? What about the other one? Can I risk trying the same trick on other one? Or should I just kill this one and flee ?
He couldn't decide.
So instead, he stepped forward and placed a hand gently on the cat-masked ninja's shoulder. A touch to deepen the illusion. He poured more chakra in, not just to hold it but to extend it. The original scroll said it lasted only ten seconds but the duration can be manipulated through control and training and Kazeo had practiced that. He watched silently as the cat masked trembled slightly, caught in a vision so horrific he couldn't even scream.
'Thirty more seconds.' The clone thought grimly. 'That's all I need.'
He didn't know what would happen next. Only that he had to keep the act alive—long enough for the original to disappear into the night. And pray… that the mask wouldn't crack.
Meanwhile, the bear-masked ninja began to feel... off as seconds passed. Something didn't add up.
First, there had been the sound—a faint clink, like a tin had been disturbed. Then Mantis had reported nothing suspicious, only for a sharp, human scream to cut through the silence moments later. When they arrived, they found not a rat but Mantis corpse and Danzo-sama, looming silently over the corpse.
Unusual? No, Danzo-sama did often inspect missions personally within the village.But this silence? Cat, frozen like a puppet? The heavy pause that had now stretched beyond twenty seconds? There were also no orders or words.
'Something's not right, Danzo-sama stood over the body but said nothing... Cat hadn't moved an inch. Not even his fingers. His breathing looks... paused.'
The bear-masked operative's instincts screamed louder than his logic. If there was one thing ROOT taught him, it was to trust that primal edge in battle.
So, carefully but swiftly he retrieved a small canister from the pouch on his lower back—a poison gas bomb standard to all ROOT squads. Their masks had internal rebreathers, after all—custom-made to neutralize their own concoctions, just have light coughing as side effects to counter genjutsu. Danzo-sama have already built immunity and even some seconds of coughing could break genjutsu.
He hesitated. If this was real Danzo... he might die for what he was about to do. But if it wasn't—he had to know. With precise movement, he hurled it straight toward Danzo.
It burst open with a hiss, releasing a cloud of sickly green mist that blanketed a two-meter radius. The clone tensed instinctively, his mind screaming to move but he didn't. He couldn't, not while holding the genjutsu in place.
Chakra surged to his face as he activated Breeze Barrier—an invisible shield of rotating wind layered over his nose and mouth, halting the poison from seeping in.
The cat-masked ninja twitched, then began coughing, breaking slightly from the illusion. The clone's hand tightened on his shoulder, reinforcing the genjutsu just enough to keep the illusion intact.
But luck was not on his side.
The moment he formed the Breeze Barrier, the rotating air subtly distorted the poison mist causing a faint swirl in the cloud. It was barely visible and mostly masked by the cat-masked ninja's coughing… but it was there.
Simultaneously, whether from the strain of maintaining both genjutsu and Breeze Barrier or from the poison's subtle genjutsu-breaking properties developed for Root operatives, cracks began to form in the genjutsu.
The cat-masked ninja suddenly jerked. His eyes went wide, his voice shaky and panicked between coughs.
"Please forgive me, Ryu," he gasped, face pale behind the mask. "I didn't mean to kill you. I… I had to survive… I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
His body shook violently as he broke down, weeping and crawling backward in fear.
The clone froze. The bear-masked ninja heard it and blinked and everything clicked into place. With a surge of anger, he dashed forward, drawing a kunai mid-step.
The clone panicked and lunged at the trembling cat-mask, hands aiming for the throat but before he could complete the motion, a kunai whistled through the air and struck him square in the collarbone.
Puff!
The clone vanished in a burst of smoke.
The truth hit like a storm. 'A shadow clone. I noticed it—too late. The subtle stiffness in movement, his lack of voice. Signs were there but I ignored it... because no one had ever dared to fake Danzo-sama. Mantis is dead. And I have to explain how I bowed to a damn clone.'
The bear masked used a small wind jutsu and the green haze faded.
He turned to the cat-masked ninja, still curled on the ground, whispering and still coughing "Sorry… sorry…" like a broken record, hands trembling.
'Looks like we're both in for it... but he'll face more than punishment. He needs retraining. Deep retraining.'
Sighing heavily, the bear-masked ninja sealed Mantis's body into a scroll, then lifted the shattered teammate onto his back.
With one last glance toward the place the clone had stood, he flickered, going back toward the hidden base. Silence returned the alley.
( Total 36 seconds passed )
--------
The next day, in the Hokage's office, the air felt unusually heavy. The kind of weight that didn't come from paperwork or politics.
It was afternoon when the message came. Hiruzen read the scroll slowly, his eyes narrowing with every word. At first, his expression was blank. Then came a twitch in his brow… a tightening in his jaw… and finally, the quiet ache behind his eyes that warned of an oncoming headache.
"Kaori killed. Confirmed Root involvement."
For a moment, he simply sat there—shoulders heavy, the scroll clenched between his fingers. He wanted to believe it was an error. That someone had misreported or acted without Danzō's knowledge. But deep down, he knew better.
Minutes passed in silence as Hiruzen stared blankly at the Hokage Monument through his window. His hand trembled slightly as he set the scroll aside, taking a deep breath but the fury had already started bubbling under his calm surface.
"Danzo... what have you done this time?"
With a sharp exhale, he stood. His voice was calm when he called out—but laced with an iron edge that hadn't been there in years.
"Summon Shimura Danzo. Immediately."
To be continued....