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Clatter.
A heavy, crisp sound rang out as iron chains clashed.
Uchiha Haru immediately sensed movement—several people were approaching.
He stopped what he was doing and turned his gaze toward the door, eyes cold and indifferent.
Sure enough, moments later, the iron door creaked open.
Outside stood more than a dozen masked shinobi clad in standard-issue gear—Root operatives.
Leading them was a man with white bandages wrapped tightly around his head, even covering his left eye. The only visible eye gleamed with feral resentment.
Danzo Shimura.
Danzo's lone eye narrowed as he took in the sight of Haru standing calmly in the cell, not the slightest trace of fear or panic in his posture.
A flicker of surprise passed across Danzo's face, but it vanished quickly, replaced with his usual dark and unreadable expression.
He raised his hand slightly and gestured.
Without a word, the Root shinobi surged forward—silent and murderous. Except for the two stationed at Danzo's flanks, the rest rushed Haru with lethal precision.
No questions. No warnings. Only killing intent.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Dozens of shuriken hissed through the air like a deadly rainstorm.
In the narrow confines of the cell, dodging was all but impossible.
"Fire Style – Great Fireball Technique!"
A massive fireball exploded from Haru's mouth, roaring forward in a wave of blistering heat. The fireball quickly grew in size, the hot pressure displacing the air in a pulsing wave.
Shuriken melted mid-air, others were flung away like leaves in a storm.
The fireball charged ahead, unhindered, a rolling tide of flame and fury.
The Root shinobi's expressions changed as panic set in.
They hadn't expected this.
"Water Style – Water Wall!"
"Earth Style – Earth Flow Wall!"
Jutsu activated one after another, desperate defenses rising in a dome around them.
But it wasn't enough.
The fireball smashed into the defenses with explosive force, detonating with a thunderous blast that sent scalding air and debris in every direction.
Hiss... hiss... hiss...
Water-style techniques evaporated instantly, vanishing into steam.
Earth-style barriers shattered like glass under a hammer.
And that overwhelming fireball kept coming.
The impact hurled bodies through the air—burned, bruised, broken. They landed in crumpled heaps.
Only Danzo remained untouched.
The blast wave stopped just short of him, as if it had struck an invisible wall.
Danzo's eye narrowed further. "Uchiha Haru…"
"The reports only mentioned your exceptional taijutsu. No one said your ninjutsu was this advanced."
He smiled faintly, but there was no warmth in it.
"Interesting."
Haru met his gaze, calm as ever, a trace of mockery in his eyes.
He had no respect for Danzo. In fact, he loathed him.
Danzo was the kind of man who turned peace into justification for murder. A manipulator in the shadows. The hand behind the knife that slaughtered the Uchiha Clan.
The two Root operatives flanking Danzo prepared to move in, but Danzo raised a hand.
"No need. Let me handle him myself."
He stepped forward and slowly unwrapped the bandages around his right shoulder, revealing a grotesque, pale limb—flesh like wet chalk, pulsing with unnatural life.
It looked eerily like White Zetsu's body.
"Hashirama cells," Haru said flatly.
He recognized it immediately.
But something was off—Danzo didn't yet have the rows of Sharingan embedded in his arm. That would come later, after the Uchiha Massacre.
This was the earlier stage of Danzo's experimentation.
With only the cells of Hashirama Senju, Danzo's Wood Style could never reach its full potential.
Unlike Haru, who possessed the complete genetic inheritance of Wood Release—his was the real thing.
Danzo watched Haru closely, expecting shock.
This grotesque arm was the result of years of forbidden experimentation—every other shinobi who'd seen it had reacted in horror or awe.
But Haru remained unfazed.
Danzo scowled.
He assumed Haru was simply too young to grasp the magnitude of what he was witnessing.
He was wrong.
"Wood Style – Explosive Tree Gun Technique!"
Danzo's arm flared to life, the grotesque limb rapidly mutating.
A massive tree erupted from it, growing at an impossible speed. Thick, jagged branches shot outward like spears, bursting through walls and floor alike. The prison shook with the force.
Steel walls groaned and warped under the pressure, the reinforced cell beginning to collapse.
But Haru didn't even blink.
He blurred away using the Body Flicker Technique, weaving effortlessly between the chaotic onslaught like a ghost.
Too slow.
Too crude.
This was the great Wood Release Danzo boasted about?
Pathetic.
"Wood Release – Deep Forest Emergence!"
The earth trembled as the jutsu activated.
From beneath the floor, seedlings erupted—then sprouted into trees.
They grew at breakneck speed, thickening, branching out, coiling upward in a web of bark and leaves. The trees became titanic, their roots tearing apart the foundation of the prison.
Danzo's tree—once dominant and ferocious—was swallowed up by the ever-growing forest. Its branches splintered, snapped, and were absorbed, turned into just another part of Haru's Sea of Trees.
The entire Uchiha district transformed in an instant into a sprawling, living forest.
Danzo's face twisted with disbelief.
"This is… Wood Release…? He really possesses Wood Release!"
"How?! How can he use Hashirama's Kekkei Genkai?!"
But he had no time to ponder.
The forest moved.
Dozens of vines and branches lashed out from every angle.
Unlike the blunt-force trauma of Danzo's Wood Release, Haru's technique was precise. Graceful. Controlled.
Lethal.
Each vine struck with calculated force, wrapping around limbs, targeting weaknesses, restricting chakra flow.
Danzo realized the truth too late—Haru's Wood Release wasn't just stronger.
It was mastered.
His chakra control was beyond precise. Not a single leaf grew where it wasn't needed. Not a single ounce of chakra was wasted.
That, more than anything, set him far above Danzo.
"Retreat!" Danzo barked.
No hesitation. No pride.
He knew when he was outmatched.
Even as the leader of Root, with all his secrets and power, Danzo understood one thing:
Haru was far more dangerous than the reports had ever said.
He still had trump cards—deadly ones. But now wasn't the time to use them.
Not when an unknown masked man loomed in the shadows.
Danzo vanished in a blur of motion, taking his wounded and unconscious subordinates with him, fleeing into the depths of Konoha's underworld.
The forest settled.
Uchiha Haru stood alone amid the towering trees he had summoned.
His expression hadn't changed.
The darkness was growing.
And this time, he would not be content to simply survive it.
He would bend it to his will.
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Love the story and can't wait to see what happens next?
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