"Things have really gotten out of hand with these criminals. I haven't even gone looking for trouble with the Akatsuki yet, and they already dared come to kill me."
Uchiha Chizumi couldn't help sighing at just how rotten the shinobi world had become. It had reached the point where a heavy hand was absolutely necessary.
"Kitsujiro, take Izumi and leave by another route."
He might have been inwardly exasperated, but with those evildoers right in front of him, there was no way he was going to avoid the fight.
The reason Chizumi hadn't gone after the Akatsuki before was because Nagato and Konan actually didn't carry much sin on them. The people they targeted were mostly Rain shinobi and Hanzo's subordinates.
As for civilians…
Nagato and Konan had been civilians themselves once. It was true they hadn't harmed ordinary people, but under the Akatsuki's rule, the Land of Rain couldn't exactly be said to be thriving. At best, people were just dragging themselves through one day at a time.
Then there was Kakuzu. The people he killed were mostly those with bounties on their heads—and some of his own teammates.
And what kind of "good people" would ever join the Akatsuki in the first place?
Finally, there was Sasori. He really had slaughtered innocents. In order to test the limits of his craft, Sasori had once used his puppets to crush an entire country head-on, causing its order to collapse completely.
One of Chizumi's wood clones had crossed paths with him before, so he already knew Sasori carried heavy sin.
But setting Sasori aside, the Akatsuki as a whole still bore less sin than some of the nobles Chizumi had already killed.
Of course, that was only because Chizumi still didn't know Hidan had joined the Akatsuki. If he had, he probably would've struck first.
Unlike the others, Hidan was pure evil.
To him, civilians and shinobi alike were nothing more than sacrifices for his so-called god.
"Detonate!"
The moment Uchiha Chizumi stopped walking, Pain's side made their move.
BOOOOOOM—!!!
A blast so immense it seemed to make the air itself scream erupted across the entire area. A gigantic fireball shot into the sky, and the shockwave collapsed trees across nearly ten kilometers. The explosion was violent enough to make it seem like the earth itself might melt into a lake.
The heat scorched everything around it, and a gray mushroom cloud rose into the sky.
"Did it work?"
Kakuzu stared fixedly at the spot where Uchiha Chizumi, Kitsujiro, and the others had been standing, his eyes full of anticipation.
An instant explosion on the scale of three hundred million normal explosive tags—in Kakuzu's eyes, that was enough to kill anyone in the shinobi world. Even a tailed beast might die if it took that head-on.
And yet, for some reason, Kakuzu still felt a faint unease gnawing at him.
"No… something's wrong!"
"What is that?!"
Pain was the first to see clearly what had happened at the center of the blast. Even though those Rinnegan were only manifesting through a special technique inside Pain's eyes, they still gave him vision far beyond normal human limits.
At the very center of the explosion, an enormous Susanoo rose into the sky. And as the smoke cleared a little more, Nagato and the others saw that the gigantic construct had wrapped Uchiha Izumi and Kitsujiro inside it as well.
"Susanoo…"
"The power only Mangekyō Sharingan users of the Uchiha clan can wield."
Pain stared at that colossal humanoid form, and for once, even his Rinnegan showed the slightest ripple.
Nagato had seen the Ten-Tails before. In fact, in a moment of extreme rage, he had even summoned it himself. Purely in terms of height, Uchiha Chizumi's Susanoo was still smaller than the Ten-Tails.
But compared to the Ten-Tails Nagato had summoned, Chizumi's Susanoo was far more complete—its form fuller, more solid, even naturally holding a sword in its hand.
"So this is the ultimate power of the Uchiha clan?"
Wrapped inside the Susanoo, Uchiha Izumi looked around curiously at everything surrounding her.
The explosion had come without warning, but Uchiha Chizumi's reaction had been unbelievably fast. By the time Izumi was enclosed inside the Susanoo, she could still see the explosion outside continuing to unfold.
"With an explosion on this scale… did the Akatsuki bury every explosive tag in the entire shinobi world here or something…?"
Kitsujiro looked at the scene in lingering shock. To be blunt, if Uchiha Chizumi hadn't reacted in time, Kitsujiro would've been blasted so thoroughly there wouldn't even have been bones left.
"Hey, hey, are we really supposed to fight someone like that?"
"Even if I swing my scythe until it falls apart, I don't think I can even crack that thing's defense!"
At this point, Hidan had finally gotten a good look at the few people protected inside the Susanoo. He was already starting to regret joining this lousy organization. First mission out, and it was a nightmare-level fight like this—Hidan genuinely felt like he was losing it.
"Forget the second plan. I'll handle this myself."
Pain nodded as well. Kakuzu, Sasori, and even Hidan were all strong in their own right, but asking them to take on a Susanoo directly was pushing it too far. Their strengths still lay in more conventional shinobi combat.
Pain and Uchiha Chizumi, on the other hand, fought in ways that barely resembled ninja at all.
"The leader is going to fight personally?"
"The power of a god… how exciting."
Inside Hiruko, Sasori's eyes brightened slightly. Truth be told, he coveted Pain's body as well.
But Pain had beaten him down before, and Sasori knew perfectly well that Pain's power was beyond anything he could match.
RUMBLE—!!!
Just as the Akatsuki side was speaking, Uchiha Chizumi made his move too.
The gigantic Susanoo, towering like a mountain, raised its hand. The colossal sword it wielded came crashing down toward the Akatsuki with a force that seemed capable of cleaving mountains apart.
The slash gouged an immense trench into the earth, while the air screamed and the atmosphere roared.
"Shinra Tensei!"
Faced with the incoming sword-light, Pain stepped in front of Kakuzu and the others himself.
If that strike landed, Konan could probably evade it using paper clones. Kakuzu would lose one life at worst and still have four left to spend. Hidan would most likely get chopped into mince—whether that actually killed him was another matter.
But Sasori would almost certainly be destroyed outright by that slash, the kind of destroyed where not even his core heart would survive.
Everyone in the Akatsuki had a way to save themselves—
except Sasori, who would've had to take it head-on and couldn't have survived it. On that point alone, Sasori really would've been justified in quitting the organization.
Shinra Tensei gave Pain the power to repel any attack that approached him.
Before that terrifying sword-light could fully reach the Akatsuki, it suddenly veered aside in midair and blasted into a mountain off to the side instead.
"The power of a god is not something an Uchiha like you can understand!"
Seeing his Shinra Tensei deflect the attack cleanly, Nagato spoke with full dramatic flair through Pain.