Everyone stared at Kanon with grave intensity, save for Hinata, Sakura, and Kakashi, who were paralyzed by conflicting emotions.
But the rest of the Konoha 11 acted.
"Fang Over Fang!"
Akamaru and Kiba transformed into two spinning blurs, surging toward Kanon from both sides. Simultaneously, a translucent shockwave of chakra blasted from her flank.
"Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm!"
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted on the street, the shockwave rattling the nearby buildings and alerting half the village.
In an instant, dozens of Anbu operatives materialized on the surrounding rooftops.
Inside the Hokage's office, Tsunade was boredly processing paperwork when an Anbu burst through the door.
"Hokage-sama! An S-Rank wanted criminal has appeared in the village!"
"What?!" Tsunade slammed her hands on her desk and stood up. Shizune, standing beside her, knit her brows in worry.
"Who is it?" The first name that flashed through Tsunade's mind was the rogue Uchiha, Itachi. He had infiltrated the village two years ago; it made sense he would return.
"It's... an Uchiha..."
As I thought! Tsunade's heart sank. Had Itachi really come back? Only someone of his caliber could bypass the Konoha barrier and get this close undetected.
"The intruder is… Kanon Uchiha!"
Tsunade and Shizune both froze. Images of the eleven-year-old girl with twin-tails flashed in their minds. She would be thirteen now... nearly fourteen.
Why would she come back? Suddenly, Tsunade and Shizune locked eyes, remembering Kanon's declaration years ago: her goal was to destroy Konoha. At this moment, Jiraiya and Naruto were away, and even Guy was out on a mission.
The village's high-level combat power was spread thin.
Tsunade grabbed her green haori, throwing it over her shoulders. "Let's go!"
…
As Kanon retreated, leading the fight further away from Naruto's house, the genin and chunin intensified their assault.
"Fireball!" Tenten unrolled a scroll, summoning a sphere of fire that erupted toward Kanon.
Fwoom!
A blinding flash of fire ignited. A significantly larger fireball swallowed Tenten's flames whole, surging toward the group like a falling sun.
The young ninja stared in horror at the approaching inferno. It was too massive!
"Earth Release: Mud Wall!"
With Kakashi's roar, a massive stone rampart rose from the ground to intercept the heat.
"All of you, fall back! Leave this to us!" Kakashi commanded. From Kanon's blind spot, Asuma Sarutobi arrived, his Flying Swallow blades humming with wind chakra as he aimed a strike at her back.
Kanon leapt into the air, her Kusanagi Sword whistling as it found its mark in the ground to stabilize her. She swung her body around, slamming a chakra-enhanced boot directly into Asuma's neck.
CRACK!
The explosive force of the chakra sent Asuma reeling back, his boots skidding across the pavement for several meters.
Kanon drifted back to the ground as gracefully as a butterfly. She looked at the group with an air of tired resignation.
"I told you... I really did just come back to see a friend."
"Naruto is out training with Jiraiya-sama! He isn't even in the village!" Ino screamed from the sidelines.
"Is that so? When is he coming back?" Kanon asked plainly.
"Go ask someone else! God, what a drag!" Suddenly, the shadow beneath Shikamaru stretched out with lightning speed, snaring Kanon's silhouette. "I've got her!"
"Now! Finishing move!" Kiba roared. From above, Choji utilized the Expansion Jutsu, descending like a mountain to crush Kanon.
BOOM!
The entire area was pulverized by the weight of the impact.
"Did we get her...?" Shikamaru muttered, squinting through the dust. But beside him, Ino, the sensory ninja, collapsed to her knees, her face pale.
"No... how..."
The dust settled.
Choji lay on the ground, his eyes rolled back and foam at his mouth. Kanon hadn't even used her blade; she had simply slammed the hilt of her Kusanagi Sword into his solar plexus with enough force to shatter his defense.
"No!" Ino screamed.
But it was too late. Kanon flipped the sword in her grip and lunged. The blade pierced through Choji's shoulder, pinning him.
The agonizing pain forced a guttural scream from Choji, a sound that finally forced the gathered Konoha shinobi to realize exactly who they were facing.
This was Uchiha Kanon, the girl once hailed as the Uchiha prodigy.
She pulled the blade free and kicked Choji away like a broken doll.
"Kanon Uchiha! What do you think you're doing?!" Tsunade's voice thundered as she arrived on the scene.
"Kanon... you've truly fallen," Kakashi said, his brow furrowed in grief. Seeing her strike Choji without mercy, he finally prepared to enter the fray.
"Fifth Hokage, do you have water where your brain should be?" Kanon spat, looking at Tsunade with cold eyes. "I haven't even initiated an attack. Am I supposed to just stand here and let them kill me?"
Tsunade gritted her teeth. Technically, Kanon's logic was flawless.
"Kanon, your heart shouldn't be filled only with hatred," Kakashi tried to reason. "Regardless of everything, Konoha is your home."
Listening to Kakashi, Kanon closed her eyes. Her mind flashed back to the day she met Itachi, the memory of being broken, run through by his fist, and left to rot in the Tsukuyomi.
"From that moment on," Kanon whispered, "not even the Mangekyo Sharingan could see clearly. There is only endless darkness before me."
Kanon's Three-Tomoe Sharingan flared. A violent eruption of chakra exploded around her, a blooming aura of sheer power.
"What is she doing?!" Tsunade realized she didn't recognize the hand signs or the flow of chakra.
"Shinobi of Konoha... my revenge has only just begun!" With a crazed expression, Kanon blurred forward. Her speed was so immense it looked like a teleportation, placing her directly in front of Kakashi and Sakura.
"Too fast!" Kakashi reached for his kunai, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. A Sharingan genjutsu caught their eyes, plunging them into instant sleep.
Before they hit the ground, they were sucked into a rose-shaped spatial vortex, the Flower Realm.
Inside the dimension, Konin sensed the newcomers. "Do you want me to kill them?" she joked.
"No. They are precious to me. Just keep them under the genjutsu," Kanon's voice echoed from outside. "I don't want to hurt them."
Inside the space, Kakashi and Sakura saw Kanon's world for the first time: a pure white field of flowers, the only place not stained by blood.
"It's... so beautiful..." Sakura murmured before the illusion took hold.
Back in the village, Tsunade watched as her top jonin and apprentice vanished into the vortex.
"Where did you take them?!"
"To a place where they'll be safe. Unlike here." Kanon let out a sharp cry and bit her thumb. "Summoning Jutsu!"
POOF!
A colossal cloud of white smoke erupted, and the massive form of Manda appeared beneath Kanon's feet. The Great Snake loomed over the village like a living mountain.
"Kanon-sama! What are your orders?"
"Use your tail. Level everything in sight."
"With pleasure!"
Manda lashed out, his tail swing acting like a horizontal landslide that sent the surrounding ninja flying!
"Don't look down on me!" Tsunade roared, slamming her palm into the ground. "Summoning Jutsu!"
POOF!
The giant slug Katsuyu appeared to meet the threat.
"Manda... but why is there a child standing on his head?" Katsuyu asked. "Tsunade-sama, what must I do?"
"That child has lost her way. You know what needs to be done."
Two mountain-sized summoning beasts now stood face-to-face in the center of the village.
"Hmph." Kanon looked at Tsunade with disdain. Her right eye shifted, the three tomoe morphing into a complex rose pattern. She reached down and touched Manda's head.
This was the new ability of her right Mangekyo—Apocalypse: Flower Burial.
Beyond the black flames of Amaterasu, this eye possessed the power to turn anything she touched, including herself, intangible by shifting it into a localized spatial fold.
Katsuyu spat a massive stream of corrosive acid, but the liquid passed harmlessly through Manda's body as if he were a ghost. Meanwhile, Manda's physical tail swing remained devastatingly real, smashing through the nearby fortifications and leveling the area!