When Makoto stepped out of the carriage, three pairs of eyes locked onto him in unison, each carrying the same suspicious look. They all assumed he'd reduced the girl to tears.
A second later, Koyuki followed him out.
But her face bore none of the tear-streaked misery Utaha and the others had expected.
"Um... Yukie, please eat a little something." Sandayu approached with a fresh bowl of broth, holding it out with both hands like an offering.
"...Thank you."
The words were barely a whisper, but they froze Sandayu in place. He stared at Koyuki, struggling to process the complete reversal.
Makoto glanced at her. "Starting tomorrow, you won't need the name 'Yukie Fujikaze' anymore."
"Wh-what do you mean?" Sandayu turned to him, bewildered.
Makoto didn't explain.
His gaze swept across the snow-blanketed mountains in the distance.
If the capital hadn't been so far from here, he'd have told Koyuki: Sit tight. I'll bring you Doto's head before that soup goes cold.
"Let's go. Utaha, Megumi, Ran."
He launched himself forward, streaking toward the capital of the Land of Snow.
Utaha, Megumi, and Ran scrambled to keep up.
"Sensei, where are we going?" Megumi called from behind.
"To kill the daimyo of the Land of Snow."
Wind howled past them. All three girls faltered mid-stride.
Four years since transmigrating to this world, they knew exactly what a daimyo was.
And Makoto had said it the way someone might say what's for dinner.
"Um... Sensei, what exactly is going on?" Utaha's face was pure shock.
He explained as they ran, laying out the basics: the actress Yukie Fujikaze was really Koyuki Kazahana, the true princess of this country, carrying the weight of a murdered father and a stolen throne.
The three girls' expressions darkened with every word.
Now they understood.
Doto Kazahana deserved to die.
"The male lead accepts a protection mission, discovers his client is a princess burdened with a blood feud, and fights to reclaim her kingdom..."
Utaha murmured, eyes bright. "That's textbook romance novel material."
"Read fewer novels."
Makoto turned his head. "What's coming next are real shinobi. A different league from the petty thugs we've been dealing with. Stay focused. And if things get dangerous, don't count on me swooping in to save you."
Utaha smiled. "Really? I have a feeling you'd come save us anyway."
He glanced back at her.
Was this girl getting bolder with him lately?
The Land of Snow was vast and sparsely populated, its frozen landscape funneling people into a handful of scattered settlements.
Alone, Makoto could have reached the capital in half a day using the Flying Thunder God technique. But with three tagalongs, the journey stretched to a crawl.
He had his reasons for bringing them, though.
Two days later, they reached the capital.
Like the borderlands, the city lay buried under ice and snow. The architecture carried a stark, Nordic severity.
The citizens who passed them on the streets wore no smiles. Only exhaustion and numbness.
The local shinobi, by contrast, couldn't have been more different. They wore bizarre suits of armor, expressions dripping with arrogance, carrying themselves like they owned the world.
"What are they wearing?" Ran eyed the guards with curiosity.
"Chakra armor," Makoto said. "You can pre-store Chakra inside it, then amplify it during combat. A chunin wearing one can fight at jonin level. It also auto-dispels genjutsu when it detects the wearer is caught in one."
The three girls exchanged glances, eyes widening.
That powerful? Then why were they killing themselves training every day?
Makoto read their thoughts and scoffed. "Don't go dreaming about shortcuts. Those things are fragile. A few solid hits and they shatter. Fine for bullying anyone below jonin rank, but against a real threat? Useless."
As he spoke, they made their way down the capital's main avenue.
A massive white palace loomed at the far end.
The daimyo's residence.
A row of Chakra-armored guards stood at the entrance. Megumi dropped her voice. "Sensei, should I infiltrate first?"
"No need." His eyes swept over the guards with terrifying nonchalance. "We're killing them all anyway."
He turned to Utaha. "Do it. Just like we discussed last night."
Utaha drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and began forming hand signs.
She'd barely finished the first seal when the guards at the gate sensed something wrong.
"Enemy att..."
A dozen figures charged toward them.
Utaha's sequence completed.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
Her pale cheeks puffed slightly, and in the next instant, a savage gale roared to life.
Like the Great Fireball of Fire Release or the Wild Water Wave of Water Release, it was a foundational offensive ninjutsu of its element. Its power scaled directly with the user's Chakra reserves.
And the power behind Utaha's version...
"Ha. This pathetic excuse for a jutsu?"
The purple-haired man at the front sneered and stopped in his tracks.
Nadare Roga. Leader of the Snow shinobi, the same man who'd fought Kakashi a decade ago. Already jonin-level on his own, the Chakra armor pushed him to the threshold of elite jonin.
He didn't even bother with a counter-technique. He simply concentrated Chakra into both hands, ready to smash through the incoming wind blades head-on.
Then his gaze drifted past Utaha to the dark-haired young man standing behind her.
The boy's left hand covered his left eye. Only the right was visible, fixed on Nadare with an unblinking stare.
The black iris was bleeding into crimson.
Three tomoe spun at the edge of the pupil, faster and faster, until they merged into an entirely new pattern.
Nadare's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
Ice-cold dread flooded through him from spine to fingertips.
"Fall ba..."
Before he could finish, the boy's voice reached him. Flat. Empty.
"Amaterasu."
Black flames erupted from nowhere, igniting the wind blades Utaha had unleashed.
Wind fed fire. The dark inferno swelled to several times its original size in a heartbeat, cascading down like an inverted storm of black rain, landing with surgical precision on every Snow shinobi in its path.
Screams tore through the air, one after another.
The guards who'd strutted like kings moments ago were now rolling across the ground, thrashing, howling.
They clawed desperately at the flames consuming them, but the black fire only burned hotter, devouring everything it touched, impossible to extinguish.
The civilians who'd gathered at a distance stood paralyzed.
Watching the shinobi who'd terrorized them for years writhe like burning insects, they couldn't process what they were seeing.
Utaha and the others were frozen too.
The aura radiating from those black flames triggered something primal, a dread that bypassed thought entirely.
"What... what kind of fire is that..."
"Sensei, your eye is bleeding."
Megumi's voice snapped the other two back. They looked at Makoto and saw blood streaming from his right eye like crimson tears, tracing a line down his cheek.
Megumi reached up instinctively, dabbing at it with her sleeve.
Makoto didn't pull away.
His body trembled faintly.
Half from the searing agony of the Mangekyou Sharingan. The other half...
From exhilaration.
Amaterasu.
The ability of Uchiha Fugaku's Mangekyou Sharingan, right eye.
Sure enough, that guy, Itachi, and Sasuke were father and sons after all; they all shared one Mangekyou ability in common.
Black flames danced in his reflected gaze, mirroring the figures still writhing in the inferno below.
And the corner of his mouth curved upward, impossible to suppress.