Vector Manipulation. The ability itself was absolute in theory. By rewriting the direction and magnitude of physical quantities, Sasuke possessed the power to control any heat, kinetic energy, or electricity that made contact with his domain. But in practical combat, the most devastating application was the rebound.
It rendered him nearly untouchable. Any attack, any elemental ninjutsu, any physical blow that crossed the threshold of his skin would instantly reverse its vectors, bouncing back at the attacker with amplified force. Their own strength was doubled, their own jutsu turned against them. Whether it was blunt physical damage or high-temperature elemental release, Sasuke stood as an immovable, invincible fortress.
The only limitation is this vessel, Sasuke mused internally, his crimson six-pointed Mangekyō Sharingan spinning lazily as he looked down from the air. My cerebral cortex is still developing. I rely on the computational framework of the super-brain processor and the visual processing power of the Mangekyō to handle the calculations. If my brain had fully matured, the explosive vectors I could generate... they wouldn't just shatter bones. They would level the entire district.
BOOM.
The earth shook violently as Shimura Danzō slammed into the ground, his body carving a grotesque, human-shaped crater in the cobblestone street.
Inside the depression, the war hawk coughed violently, expelling a mouthful of crimson blood. Danzō forced his head up, his single eye trembling with a mixture of agony and sheer horror as he stared at the small figure hovering effortlessly in the sky.
His mind was reeling. He couldn't comprehend what he had just witnessed. There had been no buildup, no gathering of chakra nature transformation. Sasuke had simply intercepted a B-rank Wind Style technique and returned it with the force of a natural disaster.
"Why..." Danzō rasped, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. "How can you unleash such a terrifying Wind Style: Great Breakthrough without weaving a single hand seal?!"
"Tsk."
Sasuke clicked his tongue, a soft sound that carried mocking amusement. A smile played across his youthful face—an expression that was terrifying precisely because it didn't match the coldness in his spinning eyes. He didn't even dignify Danzō's confusion with a response. Instead, his gaze flicked toward the boy clamped in the grip of his spectral Susano'o hand, and then to the broken figure of Itachi leaning against a crumbling wall in the shadows.
"Look at you," Sasuke drawled, his voice dripping with faux sentimentality. "Father and son, sharing such a profound bond. I am almost moved to tears. Look at that, you Uchiha dog," he sneered, glancing toward Itachi. "Danzō has real father-son affection. He loves his son. But you? You slaughtered your own parents for the sake of the village. You really are beneath this beast, aren't you?"
Itachi's breath hitched, the words striking him like physical blows. Danzō was a monster, yes, but Sasuke's comparison was a calculated strike at the deepest, most festering wound in the Uchiha prodigy's soul.
"Sasuke!" Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage, stepped forward urgently. The old man's face was etched with deep worry. He saw the hesitation—or what he mistook for hesitation—in Sasuke's eyes and saw a glimmer of hope. He believed that beneath this terrifying power, Sasuke was still a seven-year-old child. "Release the boy from your grasp! Look at the father and son. Do not let them repeat the mistakes your family made. Do not lose yourself, Sasuke!"
Hiruzen thought he had struck a chord. He thought he had appealed to the boy's innocence.
Even Danzō's eye brightened slightly, sensing a shift in the atmosphere. He looked up at the boy, trying to see the child underneath the monster.
Sasuke's eyebrows rose, his smile widening into something saccharine and sickly sweet. "Oh. I am so incredibly touched by your feelings, Hokage-sama."
But the smile vanished instantly.
CRACK.
Sasuke's fingers twitched, applying a fraction more pressure with the massive spectral hand.
CRACK-CRACK.
The sound of ribs snapping echoed off the burning buildings like gunshots.
"AAAAAAHHH!!!"
A bloodcurdling shriek tore from the throat of the captured figure, a boy whose face was rapidly contorting in unimaginable agony.
"Save me! Father, save me! Lord Hokage, please!" Hōki screamed, his voice cracking as blood began to trickle from his eyes. The Susano'o's grip was crushing his internal organs. "Let go of me! Please, let me go!!!"
"Sasuke, you intend to betray Konoha and burn it all to the ground?" Danzō roared, forcing himself up from the crater despite the pain. He coughed blood, his face contorted in rage and desperation. "Put him down!"
"Father! Save me!!!" Hōki sobbed, his body convulsing.
Dust and gravel kicked up around Danzō's sandals.
Sasuke's Susano'o hand jerked open.
Hōki's body, limp and broken, plummeted toward the ground.
Danzō didn't hesitate. The old war hawk lunged forward, his hand outstretched, desperate to catch his son before he hit the stone.
But Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
Vector Manipulation.
With a subtle clench of his pale palm, the vectors of gravity and velocity acting on Hōki's falling body were instantly altered. The descent halted for a fraction of a second, only to be redirected inward.
A wet thud.
A violent mist of blood sprayed into the evening air.
The sound of crushing bone was sickeningly loud, followed by the wet slap of the ground as what was left of Shimura Hōki splattered across the stones.
"HŌKI!" Danzō's scream tore through his throat, raw and animalistic. He stared at his hands, expecting to hold his son, only to find them coated in crimson spray. The mist hung heavy in the air, the last remnants of a life cut brutally short.
"Beast!" Danzō clutched his heart, his eye bloodshot and wild with a mixture of grief and blinding hatred. "You little evil beast! I will kill you! I will flay you alive!"
"Mercy?" Sasuke murmured, his voice soft, his expression almost angelic despite the carnage he had wrought. "I just now spared him the agony of prolonged suffering. When you reach the Pure Land, Hōki, don't look at me with resentment. Oh, and don't forget to thank me. After all, you served as a wonderful distraction."
Sasuke's face carried a pure, innocent smile. But in the eyes of the gathered ANBU, Hiruzen, and Danzō, the boy had transformed. The mask of childhood had shattered, revealing something far darker.
A demon. A young, blood-drunk demon born from the ashes of his own clan.
Vector Manipulation.
Sasuke raised a single finger and drew a circle in the air.
The blood mist suspended above the street began to swirl. Ignoring the liquid, Sasuke targeted only the solid matter—the shattered fragments of Hōki's ribs, his spine, his skull. Under his invisible guidance, the bones accelerated, spiraling inward, grinding and compressing against one another.
In the blink of an eye, the remains of Shimura Hōki were forged into a single object: a jagged, white shuriken, its red-tinted edges gleaming in the firelight.
With a lazy flick of his Susano'o's spectral arm, Sasuke snatched the bone shuriken from the air and leveled it directly at Danzō.
"Lord Danzō," Sasuke announced, his cheerful demeanor clashing horribly with his words. "This is my parting gift to you. Please, receive it!"
He threw it.
The bone weapon cut through the air with a high-pitched shriek.
The entire perimeter fell dead silent. Even the crackling fires seemed to fade into the background.
Demon.
He is a monster in the shape of a child.
Hiruzen Sarutobi took two involuntary steps backward, his face pale. He stared at the spinning projectile and his stomach churned. It was the bones of a boy.
Do I save him? Do I let the father decide?
The shuriken was fast. It closed the distance with terrifying velocity. If Danzō touched it, it would rip through his hand and embed itself in his skull.
"Today," Danzō snarled, his face twisting into a mask of agony and resolve, "even if I must tarnish the entire glory of the Shimura clan to survive, I will not die here!"
He refused to dodge. To turn his back on a weapon was the act of a coward. But he also couldn't block it.
His hands blurred through seals, weaving faster than they had in a decade.
"Wind Style!"
Unlike the chaotic Great Breakthrough from earlier, this was the Vacuum Wave—a precise, B-rank technique. Danzō's cheeks bulged as he inhaled deeply. With a sharp exhalation, a blade of transparent, high-pressure air erupted from his mouth.
The vacuum wave sliced through the air, intersecting the path of the bone shuriken mere meters from Danzō's face.
Schwing.
The wind blades shredded the bone shuriken to pieces.
Danzō was forced to use his own son's remains as a shield, destroying them completely to ensure his own survival. The wind blades carried the pulverized bone dust out harmlessly into the night air.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Sasuke began to clap.
The sound of his small hands colliding echoed through the silence, slow and rhythmic.
"I have always heard the rumors about you, Lord Danzō," Sasuke said, a dark amusement dancing in his eyes. "They said you were sinister, cunning, ruthless, and utterly devoid of justice. I always thought it was just propaganda. But today, seeing it with my own eyes... you really are magnificent. You crushed your own son's bones into ashes just to save your own skin."
POW.
The psychological blow struck harder than any jutsu. Danzō's face turned a violent shade of crimson, and he choked, spraying a fresh spray of blood onto the ground. He pointed a trembling finger at Sasuke, his throat constricting with rage, speechless in the face of his own depravity being laid bare.
His single eye locked onto Sasuke, glaring as if his gaze alone could kill.
From the shadows, a low, broken sound emerged.
"Mmph..."
Uchiha Itachi, leaning against Sarutobi Hiruzen, had his face hidden in the darkness of his cloak. But his composure was fracturing. He watched the younger brother he had sworn to protect, the boy he had tried to drive toward a righteous path, and felt his heart sink into a cold abyss.
Sasuke's poisonous tongue, his absolute cruelty... Itachi had never met this version of his brother. It was a side of Sasuke that made him look more like a monster than the boy Itachi had once bounced on his knee. It was just... heartbreakingly wrong.
"I WANT YOU TO DIE!!!"
Danzō finally roared, his sanity fraying completely.
The residual wind blades from his Vacuum Wave technique, which had dispersed into the sky, suddenly shuddered. They began to reverse their trajectory, drawn back by an invisible force.
Sasuke hadn't moved. He hadn't woven a single hand sign. To the onlookers, it looked like a miracle, or a curse.
Vector Manipulation.
Sasuke tapped his toe against the air, manipulating the kinetic vectors of the atmosphere to keep himself suspended effortlessly. Then, he simply reached out with a bare hand toward the storm of invisible wind blades rushing toward him.
The onlookers gasped. He's going to grab a B-rank ninjutsu with his bare hands! Is he mad? Does he want to be shredded to ribbons? The gap between C-rank and B-rank jutsu was the difference between a cut and a maiming.
But Sasuke's expression remained bored.
The moment the vacuum blades made contact with Sasuke's open palm—
Vector Manipulation: Reflection.
BOOM.
The wind blades didn't just stop; they were instantly seized by the super-brain's computational grid. Their direction was reversed. Their velocity was doubled. Their cutting power was amplified.
The invisible wall of wind that was meant to slice Sasuke apart transformed into a hyper-compressed storm of destruction and roared directly back toward Danzō.
"RUMBLE!!!"
Danzō stood frozen, his mind going blank. The sheer impossibility of what he had just witnessed—the seamless reversal of a B-rank wind technique without a single flaw—left him utterly dumbfounded as the invisible storm descended upon him once again.