Senju Estate
Dragging Danzo through the quiet streets for the last time, Ren finally reached the Senju estate.
The place was silent, far too silent for something that had once housed an entire clan. Lanterns hung along the corridors, their light steady and warm, but there was no laughter, no voices, no footsteps beyond his own. It felt less like a residence and more like a monument, one that had realized it was already a grave.
Ren paused at the entrance.
Earlier, he had decided Naruto should get a shot at Danzo. A single hit. Nothing fancy or bloody. Just… something. A tiny bit of justice, however symbolic it might be.
But now, standing here with Danzo in tow, he hesitated.
'What do I even tell him?'
He couldn't exactly say, 'Hey Naruto, this is the guy who made your childhood hell, isolated you, ensured you'd be hated, and indirectly caused most of your suffering.' That was a terrible idea. Naruto's emotions were already volatile enough, and Kurama was always waiting for cracks. If Naruto lost control now, things could spiral fast.
Ren could stop it if it happened. He was confident of that.
But the point wasn't whether he could contain Naruto. It was whether he should put the kid through something like that.
"…Tch."
He rubbed his face with his free hand and continued inward, dragging Danzo across polished stone floors that had seen better days. Soon, he reached the room where he had left Naruto earlier.
Ren nudged the door open quietly.
Naruto was still asleep.
Curled up under the blanket, breathing evenly, face relaxed in a way that only truly exhausted kids managed. No scowls, no forced grin, just peaceful, innocent sleep.
Ren stood there for a moment, watching.
"…Naruto," he muttered softly.
No response.
He stepped closer and tried again, a little louder. "Naruto."
Nothing. The kid didn't even twitch.
Ren exhaled slowly, then turned around, already resigning himself. "Well," he muttered to himself, "I tried. He isn't waking up."
He took a step toward the door and then stopped.
His gaze dropped to Danzo, who lay slumped beside him, eyes dull, body dragged across half the village by now.
Ren clenched his jaw.
"Damnit."
He turned back around sharply, annoyance written all over his face, and walked back into the room.
"Alright," he said, crouching beside the bed. "Naruto, wake up."
He shook him lightly.
Nothing.
He shook him harder. "Naruto."
Still nothing.
Ren straightened and sighed, then leaned closer and spoke clearly, with absolute seriousness.
"Oh. Ichiraku Ramen is having an all-you-can-eat competition."
Naruto jolted upright instantly.
"RAMEN!"
He froze mid-sit, eyes half-open, hair sticking up even worse than usual, drool still threatening the corner of his mouth.
Ren pinched the bridge of his nose. "No ramen."
Naruto blinked, blearily processing reality.
Ren pointed his thumb behind him. "Look. I brought the person I was telling you about earlier. I want you to hit him."
That finally woke Naruto up properly.
He rubbed his eyes, yawned, then turned his head and squinted at Danzo. His brows furrowed slightly.
"Isn't that the old guy who was standing next to gramps this morning?"
Ren nodded. "Yeah."
Naruto looked back at Ren. "Why is he here?"
"He's a bad guy," Ren replied simply. "So he got punished. Then he tried to run away, but I caught him. Now I'm taking him around to get hit by everyone he wronged. It's your turn."
Naruto stared at Danzo for a few seconds longer.
Then, surprisingly easily, he nodded. "Okay."
He tossed the blanket aside and hopped down from the bed.
Ren blinked. "Wait. You'll really hit him?"
Naruto tilted his head, genuinely confused. "He's a bad guy, right?"
Ren went quiet for a moment.
Then he chuckled softly. "…Yeah. A real bad guy."
He grabbed Danzo by the hair and leaned down close to his ear, voice dropping low, just enough that Naruto couldn't hear.
"Look at you," Ren whispered. "This is the kid whose life you ruined. And even now, you don't get a proper end. Just humiliation."
Naruto stepped forward, planted his feet like he'd seen others do, pulled his arm back as far as he could and punched Danzo square in the chest.
Or at least, that was the intention.
In practice, it was more like a firm fist bump.
Ren stared.
Then he snorted.
Naruto's cheeks flushed bright red. "HEY! Why are you laughing?!"
Ren coughed and straightened immediately. "Me? I'm not laughing."
His shoulders shook violently.
Naruto narrowed his eyes. "You totally are."
"Nope," Ren said solemnly, wiping at his face. "Just… dust."
He quickly changed the subject. "Anyway. You got your hit. Good job."
Naruto crossed his arms, clearly unconvinced, but still a little proud. "Yeah… I did."
"Go back to sleep," Ren said, already grabbing Danzo's ankle again. "Big day tomorrow."
Naruto yawned, the adrenaline fading fast. He climbed back into bed, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like next time I'll hit harder, and was asleep again within seconds.
Ren dragged Danzo back out into the corridor.
The door closed softly behind them and the estate returned to silence.
~~~
Uchiha Compound
By this time, the Uchiha compound had finally returned to its familiar, oppressive silence.
The air still carried the faint metallic scent of blood and burned chakra, but the clashes had ended. No more shouts. No more desperate charges. Only the quiet aftermath of a night that would scar the clan for years to come.
Fugaku and Itachi stood amid the remnants of rebellion, their work finished, but not without cost.
The rebels had been separated with grim efficiency.
The ones who had died first, then the ones who had broken first, who had thrown down their weapons and begged for forgiveness, were gathered together under heavy guard. Their chakra pathways had been sealed carefully, not cruelly, and they were kept kneeling in orderly rows. Fear still clung to them, but beneath it was relief, raw, shaking relief that they were still alive.
Then there were those who hadn't surrendered willingly.
The ones who continued to fight even after the tide had clearly turned.
Those had been subdued by Itachi.
Not killed, at least, not all of them. Precision strikes, clean incapacitations, calculated movements that left no room for resistance. Broken joints, crushed windpipes just short of death, chakra disrupted so thoroughly they could barely breathe, let alone weave hand seals. Itachi had moved through them like a shadow given form, efficient and silent, eyes cold but hands steady.
And finally… there were the ones who could not be stopped. The hardliners, the fanatics.
The ones who, even when disarmed, even when wounded, had charged with madness burning behind their Sharingan.
Those were dead.
Their bodies had been moved aside, covered hastily with cloaks. Fugaku had made sure they were separated from the rest, out of sight of those who still lived. There was no need to add more trauma than the night had already delivered.
When it was all done, only one figure remained unaccounted for in the usual sense.
Kyoshiro.
The leader of the rebels.
Fugaku stood a short distance away from him, shoulders heavy, eyes tired. Kyoshiro was restrained, his movements limited by suppressing seals wrapped tightly around his limbs and torso. His Sharingan were inactive now, dulled, unfocused.
Yet his mouth…
His mouth would not stop moving.
Words spilled from it in a steady, poisonous stream, half-coherent slogans, twisted ideals, echoes of speeches he had already given and promises of futures that no longer existed. They weren't truly his words anymore. That much had become painfully obvious.
Itachi had been the first to realize it.
"This isn't normal," he had said quietly earlier, crouched beside Kyoshiro and studying him with unnerving focus. "He knows something is wrong. I can see it in his chakra flow. But the Genjutsu isn't breaking."
Fugaku had frowned deeply at that.
A Genjutsu that persisted even after the target became aware of it was rare. One that continued despite resistance was rarer still. And this one… this one felt wrong.
It was not layered or reactive, it was a mix of hypnotic and something else.
Something planted deep, meant to control actions directly and to steer thought patterns, reinforce obsession, and override doubt. A long-term manipulation rather than a battlefield illusion.
The signature was unmistakable.
"The masked man," Fugaku had said grimly. "The one calling himself Madara."
Itachi nodded. "It fits. This kind of Genjutsu isn't meant to be broken quickly. If we force it, there's a high chance it will destroy his mind instead."
That had decided it.
They didn't kill Kyoshiro.
Not yet.
Fugaku had stepped forward then, formed a short sequence of hand seals, and placed a sealing technique over Kyoshiro's mouth. The words cut off instantly, replaced by muffled, furious sounds that echoed uselessly in his throat.
Silence, at last.
Fugaku exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of leadership press down on him once more.
They had lost many tonight.
But they had not lost the clan.
Not completely.
Now that the rebellion had collapsed, now that many had surrendered and others had been forcibly subdued, Kyoshiro's survival mattered more than ever. If, and when the Genjutsu could be safely unraveled, his testimony would be crucial.
He had believed in the rebellion. He had led it.
If he spoke the truth, admitted manipulation, admitted error, then the clan could be pulled back from the brink. Trust could begin to mend. The fractures, though deep, would not become permanent.
Killing him now would only turn him into a martyr.
Fugaku would not make that mistake.
As the compound settled into uneasy quiet, Itachi stood beside his father, eyes scanning the survivors, the fallen, the broken. His expression was unreadable, but his hands, his hands were steady.
"There has been enough blood for one night," Fugaku murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
Itachi did not disagree.
Above them, the moon hung low and pale, bearing silent witness to a clan that had come terrifyingly close to annihilating itself, and had, somehow, stopped just short of the edge.
At this moment, Ren arrived.
He didn't announce himself. He didn't flicker in with flair or land dramatically. He simply walked into the compound, dragging Danzo behind him by the ankle, the old man's body scraping against the stone like discarded baggage. The sound cut through the quiet more sharply than any shout could have.
Ren stopped near the center of the compound and finally lifted his gaze.
What he saw made him exhale slowly.
The ground was stained dark in places. Bodies had been moved aside, some covered, some not. Uchiha shinobi stood in clusters, some injured, some shaken, some staring blankly at nothing. Fugaku and Itachi were still standing, still upright, but the fatigue in their posture was unmistakable.
It was bloody.
But it wasn't annihilation.
Ren closed his eyes for half a second, then opened them again. 'Yeah,' he thought. 'This is bad… but it's still better than canon.'
In the original future, there would have been no survivors here. No chance to heal. Just a silent compound filled with corpses and one boy left to carry the weight of it all alone.
Compared to that, this, this mess of grief, anger, guilt, and survival was almost merciful.
Danzo, on the other hand, had a very different reaction.
The moment he saw the Uchiha gathered together, saw the dead, the wounded, the restrained, something inside him snapped into manic delight. His lips split into a wide, unhinged grin, and a harsh laugh burst from his throat.
"Hahaha…"
Then louder.
"HAHAHAHA!"
The sound echoed unnaturally in the compound, sharp and grating.
"You cursed clan," Danzo spat, his voice thick with venom and triumph all at once. "This is what you deserve. Look at you, killing each other like animals. Mark my words, Uchiha… you will meet your end with your own blood!"
His laughter rose again, shrill and mad, reverberating off the walls.
That was when it happened.
Every Uchiha present turned toward him.
All at once.
It was as if the air itself had locked onto Danzo.
Ren felt it immediately, dozens upon dozens of killing intents snapping into place, converging on a single point. Even without Sharingan, the pressure would have been crushing. With them, it was suffocating.
Danzo's grin faltered.
His eyes darted wildly as he suddenly became aware of what he had done. The white arm strapped to his side, exposed and unhidden, felt heavier than ever. The closed Sharingan embedded in it pulsed faintly under the seals, and every Uchiha could see them.
Eyes that should have belonged to their clan.
Eyes taken from corpses, from prisoners, from children who never returned.
The hatred in the compound deepened, thick enough to choke on.
Ren watched the shift in atmosphere and decided this was the right moment.
He released Danzo's ankle, letting the old man slump onto the ground, and spoke casually, as if he were discussing the weather.
"I'll give you an hour," Ren said.
The words cut cleanly through the tension.
"And three lives."
Fugaku's head snapped toward him.
Ren continued, unbothered, his tone almost lazy. "You can kill him three times. No more. Whatever else you do in between…" He shrugged slightly. "I don't need to know. That's between you and him."
Danzo's eyes widened in horror.
Ren's gaze dropped to him, cold and amused. "Just remember, don't kill him more than thrice."
Silence followed.
Fugaku stared at Ren, his mind working rapidly. Three lives means three deaths. His eyes flicked instinctively to Danzo's arm, to the embedded Sharingan, to the seals locking them in place.
Understanding dawned.
'Izanagi.'
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth creaked.
Slowly, very slowly, Fugaku straightened his posture. The rage in his eyes didn't diminish, but it sharpened, becoming controlled, deliberate.
He turned fully toward Ren and bowed his head slightly but deeply enough that it startled some of the Uchiha behind him.
"Thank you," Fugaku said.
The word came out rough, almost broken, but it was sincere.
Ren nodded once in response. Nothing more.
He had no intention of staying.
He knew the Uchiha. He knew what this arm meant to them. What Danzo represented. What years of suppressed hatred and stolen eyes would turn into once unleashed.
Their methods would not be clean.
They would not be quick.
And they would almost certainly be far more extreme than anything he or Tsunade had done.
Ren wasn't interested in watching that.
He turned around and began walking away from the compound, hands slipping into his pockets, posture relaxed despite the weight of what he had just set in motion.
"I'll be back in an hour," he said over his shoulder. "Try not to waste the lives."
No one stopped him.
No one spoke.
Behind him, the Uchiha closed in around Danzo, their expressions dark, their Sharingan glinting faintly in the moonlight.
Ren didn't look back.
He had done his part.
What happened next belonged to them.
~~~~~
{I think some of you guys were confused about what happened with the Uchiha's in the fic so I'll explain. The rebels gathered, but Fugaku and Itachi either killed them or subdued them. The entire clan was NOT annihilated, they would NOT be annihilated, the only ones who died were the rebels and that too not all of them.}
{Anyway, reaching the end of this arc soon, there's only a few things left, Kakashi killing Danzo, then a bit with Daimyo, execution, then the BANG and finally the rewards. I don't know how many chapters they would be but what worries do you guys have, just enjoy.}