Zander
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Chapter 76 – “she smiled warmly and proudly..”
🕑 Added 2025-07-04 03:51:30 +0000 UTCChapter 76 – “She smiled, with warmth and proud.”
Tsunade stood alone in the dim-lit observation room high in the Hokage Tower. A single crystal sphere hovered before her, faintly glowing. The room was quiet, no advisors, no guards, no Shizune. Just her, the polished stone, and the swirling images within it.
The crystal ball, a item once used by Hiruzen Sarutobi, shimmered as it projected what Tsunade asked it to find.
And right now, it showed Hajime.
She had watched everything since the moment he stepped through the walls of the eastern Root base. She hadn’t blinked once.
What she saw didn’t feel like something from this world.
Hajime moved through the base like a walking judgment, his armor catching and warping light as he advanced, every step echoing with impossible weight. It wasn’t ninja armor. It wasn’t even samurai armor. It was something older. Something more... divine.
The suit was smooth but unyielding, composed of interlocking plates of dull silver-gray metal, matte and devoid of excess shine. It covered him entirely, from the sharp-angled helm down to the heavy boots. Every surface had subtle etchings and ridged channels that seemed to hum with restrained energy. When jutsu struck him, the armor flared with a radiant blue light at the point of contact, like the surface of the metal itself refused to yield. The energy radiated outward in pulses, no chakra, but something colder and more powerful.
An inscription glowed across the front of his chestplate in an unfamiliar script:
Armatus Puritate Propositi.
She didn’t know what the words meant, but she felt their weight in her gut.
He wasn’t deflecting the attacks.
He was walking through them.
No dodging. No hand signs. No fear.
When she saw him take a wind blade to the chest and barely glance at the attacker before knocking them out with a single punch, her jaw had gone slack.
Root agents fell one after another.
Controlled.
Precise.
Not dead, but definitively broken.
Then the scene shifted.
A larger chamber. A steel door opened. And Tsunade’s breath caught.
Danzo.
She hadn’t seen the man in weeks. She thought he’d been sulking in retirement after the Council stripped him of most of his influence. She thought Root was dismantled.
She’d been wrong on both counts.
He stood there like he still ruled from the shadows, his right arm wrapped in bandages, that ever-present cloth over his right eye.
Tsunade leaned in slightly.
Then Hajime said it.
“You’re the one labeled a traitor. I’m just here to deliver the sentence.”
Danzo snarled back about rebellion, about Hajime being an outsider. About her being weak.
Her hands tightened into fists. “You smug, treasonous bastard…”
Then Danzo revealed it.
He removed the cloth from his eye.
A Mangekyō Sharingan.
Tsunade reeled back, eyes wide.
“A Mangekyō?! He had that this whole time!?”
She didn’t recognize the pattern or know the ability, but the truth was obvious: Danzo had an Uchiha’s power. He shouldn’t. That was forbidden. That was sacrilege.
Worse still, seconds later, he pulled back the wrappings on his arm, and Tsunade's blood froze.
Embedded into that twisted limb were ten Sharingan.
A whole line of them, twitching and blinking.
She stepped back from the crystal, bile rising in her throat. “You used the eyes of the dead… you implanted them.”
And the skin, she recognized the texture, the tone. A terrible memory flared.
“Those are… Grandfather’s cells...”
The Senju line. Hashirama’s blood.
He had desecrated it.
The room blurred for a moment as rage tried to boil over.
Then the scene continued.
Danzo unleashed everything. Wind bullets. Vacuum spheres. Explosions. He even vanished and reappeared using some forbidden space-time trick. But Hajime, he never moved.
Every blast struck him. Every trick failed. The armor didn’t break. It didn't even flinch.
When Danzo tried to stab him in the back, the armor lit blue and stopped the blade cold.
When Hajime grabbed that twisted arm and crushed it, Sharingan popping like glass beads, Tsunade whispered, “Yes.”
But then Danzo reset. The arm was whole again.
“He’s cheating death…”
Izanagi. She recognized it from the ancient scrolls. A jutsu so vile even Tobirama had sealed records of it.
“You can’t win,” Danzo panted. “I can rewrite my fate again and again!”
Hajime’s response chilled her.
“I only need to kill you eleven times.”
And so he did.
Again.
And again.
Each time Danzo resurrected, he looked more desperate.
Hajime never spoke in anger. He struck like a force of judgment. Calm. Cold. Absolute.
By the time only one eye remained, Danzo tried to flee. Tsunade watched, heart pounding, as Hajime dragged him back like a cornered animal.
Then came the final blow.
A punch. No chakra. No technique.
Just a strike, clean and lethal.
Danzo fell.
And this time… stayed down.
The Sharingan in his arm dimmed.
No more resets.
Tsunade stared at the body.
Dead. Finally. Decisively.
She exhaled, trembling.
Not from fear.
But from the enormity of it.
Danzo, the man who had undermined the Third Hokage. The one who manipulated the Uchiha massacre. Who trained Root in secret, even under Hiruzen’s nose. Who tried to kidnap children. Who hoarded power like poison.
Was gone.
Not by a trial. Not by her hand.
But by Hajime.
Her student.
Tsunade looked at the crystal again as Hajime turned and walked away from the wreckage. His armor still gleamed. His pace never changed.
she smiled warmly and proudly.
