Suguru felt the world around him burn. However, it was a miraculous feat that he himself had not been reduced to ashes.
With a gleaming pair of silver eyes, now shattered and reformed into a pair of Shinrakugan, the illusions before him were clearer than before. With red dust flooding throughout the battlefield, unnoticed, Suguru sighed a breath of relief.
'Using my Shinrakugan's Red Dust instead of the Sharingan was indeed the better choice.'
It seemed like Danzo's stolen eyes had a lot more to them than he initially thought. The Battlefield of Manifold Illusions cast through Bishamonten indeed had more steps.
Although these steps were more subtle than one might think — especially to those unfamiliar with the Sharingan's Izanagi and Izanami.
'After all,' Looking around the illusory world, a smile crept up to his expression. 'This Mangekyou Sharingan ability is very similar to the way those ultimate Dojutsus are used.'
Suguru's suspicions were thus proven correct.
Which meant—
'The moment the Mangekyou Sharingan is activated, Bishamonten would have been cast alongside it, without anyone knowing.'
A mere glance was all it took for the world to be plunged into an elaborate Genjutsu that would span the battlefield.
'This explains why Konohagakure's army didn't seem to care about Yugito's defiant barrage of Tailed Beast Bombs. It also has sense now — that landscape-reverting jutsu indeed needs a memorized scene that can be invoked at a moment's notice.'
When Yugito transformed into Matatabi's visage, Danzo had already set his gaze upon the battlefield, plunging the entire area in an undetectable Genjutsu that targeted everyone indiscriminately.
At that time, Suguru had been too busy to monitor the entire area, hence the sudden change had gone under his radar.
'How sly,' Suguru wanted to laugh.
However, his brain had no choice but to focus on the matter at hand. Although his suspicions were on point, that didn't mean he could miraculously do something about the reality of his situation.
His Plasma Rasengan, and all of the Nibi's Tailed Beast Bombs, were all under the influence of a very powerful Dojutsu. The only reason why Suguru had a glimpse of the truth was because his Shinrakugan's Red Dust was interfering with his surroundings.
After all, Suguru realized that Danzo's Doujutsu operated under a rather obvious prerequisite — sight. It was not some truly law-defying ability.
Thus.
With the Red Dust and the subsequent counter-Genjutsu that Suguru had cast, he had effectively hidden himself for a few moments.
—Undeniably crucial moments since he needed time to process the sheer magnitude of information that his Shinrakugan was now telling him.
His heightened analytical prowess was both a bane and a boon right now.
A piercing headache plagued him, similar to the times when his clones all disappeared to transmit their memories.
"Haa,"
However, the pain brought with it some useful gains.
"Weird," Suguru muttered as his figure blurred, moving elsewhere between illusion and reality.
Around him, the fragmented world brought about by Bishamonten rippled. Every footfall warranted a response, notifying the world of his meddlesome movements. The various signs of battle were reflected in odd ways, like looking through a kaleidoscope.
Yet he could not hear nor sense their presence.
"Does Danzo know about this in-between?" Suguru muttered.
Flickering to where he thought he had released his Plasma Rasengan, he poured chakra into his eyes, trying to see through what others could not.
"...A crack in the world?"
Suguru's gaze deepened, and his Shinrakugan flickered with strain.
His gaze followed the flow of chakra. The cycle that inevitably formed from such a complex illusory world. Suguru studied the inner mechanisms in the blink of an eye, fully realizing a piece of its essence.
Looking at the ambivalent flow of chakra, Suguru laughed. He recalled a particular line from the original version of this world.
"Every jutsu has its weakness."
A sly smile slowly sliced through Suguru's lips.
'With Hiruzen coming to my aid...'
Suguru glanced at a certain figure in the kaleidoscopic world and hurriedly identified them before the scenes shifted.
'My success should be... guaranteed.'
Of course, not with a little sacrifice.
Thus.
—Blink.
A pair of Shinrakugan shattered into fragments.
Then, the deceiving red dust vanished as Suguru closed his eyes. The world rippled, engulfing the silver-haired boy like the advancing evening tide.
"An arm should suffice, right?"
Suguru's echoing cackles were all that was left behind in this world of illusory limbo.
***
Danzo frowned, feeling the pain in his right eye. Blood was dripping down his face at a much faster rate than he realized. The ensuing blindness caused by having his Mangekyou active was almost overriding his abnormal ability to heal.
The strain.
The pain.
A missing name.
"Tsk,"
The being he wished to acquire still eluded his grasp.
Something was hindering the flow of Bishamonten. The Battlefield of Manifold Illusions was facing an odd barrier, preventing Danzo from seamlessly weaving between the different illusory worlds.
With the Nibi in a distant fragment, and himself at the center, he could not navigate through his own illusions to set up the Tailed Beast's capture.
Thus, he could not perform in the same manner he did against the Kyuubi.
'It's as if...'
...Poison had wormed its way into his Genjutsu battlefield, tainting its structure and damaging his ability to move. Luckily, he was not the only one experiencing this problem.
Everyone else had been isolated in their own fragments, confused as to why such a pervading silence had ensued.
No one could move to anyone.
A perfect isolation that Danzo found both irksome and intriguing.
'Could it be?' Danzo's eyes drew a sharp gleam, spanning the battlefield in search of a face that should have been engulfed in Bishamonten as he had commanded.
'That boy...'
That eerie gaze that bore into his own as if he was prey was nonexistent.
It was then.
"..?" The pain in Danzo's right eye subsided, returning to the standard he had grown accustomed to.
However—
—!&@^#^&!(@)@(#)(!
Suddenly, a thousand sounds erupted from all around him. Indiscernible due to the chaos, the illusions layered upon each other a thousand times. Every breath, every yell, every crackling flame.
The sound of chirping birds, the crashing of the distant waterfall, the groans of the wounded and burning.
All of these sounds were amplified, distorted, and forced into a single dreadful wave.
Instinctively, Danzo realized what went wrong.
"Someone disrupted Bishamonten."
The formation of the Battlefield of Manifold Illusions had been tampered with and given myriad mutations like a newborn abomination.
—Kuhahaha.
A devious, echoing laughter — the only sound that had not found itself multiplied in chaos — wormed its way into Danzo's ear.
And it sounded oddly hungry.
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