Inside the Fire Country's capital, the day unfolded like any other, though the atmosphere had grown far brighter than in the early months of the war.
The citizens moved through the bustling streets with lighter steps, their faces carrying relief instead of dread.
Every new report from the frontlines spoke of Konoha's victories, of steady advances, reclaimed territories, and the enemy's retreat.
The grim cloud that once hung over the capital was slowly clearing.
People had begun to look forward to peace, praying for the day the war would end, when inflation and heavy taxation would finally stop.
Amid this liveliness, two peculiar figures moved briskly and silently through the crowded streets, toward the direction of the Daimyo's grand palace.
Their movements were disciplined, their heads low, and their robes and hoods concealed every inch of their forms.
They stuck to narrow side paths and shaded alleys, avoiding the main roads.
A closer look at their faces would have raised questions.
One of them didn't look entirely human; his features carried traces of a beast, most notably a monkey, something caught between animal and man.
The other bore strange, branching cracks along his face, dark markings that stretched down toward his jaw.
After all, he was no longer among the living in his true flesh, but summoned back from the Pure Land through the Edo Tensei.
His current vessel was a grotesque construct of earth, dust, and paper, animated through the sacrifice of an unknown stranger.
Both were covered in black sealing patterns that nearly erased their chakra signatures, the marks etched into them over weeks by ROOT's finest seal specialists.
The lines pulsed faintly beneath their skin, shifting like strands of living ink with every heartbeat.
They stopped deep inside a dim alley, their eyes meeting briefly before they both nodded.
The silent one, Yoji Aburame, raised his hand in a precise motion, signaling that this was as far as they could go.
The Daimyo's palace wasn't anywhere near the direct sight yet, but it didn't need to be.
Yoji extended his palm, and a faint hum filled the air as countless his special Kochu microscopic insects scattered from his sleeve, dispersing unseen through the night.
His swarm spread out like mist, some toward the Daimyo's main palace, others toward the smaller residences belonging to royal relatives, particularly the male heirs who lived within the capital walls.
For nearly an hour, the two stayed hidden, unmoving, as the operation continued in silence and insects were assuming their positions near their targets. Then Yoji signaled again.
The humanoid monkey figure instantly formed a rapid sequence of hand seals before slamming his palm against the ground.
A moment later, two masked figures began to materialize from a shimmer of chakra.
They were Shinsuke Sarutobi, son of the Third Hokage and current Commander of the ANBU, and Hisamichi Nara, his trusted right-hand ANBU Captain.
Both wore the quiet tension of men on a mission too important for hesitation.
This was no ordinary operation.
Their objective was clear and dangerous—to liberate the Daimyo and his relatives from Ryusei's and his six Senju accomplices' unseen control.
Only then could they realise the second part of their arrangement: simultaneously eliminating the boy once and for all, in another part of the world, without leaving political chaos behind.
Shinsuke wasted no time. His hands blurred through another string of seals, and with a flash of chakra, the Monkey King Enma appeared beside him, towering and grim.
Enma's sharp eyes swept the alley, then dipped his head slightly toward Shinsuke before completing his part of the plan.
He began with a strange fuinjutsu, forming translucent chakra palms that expanded outward and enclosed them all in a faint shimmering layer.
It was a concealment technique, crafted to bury their presence even deeper, though each of them was already marked with powerful suppression seals.
The air thickened with chakra pressure, the alleyway now filled with Konoha's most elite.
The humanoid monkey who had reverse-summoned Shinsuke earlier stepped back quietly.
He was no ordinary beast but Enma's own son, his fur streaked with faint silver and his eyes sharp with awareness.
Then, without a word, Enma formed one final sealing flurry after finishing with his barrier.
The air trembled faintly, chakra rippling outward like waves through still water.
His palms struck together, and three figures began to materialize in front of him, in that same ethereal-like chakra field.
Gakuya Inuzuka and Tatsuma Aburame appeared, their forms solidifying in silence.
Then, another presence followed from behind them, the one who had synchronized his chakra with theirs, enabling Enma's Reverse Summoning to teleport them as well in the first place, right now.
The Third Hokage himself.
The king piece had moved directly onto the board.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stood there, calm yet grim, the weight of years and wars in his eyes.
"Enma, Shinsuke, and Hisamichi, start preparing the formation. Yoji Aburame, on my signal, release the insects, soon after we teleport," Hiruzen ordered, his tone steady, composed, and deliberate.
At once, Enma, Shinsuke, and Hisamichi took their positions, moving into the Flying Thunder Formation Technique.
All three were required to execute it together.
As they formed a circle around Hiruzen and the two remaining ROOT high-rank operatives, Enma's son having already been dismissed by Shinsuke, each of them brought their hands together in the seal of confrontation, aligning their thumbs, middle, and index fingers with one another's until the formation was perfectly linked and stable.
The synchronized gesture would allow them to teleport themselves and anything within the ring's confines to a marked destination.
Internally, Hiruzen recalled how this entire operation had come to be.
Ever since discovering what Ryusei had done regarding the Daimyo, all that time ago, he had been unable to sleep properly on many occasions.
The thought of a single, insidious teen exerting such control over the country's ruler and his family, during the most important war in Konoha's history, gnawed at him constantly.
He also knew that it would be impossible to ever move against Ryusei at all if they didn't first sever his influence and coercion over the Daimyo.
But that was far easier said than done.
Hiruzen was certain that the Daimyo wasn't surrounded only by those six Senju accomplices.
There had to be at least one of Ryusei's shadow clones there as well, especially knowing about that unparalleled sensory ability of his.
Therefore, sneaking in undetected to extract the Daimyo and his relatives was practically impossible under normal circumstances.
That was why this operation had been planned for nearly a year in so much silence, without any new attempts on Ryusei of any kind.
Every decision, every piece had been carefully arranged, requiring the coordination of Konoha's entire upper command structure.
They had even resorted to the Edo Tensei to bring back Yoji Aburame, whose unique insects were perfect for covert infiltration and assassination.
Fortunately, Ryusei had not completely destroyed Yoji's body when he killed him on the Kumo frontlines during that chaotic pursuit involving ROOT operatives.
Ryusei had been on the brink and cornered back then; he had eliminated Yoji more by circumstance than by full control, and hadn't managed to erase all of his genetic remains with his planted trap at that time.
By sheer chance, or perhaps fate, ROOT's recovery protocol had preserved those remains.
ROOT had long been instructed to collect every trace of such high-ranking operatives' bodies, given how valuable their knowledge and techniques could be, even posthumously.
The reasoning was simple: one never knew when the secrets of a corpse or its genetic material might still serve the village.
Besides, no one could predict what might happen if such remains ever fell into the wrong hands. Considering the kind of information those operatives possessed and the strange new techniques constantly emerging in the shinobi world, the possibility of someone extracting knowledge from a corpse, or even some genetic material left, was far from impossible, especially since Yoji had died deep within Kumo's own frontlines.
When Hiruzen and the council later decided to use Edo Tensei as one of their hidden weapons, perhaps the main one, against Ryusei Nishida, reviving Yoji Aburame was the natural, obvious choice for this vector.
Because his skillset fit the current plan perfectly.
Still, even that wasn't enough.
Hiruzen knew that if Ryusei had stationed a clone near the Daimyo, as he was almost certain he had, since the boy was no fool but a cunning strategist, then even if he didn't sense Yoji's insects directly, he would still detect something amiss.
At best, he might notice only the ones nearest to him and the Daimyo, where his real focus likely rested, where his clone was sent to secure the Daimyo.
But the moment he sensed that in the distance his Senju allies began dying inexplicably, inside and outside the main palace, Ryusei would understand at once that an attack, led by them, was obviously in motion.
And when that happened, his response would be swift and ruthless.
Hiruzen was sure the first target would be the Daimyo himself, the foundation of the leverage Ryusei held over Konoha's leadership, in the first place, and the very threat he had made clear: if they ever moved against him ever again, in any way, the Daimyo would die first.
That was the core danger.
To prevent that, they needed speed.
Instant movement.
The ability to act at the exact moment Yoji's insects struck those Senju, to intercept Ryusei's reaction before it could unfold.
That was why they had turned to space-time ninjutsu.
Shikaku Nara himself had overseen this part of the operation, designing the tactical framework.
It required not just sealing knowledge, but coordination on a near-telepathic level.
They needed a way to teleport from beyond Ryusei's sensory range directly into the Daimyo's location the moment the assault began.
That was the true purpose of the Flying Thunder Formation Technique.
The space they now stood in was sealed off completely, isolated by one of Enma's advanced fuinjutsu barriers.
After all, those monkey summons were hidden experts in fuinjutsu as well.
Hiruzen had spent months ensuring Shinsuke, Hisamichi, and Enma, who all had decent talent, mastered the technique.
The true Flying Raijin, as created by Minato, was impossible for them to replicate; it required a genius for spatial formulae that none of them possessed.
But through collective village research and adaptation, they had constructed a formation-based variant that could achieve a similar effect under specific conditions.
It took significantly longer to initiate the technique, making it far more suited for strategic transport and coordinated movement than for fast-paced combat use like Minato's.
It had taken immense effort and countless trials, but the three had succeeded.
It might have functioned even faster, had more shinobi been trained in it, but the three of them proved sufficient.
More importantly, Hiruzen had been extremely selective about who was permitted to learn it in the first place, obviously.
For example, he had obviously refused to include Tatsuma Aburame or Gakuya Inuzuka in the inner process, despite their loyalty, for one simple reason—he didn't trust Danzo.
In truth, Hiruzen now saw Danzo as nearly as dangerous as Orochimaru.
His recent successes with the Edo Tensei had changed him.
Some reports described him wearing a massive metallic seal on one of his arms, forged from high-grade chakra-suppression alloys and covered in layered fuinjutsu inscriptions, beneath which nothing could be sensed.
His aura, too, had become strange, darker, but also way more foreign, as if something newfound was coiling beneath his skin.
He was mobilizing ROOT in secret, seemingly hunting for some unknown individuals, and not even Hiruzen could determine his full motives anymore, which was not the case ever before.
That was why this new formation was kept entirely out of his reach.
Hiruzen had already made the mistake of sharing Edo Tensei with him.
He wouldn't repeat it with Flying Raijin in any way.
Yet, ironically, that very mistake had proven useful.
Danzo's mastery of the Edo Tensei had advanced to such a degree that he had become the primary cornerstone of the main offensive, running in parallel with Hiruzen's secondary strike, from another country.
He currently lay low in the Land of Hot Water, preparing to engage Ryusei's real body directly, if he hadn't already.
In recent months, they had gathered numerous new assets and Edo Tensei summons, all somewhat accidentally acquired since his last operation in Amegakure, as if fate itself had begun aligning with their purpose.
From the very beginning, everyone on their side understood that this had to be a two-pronged assault; there was simply no other way to corner him right.
After all, what was the point of saving the Daimyo if Ryusei could just send his real body, or another clone, to the capital and unravel everything within minutes?
Hiruzen and Danzo were working toward the same end, though neither trusted the other.
Two fronts, one purpose: the eradication of Ryusei Nishida.
And this time, there would be no mistakes.
Because the entire machinery of the village had been mobilized and refined over the longest time of preparation, so far, for the first time, and strengthened by a jutsu that defied the boundary between life and death, and by the strange, almost fated gifts that seemed to aid their cause.