"Oh, for the love of—"
The sudden voice from directly behind him made Hiruzen Sarutobi's heart lurch into his throat. It was the voice of a debt collector, one who dealt in the currency of pain and humiliation. 'Is this a debt of life he's come to collect now?'
Hiruzen's face was a mask of bitter misery. Jiraiya had just bled him for nine hundred billion. The Sarutobi coffers now held a little over ten billion—a pittance compared to the hundred-billion-ryō mountain he owed. With three thousand clansmen to support (minus the few dozen now in the Military Police), and Konoha's mission board already strained, how was he supposed to scrape it together? He couldn't very well have his elite shinobi snatch D-ranks from fresh-faced genin… could he?
"Y-You're… here?" Hiruzen managed a weak, ghastly smile. "The deadline… there's still over twenty days, isn't there? We… we'll definitely pay! On time!"
"I'm just here for a progress check," Raimon said, his tone deceptively mild. "A little… motivation, if you will."
Hiruzen felt a cold sweat break out. "I… I can give you what I have on hand now. A hundred million. Just… take it and go." His primary goal was to get this walking calamity out of his compound before he ran into any of the more… spirited clansmen.
"Money is money." Raimon shrugged.
Minutes later, a small hill of cash was piled in the courtyard—the entire liquid wealth of the Sarutobi clan. "I'm, ah, fresh out of storage scrolls," Hiruzen lied with a straight face. "You'll have to carry it manually." A petty, pointless act of defiance.
"Heh. Came prepared." Raimon produced several large, empty sacks from his own scroll with a flourish. He began casually shoveling bundles of cash into them, the rustling of bills the only sound in the tense air.
He was in the middle of this satisfying task when the courtyard gate burst open.
"Lord Third! You must adjudicate this!" A Sarutobi clansman, still in the standard flak jacket of the newly-minted Military Police, stormed in. His uniform was splattered with what looked suspiciously like egg yolk and something far less savory. "I made a perfectly lawful judgment on a market dispute, and the mob turned on me! This is an outrage against the Sarutobi na—!"
His tirade died in his throat. He took in the scene: the mysterious blond man casually stuffing sacks with the clan's wealth, and their revered Clan Head and former Hokage standing by with the expression of a man watching his own funeral.
The clansman's face flushed with immediate, arrogant rage. "You! You dare to extort money from the Sarutobi clan? I think you've grown tired of living!" He completely missed the sheer terror in Hiruzen's eyes. "Lord Third, leave this to us! We'll handle this gutter trash!"
"Yeah! Konoha has no room for anyone more arrogant than a Sarutobi!" others chimed in, fanning out to surround Raimon.
Hiruzen Sarutobi said nothing. He stood silently, a complex mix of dread and grim calculation in his eyes. 'Let them learn. Let them feel true fear. Maybe then they'll be motivated to take those S-rank bounties without complaint.' He was using Raimon as the ultimate disciplinary tool.
"Hiruzen," Raimon said, not even looking up from his packing. "Aren't you going to say something? Introduce us?"
'Cunning old fox,' Raimon thought, seeing through the ploy immediately.
"Don't blame me if things get… irreversible, okay?" A wicked, knowing smile curled on Raimon's lips.
"You threatening us?" the lead clansman sneered, drawing a kunai. Others followed suit. "Hand over the money, kid, and we might let you die quickly."
Raimon finally stopped packing. He sighed, as if bored. "You're very brave." His hands moved in a blur, a complex one-handed seal. "Doton: Jinzō Seki no Jutsu. Doton: Nyōdō Seki no Jutsu." (Earth Release: Kidney Stone Technique. Earth Release: Urethral Calculus Technique.)
A subtle wave of chakra washed over the surrounding dozen men. They flinched, a faint, unfamiliar discomfort blooming deep within their abdomens and lower tracts.
"Hah! Is that all?" the leader mocked, feeling no immediate effect. "Some fearsome technique! I thought you were someone, but you're just a nobody!"
Hiruzen surreptitiously checked his own kidneys. Nothing. 'He's holding back… because of the money. He still needs me functional.'
Raimon's smirk widened. "Suiton: Bōkō Chūzō. Suiton: Jin'ū Suishō." (Water Release: Bladder Retention. Water Release: Hydronephrosis.)
The change was instantaneous and horrific. The arrogant sneers vanished, replaced by masks of pure, undiluted agony. A desperate, unbearable pressure filled their bladders while a deep, sickening swelling seized their kidneys. Cold sweat drenched them in seconds. They gasped, breaths coming in short, painful hitches.
"C-Captain… I can't… I can't hold it…!"
One man, pushed beyond endurance, turned, fumbled with his pants, and let go.
The initial relief was ecstatic. For half a second. Then, the trapped, jagged stones in his urethra were forced into motion by the torrent.
"GYAAAAAAAAAGHHH!!"
The scream was inhuman. It wasn't a sound of injury, but of profound, intimate violation. He collapsed, writhing in the spreading puddle, the stench of urine now mingling with the iron-tang of fear.
"My kidneys! MY KIDNEYS!" Another clansman was on the ground, back arching, teeth grinding audibly as his body convulsed in spasms of internal trauma.
"I… CAN'T… TAKE IT!" With a final, guttural roar of desperation, one man snatched up his fallen kunai and, in a decisive stroke, brought it down on his own groin.
A choked gasp, then… a terrifying, peaceful sigh. "Ahhh… finally…" He collapsed, unconscious, even as his kidneys continued their torturous swelling.
It was the catalyst. Seeing that one act of radical self-surgery brought relief from the urethral agony (if not the renal), several others, eyes wild with pain, made the same horrific choice.
Snick. Thud. Snick. Thud.
In moments, more than a dozen "trophies" littered the muddy ground. The men who had performed the act lay in stunned, bleeding, but comparatively relieved silence, the renal pain still present but now a secondary torment.
One figure didn't move again. The shock and pain had been too much; he lay still, eyes glazed.
Raimon glanced at the body and with a dismissive flick of his wrist, dispelled the jutsu on the survivors. The remaining pressure vanished, leaving them hollowed-out shells of pain and shock.
"Sarutobi," Raimon said cheerfully, resuming his packing as if he'd just taken out the trash. "My apologies. Got a bit carried away. Killed one of yours."
Hiruzen Sarutobi didn't react. He simply stared at the scene of carnage and emasculation in his own courtyard, his face a blank slate. He looked up at the sky, a prophecy falling from his lips in a whisper. "The Ninja World's Steel Hand… The Eunuch-Maker… The Kidney Terminator… has returned. The sky… is about to change."
The world had forgotten. It had been too long since the Yellow Flash's older, far more sadistic brother had walked among them. They'd forgotten the unique, psychological terror he wielded. This fear would spread now, from the Sarutobi compound, through Konoha, and out to the entire shinobi world. With Raimon's return, Konoha would once again become the eye of the storm.
Raimon finished sealing the last sack of money into a scroll. He walked over to the catatonic Hiruzen and gently, almost affectionately, patted the old man's cheek.
"Sarutobi," he said, his voice soft but carrying the weight of an avalanche. "Keep up the good work."
Fwoop.
He was gone in a Hiraishin flicker, leaving behind a courtyard of broken men, a stench of blood and waste, and a Hokage who had aged another decade in as many minutes.
****
Far away, in the perpetually raining Amegakure, Uchiha Itachi unrolled a fresh intelligence scroll. His Sharingan eyes, usually pools of calm sorrow, widened slightly.
"Danzo… has defected?" he murmured. He read on. The entire Konoha power structure had been overturned. Tsunade, Hokage. Jiraiya, on the council. Hiruzen, sidelined.
A deep, unsettling worry coiled in his gut. Would this new Konoha leadership still honor the terrible, secret pact? Would they still protect his foolish, beloved otouto?
He looked out into the endless rain, his Mangekyō Sharingan pulsing faintly with reflected light. "My foolish little brother… it seems it is time for me to return. Let me see just how much you've grown."