Decision!!

As Tsunade pours her strength into mending the injured townsfolk, Danzō quietly forbids his Root agents from joining the defence, gambling that if she falters the office of Hokage will fall to him. Deeper inside the village, Inoichi keeps sifting through the captured Rain ninja's memories and turns up an image of the man hauling a dead woman up the tallest tower in Amegakure. Shizune comes by to combine what they have pieced together about Pain, none of them aware that two of his bodies already stand just beyond the walls.

Out on the battlefield, the Deva Path breaks off from its clash with Kakashi and departs. Both the copy-nin and Chōji have lived through the fight, though of the pair only Chōji can still move. Kakashi charges him with carrying word of the Deva Path's techniques back to Tsunade. When the surviving Asura Path lunges to cut Chōji down, Kakashi answers with Kamui, warping the strike aside and spending his own life to do it.

Danzō sabotages the Leaf's protection purely to seize the Hokage seat for himself. Inoichi's interrogation surfaces a lead about the corpse left atop Amegakure's highest tower, a thread that points back toward Pain's true nature.

Set during the Pain's Assault storyline and gathered in volume 46, the installment lands one of the siege's cruelest blows. Both the intelligence Kakashi salvages and his last act feed straight into the Leaf's desperate scramble to answer the Six Paths.