"Still no news from Danzo?" Hiruzen Sarutobi asked, but his shoulders slightly sagged as he was already expecting the obvious answer that would come.
"No, Lord Third." A kneeling ANBU replied in an impassive tone.
Hiruzen sighed and nodded. "Very well. Dismissed."
With that, the ninja disappeared from his spot, leaving Hiruzen alone in his office. When his exceptionally honed senses told him that he was truly alone, his shoulders sagged even more, and he stood up, gazing at the village below through the window in an apparent sadness.
"Who would have thought you would die such an ignoble and insignificant death, huh, old friend?" He whispered, looking at the face of Tobirama overseeing the village, as he remembered happier times when he and his teammates were still so friendly and carefree.
He missed those times.
To him, Tobirama's face always seemed to judge him and his actions. Every time he looked at the face of his sensei, he had this feeling that he had to do better, that he wasn't good enough yet. He thought it would fade with time, but no, it was still the same as when he first put the hat on his head.
Heavy was the responsibility for unsteady shoulders. But he managed and became better for it.
But he didn't do it alone. Just like Tsunade had Shizune, he had Danzo. They might have drifted apart in the recent decades, but once upon a time, it was them against the world while Koharu and Homura cheered from the background. Danzo was his best friend and his biggest supporter.
And now he was dead. Oh, there was no confirmation, but Hiruzen was not an idiot.
When he didn't show up to welcome the Suna delegation, it was suspicious, but at the same time, something that Danzo would have done if a more pressing issue sprang up on short notice. Hiruzen didn't pay it much attention back then.
But when a week later, he got a word back from his contacts in the Capital, telling him that Danzo had not been seen in the city yet, he started getting a bit suspicious.
Not about Danzo's demise, but about his intentions. That he used going to the Capital to negotiate with nobles as a pretense to do something else. Truth be told, it wouldn't have been out of character for him. In fact, the whole disappearing act wasn't out of character either. He had done it several times in the past, but he always left a way to reach him.
Not this time.
Still, Hiruzen waited. Still having no reason to suspect foul play. And with that whole assassination attempt on Temari and Ren, the political beehive was kicked in. He had been too busy with his duties to think about Danzo's escapades.
Retired or not, Hiruzen was not going to sit on his ass while his village was having problems. He helped with anything he could.
For a moment, he even considered whether Danzo didn't have a hand in that debacle, but that would have been too much even for him. Hiruzen truly believed that. Back then.
A sad, self-depreciating smile appeared on his face. He knew better now.
Then, another week had passed, and some ROOT ANBU ninjas came to him. That... surprised him because these bastards should have been disbanded long, long ago on his order. It took a lot of patience not to strike the man down where he stood before he opened his mouth.
Fortunately, Hiruzen had restrained himself. As he usually did. And it was good that he did, because he found out some very interesting nuggets of information.
Apparently, the ROOT had standing orders to contact and serve him in case of Danzo's death or if they could not contact or locate Danzo or one of his ROOT commanders for longer than two weeks after returning from a mission.
Danzo was a meticulous man. A true control freak, if one wanted to be impolite about it. The only way they wouldn't be able to contact him or his chosen commanders for two weeks was if they were all dead.
The ROOT ninja who contacted Hiruzen seemed so lost despite being completely emotionless. It was a sad sight. He reported that upon returning from their missions, he found the ROOT base empty of both personnel and Lord Danzo.
Only a few of his comrades were there, but all of those were recent returnees from missions and just as confused as he had been. So, he was chosen to present their case to Hiruzen.
There was a minuscule chance that Danzo defected with his forces... which was a ridiculous notion. Radical he might have been, Danzo loved Konoha more than anyone. He would rather die than defect.
And doing it while not informing half of his organization? The same organization he spent decades of his life building? That was an even more ridiculous notion than him defecting.
No. Hiruzen was pretty sure that Danzo was dead. Except, there was no proof, and thus, there was still that small, fleeting hope in his heart. One he knew was futile.
But it got worse. Literally at the same time when the ROOT ninja came to report to him, several damning documents found their way to Tsunade's desk. Documents portraying just what massive atrocities Danzo had committed in the name of the village.
Some even implicated Hiruzen, and a few milder ones rightly so. But the truly damning things? No. He had never signed on to these. They horrified even him.
Tsunade had been rightly furious. And Hiruzen... his eyes had been unpleasantly opened. The things he always pretended were not happening were thrown in his face in the most uncomfortable way, alongside Tsunade, who had almost swung her fist at him in sheer outrage several times during their talks about these new revelations.
The worst was finding out how Danzo gained new recruits for his ROOT. That floored both of them and had the entire village's ANBU force scrambling all over the Land of Fire for the past week to dismantle that whole operation.
Hiruzen couldn't even delude himself any longer because enclosed in the documents were locations of Danzo's training zones where he gathered talented orphans from all over the Land of Fire except for Konoha, and paired them up. He had them live together, help each other survive, and grow close like family... before he ordered them to kill each other a few years later, as only one would be surviving.
Those who refused? Both of them were executed in front of other orphans about to undergo the same rite of passage.
It was to 'harden them'.
Hiruzen wept for the first time in a very long time that night. The ideal of teamwork was Konoha's biggest foundation. It was what allowed them to come out on top after facing the other four ninja villages at the same time in a war. It was why Konoha had won every single major war since its founding. And Danzo had perverted it worse than Orochimaru had perverted his own body.
And for what? All those resources that Danzo had to put into this kind of training... if he had just trained the kids normally, some of them might have been Elite Jonin by now. Instead, he killed off half of his recruitment pool right off the bat and ended up with a traumatized other half. Obedient? Sure. But their potential was completely trampled.
The state of his ROOT forces mirrored that. The best of them were low-level Jonin even after the most rigorous and ruthless training Hiruzen had ever seen.
Clearly, Danzo wasn't interested in nurturing talented ninjas. He wanted weapons that would do his will, even if it meant their death. After all, twenty low Jonins willing to die to kill their target still had a big chance to take an S-rank ninja with them to the afterlife if they planned their ambush well.
It didn't always work. Hiruzen was the prime example after Danzo's last assassination attempt. But the S-rank fugitives were on the run for a reason.
But even that was not the end of Hiruzen's woes. His eyes trailed down, noticing some Hyuga people mingling with the villagers on the street below his office.
Normally, the sight would have made him smile. He always disliked the slavery practices of that clan. But now, he could only frown.
Again, he was not an idiot. There were only so many ways somebody could get the timing of dropping off the documents on Tsunade's table right the second the ROOT ninja entered his office.
And being under constant surveillance was a matter of fact when living in the same village as the Hyuga clan. There was a polite, unspoken agreement. The Hyuga clan would not be limited in any way, but they were also expected not to pry into things that were not their business, or to keep whatever they found to themselves.
It worked. Under the old management.
Hinata, however, clearly wanted to play a completely different game.
Hiruzen had no idea if she, Ino, or Ren had killed Danzo. But it was what made the most sense. There were other ways the Hyuga girl could have gotten the damning documents about Danzo, of course. But...
Sometimes, the simplest explanation was the true one. There was no need to overthink things.
Then again, so what? Hiruzen couldn't do anything about it without kicking off a major conflict within the village. Konoha could not afford it. Not now that the tensions between the villages have started to grow more intense.
Hiruzen had been through this song and dance three times already. They had maybe a year or two before somebody wouldn't be able to take it anymore and do something stupid.
Konoha needed to prepare. Personal grudges and ambitions had to go to the wayside. He didn't even tell the ROOT ANBU about his suspicions for the same reason. They were too loyal to Danzo not to do something that would get them killed and get the Hyuga clan up in arms.
Hell, Hinata Hyuga was not even a bad clan leader. She was everything a younger, more naive Hiruzen would have wanted from somebody in her position. She had cleaned up her clan, abolished the Caged Bird Seal while making a substitute that worked without the pain-inducing slavery feature, and she didn't even use the main family as scapegoats to appease the majority and grow her support.
Instead, she integrated them into the clan by having them teach the former branch family members the main family Hyuga techniques, making the whole clan grow more and more dangerous by the day.
The Hyugas loved the girl. Most branch family members would happily die for her. Even the former main family members grudgingly settled into the new clan order and started to form bonds as they found their place among their clansmen.
Hinata had been fair. Those who did not abuse the branch family members still retained their wealth and didn't incur any punishment. She didn't punish sons for the sins of fathers, or fathers for the sins of sons, either.
The Hyuga clan right now was a completely different beast than the Uchiha clan had been. At least, the Uchihas were somewhat fractured. But if Konoha tried to pull a similar stunt like they did with Uchihas, half of the village would burn in the ensuing conflict, and that was even before Hinata herself was factored into it.
Or that the Yamanaka clan would probably have joined the Hyugas. With Naras and Akimichis right behind them, followed by Inuzukas and Aburames due to the ties Hinata had to the clan heirs.
The same ties Hiruzen had orchestrated for the sole purpose of helping his ambition for his son to become a Hokage one day. He let out a short, helpless laughter.
Funnily enough, he couldn't even find it in himself to dislike the Hyuga girl. She was perfect. She was what he had been looking for in the last decade, ever since Minato had died.
The girl did not want to lead her clan. It was obvious from her behavior and attitude. But she nevertheless stepped up and led fairly and with competence. She made the hard decisions that might have made her unpopular because they needed to be made. She won the hearts of her subordinates with almost irritating ease despite barely trying.
At this rate, Hiruzen could already tell that the girl was going to end up as the next Hokage after Tsunade, without putting in any actual effort to get the hat. She was exactly the kind of person who would have the gall to be genuinely surprised if she was named Tsunade's successor, because that was how little she cared about it.
A part of Hiruzen wondered if Danzo would die of an aneurysm while watching her half-heartedly fumbling her way to the Hokage office, while he had spent his entire life futilely reaching for it and failing. Hiruzen's heart twinged in pain. It was a pity his old friend was already dead. Watching that would have been amusing.
And if Hiruzen didn't have his own little ambitions, he would have been one of her biggest supporters.
At times, the girl reminded him too much of Orochimaru. She had the same dismissive look in her eyes when watching people. As if they were just pieces of flesh to be rearranged at her leisure. But then, she would get to her medical ninja mode, and suddenly, Hiruzen could see a bit of Tsunade's kindness in her as she put her all into treating her patients.
But Hinata was neither of those. She was polite and kind in her day-to-day conduct. Just like one other ninja in Hiruzen's recent memory. With a slight shiver, he remembered what she had done to the Sound forces in the protection of her village, and suddenly, he could see Minato in her. Not many ninjas could cause a mass-slaughter of those proportions while being seemingly unaffected by it.
Taking a deep breath while chasing those thoughts away, Hiruzen shook his head. "This is ridicul-"
Suddenly, his ears caught the door creaking as they opened, yet he didn't expect any guests in his office today. Anybody visiting would either throw the door instantly wide open while barreling in, like Tsunade, or politely knock, like any other normal person.
This was different. Somebody was sneaking in.
A split second later, Hiruzen felt something being thrown at his back, and whirled around in a blur, his hand whipping out two kunai hidden in his sleeve as he threw one at his assailant with a twitch of his fingers and used the other in a blocking motion...
The blade of his kunai sank into the balloon filled with paint. It sliced through the outer layer like a hot knife going through butter, making the balloon pop and the disgustingly green paint spill all over Hiruzen, who froze in horror when his eyes noticed that he had nailed the grinning Konohamaru in the forehead with his kunai.
How did the kid manage to freaking sneak up on him in the first place!?
The Konohamaru in front of him suddenly dissolved into water, and a loud whoop resounded from behind the door as the real Konohamaru barged into the room, sporting an even wider and smugger grin than before, and pointed at Hiruzen, "Ha! Piggy-sensei was right! You fell for it, old man!"
Hiruzen's face twisted in a barely restrained fury, but as he was covered in disgustingly green paint from head to toe, it only made Konohamaru fall to the ground with laughter.
Whomever this 'Piggy-sensei' was, they would suffer, Hiruzen inwardly seethed.
He was aware of the dubious book on pranks that Konohamaru had gotten from some Piggy-sensei. The kid had been trying to catch him with one of them for the last week, ever since he had gotten it. It was as amusing as it was irritating at times.
But clearly, that book was teaching Konohamaru way more than just some ineffective, juvenile pranks if it allowed the kid to get a drop on him. The cloaking technique the kid had used was something Hiruzen had never seen in his life!
"Old man, you should see your face!" Konohamaru exclaimed through his snickers, and Hiruzen had to take a deep breath, unable to resist the urge to rub the bridge of his nose, only to grimace in disgust as his fingers pushed some of the green paint into his eyes.
Hiruzen gasped as it suddenly started to burn, and he realized it was an extra spicy chili sauce, mixed with edible green food paint. His eyes teared up.
The gasp allowed residue of the paint to enter his mouth, making Hiruzen cough while uncontrollably sneezing.
And then, much to his displeasure, he found out that itching powder was also an ingredient mixed into the hellish concoction, as every exposed skin surface that was hit suddenly started to itch like hell.
'Correction.' Hiruzen thought amidst his suffering, 'This Piggy-sensei would not just suffer. They were dead!' He sneezed and his both itching and burning eyes suddenly widened when the laxative finally kicked in, and Hiruzen's face paled as his stomach rumbled and he had to put considerable effort into tightening his bowels.
Konohamaru just shot back to his feet and outstretched his hands toward the ceiling with a double V gesture, with a smug expression. "Wooo! I finally won! I am ready to be Hokage!" He exclaimed in a childish excitement, totally clueless about his grandfather's more pressing predicament.
In the Ichiraku ramen stand, Sakura's eyebrows furrowed as she blinked at Ino, who was having lunch with her. "What are you grinning for, Ino-pig?"
Ino smirked at her, just for a moment, before her grin returned, "It's nothing important. I just remembered a good joke about revenge being best served with a chili sauce and laxatives, Forehead."
"Huh? You have been acting weird ever since you joined the T&I department." Sakura mumbled before deciding that her ramen was more interesting.
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