Chapter 196: Another Killer — Hiruzen Sarutobi
Night.
A boy crackling with blue lightning chased a girl holding a blade through the dark.
Sasuke moved in lightning-fast bursts, each step vanishing and reappearing closer, driving toward Hikaru with everything the technique gave him.
Hikaru balanced on a branch and launched sideways, drawing her sword in the same motion, and flame licked up the blade the moment steel cleared scabbard.
The blades met with a sound like cracking ice.
Lightning against flame. Sparks in every direction. They separated on contact — Hikaru using his momentum to push higher, Sasuke's electric aura flaring as he came up again.
They became a red and blue exchange, weaving between trees, each collision scattering light across the dark.
Hikaru turned aside strike after strike, her flaming blade meeting each of his attacks with an easy efficiency that said she was still thinking clearly while he wasn't.
"This approach won't work," she said, between impacts. "There's nothing Uchiha about this. You're fighting like one of those brainless types. Senju. Uzumaki. Pure force, no craft."
Sasuke held back.
She wasn't wrong.
Lightning Release was built for explosive speed — that was the entire theory of the style. But trying to maintain that raw speed while also applying technical precision was genuinely hard, and the technique Hiruzen had given him pushed even further in the power-over-finesse direction. Kakashi had told him once to find his own jutsu rather than copying others'. This was exactly what he meant.
"What should I do instead?"
He stopped moving, watching her across the dark.
"Want me to teach you?"
Something light passed through her eyes.
"You'll have to say something first."
"Something nice."
Sasuke was already uncertain what he was walking into.
He'd learned Hikaru's personality well enough by now — more animated than the Uchiha exterior suggested, which had become obvious every time she and Sakura crossed words.
"Say it," she said. "Great-grandma."
...
He stared at the cheerful girl who was technically several ancestral generations above him and could not make his mouth work.
"Not interested?"
She turned, flipping her sword with a small elegant flourish, and started walking.
"..."
The sound that eventually came out of Sasuke was barely audible.
"...Great-grandma."
"There we go!"
She spun back, patted him on the head with the satisfaction of someone who had won something meaningful.
She'd intended to teach him anyway. He was Uchiha, and she'd decided she wanted to see him succeed — which meant he couldn't trip on a stone along the way.
"Alright. The principle is—"
"Who's there."
A shuriken left her hand before the sentence finished.
It hit a tree to the left of the approaching figure. Deliberate. She was in Konoha. Causing trouble for Sasuke wasn't her intention.
"Unexpected."
The voice was rough with age.
"To think the Uchiha have gained a new member."
A figure moved out from the shadow of the trees.
Hikaru's brow tightened. Sasuke looked at the man.
"Shimura Danzō."
A black-robed man with a walking staff. One visible eye, watching them both.
Sasuke said nothing. He didn't know this person.
"That's normal," Danzō said. "I operate in the dark. I handle things the Hokage cannot handle openly. Where the light can't reach, I've always been there for Konoha."
He let the pause settle.
"You might think of me as the Hokage in shadow."
Something in Sasuke's expression shifted.
The Third Hokage had given him the lightning technique. Was Sakura's teacher. Sasuke had no reason to be suspicious of anyone speaking in the Hokage's name.
And he'd been a Konoha shinobi in everything but formal declaration, for years.
"Is there something you needed from me?"
"That's exactly why I came."
Danzō glanced at Hikaru.
"Tch. Your business. I'm going to sleep."
She waved dismissively and left.
Sasuke watched her go with brief regret. He'd have to reschedule the lesson.
The shadow of large clouds moved across the clearing, swallowing Danzō and creeping toward the boy in front of him.
"Sasuke. Do you know the truth of Uchiha Itachi?"
Sasuke's expression settled into something unreadable.
"It seems Haruno Sakura hasn't told you the truth of the massacre."
Danzō's mouth curved, barely visible.
He'd deliberated carefully before coming here. He needed to move fast — Sasuke would tell Sakura he'd been approached, and he only had one meeting to make an impression before that happened. It had to work immediately.
"Uchiha Itachi."
Danzō spoke with the practiced weight of a man choosing each word for maximum impact.
"A man to be pitied."
"He chose to destroy the entire Uchiha clan in order to protect his only brother."
The boy across from him went very still.
Not shock. Something hotter than shock.
What did he just say?
Destroyed the Uchiha to protect one brother?
"I see Sakura hasn't told you anything."
"This was meant to stay buried forever."
"But the time for silence has passed."
"Let me tell you the truth of what happened."
"Shut up."
"When the Uchiha—"
"SHUT UP."
The clearing filled with the sound of a thousand birds.
A sword with lightning running through it pressed against Danzō's throat.
Sasuke looked at him with red eyes that had gone completely still.
"Kill me if you like. Do you think killing me buries the truth?"
Danzō kept talking, calm, the blade an inch from his neck.
"You're afraid. You've been afraid since I started speaking."
"Afraid that the man you've hated for seven years had reasons."
"Afraid of what it means if he did."
"He loved you. He protected you. And one night he changed completely."
"You've known that doesn't fit. You've known it for years."
Sasuke looked at him.
"I think you've misunderstood something."
Danzō paused. "What?"
"Whatever his reasons. Whatever his goal."
"He killed my father. He killed my mother. He killed the entire Uchiha clan."
Sasuke closed his eyes once. When they opened, the seven-pointed Mangekyo turned slowly.
Danzō's entire body went rigid.
An unknown Mangekyo—
And I'm making direct eye contact with it—
"Whatever his reasons were."
"He still has to die."
Danzō steadied himself. The boy's nerve was alarming — he'd expected the revelation about Itachi's motive to crack him open. But Sasuke had absorbed it and come back harder.
This was more difficult than his brother.
"But what if I told you there was another killer that night?"
!!!
Red eyes widened.
"Who?"
"Hiruzen Sarutobi. Konoha's Third Hokage."
Sasuke felt the words like a physical impact.
What?
"Think about it. How old was Itachi then?"
"Thirteen."
"A single ANBU squad captain. Mangekyo or not — the Uchiha were Konoha's strongest clan."
"Who in this entire village had the capability to exterminate them without a sound?"
The question hung in the night air.
And Sasuke's thoughts were already running.
Who had that capability?
Who could move through Konoha at night and make an entire clan disappear without a single alarm?
Only—
He didn't want to follow the thought to its conclusion.
"I don't want to believe it any more than you do," Danzō continued, letting grief color his voice.
"The Hokage and I — lifelong comrades. Partners. Brothers in everything but blood."
"He was the leaf in the sunlight. I was the root buried underground."
He paused, and when he spoke again it was heavier.
"But under his watch — Sakumo Hatake, destroyed by rumors, dead by his own hand."
"Three Sannin — Orochimaru defected, Tsunade lost herself, Jiraiya wandered away."
"The Fourth Hokage died in the Nine-Tails disaster."
"One after another. Every foundation of this village — gone."
Sasuke frowned.
"You're saying the Hokage did all of it."
"I say it even though I don't want to."
Danzō let a long silence fall.
"Why would he do any of this?" Sasuke asked. "He's already Hokage. The whole village is already his."
...
Danzō's expression stuttered by a fraction.
This boy pushed harder than expected.
"Power corrupts," he said, recovering. "Even the strongest men — even a man like Hiruzen—"
"Power corrupts."
Sasuke was looking at him differently now.
He didn't disbelieve everything. The point about another killer having been involved — that, he could accept. One teenage shinobi eliminating an entire clan silently didn't add up.
But the Hokage's motive being "power corrupts"? The Hokage who was Sakura's teacher? The Hokage who, at seventy years old, had personally handed him a technique?
This didn't cohere.
"Power corrupts!" Danzō pressed, regaining momentum. "Even iron-willed men — even him — it consumes them eventually. Only I, who have lived in the shadows all these years, can lead Konoha back to the path the First Hokage set!"
Sasuke looked at the elderly man in front of him declaring his intention to become Hokage.
You're seventy.
You want to be Hokage.
At seventy.
"The next Hokage is Sakura," Sasuke said, and turned to leave.
Danzō let him get two steps.
"Sasuke. Do you think Haruno Sakura is a good person?"
He stopped.
"Deeply shaped by Hiruzen. His full ambition, inherited."
"She's your teammate, but everything she's done has been calculated from the start."
"At twelve, she was already ANBU squad captain. Why would someone of that standing lower herself to join a genin team with you and Naruto?"
"Have you ever genuinely asked yourself why?"
The night air moved through the trees.
Sakura.
He had asked himself. Never found an answer that fully satisfied. Let it go.
Danzō knew the real reason — the old man had used Sakura to balance Kumo and Iwa during the exams — but that answer didn't serve his purpose.
"Uzumaki Naruto is the Nine-Tails jinchūriki. The strongest tailed beast."
"You — the last Uchiha, and a useful tool for managing Itachi."
"Control both of you, and the Hokage seat is guaranteed. The Sarutobi line holds power in perpetuity."
"After Sakura — who comes next? Konohamaru?"
"Sakura has been positioning herself from the beginning."
"She's the inheritor of Hiruzen's ambitions. The trigger of the war. Her designs go back further than you've been told."
And Sasuke's mind was back on the battlefield.
Frost Country. The moment when everything had gone wrong and he'd been down. Sakura carrying him, the whole retreat, pouring medical chakra into him to keep him from dying —
If all of this is her ambition—
Then this life she took the trouble to save—
It belongs to her either way.
Just a shame it means dying before Itachi.
"Sasuke, you need to understand — Haruno—"
Lightning detonated in the clearing.
Red eyes, blazing. A blade back at the throat.
"From the start of this conversation—"
"All you've done is speak against Sakura."
"Do you know—"
"How long I've been holding back."
Danzō said nothing. His expression showed something resigned.
"You'd protect her even now. After everything I've told you."
"Yes."
The word came out without hesitation.
Danzō exhaled slowly.
"It seems Hiruzen succeeded after all."
He shook his head once, apparently with regret.
"Pretend I was never here."
He turned, unconcerned by the blade at his neck, and walked away.
Damn that girl.
What has she done to this boy?
He accepted the possibility that she's using him — accepted it — and still chose her. Immediately.
The Itachi-manipulation gambit had failed. The next approach would need to be different.
The Hokage seat belongs to me.
I alone can return Konoha to the supremacy it held in the First Hokage's era.
Sasuke sheathed his sword.
He watched the man go.
If he hadn't claimed to be the village's underground Root, Sasuke would have detained him.
"Wonderful performance!"
Hikaru was on a nearby rock, applauding.
"You didn't leave."
"And miss all this?"
Sasuke looked at her, not particularly surprised.
He started back toward the village. She fell into step behind him.
"What are you going to do?" she asked. Genuinely curious, watching his face. This was his path to walk.
"Talk to Sakura. Ask her everything."
"Sakura, Sakura, Sakura."
Hikaru's jaw tightened.
"That's all you ever say! Don't you have a brain of your own?"
Sasuke blinked at the sudden vehemence.
What's wrong with her?
The answer was genuinely the most direct path to the information he needed. Why take a difficult route when an easy one existed?
But he stayed on the thought a little longer.
Was he relying on Sakura too much?
Would it make me look like I have no judgment of my own?
Maybe — just maybe — he should try Kakashi first. He hadn't seen Kakashi in a while anyway.
If Kakashi didn't know, then Sakura.
"Hey!"
"Are you walking or not?!"
Hikaru, already ahead, scowling back at him.
"Coming."
☆☆☆
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