News from Iwagakure

The packed conference room was utterly silent. If not for the faint sound of breathing, one might have thought there was no one in the room at all.

Seated at the head of the table, the Third Hokage swept his weary gaze over the attendees, let out a faint sigh, and said, "Everyone has read the compiled intelligence. Now, let's hear your thoughts."

Closing the intelligence report at hand, Jiraiya curled his lip. "Danzo played us all. I don't know whether there was really something wrong with his body, but him being wounded by Kakashi was definitely deliberate. There's an eighty or ninety percent chance that he released news of his injury because he was plotting something!"

Tsunade agreed. "Yes. Intelligence from Kumogakure shows that when the Raikage encountered Danzo, Danzo showed no signs of injury whatsoever. He deliberately spread false news about being wounded and exposed his whereabouts. Looking at it now, he was likely setting a trap to lure someone in!"

The Konoha higher-ups attending the meeting all nodded.

There had been too many rumors, both true and false, and everyone had been trying to make sense of things through the fog. They had no clear idea of Danzo's actual physical condition or his true objective. Now that the various intelligence reports had been compiled, Danzo's string of schemes and accomplishments had all been made public. It was no longer difficult to guess what he was after.

Only, there was still insufficient intelligence to determine exactly whom Danzo was plotting against.

But with Danzo's current strength at the level beyond Kage, the fact that he still needed to lay such a trap showed that his target could not be weak. There were not many targets in the shinobi world who met that standard. Aside from the Five Kage,