Undercurrents at the High-Level Meeting: The Dirty Deal Between the Third Hokage and Danzo

The morning sunlight could not penetrate the heavy blinds of the Hokage Building. Smoke curled through the office, mingling the choking smell of pipe tobacco with the perpetual chill of a place that never saw daylight, making the air suffocatingly oppressive.

Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind his broad desk, puffing on his pipe. His brows were tightly furrowed, and his deeply lined face was concealed within the shifting half-light and shadow.

Before the desk, Shimura Danzō leaned on his cane, his exposed single eye fixed on Hiruzen like a venomous snake.

"Hiruzen, what are you still hesitating for?" Danzo's cane struck the floor heavily with a dull boom. "That is Wood Release! It is the First Hokage's power! That brat named Sosuke is now a walking treasure trove—and a bomb that could go off at any moment!"

Hiruzen exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, his voice hoarse and tinged with weariness. "Sosuke's chakra pathways have already been destroyed. He cannot even refine chakra. Tsunade personally placed the seal on him, and both of us examined him at the village gate yesterday. He is only a frail, sickly child who needs protection now."

"Frail? Useless?" Danzo sneered, his withered fingers rapidly tapping the desk. "Even if he is useless, the blood flowing through him is still the purest Senju blood! Have you forgotten the influence the Senju Clan once held in the Hidden Leaf? If Tsunade continues keeping him by her side, given enough time, could the scattered remnants of the Senju not gather once more under the name of Wood Release?"

The fingers holding Hiruzen's pipe paused slightly.

That was precisely his deepest concern.

The inheritance of the Will of Fire required Hidden Leaf shinobi with absolute obedience, not a clan's private army that knew only the Senju and not the Hokage. The Senju Clan's glory was too brilliant—brilliant enough to eclipse even him, the Third Hokage.

"What do you intend to do?" Hiruzen lifted his gaze, looking deeply at the old comrade who had worked alongside him for so many years.

"Hand him over to me." An undisguised fervor flashed through Danzo's eye. "I will take him back to Root and protect him with the strictest barriers. On one hand, Root's medical division can extract his cells and continue the Wood Release replication experiments, cultivating true ultimate weapons for the village. On the other hand..."

Danzo paused, leaning forward slightly and lowering his voice to a whisper. "As long as he is in Root, the Senju Clan will never be able to stir up trouble again. No matter how much Tsunade makes a fuss, for the sake of her precious little brother's life, she will have to obediently accept the high command's orders."

The office fell into a long silence.

Only the ticking of the clock on the wall remained, like some cruel countdown.

After a long while, Hiruzen tapped his pipe against the ashtray and sighed. "Tsunade will not surrender him easily. You know her temper."

"Her consent is unnecessary." Danzo turned and walked toward the door, his tone cold as iron. "I will issue a compulsory order in the name of 'special ANBU protection.' You only need to stamp the elders' resolution. I will play the villain for the rest. Hiruzen, you are the Hokage. Do not let womanly sentiment ruin the village's foundations."

The door opened, then slammed shut. Danzo's sinister figure vanished into the shadows of the corridor.

Hiruzen refilled his pipe and lit it. Firelight illuminated his face, but he did not speak to stop him. Silence was the tacit approval of supreme authority.

Senju Clan Grounds, Sosuke's room.

Sosuke lounged lazily in a wicker chair by the window, absentmindedly turning a kunai that had long lost its luster in his hand.

The secret letter Toka had delivered half an hour earlier was even more detailed than he had expected. The Senju covert guards had followed the trail of Root's hidden agents planted in the Hokage Building and intercepted the core details of that secret discussion with pinpoint accuracy.

"Protection? Experiments? Keeping Tsunade in check?"

An intensely mocking sneer curled across Sosuke's lips.

Hiruzen Sarutobi's hypocrisy and Shimura Danzō's greed had been laid bare in this bloodless political transaction. They believed themselves to be lofty players moving pieces across a board, treating the Senju Clan as a slab of meat they could carve apart at will.

Little did they know that, in Sosuke's eyes, blessed with the perspective of a god, the schemes of those two old fools were as crude as children's games.

"They want to lock me in a basement as a lab rat, while using me to keep Sister Tsunade under control?" Sosuke's fingertips tightened slightly.

Creak—

The kunai forged of refined steel twisted and deformed in his hand as if it were made of clay, finally crushed into a lump of scrap metal. The terrifying strength granted by his initial-stage Sage Body gave him physical power enough to crush elite shinobi without using a single thread of chakra.

"Since you are so eager to die, do not blame me for overturning the board."

Sosuke rose to his feet and looked toward the bedroom.

Behind the sliding door, Tsunade was still asleep. Last night's nearly frenzied union of yin and yang had not only drained her chakra, but also utterly shattered her pride and defenses as an elder sister. Now, she was like a lioness curled inside her den, having cast aside all vigilance, belonging only to him.

Sosuke did not wake her.

Hiding behind a woman and begging for protection whenever danger arose was the way of the worthless. Tsunade was his trump card and his sharpest blade, but good steel had to be used on the cutting edge. It was not yet time for his first wife to step in and overturn the table.

To face this chain of lethal moves from the high command, he needed another force—an external force powerful enough to make the Hidden Leaf's leaders wary, even one capable of detonating the entire political order of the Hidden Leaf.

Sosuke went to the wardrobe and changed into an inconspicuous dark kimono.

[All Creation] operated at full force, and the ocean-deep vitality within him vanished without a trace. His back bent slightly, transforming him once again into that sickly youth with ruined chakra pathways who looked as though a gust of wind could knock him over.

Opening the door, he slipped alone into the faintly chilly morning mist.

The Hidden Leaf's streets had not yet fully awakened. Only a few scattered vendors were busy at work. Sosuke appeared to be wandering the streets without purpose, walking slowly and occasionally stopping to cover his mouth and cough twice, playing the part of a crippled invalid recovering from serious illness to perfection.

In the shadows, two barely perceptible gazes remained fixed on him.

They belonged to Root's watchers.

Sosuke had noticed those two irritating rats long ago, yet rather than shake them off, he deliberately slowed his pace and guided them along his chosen route.

He did not head toward the bustling commercial district, nor did he go to the Hokage Building. Instead, he crossed more than half the village and walked directly toward the Hidden Leaf's most remote and sensitive area.

It was the edge of the Uchiha clan grounds.

When the Hidden Leaf was first founded, the Senju and Uchiha clans had jointly divided up its most central territory. Yet under the Second Hokage's wariness and suppression, the Uchiha clan had gradually been pushed to the margins, driven into a corner of the village and assigned the thankless work of the police force. Resentment had accumulated within that proud clan for decades, like a dormant volcano that could erupt at any moment.

Sosuke stopped beside a clear river.

The Naka River.

A breeze passed over the water, raising glittering ripples. Sosuke looked across at the sprawling Uchiha buildings on the opposite bank, and a dark hunter's gleam flashed deep within his eyes as he locked onto his prey.

Danzo wanted to crush him through raw authority. Then he would borrow the Uchiha, the fiercest flame of all, to burn through the Hidden Leaf's bottom line.

"Uchiha Fugaku, your laughable arrogance and prejudice will make the perfect shield for me."

Sosuke slowly walked along the willows hanging over the riverbank.

On the system radar, the point of light representing an A+-rank target flickered not far ahead. It was the key to breaking this deadlock, as well as the next ideal vessel for expanding his clan and plundering laws.

On the rocky shoal ahead by the river, a soft and graceful figure sat quietly, staring blankly at the rushing water. The breeze lifted her smooth black hair, and her slender back radiated an unmistakable loneliness and despair.

Sosuke concealed the calculation in his eyes, took a deep breath, and made his face appear even paler and more fragile. He stepped onto the river stones, producing faint rustling sounds as he walked step by step toward the Uchiha pearl that was about to fall into his palm.