The Third Shinobi World War had begun, and Konoha, once the strongest shinobi village, now faced pressure from several directions at once.
"Hiruzen, your indecision will only put Konoha on the back foot." Danzo's cold voice before he left still seemed to echo in his ears.
The Third Hokage shook his head, pushing down his tangled thoughts.
This was no time for infighting. They had to concentrate every bit of strength on the crisis before them.
Meanwhile, deep underground, at Root's base.
Danzo walked slowly through the dim passage, his footsteps echoing through the empty space.
His expression was so dark it could almost drip water. The argument at the meeting and Hiruzen's rejection had both stoked his anger.
But what bothered him even more were those two brats from the Uchiha Clan.
Uchiha Makoto and Shisui Uchiha.
Back in his Private Chamber, Danzo sat in a chair shrouded in shadow, his lone eye gleaming coldly.
He had never forgotten the failed assassination attempt on Uchiha Makoto two years earlier.
Although he seemed to have laid low over the past two years, making no major moves against the Uchiha Clan, he had never actually abandoned that idea.
To make the troublesome Uchiha Clan disappear from Konoha for good.
"Uchiha Makoto..." Danzo murmured the name, tapping his fingers lightly against the chair's armrest.
Others might believe the story that the brat had "escaped by sheer luck" from three Sunagakure elite jonin at the border, but Danzo did not.
Although Root's informants had been unable to approach the heart of that battlefield, subsequent intelligence analysis showed that the Sunagakure squad had vanished without a trace after encountering Uchiha Makoto. Not even their bodies had been found.
Missing, rather than dead or retreating.
What did that mean?
*It meant that the ten-year-old brat