Fanning the Flames
Shisui's altercation with Danzou ends without the former's death. Still, the Leaf Village faces the threat of the Uchiha coup. The fate or doom of the Uchiha rests in the hands of two traitors.
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What will win?
An unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
A lie that cannot be forgotten.
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-3
He never particularly liked the warhawk and now he got to spend days upon days researching his death. It seemed there were people in this world that you couldn't escape, no matter if they serew alive or dead. Thinking like that, a sour feeling returned to his heart.
He shut the locker door harder than anticipated, jarring the Anbu agent next to him. The cold, crisp noise made the feelings go away. Then he returned to seriousness.
The first thing he smelled at the scene of death was so much iron. It wasn't unfamiliar at all. As soon as the pungent order hit his nose, he thought very simply, Oh, that would be blood, then. Lots of blood. There is no return from that much blood loss.
Still, arriving on sight had done a number on him.
The amount of red covering the clearing looked like paint. It had been hard to associate that much red inside such a small human body. It looked like a nightmare at had came to life, and the dusk that had painted the clearing red as blood helped little. It was a heavily surreal event that left him feeling nauseous.
Only the click of the camera next to him snapped him partially out of his thoughts. At his side was his team member. The boy, a head shorter than he, took photos of the crime scene, unaffected by the spectacle. The older attributed this to innocence and lack of experience and dropped it.
Four hours worth of work revealed nothing beyond five bizarre suicides. It had to have been somehow staged. Danzou was not suicidal. On the contrary, anyone who saw a glimpse of his true self could see his fear of death. Even so, the Anbu could not sense a trace of chakra leading back to an owner nor find any weapons or poisons used to initiate the suicide. Finally, they checked the remains once more to ascertain the identities the bodies had not changed during their four hours of diligent work.
The Anbu man made his leave from the locker room still somewhat annoyed that nothing made sense. Why would Danzou be in a random clearing a few kilometers away from the Uchiha Clan with four Root agents? Why would he just kill himself like that? The Leaf's best sensors could detect Sharingan-based genjutsu with ease, but found nothing that could obviously reveal an Uchiha's hand.
"Excuse me... Captain?"
He stopped and turned to the young voice of his teammate.
"You seem upset," he stated plainly.
"With everything that's happened, why wouldn't I be? I've been assigned the craziest death in all of Leaf history. We have so many suspects and so many motivations to murder this man but not a single shred of evidence to connect it all together," he ranted, voice a few decibels away from shouting. "Lord Hokage trusts me to know how to solve this, but sometimes it feels as though he's given me this mission knowing I'll fail it."
"I believe in you, Captain," his teammate told him firmly. "This is really difficult, but not impossible. We just have to look under the underneath, like you say."
He sighed. There was nothing he hated more than hearing his own advice. He was too hypocritical. "I'll be returning to the crime scene. We still have the bodies in tact, right?"
"Uh-huh. Ask Panzaa about that whenever you want to see them."
"Right, right..." he exhaled with a dismissive wave, and vanished into the darkness.
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-3
His feet guided him to the crime scene. The smell of blood was far less intense now and didn't stir up memories he thought he repressed far better. There were a few other Anbu agents working as well, his teammates that didn't prefer being as tardy as their captain.
In fact, a female said, "Late again, Captain?"
He landed on the ground in a crouch. "I'll say it again: any more evidence?"
"Sensors trace two dozen bodies in these woods," replied an agent closest to his position. "This is a popular place for ninja to train. On the day of the attack, there was four ninja who entered the woods."
"...tell me they were close to Danzou."
"Not at all. The last trace is actually the furthest from the corpses."
A trace gone just like that, he mused.
"However, the sensor also detected something else. Two peculiarities."
"Oh?"
"All corpses had been using chakra. They were very agitated before death. Secondly, the Root corpses's chakra gets the closest to the most recent chakra before dying."
His ears perked up. "This somebody who was here last attracted the Root's attention briefly before the Root came to die right here? I'm guessing by the lack of names the sensors can't detect the owner."
"Correct, Captain. The chakra residue was tampered with, shortly after Danzou's death. Perhaps six hours afterwards and five hours before we arrived at the scene."
"That's no good."
Which was a massive understatement. The only ninja versed in tampering their own chakra signatures were Anbu, Root, Kage-level shinobi, and ninja who knew certain forbidden techniques. At least for Anbu and Root, the ability was to prevent chakra from being traced back to the mother country. Without that skill, the balance of world order would have been certainly compromised. It seemed the way the chakra was hidden was the exact same way Anbu and Root used: overlaying their chakra until the energies blend together into an unidentifiable mess.
Either there was a traitor in Anbu, or one of Danzou's "loyal servants" in Root played a part in keeping his murder secret.
And if there was to be any talk of a traitor in Anbu, there was only one person everyone would blame equally.
"Itachi Uchiha is not safe," said the Captain out loud, surprised by a protective throb in his heart.
"I agree. Everyone understands how critical of a player Danzou is in keeping the Leaf military strong. Little prodigy Itachi Uchiha, Anbu Captain at 12, is more than capable of this murder."