A/N: Am I the only person who thought how Danzo went out was completely stupid?
Danzo stood atop the ancient stone bridge facing the from of Sasuke, still leaning on his cane.
With a slow movement, he twisted the handle of his cane,slowly withdrawing the blade from the cane itself. "Fu. Torune. Leave. Report to Uzumaki and ensure he becomes the Hokage."
The dark-haired avenger sneered. "You think I will let your pets flee?" With a motion of his blade, sharp arcs of electricity lashed out.
Danzo lifted a single hand, and a wall of fierce winds erupted, disrupting the lightning. "Petulant child, your quarrel is with me, not my minions." Even as he spoke Fu leapt away and Torune evaporated into a cloud of bugs, falling out of sight a moment later.
Sasuke glared at the man, hands tight around his sword. "You murdered my family, you and the elders of Kohona. You set up my brother to take the blame!"
Danzo shook his head. "No. The elders? Spare me. They were nearly as soft as Hiruzen was, boy. I instructed Itachi to eliminate the Uchiha. And he had no choice but to obey."
Sasuke gritted his teeth, as the ancient being across from him made another hand-sign. There was a series of clicks and rips, and with a single sigh of cloth and several clangs, the bandages and bindings around the old man fell away.
Sasuke's eyes widened in horror at what was revealed. The pale, wrinkled right arm of Danzo was studded with swollen, mutated Sharingan eyes, set in wooden-looking flesh that bore a face on the right shoulder.
Worse than that, though, was the glaring red Sharingan set into Danzo's right socket. Sasuke was a boy when the wielder of that Sharingan had died, but even so he recognized it's pattern. He instinctively triggered his own Sharingan to protect himself from its power.
The eye of Shisui, capable of controlling and manipulating thoughts effortlessly.
A thousand, thousand questions were suddenly answered in Sasuke's mind, as Danzo's smile turned into a hard, feral grin. "As you see, boy, I have been in control the entire time. Of Hiruzen, of the elders, of Itachi. I instigated your fool father to act instead of being merely upset. I manipulated your idiot clan into the rash actions of plotting against the Hokage. And with this eye, I doomed them all."
It was only with the greatest of effort that Sasuke managed not to leap at the man. He needed one final answer, after all. "Why? Why murder my clan?"
Danzo tapped the tip of his sword against the stone, making it ring. "The truth? Your clan was a danger. To Kohona, and more than Kohona. Your arrogance, blindness to reality, and most of all your idiotic Curse of Hatred lead to your downfall. I merely orchestrated it. Itachi was merely the tool. And now you are here, boastful and proud, to take meaningless revenge."
He snorted and leveled his blade. "That is your answer? That we brought this on ourselves? When I am done killing you, Kohona will burn, and everything you care for will wither in the flames."
Danzo merely smiled wider, even as Sasuke charged, flinging his strength into a massive strike against the old man. The blade tore through him without resistance, slaying him almost instantly.
He fell to the ground limply, bleeding and broken, and Sasuke frowned. That was...far too easy. But this was no clone.
He watched the chakra slowly fade from the corpse, until with a blink it faded into nothingness. Before Sasuke could even react, a hand struck him in the small of the back with a hot, burning sensation.
He cried out as his chakra shattered and fled, staggering away to turn to face Danzo, seemingly unhurt. With a contemptuous sneer the old man slapped his sword out of his weakened grip and kicked him in the chest, sending Sasuke flying to collapse in a heap.
"W-what...?"
Danzo shook his head. "Pathetic." He watched one of the eyes on his arm slowly close, before sighing and staring hard at the Uchiha. "You don't even recognize one of the powers of your own clan, fool. Izanagi. I cannot be killed by such pitiful, foolish children such as you. The chakra suppression mark I have hit you with will prevent you from any more stupidity."
He slowly walked forward. Sasuke grabbed two kunai from his pouch and flung them, even as he scampered to his feet. With no chakra, his motions were sluggish, and Danzo batted both projectiles aside with his blade.
Sasuke backed away more, before bumping into someone behind him. He looked up to see Tobi standing there, arms folded. "Ah, old bastard. I see you have proven too much for young Sasuke."
Danzo gave a cruel smile. "And at last you expose yourself...impostor."
The single visible glowing Sharingan eye behind the swirled mask narrowed. "It is unwise to antagonize me, doddering old fool."
Danzo's smile only grew wider. "I have no doubt, however, that you are indeed a Uchiha. Your arrogant belief in those eyes seeing everything is absolute...and your doom."
Tobi let a length of black chain slip from his robe's sleeve. "It is your end."
Danzo tapped his blade against the bridge – and channeled chakra.
The entire bridge seemed to light up in a single blast of energy, detonating a split second later, a pulse of energy powerful enough to send Fu and Torune both hurtling to the ground from over a mile away. The Yamanaka sat up slowly, eyes wide and disbelieving at the sheer magnitude of the blast.
Danzo had given them both a multitude of scrolls and fuinjutsu seals to apply to the bridge, and then made sure ROOT scouts were obvious in clearing the path ahead of Danzo well enough for Sasuke to track them. He'd expected all along to be ambushed at that location by Sasuke, especially after the fiasco at the Three Wolves, and had set this up.
Some fifteen minutes later, the tap-tap-tap of Danzo's cane could be heard, and the ancient ninja walked into the clearing where the two of them had decided to wait. Once again his arm was bound up and his eye covered. Neither looked surprised at his survival, but Fu's voice was low as he spoke. "How many eyes did that cost you, Danzo-sama?"
The old warhawk's voice was icy. "Two. I am unsure if I eliminated them both, but at the very least Uchiha Sasuke is ashes." He shook his head. "The Uchiha were always poor ninja."
At this his subordinates looked at him blankly, and he gestured with his cane for them to follow. "Everyone believes the Uchiha were all-powerful, with their ocular abilities. They never truly learned how to strike from stealth, however. They were all flashy, in love with being elites, and in their status."
His good eye narrowed. "The only exception to this rule was Itachi. He, at least, was shinobi. The others were fools. As were those two. What kind of idiot goes into some sort of melodramatic fight on a bridge of all places? They were not expecting me to assassinate them, and were so proud and arrogant that the thought that the bridge was a trap never occurred to them."
He picked his way along the path, shaking his head once more. "I have no idea what would make a fool think that announcing your plan to the Five Kage was somehow a brilliant step, save for emotions. This is why they get people killed." His eyes snapped to Torune. "Have six ROOT scouts check the area around the battle site for any signs they survived."
Torune leapt to obey, leaving Fu alone to guard his master. "Danzo-sama, what now?"
Danzo shrugged. "Ao was able to detect my eye, but I did not need to use it as I was perfectly content with someone else being chosen to lead this ridiculous effort – and thus, I proved my ability to not merely act in a whim. In any event, I let them select the Raikage to lead."
Fu was confused. "Why, Danzo-sama? Is this not a threat to Kohona?"
Danzo snorted. "Hardly. If Tsunade awakens, let her waste her time dealing with the Raikage. If she does not, then we have a chance to give Naruto-kun a chance to shine once more. My place is in the shadows, not in the light – I do not need to be placed in formal charge of this 'Alliance' to control it."
He glanced around, seeing the flitting forms of ROOT shinobi closing in and around them in a protective cordon. "I can influence Naruto to act as I would, and he will either be the Hokage or be incredibly trusted and supported by Tsunade should she awaken. Either way, my hand remains unseen. With both Sasuke and the impostor acting as Madara slain, Pain crushed, and most of the rest of the organization destroyed, there is little danger for such an Alliance to actually face. Meanwhile, ROOT will be in place both to infiltrate enemy villages and steal what we can from our fellow 'alliance' members."
Fu nodded. "And this … false Madara? If he survived, or was himself the puppet of another?"
Danzo grimaced. "It is likely he survived, unless he was truly foolish. But I know that was not Madara. I was very young when he left the village, but I know what Madara looked like – this person was too short, and he did not stand like Madara stood. Nor was his voice anything like Madara's."
He glanced over his shoulder, at the huge smoking crater left behind by his fuinjutsu. "No, whoever that was, if they are the puppets of another, the Alliance will deal with. Our primary focus should be locating wherever they have stashed the biju they have captured, with an eye to gaining them for Kohona."
With that, Danzo fell silent, and Fu stepped back. The interim Hokage wasn't sorry to see the last of the Uchiha gone. The bits and pieces of lore, passed down from Hashirama and Tobirama, explained exactly why the two brothers had worked so hard to bring the Uchiha under the control and watchful eye of the Senju.
The details were scarce, but Hashirama had spoken of conversations with the biju, about the nature of their existence. While there was little he could put together that was useful, one fact stood out – the sons of the Sage of Six Paths had been powerful, and one of them had eyes much like that of the Uchiha Clan, while the other had chakra much like the Senju did.
Tobirama's theory, based on scattered historical evidence, was that the Tailed Beasts – and the bits of rumors of a Ten-Tailed Beast – had arisen in the aftermath of something terrible happening. The wreckage of ancient civilizations, the bits of high technology painfully maintained from badly understood notes, the terrifying ancient machines like the flying Sky fortress and the Ama no Hoko – all of these pointed to an older civilization.
One that experimented with chakra, and was destroyed utterly.
Tobirama felt the Sage of Six Paths had done something to seal away whatever had shattered the world and created such forbidden machines and powers. The more he studied, the more fearful he became of the Uchiha. While Danzo had never gotten him to explain exactly why, he knew it was more than just the old memories of the time before Kohona giving rise to such.
When Danzo had begun his own investigations, discovering the ancient notes found in the aftermath of the Saizuri debacle had been terrifying. The Ama no Hoko was a machine that punched 'holes' into the spheres of the Kami, opening ways to realms beyond their own. The ancients had been playing with the very nature of existence in search of more power, and chakra had been their goal – one that destroyed them. The notes surmised the possibility of imbuing such power into living beings, and it was clear from what was being suggested that ocular powers were sourced from such unholy things.
There was a link between the Sharingan and the Biju, between the Sharingan and things like the Ama no Hoko. Better, then, that the Uchiha be destroyed, rather than taking the chance they might be a risk to Kohona. It had taken years of careful manipulation, but after he'd taken Shisui's eye, it had all wrapped up in a single night.
Itachi had been strong enough to not kill his beloved younger brother, but Danzo had allowed that as long as the boy had been loyal to Kohona – a single Uchiha was no real threat. When Sasuke had defected, Danzo had immediately ordered him killed, Itachi's wrath be damned.
And now it was done. Itachi was dead, Sasuke was dead, and the only working Sharingans in the world were his own and Kakashi's. It would likely only take one more good push to break the Copy Ninja's mind once and for all, and have him die messily in some S-rank nonsense.
Danzo placed Hiruzen's calm and gentle smile on his features as he walked on, mind turning to plans within plans. The wind blew past him, past his ROOT forces, soaring over the landscape and the smoking, charred crater left behind from his fuinjutsu.
It blew scattered ashes to the winds, ashes that flitted past a torn, gasping figured in the badly burned remains of robes, the cloth melted to what was left of his dying flesh.
Obito knelt heavily on the rocky ground, vision dark. The blast had hit him before he could even react. He'd managed to block some of it with his split-second attempt to use Kamui, but he had not been entirely successful.
He scrabbled for chakra, feeling the seared and blackened parts of his body, and realized belatedly that the blast had blinded him. He slumped to the ground weakly, laughing quietly to himself at the irony of his demise – that he would die in such a stupid fashion seemed only to reinforce the hollow, pointless nature of his life.
When ROOT scouts found the figure lying dead on the ground a few hours later, they conferred quietly over what to do before immolating the corpse with fire jutsu until nothing remained but half of a charred, misshapen skeleton.
