No matter where Danzō's feet were planted, the ground shook in rage. If he reached to grab for something, it rattled. Then a roar far stronger than any powerful wind blew through the air. These were the howls of a terrible beast large enough to destroy everything in its path.

The people of Konoha ran in every direction, screaming and trying their best to find any sort of shelter from the hell unleashed upon them. Tents and blankets weren't enough to shelter them from the nightmare. Walls weren't much better. The predator just outside their borders could destroy entire sections of the surrounding forest using nothing but one of its massive tails. Every howl tore past another chunk of wall.

No man, woman, or child unfortunate enough to be within the destroyed wall's trajectory path was spared. They fell over like bowling pins, leaving blood red skids and the occasional torn limb behind.

"RUN FASTER!" Danzō ordered, squeezing his classmate's hand tightly. Their Academy teacher, Inuzuka Unubore, paired the children off at random to seek shelter: always a boy with a girl. His partner, Nara Usako, sat to his right for most of the day. She never spoke up much in class, typically sleeping through it and waiting until the last minute to do her homework. Today, every last ounce of life poured in her bewildered heart because she wanted to live. "HURRY!"

"I'm…" Usako puffed for air, starting to gasp. "I can't, Danzō. I…hn…" She pulled a pendant-like item from a necklace and breathed into it a few times; her voice starting to sound a bit less wheezy.

'She's asthmatic…' That would greatly slow down their hurry to safety. The girl kept giving him apologetic looks, but Danzō couldn't do anything with an apology. Sorry wouldn't count for much of anything if they died out here! "Does that help?" Usako nodded her head, a few stray wispy pieces of jet black hair falling to the front of her face as it came loose from her too-tight bun. "Can you run?"

"For a little while…" She squeezed his hand again, trying to make sure he didn't leave her behind. As scared as he was, he didn't want to do that, either.

"SENSEI!" he yelled. "UNUBORE-SENSEI!" The portly Inuzuka man lifted his head. The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Those vibrations paired hellishly with the frightened screams of grown shinobi trying to flee from whatever this offending presence was. Their sensei was a decorated chūnin, but this thing left his knees quaking like a newborn fawn's. "WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT IS THAT THING?!"

"Kyūbi," Unubore barked. "The nine-tailed fox: the creature of death and destruction. Kids, that's death itself out there!"

'Death itself?' Danzō's entire body felt cold, save for his stomach. The contents of his belly soured, twisting and turning into frantic knots. 'We're all going to die?' Usako trembled, which only made his own anxiety climb. 'Is there any way to escape it?'

"Everyone, please!" Unubore roared at the top of his lungs. "Stick together! We need to make it to the shelter before it comes any closer!"

Another howl. Another rage from the beast. Off in the distance, Danzō caught sight of an orange tail and sucked in a nervous breath. "It's okay," Usako whispered to him. "I'm scared, too."

"Shut up! I'm not scared!"

The next roar was so loud that every wall in the village reverberated. The children scattered, despite their sensei's pleas to stick together. Usako ran like the frightened rabbit she was named for, though she kept stopping to catch her breath. Danzō begrudgingly stayed at her side, considering he was responsible for her. After all, what kind of a man left a lady to fend for herself against—

A major wall collapsed. Danzō tried to shove Usako out of the way, knowing she was too out of air to do it herself. The action came too late. When the debris rushed at them, he narrowly escaped it. The Nara girl wasn't so lucky.

The scream she made was one he'd remember forever. Until that moment, he never realized human beings could make sounds like that. It came out high-pitched, shrill, and reminded him far too much of the animals his father hunted in the woods. It was one thing to hear it from a beast; but from a girl he'd known since Academy started, from a kid too weak to even run a kilometer without feeling faint…

When he finally worked up the courage to open his eyes again and brushed the dust off his face, the first thing he noticed was the blood pooling beneath the shattered concrete and wood. Usako stared up at him, her face scarlet and hot from tears as she gasped for air. Her entire lower body from the pelvis down was shattered and trapped beneath the collapsed wall.

Her dark eyes were wide open and blood spurted out of her mouth. When she wheezed, she gurgled, reaching for Danzō's hand to pull her out. "It won't do anything!" Danzō kept trying to tell her, pushing his hand away. "All I can do is get help. I have to go, Usako! I—"

But she wouldn't let him. When he tried to run, her shadow caught him and held him in place. Don't leave me behind, her face pleaded. Don't leave me to die alone. In her dying moments, she needed somebody to latch onto. He was available. He was vulnerable. He was—

He was only free again when the next part of the building toppled over and crushed her. All he saw now was Nara Usako's lone snow white hand sticking out from the debris: still reaching for a hand to rescue her. It twitched for a few seconds and then turned motionless.

All around him, he couldn't find any other classmates. They'd scattered like roaches. All Danzō could see were the dead, the injured, and those trying desperately to seek shelter. As childish as it was, all he wanted at that moment was the comfort and protection of a parent. So he ran toward the western gate, despite the fact he could see more of the killer fox as he approached.

His father managed the village borders. His main outpost was on the western end, facing toward the Land of Wind. 'Otou-san…please. Please, be alive out there!' And since Danzō couldn't find Hiruzen, Torifu, Kagami, Unubore-sensei, or anyone else; he'd run in the one direction he felt he was certain to find safety again.

Buildings fell. People collapsed. Horrible noises followed him at every twist and turn. Danzō darted past the obstacles as best he could: wishing the nightmare would end already. But it wasn't a dream. It was an ugly reality and that thing really was setting itself out to destroy every last part of the village. Konoha would turn to dust, leaving nothing but some flimsy alliances between old enemies behind. Disaster, despair, disorder and entropy…

As he ran, he felt his own breath turn short, almost as if Usako's angry ghost decided to squeeze the life out of his lungs for leaving her to die. 'It wasn't my fault! You slipped! I wasn't strong enough to help you. It's not my fault! It's not!'

More people lurched about, limping from injuries or fatigue. Either their eyes still carried the heated flame of life or it was snuffed out by watching those near them lose their lives to this approaching chaos. 'Who would do such a thing!? Weren't the villages supposed to bring us peace?!'

But then he thought about it. Some clans didn't join Konoha. Some clans had their ancestral lands taken away from them in the expansion campaign. The land that now belonged to his clan, once belonged to the Hagoromo family. The Hagoromos didn't join Konoha. If anything, they kept coming back every few months to try to assassinate the Hokage. Was it them?

Or maybe one of the dozens of foreign clans the Hokage turned away because they were too dangerous or their demands were too high? Or another new village? Even though Konoha preached peace, that didn't mean the others did. The world was expanding again, growing in ugly new ways with each passing day.

It could be the Hidden Cloud, the Hidden Stone, the Hidden Sand, the Hidden Mist, or—

But it wasn't. Once Danzō made it to the outpost and could get a good enough view, he saw for himself that this wasn't an affront from a clan or a village. It was only one man, but that's all it would take considering who he was. Standing out there against the Shodaime was a man who played an equal role in Konoha's creation. And just as he co-created it, he believed that gave him the right to destroy it.

'Uchiha Madara.'

…

The dream could have gone longer, had Yamanaka Hanako's son not poked Danzō in the chin and startled him out of his dream. It wasn't the flooded house dream anymore, but a genuine memory. This, though: why was it that since his argument with Kagami, he now kept thinking about what transpired the day the kyūbi was unleashed in Konoha?

"You're okay now," the little boy, Nori, informed him. "The bad dream's gone."

Danzō had to wonder if that child was going to be the third teammate to Tsunade and Orochimaru. Hiruzen hadn't chosen his third student yet, and Nori was in the same class. While he wasn't a prodigy like Orochimaru; the boy was clever, resourceful, and gifted in his clan's psychic arts.

It made sense that Nori had plenty of potential. Hanako was the daughter of the clan head prior to Osamu. She'd married a powerful man and their child's test scores consistently placed him in the Academy's top five. Nori would make a fine interrogator like Zassō someday, Danzō supposed, though he couldn't help but find it mildly amusing that the boy was already every bit as nosy and invasive as his mother.

He'd stop Hiruzen from choosing Nori, even if he had to give him a bullshit answer to convince him to pick someone else. 'Choosing a Yamanaka means you'll have to choose a Nara and an Akimichi, too,' he could argue. 'You already upset the balance by choosing two children from neither clan.'

"No, Nori," Danzō replied, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he leaned upward on the couch. "It's still there. The next time I close my eyes; it will still be there, waiting for me."

Yamanaka pupils remained as tiny as pinpricks, giving their eyes a glossy and dead look. Nori's eyes were every bit as gray as Hanako's rather than the gentle cornflower blue of Morirama's widow. "But you'll fight it, right? It's just a dream. It's not like it can win."

'You're wrong, child. It can, and he almost did.' Had the Shodaime been only a little weaker, this entire place would have perished. And the more Danzō thought about it, the more the anxiety crept in. 'Hiruzen isn't Hashirama. If Mito loses control of the kyūbi again, we'd be at a loss to contain it. Losing her last child could be enough to tip her over the edge. Or she could die and take the beast down with her…but there's eight more out there. The two of us only ever saw the kyūbi. We never confronted it.'

"Are you trying to coach me, Nori? Is your mother really so busy that she's letting you play dream therapist in her place?"

He heard a low laugh from the background. The door shut, soon followed by the sound of a man taking off his coat and shoes. Danzō turned around to see Zassō returned home from another long day at Torture & Interrogation. "You're not bothering Danzō-sama. Are you, son?"

"But otou-san, his dream was—"

"Nori." Danzō watched as the boy turned to face him again. He looked bashful: like he was afraid of getting in trouble. "I want you to be honest with me. Did you read my dream?" Apologetically, the young Yamanaka nodded his head and averted his gaze. He didn't fidget, but there was no mistaking his face as anything other than guilty. "Then you should know that everything that happened was real."

"I know. Dreams are honest places. Okaa-san says people lie when they're awake, especially to themselves. Dreams are the one place where all guards are down and you can see a person's true self."

What the hell did that mean? Was his true self still Nori's age: running in terror from something that could destroy his whole world with the flick of a tail? God, he hoped not.

'But I didn't run away from it,' he reminded himself. 'After Usako died, I ran toward it. All I was concerned about was finding my father to make sure he was safe.' Not that Daichi appreciated it. He'd shaken Danzō with so much force and anger that the boy thought his head would fall off.

But all he had to do was watch Hashirama stand his own against that madman. Off in the horizon, Madara stood upon the kyūbi's head and ordered the fox to do his bidding. Hashirama had his own wooden titan and held his own in the great conflict. It lasted for seemingly hours, and all Danzō could do was watch from the distance at the Konoha gates.

Madara was defeated, though. Hashirama put an end to his treachery. And later, Tobirama did the same thing to Uchiha Setsuna.

'But their presence at the Nidaime's funeral was small. It was even smaller for Morirama. They might…' He took in a deep breath. "Zassō?" The man of the house lifted up his head. "Nori was fine for me. I just didn't expect your wife to be so busy."

"Well…" Zassō shrugged. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but you aren't the only person having troubled dreams. The Hokage has to take priority, you know?"

…

There was a tickle in the back of his throat, but that was the least of the Raikage's worries.

All across A's arms, back, thighs, groin, chest, and neck were a prolific crop of boils. In the past two days, his medic had to lance and drain at least ten massive welts. The infected skin was stretched so thin that it turned the pink color of raw meat with a bruised, purplish undertone. At the slightest provocation, blood and pus could erupt from his sick body like a volcano.

For this reason, A ordered his finest medics to meet him in a bunker nearly a hundred kilometers away from the Kumogakure border. As their Raikage, he had to fight the good fight against this illness before he could face the masses again. For now, his best friend would have to carry on village affairs in his stead.

When the second squad of medics arrived, they were greeted by a Raikage who was every bit as bandaged up as the Nidaime Tsuchikage. But Mū did so to keep himself visible. At this moment, A wanted to contain and hide his damaged body. Each cough felt like thirty cane lashes to the back. Most of the bandages had already soaked through with blood and a pale pink fluid.

"I can't go back like this," A informed them. "And I have to quarantine the corpse until we finish our research. Contagious or not, he's still a game-changer." For this, he heard no opposition. "But the plague…do you have anything for the plague?"

"Lord Raikage." A dark-skinned medic with fluffy blonde hair got down on his knees and presented a large cinnabar container. "This salve will help. Apply it to the boils and they will reduce in size. Most of your pain comes from the boils. If we can get those to stop, then we can guarantee your life will no longer be in danger."

Next to him, a pale woman dressed completely in white presented a second treatment: a collection of syringes and vials. "Opioids will stop your cough. You're damaging your lungs and throat by coughing. More blood is coming out, and this will also help with the pain. We synthesized this. Heroin is stronger than morphine and smoking opium. All I have to do is inject it and—"

He had no interest in medicine, but wanted these people here not only to help prolong his life, but to study the corpse. "And what of the corpse? I've given it some of my chakra every day to keep it from rotting."

The medics all reached for gloves and masks, wanting to be as sanitary in death's den as possible. They went deeper and deeper into the chamber, letting A guide the way. There, eternally resting like a parody of a fairy tale prince, was the disease-ridden son of Senju Hashirama. Beneath the boils and the injuries was a man who had been handsome and charming in life.

The woman gloved up and took a deep breath from beneath her surgical mask. She stroked some of the corpse's long hair out of his face. Beneath the mask, she smirked. "He doesn't look too much like his father, does he? I thought Hashirama was sun-tanned with dark hair."

"Did you see his brother?" the male medic quipped back.

"Yeah. He doesn't look like him, either. You're sure that's who you claim it is, Nidaime?"

A nodded. "The last time I tried negotiating with the Hidden Leaf, he was guarding his uncle. I recognized him the moment his mask came off." And when the woman pulled off the corpse's trousers to place a needle between his legs, A couldn't watch. "What are you doing?"

"Collecting semen," she answered. "Just in case the mokuton is a hereditary trait." Not a single man in that room wanted to watch. Every sound made them wince. "Kuroi?" the blonde medic lifted his head again. "Scalpel, please. It might just be better to take both testes."

…

Ahead of him, Danzō saw Koharu and Homura whispering something to each other. They were keeping a professional distance, but he'd taken notice of how much color was in their faces every time they talked alone like that. Koharu was practically glowing and it was the only time Danzō ever saw Homura smile.

"I need your help with something."

Danzō stopped packing his things and noticed just how restless and anxious his best friend appeared to be. Even outside of the Hokage robes, Hiruzen couldn't shake that burden from his shoulders. It wasn't audible yet, but he expected a plea of some sort to leave the Sarutobi man's lips fairly soon.

"I figured you'd have a better approach on this matter, seeing as Torifu's your teammate. You know him better than I do."

"Hiruzen…" He had a sneaking suspicion he knew what this was about. Danzō had asked his ANBU to keep tabs on both Kagami and Torifu after the spat at the memorial service. To his knowledge, neither man knew they were being spied on, but Danzō wanted to see just how deep the anguish went.

Torifu's grief was inconsolable. He mostly stayed at the house, surrounded by his wife's mementos and clutter. Some nights, when he thought no one was around to see him, he'd place the half-knitted baby blanket under his pillow or sleep with something that used to belong to her. A few times, Danzō's spy reported Torifu would spritz a bit of his Amai's perfume on a handkerchief and sniff it for over an hour.

Had this been any man he didn't know, Danzō would have called these actions pathetic, but this was eating at him. 'She had a chance to recuse herself. Amai could have said no. Someone else could have easily gone, but she accepted. The fault's not fully mine. I gave her a way out and she didn't take it.'

"What exactly are you asking me?" He wanted Hiruzen to clarify. More information was needed. Would he ask him how to cheer Torifu up? If so, Danzō would tell him this was impossible: that a heart that broken couldn't be mended.

"I'm asking you to talk Torifu down from what he wants to do." For this, judging by how Hiruzen's hand twitched, he was thinking about reaching for a pipe and having a long, relaxing smoke. "He's volunteered to retrieve Morirama's body."

"That's—"

"Alone, Danzō. I'm worried that he doesn't value his life anymore. I already told Torifu I can't let him fly solo on this, and that he'll need to take a team with him. Perhaps one of your ANBU can—"

"No." For this, he'd put his foot down. "I got him into this mess. I should try my best to pull him out of it."

Hiruzen sat, hand still twitching from anxiety. He covered it with his other hand in an attempt to steady it. There were many things going on behind closed doors that even Danzō didn't know about. Aside from having to deal with Torifu's grief, other diplomats were asking to meet. More than this, Hiruzen's mother was now pressuring more than ever for him to settle down, marry, and start a family. The fear of him becoming married to his job and putting an end to Sarutobi Sasuke's line was a legitimate fear for her.

Were it fully up to him, Hiruzen would have considered it. The people he needed at his side were already there. Having a family could only complicate matters, but another side of him agreed with his mother. Deep down, he did want to start a family someday. But after seeing for himself what could become of a dynasty, he wasn't completely sold on the idea. Back and forth, his mind went. And in those moments where he turned ambivalent, that's what Danzō was for.

Danzō always had ideas. If Hiruzen got stuck, Danzō could either pitch a proposal he agreed with…or one Hiruzen so fervently disagreed with that he'd create a Plan B on the spot. "If I let you go, who would balance me out? Koharu? Homura?"

"When you became Hokage, you promised me that the only person I would ever have to submit to is you. Torifu's my teammate, Sarutobi: my comrade in arms. My mistake ruined his life. Please, allow me to—"

"Take one of your ANBU with you, then: one that you actually trust to watch your back. It's not that I don't trust you; or that I think Torifu is plotting anything; but…" Hiruzen hissed in a deep breath. "I've lost enough friends to last me a lifetime."

'Get used to it,' Danzō wanted to tell him. 'You're still young. You're Hokage, no less. There's no telling how many more friends and loved ones you'll have to send to the slaughter to keep this place afloat.'

"I have very few ANBU I trust at that level, Sarutobi. Most of them were loyal to Morirama. I've already terminated contracts with the captains and mid-ranking officers. I'm starting from scratch with my own people. Rather than ANBU, I have somebody else I wish to request."

Hiruzen continued to hold his hand in place, but Danzō saw it move. His anxiety was building, reaching a point where he could barely contain it. "Who is it? Word is you've spent a lot of time with Yamanaka Hanako lately. Are you asking her to—"

"Kagami needs to come with us."

Hiruzen's eyes grew big. "The Hidden Cloud already took Morirama's body. You want to give them a chance to steal an Uchiha, too!?"

"It won't come to that," Danzō promised, pulling Hiruzen to someplace a little quieter so they could talk uninterrupted. It was a back alley next to a closed storefront. Nobody was around, not for half a kilometer. "If Kagami falls in the line of duty, I give you my word. His body will either come home or be destroyed. The same is true for Torifu."

"You want to use this as a chance to make amends with your team, don't you? You want them to forgive you." But Hiruzen could tell there was more. "What else? You're hiding something."

"This isn't about forgiveness. I'm suggesting Kagami because he's a liability." It was blunt, abrupt, and damning. Hiruzen was dumbfounded that his best friend would even propose such a thing. Wasn't Kagami Danzō's friend, too!? "I'm already seeing the warning signs. Ever since the Nidaime died, Kagami's clan has shown signs of unrest. That and they refuse to give the proper respect to your officials."

Kagami's words had been scathing at the memorial service, but Danzō could chalk that up to grief rather than some cruel agenda. "But if that isn't enough to raise concerns, let me ask you something. When we were surrounded by the Kinkaku Squad and the Nidaime died for our sakes, who proposed we use a decoy?"

Hiruzen's silence told him all he needed to know: he'd agree to letting Kagami join this mission, but didn't want to hear anything else. Too bad.

"The person who proposed we sacrifice a party member for the sake of the group was the one person in our squad who couldn't volunteer. It's pretty ingenious, if you think about it."

"Danzō, I don't—"

"Do you honestly think Lord Second would have allowed any of us to sacrifice ourselves for the group? Especially you?"

Hiruzen's head was spinning: horrified and appalled by these words, but incapable of telling his friend to stop. "No," he admitted. "He wouldn't. Even though your squad was just an escort unit, we were the next generation. We embodied the village he and his brother worked so hard to create."

"So of course he'd take the bait," Danzō murmured. "Without proposing any further solutions, he took Kagami's word for it and threw his life away to save ours. Hiruzen…" He moved close enough to brush his lips against his friend's ear. "Do you even want to know what my ANBU reported back to me? What sort of things the Uchiha Clan says about you behind your back?"

There had been a tiny bit of awkward good news Hiruzen wanted to share, but now was no longer the time. That could wait until Danzō came back from this mission, either with or without his team. "I don't have to hear it. I believe you. But do be careful, alright? When you come back, I really need to talk to you about something else."

"Hokage business?"

"No. Personal business…" Yet when Danzō left to begin his preparations for that mission, Hiruzen felt nothing but chills. The air around them was finally starting to warm up, so why did he feel so cold?