"You couldn't have picked a better day to visit." Mikuro's entire body swelled with pride as another thunderous crash between the village's two most powerful men reverberated from the edge of his clan's district. He poured another cup of tea for his guest, watching both the battle and Hyūga Hiashi's expression.
Hiashi had a far better view than he did, considering he chose to cheat by using his byakugan. "I'm beginning to see that. I never thought I'd see the Hokage spar." Even though he kept them on, veins bulging by his eyes, the Hyūga boy glanced at Mikuro and smiled. "You're one lucky guy. How often does your uncle fight him?"
"Danzō-dono isn't my uncle," Mikuro corrected as he sipped from his cup. "I think we're second or third cousins somehow. In my clan, every man over a certain age is addressed as uncle. Still…" He stretched forward, resting his chest upon his knees. "He and the Sandaime do this a lot. They've been rivals since their Academy days."
Mikuro had always privately wanted a friendship like this: somebody destined for great things with whom he could measure himself as an equal. Then Hiashi dared to say it. "Like you and Fugaku?"
Mikuro snorted at the remark and placed more of the genmaicha between his lips. It was one of Danzō's favorites: a robust and strongly steeped green tea with roasted brown rice. "I guess you can say that. We weren't rivals in Academy, though. I just disliked him." The Hyūga heir clearly wanted to know why, but this friendship was too new for Mikuro to feel comfortable sharing his whole life's story. "Now Fugaku is my measuring bar: someone I need to surpass if I intend to amount to anything."
"But you've already done that," Hiashi argued. "Fugaku didn't save my life in the Hidden Knolls. You did."
'And if I hadn't hesitated, I could have saved more.' The point was moot. Saving lives had nothing to do with the line of work Mikuro wanted to pursue. Still, he could tell his guest hoped to cheer him up. More importantly, he heard the gratitude in Hiashi's every word and hoped it would stop. People who acted like they owed him something made him uncomfortable.
Hiashi was a bit younger than him and nowhere near as self-confident. 'You remind me a bit of how Kaede used to be.' But maybe he'd be able to coax some of that pride out of his new friend and help Hiashi regain what he lost somewhere along the way.
"Are you ready to call it a day, Hiruzen?" Danzō called out. He had an ugly gash on his left arm, but the Third's right leg lost an impressive amount of blood, too. Danzō panted, trying to catch his breath. The fight had now gone on for a solid hour and both men felt it. "I've taken you out two times in a row!"
"If that's enough for you, old friend; I'll concede. But I think you're forgetting something," the Sandaime quipped back. Sarutobi Hiruzen grinned as though he alone was in on the world's greatest private joke. "I've bested you three times out of five!"
"Shit. His ego's too big to accept that." Mikuro put another one of his mother's snacks into his mouth: pull-apart bread with red bean paste. Hiashi already ate the majority of it, absentmindedly stuffing his face with the sweet pastry as the mock-battle escalated. "We're gonna be here all night."
The whole reason these two battled so fervently went far deeper than a mere rivalry that refused to die. Danzō was in charge of managing assassination drills to see how well the Third was able to defend himself at a moment's notice. The Hokage never knew when these drills would happen. Rumor had it he always wore battle garb beneath those billowing robes because he wanted to be prepared.
Mikuro could believe it, considering how many times he watched these fights.
"It's come to this, Hiruzen. You've left me no other choice." Danzō's hands wove the signs rapidly for the summoning jutsu.
Mikuro knew what the creature was and what it could do. Instinctively, he positioned himself in front of Hiashi before the Hyūga could even ask him what was going on. "We need to keep our distance," he warned. "And if the Sandaime's as smart as he claims, he'll need to do the same."
"Why?" Hiashi countered. "Is it–"
From a large cloud of smoke, a great and terrible beast emerged. This ungodly amalgamation of leftover animal parts carried an elephantine trunk, boar tusks, striped and clawed limbs reminiscent of a tiger, an ox's tail, and eyes consumed with an inhuman, insatiable, ravenous hate.
The mere act of standing near the Baku was enough for Mikuro to feel its pull: that familiar sinking, sickening sensation. "We need to leave," he informed Hiashi. "Get back in the house."
"But the fight's starting to–"
"It's too dangerous!" Mikuro growled, pulling the younger boy indoors and away from the beast. "Once Danzō-dono summons that thing, the fight's as good as over."
…and that was precisely why he wanted to learn how to summon it.
…
"You think you want that," Danzō murmured as he leaned back in the water. "You don't."
Mikuro had accompanied him to one of the hot springs, noting all the scars and healed-over injuries on the older man's body. By comparison, his own physique was nearly unmarked. Privately, the teenager envied some of Danzō's old wounds. It was a living testament to everything he'd survived and endured.
The First Great Shinobi War was fully chronicled on Danzō's body, as would be the Second. So, too, were an attack from a mad jinchuriki in the Land of Wind…claw marks from the dying throes of a deserter he'd once called his friend…and his refusal to give up any village secrets, even under the threat of torture.
All Mikuro had was an appendectomy scar, but it didn't make him look like a badass. It made him look like an inexperienced kid–which was precisely what he suspected Danzō thought of him. "How many times have I watched you fight the Hokage and hold your own? I never kept track, but I've seen enough to know it was in Hiashi's best interest and mine to leave the moment you summoned the Baku. Once it's out, something changes in the air and not in a good way."
The man smiled knowingly. "So you noticed. Tell me, Mikuro. Do you start doubting yourself when you're near it? Does your brain wander to your darker memories? Your regrets, perhaps?"
Like the time you got cold feet and Neyuki had to rescue your sorry chickenshit ass, perhaps?
He didn't have to say it. Mikuro knew. "I know my yokai stories," he grumbled. "Kaede's obsessed with them." His Uchiha teammate left offerings to hungry ghosts and knew every monster and spirit by name. Fairy tales and folklore were childish things to take an interest in; but Kaede wouldn't be Kaede without that obsession. "I know what those creatures do, but I'm confused. They're supposed to eat nightmares."
"Mine eats more than that," Danzō murmured. His eyes were closed as he leaned as far as he could before completely submerging himself in the water. Thoughts, water: one could drown in either thing.
…
If he stayed in place any longer, it would catch up to him. Once it caught him, it would wrap its eight long arms around his body and bite his back until it liquefied and sucked out his organs from behind.
"I'll catch you!" Hiruzen called out, arms outstretched from the other side of the ravine. "All you have to do is jump!"
"I–"
"Just do it, Danzō! It's right behind you!" His friend never sounded this frantic before, nor had his face ever looked so pale. "JUMP!"
Hiruzen had to be crazy. They were so high up that he could barely see the Nakano River down below. If he slipped and fell, death awaited him in mere seconds. Then Danzō heard it: that awful, foul-smelling hiss. There was no more time to waste. Either he fell or he made it toward his friend. One way or the other, he couldn't allow this monster to…to…
Something brushed against his arm and he shot upright in his futon, shrieking at the top of his lungs. As his brown eyes adjusted to the darkness, the little Shimura boy caught sight of a big, fat bug crawling out of his covers. He couldn't have wriggled his way out of bed any faster had he been on fire. He hyperventilated, feeling as though someone replaced his heart with a hummingbird's, and pulled all the blankets back in a frightful search for more.
There were no others, but what if they were hidden? As that one Aburame kid in his academy class loved to remind him, bugs were good at hiding. The six-year-old bit his lip, having already forgotten what made him scream in the first place, but fear itself wasn't so easy to quell.
Gingerly, he made his way out of his bedroom and did his best to take slower, deeper breaths to help calm his body down. 'Whatever it was, it's not real,' he reminded himself. 'It's not real. It's not real…'
The only light in the entire hall came from the other side of the shoji doors. Some, he recognized as moonlight bleeding through the rice paper. However, a more subtle pink glow came from his parents' bedroom. Cautious young hands reached for the door and–
"What do you need, son?"
His father's voice was so quick and sharp that Danzō hesitated to pull the door back any further. Daichi sounded very, very annoyed. He heard the man murmur something to his mother, who only groaned and rolled back over.
The door opened only far enough for Daichi to step out, arms folded as he stared down at his child. "Can I stay with you?" the little boy asked. "I–"
"Danzō, you're six. That's way too old for this kind of nonsense. When I was your age, I'd already killed a man!" He loved to bring that up. "Go back to bed."
"But I–" All his father did was wave him away with a flick of the wrist. Very well. If he had to man up and tough it out himself, then so be it. Halfway down the hall, he could have sworn he felt something furry scurry across his foot. He yelled again, causing Daichi to once more come after him.
"Unbelievable…" the man grumbled. "You know, after a long day of keeping this village safe from any potential threats or intrusions; it would be nice to once, just once, get a good night's sleep."
The fear was mostly gone by now, but guilt or shame wasn't exactly a good replacement. "I'm sorry. I–"
"Did your bad dreams come back?" Very meekly, the boy nodded his head. "Next time you're scared to sleep, say this three times in a row: Baku-san, come eat my dream. If you say the chant correctly, a nightmare-eating yokai will come and eat your bad dream."
"I'm six," Danzō growled in response. "Isn't that too old for silly stories?" But he realized that was the full extent his father was willing to help him for the night. The door closed and Daichi returned to the shadows.
Very quietly, trying to make sure the nightingale floors didn't chirp or tweet as he walked, Danzō took his time to return to bed. The shadows seemed to move, turning into ominous shapes. Pulling the blankets close to his body, tightly twisting himself into an anxious little bundle, he shivered.
"Baku-san, come eat my dream." He felt silly for saying it. "Baku-san, come eat my dream." Nothing was going to happen. "Baku-san, come eat my–"
A scratching noise came from the other side of the rice paper door. The silhouette was comparable to a medium-sized dog or a very large cat. Something long reached for the door, pushing it back. Danzō curled even tighter into the blankets, trying to make himself as small as possible because that thing was the most bizarre-looking creature he'd ever seen.
The animal squeaked when it saw him and excitedly wagged its ox-like tail. It seemed startled at first—probably because the child who conjured it up was still wide awake—but it quickly got over that. It moved closer, causing the floor to chirp with every step, and poked the child with its long trunk.
"You're Baku-san, huh?" The very air in the room had changed. The monsters in the dark were only harmless shadows. Whatever made Danzō scream out in terror wasn't real. It couldn't hurt him. Everything felt fine, especially when the animal sat beside him and head-butted the boy's hand.
The Baku's fur was soft and smelled like the plants in the garden. The more Danzō stroked the creature, the more it wanted to curl up and snuggle beside him. "Please eat my dreams. I have bad ones all the time…"
For the first time in months, he felt safe to sleep…and the little yokai showed no signs of wanting to leave. As fatigue took him again, Danzō put his head down, made himself comfortable under the covers, and chose to let his new friend cuddle under the blankets with him. It obeyed, making a few sounds Danzō hoped were happy sounds, and snuggled up.
…
"I don't think you have what it takes to keep an animal that unstable in check. Mikuro, you're someone I have high hopes for. The blood and spirit of the Shimura Clan runs strongly inside you. You're ambitious, just as I was at your age–"
"Then why won't you help me?" Mikuro hissed. "Tohru figured out how to summon something and he's not even a ninja." Somewhere among the thousands of scrolls in Archives, Tohru found a summoning scroll for messenger pigeons. In a moment of boredom, he signed the pact and dragged Mitsumi into the same vein of nonsense. Ever since they mastered that technique, they'd been a pair of unholy terrors. The birds were everywhere.
Mitsumi mostly used her new summon to drop coded messages everywhere as a "training exercise" for her friends. Tohru had already ruined one of Kaede and Neyuki's little dates by having the birds crap on everything and follow them around. Kaede was so rattled by the end that she torched three of the birds with a blue fireball.
"That means a civilian is ahead of me. I know I stagnated after the Akane Shinsa incident. It's been three months, and I don't feel like I've made any progress." He'd mastered more air pressure techniques. His air bullets were more accurate than ever before and now strong enough to shoot through a brick wall. Mikuro had even managed to create a vacuum chamber in a confined space last week. When Fugaku came at him with a fireball, he'd managed to blow it right back.
"I'm afraid that you might think I've plateaued: that there's no further room for me to improve until I try to learn something more complicated. I know what I want. I want to be like you!" And nothing like his philandering cripple of a father who spent his time painting fantasy worlds rather than contributing anything to the real one.
"Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?" Danzō asked. "If you want something that badly, you should pursue it. If you want a summoning animal, I suggest you find another one. The Baku won't listen to you. You can't let your guard down around it. Ever."
…
It returned every night, always with an expectant and happy look on its face. By the time he graduated from the academy, Danzō didn't even have to call it by name. None of his former classmates needed to know he still slept with a Baku at his side or that the dreams were this bad.
He had, however, put his foot down about having it follow him on overnight missions for fear of the other boys (or his sensei) seeing it. The last thing he needed was one of his teammates (Torifu in particular) teasing him for having to rely on such an animal.
But the whole of the village was in mourning. Senju Hashirama, the great and famous Shodaime Hokage, was dead. The strongest and most important man in the village left behind his hopes, his dreams, his grieving family…and a compromised Konoha.
Danzō had done so well over the past few years. The Baku only came for company, not for food. It was practically a glorified pet by now and he knew by how much its tail wagged every time it saw him that the creature loved him. He'd assumed the worst of the dreams were gone, at least until he killed a man for the first time. He still had yet to do that.
The nightmares returned with a vengeance the night after the funeral and every night afterward.
"Baku-san…" the eleven-year-old groaned as he tossed and turned in his half-sleep. "Come eat my dream. Come eat my dream…" But it wasn't there.
He heard shrieks all throughout the district and not all of them were children. Even his own father (who had laughed just days before about the anonymous death threats people mailed to him for announcing he'd run for the Nidaime Hokage seat) screamed in his sleep. What was going on? What was wrong with this world?!
Danzō left his bedroom through the window and ran as far down the compound's courtyard as he could, wondering how far this went. The entire village had gone mad. Even in the dead of night, the lights were on and he could hear people screaming like lunatics inside their bedrooms.
His sensei was a talented interrogator and a genius when it came to genjutsu and the human mind. When everyone gathered for their mission tomorrow, Danzō wanted to talk to Osamu-sensei about this. He wanted to know if—
The ground trembled. Danzō halted, reached for a kunai, and looked in all directions until a deep, reverberating growl caused all the nearby buildings and himself to shake. The creature was there. "You're…"
The Baku had been so small before. How could it grow to such a terrifying size in such a short amount of time?! Sure, it had grown to the size of a large dog since Danzō first started interacting with it, but the beast now towered over the buildings. Its tusks alone were the size of his body!
Briefly, the Baku wagged its tail at him and took a few steps closer. Its trunk gently brushed against the ugly gash on Danzō's face from where his father hurt him. Danzō caught sight of his blood on the Baku's trunk and shuddered. "How did you get so big so fast?"
His answer came in the form of an encore of screams. The Baku roared, stomped off, and tore across the village like a fox in a hen house, eating one bad dream after the next.
"Wait! WAIT! They won't understand! They didn't ask!" But it was no use. It was too hungry to listen. "PLEASE!"
Other Shimura began to leave their homes, wondering what all the commotion was about. The Baku was long gone, having chosen to attack the Nara Clan next. All they saw was Shimura Daichi's son with blood on his torn bare feet, seemingly shouting and cursing at thin air.
…just like his father, really...
…
Maybe the boy was blind to what was really going on. Despite Mikuro's failures and hang-ups, Danzō still gave him solo missions in the hope that the boy would someday make the cut for ANBU. If ANBU meant that much to Mikuro, if he was willing to give his all and try…
Danzō didn't have children like this in his Foundation, nor did he have any sons or daughters. He never would. Parenthood made people weak. Hiruzen, Koharu, and Kagami were parents and their children made them soft. Torifu tried and never fully recovered from the loss of his wife. Or the baby.
This boy was as close to a son as Danzō would permit himself to have. For some reason he didn't fully understand, Mikuro did more than admire and respect him. Mikuro loved him. Maybe a part of Danzō loved Mikuro back...or at least what Mikuro represented.
In many ways, Mikuro was similar to his former self: the ambitious, hardheaded perfectionist with fierce determination burning in his eyes. Danzō dearly missed the young man he'd once been and felt as though his hopes and dreams had a second chance with Mikuro as his proxy. But if Mikuro followed in his shadow and never deviated outside it, he'd turn out just the same.
And those dreams would be ripped from his passionate soul: dashed to bits and devoured.
"One of these days, you'll realize the full extent of what I can do," Mikuro murmured as he got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around his waist. "And on that day, you'll hear my name in conversation and be proud to know me. If I can't get any help from you tonight, maybe I'll have better luck asking the Sandaime."
'Oh, you little shit. You know exactly what to say to twist my arm.' A malicious little glimmer twinkled in Mikuro's eyes as he saw Danzō cringe. "Don't do that. He has no incentive to help you."
"I'm also calling bullshit on the Baku being some hostile, unruly thing you can barely control. Like I told you before, sir: I know my yokai stories. Bakus are friendly creatures, provided you don't–"
Mikuro paused when he saw the expression on the older man's face. "That's it, isn't it? You called on it so many times that the nightmares weren't enough to satiate its hunger. It became so big and horrible that you had no choice but to tame it…right…?"
Oh, to be young and gullible again! That wasn't how it happened at all. Danzō wasn't so noble.
He'd done something worse.
…
"He's incredible…"
Indeed, he was. This majestic golden primate stood taller than a man, wore a vest made of tiger skin, and showcased only a few of the remarkable things he could do. Monkey King Enma was a creature of mythology—practically a god—and he was Hiruzen's alone to control.
"His scroll is an heirloom passed within the Sarutobi Clan's strongest family." Hiruzen explained. "I was going through my dad's old things a few months ago and I found Enma in there. Tobirama-sensei helped me master the summoning pact. He really is a great teacher."
'You have to rub it in; don't you, Hiruzen?'
Danzō's team made it to chūnin rank first, but without much (if any) guidance from the jōnin entrusted with his team's welfare. The man he once called sensei was a paraplegic shell of his former self: half-covered in burns and in chronic pain. Privately, the fifteen-year-old hoped Osamu-sensei lived a long and agonizing life. It didn't matter that his sensei claimed his atrocities were committed for the greater good of the village. Danzō still wanted him to burn.
"This was quite possibly the most complicated jutsu I've ever attempted. Can you be happy for me?"
No. He couldn't.
Introducing Enma to all this meant Hiruzen stepped up his game to a level Danzō had no hope of matching. The Shimura Clan had no summons passed down from father to son. Even then, his father wasn't a clan head like Sarutobi Sasuke had been.
"I am," he lied. Every last word tasted like acid. "Congratulations, Sarutobi."
…
"I'm home," Danzō announced, but there was no reason to do so beyond habit. Nobody lived here anymore. Daichi died when Danzō was eleven and Hakuchō followed suit around her son's thirteenth birthday.
He put the bag down, placed his shoes at the front door, and moved to the kitchen so he could wash the sweat and grime off his scarred face. His hands shook in rage, fingers digging into the tender skin until he felt the slick, hot sensation of blood under his nails. He wanted to scream, to throw something, to tear something apart. Nobody ever saw him like this. Nobody bothered to check in because the whole of the world believed him when he swore up and down he was fine.
It wasn't fair. He busted his ass out there every goddamn day and most people still saw him as little more than an extension of his best friend. Every accomplishment in his life, Hiruzen's name came up somewhere.
Danzō decided to bathe once it was dark because he didn't want to look at the bruises from the spar. He hurt all over, but his pride took the greatest blow. He savored the warmth of the private spring and stared up at the clear night sky. Was there anyone capable of valuing him first and foremost? Whose pride and joy was he? No one's. He would always be second best: Hiruzen's winning loser.
At some point, exhaustion kicked in and he felt his eyelids droop. The familiar warm, velvety-soft sensation of the dream eater's trunk moved across his bare back. "I didn't realize you were there," he murmured, letting his fingers stroke the beast.
He had an idea. "Baku-san…"
…
Danzō was so blinded by envy that he'd been willing to trap the creature forever. He'd beaten the creature into submission; forcing it to make a pact with him and him alone. Now he could summon it whenever he wished: even in the day. It was terrified of daylight.
He intentionally starved the Baku so it would always be hungry and angry enough to fight whatever got in front of it. In time, he changed the very nature of the beast. It was furious: completely and utterly mad at the world.
"I beat it into submission so I could catch up to Hiruzen and have a summon of my own. It won't listen to you. It will attack you. You still want this?" Mikuro could say yes or no, but it wouldn't matter. Danzō knew the truth because he saw it in the youth's eyes.
'You poor fool,' he thought as he handed over the scroll. 'You are going to become another me.'
…
Despite having used top grade blackout curtains for years to hide the natural light coming from the large window, enough sunlight bled through the cracks to create a trapezoidal halo on the dormer ceiling. Mikuro rolled over in bed, feeling the highest speed from his box fan hit his face again and again.
Dim and dark as it was in here, he still managed to see everything: the fan, the dresser his father hand-painted to look like a starry sky, the pile of dirty laundry shoved behind the door that he kept meaning to take downstairs and wash but forgot about the moment he left his room. He could even make out whose smiling face was whose on the pictures hung on the walls.
He loved photographs. They were flickers in time: captured forever without fabrication or embellishment. Art was nothing more than a beautiful lie. It showed only what the artist wanted to convey and seldom was that desire the unadulterated truth.
Tohru wanted a group photo after the incident with the Archives thief was over. There he happily sat in the middle, holding up one of the sealed notebooks that helped the team communicate during the mission. Mitsumi sat beside him, smiling in a way Mikuro hadn't seen in years. Mikuro stood at the far right, Fugaku at the far left. One burned with ambition and one carried the smile of the resigned.
There were others, too. Gatherings for birthdays, festivals, Kaede and Neyuki's second anniversary as a couple…
As more light entered the room and the more Mikuro's eyes could take in from these snapshots, he noticed a trend he'd blindly ignored in the past. Photos didn't lie. They were honest, even when the truth hurt.
'Half of these people hate me,' he realized. As he became more aware and awake, he heard the familiar sound of his father's infidelity in the form of a woman's moans from the studio. It could be Kaede's mother in there, or the kunoichi preschool teacher, or maybe even the Hokage's wife. Shimura Zocho played dangerous games and was too old and infirm to care about the consequences.
In the past, Mikuro turned blind eyes and deaf ears to his father's depravity. This morning, he couldn't. He glanced at an item atop the dresser and reached for it. Despite Danzō's warnings, he'd pushed and pushed until the man permitted him to borrow the Baku's scroll. And like a fool, he made the pact….and regretted it immediately.
It felt as though every last hope and dream had been sucked out of him, along with joy itself.