Chapter 48: The Harshest Venom
The restaurant seemed unchanged from the last time they met at the establishment. Tables were positioned the same way, the waiter at the door was the same, and the table that he and Sakura found themselves in was the same one they sat at during their time together as Team 7. Granted, Naruto wasn't here, but otherwise it was the exact same. When their schedules were exclusively training for the Chunin Exams, it was easy for them to wander in here and catch up with their monotonous lives. Since then, though, so much has been muddied that there was never a great time to fall back into the routine. However, for whatever reason, Sakura suggested they finish their day here once again.
Had they still been in their first month together as Team 7, or maybe even the following month after, Sasuke would have brushed off the girl's offer as an attempt to start some sort of relationship with him. Now, though, it was hard to justify such thinking as they've been teammates for so long. Despite that, assuming this wasn't a try at a date, Sasuke couldn't get over how nervous Sakura looked across from him. Lips were being chewed between twitching teeth, green eyes looked around more frantically than he was used to, and the girl couldn't seem to find a comfortable position to sit. Sakura was showing so much nerves Sasuke was beginning to feel antsy himself, making him speak up in a bout of frustration.
"What's wrong with you?" He asked her, brow furrowing as he watched her jump at his sudden words and chuckle it off to herself. She looked at him hesitantly, scanning her eyes over to the mannequin puppet that sat in the seat Naruto used to occupy before looking back at him. She began to speak, stopped herself, and began again.
"I'm worried about you, Sasuke. I don't know, it just seems like you're pushing yourself too hard lately, and without Naruto here I'm not sure how to help." Even with the few tries it took to get started, Sakura wasn't able to gather much confidence in her words. Sasuke didn't blame her though, confrontations weren't her strong suit, not lately. After the run-in with Itachi, Sakura was more jumpy than ever, and with Team 7 being disbanded, officially, she wasn't exactly the most boisterous she's ever been.
"I'm fine, Sakura. This is something I have to do if I ever want to catch up to him. There is no other way." Sakura simply nodded at Sasuke's words though she didn't look reassured. The waiter interrupted them to serve their meals to them, making their conversation come to a halt as he came and went. Silence reigned as they began to eat slowly, neither showing a particularly aggressive appetite at the moment.
"Have you done whatever you asked Naruto about the other day? The thing that might hurt you but make you stronger?" Her words were even quieter like she didn't want to be heard or know the answer. Sasuke paused to look at her, waiting for her to glance up before he shook his head. Before she could feel relieved at his answer, he spoke up after a swift swallow of food.
"I planned to do it soon, maybe even tomorrow. Kakashi's training made me wait longer, so I knew I had the energy for whatever it would be, but now I know I can do it." Sasuke wasn't stupid. Reckless? Maybe. Doing some secret protocol that could increase his progress wasn't something a pragmatic man would do, however pragmatism wasn't what would help him now. He's drilled Chidori long enough to be able to recover after some downtime in the morning, the visits with Neji, when he was available, kept Sasuke's fighting sharp, and now all he needed to do was to meet with Kabuto and discuss whatever it was they would be doing.
"You don't even know what it is!?" Sasuke winced at Sakura's whisper-shout at him, her tone harsh and her face filled with exasperation. Her judgment was clear in her face and Sasuke didn't know whether to try and reassure her or rebuke the negative reactions. Sasuke set down his eating utensils and raised his hands in surrender before the whisper-shouts turned into real shouting.
"Calm down, it's not as bad as you're making it. Kabuto is the one that told me about it. He didn't tell me much, but he said that he could help me get stronger." He tried to explain carefully that it wasn't some random person that was offering this, but someone they both knew. Sakura, however, only looked confused for a second. Her eyes trailed to the ceiling as she fell into quiet thought.
"Kabuto? The guy from the Chunin Exams?" She asked, her eyes squinting as she physically tried to remember the elder genin. Sasuke nodded again, but Sakura didn't reply right away. She sat for a few seconds to think about what he'd said. "And you trust him?"
"I don't have a reason to distrust him. He helped heal me and gave us a scroll for the Second Exam and he watched over me last time I was in the hospital. What is there to worry about?" Sasuke tried, once again, to reassure the girl's disbelieving voice. He wasn't sure how truly effective his words were, as Sakura tended to be more of a worrywort than either he or Naruto ever was, but they went back to their food shortly after. The topic never came up again the rest of the night, conversations flowed closer to their usual places and the tension eased up as the meal went on.
Sasuke allowed himself to appreciate Sakura's concern. Much like Naruto, Sakura was someone he knew he could trust and someone that he could consider a friend after so long of living in solitude. Albeit, there was a bit more hesitation in accepting her as such when, in the academy, she used to be one of the many that Sasuke couldn't stand. Her fixation on him merely because of who he was unsettled him more than anything. In the months they spent as teammates, though, she showed that she was more than some blind fan to him and he was grateful for it. That concern made him more confident in what he wished to follow through with, it made him sure that he would have someone at his side should something go wrong with whatever Kabuto had planned for him.
When he awoke the next day, a subtle sense of nervousness flowed through him. For whatever reason there was a sense of trepidation in the back of Sasuke's mind that he never remembered having, like he was going into something unprepared. Those thoughts and feelings were pushed to the back of his mind, though, as he went through his morning training with Kakashi. The Hokage made a statement or two about his poorly hidden nerves, but all of which were brushed off or blamed on a poor night's sleep. The same dismissals couldn't be made to himself when he finally made his way toward the hospital. He couldn't simply ignore his rapidly beating heart or moist palms, he couldn't even blame it on the weather. Midday it may be, but autumn was taking a stronger hold and the high hanging sun was more comfortable than it was beating.
Sasuke didn't let his mind deter him though. He would accept being nervous so long as he saw it through, and so, when he entered the hospital, the Uchiha did so with his chest broad and his back straight. He walked up to the receptionist's desk, the woman behind that desk merely smiling at him in his attempts to exude confidence.
"How can I help you?" She asked, voice light and lips smiling. For a second, Sasuke acknowledged that such a greeting was odd for a hospital but didn't bother mentioning it. His dark eyes peered into the girl's own as he replied back to her question.
"Is Kabuto Yakushi here?" His voice was even and spoken with a touch of force. The receptionist furrowed her brow at his question before looking down to a clipboard with a table that stretched the length of it. Her finger slid down the side as she skimmed through the list, but a voice broke the silence between them before the receptionist had a chance to answer his question.
"Sasuke? I didn't expect to see you here." The gentle voice of the man he was asking for called out from his right, pulling the attention of both him and the receptionist. Kabuto walked toward them with a white coat over his usual purple outfit, a small smile pulling at the man's lips. "Thank you, Miyo, but I can take this. I'll catch up with my friend here while I take my lunch."
The receptionist, Miyo, nodded at Kabuto and took the papers that he was carrying before returning to whatever she was doing before Sasuke entered. The older genin held up a finger to the Uchiha as he slid behind the desk to remove the white jacket from his shoulders and then walked back around to nudge them both out of the hospital's doors. The two exchanged no words by the time they were amongst the village's midday crowd and only when they were a fair distance away from the hospital building did Kabuto speak up.
"Sorry about the hastiness, but if I'm right about why you came to me then it's best we didn't talk about it in there." Kabuto's voice remained unchanged despite how suspicious the man was acting, but Sasuke chose to put that off to the side. It was mentioned before that whatever the medic had planned wasn't exactly within the rules, and so Sasuke allowed a fair amount of secrecy.
"How can you help me get stronger?" He shot out, point blank to the boy to his left. His dark eyes glared up at the man who only returned another grin at him as he lifted a finger to his mouth. Clearly, the man was intent on not letting anyone know what he had planned, not even the sky above.
"Not here, it would probably be better to talk about this in private." Sasuke nodded and they continued their walk in silence, Kabuto skulking through the crowd with ease as Sasuke tried to keep up in the sea of people that were also out on their lunch breaks. After a short enough walk, Sasuke followed Kabuto up the stairs of an apartment complex and quickly into an apartment on the third floor. Just as he had before he made it to the hospital, the Uchiha was painfully aware of how unsettled he was.
The entrance to the apartment did him no favors in calming down, however. From the looks of it, Kabuto could have just moved into the place the day before as there was no sense of identity to the palace. No decoration, no personal effects, and nothing of not out of the basic furnishings that came with the unit. Kabuto walked to the table that sat in the center of the room, a room designed as a living area with a kitchen and dining but with no accommodations to be such. A couch was pointed toward nothing, not even a tea table, with its back facing Sasuke, the kitchen was spotless of any evidence of anyone working within it, and the dining room table was similarly spotless. Kabuto offered a hand to a seat across from him at the square table, his smile never leaving his face. Slowly, Sasuke sat in the chair, his eyes still wandering around the apartment as he waited for Kabuto to speak up again.
"I know, it's nothing much, but it's home." Kabuto said lightly, a small chuckle escaping him as he did so. Home wasn't the word Sasuke would use. He wasn't a sentimental type, but he knew that a home was something that had a sentimental connotation, something with emotional pull. This was a dwelling, merely a shelter for someone to sleep within. "So you've decided to take me up on my offer?"
There was a subtle change in Kabuto's voice. There was an eagerness that wasn't there just seconds ago. Sasuke nodded at the question but said nothing, his heart beating heavily within his own ears in the silence of the room. Kabuto's smile grew and his fingers twitched briefly before the older boy stood in his seat and walked into the kitchen. A cup was pulled from a cabinet and quickly filled with water, but Sasuke didn't miss the barrenness of the cabinet before it shut again. There looked to be nothing but a single piece of each type of dish one would store in a kitchen rather than a set of many. Another question mark in the "home" he sat within.
"I need to get stronger. You said that there was a way to speed up my progression and I want to do it. No, I need to do it." Sasuke pushed away any thoughts of Kbuto's strange home and let himself focus on the issue at hand. Fortunately, Kabuto didn't push back at all, holding up his hands in mock submission as he carried a glass of water that he filled from the faucet. The glass was set down on the table just in front of Sasuke, the medic standing a few feet in front of him with his arms crossed and a serious expression forced onto his face.
"If you're serious about this," Kabuto raised a hand to stop any interruptions, "Then take a drink of water and prepare yourself. This won't be pleasant." Sasuke listened to the advice of the older boy, reaching out a hand and grabbing the offered water to drink from. As Sasuke took a drink, he became more aware of his apprehension that sat in the back of his head. The deep gulps of water helped him push those feelings away, and when he set down the glass, Sasuke noticed Kabuto walking around his seat. They were swift steps, steps made with purpose as Kabuto positioned himself just behind Sasuke.
A hand found a place on each of the Uchiha's shoulders, unsuspectedly so, causing a sharp flinch in the young chunin. Fingers squeezed through the thick fabric of the flak jacket and his high-collared shirt underneath it, putting pressure on Sasuke's collar bone. Silence reigned through the apartment, only the deafening noise of pure quiet filtered into his ears.
"It's been a pleasure doing business with you, Uchiha. My master will be pleased by your choice here today." A cold chill ran down Sasuke's spine from the sudden change in tone alone. Gone was the kind voice of a boy that wished to help him, of the boy that offered a hand while Team 7 was in the Forest of Death, and in its place was the slimy voice of a beast that successfully ensnared something in its trap. Sasuke tried to push upward into a stand the second the voice touched his ears, but the hands on his shoulders were unbudging. "Ah, ah, you can't leave yet, Sasuke. We haven't even started."
The ever-changing voice of Kabuto took up a playful tone, like a caregiver playing with a child in a park while also serving to unsettle Sasuke to his bones. Before he could chance another escape attempt, Sasuke was suddenly shoved sharply so that his upper body was flat against the table. Something gently shoved back the collar of his shirt that jutted upward only to pierce him swiftly and sharply at the junction of his neck and the start of his right shoulder on his back. Calling it blinding pain would be an understatement that Sasuke wouldn't stand for. His shoulder burned like someone injected him with acid and it was running its course through his whole body. He never heard his screams, but they were undoubtedly there. He never heard the words of Kabuto that followed whatever torture he set him on, but his ears were discomforted as if that slimy bastard had his lips just above his ear to spout his venom. What Sasuke could comprehend, though, was the white blur that was tossed just in front of his view as his face rested on the table and his view pointed to the right where he entered this hell from.
The blur slid across the floor, and through his screams Sasuke noticed that it was nothing but a pale snake that wriggled over the wooden floorboards of the apartment, seemingly in a similar amount of pain. Suddenly, the small snake bursted into purple flames that ate through the pale scales to expose the tossing and turning skeleton of the reptile. The flames then turned to the white bone to leave naught but a pile of ash on the floor with scorch marks dancing around it. For whatever reason, Sasuke focused on that pile of ash as the pain racked through his body, the demise of the snake filled him with some sort of comfort.
"Maybe, after enough time has passed, I'll be free from this burning, too." He mused in his same spot. Despite the agonizing pain, he never moved from where he sat in the unknown amount of time he was exposed to whatever Kabuto injected him with. He didn't know if Kabuto was still there, he didn't know if anyone would come to him, and he really didn't even know if he was alive anymore. At that moment, when his voice stopped working and his brain found some solace in adjusting to the terrible pain that cursed him, Sasuke simply just was.
Right then, he could acknowledge how stupid this was. Sasuke realized how bratty he was being in his own progression and that taking some shady offer at something that might help him progress wasn't necessary by any means. He was the sole student of the Hokage, what did he have to complain about? At the end of the day, Itachi and his mind games were too much for him. They made him desperate for something he already had and now he was going to probably die because of it.
The light around him dimmed slowly, but the Uchiha couldn't tell if it was the day passing him by or if it was he himself that was fading. The pain seemed to have passed, or his nerves were fried from the torment, and his breathing got heavier. Soon, all that he noticed was his own heavy exhales that filled his mind as his eyes never pulled themselves from the pale snake's ashy remains. Before long, Sasuke was fully consumed by the darkness that crept up on him, fully eliminating the world around him.
Sasuke was honestly surprised when the darkness gave way, exposing him to the sights of the world again. However, he was quick to realize that it wasn't the sights of the true world, not today's world. It was no different than Itachi's mind game, and Sasuke already felt sick. He was once again standing at the entrance to the Uchiha clan's compound and already he could see the evidence of his brother's work. Granted, it was subtle as it was kept from being so readily seen from the outside world, but he could see the limp arm of a distant relative down the main road. Stains of blood that would be kept from most by the shadows that covered it were clear to him as he's seen these scenes so many times already. Sasuke was almost as disturbed by the memory as he was at how callous he was becoming to it. Emotions were still raw and intense, but they were habitual and regular at this point in his life.
For whatever reason, though, Sasuke had a freedom that he normally didn't in these visions of the past. Normally, he was merely a passenger for the night and Itachi was the conductor that showed him what he needed to see, but now he had full control of himself. Sasuke was content with staying at the entrance of the compound, however. If he was given the freedom to move, he could simply not move and thus enjoy the quiet night. Or, he would have had a voice not echoed throughout the air.
"Take a step boy. See what needs to be seen." The voice reverberated all through the night sky, emanating from somewhere up above. When Sasuke looked up to find its source, he was surprised to see the Moon that should've hung in the sky. On the true night of the Uchiha Massacre, the sky was illuminated by a full moon that acted like the Sun in its own right. In the Tsukuyomi, the Moon was blood red and shadowed by his brother's cursed eye. Now, though, in the Moon's place was a single, yellow eye that was slit down the center like a reptilian and gazing directly at the Uchiha's baffled face.
Sasuke remained unmoved for several moments, despite the voice's insistence. He was not familiar with the voice that spoke. It was smooth as silk, speaking with a certain fluidity that served to unsettle him more than anything, and underneath the initial tones, a very apparent danger hung within it. Vaguely, Sasuke thought of Kabuto's sudden tone change, but not even that could measure up to whomever spoke to him now.
Eventually, Sasuke did move from his compound's entrance and moved through the ravaged home of his clansmen. The landscape was no different than it ever was. Bodies lay where they were supposed to, the walls stained as they should be, and his feet followed a path similar to what he did that night. Slowly, he came up to the door of his own home, pausing as he prepared himself for the sight he always loathed to encounter. The voice coaxed him forward again, this time much closer than he was comfortable with as the sharp sounds of the words it spoke tickled the inside of his ear. The steps of his home's entrance were taken one at a time with heavy falls of his foot, the porch was slid across with feet as lead, and a hand gripped the sliding door ahead of him to open with one heaving tug.
Red, burning eyes met his own once again. The face of his brother, one that was younger than today's variation, looked at him stoically as the blade in his hand was raised slowly. Sasuke didn't yell, he just heaved and his nose blew out air with intensity, but he never let a sound escape his throat. When the blade halted, Sasuke knew that its next movement was into the kneeling form of his father, followed closely by his mother. He expected to hear the dull thuds of his parents' bodies hit their floor and for his brother to speak his vile to him once again, but none of that came to pass this time. Instead, a shadowed figure grew behind Itachi, one that went unnoticed and undiscovered. The shadow took the hulking form of a serpent, one with bright yellow eyes that matched this world's moon as it towered over his brother, and in a swift movement, Itachi was ensnared by this serpent. The shadows gave way to reveal pale scales that trailed up the serpent's body, occasionally jutting out aggressively like spines to add to the monstrosity of the large snake.
Without so much as a sound, the snake that held Itachi in its grasp opened its mouth and consumed his brother in his entirety. Within seconds, Sasuke's tormentor was nowhere to be seen, left digesting in the stomach of a massive reptile to leave his parents well and living in their kneeling poses within the home. Yellow eyes then turned to the younger Uchiha, making the boy gulp as their gazes met in stone silence. Nothing moved for many moments, no calls from above to give him instructions rang out, making Sasuke simply wait for what was to come next.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, the large serpent dissolved into the shadows, but in its place remained a man. A regular sized man. The man had straight, silky hair that extended to his mid-back, deathly pale skin, and bright yellow eyes that were surrounded with markings of purple that extended from his tear ducts. A cruel smile played at the man's lips as his arms crossed over his chest, standing proudly in his long tan shirt that was tied with a thick purple rope. Gray pants and a black long-sleeved undershirt blended in with the darkness behind him, making the man appear as smoke as he stood just in front of Sasuke.
A airy chuckle sounded out through the night, growing in intensity as the man in front of him fell into hysterical laughter. Sasuke noticed quickly that this man was the owner of the voice that echoed out from the Moon, just as his eyes shared the large light's face. In the body of his seven-year-old self, there was nothing Sasuke could do to remove the man from in front of him, and so he was forced to endure the cruel sounds of his jolly laughter.
"I finally have my prize! After so long, it is finally done!" The man exclaimed with pure and open glee. His eyes focused on Sasuke once again and approached with deadly grace. Steps were well measured, his body flowed perfectly along with them, and there was hardly a sound that sounded from the wooden boards below his feet. He stopped just in front of Sasuke, a smile stretching so far across his face that it threatened to split his head in half. "Finally, we are connected, young Sasuke Uchiha. Through this gift, I shall aid you in removing your brother. Follow me, come into my service, and I will gift you with anything you could ever want from this world."
Sounds of the man's voice flowed over his ears like warm honey, sweetening with every word that was spoken. Sasuke forgot about the pain he felt before he entered this world, he ignored the discomfort the man's voice originally gave him, and the threshold of his home that his parents kneeled in with their lives fully intact felt warm for the first time in six years. He couldn't even say what he would be agreeing to, but the offer was so generous…
How the hell could he say no?
It was a fucking disaster. How could so much go wrong all at once? What was it that he missed that allowed such a massive hole to form within the Leaf Village in a single night?
"That damned boy. Never had I expected some nothing medic-nin to be a long-time sleeper for Orochimaru of all people." Danzo thought to himself with the harshest of venom. Disgust was a physical being in Danzo's mind, be it directed outward or to himself. How could it not be? Kabuto Yakushi just blew every door of every hinge that he possibly could in one fell swoop.
The boy was found in some slum within the village and only given more than a passing glance because he held some semblance of chakra control as an untrained civilian. Nothing was known about him, all that anyone could find about him was that Kabuto was orphaned during some battle or another and he showed enough basic understanding of chakra that he was given a pass into the academy. The hopes of his entrance was that he could prove to be some diamond in the rough because of his affinity for chakra control so young, but he turned out to be nothing but a disappointment. The boy wasn't meant for any other shinobi arts outside of medical ninjutsu, showing abysmal marks in every other facet of what was expected of him within the Academy. Danzo didn't even give a passing glance to him for ROOT, despite orphans being a majority of his operatives, but perhaps he would've been able to sniff out the boy's ratty nature had he forced the issue. Had he pressed the boy's skillset, there was a chance Danzo could've prevented this catastrophe.
Instead, Danzo was forced to sequester himself within his office in ROOT to reconfigure every security rotation, every code word, and every hand sign. Despite the secrecy around his organization, Danzo wouldn't allow himself to underestimate Yakushi's proficiencies any longer and he would treat the boy as if he had the ability to dig into any secrets they were to have, as he advised the Hokage to do. Perhaps, if they were lucky, a swift change in protocols and wipe of everything that could physically be changed, there would be fewer holes exposed than there should be. Maybe they could jump ahead of any further catastrophe from a spy running free and clear from their clutches.
Naturally, there were patrols out looking for the escaped spy, both his operatives as well as Kakashi's Anbu were all notified of the situation at hand, but Danzo was not looking at his capture with high hopes. All signs pointed to the boy being a creature of Orochimaru and that only twisted the knife that was in the guts of every self-respecting shinobi within the village. One of the two most notorious criminals that began in their great village getting one over on them in such a fashion was an embarrassment that they would have to live with for some time, and that's before even seeing the full weight of consequences that came with the rat's digging.
There was still the issue of Sasuke Uchiha.
The boy was a question mark for a day and a half. Haruno was the first to start asking about the Uchiha's whereabouts after he never showed up for their daily meeting, but little was made of the situation. A young teenager disappearing for an evening wasn't something to call the forces for, and so they waited until the next day before they started worrying. Only when the Hokage called both he and the other two advisors to his office because Sasuke was a no-show, did they realize the issue at hand. It took no time at all to gather who the boy saw last and the dwelling of that boy, the receptionist at the hospital watched them walk out of the door together as well as reported his absence from the rest of his shift. When the Uchiha was discovered, slumped on a table and amassed with foul purple chakra, they all assumed the worst. The idea of the Leaf losing the last of the Sharingan holders was not a far-fetched one.
"But now it seems we've been hindered by an even worse possibility." he mused as his cane clacked against the wooden floor he limped across. The thought wasn't one of dramatics either. However it was done, however that snake pulled it off, Sasuke was tainted with a mark of Orochimaru's creation. Sasuke Uchiha was marked with a seal that showed the Snake Sannin's claim over the boy's life and it was their jobs to make sure that he didn't have a chance to claim his prize.
Three inky-black tomoe was all it took. The markings that looked like a cruel payment of homage to the Uchiha's fabled eyes that arranged themselves close together triangularly was all the proof that they needed to know it was Orochimaru's machinations that caused them such an issue. It was a creation that was made under their own watch while Orochimaru still wore the Leaf Spiral, and now it was being used to ensnare one of their most valuable assets. Though, at least for now, they could do their best to mitigate the effects of the seal that now sat on the Uchiha's neck, lest they wish to put themselves in an even worse position.
Danzo stopped outside the hospital room that the Uchiha inhabited, once again at the top floor of the hospital and away from any unwanted eyes. Kakashi was already within the room along with another as they looked upon the still sleeping Uchiha. The boy hadn't budged in the three days since they'd found him. The only indication that he was making any progress toward some type of recovery was the absence of the purple chakra that was once flowing from the mark like a bustling river. The elder didn't even bother knocking before he pushed himself inside the room, gaining the attention of the two aware occupants.
"Good, you're here. I trust that the necessary changes have been made." Kakashi stated, not bothering to make his words sound like a question. The situation was clearly too serious for even the aloof Kakashi Hatake to make some dry statement or comment. Instead of the notorious ninja that was fine with remaining a stagnant jounin within the Leaf, Hatake now held the iron gaze that was supposed to accompany a Kage, the mess they've found themselves in drawing out a proper leader out of him.
"Don't take me for a fool, Lord Hokage. Whatever was taken with Yakushi outside of our walls won't help him to slip past my operatives." Danzo replied with a stony voice, his eye matching Kakashi's own for a brief second to ensure that the man knew of his seriousness. He then turned to the other occupant with a similarly stern glare. "Do you have anything for us?"
Anko Mitarashi looked at him with an attitude more altered than Kakashi's own. Mitarashi was known for her unstable behaviors and eccentricities, but now she was the picture of disciplined. There were very, very few scenarios that Danzo would turn to the special jounin for, in fact, had you asked him just a few days ago Danzo would've said that there were no true ways that she could be called in for true support. But as a former student of Orochimaru and the first known holder of the same seal that sat on the Uchiha's neck, her expertise in the subject was more necessary than it could ever be. Brown eyes met his gaze as she stood stone silent for a few seconds, clearly trying to come up with a worthwhile answer.
"It's hard to say. Only one in ten people that get exposed to the Cursed Seal survive, I'd be more focused on making sure the kid survived first." Anko replied, turning her eyes back to the by as she took a deep inhale. It was clear as day that the girl was more than a little discomforted by the situation but Danzo cared little and less. Instead of replying to her initial words, he waited for her to continue with whatever it was she was withholding. "If he survives, the first thing we need to do is stop him from ever using the seal. No matter what."
She then looked at their Hokage, resolute in her words and sincere in her worry. Danzo was in one of those few moments that he was lost as to what someone was referring to. He took pride in being in the know on most things, especially things that many will never hear a whisper of in their lives, and yet Danzo truly had no information when it came to this Cursed Seal that Orochimaru developed. It was nothing like he'd seen in his own dive into the art and something far above his own capabilities, as much as he disliked to admit as much.
"What are we looking at? Should Sasuke end up using the seal?" Anko reflexively covered the left side of her neck with her hand, presumably the place of her own mark, at the Hokage's question. Her expression darkened further as she looked down at the Uchiha with something akin to pity.
"The mark will fill him with power, with that snake bastard's power, and make him want to use it more and more. The more he uses it, the more he becomes dependent on it. The more he uses it, the more pull Orochimaru will have over him. With how long he's wished for the Sharingan to be his, there's nothing more that Orochimaru would want than for this kid to be within his grasp." The weight of the special jounin's words weighed on the room as a whole as it felt for silence. Clearly this was the attempt to get the Uchiha within the Sannin's grasp, but how did they prevent him from gaining such a valuable asset? If the seal would work against their best interests, how did they remove the seal from being a factor?
Those were the immediate questions that entered Danzo's head, but he knew that they left nothing but dead ends. He already admitted that the seal was beyond his own capabilities, and without Jiraiya in the village, Danzo was the most proficient seal-user in the village. Granted, the Hokage had his own talents in the art, but he was no prodigy. Trying to counter Orochimaru's creation was a battle of the futile.
"Mitarashi, leave us. Thank you for your insight, but I have something to discuss with our Hokage." Danzo interrupted whatever it was the girl meant to say next, her exit being nothing more than a nod to him and a bow to their Kage. Danzo made his face contort in a way that showed the seriousness of his next words. He would not have his words be disregarded without a single thought to their reasoning.
"If you have something to say, say it. We have no time to dance around each other." Kakashi said, turning to Danzo with a matching level of sincerity. The elder leaned forward on his cane, causing a dull creak to come from the floor board he stood upon. His voice rasped out like acid flowing into the air, but not without its logic.
"You know as well as I, the importance of having an Uchiha within the Leaf is not something that can be overstated. I do not need to tell you how much that is true of the inverse. It cannot be said enough how important it is that we lose another Uchiha, this time to an enemy." Danzo paused, waiting for the nod of Kakashi's head to show his understanding. The Copy Ninja's eye narrowed at his words, but he nodded all the same. "Should this go the way it must not, we must consider the possibility of disposing of the possibility of Orochimaru gaining access to the Sharingan."
Danzo watches the realization of his words dawn on Kakashi's mostly covered face. He watches as fury and horror flow into the man's single eye in equal parts. He watches as the man tries to respond to the implication several times, and he watches him give up and leave Danzo standing within the room along with Sasuke Uchiha.
Surely, he could've made his move now and ended the crisis before it came to be, cutting the Uchiha down within his bed, but Danzo knew that it would be fruitless. He was no young soul, and there was a strong chance that the blank faces that looked down on him from the shadows could close in on him before his strike fell true.
They weren't enough to put an end to him, but they would be enough to uncover enough about him to make the abrupt assassination a foolish one. So, Danzo did as he did best and walked out of the room to wait for the opportune moment to make his move.
We've reached that point. Cursed Seal planted, Orochimaru's influence added and all of that. Surely, with the fact that Kabuto was in the story and the little ending portion I had in here several chapters ago were enough to not make this too shocking. This wasn't supposed to be some big reveal, it was going to happen eventually. It had to.
Next we get to go back to the man himself, along with Tsunade and their little situation.
