Shimura Danzou languished in prison. Half-starved, his movements restrained, left almost entirely disrobed with only the bare minimum needed to preserve his dignity. It did little enough to keep him warm. He grew so cold in his old age.
He was certain he was being kept in a cell somewhere halfway up the Red Line, on the side that was commonly known as the 'New World.' His location didn't seem to matter much; his captors clearly had no intention of letting him leave. Before incarcerating him here they had made the interesting decision to break his right arm and his left leg, the better to keep him from fighting and running. They had even gone so far as to place a steel cage around the eye that carried his stolen Sharingan. The oafs out here on this ocean may not understand the eye's true capabilities, but they knew it had caused them enough trouble. He had, in essence, had half of his appendages taken from him, and the loss was far greater than the simple sum of their parts.
They hadn't even needed to have bothered with his eye. After dueling Sasuke, the Yatagarasu Mangekyou was dead in its socket. He had kept it only because Orochimaru had strange ways to use the eyes, even the dead ones.
Though, Orochimaru was now likely deceased. Either way, the eye would be little help to him.
He sat, still, thinking, endlessly thinking, cataloging his assets, enemies, and plans. The guards came by frequently, but were hindered by a lack of manpower. A rift grew between the World Government remnants that had captured him and the Marines that might normally have aided them. Individually, the guards were inferior specimens, though a group of them would be far more than enough to deal with a chained, unbalanced cripple.
He had, perhaps, one asset left to him. The Kotoamatsukami, though almost completely dim, had one use left to it, and it had been stored safe in the mask of flesh upon his shoulder. The guards had not discovered it, as he had maintained a Henge that disguised its presence. The problem was that his right eye was sealed, and his left eye was that of a mere human. To replace it with a Sharingan would require tearing his own eye from its socket with his own fingers, and then he would be blind for the rest of his days.
Not ideal, in other words. Oh, what a pitiful state this was.
His seventh day in captivity passed without incident before his true jailers finally arrived, and the facility burst into action. After a moment of thought, he decided to continue the ruse he had been maintaining this entire time. He kept closed his human eye. Ever since he had been captured he had played the part of a blind man.
As his jailers approached, they argued and bickered as if completely unconcerned with what the captives might hear and glean.
"My Lord," said a woman with an oddly nasal voice. "Please, let us move him to a more suitable location for your safety. We can interrogate him there."
The voice that responded was deep, feigning detachment, yet Danzou read it as disguising an undercurrent of strong emotion. "We will not. We have broken his body, have we not? We have sealed his eye, have we not? The cage is seastone, is it not? He will not be escaping to harm me, and if he does attempt it then dealing with that attempt is your job."
"My Lord, we do not know if those are all the tricks available to him. He may yet have ways of-"
"Silence," said the voice, well used to being obeyed. "I will wait no longer."
The entourage approached his cage, half a dozen strong to his ears. One of them moved with a heavy, inhuman gait. They stopped before him, his body broken, bruised, and mostly stripped. The Lord watched him quietly for perhaps ten seconds. No one spoke in that time.
"Look at me," ordered the Noble.
Danzou opened his mouth, his voice hoarse from disuse. "Regretfully, I-"
Something thin and whiplike slipped through the bars of his cell, cracking him across the face. The woman's voice spoke, oddly muddled, though still decipherable. "You will not speak in my Lord's presence, peasant!"
The nobleman's robes rustled, and Danzou could imagine him holding up a hand to urge restraint, though he seemed unconcerned with her violence. "No, allow him to answer. I wish to hear what defenses he offers."
Danzou brought his head back, neck sore from the whiplash of the strike. "Regretfully, the use of my special eye has drawn strength from my other one. It may be a week, or longer, before I can see properly, if ever again."
The lie slid smoothly from his lips. The nobleman gave his bodyguard a curt order, and the woman did her strange trick again. Something wet struck him in the eye, sticking to his eyelid like glue and then forcibly lifting it open as he staggered back on his haunches. Eye opened, he caught enough to see that the nobleman's female bodyguard had taken the form of an anteater, and it was her long tongue that had pried his eyelid open.
Danzou had trained in the past to feign unconsciousness during interrogations, and he applied the same techniques here. His eye became listless and unseeing. The woman's tongue sprung away, zipping into her mouth to be stored like a coiled spring.
"It is not one of the special eyes," confirmed the woman.
"Hmm," said the nobleman. "Well, no matter. To business, then. I am Saint Roswald, and I have the pleasure of being one of the few nobility to survive your ill-considered strike at the heart of the world. Well done, that. Now, I suppose you're wondering why I have kept you alive."
"I am the only surviving member of Akatsuki," Danzou surmised, giving the only reasonable answer. "You wish to interrogate me for information on those that sent me."
Smoothly, Danzou slipped the poison into his words. You could imply quite a bit with a simple phrase. It was deeply unlikely that the World Government would be able to easily piece together exactly which part of the sealed kingdoms he was from, which meant he could redirect their wrath upon just about any place he cared to name. He was considering… Sand.
Saint Roswald shook his head. "Oh, no. Far from it. You see, the only reason you are still alive is because I wished to be part of your torture myself, and I have been very busy over the last few days. In truth, I don't want any information from you at all."
The man stepped forward, grasping the bars of the cell and letting loose the rage he had been concealing. "You pissants killed my son, destroyed my home, and stole my very future from me! You've unsettled the order of the world, and now it's all tumbling down around you! I will personally flay the skin from your body and pay to keep you alive long enough to properly enjoy it, worm, and THEN, when I am DONE…"
Saint Roswald smiled, the slow grin growing wider until it showed far too many teeth, though Danzou could not fully appreciate it while blind. He sounded altogether too pleased with himself.
"Then, and only then, I will pull every string I have available to me and ensure that the Navy surrounds your pathetic island-chain and turns the entire thing to blasted plains and fields of glass. A Buster Call… yes, I think that would do nicely. No chance for your slippery sort to evade our notice. There will be nothing left alive at all. Not even your statues shall remain." The man leaned back. "…Perhaps knowing what awaits your countrymen upon your demise will give you the will to survive as long as you can?"
Danzou gave no outward sign of displeasure, though he was fully aware of the dire situation that had been presented to him.
"I shall let you consider that on your own for a time. It would hardly do to proceed before the fear has set in. Perhaps I shall return within the hour, perhaps not. Good day to you."
Then they departed. All of them, leaving him alone with his thoughts. And think he did, though not, perhaps, in the ways they had anticipated. Despite his current predicament, Danzou's mind whirled through paths that would turn this situation on its head. He had possibilities open to him. Yet still he could not help himself from contemplating the hatred creeping into his heart.
He ground his teeth together. This disaster was entirely the fault of those ridiculous children. Because they had meddled, the Divine Fruit had gone to no one, and thus there was no one besides him left to prevent this unmitigated disaster in the making. Personally, he had faith in the strength of the shinobi forces that could be arrayed against this so-called 'World Government,' but there was no doubt that the damage done would be catastrophic, and that was only if they saw the invasion coming in the first place.
If Konoha had not yet already transitioned to a war footing in the face of this new, strange ocean then they were fools, and yet… wasn't the foolishness of Konoha the entire reason he was out here in the first place? The fact was, his failures here might well doom the Country of Fire to destruction. It would not do. It could not be allowed.
He had but one option available to him and it was distasteful in the extreme… But, if you knew you only had one path available to you then there was no point in dithering about. Danzou sighed, a rare display of weakness from one such as him.
Oh, the things he did for Konoha.
He performed the grim and gruesome deed quickly and without screaming, because the choice was either swift silence or tortuous death. Finally, breathing heavily, he accomplished his task just in time for the return of the guard. They verified he was still there, noted his condition, then left.
Danzou continued to focus his hearing upon the outside world, eyes closed, blind. The Celestial Dragon returned minutes later.
"I realize that I said you'd have an hour, but you know, I've never truly been good at waiting for… what is this? You are bleeding. What has happened to your eye?"
Danzou considered this for a moment, answering just before the man became impatient.
"As I said, it could take some time before my eye recovers enough to see. A bit of bleeding is a very bad sign. Perhaps the recent light damaged it."
The nobleman scoffed. "Well, I hardly think you'll be receiving medical attention. That rather defeats the point of this."
Danzou slowly, hesitantly, opened his mouth, injecting just the right amount of hope into the words. "Perhaps… an arrangement can be made, in the end? My body has already been broken to prevent my escape, and I understand now that my death approaches, but this old man has knowledge he might offer in return for a bit of comfort. Surely, my Lord is as magnanimous in victory as he is wise in his decisions?"
The Celestial Dragon paused, radiating disbelief. Then he chuckled, the noise strange and stilted. "You must realize ingratiating yourself with me is impossible… but I won't stop a desperate man from pleading. Having someone sing my praises as they fall to the knife… hmhmhm… How quaint. Keep it up and we'll see how I feel."
With that, Danzou raised his head to face the Celestial Dragon directly. Eyelids still shut, he summoned his chakra, guiding it into his bleeding eye. In his left socket, now smeared with blood, the Kotoamatsukami flared and guttered to life, hidden to all. Unhindered by the thin obstruction of skin, it focused on Saint Roswald and spent the very last bit of its essence connecting to his mind. The fire in the eye dimmed and flickered out, and then Danzou was left permanently blind, his birth-eyes never to be recovered.
The Sharingan's power spent forever, he responded.
"Of course, my Lord," he said. "I will gladly do as you ask. After all…"
[I am now, and always have been, your most trusted friend.]