Author's Notes:
Hey guys and gals, I hope you are all enjoying this. Sorry for the awfully late update. I'm going to try and get chapters out a lot faster than this, and if you ever get tired of waiting feel free to PM me and hassle me. That'll help a lot... probably.
A couple of things about this story. One: I've always thought for an elite who is undoubtedly paranoid, Danzo never took enough precautions, so expect his organization to be stupid secure, and for him to be stupid paranoid, and everything he does to be stupid complicated.
In addition, I've never bought the fact that Root could operate without semi-normal people. It would be really easy to identify members of Root otherwise, just ask them about their mother or father (don't have them, they act sad, if they do, they act happy/warm/angry), and if they don't have an emotional reaction or don't understand they are in Root! Easy peasy. So there will be people like Rin, whose training turns on and off depending on certain parameters.
This is not going to be fully canon, still not sure to what extent though. Also, this story is about Lee and the people around him. Gai will definitely be in it, but Naruto will mostly just be off doing stuff. They might interact, and they might even fight, but this story is, first and foremost, about Lee and pain and all of that. This is also going to be a very mature story, with all sorts of fucked up fuckery. I'll try to give warnings and everything (same if there is any sex scenes), so you can skip if possible, but anything like that will be important and will impact the story, so you might want to at least try and read it.
Thanks for the few reviews I've already gotten, and I hope I elicit more, even if all you have to say is "Suck on this, faggot". I treasure every review. Thanks.
Chapter 2: Where Kicking Gets You
'Mission accomplished. No pursuers, *click*' And with that Ri's Root training switched off, letting her stop her intense inspection of the ninja's chest, had to make sure he wasn't breathing, who had almost caught her. He was an absolute mess, the chakra that had been holding his body together had been snuffed out when she had driven her kunai into his throat, nearly severing his head from the force of her attack. She hadn't wanted any other surprises, surprises killed ninjas, and she had already been surprised twice today.
The effects of her attack and the explosion had almost turned the man into mincemeat, and she was glad that this had been the first time that someone she was fighting had decided to overload on Soldier Pills. The damage he had incurred and overcome had been terrifying, reminding her of lectures from Danzo-sama about what it was like when high level ninja fought, those at and beyond Jounin skill.
It wasn't something that she wanted to encounter again. As her thoughts went over the battle, replaying it in her mind so that she could learn and dissect the strategies involved, her hands finished checking the pockets and body of the man and started to clean her bloody kunai. 'A clean weapon is a sharp weapon' Her training said with the feeling of a smile. The man had nothing of importance on him, which made sense, this clearly wasn't the type of mission you walk away from.
Ri kept staring at the dead ninja's body, not wanting to glance to her left where she knew the dead and broken body of the child she had used lay. She didn't really feel bad per say, most of her emotions had been beaten/coerced/tortured/wiped from her over the course of years. Of course, the obvious by product of that being that those heinous actions taken by her superiors to disabuse her of emotions no longer bothered her, it was a nice little vicious circle now that she thought of it.
But regardless, it still didn't sit pleasantly with her, the idea that she had sacrificed the small child for her own escape. Danzo-sama always lectured the Root forces on the importance of protecting Konoha; that was their job. And killing kids who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time seemed like a bad way of going about that. Still, Root members did not balk at anything.
Rock Lee was barely conscious, and he knew that his body was screaming at him to lay down, to stop, to go to sleep. But he needed to know what had happened. He had seen the juggernaut of a man, seen the knife that he was wielding coming straight for his chest, but he had kicked! He had hit the man's wrist, coming from below, with the ball of his foot, not that had really stopped the man, instead it had just put his fist off center. And then the most intense pain he had ever experienced had hit him, tearing through his left shoulder like a tsunami, or an earthquake, or something else that was unstoppable. He had blacked out then, only to awaken moments? Minutes? Hours? later to the sky.
His shoulder pulsed with the beat of his heart and his left arm and right leg, the one he had kicked with, both felt warm, but everything else was cold. He was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be that cold. Well, nothing he could do about it right now, it seemed like he couldn't even lift his arms, although he did manage to get his right arm and hand to twitch a bit, and he could have sworn his left foot's toes wiggled. So that was good, he guessed.
He was slowly getting control over his body again, and with some consternation, noticed that he had been crying. Lee very rarely cried, but lifting his head a little and getting a good look at his left shoulder, he figured that if that gory wound and mound of flesh that made up his shoulder hadn't managed to kill him he could allow himself to cry, maybe for a couple of hours. He closed his eyes. He had heard of people getting really badly hurt before, in fact, he had seen some of his fellow orphans, as well as others who had gotten their asses kicked, whether from other kids or just from the world itself, and he had seen how terrified they were. He wasn't though, he was just kinda floating along, slightly making note of his body, his condition, and the very nice breeze that seemed to be blowing through the field.
After a while, Lee stopped just floating in his head, having realized that he wasn't going to just die, nor was he going to go to sleep as the pounding in his shoulder was just getting worse. So, instead, he decided to get a look at his right leg, he still couldn't feel it, not like his left leg at least. Opening his eyes and lifting his head a little he took a good, long look at his right leg only to regret it. There was bone jutting out, and it was a mess. It didn't really look like his leg. He figured he should be having a greater reaction to this than just, 'Gee, that doesn't look like MY leg.' But that was what he thought, so he just rolled with it, although he was a bit disturbed that it would be a lot harder to kick anything for a while.
Looking up once again, Rock Lee managed to get his head almost vertical, only to have his breath caught in his throat, there she was. The girl Ninja who had been so graceful! She was staring down at the man he had kicked, and he seemed to be dead. 'I must have kicked him harder than I thought.'
Lee let his eyes travel up from the man laying on the ground to the girl in front of him. She was wearing the common black sandals that he had seen on so many other Ninja, but instead of the regular black pants of the ones he had seen jumping from roof to roof she had camouflage patterned pants. They were tied down with black bandages, keeping the baggy material closer to her legs, even with all the pockets. And man, did she have pockets, they were all over the pants of all sizes and shapes, but with no bulge to indicate that there was anything in them. She also had a belt holding it all up, very thick, almost like some sort of armor. It was also black and had, instead of a belt, a thickly coiled rope going through the loops, it looked like it had been looped around several times, and it was impossible to tell how much rope she on her.
Tucked into the belt was an olive green shirt that matched the camouflage on the pants, with a heavy jacket thrown over it, unzipped and black. The jacket also had a plethora of pockets. It seemed to be a combat jacket, looking stiff and tough, with it being a little short, so that even just standing there you could see her hips and the t-shirt underneath it.
The most startling aspect about her though, besides the never ending pockets, was her head, specifically her eyes and hair. She had a fairly long face, not beautiful, but with a kind of rugged prettiness, like a pageant contestant who rather fight for the tiara rather than pose. Her hair however, seemed to be clearly on the rugged side, no beauty there. It was spiky and messy and utterly out of control, even with her sweat pulling it down it stuck out every which way, and it was a black, no wait, Lee saw it was actually a deep, dark blue, the sunlight glinting off of parts of it revealing the blue tinge to it. And then Lee saw her eyes, they were a bright green, hard but containing life, if a very tough and rugged kind of life.
'Oh right. Isn't she the one that kicked me?' Lee mused, his eyes still stuck on her. He remember how he had been turning to look at her, his first real close up view of a Ninja in action, but then she had been right by him, her leg already outstretched, and her eyes, they had flashed with regret. He was almost sure of it. Regret for what though? For kicking him? Well, he had survived, or at least he had sort of survived. And he didn't have any plans to die; he wasn't even a Ninja yet!
Well if he wasn't going to die, then he probably needed to stop the wounds, the hurting, his head was getting fuzzy again. Before he could black out again, Lee wheezed out a couple of words, "Hey, -" but before he could get any farther, the girl had suddenly appeared near him. Instead of finishing his previous sentence all Lee could do was inhale sharply and whisper, "Pretty."
Rin was staring down at what could be called a child, if you wanted to use the term loosely. The poor kid was just a fuckin' mess, but that wasn't what made her eyes widen. It was the single word that she caught from, surprisingly, his still breathing throat. "Pretty" that single word shocked her nearly as much as the man who, just a few moments ago, had nearly torn her in half.
In an instant, Rin was kneeling down, her Root medic training taking over on pure instinct as her mind still reeled a bit from the tenacity of the boy as well as the innocent compliment. Root members weren't complimented on their physical appearance, unless you included some of their trainers obsessions with them having the most athletic bodies possible.
As Rin struggled a bit with the idea that this boy was alive and thought her pretty (wasn't she covered in- she had kicked him!), she was also making a rigorous appraisal of the wounds the boy had suffered. So diverted was her attention, that she never noticed the presence of her master suddenly appearing. It wasn't until the enigmatic old man quietly said her name that she leapt to her feet and saluted.
Danzo did not often come out to meet his agents in the middle of a field. He rarely showed his face in any place where a connection between him and the many emotionless Root members could be made. But this mission was of particular importance, Rin was late, Danzo was known for walking along this path, and this wasn't Danzo. Instead it was a Kage Bunshin (a clone that wasn't as strong but a perfect copy of a person) that was Henged (a jutsu that made you appear to look like someone else) into Danzo.
Regular ninja would just see Danzo talking to someone along his normal path. Those who were much more cautious and probably more powerful, would see someone who was Henged into Danzo. Powerful ninja or even very cautious ones would never be fooled by a Henge, but that didn't mean that they would know who was under it. That was the true power, not to deceive on the surface, but underneath that. And who would imagine that he was Henged as himself? That took a special amount of paranoia and planning that Danzo had cultivated through years of combat in the shadows.
"Rin." Danzo quietly announced his presence to the veteran Root Member. Immediately she saluted, and then followed up with a series of complicated hand signs, which were not only furiously fast but also had the very odd effect of producing a spicy scent, somehow.
Another precaution against those who might try to infiltrate their organization. It was conceivable that somehow someone could copy the seals, through the use of a Sharingan, Genjutsu, or some other specialized method. But to also catch the scent would be difficult, and Danzo's response was even more complicated. You could tell a lot about the security clearance of someone in Danzo's organization by just how many human sense's were involved when greeting a fellow Root Member.
Getting the correct response back from Danzo-sama, Rin immediately launched into her report. "Mission was a success. Delay was due to being pursued, due to tripping of alarm, due to information not being accurate. All pursuers are dead. One made his way past the Village's walls." With that being said, Rin handed the scroll that she unsealed, in a small puff of smoke, from another seal.
Danzo nodded his head, taking the seal and pocketing it away somewhere before turning his attention away from the dead man in the clearing and focusing upon the heavily wounded boy near Rin's feet. "And who is that?"
Mission parameters being satisfied, Rin was able to give a much more thorough explanation regarding the boy, his involvement, and her best guess as to why he was there in the first place. "I had thought he was dead, but when I came over to make sure, he suddenly looked at me and said that I was... pretty."
Danzo made note of the slight hesitation in Rin's voice, his eyes now boring into the skull of the dying child. Apparently the boy had succumbed to unconsciousness after uttering his compliment. "He is a citizen of Konoha. Letting him die will only bring more attention to this area. Take him back to the base for him to receive medical attention."
Rin immediately went about her task, body and heart happy to comply with the order from her master. Cradling the boy in her arms, she leapt away to find a secure entrance to one of the many Root Bases scattered throughout the Village.
Behind her, Danzo made a small motion with one of his hands and another Root Member appeared. "Unleash the jutsu you use the most in this area." The Root Member complied. "Absorb any foreign chakra here." The Root Member complied. "Use two of them upon the dead man, over there." The Root Member complied. "Stand still."
Danzo quickly summoned enough chakra to make one of his fingers glow from the concentrated energy and started to slash the Root Member who simply stood there. Next he ripped parts of the Root Member's clothing before finally slashing him a couple of times with a kunai. "Stay here and wait for ANBU to come. Answer all of their questions. You killed this man when he suddenly came upon you training. You suffered from his attacks. There was no child here. Rin was never here. I was never here." The Root Member complied.
Danzo turned to leave, only to pause for a second and then turn around. "You must show emotions" he said to the Root Member. The agent simply stood silently, not understanding. Danzo sighed, this was the problem with his training, while it created nearly perfect tools it also stripped the people of their humanity. Tools didn't need humanity.
Danzo walked up to the silently standing agent, "You shall act as if you are in pain." The Root Member did nothing, "as if you are a normal ninja" Danzo added on. The Root Member smiled, poorly. "No." The smile disappeared. "That is a smile, you need to look as if you are in pain. Grimace." The Root Member let out a hallow and chilling laugh, then noticing the ire in Danzo-sama's eye pouted, while shaking, and sticking his tongue out.
It seemed that the agent was simply cycling through facial expressions, hoping to get it right. "Stop." The Root Member went back to his normal, blank expression. Danzo stepped closer, and then put his hands on the agent's face. Pulling up on his lips, Danzo corrected, "This is a smile." Pulling the lips down to a straight line, "This is neutral." Pulling the lips down, "This is a frown." Use the frown to denote pain, the neutral is for all other times, except when your wounds are finished treating, then go with the smile. The agent nodded.
"Good, now demonstrate please. I have just appeared and begin to ask you what is going on." The man smiled widely, his lips shaking as the muscles strained to adopt the biggest smile that the agent's face could make. "No. You need to turn that smile upside down." The agent frowned furiously, the deep creases in his face denoting either extreme discomfort, furious outrage, or insanity.
"Close enough. Report back once all suspicion has been cleared." And with that Danzo disappeared suddenly, leaving the Root Member to frown in a horrifying manner in the destroyed field.
Rin was a flurry of movement. She didn't think she had ever moved this fast before, even when she had been chased by that man. Turns out, for her at least, guilt was a greater motivator than self-preservation. Really she shouldn't have been that surprised. Her training had gotten rid of a lot of normal human traits.
She looked down at the bleeding mass of flesh and rags that resembled a small boy. She was still stunned that he was alive, and that he had stayed conscious. That was no small feat of concentration, especially considering how much pain he must have been in.
And upon her inspection of him, which had been interrupted by Danzo-sama, she had noticed that he had a lot of bruises and cuts from something else. He had been dirty, seemed malnourished, and he didn't smell very good either. The boy had obviously not had the most protected of lives.
Rin looked up, heading towards not the nearest Root base, but the second nearest. Root Members were never allowed to go to the nearest base unless in the most desperate of times. Have enough members, incidents, and ninja around and those who specialized in tracking could start to figure things out by simple triangulation or by interviewing witnesses until they could figure out the area in which the person they were tracking disappeared.
Normally Rin would be heading to a base that was much farther away. She wasn't injured, and she had completed her mission successfully, that meant she could take her time and find a base that was very far away. So that if someone was trying to track her she would have time to figure it out, and if they did interview witnesses it would appear to be a random pattern of where people were going.
Instead Rin felt that it was worth some chewing out to use a nearer base. She wasn't about to let her training and mistakes earlier cost this poor boy his life. It was her job, and the rest of Root, to protect the citizens of Konoha, not get them killed. It was loopholes like that that let her bend the rules governing base access.
Looking down again, Rin was, once again, shocked to see the boy opening his eyes. They weren't focused on anything at first, simply roaming about in his sockets, but then his whole body tensed, and Rin realized that he was now feeling the excruiating pain that he must be in. She tried to make some kind of comforting sounds, but panicked, so she fell back on training, starting to calmly list all of his injuries that she had noted. It didn't seem to help much.
Lee was moving, moving quickly. As he opened his eyes he could barely make out a face, green eyes, and the blur of the sky. He started to smile, thinking that it might be the pretty lady who was above him, but then his skin started to crawl, and then it started to burn, and then he was trying to scream but he couldn't.
Breathing hurt so much, everything hurt so much, and he would have thought that the pain he was in couldn't get worse, but every time they landed his leg and arm and ribs and head jolted a bit, and the spike of agony that was drilled through those parts of his body was simply unbelievable.
He thought he heard something coming from the lady Ninja's mouth, but he couldn't be sure. He tried to focus on it, looking at first at her mouth, to see if he could lip read what she was saying. But then he noticed that he was crying again, the tears streaking down his cheeks.
Rin didn't know what to do. This gravely injured boy seemed to be feeling everything now, his shock must have worn off and without the pain being numbed by a brain overwhelmed he was hurting so much that Rin's own body was recoiling from the torture written out on the boy's face.
Her listing of his injuries didn't seem to be helping him at all. And while she was trying to land softly now, noticing the sharp intake of breath and tensing of the boy's muscle whenever she landed, it was much more important to get him to a doctor than to slow down so he wouldn't be as hurt.
Rin, against her will, was taken back to her own training. She, like everyone who didn't break, had only barely made it through. There was no passing with flying colors through that. You crawled out of it or you didn't. She shuddered a bit, remembering, only to cringe as she realized the movement had elicited a heart wrenching groan from her ward.
Rin had almost not made it through, but near the end, when she was already more or less numb and the end was in sight, one of the trainers had given them a piece of advice, "The pain you are going through, the pain you went through. It is necessary. It gives you strength, it tempers you, it makes you into what is needed." That, for some reason, had helped her. Maybe it would help this poor boy.
"Uh, I know you are in a lot of pain right now, but it will get better! And, uh, I mean, this is probably the worst thing you'll ever experience... probably. So there is that. Also, maybe after dealing with this other things won't seem so bad, yeah. Who knows, maybe this will make you stronger?"
Rin wasn't really very eloquent with her words. Most of her communication was terse sentences, filled with facts, not comfort. On top of that, she wasn't really in a stable state of mind to be talking to a barely conscious kid. She was far too focused on getting to the 2nd nearest base for some very needed medical attention for said kid.
Lee couldn't even believe what was happening to him. His mind was just an endless screaming mess that howled and howled. His nerves were dying, but that just seemed to make them want to live more, transmitting the pain in a near constant rate, with occasional spikes when jerked or moved.
His arm, which had at first just itched, had moved from uncomfortable, to painful, to a molten, liquid pain that clung to him like a scent. He wanted nothing more to hack off the offending limb with any sharp object available, even if it was his teeth. The same went for his leg.
Through it all he was vaguely aware of the fact that he was being carried. He was livid about that, the movement through the air was fanning the flames of his agony, the jarring stops and starts of landing and taking off making everything so much worse. He hated the person carrying him, he thought at once he might have known who it was, but it was all lost to the seething torrent of fire and bone and feeling that had coalesced around him.
Then he had heard some words, that were delivered by a cool voice. Almost seeming a balm to the wounds that had torn him asunder. He only caught a couple of words on the edge of his hearing, his ears, blissfully, mostly unaffected by his other injuries. He heard, "Pain... better... experience... after dealing... make... stronger."
Those words to him were a connection. He was in so much pain, and there didn't seem to be any escape, but those words were outside of that. And he clung to them like a man drowning. One word in particular became especially important to him, "after". That meant that this could end, and he wanted it to end, by any means necessary. Death seemed fairly welcoming, especially since up to this point his life hadn't been particularly amazing. His best friend was a Rock, for Kami's sake. Lee would have let out a snort if he had been even remotely close to a proper state of mind to appreciate the humor.
Regardless, the words had done a significant amount of help. His consciousness, while still screaming, was also finally aware of other things. It was the girl Ninja who held him right now. And she was looking down at him, with some sort of expression. His mind was running pretty much on autopilot, but he, at least, knew that this person wouldn't be causing him any more harm, and she probably had some sort of reason for dragging him through the hell of movement.
So Lee did what most children do when faced with a pain that they cannot understand nor stop. He grabbed onto a person he felt was safe, who had spoken words to him in a time when all he knew was a searing pain. He grabbed at her clothes, tried to bury his head deeper into her arms, and tried to use her a shield to the misery and torment as he was finally overcome by the pain.
Lee woke up in the dark, not feeling anything. At first it was a kind relief. At first he didn't understand why the darkness and numbness felt so good, but slowly, in a kind of snowball of traumatic experience, he began to remember his training, the girl, the man, the kick, and the pain.
Lee was almost knocked out again, and he began to cry once more, the tears, amazingly, no longer burning trails down his cheek. Instead, the wetness stopped at his jawline, where, apparently, there was some thick bandages.
Surprised by the bandage on his face, he quickly became aware of the bandages that seemed to wrap his entire body. His left arm and right leg were totally numb. Everything else seemed to be working, if tightly wrapped. He could barely even move. With these realizations, in particular the one where he was no longer in horrifying pain, Lee stopped crying and tried to look around.
Opening his eyes wide, Lee realized that he was pretty much in utter darkness. He seemed to be on some sort of bed, but that was about all her could tell. Concentrating on trying to feel what was around him and staring intently every which way he could, Lee was able to determine... nothing. It was very dark, and while he was very appreciative of the lack of pain, Lee was also hoping someone would turn on a light.
Before Lee could muse any more about his situation though, someone granted his request, and the room was suddenly bathed in a soft, muted light that still managed to seem like a solar flare to his now sensitive eyes. He blinked rapidly trying to make out who had entered the room and turned on the light.
A person was standing in what appeared to be a doorway, although Lee couldn't see a door. The man seemed to be wearing some kind of mask, but Lee's rapidly blinking eyes still couldn't see exactly what was up.
Suddenly the man was by his side, calmly and cooly removing something from his arm that elicited a small gasp from Lee. It felt like something from inside of his right arm had been detached and it was a particularly eerie feeling, although it didn't hurt much. Again, without really seeing the man move, Lee was being picked up, experiencing some powerful vertigo from being lifted up.
Lee was rapidly moved out of the room into a dreary hallway, the walls an uniform grey that stretched as far as Lee could see. He didn't see anymore doors, but he was having a hard time concentrating, and weirdly enough, even though he was being carried his wounds still didn't hurt. Lee was a bit surprised by that, but it didn't seem that important. Not much seemed very important right now.
Moving rapidly through the hallway, Lee soon lost all idea of where he was or how much time was passing. He felt a bit funny, but in a good way, and he became rather entranced by the passing lights in the ceiling. His head was cradled in the man's arms, and they never wavered or seemed to tire, although Lee couldn't say if they had been moving for hours or minutes.
Eventually, after some amount of time, Lee was carried into a room with a two chairs, each facing each other. Other than that, there didn't seem to be anything else, although the edges of the room were still clouded in darkness, as far as he could tell at least.
When the man placed Lee down on the chair Lee finally got a look at the man's mask, which seemed to be some kind of animal. Maybe a kitty or a doggy, Lee really had no idea, as his head lolled around a bit.
Lee sat in the chair for a while, not really sure how long he was there, but knowing for sure, that he should be there. After all, why else would the doggy or kitty man have brought him there? He did wonder where the pretty Ninja girl was. He needed to thank her for being so pretty. Lee was starting to think that his thoughts were a little extra strange today. Was it today?
Further musing about the current time and day were interrupted by a man sitting down in the chair opposite of Lee. He was dressed like the other guy, but his mask had some different markings, and Lee wasn't sure if it was an animal or not. Further musings of all the animals that Lee had ever seen and comparing it with the markings was interrupted by the man speaking.
"Lee, I am going to need you to focus on me and what I am saying. Can you do that?"
Lee nodded. "Can you speak, Lee?" Lee nodded. "Lee, could you please say something?"
"Something."
"Okay Lee. That's great. Could you please tell me about the two people you saw fighting the other day?"
"Um, they were fighting?"
"Right, yes they were fighting Lee. Good job. Do you remember anything else?"
"One of them was pretty, and the other was way... less pretty. Uh, the pretty girl Ninja kicked me, and then I kicked the man. It was like, like a chain of kicks? A kickchain, is that a thing? Are you an octopus?"
"Great, that was very descriptive Lee. And no, I am not an octopus. Could you please tell me about everything that you remember about the 'Pretty Girl Ninja'?"
"She was pretty. She kicks pretty hard. Her kick was pretty, pretty hard. Lot's of pretty. Ummmm, she carried me? She was really fast, and, and it hurt a lot. It hurt so much..." Lee's eyes started watering again, thinking about it.
"You don't hurt right now though, right Lee? You feel okay?"
"Yep! Yeah, yeah, I do! I feel weird and funny but good, like really good. Like pretty good." Lee giggled at using the word "pretty" again.
"Good. Do you remember anything else?"
Lee got a little quiet, "The man was scary. He hurt me, I think? I kicked him hard though. I kicked him so hard that he was sleeping. I kick really hard!" Lee smiled at that last part.
"Great, that's wonderful Lee." Our friend over there will see you back to your room. You just rest up for us, and we'll have you back to kicking things soon enough."
Lee simply nodded at that, the talk and travel having made him surprisingly sleepy. When the man picked him up again, Lee let his head rest against the man's bicep, imagining it was the Pretty Ninja Lady and falling asleep.
The man sitting in the chair took off his mask to reveal the left side of his face to be bandaged, his greying hair poking out of the bandages in an unruly manner. His clothes were ragged and torn, dirty in some places, but his fashion sense was overwhelmed by the danger he exuded. Tossing the mask to someone in the shadows, Danzo let his body stoop, discarding the bright and friendly presence he had worn moments before for his interview with Lee.
"We have a new addition to Root. Get him ready."