Prompt Eight: So, have Ya been Swimmin' Lately?
"Hiruzen, tomorrow you will be the Third Hokage of the Hidden Leaf. Take care of everyone."
The six students of Tobirama Senju were solemn at this announcement, each having their own internal reflections on it. In many universes, Hiruzen's bitter rival Danzo Shimura was exceedingly jealous at Hiruzen figuratively going on ahead of him and gaining the title of Hokage. Yet it must be said that this is not the case in every universe. Obviously.
No, in a very rare few universes, years of camaraderie and friendship prevent Danzo from feeling anything negative at all about this development. As hard as it may seem to believe, Danzo acknowledges his faults in some universes. In this one, his strong-as-ever friendship with good ol' Hiruzen will have a unique effect on Danzo's personality and future actions.
But boy… historians will wonder how the hell Danzo turned out like this.
"Hiruzen! Good to see you, old friend. Have you been swimming lately?" Danzo gave a wide, toothy grin and clapped his hands a few times jollily. Even though it had only been a week, Danzo acted like it had been months or years since he'd seen his Hokage last. The First Shinobi World was still in full swing, and needless to say Hiruzen had been utterly swamped in duties ranging from paperwork to being out on the frontlines.
Being Hokage was not for the weary. Already Hiruzen was seeing gray hairs.
"No, I'm afraid there hasn't been time, Danzo." Hiruzen sighed breezily and rolled his eyes at the bizarre question. "Listen, I need a new Anbu Commander because the last one died on a suicide mission, and I think I can trust you to lead our elite."
The fact that the 'mission' had been to moon the Tsuchikage purely because the Commander had been an annoying, patronizing little shit was irrelevant.
"Now Hiruzen…" Danzo trailed off, and suddenly a tense, heavy silence was between the two. All Danzo did was stare at Hiruzen with a smirk on his face. He stared, and stared, and stared. After a while Hiruzen thought that time had frozen or that his friend had become paralyzed somehow.
The room temperature even rose 5.7 degrees.
"… I've changed my mind, you don't need to…"
"Hiruzen, please! Do I look like a selfish man?" Danzo clapped his hands once and went back to grinning toothily. "Heck, if somebody asked me they needed to borrow five hundred ryo, I'd give it to them, no problem. Sure! I'll take over as Anbu Commander."
Hiruzen released a breath of relief that he didn't know he'd been holding.
"Oh thank Kami, that's a relief. I didn't know who else to turn to and…"
"No trouble, my friend, no trouble at all!" Danzo laughed jollily and clapped. Loudly. "You just let me handle everything."
Typically, when someone is drafted into the Anbu, you can only serve a maximum of ten years, and even then that's very rare because if you're determined to be psychologically troubled, you're booted out into the regular shinobi forces again. Not-so-little-anymore Kakashi Hatake learned that the hard way. There are exceptions to the rule, of course – such as during a war, and a certain capable Anbu Commander is needed. Said Commander would probably last through the war, and then take care of the cool down period between wars.
Jolly old Danzo Shimura had been Anbu Commander for decades by the time Kakashi was drafted by Minato. Despite some eccentricities that the Yamanaka Clan Head was unable to explain, Danzo always came up clean when he was mentally evaluated every few years or so. The process was totally randomized so as to capture Danzo unawares, but he always. came. up. clean.
The strangest part? Danzo hadn't taken a section of the Anbu and made an extraneous group bent on taking the Hidden Leaf's turned-away missions. The ones that needed to be taken but could not be attributed to the Hidden Leaf. Danzo actually stayed within the perimeters of the law and kept all Anbu, the elitest of the elite, shipshape. He was the Right Hand of the Kami of Shinobi. The second most powerful man in the village, though perhaps third most powerful now that Minato had risen to infamy with the other Great Nations.
In any case, the Anbu program was a well-oiled machine with Danzo at the helm. Though there were some… eccentricities as well.
"Is that a pipe organ?" Kakashi asked his Squad Captain as the team was running through a training exercise. He was new, so he was not intimately familiar with the program.
And indeed, a pipe organ could be heard playing. From the opposite end of the underground Anbu HQ. Kakashi's Squad Captain had chosen this end of the base for training for that very reason.
"Yeah. If you royally screw up, Danzo straps you down and makes you listen to this big ass organ that he purchased a long time ago. He makes you listen to it nonstop for three hours. We, uh… We're pretty motivated not to screw up."
Beaver had this ringing in his ears for two weeks straight after being punished like that. Falcon, Kakashi's Squad Captain, was pretty determined to avoid the same fate at all costs, even if he had to sometimes throw his minions under the bus. To err is human, to be caught doing so is to become deaf, as the saying goes.
Kakashi blinked owlishly and recoiled just a bit.
"But… if he is playing the organ that loudly, doesn't his hearing go, too?"
A contemplative silence was the reply initially, but moments later Falcon shrugged neutrally.
"Eh. It's not like the Commander listens to us these days anyway. Earplugs do reduce its effect on his ears, though."
… Kakashi resolved right then and there to be perfect in every way.
Sasuke looked at the old man before him in confusion. When the Hokage said that someone was interested in adopting him, Sasuke had thought it would be somebody on the young side. Somebody young and… relatively normal.
This old bandaged-up guy had been smirking and staring at him for five minutes straight. And he swore the temperature in the room had risen 5.7 degrees since he came in here. Aside from the occasional blink on the old man's part, Sasuke was under the impression time had frozen and he'd be stuck here forever.
And then before he knew it, the tense silence was over.
"So! Sasuke, my boy! Your brother massacred your Clan. Such a tragedy, rest assured I have my Anbu hunting him down as we speak. He won't get far."
"You'll… You'll keep my Big Brother alive, won't you? I don't believe that he massacred the Clan. When I saw him leaving the Compound, he looked so scared. But not of me or what he'd done… He looked scared of something else, and I wanna know what!"
"Sorry, Sasuke, but there's a longstanding protocol to follow with Missing-Nin like your brother, with serial killers like him. Why, if we don't put him down, who knows what village secrets he'll divulge later on?"
Like being blackmailed by the Anbu Commander to massacre the Uchiha Clan. Negotiations with the Hokage and the Council had actually gone extremely well, and the coup d'état seriously looked like it would be called off. But if the Uchiha were gone, the Anbu could be the police force of the village, which meant that Danzo held just that little bit more power over everyone that wasn't Hiruzen, Homura, or Koharu.
Hey, Danzo might have been a changed man, but in his old age, power looked more and more appealing by the day. There were just some lines he wouldn't personally cross… like murdering and supplanting the Hokage. Danzo would never do that to his old friend.
"No! Itachi didn't do it! Or… Or if he did, he was forced to do it! I'll track him down and find out the truth someday!"
"Now, Sasuke, let's not make promises we can't keep, hmm? Be a good boy and come with me so we can sign your adoption papers."
"I'm not letting a creepy pedophile adopt me! Go way!"
Oh dear. Sasuke was being rather difficult, wasn't he? Well, no matter. He could simply make the boy agree to adoption with Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan, but… Hiruzen might grow suspicious. Best to just back off for the time being and wait for the opportune moment to swoop in and mold the boy to his liking.
Sasuke-kun would come around, and he would see that he was not a pedophile, thank you very much.
"Teams are as follows… Team Seven: Hinata Hyuga, Naruto Uzumaki, and Ino Yamanaka. Team Eight: Shino Aburame, Kiba Inuzuka, and Sai. Team Nine is still in rotation. Team Ten: Choji Akimichi, Sakura Haruno, and Shikamaru Nara."
There were two distinct moans after the teams were read aloud, and Sakura raised her hand afterward.
"Sensei! What about Sasuke-kun? He graduated, too!"
Iruka smiled wryly.
"Yes, well… A venerable elder has shown interest in teaching Sasuke personally, and Lord Hokage allowed it. Sasuke will be an apprentice to Danzo Shimura."
"NOOOOOOO!" Sasuke groaned and slammed his head on his desk. That man just wouldn't leave well enough alone!
The fact that Danzo might have used Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan to influence the Hokage to rearrange the teams is completely irrelevant. And we don't talk about the fact that the last child Danzo had shown a remote interest in had gone insane and abandoned the village to get away from his adoptive father. Orochimaru might not have a keen interest in learning every Jutsu, but he did have the ambition of staying the hell away from the Hidden Leaf Village and especially Danzo Shimura.
And to top things off… Danzo was still the Anbu Commander.
Author's Note: For those of you who don't recognize what I've done… Go look up Damon Gant – Google, Youtube, whatever. I'd personally recommend Youtubing him and seeing what you get. XD This Anti-Quirk hit me yesterday, and I just had to write it. Danzo with Damon Gant's character quirks is dreadfully amusing, and would you believe that it also gives the poor man a break, after all the crack-bashing I've done on him. XD