Hope you're all doing great.

Well, I knew it was bound to catch up to me someday. Writers burnout. I've been pushing really, really hard since last November, allowing myself to get carried away with my writing. I even had a routine, switching between FFs and "Ticker". I'm amazed it wasn't writer's block that caught up to me. And I didn't necessarily "break down" from the stress, more like, I just…stopped writing these past three weeks.

I might have to pull back and make updates for this story once a week, twice if my day-to-day becomes less congested.

Note: Yagura's full name is Yagura Karatachi.

Enough of my yammering. On with the story!

Enjoy…

CHAPTER 19

The elders were separated and placed into three rooms inside Danzo's residence.

Koharu was taken upstairs to the guest bathroom, Homura was kept alone in the parlour and faced into a corner of the room, and Danzo was left in the kitchen under the rapt stare of Rin Namikaze.

All of them had hoods obscuring their vision and their awareness.

Naruto gingerly sat down on the edge of the bathtub of the oddly unused bathroom, sitting in silence as Fugaku stood on Koharu's other side, glowering with a contemplative expression at the bound elder.

"You cannot have me tortured," Koharu suddenly said, swivelling her head to the left and tilting back in the general direction of the Uchiha clan head. "I was an officer for five years after my retirement as a shinobi. I've read the guidelines. I know how your system works." The woman rambled, and Fugaku shared a look with his nephew. Naruto looked back at Fugaku with the corner of his lips somewhat turned down. She was referring to their Uchiha sensibilities with police work. "No Yamanaka contribution. No torturing a Konoha citizen."

Naruto hummed inaudibly.

It wasn't much of a secret that Konoha's Police was an Uchiha organisation, created by the Second Hokage to appease the Uchiha clan after being passed over once again for the position of Hokage. The creation of the police was to provide the Uchihas with a deeper sense of responsibility and commitment to the village, even though Tobirama Senju's views on the Uchiha were openly distrustful.

Since the beginning of the Konoha's police force, non-Uchiha were admitted in—after strict vetting—but the majority of the officers are Uchiha by blood or by marriage.

"How do you think Minato would react when he finds out about this fiasco?"

Naruto scoffed and made to answer, but his uncle held up a finger for him to wait a moment—

There was a knock on the bathroom door, and Koharu flinched, turning as much as she could in the direction of the sound, shifting with her hands restrained to her back as Fugaku grunted in acknowledgement.

The door opened and a police officer in civilian clothes stood there, dipping her head to her clan head and presenting him with a plain, featureless white mask.

"We've found an underground passage," she said and Koharu stiffened. "Master Itachi and Lady Tsunade have gone down to investigate. The bodyguards have also been apprehended and subdued."

"Thank you, Io." Fugaku nodded and the Uchiha woman nodded back, excusing herself from the bathroom.

Naruto relaxed a little, hinting at a smile on his plain features, and Fugaku noiselessly walked across Koharu and leaned against the sink, crossing his arms and fixing a stare on the bound elder.

Both uncle and nephew didn't need to look at each other to know that the elder's resolve was unravelling.

They sat in silence for another minute, watching the old woman fidget on the covered toilet, shuffling her feet and blindly turning her head about in whichever direction she thought her captors were staying.

Until Fugaku said, "I'm not going to speak to Danzo or Homura." He waited a moment and observed Koharu jerk her head to the sound of his voice, facing him. "Danzo's a stubborn man with an outdated way of thinking. You're different. You know how important the stability of this village is, not only for the sake of the people but on a global scale too. Homura on the other hand will say and do anything to save his skin."

The man walked across the elder, this time not suppressing his footfalls, letting the nervous lady track his path to the bathroom door.

"We've known about ROOT for longer than we want to take credit for."

A jolt ran up Koharu's back and she sat upright, frozen.

The stoic clan head furrowed his brow incredulously. "Did you think Lord Third could keep its existence a secret for long?" especially since the Fourth Hokage wholeheartedly disagreed with the existence of ROOT. The information Kakashi had been supplying the Fourth Hokage since his induction and exit from ROOT was incredibly valuable. "But the Hokage has been patient. He wanted to see the extent of influence ROOT has, and do you know what we discovered?"

Koharu didn't say anything.

Naruto pursed his lips, enjoying the elder's discomfort.

"We found out ROOT and Hidden Sound use the same methods to condition their operatives. Developed by Danzo and perfected by Orochimaru. It's all on record—"

"I-I wish to make a deal," Koharu shakily interrupted Fugaku.

Fugaku suppressed a smirk. "What do you have in mind?"

"My cooperation in exchange for immunity from charges of my involvement. I also want you to personally ensure my protection and the protection of my family."

"That all depends on the depth of your involvement," Fugaku said with a shrug. "Give us something valuable. What do you think we don't already know?"

"This was all Danzo's idea. Honestly. He recruits from orphanages across the country and even across country borders, stealing children away and brainwashing them into mindless, obedient, emotionless husks."

"We already know that," Fugaku said with a frown. Kakashi had detailed the brainwashing process to them and, from Itachi's raids on Hidden Sound hideouts and the cooperation of the Sound Five, a way to deprogram the victims had been provided by the Yamanaka. The deprogramming was difficult but proven to work. "Try again."

"We…" the woman faltered, hunching forward and gritting her teeth. Fugaku shook his head when Naruto made to take the hood off her head. She sat up again and continued, "We…We are mobilising ROOT to overthrow the Hokage."

A heavy silence fell in the bathroom.

Naruto's face darkened and he stood up.

Koharu didn't hear him stand, continuing her confession, "The plan is—was—to quickly depose Minato with the support of the Mizukage, finish off Minato's children and silence any opposition, especially an Uchiha or Hyuuga uprising—"

"With poison and chemical hypnosis," Naruto finished for her.

The elder snapped her head in his direction, just realising that Naruto was present.

Koharu stammered. "Y-Yes. The Mizukage is underhanded and vile, even among shinobi. He doesn't care how it happens, as long as it happens."

Fugaku asked, "Am I to assume ROOT is Konoha's mole?"

Koharu screwed her lips shut.

Naruto's sharingan spiralled in his eyes, saying in a deceptively cool voice, "Answer the question."

"I…I won't say any more until I have a written agreement from the Hokage himself to absolve me for my involvement." The woman stuttered, turning away from where she last heard Naruto's voice and facing Fugaku, turning her head up. "I've been stockpiling insurance against Danzo in case he decided to go after me. Three decades worth. It's all yours if I have that agreement."

"Uncle." Naruto's sharingan turned backwards.

Fugaku shook his head. "No."

"Leaving aside them planning to poison my family," Naruto's tone darkened and he bared his teeth, looming over the shuddering elder, "this is still high treason."

Treason was a capital offence, punished with death by hanging.

Fugaku flicked his eyes to Naruto, signing to his nephew.

"She might not be executed, but she will still be punished."

Aside from Koharu's assets being seized and her benefits taken away from her, someone could "leak" her crimes to the general public. The elder would have to change her name and move out of Konoha, but the reputation and face will follow her till the day she died, imprinted on her very being like a brand. She would be made to wear a monitor, tracking her movement to make sure she didn't leave Fire country and that she didn't associate with any of Konoha's enemies.

Her "freedom" would rest on her non-involvement with enemies of the village.

There was a chance her family would feel the effects of their grandmother being a traitor, and that lowered Naruto's snarl.

Being branded as the family of a traitor could drive people to do horrendous things to that family. And Naruto didn't deceive himself by thinking that everyone in Konoha was a rational person.

The boy rubbed his face and exhaled into his hands, shutting his eyes and deactivating his sharingan.

After a while, Naruto signed back to Fugaku.

"I'll think of something else."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Rin idled herself by rummaging through Danzo's fridge.

Her brow furrowed incredulously, leaning back and saying to the bound man seated beside the sink, "You have an entire fridge and all you keep inside are," she brought out a saran wrap pork sandwich and a bottle of water, "these?" She smelled the pork sandwich, expecting to recoil from it being spoiled, but she hummed when she didn't perceive any unpleasant smell. She turned and nudged the fridge door shut, walking to the island counter. "Matter of fact, this whole house is empty." She hopped onto the counter and set the bottle of water down to her right, ripping the saran wrap off the sandwich. "You've been a busy old man."

She opened her mouth to bite off a chunk of the sandwich, until her brother reached around her, snagging the sandwich from her hold and tossing it over his shoulder.

She groaned. "Bro."

"Could be poisoned," he said stoically, looking firmly at the unspeaking man on the chair. Danzo's hands were also tied behind his back and a dark hood was thrown over his head, intended to disorient the old man.

The girl made to complain, but her words faltered at the scathing stare her brother levelled the silent man with. She sat there on the counter, her brow knitted as she peered into Naruto's face, pushing into his thoughts.

"Have you found Shisui's sharingan?"

This made Danzo's head jerk up and swivel to Naruto.

Rin tentatively replied, clapping her hands to remove the breadcrumbs, "No. We searched all of the storage seals on him and all we got were heart medication and a letter from a Wind country yakuza boss about missing "shipments"." She air quoted this since the shipment was a softer way of saying people, in Danzo's case. "No sharingan yet."

"I have said this before, repeatedly," Danzo said, shifting forward till he was sitting on the edge of his seat, "I did not attack that boy. I was here, in my house, preparing to sleep."

"Then submit yourself for a memory scan," Rin said to him with a raised eyebrow, sitting up and perching her hands on each side of the counter. "How is that so hard?"

"As an honoured citizen of this village—"

"You do not need to endure the indignity of a Yamanaka memory scan," Naruto parroted that man's reply, memorised from every time through the years he had been pressed to solidify his alibi. Danzo snapped his mouth shut, gritting his teeth and seething. "You're only afraid of what else they'll find in that head."

The man didn't deem the boy an answer.

"If finding Shisui's eye doesn't put you away—and we will find it," Naruto pressed, narrowing his purple stare to the old man, "then believe me when I say that we have plenty of other cases on you."

Rin smirked. "We're good at hiding things too." The Hokage, his two oldest children, Fugaku, Crow's Feet—Shisui—, Kakashi, and Yugao had been compiling years' worth of evidence against Danzo in anticipation of this day. It was only unfortunate that Kakashi and Yugao weren't participating in this raid because they were the Hokage's guards during the Kage Summit. Crow's Feet was busy in Kiri. Naruto and Rin exchange a look, looking back at Danzo. "You can't hide behind the Daimyo anymore. He'll be smart enough to back the hell away from this."

Danzo vibrated with suppressed rage, muttering, "There will be hell to pay, Namikaze."

When the Third Hokage had died—sacrificing himself in Minato's place to seal half of the Kyuubi into himself with the Reaper Death Seal—Minato busied himself from grieving the loss of his wife with one task, aside from rebuilding the village and reigniting the villager's trust in their shinobi; coming down on Danzo and Orochimaru for their clandestine activities.

Hiruzen Sarutobi, then retired from being Hokage for the past five years before his death, had been helping to divert and hide both Orochimaru and Danzo's activities, and the magnitude of this orchestration came to light after the Kyuubi attack. It was because of this revelation of his loose grasp on power that the Fourth Hokage centralised his government even more and retook what independent power and authority the Council had on their "jurisdiction". This only excluded clan matters.

This in turn provided no avenue for the Council, or anyone in the village, to hide anything criminal from him.

Over the next five years after the Kyuubi attack, there were widespread revelations of corruption in the Hidden leaf, and both the ANBU and the police cooperated in mercilessly cracking down on the criminal activities. The number and power of Konoha shinobi and police drastically increased. The influence and popularity of the Fourth Hokage among the villagers and allies tripled.

It was during these crackdowns and the peace that flowed outwards from Konoha to their allies that Minato Namikaze was popularly referred to as the Peacetime Hokage.

Orochimaru fled the village, swearing to kill the Namikaze Hokage and his family on his return, but Danzo remained.

The Daimyo came to his rescue.

Oddly, months before the Kyuubi attack, Danzo had become the Fire Daimyo's representative in Konoha. Arresting and putting Danzo on trial would pit the Hokage against the Fire Daimyo, and that political battle would only affect those caught in the crossfire.

So, Minato did the next best thing; investigating Danzo and compiling evidence, until the Daimyo had no option but to step away. Barricading Danzo's black-market supply of trafficked humans and intercepting communication between Orochimaru and Danzo was proving to be problematic, since Jiraiya—the expert in criminal underworld dealings—had vanished, and Crow's Feet was occupied in Kiri.

Everyone in the small team of investigators had to be patient.

"I'll be right back," Naruto muttered.

He patted his sister's back and flicked his thumb over his shoulder, she nodded and faced the old man as Naruto walked out of the kitchen and moved to the room underneath the stairs. A policeman there stood aside for him and helped him open the door.

On the other side of the door and leading into the basement was an illogically thick wall of darkness.

Naruto looked at the officer and the man half-frowned, sceptical. "I have no idea why the lights don't work." He jutted his head into the wall of darkness, leaning back and saying, "Feels like a genjutsu, I think. Nothing dangerous. Just a bit spooky, if you ask me."

The younger Uchiha hummed. "Do you have a torchlight?"

"I do," the officer answered, taking out a torchlight from one of his back pockets and handing it to Naruto.

Naruto collected the light with a grateful nod and flicked it on, pointing it into the dark basement. The light cut into the darkness and landed at the bottom of the stairs, illuminating the house's water heater. Idly swishing the light about the basement from the entrance, the teen asked the officer, "Have you heard from Tsunade and Itachi?"

"Their radios stopped working the moment they stepped down there," he pointed to the lit heater. The man shrugged. "Honestly? I think they're fine."

Naruto conceded to that.

Tsunade and Itachi weren't ordinary ninjas by any stretch of the imagination.

Either way, Naruto was going in after them to see what other skeletons Danzo had been hiding.

"The entrance is to the right. You can't miss it," the officer supplied, tucking his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans.

"Thanks," Naruto murmured and carefully trudged into the basement, stepping down the stairs as his clanmate watched from the door, leaving the basement door open for his benefit.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and, as he was told, he turned right and flicked his light on the wall.

The policeman was right; he wouldn't have been able to miss this.

It was a wide entryway roughly shaped into a door, carved out from the brick wall and winding downwards. Naruto ran the light of the torch along the edges of the hole in the wall, slowly nearing it and setting flashing the light down to the hardened-clay staircase leading down.

The boy looked back to the still-open basement entrance, scrunching up his face in distaste at the genjutsu blanketing the basement and the subterranean door; it wasn't dangerous, just off-putting and somewhat disorientating.

Naruto activated his sharingan and peered back into the hole in the wall, and the darkness didn't clear.

The boy hummed thoughtfully and deactivated his doujutsu, conserving his chakra. He put his trust in his natural senses.

Taking a preparatory breath, Naruto walked into the hole in the wall, diving deeper into the genjutsu.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

He kept his left hand on the wall of the tunnel as his right held the torchlight, flashing light down the spiralling staircase.

His ears perked at the distant sound of rushing wind and his nose perceived the smell of damp clay. Five minutes into his descent, his feet squelched on the wet clay stairs he had previously smelt, and he flicked the torchlight up and frowned when he didn't see any leakage from Danzo's pipes. He pointed the light to the left and right, then down to the wet clay as he balanced on top using his chakra.

He put that out of his mind and hastened his steps, anchoring himself to the staircase by keeping his left hand on the wall.

Whatever genjutsu Danzo used was powerful enough to negate his sharingan, and that meant that since he couldn't use his doujutsu to keep himself centred, he would have to physically remind himself where and when he was, thus the hand against the wall.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and saw that the ground was flooded with water.

Naruto's pace quickened, nearly jogging down the pitch-black corridor, running through an open door without hesitation and speeding up his steps into a jog, then speeding into a sprint.

His feet pitter-pattered on the wet floor, never once skidding or slipping on the clay ground. His eyes stayed forward, following the straight path his light shone down, passing another door and skirting to the left, kicking off the wall and maintaining his sharp pace, till he reached a final door at the end of the corridor. The light from the door shone blindingly, and he squinted his eyes, flicking off his light and shading his eyes with the back of his hand.

The sound of rushing air increased and Naruto's expression scrunched up, tearing faster and faster toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Red mist poured from his body as he ripped the earth, heating the ground with each firm step and hardening the wet clay as he charged. His body gradually shifted into a red cloud, pointed at the tip and warping at dizzying speeds to the light, always keeping a wispy grasp on the wall to his left.

Naruto's face twisted harder and he pushed harder against the genjutsu, flooding his extremities with chakra and flushing out the external chakra threatening to invade his body, until he burst through the door and tucked into a brisk roll, shifting his body back to normal.

He breathed out a relieved breath and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, Tsunade stood a short distance in front of him with her arms crossed, an eyebrow quirked up and her lips twisted to suppress a laugh.

"Shut it." He grunted, wandering his eyes around him. He dreaded hearing what it looked like he was doing from her perspective as he pushed to escape the genjutsu. "I don't want to hear it."

She raised her hands in defeat, zipping her lips shut.

He and the lady stood in a vacant hall with a low ceiling. More open doors and tunnels led outwards. Naruto approached Tsunade, tucking his torchlight into his back pocket and rubbing the fingers of his left hand, cleaning the dried clay off them.

"Where's Itachi?" Naruto asked, and on cue, the Uchiha exited one of the open doors behind Tsunade, at Naruto's front.

A long train of bleary-eyed, weeping children stumbled out after him, holding hands in a single file so as not to get lost. Naruto counted forty-two—thirty preteens and ten teenagers, till another Itachi followed at the back of the line, leaving the door open. The children winced at the light, cringing away from it and huddling together behind the two Itachi clones when they approached the two other ninjas in the hall.

From another door to their right, Tsunade trooped out with her own single file of children, carrying three toddlers in her arms. These were much younger, looking to be barely six years old. Twenty-seven in total. They too grimaced at the light and took shuddering steps after the tall blonde woman.

They were pale, wearing simple clothes—white shirts and white shorts with no shoes—and Naruto easily identified some of the children as not being native to Fire country.

From another door to Naruto's right, another train poured out, led by a Tsunade clone. This one was of teenagers—the youngest looked thirteen and the oldest was seventeen—and they wore black clothing—black shirts and black pants with dark shinobi sandals. They trooped out in a neat line with their hands on each other's shoulders, their heads tilted down and their expressions devoid of emotion.

They didn't so much as flinch at the light.

The wide hall began to fill up and Naruto's expression fell, staring at the scared children and how painfully silent the room was, bustling wordlessly behind their rescuers and doing their best to muffle their crying.

One child in particular caught Naruto's eye; a twelve-year-old boy carrying a five-year-old boy, bearing the markings of an Inuzuka clan member.

An abrupt sob caught Naruto's attention and he saw a white-clothed boy, no older than six, stagger to a black-clothed girl. The girl broke out into tears and knelt, weeping freely as the boy jumped into her arms, sobbing into the girl's chest.

Similar reunions erupted around the hall, with some of the white-clothed children racing to some of the black-clothed seniors, clasping them for dear life and crying without restraint.

Itachi—the real one—managed to squeeze through the crowd, with a few younger children still gripping the bottom corner of his shirt, stubbornly sticking to the seventeen-year-old Uchiha. Their watery eyes looked about them, and Naruto saw how crestfallen they were at not finding who they were looking for.

Naruto's grim expression was mirrored by Itachi's, who frowned with suppressed anger. He didn't move to disengage from the children following him, going as far as allowing one of the children to grip his left hand.

Itachi didn't speak, exchanging looks with both Tsunade and Naruto.

A humourless scoff brought Naruto's eyes back to Tsunade, and the woman shook her head, saying, "Danzo's fucked."

The Red Demon couldn't agree more.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Naruto found a route that led into the Forest of Death, free from the genjutsu and relatively short. He guided the crowd of children and young adults above ground.

He and Tsunade summoned more clones to protect the large crowd from the forest's nocturnal animals, moving them to Konoha.

A handful of ROOT operatives managed to evade capture, but the surprising nature of Tsunade and Itachi's invasion of their hidden base didn't give them enough time to destroy all of Danzo's incriminating records.

Some of the police that could be spared were gathering everything together and piling them into storage seals. They could arrange whatever they had gotten later. The hideout had been primed to self-destruct via dozens of explosive tags tattooed to the walls, but that was only if Danzo had anticipated the raid of his home; his chakra had been sealed and his bodyguards were restrained before he could give the command. The haste in collecting and storing the documents was in case the escaped ROOT agents returned since the officers didn't want to test their strength against people that managed to escape Itachi Uchiha.

The fate of the elders was sealed.

Danzo, Homura and Koharu were taken into police custody.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

At the same time

Somewhere in Grass country

Yagura's first memory was being clutched in his mother's arms, fleeing from Konoha ninjas.

Flashback

One by one, the Karatachi clan members fell as they raced in Grass country from Fire country's border.

Tobirama Senju led the charge, brandishing his lightning sword and striking down whoever he crossed in a blaze of speed. No one could match the First Hokage's successor, and anyone that tried died reeling in agony.

Yagura's mother panted, gripping her child close and speeding on barefoot across the Grass country plains, never once daring to look behind her and biting her lips to keep her ragged screams muffled.

It was all a rush of colour and sound, blurring together as Yagura cried into his mother's chest.

Flashback End

Yagura's eyes glazed over as he emptily looked over the warehouse full of caskets, standing upright and teeming with chakra inside. One warehouse of five across the continent.

"—gura. Lord Yagura."

The man grunted, blinking his eyes at the tears that pushed against his resolve. He didn't turn to face Chojuro, and the swordsman dipped his head in a bow as he proceeded.

"We have two hundred usable samples in this warehouse and they're responding positively."

"Is Kabuto cooperating?"

"Yes, sir." Chojuro nodded, clasping his hands together. "On our way from Fire country last night, he led us to Orochimaru's cache and retrieved three hundred more samples for us." Chojuro shrugged, giving the Mizukage a lopsided expression of exasperated doubt. "He claims to be invested in our cause because Orochimaru was invested in our cause."

It was Orochimaru that had provided Yagura with the secrets of the forbidden jutsu. Yagura and his people had been setting up warehouses across the continent since the Kyuubi attacked Konoha twelve years ago.

While Yagura wanted world peace through the destruction of Konoha and the conquest of other nations, Orochimaru wanted the Namikaze clan to be wiped out of existence, and Yagura honestly wasn't against that.

Kabuto's purpose in this was to supply them with more samples since it wasn't a question if Orochimaru had not been so forthcoming on his part of the plan. The snake sage was right to suspect the Mizukage would come after him, sooner or later. If Danzo was any smarter, he would know that the Mizukage didn't truly intend to replace the Hokage with anyone else other than, in every sense of the word, a puppet.

"What about Orochimaru?" Yagura asked, watching stoically as Kabuto bustled from casket to casket, marking down names on a clipboard and peering inside each box, pursing his lips and busily nodding his to whoever looked back at him from inside.

The tag on the casket read, Hiruzen Sarutobi.

Yagura spoke again when he didn't get a reply, "Has Zetsu found him?"

Chojuro teetered and Yagura narrowed his eyes at the boy's annoying habit of always hesitating to provide him with information.

Was the hypnosis coming undone?

"Zetsu found Orochimaru underneath Konoha's prison," Chojuro supplied, wincing and giving the Mizukage three black-and-white photos. "Zetsu…says that Orochimaru is a lost cause."

All three photos displayed a filthy, weakly giggling creature, standing upright due to being strapped onto a table.

Orochimaru's legs were being eaten by rats, his clothes barely hung from his bony, spindly body and his black hair was matted, reaching his navel as it hung over his face. He looked to have soiled himself and had taken to eating bits of his mouth to sustain himself.

"A doctor's report says that Naruto severed a nerve connecting Orochimaru's spinal cord," Chojuro said as he pointed to the nape of his neck, frowning. He lowered his hand. "And, as you can see, Orochimaru has lost his mind. Even if we somehow freed him, which is impossible at this moment, he wouldn't be coherent enough to be worth anything."

Yagura scoffed and gave the photos back to Chojuro.

"To think Minato and his son could be so ruthless." The Mizukage crossed his arms, admitting, "I'm impressed." He shrugged casually, his eyebrows lowering when Kabuto turned and looked up at him with his clipboard clasped in his hands, and a grim expression marring his face. "Alert Mei and tell her that we will proceed to Ircon country by sunrise."

Authors note

Chapter 4 is where Naruto snapped Orochimaru's spine.

Thoughts on this chapter?

I'll see you when I see you :)

Foy.