"Is it worth considering?"
"The convulsion of nature, or the erasure of nature? I can't imagine doing either has any merit for society currently."
"You're both missing the overall point, I can assure you. Is it really 'convulsion' or 'erasure' if the subjects will do the same to us?"
A damning silence pervades the room following this one point, yet none of the three occupants really seems to be contemplating the point created. And then a mouth opens again.
"Can it be done? Can we really do this?"
No hesitation for a response, "They're willing to do it to us. It's either our blood or their own, and I'm not keen on painting my floors with my own."
"Now Danzo," a rather solemn voice breaks in, "We can't go this route. We are not this low, and especially not low enough to use our own children to fight our battles."
"HIRUZEN!" an aged effeminate voice yells, "They are going to use their children to kill us!"
Again, the solemn voice of reason speaks, "Koharu… we can't do it this way. We have the insight to change what can and will happen. Why do you wish to make young Itachi suffer?"
A different voice pops up in Koharu's defense, "Hiruzen. The time for negotiations is done and over. It is within our best interest now, as it always was at the start, to erase this new problem. Just as we did to the Senju, we'll do to the Uchiha."
"YOU UTTER FOOL!" One of the voices shouts, another older man, but with a grittier, less benign inflection, "Sarutobi knew none of that information! It was between us and only us!"
There's a prolonged pause in the chatter of the four, until the grey walls begin to slowly split apart. Lines of seemingly age peel the years of paint away, leaving paths of rapid decay. Slow tremors shake the room as each occupant shudders under the deluge of pressure and power. The aged man, a relic of time, is burning under the processing of information. His friends, his family… his brothers and sisters in arms… and their sudden lack of life slowly making sense to his mind. All dead, and now the reason making itself known.
"What did you say? I think you'll want to say it again."
The air seems to be shaking, like a rough summer's heat on the gravel roads outside. The woman between the three men seems to be taking the intent worse than the others, but for differing reasons. It's an influx of knowledge she couldn't fathom. Like the Senju? The Senju were planning a coup? The Senju were killed off, leaving only Tsunade? Is that why she left the village? Were Dan and Nawaki killed off by the leaf village for some ulterior motive? The same with Hashirama and Mito?
She suddenly popped up, the question ripping through her mouth under the agony of her friend's intent to kill the other two. "Danzo," she shakily says, "Do you mean to say…" she pauses again. Her breaths are slow and she can barely sit up, "You mean to say the Senju were… were killed?"
And now the releasing pressure two-folds and she chokes on air, her lungs crushed. Almost like her organs are failing, blood ejects itself from her constricting throat and splatters on the table before her, yet no one bats an eye. The other male, her ex teammate, is ensnared by the hellscape bleeding from Hiruzen's darkening eyes. And now the burning feeling in her body becomes a cold, ruinous blizzard. The blood sitting on the table freezes to the wood even as the wood tears itself apart to escape.
The ground around the man spreads ice throughout the room. A cold chill permeates the air, biting at eyes around the room.
"Danzo. Homura." Hiruzen mutters, yet the both of them hear it completely. Homura is stricken in place while Danzo's one eye narrows in anticipation. "Repeat what you said, Danzo. And you best explain what you meant."
A small burst of flame flows from Hiruzen's aged lips. It floats around the room as if it's looking for some prey to cook and consume, before dissipating.
Homura gulps in fear like he just swallowed his tongue. Well, the assumption wouldn't be entirely wrong.
"Why would I even bother responding to you, Hiruzen. It's in the past, so you best leave it there," Danzo snaps back.
Even now, the bandaged man doesn't bat an eye at the ever increasing pressure. Even with one arm tied to his chest, even with bandages covering half of his head, the man cares none about any impending disaster. He just sits there, one charcoal eye narrowed upon the walking God of Shinobi. His slow, methodical breaths follow the rhythm of the slow footfalls nearing his sitting form.
A white cloaked arm slowly descends on the man in the chair before grabbing his throat and pulling up, yet the man in the grasp doesn't bat his eye. Almost like the entire situation is a joke.
"Come now, Hiruzen," the man mumbles, "This is beneath you and I. Petty squabbles like this, you're much too old to consider any fight or threat."
There's a small light, a fragmented moment in time, but it's quickly driven away.
"You may have been right before, Danzo," Hiruzen says threateningly, "But you committed one. Small. Error."
Before Danzo can even reply, he's thrown down onto his chair. A small smirk plays on the man's lips as if he was just proven right, but it's quickly torn away. That is, it never became a smirk. His eye darts around the room, looking for the source of what put him in a paralysis state. Then he finally looks up at the man before him and he realizes then.
Not a paralysis jutsu. He can feel a small trail of blood run freely down his neck.
'Poison,' he thinks, 'But what type of poison could get through me?'
The answer softly tears through the room.
"Sacrifices must be made, Danzo. I needed but one look in your eyes to find all the information I needed. A poison is what you used on Hashirama and Mito. A poison you used to kill the Senju in the village whilst Dan, Nawaki, and Tsunade were away. A chakra devouring poison."
Danzo can do nothing but struggle internally. Even with countermeasures, they can't stem the flow of the poison. The only poison in existence that negates anything currently known trying to stop it. The one true disease.
'How did you find this, Hiruzen!' Danzo seethed internally.
"It's now only a matter of time before you die, Danzo. And how I found this disease? You had it on your person, of which I took it from you before grabbing you. I see you had alternatives planned if we decided not to kill the Uchiha tonight."
Even with his struggling, Danzo watched helplessly as the world spun on its axis. Eyes blurring through life and the solitude of death, blood now dripping from his eyes, under his finger and toenails, out of his mouth, and down his nose, then gushing from his ears. An illness beyond all reason, born from what could have been an alien. As Danzo's body deteriorates under the watchful gaze of Hiruzen, the world shifts.
Kagami's lone eye under the bandages unfurls the reality killing him, and he's back in the office, breaths coming normally and his three friends staring back at his one panicked eye.
"Genjutsu, Hiruzen? How cruel to use my own mind against me. I imagine you started it after you questioned how we could kill the Uchiha clan."
Hiruzen's brown eyes shift to the direction of Koharu on his right before shifting back to Danzo. His eye widens before a sneer erupts on his face.
"Koharu," Danzo says, "I thought we were in agreement on what to do."
It's a rhetorical question, and she knows it. Nothing good would come from answering, yet the other choice is just as bad.
Instead, she says, "We never agreed, Danzo. We just didn't disagree."
Danzo, in return, only scoffs airily. "As if there's much of a difference. We both know, including Homura, all three of us know the Uchiha are a problem we should terminate."
"Danzo," the fourth member finally says, "Let it go. Let's allow Hiruzen the chance to talk about why we shouldn't kill off a clan."
Said man clears his throat to gather all eyes his way, though Danzo does his best to intimidate the man.
"We shouldn't give any Uchiha a reason to think negatively of us…"
"Yes, Hiruzen," Danzo interrupts, "As if they don't already want us dead, let alone think negatively of us!"
Hiruzen just glares at his old friend before responding. "As I was saying," he says through gritted teeth, "We shouldn't give them more reason to think negatively of us. We still have available methods of delaying, and also two methods of stopping it altogether."
"And what!?" Danzo yells. "Trust another bloody Uchiha?! They're all liars, thieves, and killers!"
"So they ninja like us?" Homura butts in.
"At least, in our cae, we don't want to murder every child in our village." Koharu pops in.
"Hiruzen, think of Biwako and her team. The Uchiha that abandoned her and let her die when the Kyubi arrived."
"DANZO!" Homura screams, "That's more than enough out of you! Especially broaching that topic."
Yet Hiruzen is calm through the storm of emotions in his mind.
"Danzo," he mutters. "Why even bring her up unless you plan on saying something else? My wife was a medic. And I also recall you pulling the Uchiha from the fight to save only the civilians."
Danzo scoffs again, this time in sheer disbelief. His lone eye tears into Hiruzen with little issue. Slowly overlaying genjutsu upon genjutsu on the man, yet none seem to be sticking. All the while, Hizuen's hands are driving gauges into the wood of his desk in anticipation of another scuffle.
Kagami's eye begins to coalesce under Danzo's bandage, three tomoe spinning and morphing into a mangekyo. A black steel figure eight design covered by white spins softy, churning out illusions faster than the mind can think. Each one drowning Hiruzen's mind in visceral images of his wife Biwako dying over and over again to just one Kyubi claw. From her body being bifurcated and her organs painting the grass beneath, to her head being flicked off and plastering itself to the chest of another medic.
Tears well up in Hiruzen's shuddering eyes to each image even as he tries dispelling them, but each one dispelled becomes five more shoved into his mind. More Biwakos dying, one to the Kyubi stepping on her and squishing her soul away, one of a small blast of air peeling the skin from her bones, and another a small burst of fire melting her cries of agony into a puddle of human nothingness.
And the last, the Kyubi shoving a claw through her stomach, tearing her spin apart and rupturing her diaphragm. She can't even mutter a small 'Hiruzen' because no breath can be found. She just topples over when the nail is released, forever embedding her death into the soil of Konoha's forest.
As the illusions dissipate, Hiruzen's heart burns through every beat it has, his fury collapsing the very building all four are in. And even as they all try to escape, his collapsing heart becomes a dying star as his chakra releases. Imploding blue covers the room, turning into a blackhole. Each member feels the pain of their bodies being torn apart, their very DNA becoming sheets of paper in a shredder. And faster than they can utter a scream, each member finds themselves once again seated at their desks.
Now they're panting and sweating, the very real sensation of their deaths crippling their minds currently. It's a point of hell for the four, a very real battle of minds. The first two, Koharu and Danzo, using the minds of their enemy to contort their own illusions into senseless slaughter. The first to tire being the first to admit they're wrong.
Homura mutters a curse under his breath, his displeasure of the group being the first to show.
"These wars are doing us no favors. Hiruzen… just tell us what we have now that we can utilize."
The man in questions clears his throat, his mind still suffering from the images of his dying wife.
"We can use Shisui's mangekyo ability. The one to rewrite how a person thinks. Use both eyes, one against Fugaku, and one against Mikoto. The other, more abrupt method, is having Shisui kill the Uchiha members who have sided with Fugaku, but not Fugaku himself. Make it look like Yahiro's kid did it."
"The first issue with that," Koharu jumps in, "Is that Yashiro's kid is out on an S-class mission."
"Exactly," cuts in Homura, "Means we can potentially say the mission was this. To keep him out until the very end, before we have him kill the problems amongst the Uchiha."
"Oh, yes. Let's rely on someone we don't really know to play along. Need I remind you all that he also has a mangekyo eye?" Danzo says. "It is NOT a viable option, especially not when he's stronger than both Shisui and Itachi. We stick to either or, not someone much worse than them."
"Wouldn't work, anyway," Koharu says.
The three men turn to the woman, questions evidently on their mind, but she cuts off any from being asked.
"He'll be long dead before that plan can be enacted. I made sure of it myself in the mission parameters."
"Koharu. What did you do?"
The woman smirks under the gaze of the three, one that sends a small smile of pride down Danzo's emotionless face.
"I sent him and ANBU Squad C on a death mission. With Hidden Cloud causing issues, all of them are to take out Cloud's current two jinchuriki."
"You WHAT!" Hiruzen roars. "That'll be traced back to us!"
The woman only grins back at him.
"Not if the individuals involved also brainwash a few ninjas from stone to assist. They'll be none the wiser when all persons involved are also wearing Stone ANBU gear. With those two at potential war with one another, we won't have to worry about invasion. Not with Kiri in a civil war and Sand being marginally weaker than Kiri. And they'll be all the happier when we send them missions after dealing with this Uchiha problem."
Muffled laughter can be heard in the room, all coming from the heavily bandaged man.
"See, Hiruzen. We have nothing to fear by killing off the Uchiha."
Said man is sitting leisurely, thoughts adrift in the new sources of information. He sighs in displeasure, a final choice entering his old mind. To one again prove to the world he isn't soft, nor is he above violence.
"Koharu. Homura. Is this really what you want?"
Both people next to him turn to look at him as his eyes slowly open and stare ahead. They only nod, having no reason to say anything.
"And you, Danzo? You see no other options?"
The man just stares back unblinking, no doubt silently agreeing. No other options.
The wizened man sighs once again before bringing his hands up to rest behind his head as he leans back into his chair. That is, that's what all three members looking at him thought.
Hiruzen, the old God of Shinobi, rests his right hand on Homura's shoulder and his left on Koharu's. They're both puzzled, but their confusion turns to horror as they feel their skin begin to heat up. As they both try to flee, Hiruzen's grip on the shoulders tighten. A silent grimace ignites on his mouth as he feeds his chakra a command.
The skin on Koharu and Homura's bodies begins to color red as their blood inside is super heated to the point of coagulating. They try to scream, but nothing comes out as they topple over, dead before they can question their old teammate why. Danzo looks at Hiruzen with alarm before trying to activate Kagami's eye again, but it's to no avail. His confusion becomes horror and pain when his left eye catches sight of the end of a needle. Said needle stabbing through Kagami's eye.
Before he can do anything, the needle glows a brilliant orange before igniting. Half of Danzo's head is eviscerated and paints the grey walls red and grey, with fragments of his skull embedded in the sheetrock.
His form flickers and disappears, reappearing behind Hiruzen with his lungs full of air and his mouth aimed at the back of Hiruzen's head, but he's sheared in half by a wind coated hand instead. His intestines create a maze on the carpet beneath his split body and he can only wonder how his opponent knew he'd reappear there, or reappear at all.
"Danzo," he says as Danzo appears to his right, "Did you really think I didn't know what happened to the Uchiha we long since buried. That I didn't know what you were doing with your body and their eyes? That I didn't know you used Sensei's DNA to make it all work?"
Hiruzen slowly looks to the right, staring directly into Kagami's covered eye.
"Did you really believe I didn't know?"
Danzo doesn't even panic. Instead, he readies another wind release jutsu before realizing he can breathe through his neck. Panning his gaze downward, Danzo can see his head falling from his neck right before he flickers to Hiruzen's left. Three eyes down, he wonders why he can't leave the room itself to escape, but Hiruzen answers the silent question anyway.
"Have you ever wondered, Danzo, which clan is stronger?" Hiruzen asks as he burns Danzo to death with a fire and wind jutsu before the man can move. He continues when he sees Danzo return. "Between the Uzumaki seals and the Uchiha sharingan, which would prevail in a fight?"
A fifth death rips through Danzo's mind as he struggles to come to terms with what's happening. A searing agony from superheated water tearing through his heart.
"Have you never wondered why the Uzumaki were wiped off the map in their own territory?"
Between Hiruzen killing him near instantly and his sharingan eyes closing, Danzo can only grit his teeth in frustration. At least he tried to before lightning disintegrated his body all while Hiruzen is sitting in the same spot.
Three more eyes and Kagami's in his skull are all that remain between him and his enemy, yet the one hasn't even attempted to stand amidst his slaughter of Danzo. And in Danzo's case, he can't remember a day where Hiruzen was ever this much more powerful than himself. A thought that only lingers for half a second before his skin crumbles away in sheets of stone. His enemy being more than adept at all nature releases didn't help matters.
As soon as Danzo reappeared, he shot wind from his mouth to try and slice through the casually sitting Hokage, but nothing happened. No wind, no chakra built up. His shock was replaced by another gap of pain when a hole magically appeared in his abdomen, replacing his spin with what appeared to be lava release. All of his thoughts couldn't prepare him for this moment of pure panic. Another eye pulled into an infinite slumber as Hiruzen kept muttering about the Uzumaki and Uchiha clans. Who cared about it all when he found himself dying as the air itself melted his bones under his skin into puddles of calcium.
It was humiliating, let alone horrifying. His rival, the man he grew alongside, was casually dismantling all ideals Danzo had about the world. Power was all the world was about, yet all the power he amassed was nothing to the man he thought of as a rival.
'Yeah,' he thought. 'A rival.'
The last eye on his arm closed as soon as he materialized, all thanks to what seemed to be the fourth hokage's jutsu, the rasengan, appearing inside his skull. From where, Danzo didn't know. His last appearance had him on all fours against his own better judgment. He couldn't stand up, as if gravity was slowly pushing him into a grave. Even worse, without his chakra being able to activate and just the sharingan keeping him alive, he couldn't activate his own Uzumaki seal.
"Let me tell you why the Uzumaki were killed, Danzo."
The man would have scoffed again if gravity didn't seem to triple. He grunted in pain as his elbows bent backward and his femurs snapped in half. A slowly forming human pancake under the watchful gaze of his self-proclaimed rival. What a fool he was to even assume such was the case.
"It's because I needed them dead, Danzo, so I could make some things happen without them interfering."
Danzo's lone eye would've widened if he didn't immediately die by being crushed into a paste under the force of gravity above himself. Kagami's eye not activating to save himself.
"You were at my mercy your entire life, Danzo. Even here, where you could only use izanagi because I had to prove a point to you. Goodbye, old friend."
Hiruzen slowly released the seals around the room, the smell of fresh blood waking him from his stupor of staring around at his dead friends.
He sighed again, one too many for today, before calling out to his one agent, ANBU alias Dog.
"Dog! Enter and clean this mess up, then go retrieve Crow and Raven! We have some things to discuss."
A shadow slowly pulls itself from the window behind the man and seals the three dead council members, before puffing from existence. The blood was still there, but it always would be now. A painted reminder to all who enter.
"I need a drink," Hiruzen mumbled before walking back to his desk with a soft groan of displeasure.