Note: Large texts that are written in italics are sort of flashbacks. Sort of. They are similar to flashbacks you know, but they are happening in the present. Hard to explain, sorry XD
You'll get what I mean when you read them.
CHAPTER 17
The consequences of the breach were swift.
Ten minutes after Orochimaru fled the Archives with Kakashi, and just as Naruto was teleported out of Konoha, the village was flooded by hundreds of thousands of incriminating documents, photographs, and letters.
All of Orochimaru's nefarious exploits were laid bare to every single eye in the village, and quickly spread to the entire country; evidence of the Sannin's inhuman experiments on hundreds of kidnapped people across the village and even from all over the continent over two decades, the man's evil sexual activities to men, women and children, his dealings with the criminal underworld in the shipment of banned substances into Konoha for his experiments, human trafficking where parents and children were violently separated and inevitably used for their parts, and a vast array of other disgusting crimes perpetrated since the man first joined the Ninja Academy at the age of nine.
It was akin to a universal switch; one moment a man is hailed as the greatest, smartest, and most altruistic ninja, scientist, and human being, and then a split second later, they are seen as the person they truly were from the very beginning.
A vile, putrid, hatefully selfish, and sociopathic existence that just so happened to take the vague form of a human being.
Once a hero, now turned into less than scum.
The revelations were enough to make the stomach turn with vile and boil the blood, as graphic images circulated Konoha, and flooded outwards to all of Fire Country, of the man heartlessly cutting into children as they screamed in agony, or black and white photos of Orochimaru amputating a person that was clearly from the Akimichi clan without the use of anaesthesia, or written accounts of the depravity that took place underneath Orochimaru's laboratory.
Several hundred missing active and cold cases were solved in an instant as families identified loved ones that had either gone missing a week prior or two decades ago, curled up in their filth inside painfully small cages and listless.
A large volume of documents written and signed by Orochimaru were pumped into the village's new stations and the newspaper company; they were rushed photocopies of the original and later, handwriting experts and friends of the Sannin would verify the handwriting as accurate.
Detailed maps of Orochimaru's lab were spread out for all eyes to see, either on screens or pasted on several walls in the form of fliers.
No one knew the source of the massive leak.
Danzo was not a man to be trifled with.
Twenty minutes later a large Police taskforce was mobilised by the Hokage, and they raided Orochimaru's famous lab, now turned infamous the very second the taskforce found the hidden entrance and uncovered the depths of human depravity underneath the two-storey laboratory.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"Police! Hands in the air!" Fugaku bellowed as he kicked down a door, right hand gripping a katana in the air, ready to indiscriminately swing down. Behind him, his subordinates blasted down the corridors and blasted doors open with swift kicks.
Four assistants in white aprons and goggles inside the room shot to their feet with their hands up, showing that they were unarmed.
Fugaku stormed in and waved them to the right side of the lab. "Stand aside." Two officers roughly manhandled the assistants around the table, and the assistants complained loudly as they were forced against the walls with their hands at the back of their heads.
"What's the meaning of this?! We've done nothing!"
"Shut it, scum," Fugaku growled and walked around the table the assistants had been working on, examining the fragile beakers and test tubes. This was his first official assignment as the Chief of Police, after getting the title from his mother, he needed to do this right. He looked to his left at an Inuzuka with a ninken. "Here?"
The dog unleashed, and sniffed the clean, tiled ground close to the table, recoiling with a pitiful whimper before it could get underneath the table.
"Oi! What are you doing?!" another assistant yelled, making to push away from the wall, only to get a fist to their jaw. They fell like a puppet with its strings cut, blissfully unconscious.
The other officers ignored the unconscious man and bent down to look under the table, where the ninken had scurried away from; it was smooth tile. Clean and shiny like the other tiles in the building, but similarly unremarkable.
The ninken wheezed and sneezed, pawing at its nose. The Inuzuka partnered with the dog turned to her Police Chief and nodded, rubbing a handkerchief on her whimpering partner's face. "It's definitely there."
Disregarding the contents on the table, Fugaku pushed the table away and stepped away. "Break it."
Not needing any other prompting, the second officer, the one that had knocked out the assistant, flipped through a short set of hand seals, shouting, "Partial Multi Size Technique."
The man's right arm elongated and enlarged, and he closed his hand into a fist and unceremoniously slammed it down on the open space where the table had formerly been positioned. He raised his massive arm and slammed it down again, cracking the ground. He repeated these four more times before the ground gave way to reveal a mangled iron door that was bent inwards and a short set of steps.
Fugaku cautiously marched down the steps with his blade at the ready, and what his eyes beheld stuck with the man to the day of his death.
It was the catalyst that made the man lose all faith in Konoha.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Thirty minutes after the news broke in Konoha, a large number of ANBU ninjas rushed out of the village in search of the criminal, swearing vengeance with each breath they took. They were ordered by the Third Hokage to retrieve Orochimaru and Kakashi alive, but even Hiruzen Sarutobi doubted the restraint of the shinobi to do so.
Even assigning Shikaku Nara would not temper the emotions of the furious ninjas.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Dozens of soundless footfalls raced through the forests, and dozens more leapt through the trees, gradually fanning out into the thicket and following three leads.
Not so much as a crackle came from leaves that were stepped on, as the eerily quiet ninjas blazed intensely toward their targets.
Shikaku hissed under his breath. "He's using clones as a diversion." He looked to his right and held his right hand up, stopping on a tree branch and squatting down to assess the situation. The black operatives with him, roughly forty in total came to a stop around him, cloaked in darkness and ominously hovering in the shadows wearing their animal masks. "Tiger."
A small shinobi wearing the tiger mask came to the commander's side, tipping his head low and not speaking. The boy's chakra bubbled hotly under his skin, barely suppressed if not for the little professionalism left in his body; he wasn't angry at Orochimaru for the same reason every other of his comrades was angry.
"Is he gone?" Shikaku asked, and the small ninja shook his head.
"He's heading north to Waterfall Country," Tiger said through his teeth. A subtle rush of wind flowed through the sea of trees, and the trees swayed. They looked to be bending inwards to the boy, like magnets to a slab of metal.
"Good," Shikaku said and pointed east. A huge rush of ninjas blitzed in that direction, while Shikaku accompanied them in the middle of the formation, with Tiger at his back. He radioed back to Konoha. "Get on a call to Waterfall Country; I want all their assets grounded. That's an order."
"That's…that's impossible," the person on the other end of the radio stuttered. "Waterfall Country is a sovereign nation. Making that declaration could risk Konoha's reputation on the global stage—"
"Get it done, Shizune," someone wearily said on the other side of the radio. Shikaku recognised Hiruzen Sarutobi's aggrieved tone. No doubt he was still sifting through all of Orochimaru's seized assets; all transactions to and from the man's bank account, all of the Sannin's noted-down properties on his estate, and all of Orochimaru's books, research works, and unfinished groundwork on revolutionary sciences.
They were a lot.
Shikaku stashed the radio into his vest and proceeded to Waterfall Country.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
In thirty minutes, Orochimaru's reputation was destroyed.
The man ran for his life with Kakashi on his right shoulder, gritting his teeth at his life choices to that point in time.
Was revenge really worth it?
A pain shot through the man from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head, reminding him of the constant cycle of agony Naruto had subjected him to for the rest of his life, and reminding Orochimaru of his vow to make Naruto feel worse than he had ever felt before.
If changing bodies had at least lessened Orochimaru's torture, he would have pushed Naruto to the back of his mind and faced his business.
But it didn't. He could only change bodies once in three years and it didn't work.
Changing bodies did nothing.
The pain was constant.
Orochimaru panted raggedly, weighed down by physical pains from the bodily wounds that would never heal, and Kakashi. The boy slept heavily on the man's shoulder, oblivious to the fact that his benefactor's world was ablaze.
"So much for being partners," Orochimaru swore, clambering over a fallen tree and looking to the sky, which peaked through the leaves. The sun was staggering down from the sky and lingering over the horizon, burning as red as Orochimaru's suffering. The man spat blood and mucus on the ground, feeling a tear in his stomach lining from all his rigorous activities of that day. "You'll get yours soon, Danzo."
Orochimaru didn't doubt that this day was coming—the destruction of the thin alliance he had with Danzo since he was fifteen years old—but he didn't think a meagre thing like the destruction of the ROOT Archives would be what caused Danzo's wrath to fall on him.
Of all things, books?
Old, out-of-date books for that matter.
Danzo had effectively blown Orochimaru's cover; the Sannin was sure that his escape plan to Grass Country and the network of laboratories around the continent was compromised. He didn't doubt the vindictiveness of Danzo Shimura.
Worse yet, Orochimaru had taken extra care to untangle several networks from ROOT, but he couldn't trust the integrity of his hideouts in Grass and Kiri until things cooled down.
One thing Orochimaru was sure of was that Waterfall was his only hope for escaping and hiding out.
Orochimaru's hateful sneers carried his mind away from the agony of the lengthening tear in his stomach, oozing blood and venom on his liver and kidneys. The trees of the forest started to become sparse and the sky cleared up somewhat of branches, allowing the man to be bathed by the orange glow of sunset.
He didn't slow down his pace, blazing harder and faster over the uneven, rocky ground as he crossed out of Fire Country and into Wave Country.
The deafening roar of dozens of waterfalls beckoned to him—
He grunted and coughed as a kunai stabbed his lower back, cutting deep into his side and making the man stumble a little.
He cursed as he zigzagged, dodging the relentless hail of weapons. His shadow clone diversion had not worked; they must have a powerful sensor in their midst that could differentiate him from them.
All manner of kunai, shuriken and other blades whizzed past his shoulders and ears, barely scratching him and the boy on his shoulder, but he dodged them diligently without daring to look over his shoulder.
He bared his teeth, painted red by his blood, and surged ahead as quickly as his legs could carry him. The insistent thud of his life force pounded in his ears and an icy feeling crept up from the base of his skull; his wounds were reopening. He coughed out blood and wheezed when he felt a small wound on his throat.
Haggard and fighting for his life, Orochimaru's legs merged and his lower half transformed into a white snake, doubling his speed and his aching. He muttered the jutsu as he completed it, "Soft Physique Modification."
"Orochimaru, stop!" Shikaku bellowed.
The Sannin didn't give the man any response, he swiped at his blood-covered chin with his left thumb and flashed through an array of hand seals and jumped ten feet as a tree exploded from the hard ground, escaping the branches before they could get a better grasp of him.
He finished the hand signs and pressed his thumb to his left collarbone, on top of the miniature summoning seal, and shouted, "Summoning jutsu!" he pushed through the column of smoke and sprinted out, yelling over his shoulder, "Go!"
Four feral snakes that were twice as large as horses slithered madly from the smoke, attacking the Konoha ANBU. The volume of throwing weapons reduced drastically and the sounds of desperate combat increased as blades and jutsu clashed against fangs and flesh.
"This is it," Orochimaru said with heavy relief, seeing the edge of a cliff and hearing the booming crash of endless waterfalls. The sun was steadily sinking over the horizon on his right, basking the landscape in a soft, picturesque glow of orange. It was soothing.
"Orochimaru, I said stop!" Shikaku shouted over the din, somehow bypassing the snakes and gaining ground on the haggard Sannin. "Stop! Now!"
Orochimaru hissed in frustration. "Tsk."
His eyes enlarged when he shortly caught sight of Shikaku's lengthened shadow, from the sunset, flip through a few hand seals and shoot towards him. Shikaku's declared jutsu was lost in the harsh roar of the waterfalls, and Orochimaru's mood lifted at the glorious sight of endless rows and piles of powerful waterfalls and the brutal cascade of water that could shred flesh from bone.
Time seemed to stop the moment Orochimaru's feet left the ground.
Shikaku's shadow just missed Orochimaru's heel as the man jumped off the cliff, curling around Kakashi as they fell hundreds of miles down, where only sharp rocks, frigid water, and dense foam waited for them.
Shikaku clutched his head in horror and watched helplessly as the Sannin and the Hatake vanished inside the water foam.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Nighttime in Konoha
The airwaves of the village carried Minato Namikaze's declarations that Orochimaru of the Sannin would be caught, declaring the man to be an enemy of the State, and a wanted criminal. The sound of Minato's reassurances permeated all households, shops, and clan compounds, and it worked well to keep the people from panicking at having such an unforgivable monster close.
Minato knew his influence and he employed it to the full extent of his ability.
The future Hokage had spent the better part of three hours on a regular rotation of news stations, and radio stations, and meeting with fearful civilians, scornful ninjas, community leaders, clan heads, and business leaders to help keep the people calm and confident in the abilities of the village's armed forces.
The failure of the village's ninjas to apprehend Orochimaru hit the airwaves almost immediately after Shikaku re-entered the village, yet again from an unknown source, and a revolt was prevented by Minato Namikaze pleading for calm.
Hiruzen Sarutobi was exiting the Hokage's Tower late that night, breathing out a tired sigh and rubbing his left shoulder with his hand. He had also had a long day of assuaging the fears of the Council that Orochimaru would not seek revenge on them for all the measures taken to cripple the Sannin.
Street activity was low that night, with streetlamps lining the roads and illuminating the village. Lights inside houses and apartment buildings were mostly on, as the occupants were either too worried for their safety to sleep or too revolted by the revelations to peacefully shut their eyes. Or both.
Hiruzen scratched his brow and pulled out a box of cigarettes from the sleeve of his ceremonial robe, idly tapping the bottom and pulling out a lone cigarette. He gently held it in his wrinkly lips and stashed the box away. From his other sleeve, he took out an old, iron lighter and worked his thumb on the flint wheel, getting sparks that annoyed the man. He glanced up and wrinkled his nose; there wasn't any breeze. He shook the lighter and grunted in frustration when he didn't hear much oil inside.
He rubbed his eyes, then stored his lighter away.
"Do you have a light?" he asked to seemingly no one, looking forward to a dying streetlamp.
On the other side of the lamp, away from the light but not from the stray beams of light, a shadowy figure had been standing and waiting for Hiruzen to notice him. They were less than fifteen feet apart, with the shadow standing upright with his hands at his back.
The shadow's electric blue eyes tipped Hiruzen on the identity of the person.
Instead of answering his question, Minato stayed rooted in place and said, "Tell me you didn't know."
Hiruzen chortled, holding the unlit cigarette in his lips and speaking kindly, "Come now, Minato, I have eyes. I can see you—"
"Cut the crap," Minato snapped, losing his patience. The only visible indication of Minato's irritation was the slight narrowness of the man's bright eyes. He repeated himself, "Tell me you didn't know."
The Hokage frowned and paused, studying his successor's rigid demeanour. The old man's eyes flicked left and right, verifying that they were alone.
Minato stared back, waiting for an answer.
"…I will not lie to you," Hiruzen slowly said, taking the cigarette from his lips. "I…have known the whole time, since Orochimaru was a child."
Minato's eyes narrowed to thin slits. "He was your first choice, correct?"
Hiruzen chewed on his tongue and mulled over his words. He then decided to drop the act of geniality and level his successor with a stony, cold stare. "Correct." He looked at the unlit cigarette between his pointer and middle fingers, twirling it absentmindedly. "It was either I appoint the peoples' choice as the next Hokage or my choice." The Third Hokage looked at his successor with a teeming frown, disapproval in his tone. "You were even my third choice, to be competely honest."
Minato's rage filtered through his grit teeth. "You're telling me that you'd rather pick that…that guy to be Hokage. Knowing everything you know. Him?"
The Third Hokage's answer was a firm and unequivocal, "Yes."
Minato asked, revolted, "Why?"
"He…He would go above a beyond for the sake of this village." Despite the firmness of his posture, the Hokage still sounded doubtful of his words.
"And I won't?"
Hiruzen sneered. "You are a no-name waif who just so happened to have a little talent for ninjutsu. You have no qualities to be a good leader." He flippantly motioned to Minato. "My picking you was only to keep the people calm." He crossed his arms. "I would do anything for the sake of this village, Minato."
Minato's silence was long and ominous, regarding the Third Hokage with palpable contempt.
"Are we finished with this interrogation?" the Hokage asked impatiently, making to walk to Minato but stopping with the other man held hand up.
With his other hand, Minato pumped the side of his fist against the streetlamp. The light quickly flicked off and on, shining brighter than before. The renewed light barely cast over Minato, showing more of his features more clearly.
The Hokage's successor wore a terse frown. "You enabled Danzo for years and that man turned into Konoha's parasite, and now you enabled Orochimaru for so long that he was sapping the life from this village. You are the rot eating the heart of Konoha." He pointed at the Third Hokage, who gnashed his teeth at Minato's audacity. "You're a disgrace."
"Watch your mouth—" Hiruzen snapped.
"Tonight," Minato stated, pointing to the ground and staring daggers at the Third Hokage. "I am officially the Hokage. You will hand power over to me tonight. You will hand over everything within and without the reach of the Hokage. Everything." Minato said that last word with unwavering conviction, startling Hiruzen. "The ceremony will take place next week." He pointed at the Hokage's Tower and barked, "Move it!"
"Minato, be reasonable—"
Minato's eyes hardened and he walked up to Hiruzen. He spoke in a low voice, seething, "Do I look reasonable to you?"
Hiruzen's mouth flapped open and closed, lost for words.
Minato's lips fought not to pull back as he snarled, jerking his head to the Hokage's Tower, "After you."
A brief debate passed through Hiruzen's mind if he could overpower and subdue Minato Namikaze, but that train of thought crashed into the reality of the situation; outside of the Three Legendary Sannin, Minato Namikaze was the most powerful shinobi in the village, and that took into account the clan heads and the successors of the clan heads. The boy had also seen his fair share of active combat and had led several attacks and counterattacks during the Third War.
Hiruzen Sarutobi wasn't as young as he used to be.
He couldn't match Minato.
He sealed his lips and turned around. He didn't bother asking Minato about his fate after the title was officially handed over, and he didn't lower himself to pleading for his freedom.
Whatever happened afterwards, Hiruzen wouldn't resist.
That night, the transition of power took place, and it was peaceful and seamless.
Minato Namikaze became Konoha's Fourth Hokage, bearing all the powers, privileges, tools, and responsibilities attached to that honourable position.
His first order of business was to notify his most important ally, Whisper Group, of his ascension.
He invited Naruto to the swearing-in.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
That night
Namikaze Residence
Kushina was listlessly stirring a bubbling pot of tomato stew. Her eyes were peering out of the window of the kitchen as her hand absentmindedly stirred; she wasn't looking at anything in particular, only seeing the picket fence adorning the front of their residence, the manicured front lawn and the cobbled footpath. At the sides and back of their quaint home were tall, white, wooden fences that kept unwanted eyes from glancing over.
The news about Orochimaru came as a genuine yet horrific surprise.
She wouldn't say that she was close to the Three Sannin like Minato; Jiraiya was an intolerable pervert, so Kushina stayed as far from the man as possible for fear of snapping at him after one of his lecherous advances, and Tsunade was too busy working in the hospital, going on the occasional mission. Besides, Kushina had a feeling that Tsunade didn't like her; the one or two times they had conversed all these years, Tsunade looked to be searching for an escape route, even though Kushina took extra care to not be too chatty.
Minato was Jiraiya's greatest pride and joy, but Kushina avoided him the best she could for obvious reasons.
Kushina had spoken to Orochimaru once, and it was before her and Minato's wedding.
He handed them, Kushina and Minato, presents from himself and Tsunade; it was a brand-new set of non-stick frying pans and a toaster. He congratulated them on their wedding with a brisk smile and left, not attending the ceremony or sticking around to greet the other guests. Tsunade had only poked her head inside the venue for a few minutes before departing herself.
Even growing up, Kushina realised that Orochimaru was not a person who attracted too much attention. Only after Hanzo the Salamander declared Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya as the Legendary Sannin for surviving his onslaught did the Snake Sage get any sort of open fame. The Children's Clinic and laboratory he had opened in the village began to get more visitors, and the reviews improved.
By the time Orochimaru could construct a defined public image, Minato had already swayed the people in his favour, both as a high-ranking shinobi and as a relatable, neighbourly person who lived and breathed Konoha. The people wanted him to be the next Hokage; all of the successors to the clan heads, community leaders, business leaders, allied nations and villages, the ANBU, the ninjas, and ordinary citizens.
The only people backing Orochimaru were the village Council; influential they may be, but the matter of the Hokage's successor was a matter they were forced to bend to the will of the people.
Maybe that was why Orochimaru and Tsunade avoided them…
She blinked when she heard the doorbell chime.
"Strange. We're not expecting anyone." She glanced at the fridge and didn't find any note from Minato telling her to expect visitors that evening.
She stepped away from the stove and went to the sink, twisting on the tap and washing her hands, taking care to rinse under her fingernails before turning the tap off. She dried her hands with a clean rag hanging near the sink and returned it, strolling to the front door.
The doorbell rang again.
"I'm coming!" she called to the person, hanging back a step before she could open the door, and looking into the peephole. "Sensei?"
Outside the door, Danzo Shimura waited with an impassive expression. He was facing away from the door, examining the front lawn.
He didn't look any different than usual, with his bandaged right arm swaddled inside his light purple kimono, his right eye and forehead bandaged to hide the mess of injuries underneath, sustained in the Second Ninja War. The aged lines on his face were particularly deeper that night. Kushina verified with her senses that the man standing on the other side of the door was indeed her teacher.
The stoic man clicked his tongue. "Kushina," he said without any telling inflexion in his words. He sounded as neutral as Kushina always remembered. The woman didn't answer, preparing to ignore the man. "Please, I would like to speak to you."
Kushina's lips tightened into a frown, remaining silent as she watched the man through the peephole. The man's politeness was not out of place for her, or the rest of their team, but Kushina was more used to when he was assertive in his demands. It was easier to disobey him when he tried to act all high and mighty.
Tonight, Kushina wasn't in the mood.
Orochimaru's revelation aside, finding out about Danzo's hand in Sakumo Hatake's death was difficult to swallow.
"If you will not have me inside your home, then I will simply speak from here," Danzo said, his voice droning emptily as he tucked his left arm behind his back, watching over the lawn with a half-lidded eye.
Kushina didn't answer. She didn't move.
"I left you two voicemails, but you have not reached back to me." The man hummed, clicking his tongue. "I suspect something is wrong."
Kushina and Danzo spoke often. If not in person at the ROOT base, they regularly conversed on the phone, and by conversing, it was mainly Kushina exhaling a stream of words about one thing or the other, and Danzo dully nodding and grunting infrequently in response to her rant. They had done so for years.
It was odd, but it was their routine.
"Every sense in my head tells me that your husband spilled poison into your ear," the man said with noticeable scorn. Danzo's disdain for Kushina's childhood love has been a constant since she was a child, and she doubted it would change anytime soon. She allowed the man's disdain for her husband to easily roll off her shoulders, not thinking much of it. "Whatever it is he told you, I would like it very much if you confirmed with me first before reaching any erroneous conclusion. I would hate for your stress to affect your child—"
Kushina opened the door and the man stopped short.
He faced her and tipped his chin up slightly, proud and stubborn. "Kushina."
"Danzo-sensei," the woman said with a nod, mimicking her teacher's upright stance. "Did you kill Sakumo Hatake?" she caught the imperceptible twitch of the man's left eyebrow and a flickering frown before his expression evened out. The woman crossed her arms. "So, that's a yes."
Danzo quietly clenched and unclenched his jaw, staring at his precious student with an emotionless eye. "I did that for the sake of this village; Sakumo was far too powerful. His actions were beginning to become…treasonous…"
"That doesn't give you the right—"
Danzo scoffed. "Spare me the moral justification, Kushina. Will you report me or not?"
Kushina gnashed her teeth and clenched her hands at her sides. Her lips were pursed tightly, and Danzo scoffed again.
"So that's a no," he mimicked her tone, mocking her previous conviction.
"Minato knows."
"He knows what I want him to know." Danzo waved away the woman's failed retort. Again, the man's blatant disregard for Minato grated on Kushina's patience again. The woman stayed powerlessly silent, frowning angrily at the ground, not noticing when Danzo's eye flicked down to the slight bump of her belly and his mildly irritated expression cooled to that of apologetic. "Long before the time I began teaching you, Mikoto, and Hiashi, I had a daughter. Kimiko."
Kushina's eyes leapt up, but she didn't trust her mouth to voice any other thoughts than toxic hatred for her teacher.
"She was a runaway from the Hyuuga clan." Something began to dawn on Kushina as Danzo went down memory lane. "I…treasured her with all my soul. I still hold her memory dear to me."
He took out a faded brown photograph and showed it to Kushina, allowing her to hold it; it was of a woman in her mid-twenties. She was astonishingly beautiful, with an oval-shaped face, smiling byakugan eyes, a small but pointed nose, and cherubic lips that were spread into a kind smile as she posed for the camera. Her hair was a pale shade of yellow and, to her greatest surprise, she shared Naruto's broad, mischievous smile. The eyes too.
The resemblance was uncanny.
To a slight degree, all byakugan eyes were different. However, the pair of eyes Kushina saw in the photo matched almost perfectly with the pale set she had seen in person on Naruto.
"Kimiko…fell in with the wrong crowd…and got herself pregnant. She refused to abort that maggot." He sneered hatefully and his dark eyes burned with suppressed wrath. "The father was a lowlife who made a living as a bodyguard; I had him dealt with long ago. Erased from the face of this planet." His eyes hardened as he looked at Kushina. Her expression was pale and horrified, looking at her teacher with enlarged eyes. "It was my fault. I gave Kimiko too much freedom. Much like you. It seems I never learn, do I?"
"You…killed her…" Kushina uttered, terrified of what she was going to hear next.
"I corrected my mistake, Kushina." Danzo collected the photo from her and carefully eased it back into the folds of his kimono, close to his heart. Whether it was the pregnancy alone or a combination of discoveries that had tipped Danzo over the edge to commit such a crime against someone he supposedly loved was a mystery to Kushina. "You will never know true sorrow until..." The man's face crinkled with an unknown emotion. It was something akin to anguish and remorse. "You will never know true sorrow...until you watch the child you have raised from such a young age die at your hands. By your hands." Danzo's eyes became heavy and more sunken, wearily looking at Kushina's belly. "Watching the light leave her eyes." He looked up at his student with a perilous stare. "It does something to you."
The specifics of how and why Danzo did what he did hardly mattered to Kushina anymore, not with how much the man was bearing his soul out to her. Kushina bore a resemblance to Kimiko in Danzo's eyes, now more than ever.
Danzo had killed Kimiko, and he had done so himself.
However, Kushina couldn't help but ask, "What about her baby?"
Danzo controlled his face once again and said with the same even tone as before, "He is gone."
Kushina was flabbergasted at the cold-hearted confession of her teacher, one of the few people she trusted and loved with all her heart. Her blood ran cold and all the colour in her skin drained, more so when the man raised his left hand and gently touched her cheek, smiling invisibly.
"Henceforth…try not to be like Kimiko. Or else, you will be like Kimiko."
Kushina's heart thudded and her hands closed again into hard fists. Righteous anger flooded her being and she swelled up to twice her height, almost matching her teacher as her eyes darkened and her stare turned a vulpine shade of red. A shadow cast over her face and she spoke with unnerving calmness, exhaling hellish sulphur with each word, "Is that a threat?"
The man smiled, this one more visible than before. His hand was still softly touching her cheek, ignoring the foreboding of his student's looming posture. "Is it?" he stood his ground as the woman loomed ominously over him. His smile then became melancholic and sincerely regretful. "It would break my heart if I am forced to correct my mistake once again."
"You're insane," Kushina swore in a cavernous tone to her teacher's face. It took a physical effort for chakra not to ebb off her form.
"Oh, yes. I believe I am," Danzo agreed, nodding his head while keeping his face mildly emotionless. "One doesn't survive this long in our profession and retain their sanity. You know that just as much as I do, Kushina." His hand dropped to his side. "Be that as it may, I won't want to keep you for much longer. This brisk weather can't be good for the child." He turned and walked down the cobbled pathway, saying in an audible voice without turning his head. "Don't forget our dinner party. Mikoto and Hiashi will be there with their families." He stopped at the short fence and said, wearing an expression of trifling irritation, "You can even bring Minato. It's a celebration, after all."
And with that, Danzo walked down the street, away from the house, leaving Kushina to stew in her newfound realisations of her teacher.
Authors note
What are your thoughts on this chapter, and the story so far?
The next chapter would follow Naruto and his Whisper Group.
See you when I see you.
Foy.