Night fell on Konoha after the invasion.
The village looked exactly like it should have.
The main hospital was overflowing, corridors packed shoulder to shoulder, medical tents spilling into the streets.
Medic shinobi worked past exhaustion, hands shaking as they healed one wound only to be dragged to the next.
Rubble still choked entire districts, smoke lingering where no one had the strength to clear it yet. Fires smoldered unattended.
Many people didn't sleep at all.
They sat, stared, counted who hadn't come back.
Grief hadn't even finished settling in.
But far below that broken surface, deep beneath the Hokage Rock, the world was very different.
Inside Root's metallic hallways, cold and sterile, Danzo Shimura paced.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
His expression never changed.
Calm. Empty. Controlled.
A face carved to reveal nothing.
But behind it, his mind was a storm.
The invasion had torn the village open. Hiruzen was dead. ANBU was shattered.
Authority was drifting, unclaimed, bleeding into the cracks. Power was loose.
And loose power never stayed loose for long.
One question dominated every thought he had.
How do I exploit this immediately, before it slips out of my hands?
Delay meant rivals. Delay meant narratives forming without him. Delay meant Sanins, councils, heroes, sentiment.
He could not afford any of that.
The window was open now, and windows like this never stayed open.
Danzo's footsteps echoed softly in the corridor as plans stacked on plans, contingencies branching endlessly in his mind.
This wasn't a tragedy.
It was an opportunity.
Danzo already knew.
The reports had been coming in steadily, quietly, the way real information always did to him from inside the village.
Homura and Koharu, his old "friends," were already moving.
Under the banners of stability, continuity, and their long personal ties to Hiruzen, they had begun assuming control over his former ANBU core subordinates.
Not loudly. Not officially.
Efficiently.
Root operatives and silent observers stationed throughout the upper levels of the Hokage Rock confirmed it.
Those corridors where administration, high-level bureaucracy, and ANBU command intersected, the nerve center of the village.
The two elders were fishing in the same troubled waters as him.
Danzo muttered something dry under his breath.
As the only remaining official members of Konoha's council, after he had been pushed out following the Uchiha massacre, it was easy to see why they could act so freely now.
Authority loved vacuums. And old titles carried weight when no one else was standing.
Despite decades of shared history, Danzo had never truly gotten along with them.
They had known each other too long for illusions to survive.
Power corrupted everyone eventually, especially those who sat near it long enough without holding it themselves.
Homura and Koharu had always latched onto whoever was strongest, whoever promised them the most benefit.
That had always been Hiruzen.
Never Danzo.
Most people misunderstood ANBU, and that misunderstanding was useful.
Technically, any high-level chūnin or jōnin with the right intelligence and psychological profile could serve in ANBU.
It was a black-ops structure. Masks were worn as needed.
Most ANBU members were temporary or semi-permanent.
They rotated in and out, performed specific missions, then returned to regular duties.
That made up the majority of the force.
But that couldn't explain what had happened during the invasion.
When chaos erupted, a specific group had moved instantly.
A unit that hadn't needed time to assemble.
Shinobi who went directly to Hiruzen's defense and the village's critical points without hesitation.
That was the core.
The hidden ANBU core.
Shinobi erased from records.
No civilian identities.
Masks worn permanently.
No regular missions. No rotations.
Their sole function was readiness.
Protect the Hokage.
Defend the village at a moment's notice.
They spent most of their time waiting.
And that was the point.
Danzo understood their real purpose better than anyone.
They weren't just bodyguards.
Those green-jacket ceremonial "guards" were administrative fluff, no different from any other office assignment.
The core existed to reinforce the Hokage's rule as an institution.
A permanent, cohesive, ever-present military force that answered only to him.
Absolute obedience. No questions. No political hesitation.
And the Hokage had full authority to shape them.
They were power in its finest form.
Which was why Homura and Koharu's move mattered.
Once they secured that core, their next step was obvious.
They would rush to involve the Daimyō.
Bring him into Konoha as quickly as possible.
Frame the situation as a crisis demanding immediate leadership.
Technically, Daimyō had no business meddling in shinobi military affairs, just as Hokage were not supposed to interfere in national politics or noble economics.
But with the Hokage dead, the lines blurred.
The daimyō's voice suddenly carried weight.
Danzo already knew what the two old fools were aiming for.
Jiraiya.
Not because of virtue. Not because of stability. Not even because of strength.
But because Jiraiya was a liability.
A perverted wanderer. A novelist.
A man with no interest in administration or control.
If he became Hokage, who would actually run the village?
Homura and Koharu.
Just as Hiruzen had ruled from the shadows during Minato's tenure.
Just as he had effortlessly reclaimed the chair after Minato's death.
Danzo could already see the sequence unfolding.
And that was his advantage.
Because if he could predict their moves, he could insert himself between them.
Quietly, Danzo reached up and began unwrapping the bandages covering his right eye.
His lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
But he wasn't without other cards of his own as well.
It was because most of the village still vastly underestimated how much power he currently held, misled by the performance of his so-called "disbandment."
It wasn't just Shisui's eye, though, that would be the centerpiece.
After the Uchiha massacre, an operation Hiruzen had "objected" to and retroactively declared to have happened "without his consent," the old man, along with Homura and Koharu, had forced Danzo into a performance.
He was "ordered" to openly dissolve Root.
To surrender all de jure authority.
To leave the Konoha Council
To step back into the shadows completely.
And Danzo had complied.
Not because he was defeated, but because they were afraid of him.
At that time, his resolve was sharper than theirs, his ability to act unquestioned.
They probably subconsciously feared how easily he could get things done, in his view.
So they demanded appearances.
Paper. Declarations. Theater.
Danzo gave it to them.
In practice, he lost nothing that mattered.
His old Root subordinates remained his.
His networks and contacts stayed intact.
What he lost was permission to recruit openly inside the village, especially from the clans, for a few years. A temporary inconvenience.
Hiruzen, Danzo estimated, would rot and die long before that ever became a problem.
And crucially, they hadn't pushed for a true de facto dissolution.
No raids. No purges. No real confrontation.
They hesitated. Which told Danzo everything.
By then, he was already too powerful for them to risk an outright clash.
Compared to Hiruzen, Danzo had changed.
The Hashirama cell arm invigorated him beyond what the others liked to admit.
Even visually, the difference was obvious. Same age, yet Danzo stood straighter.
His body firmer. His presence heavier. Even his face looked less aged visually. He never bragged about it, but anyone with eyes could see who was decaying and who was not.
Danzo had correctly assumed Hiruzen would die first and in a few years, perhaps.
So he accepted the "disbandment" to reassure them.
Smiled. Waited.
Never lost his capabilities.
He simply waited for the right moment.
This moment.
Originally, Orochimaru had been meant to kill Hiruzen today. Cleanly. Efficiently.
Danzo had pushed for Orochimaru as Hokage during and after the Third War for a reason.
Hiruzen had been unpopular after that conflict and should have stepped down.
Orochimaru's research goals aligned neatly with Danzo's own.
They understood each other.
They were similar in nature.
What none of them had predicted was Minato.
A comet. A Flying Raijin–sponsored anomaly that allowed Hiruzen to cling to power by placing a golden boy puppet in front of the chair.
When Minato rose, Hiruzen never had to relinquish anything.
So he had failed to place Orochimaru in the Hokage's chair as his own "puppet", but their relationship and lines of contact had remained intact throughout the years.
Which was why Danzo had been genuinely taken aback when Orochimaru displayed such overwhelming strength and casually discarded their agreement from weeks earlier, the plan to focus on killing Hiruzen and not to go overboard. In the end, it didn't matter.
In truth, Danzo had never been as strong inside the village as he was during the Uchiha massacre. Except now.
Hiruzen, in his prime, had been considerably more talented and stronger than Danzo, and that was precisely why Tobirama had chosen him.
Not because of some idealism, but realism.
But because the Hokage had to be powerful enough to keep other powerful shinobi in check.
Authority without strength invited coercion.
Instability. Collapse.
Danzo had understood that lesson perfectly.
Which was why, in those early years, he had been submissive. Patient.
He grew slowly under Hiruzen's nose, with his tacit approval.
First, by offering himself as his and the village's moral shield.
Root took on the dirty work. The assassinations. The coercion. The sins.
Hiruzen kept his sanctimonious image. The benevolent leader. The kindly grandfather.
Danzo did what had to be done.
Over time, he grew stronger. He researched alongside Orochimaru under the banner of "village interests." Root matured. Clan heirs were quietly taken, conditioned, absorbed, often with Hiruzen's reluctant consent.
Meanwhile, Hiruzen aged.
His body weakened. His mind dulled. Hesitation crept in. Decadence followed.
At some point, Danzo suspected, the old man even began to believe his own cultivated image. The saint. The moral pillar.
While Danzo continued to grow.
And now, finally, the old man was gone.
Danzo's fingers tightened slightly as he finished unwrapping the last bandage.
He had waited a very long time for this board to clear.
Yet his expression tightened again.
Because the entered plan depended heavily on one thing, whether the Hyūga would keep their mouths shut.
And that was looking increasingly difficult now that they had revealed such power.
So for the first time in a very long while, he might actually need to negotiate with someone like them before making his next move.