Hiashi understood exactly what kind of man Danzo was.
He always had.
The only reason Danzo had never managed to harvest Hyūga heirs the way he had from every other clan in Konoha nowadays was simple.
Hiruzen had never allowed it.
The Third had wanted that advantage for himself, not shared with Root.
Even if the Byakugan would have been perfectly suited for their work of foreign soil surveillance, infiltration, and assassination, Hiruzen had drawn that line firmly.
And Hiashi had been grateful for it.
Better the Byakugan remain in the hands of someone who had to care about appearances, about legitimacy, about being seen as a benevolent leader, than in the grasp of a man who lived entirely in shadows.
Danzo experimented. He dissected. He erased people quietly.
Given decades and unlimited resources, who knew what kind of sealing techniques or grotesque workarounds he might eventually devise to bypass even the Hyūga's protections?
The clan had always been paranoid for a reason.
Which was precisely why this meeting carried such weight.
Under any other circumstances, Hiashi would never have sat across from Danzo like this.
Not in a hundred lifetimes.
Only what had happened yesterday, the invasion, the exposed power, the shifting balance, had made this even remotely possible.
And there was another layer Danzo underestimated.
Those Hyūga who had served close to Hiruzen were not merely assets to him.
They were quiet leashes as well, held firmly by the Main Branch and by Hiashi himself.
Even with the Cursed Seal binding them, even after years of conditioning, side branch members never truly forgot where the ultimate authority lay.
No matter Hiruzen's potential promises, power, or nice rhetoric, obedience was engraved into them from childhood. The Main Branch held the final command.
They rarely exercised it. The restraint was deliberate. Especially with those stationed near Hiruzen, the command was left untouched, but it was always there.
Unspoken. Ever-present. A pressure that never fully left their minds.
Danzo folded his hands once more.
"Then state your price," he said, watching Hiashi with open interest. "Precisely, as well."
As Hiashi fell silent, Danzo studied him carefully.
Borrowed power or not, Danzo did not believe Hiashi could ever rival him in scheming.
Strength was one thing. Political calculus was another.
And this plan, once agreed upon, was airtight.
The Hyūga were the only ones capable of detecting the Sharingan beneath the bandages.
The only ones who could sense the subtle wrongness inside that closed meeting.
If they chose not to see, it would happen.
Homura and Koharu trusted the Hyūga. They always had.
Even if they realised that the clan was hiding something more now, the sheer idea that Danzo and Hiashi, of all people, had formed such a pact overnight, before the smoke had even cleared, would never cross their minds.
Danzo was confident.
Too confident.
Hiashi opened his eyes.
"I want a new internal unit formed," he said calmly.
Danzo's gaze sharpened.
"A permanent shinobi division," Hiashi continued, unhurried, "tasked with village perimeter defense. Early warning. Internal containment. Border integrity."
Danzo said nothing.
"It will be led by the Hyūga," Hiashi added. "Staffed exclusively by Hyūga."
The silence snapped.
Danzo's chakra spiked for a split second before he reined it in. His jaw tightened. The cane creaked faintly beneath his grip.
That was not what he had expected.
"A Hyūga-only unit," Danzo said slowly. "Inside the village."
"Along its edges," Hiashi corrected. "And its walls."
Anger flared hot and immediate in Danzo's chest.
This wasn't a concession. It was a land grab.
His mind raced. Control of movement. Control of access. Eyes on every gate, every breach, every arrival and departure. Not a police force like the Uchiha's old position, loud, arrogant, resented, and ultimately powerless.
This was different.
This was infrastructure.
Danzo forced his expression neutral, but internally he cursed.
Damn it. I never thought he'd go this far. This bold, this quickly.
Hiashi watched him, stone-faced.
Danzo understood then that this had not been improvised. Hiashi had already thought this through. Not just how to protect the clan today, but how to make the Hyūga untouchable tomorrow.
Power alone invited fear.
But guardianship?
That invited dependence.
Who would argue with those who guarded the village day and night? Who controlled the doors, the walls, the first and last line between safety and annihilation? Who could quietly decide who entered the home, and who never made it inside?
This wasn't about dominance.
It was about keys.
And once the Hyūga held them, no future Hokage could strip them away without tearing the village apart in the process.
Danzo realized, with mounting irritation, that even many side-branch Hyūga were already performing fragments of this role as mobile external assets.
The difference was jurisdiction.
Informal assignments could be reassigned.
Formal authority, once granted, was far harder to retract.
This wasn't the Uchiha Police Force.
This was real leverage.
Hiashi's lips curved almost imperceptibly, a smirk Danzo pretended not to notice.
Danzo exhaled slowly.
"You drive a hard bargain," he said.
"I drive a necessary one," Hiashi replied evenly.
Another long pause stretched between them.
Danzo weighed the board again.
If he refused, the plan collapsed. If he delayed, the window closed. If he forced it, the Hyūga would see everything.
And he needed today to succeed.
Reluctantly, Danzo inclined his head.
"Very well," he said. "A Hyūga-led perimeter defense corps. Framed as a post-invasion necessity."
Hiashi didn't move.
Danzo continued, voice clipped. "It will be approved quietly. Embedded gradually. No spectacle."
"Of course," Hiashi said.
Danzo leaned back, displeasure simmering beneath his control.
In the end, he accepted.
Because sometimes, to seize the throne, you had to give someone else the gates.
But even as Hiashi secured his terms, there was something else he couldn't see.
Something he underestimated.
He had no real sense of how far Danzo could still climb if this succeeded.
Not just politically, but in a far more fundamental way.
Hiruzen himself had likely never known the full extent of what still slept inside the village's depths. Techniques sealed away, abandoned, half-forgotten.
Tobirama's work, for example. Things never meant for public doctrine. Edo Tensei.
If Danzo gained uninterrupted access to that level of knowledge, if Root's entire machinery was turned loose on it, subordinates working until exhaustion, cycling, refining, failing, retrying, eventually mastering it, then fear became irrelevant.
At that point, Danzo wouldn't fear the Hyūga. Not their ancient power.
Not their secrets. Not their newly formed division guarding walls and gates.
The dead didn't respect borders.
In the end, both sides were using each other.
But Danzo had always understood one thing better than most.
When two men believe they are exploiting the same bargain, the one who gains access to irreversible tools is the one who walks away with more.
And if this worked, Danzo intended to be the one standing at the top when the dust finally settled.
Hiashi nodded once, satisfied.
Danzo's agreement was enough.
The world had shifted, and Hiashi understood that now with painful clarity.
Their power had been revealed, dragged into the open by force.
Remaining still after that would mean losing.
Predators always came for anything that revealed its fangs and then chose to remain still.
The thought drew his gaze, unbidden, toward the open side of the hall, where clean moonlight spilled across the stone floor between them.
The moon hung high, distant and indifferent, as it always had.
And yet, to his people, it had never been just that.
Then he looked back.
They finished the remaining technicalities without ceremony.
How contact would be maintained. Which intermediaries would be used.
What signals meant abort, delay, or proceed.
Where Danzo would act, and how his influence would be applied through Koharu and Homura once he crossed that threshold.
Everything was clean. Minimal. Precise.
When it was done, Danzo rose.
No threats. No final barbs.
They bowed to each other once, shallow and mutual, and Danzo departed the compound as he had entered, alone.
Hiashi watched him go without concern.
Danzo might betray many things, but not this.
As long as the Hyūga could see, truly see, the secrets he carried beneath those bandages and body modifications he now perfectly observed and understood in detail, his leash remained in their hands.
And Danzo knew it.