Deep beneath Konoha, a sealed corridor opened into a dimly lit hall.
Shimura Danzō entered with measured steps. His expression was dark. The figures stationed along the walls lowered their heads at once. No one spoke. No one breathed too loudly.
Root had been officially dissolved, stripped of name and authority by the Third Hokage's order. Yet its remnants endured. Some of his people still served within ANBU. Others answered only to him. Danzō had always prepared more than one refuge.
He took a seat alone in the shadows.
"Hiruzen," he muttered. "You will regret this."
The words left him, and the tension eased slightly.
His feelings toward his old companion were tangled. He had taken Uchiha Shisui's Mangekyō. That much was fact. Yet he had never once considered turning it on Sarutobi Hiruzen.
Part of it was uncertainty.
Shisui had claimed the technique worked without awareness, rewriting a person's will completely. Danzō had never trusted that claim. He had tested it first on his own subordinates. The results were imperfect. Detectable. Temporary.
Not absolute control.
That alone had stayed his hand.
The other reason ran deeper.
"You stand in the sunlight," Danzō had said more than once. "I remain beneath the roots."
He had lost to that sunlight once. That was his deepest resentment.
He could scheme against Hiruzen. Even kill him, if necessary. But turning him into a puppet would drain the act of meaning. A Hokage twisted into shadow was no victory at all.
Danzō's fingers brushed the bandages over his right eye.
"This eye…" he murmured.
The Sharingan was merciless to those not born to it. Even prodigies struggled. For someone of his age, the strain was constant.
He unwound the bandages on his arm.
The skin beneath had hardened, pale and fibrous. Wood crept upward from wrist to elbow, spreading slowly, relentlessly.
"So even this isn't enough," he said.
The First Hokage's cells refused to be suppressed. Danzō had witnessed Hashirama's power once, long ago, from afar. He had known it was monstrous.
He hadn't expected it to devour him.
Shisui's eye burdened his mind. The cells consumed his body. One held back the other, barely. A balance that could not last.
Ten years, perhaps less.
Danzō rose and moved deeper into the base.
The laboratory doors slid open.
Researchers in white coats dropped to their knees as he entered.
Danzō glanced at the tanks lining the walls. Preserved corpses. Crimson eyes suspended in fluid.
"Any progress?" he asked. "On the Uchiha remains. The Sharingan."
Silence.
Sweat broke across their faces.
Danzō exhaled through his nose. "Useless."
He already knew the answer. Without Yamato, their work on the First Hokage's cells had stalled. The only path left was the Uchiha.
That was why he had demanded Sasuke.
Not to destroy him. To observe him. To understand the bloodline while it still lived.
Dead eyes told only part of the truth.
There were only two living Uchihas left. One had fled the village. The other remained.
As for Itachi's threat.
Danzō found it almost amusing.
The village had faced annihilation before. Information leaks were nothing new. Danzō himself had traded secrets countless times.
You would be selling out Hiruzen's Konoha, he thought coldly. What does that have to do with me?
He turned back to the researchers.
"I expect results," he said. "Soon."
They bowed deeply. "Yes, Lord Danzō."
A knock sounded.
"Enter."
A masked operative knelt, offering a sealed document. "Encrypted report."
Danzō opened it, scanning the contents.
"…Orochimaru."
The name lingered in the air.