Chapter 2 - Test of Danzo Shimura

Yakushi Nono is the director of Konoha Orphanage. This was the projected image of her in the minds of everyone in the orphanage, including the caretaker, but she had another image, which was a former ROOT member who served under Danzo Shimura, who was called the Shinobi of Darkness. She called for a meeting with the caretakers of the orphanage for the annual meeting regarding topics of funding and spaces for housing the orphans and also assessing the potential of the orphans, while also assessing whether any child is emotionally unstable and needs much more care than others and also checking whether any hidden village sent their spies here to disrupt the village's harmony. During this discussion, the name Kurose Ren is spoken about and how he is diligently studying books present in the orphanage and is also more mature than other children who only play. This created suspicion about me, which was cleared as soon as my identity as an orphan born of civilian Konoha ninja was revealed. Then they discussed other potential prospects such as myself, and at the end of the discussion, Nono revealed her intention of speaking to the potential prospects one on one. The next day after discussion, Nono reached me and asked about my ambitions and hobbies, to which I answered like I had already planned, which is becoming a strong ninja who would protect the village from the enemies, and then asked, "So do you want to become the Hokage?" For which I answered that if that is what it takes to protect the village, then I would do so. This answer of mine made Yakushi Nono think a lot since it was an answer similar to ROOT's ideology because they would do whatever it takes to save the village, and Yakushi Nono doesn't like how ROOT does things and wanted me to somehow escape from ROOT's clutches, so she gave me advice, which is to never become emotional at any time since emotion clouds judgment and an emotionally unstable person can never save the village. Her saying this made me think that Danzo's ROOT recruitment is near and that he would test the emotional stability of a person. The next day Danzo came with 4 ROOT ninjas and ordered Nono to assemble every child of age 3-5 since from age 6 we are asked to attend Ninja Academy, and Danzo wouldn't take academy failures under him. Then he asked Yakushi Nono about the emotionally unstable children and asked them to stand aside. Those children stood aside, and then he asked everyone to look at the leaves, which were creating a circular rotation similar to hypnotism, and everyone fell into the Genjutsu technique, which was Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique. This technique would make the target view their deepest fear, and there are two ways to overcome Genjutsu, which are inflicting a wound on oneself and Genjutsu Kai (disrupting one's chakra). While I know both the methods, I haven't officially learned them, meaning I can't use both, so I thought, how would Danzo select the members who are going to become ROOT? This narrowed down to two options, which are either emotionally unstable members get selected or emotionally stable members get selected, and going by how Danzo ordered children who were emotionally unstable to stand aside near ROOT members, he was going to select them, so I thought, Let me resist my fear as long as possible. Even though I knew my fear, it was still hard to resist since my fear was the loss of comrades, which is why I sacrificed my life on Earth in the first place, but still reliving the same experience again was very hard, and I was resisting my fear since I couldn't move my body and saw my comrades whom I spent my past life with dying. Even though I knew it was Genjutsu, it was very hard because all my senses told me that it was real, but I forgot a major detail in the heat of the moment: that time flow in Genjutsu would be different than realtime, so I was stuck 35 minutes in the Genjutsu seeing my comrades tortured before me, but only 35 seconds passed in realtime. While I was in genjutsu, many children dropped unconscious after 5 seconds, and some 5-year-olds bit their tongues to come out of the genjutsu. Then Danzo waited 10 more seconds to stop the Genjutsu and was then intrigued by me since I was the sole 3-year-old who withstood 15 seconds of Genjutsu while the majority of 4-year-olds had fallen unconscious. He wanted to test my mental resolve and didn't release the genjutsu while many other children started to fall one by one. Yakushi Nono intervened, then saying she would give a report to the Hokage if any child got a mental scar. Hearing this veiled threat, Danzo gave her a cold stare while saying, "I could cut down the orphanage funds, citing the looming war threat. Know your limits before threatening me," and then asked the ROOT ninjas to disrupt the chakra of the children while Nono also helped the children. But unknowingly this created interest, an interest in Danzo, who was planning to forcefully abduct me into ROOT, but thankfully Nono misunderstood my resolve as my aptitude in Yin Release and mentioned these events to Hiruzen, the Third Hokage. This wasn't known by me until I became ANBU, but that's a story for another day. So the Hokage ordered Nono to give me an introduction about Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, and Taijutsu for now and asked to train me until I drop dead to test my resolve and to see if it was Yin release that made me resist or my mental resolve. This was a happy surprise for me since I thought that I needed to wait until my 4th birthday to start my physical exercises. Even in a world where strength decides survival, body conditioning was strangely neglected. That baffled me. Knowing chaos wasn't far off, I pushed my training to the absolute limit—just short of breaking my body beyond repair. I started training intensely for 6 days and meditated on the 7th day while also doing autophagy fasting, which helped me tremendously. This went on for three months, and Yakushi Nono, being a medic ninja herself, checked whether I had a hidden injury due to training vigorously and saw that no such thing happened. This made her believe in me and left me to train on my own from now on. Finally, knowing that no one is here to supervise me, I started specialized training with some shadowboxing, preparing for the academy entrance exam. A year passed, and I was shocked since pushing my body to the limit with autophagy fasting has provided a tremendous boost to my body. I asked Yakushi Nono when I could attend the academy, and she replied, "In 2 years when you turn 6." I asked, "Why is that the case?" Then she told me that there is an entrance exam to pass to get selected for the academy to study, and to pass the entrance exam, we need to run 15 laps on the academy grounds for the physical test and must pass another paper test. To which I asked, "Can we apply for the entrance exam only once or can we try again?" which baffled her, and she replied, "You can apply up to age 6, after which you can't." Then I told her my decision of taking the academy exam this year, and since I have two more attempts, it isn't a problem. Then she went to Hiruzen to discuss this since she knew that there were precedents where some children were accepted at the age of 5, but that was it. Accepting below that criteria needs proper reason from their clan and approval of the Hokage, but since Kurose is an orphan, Yakushi Nono gives the final decision to Lord Hokage himself. When Hiruzen heard this request and the conversation that followed, he made a mental note of Kurose Ren's IQ and decided to let him participate in the academy entrance exam since another 4-year-old is also participating. He is excitedly waiting for what kind of results these two will show him in the next week at the academy entrance exam. Yakushi Nono, after knowing that Hiruzen would watch the academy entrance exam, didn't want to embarrass herself, so she decided to check his physical prowess since she knew he would pass the written test. She asked Ren to be ready in the morning and asked him to be at his best. Ren, not knowing what happened in the Hokage's office, just nodded. The next morning she asked Ren to come along with her and started running around the village, and I, without any questions, followed her, and she finished one lap around the village and then slightly sped up and completed another lap, by which I started showing slight signs of exhaustion. Then we continued another round in which I started falling behind and was completely exhausted and fell down. Nono was surprised but didn't show it on her face since the academy only needed 15 rounds in the academy training ground, which was 14 km per round, but the perimeter of the village, which we ran, is around 140 km, meaning one round around the village is equivalent to 10 rounds in the academy. She now knew that I was ready for the academy entrance exam.