The air beneath the Hokage Monument was cold and unmoving, stale with the breath of secrets and stone. Deep within Root Headquarters, torches guttered low along the walls, casting shifting shadows across the carved corridors. Danzō Shimura sat alone in the central chamber, a low table before him bearing a single sealed scroll. The wax bore two crests—one of Root, and one of the man he trusted least.
The candlelight licked the corner of Danzō's face, glinting off the slight sheen of sweat beneath his bandages. He said nothing for a long time. His eye, his real one, remained fixed on the scroll.
Orochimaru's request.
It hadn't even been formal. The words had come buried in half-coded dispatches, carried through corridors few dared tread. But the message was clear enough: a specimen had escaped, one of his living projects. Its value was not explained, only its location and the urgency. And a single note beneath it all, like a smirk between the lines.
I cannot retrieve it myself, old friend. You understand.
Danzō scoffed aloud, finally breaking the silence. "Understand? I understand you've grown comfortable relying on me, snake."
He leaned forward, steepling his hands over the scroll without touching it. His gaze unfocused, drifting inward.
It had been just over a year since the Nine-Tails had torn through Konoha. Since the night that carved new power into the village, and into him. The Third Hokage had bent under the weight of the attack, and in the panic that followed, few had noticed how deeply Root had dug in. Every empty building, every burned street corner, every broken record in the archives had created room for men like Danzō to step in. With shinobi dead and infrastructure fractured, the village's old walls were held together not with stone or symbols, but with quiet hands in the dark.
Root hands.
There had been opportunities in that chaos, opportunities Danzō had seized with the hunger of a starving wolf. Children orphaned in the attack found their way into the Foundation, stripped of names and doubts. Whole families had been wiped out. Entire sectors now housed Root safehouses. The council, distracted by funerals and reconstruction, had little will to challenge his growing presence.
And then there were the eyes.
Danzō shifted slightly, his right shoulder aching beneath its wrappings. The work had been done carefully, in the silence of nights when the city above slept. He'd secured more eyes since the Nine-Tails' attack, each Sharingan purchased in blood and silence. The treacherous Uchiha clan had suffered, like all others, but they were not trusted. Not anymore. Whispers had spread like smoke, how the beast had been controlled, how only the Uchiha had that kind of dōjutsu.
Danzō didn't start the rumor. He simply let it grow.
Because soon, the Uchiha would be a problem no longer.
They didn't know it yet, though some surely suspected, but their days were numbered. He could see it, like a blade already half-drawn. The Hokage hesitated, but the elders had begun to shift. Danzō had fanned the flames just enough. It wouldn't be long.
And when it happened—when the clan fell—he would inherit what they left behind. Their power. Their eyes.
Their legacy, turned inward toward the village they'd always mistrusted.
A sharp knock snapped him back to the present. "Enter."
A masked operative stepped in without sound. "Lord Danzō. Squad assembled. Awaiting assignment."
"Who leads it?"
"Tenkō, sir."
Danzō grunted. Tenkō was a blunt instrument, but he obeyed, and he got results. That was enough. "He's not to question this assignment. It comes from me."
The operative hesitated, barely perceptible. "Should we inform him the request originated from..."
"No." Danzō's voice was cold. "He doesn't need to know Orochimaru asked this of me. Only that I require it done."
The operative bowed low. "Yes, Lord Danzō."
Danzō turned to the scroll and broke the seal, scanning the coded map and coordinates. The creature had fled east, toward the forests on the border between the Land of Fire and the Sound's fractured outer trails. An easy place to vanish. An easier place to die.
"Retrieve it alive if possible," he said. "But if it resists, bring back what's left. Orochimaru can stitch flesh together when he needs to."
"Yes, sir."
The operative moved to leave.
"One more thing," Danzō said.
The man paused.
Danzō turned his head slightly, not facing him, but speaking slowly and deliberately. "The tree that grows too fast forgets the weight of its roots. Let the boy remember why we wear masks."
The words hung in the silence, heavy with the kind of truth that could not be disobeyed. The operative bowed again and vanished into the corridor.
Moments later, the torches along the southern tunnel flared briefly as Squad 9 moved through. Six figures, lean and silent, passed through the stone throat of Root's domain and into the upper corridors of the village. Tenkō led them, his face half-shadowed beneath his mask. His boots made no sound.
They did not speak.
Not even when they emerged from the alley behind a closed dumpling shop, slipping between paper-lantern-lit rooftops and silent merchants cleaning their stalls. The main gate loomed ahead, iron-stamped and quiet in the fading light.
Tenkō glanced back at his squad once. A single nod.
They moved as one, passing beneath the gate and into the descending dusk.
Back in his chamber, Danzō sat with the flame guttering low. He did not watch them leave. He already knew where they would go, how far they would go, and what they would bring back.
He closed his eye.
I won't always need you, he thought. But for now, your leash still leads to me.
And the candle died.