So ti later that sa day, the Hokage's office was quieter.
Danzo sat stiffly in front of the Hokage's desk, his eyes cold.
"Hiruzen. Two indirect attempts. Two failures. First Root, now your Anbu, and still the boy breathes. How long do you intend to drag this out? Let end him properly, with my n, this ti."
Hiruzen drew from his pipe, exhaling slowly. He didn't even blink.
"Patience, Danzo. The timing isn't right. The war is upon us. In a few months, the field will be drenched in blood, and it will also be flooded with regular forces. Operatives like your Root and my Anbu can step back, let the armies grind each other down, and we'll also have more free hands. Then the boy can be erased naturally, quietly, in the chaos. That is where such things belong."
Danzo's fingers tightened on his cane. 'Still obsessed with your mask, Hiruzen. Still worshiping appearances when a knife would suffice...'
His jaw set, and inside, his disgust burned as he argued again with a frown on his face.
"You call it patience. I call it negligence. No one survives this long by chance. Either he carries unnatural luck, or he hides power and ans beyond what we've seen. Both are dangerous, especially tied to his na. You know full well what kind of threat a boy like him might pose, not just to our positions, but to the great design left to us by our teacher."
"I know what he is," Hiruzen replied, still with that saintly calm.
"But you overestimate him. A boy cannot escape the difference in position. He is a small cloud. We are the vast sky of Konoha. No matter how far he drifts, the storm will erase him."
"You're gambling that he will stumble into his death. I don't like gambling. He's not a cloud, Hiruzen. He's sothing heavier. If he's hiding power, and if we let him climb even a little higher, it will not be easy to cut him down later." Danzo's expression was full of disagreent.
"You see everything in simple binaries, Danzo. Kill or don't kill, now or never. You don't look at the entire perspective or the deeper layers. That is why you are not the Hokage."
Hiruzen leaned back, his pipe smoke curling lazily upward.
"I admit the boy has talent, and he is clever, but can he fight the whole of Konoha? You must rember scale. One shinobi, no matter how cunning, cannot overturn an entire system."
He tapped the desk lightly, his tone almost casual.
"And don't think I am leaving it to chance, or that I lack a plan. Just today, I promoted him to chunin. Do you understand what that ans? By surviving this last mission, he rely postponed his death. And now, as a chunin, he will be sent on more dangerous assignnts, and when the war breaks out, it will be even easier to put him where the fighting is fiercest."
A faint smile tugged at Hiruzen's lips.
"No one escapes forever. A branch may float downriver for a ti, slipping past rocks and currents, but eventually the rapids will smash it apart. That is why I say his survival is structurally impossible."
Hiruzen's and Danzo's relationship was one of calculated balance.
Outwardly, they stood united, presenting a seamless front as two pillars of Konoha's leadership.
That would never change. But under the surface, both n knew the truth.
They were allies only as long as necessity demanded it.
Danzo had always dread of sitting in the Hokage's chair himself, of one day replacing his old comrade.
Yet Hiruzen had remained the strongest presence in the village for decades, his reputation unshaken, his authority absolute.
That ant Danzo could do little more than raise concerns, offer his sharp opinions, and negotiate at the margins. In the end, Hiruzen's word was final, and Danzo was forced to obey.
So, Danzo gave a shallow nod, the kind of motion that could be read as either respect or resignation.
He stayed seated a mont longer, his eyes narrowing.
The tension in the air shifted as he leaned forward slightly, cane angled against his knee.
"Hiruzen," he said with calculated calm, "about the Hyūga girl and the Hatake boy. Their reports keep crossing my desk. Both show unusual promise. Even if they are past the ideal age for conditioning, they would still be of great use to . To Root. I am requesting permission to recruit them on the grounds of manpower shortage during tis like these."
Hiruzen exhaled a plu of smoke, eyes half-lidded, watching the curling trails as if they were more interesting than Danzo's words. "Denied."
Danzo's brow creased, ever so slightly. "You deny , even when it strengthens the village?"
"They are already spoken for," Hiruzen replied evenly. His tone carried the weight of a verdict. "When their current assignnt ends, they will join the Anbu. My Anbu. Their talents will not be wasted, but they will not be yours."
Silence stretched for a mont.
Danzo's grip on his cane tightened, the wood creaking faintly.
He had assud Hiruzen might concede this ti, if only to balance out the sting of rejecting him earlier over the matter of their target.
He thought that perhaps he could've used that as verbal 'leverage'. Yet it seed he had badly overestimated his own weight in Hiruzen's mind.
He wanted to argue, he wanted to point out how Root could mold them, strip them of sentint, turn them into perfect tools.
But he knew the futility. Even if he pressed, Hiruzen would not budge.
Hiruzen turned his gaze back to him now, calm and steady, but his eyes glinted with quiet triumph.
Internally, he smirked. Monts like this reminded him how much stronger his position still was. He could reject Danzo to his face without fear of repercussion.
For all of Danzo's sches, in the end, it was the Hokage who decided which talents went where.
And these two… Hiruzen wanted them for himself.
Talented clan heirs, loyal once properly broken in, valuable tools to keep in his own arsenal.
Why hand them to Danzo, no matter how weak they were now, when his Anbu could just as easily benefit?
How did Danzo fill most of Root's ranks these days?
The answer was simple: start with children exclusively for the new second generation, since it couldn't be done right from the first.
The younger they were, the easier it was to break them down and rebuild them.
Orphanages in Konoha and beyond were his favorite hunting grounds.
Root agents scouted not only there, but across the Land of Fire, looking for talent.
If the child wasn't an orphan already, Root would quietly make them one and then fabricate their life story.
Sotis it wasn't orphans at all, but poor, gifted civilians desperate for a way out.
Those who couldn't wait to finish the Academy, who had no prospects without a clan na or money, were easy prey.
This was the backbone of his recruitnt.
Because once they were old enough to reach senior years and graduate from the Academy, most children, even civilian ones, were sane enough to say no.
Faced with a choice, they would obviously pick the path of a proper Konoha shinobi over slavery in Root.
Danzo was not powerful enough to openly force them, not while Hiruzen still insisted on "protecting" the village's children.
At best, he picked up a few academy graduates here and there, sotis even from shinobi clans, which Hiruzen turned a blind eye on to maintain a certain level of power for Root, but those were rare exceptions.
That was why Root shinobi were never recorded among Konoha's official forces. They were ghosts.
Anbu, on the other hand, was different.
Their mbers ca entirely from the regular forces, selected among the strongest and most fitting in skill or personality.
They were chosen, not stolen.
And unlike Root, their service was recognized, with higher pay, more resources, access to forbidden techniques, and honor.
But also a far greater danger.
They were Konoha's special operatives, performing missions too dirty for the public to see, yet still sanctioned by the Hokage's hand.
Danzo sat back at last, the tension in his jaw hidden.
Outwardly, he inclined his head in the sa stiff, asured nod as before. Inwardly, his resentnt burned hotter.
Friends to outsiders, yes. Partners in faction when necessary, yes. But here, in this office, with no one to see… they were rivals, each guarding his share of power like a starving wolf over scraps.
Danzo left the office that day with a simring indignation.
His instincts scread that the Senju target could not be allowed to live another day, that the boy was a powerful threat waiting to bloom. He also got indirectly humiliated by Hiruzen when he asked for subordinates.
But he had no choice but to bow to Hiruzen's will, for now.
anwhile, inside, his thoughts twisted into ambition.
'Hiruzen… you think your flawless reputation will shield you forever. But the people grow tired of any leader who clings to power too long. This war, more unfavorable to Konoha than any before, will bleed the village white. When the casualties mount, when your gilded image cracks, you will falter. And when that mont cos, Root, hidden in the dark, growing stronger with every conflict, will step forward. You believed you were using as a shield, but I will be the one who claims the sky of Konoha. And then the Hokage's chair will be mine.'
Back in the years of Tobirama's reign, in official title, yet much longer in practice, since he had already been the true hand guiding Konoha even during Hashirama's rule, many of the village's cornerstones were created.
The Academy. The Chūnin Exams. The Anbu. The Police Force. The chain of command between the Hokage and the council.
The entire frawork of missions and their rank system. All of it bore Tobirama's mark. The other shinobi villages just copied.
Even many advanced techniques, he researched and listed in Konoha's Scroll of Seals, which elevated Konoha even further for years to co.
The entire administrative system, the true roots and branches that upheld the great tree of Konoha, was Tobirama's work.
Hashirama had only planted the seed and given it life with his overwhelming power, prestige, initial vision, relationship with Madara Uchiha, and charisma.
Without Tobirama to shape it, there would be no Konoha as it stands today, no stable countries, no hidden villages.
The whole shinobi world itself would have stayed still.
Danzo was there for it. First as Tobirama's direct student, and later as one of his closest subordinates inside the Anbu.
He admired Tobirama deeply, above all, his vision of a more balanced Konoha, one that clipped the power of clans, even though Tobirama himself was a Senju.
Danzo understood it well. After all, the Shimura were a clan too, but much weaker and without prestige.
To Danzo, it was obvious: when you are at the top, when you sit where Hashirama, Tobirama, Hiruzen, or himself once aspired to, or even just in an official position around the first leader, the greatest threat is not civilians but the clans.
They are the ones with cohesion, powerful bloodlines and strengths, and loyalty to their na above the Hokage.
Which is why Tobirama's system always leaned toward empowering civilians and dismantling clan leverage where possible.
But building such a system was easier said than done. Tobirama's death in the First Shinobi War left much unfinished. It was Hiruzen and Danzo who inherited the weight of carrying that vision forward.
The greatest regret of Danzo's life, however, ca at that very mont. When Tobirama chose his successor, it was not him. It was Hiruzen.
Danzo never forgot. In his mind, he and Hiruzen had both been cut from the sa cloth, students willing to make hard choices, ruthless when needed.
Tobirama had tolerated, even nurtured, that ruthlessness. So why not him?
The answer Danzo gave himself was simple. He had never cared to play the sanctimonious gas of appearance, the false benevolence Tobirama and Hiruzen both put on like masks.
Hiruzen was chosen because he was more talented, yes, but also because he was willing to act the saint while being just as ruthless beneath.
That was the mont Danzo's obsession began. The mont he vowed to grow stronger by any ans and find ways to make himself indispensable.
So when Hiruzen rose to Hokage, Danzo swallowed his bitterness.
He stayed quiet, stayed in the Anbu, biding his ti.
He played on their shared history, their teacher's legacy, their common origin.
Eventually, he convinced Hiruzen to create Root, his own branch of the Anbu.
Root grew steadily during the Second Shinobi War until it beca a power of its own, hidden yet formidable.
Only a few years had passed since that war's end, and now, with another one about to ignite, Root stood at its peak once more.
As Hiruzen grew older, weaker, and more unpopular, especially with another war looming, Danzo had already charted his path forward.
He would press for more and more concessions from him, and make him acknowledge him, as the balance of power shifted.
In the short term, what he wanted most was the authority to act first and report later.
At present, Root still had to bend to Hiruzen in the most critical matters.
But if war shook Konoha hard enough, that balance could tip.
Only when Root had that kind of freedom would Danzo be truly positioned to seize power outright, perhaps after this war, perhaps a decade later.
There was no other way. His na was too tainted to win through soft power or popularity.
His only path was through hard power, overwhelming, undeniable, both personal and organizational.
It would not be quick, and it would not be easy.
And depending on how this war scarred Hiruzen's reputation, there might need to be an interim Hokage before his own chance arrived.
Danzo was already preparing to recomnd soone closer to himself, a tool to hold the seat until he was ready.
"Orochimaru," Danzo mused.
The only candidate is ambitious enough, intelligent enough, and skilled enough to fit the role.
He dismissed Tsunade and Jiraiya as wastes, drears who had inherited the naïve idealism of the First Hokage.
Jiraiya, in fact, was already a liability, running Hiruzen's external spy network, cutting directly into Root's reach, following Hiruzen's designs and sches against him.
Koharu and Homura, his old comrades, were irrelevant.
Weak in body and will, they would always cling to whoever held the reins of power.
For now, they clung to Hiruzen. Tomorrow, they would cling to him.
Orochimaru was different.
He had entered Anbu soon after the Second Shinobi War, and Hiruzen later placed him in Root itself, ostensibly to monitor Danzo, though Danzo had long recognized the younger man's ambition.
He could see it in the way Orochimaru's eyes lingered, in the hunger that matched his own.
Now Orochimaru was too busy, sent across the world as Root's shadow-commander to prepare the ground in these pre-war gas.
There was no chance yet to turn him. But Danzo already had his hooks in mind.
They were alike, after all. Both obsessed with strength. Both obsessed with research.
And that was sothing Hiruzen would never indulge.
The Hokage's spotless reputation forbade it.
But Danzo? He had no such weakness.
The war would bring opportunities, space, freedom, "research materials."
He would carve out a special, top-secret unit for experintal shinobi arts under Orochimaru's hand under his Root umbrella.
If his instincts were correct, that would bind him.
Help him earn war rits, then push him forward as Hokage with Hiruzen tricked into supporting it.
And when Orochimaru sat in the Hokage's chair, Danzo would be the one holding the leash.
Danzo smirked at the thought.
He was also convinced that once Hiruzen's hollow idealism finally died with him, Konoha would step into a new age of true progress, stopping all wars, achieving true peace as the new 'world policeman'.
An overlord among villages, ruling the shinobi world not through dreams but through fear, order, and performance.
However, of course, in that new age, it would be Danzo himself standing at the very top.
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