"What happened that night..." Hiruzen sat upright, his expression cold as he looked at Danzo.
'He knows something,' Danzo thought. 'Hiruzen must have found some evidence I don't know about, otherwise he wouldn't be so certain.'
Could it be...
'Impossible. No one else knows about that except me. I made sure of that by discarding even my root operatives present for it.'
"Hiruzen, what are you getting at?" Danzo asked, keeping his voice calm and neutral. His mental fortitude was immense. Even as memories of dozens of past deeds flashed through his mind, he spoke flatly, "The Uchiha clan had to be behind what happened back then. We just haven't found concrete proof yet."
Whatever Hiruzen had discovered, Danzo would pin it on the Uchiha first.
"Whether the Uchiha were truly involved... that's debatable." Hiruzen neither confirmed nor denied it, instead staring intently at Danzo. "Someone saw you meeting with that Masked Man before that night!"
"What explanation do you have for that?"
That Masked Man... he killed Hiruzen's wife, Biwako. He attacked Kushina during childbirth, released the Nine-Tails... he was the true culprit behind the attack on Konoha.
And Danzo had met this culprit right before it happened.
The implication was clear.
This, more than anything, was what angered Hiruzen. Danzo was testing his limits, again and again. For the Hokage seat, Danzo had even plotted to assassinate Hiruzen when he retook the position, let alone the subtle sabotages he tried against the Fourth Hokage, Minato.
'Get rid of the Fourth, frame the Uchiha... kill two birds with one stone.' Then Danzo could make his grand entrance as the Fifth Hokage. Who could have predicted that after Minato died, Hiruzen would actually step back in, reclaiming the Hokage's position?
Most people didn't expect this, even Hiruzen himself didn't want to after Biwako's funeral. But he did it regardless for the village.
"What explanation do you have?" Hiruzen pressed, his voice dangerously low.
"Explanation?" The question hammered at Danzo's mind like a drumbeat. 'Damn it! Hiruzen really found out?'
Shock and anger warred within Danzo, but composed as ever, his expression remained a mask, betraying nothing of the storm brewing inside. 'I am so close to achieving my goals with Uchiha's. I didn't expect this.'
He had met the Masked Man before the Nine-Tails rampage. Otherwise, how could he have pre-emptively deployed Root shinobi around the Uchiha compound?
"What Masked Man?" Danzo scoffed. "I don't anything of such a person."
'I can't admit it. Absolutely not.'
'Knowing Hiruzen,' Danzo reasoned, 'if he really had solid proof, he wouldn't be confronting me like this. He'd have acted already. He's bluffing. He has to be bluffing! As long as I don't admit anything, he can't touch me. I cannot confess to colluding with murderer of his wife. He might execute me if I admit it.'
Danzo steadied himself inwardly. This was a psychological game. The first to show a crack would lose. Danzo's denial was absolute. Even with evidence laid bare before him, he wouldn't admit what he didn't want to.
Hiruzen didn't seem to see through Danzo's facade, nor did he linger on topic of the Masked Man. Instead, he asked another question, though it sounded more like an accusation. "Last year... Shisui Uchiha's death. You were involved, weren't you?"
He let the silence hang for a moment. "His body was missing its eyes. The autopsy report said they were gouged out."
Hiruzen leaned forward slightly. "And Orochimaru's experiments... fusing the First Hokage's cells... You were part of that too, weren't you?"
"Danzo! What haven't you reported those to me?"
"How much are you hiding?" Hiruzen stared at Danzo, his expression grave, his voice holding a warning sharper than any before: "Danzo. You've overreached. Know when to stop."
"Hmph." Danzo forced calm, but the almost imperceptible tremor in his hand gave him away. "I don't need to explain my actions to you. Over the years you haven't asked me for reports yourself. Because of the gruesome actions I took in the shadows." He was genuinely rattled now.
'Before, I suspected Hiruzen was just guessing. Now, I am certain Hiruzen knows something.' Proof of any one of those accusations would be enough to seal his fate.
"Everything I do," Danzo bit out, "is for Konoha."
He didn't even realize that, in saying it, he'd implicitly admitted his involvement. Hiruzen still hadn't produced any concrete evidence, relying only on his words. But his conviction was so absolute that Danzo had believed him.
This time, Danzo had lost the psychological battle.
The conversation ended badly.
In the end, Hiruzen didn't punish Danzo. After all, Hiruzen reasoned, Danzo's methods, however despicable, served Konoha. Konoha needed its darkness, as Hiruzen believed.
--**--**
'Damn Hiruzen...' Danzo seethed as he walked away from the Hokage's office, his expression dark. 'Accusing me of colluding with outsiders.' The issue wasn't whether he had colluded, it was true, of course, but that Hiruzen dared to suspect him, after decades of sacrifice for the village. That was the offense.
His visible eye held a venomous glint, and as his gaze drifted towards the Uchiha compound in the distance, a flicker of greed surfaced.
In Danzo's view, the only good Uchiha was a dead Uchiha. Like Shisui, whose eyes Danzo himself had taken. Letting such powerful abilities rot in the eyes of naive Uchiha was a waste after all.
'My plan needs to move forward. Now. The Uchiha problem must be dealt with. Soon.'
'No more delays.'
'I need the Uchiha's power... the First Hokage's cells... as soon as possible. Then Hiruzen... *hmph*. He won't be a threat.'
--**--**
After Danzo left, Hiruzen sat alone, drawing heavily on his pipe. He seemed to deflate in his chair, the lines on his face deepening, aging him years in moments.
"Hattori," Hiruzen murmured to the empty room, "you were right about everything. What happened back then... Shisui... it really was Danzo."
As Hiruzen spoke, a figure emerged silently from the shadows, a middle-aged man with a cold face, wearing a light blue kimono. There had been a third person in the office all along. Someone even Danzo hadn't detected.
"Hokage-sama." The man, Hattori, adjusted his glasses. "Now that it's come to this, there's no point indulging in grief. The priority now is resolving the Uchiha situation. Swiftly."
"It cannot wait."
Hiruzen had managed to corner Danzo thanks to Hattori's advice.
"ANBU," Hiruzen ordered, his voice heavy. "Bring Itachi here. I need to speak with him."
"You may take your leave Hattori."
"Yes, Hokage-sama," Hattori responded respectfully.
Soon after, summoned by ANBU, Itachi arrived outside the Hokage's office. Dressed in standard ANBU gear, he stood waiting. As Hattori passed him on the way out, Itachi frowned, a flicker of recognition making him glance back.
'This man... he felt familiar, somehow. Like I've seen him somewhere before...' The thought vanished as quickly as it came, and Itachi pushed open the office door.
Hattori walked out of the Hokage building, crossed the bustling market, and slipped into a deserted alleyway. He took off his glasses, swept back his hair, revealing vertical, beast-like pupils. Then, *poof*, he dispersed in a cloud of white smoke.
He had been a Shadow Clone all along.
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