23: Chapter 23: Danzo P.O.V.
23: Chapter 23: Danzo P.O.V.
Danzo stood within a chamber inside Root headquarters and listened as one of his operatives finished his report.
“Sixteen,” Danzo said at last.
“Sixteen Root shinobi are confirmed dead.
Every one of them was part of the team sent to retrieve Shisuis other Sharingan.
They were killed by a poisoned and one eyed Uchiha who should already have been dying from his wounds.” Danzo remained completely motionless.
He leaned upon his cane as though the number of dead men meant nothing to him.
Behind his half lidded eye however new calculations were already being written and old plans were being adjusted.
He had selected those sixteen agents personally.
Each of them had been taken from childhood and trained to kill without hesitation or regret.
Every one of them was capable of handling missions that ordinary jonin would find difficult.
They had been sent out with overwhelming numbers and clear orders to secure Shisuis Mangekyo at any cost after he himself had managed to not only poison him but also take his other eye.
Instead of success they had been killed.
There was no evidence to suggest that It was Shisui who killed his men but there was no one other than him present there and capable enough to kill elite Root shinobi.
Danzo almost admired the cold efficiency of the work.
Even while mortally wounded and missing one eye the Uchiha had still eliminated an entire Root squad.
It was a fitting final performance for the greatest prodigy the Uchiha clan had produced since the days of Kagami.
A lesser leader might have viewed the entire operation as a costly failure.
Danzo did not share that weakness.
He had expected heavy casualties the moment he decided to move against someone of Shisui’s level.
What truly interested him was the final detail contained in the report.
One of the Mangekyo eyes had been taken and now rested in a sealed container with him.
The other eye, the left one had vanished before any Root operative could reach it.
Danzo already suspected where that missing eye had gone.
There was only one living person Shisui would have trusted with such dangerous power.
That person was Itachi Uchiha.
Yet reliable information placed Itachi on a Konoha border mission during the hours of the fight.
The only conclusion that made sense was that Shisui had destroyed the second eye himself rather than allow it to fall into Roots hands.
Danzo muttered a single quiet phrase that carried both irritation and reluctant respect.
“Stubborn Uchiha.” He turned away from the kneeling operative and walked deeper into the headquarters until he reached the underground operating room.
A masked medic from Root stood ready beside a metal table and prepared the necessary instruments for the operation.
Danzo sat on the edge of the table and removed the bandages that had covered the empty socket of his right eye for many years.
The old wound had long since healed into smooth scar tissue that no longer caused him pain.
He spoke a single command.
“Begin.” There was no ceremony and no offer of anesthetic.
Danzo possessed neither the patience nor the desire for such comforts.
The surgeon carefully lifted the preserved Mangekyo from its special container.
The separated eye felt unnervingly alive in the medics gloved hands.
The man hesitated for the briefest instant before placing the eye into the empty socket and beginning the delicate work of connecting nerves blood vessels and chakra pathways.
Agony surged through Danzos skull like molten iron poured directly into the bone.
His hand tightened around the head of his cane with such force that the wood began to splinter beneath his fingers.
Yet not a single sound of complaint or pain escaped his lips.
He sat in complete silence while the minutes stretched into nearly a full hour.
The surgeon worked with steady hands and finally stepped back from the table.
“It is complete Danzo-sama,” the medic said in a flat voice.
Danzo remained seated with his head lowered and waited for the worst of the throbbing pain to settle into a dull and manageable ache.
Slowly he opened the newly transplanted eye.
At first the world appeared as a blur of indistinct colours and vague shapes.
Then the vision snapped into sudden and impossible clarity.
He could perceive the flow of chakra as naturally as he perceived the act of breathing.
Every masked Root operative in the room appeared before him as a living network of blue energy pathways moving beneath skin and cloth.
The three tomoe of the ordinary Sharingan twisted and unfolded into the unmistakable pinwheel pattern of Shisuis Mangekyo.
Danzo knew the ability of this eye.
It was Kotoamatsukami the most subtle and dangerous genjutsu ever recorded in the history of the shinobi world.
This was not an illusion that simply imprisoned the five senses of a victim.
It was a technique that quietly rewrote a persons deepest convictions.
Anyone caught in its power would never realise that their thoughts had been altered by an outside force.
They would believe with complete sincerity that the new decision had always been their own true desire.
Danzos lips curved into the faintest hint of cold satisfaction.
Power of this nature was not meant for open battlefields or contests of strength.
It was meant for the quiet rooms where leaders daimyo and village councils made the decisions that shaped the future of entire nations.
A single careful use could change the direction of a country without a single drop of visible blood.
But he could also tell that the eye can’t be used every time.
It seemed to have a sort of cooldown before it could be used again.
And he could also feel his chakra draining at an increasing rate.
He rose from the operating table and walked toward the polished bronze mirror that hung against the wall.
The crimson Mangekyo stared back at him from beneath his own weathered features that had been marked by decades of war and hard choices.
For a moment he considered the deep irony of the situation.
Hiruzen had always believed that lasting peace could be achieved through trust mutual understanding and compassion.
Kagami Uchiha had shared that same foolish optimism and his grandson Shisui had inherited it in full measure.
All three of those men had possessed extraordinary talent and strong ideals.
Yet none of them had ever accepted the simple and brutal truth that history had taught Danzo again and again through blood and loss.
Peace was never granted freely by the world.
Peace had to be engineered through careful and often cruel design.
It required unseen hands that were willing to become stained with dirt and blood so that the hands of ordinary citizens and idealistic leaders could remain clean.
Someone had to make the choices that others were too soft or too frightened to make.
Danzo had accepted that role long ago.
He gently lowered a fresh strip of bandages over the newly transplanted eye and concealed the swirling crimson pattern from any possible view.
The power would remain hidden until the moment he chose to use it.
He spoke a final quiet sentence to the empty air of the operating room.
“Rest.
When the proper time arrives your power will preserve the Leaf Village even if the gentle ideals you once held could never have done so.” Whether he addressed the stolen eye or the spirit of its former owner was a question even Danzo himself could not fully answer.
———Author Notes——– Thankyou Nef Mccrimmon for supporting me!