The council had no answers to the question Ryu had presented. Why didn't the committee protect Naruto? If they had tried, it wouldn't have been hard to find where it all started: the hate towards Naruto.
"No answer. Speak up; try to justify your inaction that led to the suffering of a boy."
Nobody moved.
"I know not everyone is involved in this scheme, but everyone is responsible for what happened to him as a result of it because no one wants to point out the elephant in the room," Ryu said while looking at the peak of the table, where echlons of the village, the elders, were sitting.
Hiruzen closed his eyes. "He is right. I have been complicit in this too because I did not want to risk the stability of the village by going against Danzo. I should have fought him for what is right. I made this choice. But I am going to make a different choice now... even if I have to force the council."
Ryu clicked his tongue and said the words which were final nails in the coffin and made every member of the council drown in guilt, especially those whom Minato considered his friends, and yet they chose neutrality.
"Just so you know… The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis..."
It hit hard at those who still had a conscience.
"Don't you ever tell me that you had Naruto's best interest at heart," Ryu said, looking at Koharu. His voice was small, but it did not shake. "Because the only interest you had was yours."
Koharu's mouth went flat. Homura stayed silent, his face closing like a shutter.
Behind Ryu, Dan Hamura did not move. That steadiness mattered more than any show of approval would have. It told the room exactly how much room there was left for them to pretend this was still theirs.
"Good... things are going as I planned... need to step it up and make everyone here guilty," Ryu thought.
Ryu continued to make his argument.
"Village isn't land," Ryu said. "It's people. The village is supposed to be a family, and its leadership should treat the people like their own children, not subjects. But you treated Naruto like a tool, a weapon to be used and thrown away."
"You all failed Naruto," he said.
Danzo had enough of this child's banter. He spoke up. "A ninja's life is to be a useful tool only, nothing more. A ninja that is not useful is no ninja at all."
Ryu looked at Danzo and saw no shame and only cold calculation.
Ryu thought, "This bastard... I need to make it personal... and make it hurt... He won't ever argue with me publicly."
"Naruto is not a ninja, not yet at least," Ryu said, "and neither are half of your recruits that do not end up in your ranks. So your argument is more useless than what you consider a useless tool."
This shocked everybody. No one expected Danzo to finally speak up and immediately lose an argument, especially not to a boy.
If the eyes could kill. Ryu stared back at the cold gaze Danzo was giving him. Ryu thought, "This is going to bite me in the future, but ... what the hell? There is no going back now. The Pandora's box is open already."
Ryu gave a smirk and continued, "No wonder my grandmother dumped you."
"Ohh boy," both Dan and Hiruzen thought at the same time.
That drew the first real change from the room. Not because the line was loud. Because it was precise and personal. Those who knew moved a few inches forward to again see the face of the boy, who has balls big enough to personally attack not once but twice. And not just that, but also attack his nonexistent love life.
Tsuki Hamura. It was a name buried deep only in the memory of the older generation. Only a handful of people knew the name in the entire village, and most of those were present in the room.
Ryu watched Danzo's face.
Nothing. No blink, no flinch, no tightening around the eyes. Just that flat, dead stillness — as if the insult had landed on stone and found no seam to enter.
"Brat," Koharu said, her voice edged thin with warning, "you are getting too personal now. You are walking on a very thin line."
Danzo's expression stayed composed, unreadable, and cold enough to make the room feel suddenly smaller around him. If anything, the stillness made the rest of them louder by contrast.
Ryu let a small pause settle in.
Then he went on.
"I always wondered what made my grandmother so special," Ryu said, "that your father went to such extreme lengths."
Ryu ignored Koharu like an idiot ignoring good advice. This made Koharu angrier than the one being attacked personally.
Ryu kept his eyes on Danzo while he spoke, because the next accusation was not for the room but just him.
"The two patriarchs arranged the union," Ryu said. "The Hamura patriarch and your old man. And when she slipped the noose, your father spent years quietly gutting my clan, thread by thread."
The air shifted, and people became tense. No one has ever done this before publicly and to the face, so fearlessly ... accuse Danzo.
Danzo remained perfectly still. He had been eating such accusations for lunch for most of his life.
Behind Ryu, Dan Hamura closed his eyes for a moment.
"It wasn't a simple rejection for him, was it?" Ryu then said. "Your father held that grudge to his grave just because things didn't go his way. But what did he actually lose? A bride for his son... or was there something more to it?"
That one landed. Danzo reacted. He opened his eye. That was all the reaction Ryu could muster after so many accusations.
Ryu had one more strike to make. He smiled at Danzo face-to-face.
"I always wondered, after hearing her story from Grandpa Dan," he said. "But when Aunty Tsunade taught me Senju-style taijutsu, I had an epiphany... she learnt it, didn't she? I mean my grandmother. She learnt Senju chakra control just by watching them, didn't she?"
Danzo's jaw set—a microscopic twitch that vanished a second later. The first genuine crack. Ryu had caught him entirely off guard.
"That was the only reason I could think of considering her proximity," Ryu said.
Natsurama Senju was half a step above his seat from surprise.
Those who didn't know were looking left and right, and those who knew, including Dan, when they heard Ryu's theory, were shaken to the core. They never thought this could be the reason.
What Ryu was saying between the lines was absolute: the Shimura patriarch hadn't just wanted a daughter-in-law to secure an alliance. He had wanted the prized Senju chakra control method, and Tsuki had been his way to get it. And she had refused him.
"Your old man wanted that chakra control for your clan," Ryu said and kept the edge of his voice flat. "Too bad my grandmother dumped you. If I were her, I'd have done the same. Who wants someone heartless?"
A few heads shifted — some still on Danzo, turning the accusation over in their heads, some already swinging to Ryu, wondering how a child had dug this deep.
That was the point. He wanted them looking at him when the sentence landed, because he wanted them to see his face as he said it. Ryu wanted to make it personal, and boy, did he make it personal. It was a royal roast. The jaws were still hanging open.
The chamber held its breath. Ryu could feel the people in it deciding whether to believe him.
Danzo did not help them decide. He looked neither shocked nor offended, just composed in the way of men who had long since decided that stillness was safer than truth.
That answer reached the room faster than any defence could.
Danzo's composition finally broke its silence — not with heat, but with a single flat line. "These are just your wild theories with no proof, boy," he said, unhurried. "Do not bring baseless accusations to this chamber under the influence of sentiment."
For a heartbeat, the council chamber did not know what to believe. Hiruzen's fingers stilled on the arm of his chair; this was surprising, even for him. He had been a hokage, but he could not think of this reason.
Good — the word was still burning when Ryu decided to push once more.
"Sentiment," Ryu repeated, letting the word echo in the vast room. "Maybe ... without proof, maybe; baseless, maybe. Now that everyone involved is dead, the truth may never be revealed, but I am still here. And I am challenging your decisions with proof... Proof that I am the rightful person to have custody of Naruto."
This caught everyone's attention.
Ryu continued, "And not just that, I am going to lay bare all your failures and prove to everyone here that you made a mistake and have been making them for as long as you have held power."
No one answered.
Of course they didn't. They were now trying to figure out who might be his next target.
The chamber had learned the shape of his attack by now. It knew he wasn't looking for a reply. He was stripping the room bare, one layer at a time.
He drew one slow breath and kept his eyes on the council floor.
A/N:
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