"So the Raikage launched a final offensive."
Danzo removed the blindfold as he said it. The three-tomoe Sharingan opened in his right eye, sharp and red, drawing the attention of both men flanking him. Orochimaru on his left. Aburame Tatsuma on his right.
"He learned of our truce with Iwagakure," Tatsuma said. His voice carried the measured quality of a man who processed information before speaking rather than while speaking. "Before the war's conclusion forced his hand, he decided to clean up the battlefield on his own terms. Force Konoha into signing equivalent terms with Kumogakure through pressure rather than negotiation."
He was Danzo's most reliable instrument. Not brilliant in the way the Nara clan produced brilliance, that particular cold genius that saw twenty moves ahead without apparent effort. But Tatsuma's analysis was sound and his execution was without flaw, which in practical terms was worth more than brilliance that arrived late.
"If that is his intent, then our plans regarding the Land of Water are under immediate threat," Orochimaru said. He had been in good spirits moments ago, the arrangement with Yamato still sitting warmly in whatever part of him registered satisfaction. The news from the Lightning Country front had soured that quickly. His expression carried the specific displeasure of someone whose schedule had been disrupted by someone else's incompetence. "That idiot Jiraiya cannot even manage something this straightforward."
Tatsuma's lips moved slightly, the beginning of an objection. He reconsidered.
Orochimaru's victories on the Earth Country front had been extraordinary. His methods had been costly in ways Konoha's shinobi still had not fully forgiven, but the results had been undeniable. Measured purely by outcome, his assessment of other shinobi carried some basis.
And if one were choosing between fighting the Third Raikage and fighting Ōnoki of the Dust Release, most shinobi would choose the Raikage without hesitation. At least the Raikage's techniques operated within a framework that could be understood, analyzed, countered in theory if not always in practice. The Dust Release reduced its targets to molecular components. There was no counter to that. There was only not being where it landed.
"Jiraiya-sama held the Third Raikage for at least half an hour," Tatsuma said. "The army had time to retreat."
Danzo was reading the combat report the encrypters had forwarded. He let their exchange continue around him and read.
...........
March 2nd, year 47 from Konoha's founding. The Third Raikage, leading his personal guard, has broken through Jiraiya's Hermit Mode defense. The Lightning Country front has collapsed. Kumogakure forces are advancing. Shinobi designations "A" and "B" of Kumogakure are confirmed in pursuit. Namikaze Minato has arrived and is currently holding the line. Situation is critical. Requesting Hokage's immediate decision.
Danzo set the scroll down.
"This is where Hiruzen's caution leads." He kept his voice in the register the original had used for this particular grievance, indignation sitting in his eyes at the right depth. "He delays, he negotiates, he softens every edge until the edges stop working."
"An order from Hokage-sama will come shortly," Tatsuma said. His tone carried the particular quality of a man whose first instinct was always toward solving the problem rather than assigning its blame. "You are Konoha's strongest Wind Release user, Danzo-sama. He will call on you."
"Tell him I have not yet recovered from the wounds sustained in my last engagement with the Raikage," Danzo said. "Decline on those grounds."
Orochimaru's smile was contemptuous and immediate.
Tatsuma's reaction was more careful. He knew his master's character well enough to recognize that arguing would accomplish nothing, and set his objection aside without expressing it.
...........
"This is actually a significant opportunity," Orochimaru said, the contempt shifting into something more calculating. "The Third Raikage is a perfect opponent for a true test. You could use the situation to verify whether Tsuki-no-Kagami is as invincible as you believe."
"That day will come," Danzo said. "Not now."
The first piece placed on a board was always expendable. That was the nature of opening moves. Danzo had no particular feeling about Konoha's survival as a matter of loyalty, but he could not pretend the organization called Root was not one of the most significant advantages he currently possessed. Losing it through unnecessary exposure was not acceptable. Without extreme necessity, he had no intention of revealing the full scope of what he had become.
And there was further to go yet, if the conditions could be arranged. The Hokage's seat carried voice in this world in ways that purely private power did not. That had been the original's obsession, and obsession it had remained, but it was not without logic.
Those were considerations for later.
"Besides," Orochimaru added, his tone lightening into something that carried genuine amusement beneath the surface, "this is a fine opportunity to observe Jiraiya's situation from a comfortable distance. He spent years claiming Hermit Mode made him essentially invincible. He has now been defeated in it twice. His relationship with accuracy has always been flexible."
Danzo heard this and noted something unexpected.
Beneath the mockery, the affection was present. Orochimaru had not entirely severed his connection to his teacher's lineage, no matter how far he had moved from it. The Will of Fire, which Sarutobi Hiruzen had spent decades cultivating in his students, had left traces even in the one who had walked furthest from the fire.
A student of the Third always remained a student of the Third in some residual way. That was worth remembering.
...........
"Directly refusing the Hokage's summons will damage my standing in the village," Danzo said. "When Hiruzen sends the formal request, you will lead a Root squad to the Lightning Country front in my place." He looked at Orochimaru steadily. "Combined with Jiraiya and Minato, your strength is more than sufficient to halt Kumogakure's advance, even if defeating the Raikage outright is beyond the engagement's scope."
Orochimaru shook his head without particular urgency.
"Why should the welfare of that fool concern me? The time would be better spent on additional Living Corpse Reincarnation trials. Furthermore, a truce has been in effect with the Wind Country for some time. Tsunade is available. Jiraiya sustained serious injuries from the Raikage." He paused. "Send her. Her medical ninjutsu on the battlefield would restore morale more effectively than my presence anyway."
Princess Tsunade's recent years had not been without their difficulties. The wars had cost her things she had not fully processed. But her medical ninjutsu remained without equal in the shinobi world, and Orochimaru's assessment of her battlefield value was accurate enough to be inconvenient.
"As you wish." Danzo turned to Tatsuma. "You will take Orochimaru's position. Prepare your unit for deployment."
He issued the final order and then, deliberately, let the Sharingan fade. The red drained from his eye slowly, the tomoe losing their sharp edges, the power withdrawing back beneath the surface until his pupil returned to its ordinary black.
...........
The silence that followed lasted only a moment.
"You already have complete control over Mangekyō Sharingan?"
Orochimaru's voice carried genuine surprise for the first time in the conversation, the particular quality of someone recalibrating a timeline they had constructed with confidence.
"Orochimaru." Danzo's voice was quiet and without particular emphasis, which somehow made it carry further. "Do not mistake reaching a high level for having seen the ceiling of those above you. Both Hiruzen and I are considerably stronger than your current models account for."
He did not elaborate on the specifics.
The truth was straightforward enough. His position granted access to every significant document in Konoha's archives, including the restricted categories. He had spent the adjustment period not simply getting accustomed to the aging body but comprehending the fundamental nature of chakra from the inside, mapping it against everything he had known in the Tao World and finding the correspondences and the gaps. He had absorbed the original Danzo's Wind Release mastery and then, using training records accumulated across generations of Konoha jonin, had extended his understanding to Water, Fire, Earth, and Yin.
Lightning and Yang remained outside his current reach.
But with Mangekyō Sharingan, he felt the distance between himself and even Konoha's strongest had narrowed past the point where the comparison made him cautious.
"I have always felt genuine reverence for both you and my teacher," Orochimaru said, his smile carrying more layers than it showed.
Then he dissolved into a puddle of pale mucus and was gone, the surface rippling once before going still.
The Root headquarters settled back into its usual silence. Iron and shadow and the faint distant sound of children training in the field below, blades moving through forms that had been passed down from the Second Hokage through Danzo's hands and into theirs.
Tatsuma stood at his post and waited for orders, the way he always did.
...........
The Land of Lightning.
A golden flash crossed the battlefield with the particular speed that had given its user his reputation, resolving into the shape of Namikaze Minato arriving behind the Third Raikage with a special kunai already in motion.
The Rasengan had landed on the enormous man's chest a moment earlier. It had left a thin trace of smoke.
The kunai, filled with Wind Release chakra and distorting the air around its edge in the way that marked Minato's most refined work, drew a shallow red line across the back of the Raikage's neck.
Then Minato was elsewhere, moving again on the marker tag before the counterattack fully committed, and he looked at the kunai in his hand with an expression that mixed professional frustration with something closer to genuine disbelief.
The blade had cracked from the rebound of the Lightning Armor.
"What a problem." He turned the cracked kunai over once. "I consider myself a Wind Release master. But is the gap between my level and Danzo's really that significant?"
The Raikage turned toward him with the unhurried patience of someone for whom speed had long since stopped being a limiting factor, and the white lightning wrapped tighter around his body in the way it did when he was deciding to stop holding back.