A/N Beta'd by Bob Saget who once fought 100 duck sized horses, but has yet to fight a horse sized duck.



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Interlude: Shimura Danzo



As Danzo climbed the last of the steps to the Hokage’s office, his thoughts ran in slow circles. Squad 5 would need backup if the intelligence from squad 14 was accurate. Agent 37 was closest, the message was already on its way. Now there was just the waiting. There was always the waiting. That endlessly stretched moment between choice and result, cause and effect. He disliked waiting. The tap… tap… tap... of his cane as he rounded the corner to the Hokage’s office was just another reminder of the time he had to waste traveling so very slowly for the sake of secrecy. Patience was vital to a shinobi, but that did not make it pleasant. Maybe this meeting would take his mind off of it. Hiruzen had sent a messenger, apparently he needed his expert opinion on a delicate matter after the general jounin meeting.



Just like so many times before.



His spies had not been able to tell him what that matter was. A less frequent occurrence, but not abnormal.



The schedule for a general meeting of the jounin currently in Konoha was a closely guarded secret, it would not do for anyone to know ahead of time where they would be, and more importantly where they would not be. After all, the people in this room comprised a majority of the total combat strength of what was - finally, and after so much work - once again the strongest nation on the continent. Each were demigods amongst men, titans with the power to destroy dozens of lesser fighters, between them they could wipe lesser villages off of the map and only a tenuous system of ever-shifting alliances and counterweights kept this from happening.



… From happening again.



Danzo remembered well the lesson of Uzushigakure. Even the strongest of allies were useless if they did not arrive in time to make a difference, and most alliances were weak as cobwebs in the breeze. Where were Sand when the strongest crop of Konoha shinobi in decades were cut down by the Kyuubi? Three days away. By the time they’d been told of the threat, it was already too late. Where was Konoha when Uzu was destroyed in a single night? Sleeping soundly, unaware. No, the only way forwards was for Konoha to be strongest, and if that was accomplished by keeping others too weak to challenge them, so be it.



At the head of the table was the man known as the God of Shinobi. Danzo wondered for the hundredth time how many outside this room actually believed the grandfatherly act he had chosen. So few these days had seen him fight - had seen him kill. Danzo headed forwards, to take his place by his old teammate’s side. He had timed his arrival carefully and arrived just on time, so that it appeared that the meeting waited for him before starting. It was a simple thing, but many simple things added together could be powerful indeed.



Sarutobi looked across the room, just as he always did. He took his pipe from his mouth, just as he always did. Then he stood from his desk and turned to Danzo, this was not as he always did.



Sarutobi’s eyes latched onto his face. Searching, searching. What were they searching for? “Shimura Danzo.” His voice was cool and steady, conspicuously leaving off his title. He took a deep breath, and let it out. “As you were informed earlier, Shimura Danzo was called here under false pretences. The actual reason for this meeting is as follows: we have received intelligence implicating him in bloodline theft. Specifically, that you have had a byakugan implanted into your right eye socket.” The gathered shinobi were all facing him, and for the first time in a long while he considered how menacing it was to face an entire room of angry jounin.



Danzo’s whole body tensed, his heart raced, his mind whirled. Who talked? Who talked? Who figured it out? It couldn’t have been Orochimaru, he knew that it was no byakugan behind those bandages. Whoever it was had to have incomplete information, but it was still deadly to him all the same. Finding him innocent of having a byakugan but guilty of having a sharingan was no less deadly. No matter, going forwards was the important thing. He needed an out, a way out, an angle, an edge, a corner, anything. His mouth started, a practiced lie on his lips while his mind kept working. “I lost this eye defending Konoha from Rock shinobi, as well you know. I do not appreciate this obvious attempt to sow discord amongst the ranks, where does this ‘intelligence’ even-”



“I know you do not like to show off your injuries, old friend.” Sarutobi continued inexorably. “You won’t have to show it to all of us, just me.”



An angle! A ray of light and a way out all at once! Their incomplete intelligence had given him a way, they thought he had only a byakugan, they did not know he had the one tool that would allow him to perfectly escape this situation. He made a show of considering as Hiruzen walked to the back of the room before appearing to agree reluctantly. He would need to turn his back on the jounin, which prickled at his instincts, but it was the only way to stop the others from seeing. He could only use his ultimate genjutsu on one person a day, and that one person would have to be Sarutobi. He had never dared use it on him before in case he somehow had a countermeasure or a way of checking for altered memories, but it was the only way. A forced move. Fortunately the room was blessedly free of dedicated sensor jounin who could detect the small chakra flare.



Danzo turned to Sarutobi, his old friend, and slowly reached up to the bandages covering his eye. Meanwhile he prepared the exact deception he planned on using, that of a completely ordinary empty eye socket. His timing would need to exact, he opened the specially treated bandages at precisely the moment that the dart of chakra shot from the centre of his eye to the centre of Sarutobi’s.



Who popped like a punctured balloon.



Leaving only smoke.



The walls came down, metaphorically and also physically. The walls to the side sunk into the floor at the bidding of earth users. There were the sensors, there was the carefully chosen team of shinobi with the exact abilities needed to counter his own, there was the true Sarutobi. His expression was heartbroken as he shook his head. “I had hoped…” He trailed off then fixed Danzo with a look. His voice was raw and shaking. “Shimura Danzo, you are under arrest for bloodline theft, desecrating the corpse of a former Hokage, treason and other crimes still to be determined. Surrender and you may still be of some use to our village. Surrender, or die.”



For a long moment Danzo stood there, weighing his choices. In the end though, there was only one choice. The same choice he had always made. “I will not weaken this village by cutting short the lives of its strongest defenders in a vain attempt to escape.” He sighed heavily, then straightened, eyes staring fixedly at the wall ahead of him, not deigning to look at the combined forces to his back and sides. “All I did, I did for Konoha.”



“Take him.”