Naruto : Monsters: Chapter 71

"You…" For once I found myself completely speechless, my mind unable to form a single cohesive thought and I was left gawking at the man with what might have been a mix of incredulity and reluctant awe.

How long had they been planning this?

...

"Konoha is spread thin," Danzo spoke on despite my incoherent state. "We have succeeded in maintaining the illusion of our dominance over the rest of the Hidden Villages, but the truth of the matter is we are hanging on by our fingernails. 

We had lost far too many good men to the Kyuubi, men we could ill afford to lose after the Third Shinobi War, and we only managed to survive this far by using every single available man, woman and even child we had left until we had no one left to spare. Even today, a full decade later, we are still haven't fully recovered to what we had once been. Our supply of experience Jonin is so small that it is a miracle we manage to spare any at all to train the new teams.

"In such a situation do you think we can afford to waste an asset like Hatake Kakashi as a Jonin Instructor?" Danzo asked, his tone making obvious of what he thought of the idea, "At a time when we can barely afford to spare a single man, why would we take our greatest Jonin out of active duty to train a group of children, no matter how potentially talented?"

"…because you believe the gains would outweigh the cost." Came my answer.

"Exactly," He nodded, satisfied I understood. "Currently Uzumaki is far from ready for handling any kind of responsibility, but given a few years to mature under the teachings of Hatake and that would soon change. Then there is the added benefit of how you too would flourish under his instruction. Taking into consideration, the potential long-term gains more than justifies the short-term loss of removing Hatake from the active roster."

"Do you really think that just by making Naruto Hokage, you can make me do whatever you want?" I tried to retort.

"Then, by all means, feel free to refuse my offer," Danzo answered dismissively. "As I have already said, I have no use for an unwilling successor. While you are the best choice I have available to me at the moment, you are not only one. If you refuse my offer I will simply select another."

And whoever he chooses will one day gain command over Root and become responsible for Naruto's safety. And, as hypocritical as it sounded, there was no way in Hell I would trust Naruto's safety to someone that Danzo of all people chose.

He had me.

How long had I been planning this? How many years had this been brewing in the background? Was it during my first year at the Academy when my talent had become publicly known and they saw how quickly I bonded with Naruto, was that when they started to devise a way to capitalize on it? Or did they just see an opportunity and decided to take advantage of it? It felt disorientating just thinking about it as if I was dancing to invisible strings all my life and I have only just begun to notice them.

For the second time since my reincarnation, ever since I found out about the hidden players behind the Uchiha Massacre, did I begin to feel out of my depths when it came to dealing with these damned ninjas.

"Loyalty can chain down any man. Where muscles and might can shatter steel and bend iron, it can do nothing to break free from the chains of the heart." Danzo spoke softly as he turned back towards the counter and picked up his chopsticks. 

"Once Hatake had finished training her, Uzumaki will make a fine Hokage. She has that spark that draws in people to her, it's still only an ember right now but one day it will flare like a bonfire. 

Hiruzen believes it to be so and, I admit, I may do as well. But any flame, no matter how bright it shines or fiercely it burns, could be puffed out. Which is why you will remain by her side as a shadow, bound there by your loyalty, protecting her from all those that seek to harm her. I am certain that you will keep her safe, just as I had done for Hiruzen."

"Are you sure you should be telling me all of this." I said, "Aren't you afraid I'd try to slip the leash you're trying to tie around my neck if you tell me how you're using my own loyalty to manipulate me."

"No," Danzo stated as he began taking small methodical bites from his meal, which had probably gone cold by now. "The truth can be an insidious thing at times, it holds you at bay better than any lie. A pretty lie can be broken but the truth will always hold true. That is what makes the Root strong."

I frowned, not understanding what he was getting at, and it must have shown on my face because Danzo elaborated.

"Look around you," he commanded, still focusing on his food though he didn't seem to be enjoying it any more than I had as far as I could tell, "how many of my men do you see?"

With my Byakugan still active, I didn't even need to shift my head to see but I still had trouble answering him. A quick count told me that, if you included the children, there were over a hundred Root members in the restaurant alone but there were more people loitering outside. The problem was that I had no idea if they were Root or just ordinary civilians.

They were acting so naturally – a couple making out in an alleyway, an elderly lady out for a late-night stroll with her dog, a staggering drunk trying and failing to make his way back home – that I had no way of telling if they were Root or not.

I decided to ignore the people outside and just stick to the ones inside. "A hundred and four."

"This is only little more than half of the number I have stationed in Konoha. In total, including the non-combatants, there are eleven hundred Root members scattered throughout the Elemental Nations." Danzo said casually as if he hadn't rattled a number that vastly outstripped the size of my own clan. "And all of them serve me willingly."

"How?" I asked, unable to guess how he managed to gather so many men under his command. He couldn't have kidnapped and brainwashed that many, could he?

"I saved them," Danzo answered.

"From what?"

"War," He said, "starvation, abusive parents, child-slavery, prostitution. Take your pick. Wherever you go you'd always find people suffering, even in the greatest of cities you'd find them if you care to look. 

Peel away the pretty exterior that the world tries to show, look beneath the surface and there they'll be, clinging to life in the dirt from where they had been tossed away, surviving in the fringes of society, on the outskirts of a world that does not want them. Unwanted and unseen, suffering even as the people around them happily live their lives blissfully unaware, and perhaps even willingly ignorant of their pain.

"They despise the life they had been given, even as they desperately cling to it, refusing to die, refusing to accept that they were born into this world with no greater purpose than to just suffer and perish.

"I find them. The war orphans starving in the streets, the children suffering under a drunken father's fists, the slave victims of sex-traffickers whose souls were every bit as broken and battered as their bodies, I find them all, gather them together and give them a purpose greater than just suffering and death. 

I feed them, teach them their letters and numbers, how to fight, how to think, I put their minds and body back together and help them learn how to be strong. 

You would not believe the devotion they give just for that; just a belly full of food and a little bit of kindness when others have shown them none and a child would happily bleed for your approval. Then when they are deemed ready, both physically and mentally, I administer them the final test."

To kill their brother – that was the Root's final examination, to kill a fellow Root member who had been raised by their side throughout their training as siblings. It was what Sai had been forced to do, to kill the person he loved more than anyone else in the world, only after he did that could he be fully initiated into Root.

At least, that's what I thought until Danzo proved otherwise.

"I show them their homes."

"…You what?" I asked, confused in more ways than one.

"I let them see their old homes. I take them back to the cities or villages where I found them and I let them see what has become of the people they had left behind. Their old friends, their abusers and tormentors, the others who had starved and suffered alongside them that I had chosen not to save, I show them what had become of them. It is rarely a pretty sight. 

Sometimes there was nothing to go back to but burned husks of ruins and shallow graves. Once they see with their own two eyes what their fates would have been had I not stepped into their lives, I give them a choice: Leave or stay."

"You let them go?" I managed to ask through my steadily growing shock.

======================

If you want to support me, Or just read ahead of the public release, you can check my p atreon :

 p atreon.com/sybife