Naruto : Monsters: Chapter 74

And Hinata, was that why she had been so timid? Because she knew it was her fault that they took her mother away?

I would never know.

...

All I knew was that if any of my clanmates still held into any ideas of killing my mother, well, I knew of a room under a certain temple where a young boy could use some company.

Sasuke was probably getting lonely anyway.

"See?" Startled out of my thoughts, I looked up to find Danzo watching me with a satisfied look on his face. "After having implied that your own clan might have assassinated your mother had things gone differently, you didn't try to deny, didn't start wailing like a child that there was no way your family would ever do such a thing. 

Instead, you simply accepted the harsh truth you were faced with and began preparing plans on how to deal with it. I could almost see your mind as it began churning away plans and contingencies. I can tell, Hyuuga Hikara, that the only question lingering in your mind is not 'what should I do if they try to hurt my mother' but rather 'where should I hide the bodies'.

"It seems that I have chosen well," Danzo almost appeared to smile for a short instant before turning away and began to leave. "Do consider accepting my offer Hikaru, I believe you would do well in the shadows."

Then he was gone.

Walking out of the restaurant and into the dark streets outside.

And that would be the last I saw of Danzo for a long while.

...

I see. So that's how Danzo gets them.

He gives kids orders that they couldn't have refused anyway.

The night air was chilly as I made my way home, the streets empty, but I hardly noticed it, too engrossed in going over everything that had happened.

After Danzo had left I had waited for a solid twenty minutes before leaving myself, keeping track of him with my sight and making sure he was truly gone before stepping out into the street. Even then I hadn't turned off my Byakugan and kept a constant watch on my surroundings to make sure I wasn't being followed or walking into another ambush.

I wasn't, thankfully, but I had no intention of letting my guard down until I was safely tucked behind the compound walls, and maybe not even then.

Succeed – that was what he ordered me to do in my next mission. Something I would have done anyway even if hadn't ordered me to.

What else was I going to do to any mission the Hokage gives me but try and succeed? It's not as I would have wanted to fail a mission. By ordering me to do something that I was already going to do anyway, it gave the false impression that I was actually following his orders.

It was a tiny thing, but a crucial one.

In the young impressionable mind of a twelve-year-old, it was a stepping stop he could use to build his authority on. I had seen it happen many times in my old lifetime, how small things would quickly escalate to something big.

It reminded me of how some of the kids in my old high-school got involved with drugs after they started hanging out with the wrong crowd. The method the dealers used to lure them in was very similar to what Danzo was trying with me.

They started them off small, getting them to do some harmless chore or favour. Something simple, like delivering messages or maybe even a small package, and the kids would gladly do it, eager to please. 

Then they would start them selling. Usually, it wasn't something too illegal, like a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer. From there it wouldn't be too hard to upgrade to weed, another drug that's considered harmless by the general public, but it was one more step further into their grip. Then, before long, they find themselves neck-deep involved.

That's how they get you. Start with the small harmless things that didn't seem like a big deal, easing you in, steadily raising the stakes a little more at every step as you grew used to it. Little by little they would up the ante, too small for you to notice at the time but would slowly and steadily build up over time until one day you looked around yourself and wondered how you went from selling cigarettes to dealing cocaine.

That was what Danzo was trying to do to me, build up the habit of listening to his commands. It was an effective strategy against kids, and if I had really been twelve years old it may have even worked.

Then there was the little bomb Danzo dropped at the end.

Why had Danzo bothered telling me about my mother and the circumstances surrounding my birth? It wasn't to help me, that was for sure, not when the entire incident had been over and done with for years now.

No, the reason why Danzo had told me was to read my reactions. He wanted to see how I would react to the news, and perhaps more importantly, he wanted to know if I cared for Mio.

Normally that wouldn't have been a question, but with the psychiatric report he had on me it probably wasn't a given that I would care about my own mother like most children my age would have. So he dropped that little bomb on me to find out. And now that he knew, he had one more emotional leverage he could use against me like he had with Naruto.

He was probably already dreaming up ways he could use the information to manipulate me into becoming a mini-Danzo.

For all of his claims to the contrary, I didn't believe for a second that Danzo would be willing to let me go. Danzo wasn't the type of person who would take no for an answer. All his talk about free will was probably little more than that, talk. In his mind, it was less about giving me a choice or telling me the truth, and more about saying the things he thought I needed to hear to make me do what he wanted.

That was how men like him manipulate people, by telling people what they wanted to hear instead of what they needed.

What else was he lying about?

There was no way to really tell with someone like him, but if I had to guess I'd say almost everything he said was mostly true. He wouldn't have wanted me catching him on an outright lie and risk losing any trust he may have built with me - which was freaking none – so if I had to guess I'd say the majority of what he told me was properly true.

The trick was spotting the tiny lies he sprinkled in with the truth.

The one thing I was almost certainly positive he was lying about was letting the uninitiated Root members go. No matter how little they knew, they were far too much of a security risk. And Danzo didn't strike me as the type to allow such a security leak to exist when he could have just as easily silenced it with a single knife stroke to the throat. Most likely, he only gave them the illusion of choice, allowing those who refused to join Root to leave, only to send assassins after them.

Yes, that fits the image of Danzo far better.

He didn't earn his current reputation for being scared of getting his hands dirty. But it didn't matter whether Danzo had lied to me or not. What did matter was that Danzo tried to use Naruto and possibly my own mother to manipulate me into doing what he wanted.

Honestly, looking it over it was actually a good plan, and might have worked too if things had been a little different.

But Danzo, you made two critical mistakes.

First off, I'm not a kid. The plans you're using were designed with a young impressionable child in mind, not for someone like me who had lived for over five decades in total.

Then there was your second mistake-

I have no intention of becoming anyone's shadow.

I was going to become a God.

Danzo, you thought I would make a good replacement for you. Well, you're right, I probably would have made a great successor.

Let me show you just how much like you I can really be.

Now, how do I turn this around to my advantage?

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