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Danzō remembered the burn of Hiruzen's ninjutsu the last time they had fought. He also recalled the many times he had been hit by powerful jutsu, but nothing compared to Gai's foot hitting his face.
His skull instantly caved in, and that was only the start. That same boot snapped his neck, leaving behind a severed spinal cord, cracked bones, and torn muscles. The damage extended to his shoulders The kick was angled such that instead of flying away, Danzō slammed into the ground, shattering his ribcage and causing the bones to break and stab out of the skin.
The ground beneath caved as easily as his ribs had. He couldn't breathe. The nerves from his brain that commanded his lungs to breathe were damaged; not that it mattered—his lungs were punctured in multiple spots.
Danzō was dying. His fingers, bound in hand seals, loosened as he lost strength and focus. A cold darkness took hold of his body and vision. Gai didn't let his guard down, but there was a deep frown on his face. Two long and consecutive Morning Peacocks were tough on his body. Once he relaxed, he'd likely be in for a world of pain.
"Are you finally dead, Lord Danzō—!"
Danzō's body disappeared as though he had been a mirage all along. Gai's honed instincts screeched at him as a hand laid itself upon his shoulder.
"Yes, I died, but then I came back," Danzō said, standing behind him. All his gruesome injuries had vanished like an illusion.
Gai's green aura flared as he whipped around, only for his body to refuse his command, suddenly bound in paralysis.
"Juinjutsu: Self-Cursing Seal," Danzō recited, and thick, burning red seals spread all over Gai's body before they solidified into black.
"What—"
"You are strong, Jōnin Gai. Worthy of being a proud shinobi of the Hidden Leaf."
Danzō gazed at the back of the man whose chakra was so violent that any normal genjutsu was useless against him. What was a genjutsu? It was applying an illusion to a person's senses, causing them to experience things that were not real. Even the legendary Kotoamatsukami, a genjutsu so vivid that it could only be perceived as reality, was, at its core, the same as every other genjutsu.
But what if there was a genjutsu that didn't target people? Instead, it deceived the world by applying an illusion to reality itself, allowing the deceiver to control what was real or not.
Izanagi
The forbidden Uchiha genjutsu sacrificed the light of their prized dōjutsu, but in return, it allowed them to cheat death itself. It was branded as kinjutsu, and any Uchiha who dared to use it was deemed a traitor as they blinded their Sharingan.
Danzō didn't hang around and instantly backed away because he knew that now that he had used Izanagi, he didn't have much time. He had sacrificed Shisui's eye, putting Kotoamatsukami forever out of his reach. He had only transplanted the eye less than a day ago; he wasn't even sure it was going to work. The least he could do now that the jutsu had worked was to secure his life.
Binding Gai wasn't enough because he wasn't the only source of danger. Danzō bit his thumb to draw blood, weaved hand seals, and slapped a jutsu formula onto the air.
Summoning Jutsu: Nightmare-Eater Baku
"Kill him, Baku," Danzō said as he ran away.
The ginormous cloud of summoned smoke split apart as a gigantic elephantine chimaera charged forth. It was predominantly dark-orange in colour, except for its trunk, legs, and the markings around its eyes. Baku had striped feet—reminiscent of a tiger—huge tusks, sharp claws, and what looked to be a beard.
It was a creature of legends.
The tapir trumpeted like an elephant as it released white smoke from its trunk. The ground cracked under the monster's feet as it charged on Gai, who was helpless to move
"What's behind me?!" Gai called out, unable to even turn his neck.
The crushing blow never came as a massive palm struck Baku from the side, sending the tapir chimaera flying. Danzō looked back, irritated as Akimichi Chōza slammed his giant palm—the result of the Partial Multi-Size Jutsu—into Baku's side.
Backup had arrived and his chances of escape were dwindling. If that wasn't bad enough, Danzō could once again hear those damnable repeated explosions, which could only mean one thing. He looked up in the air and didn't see anything, only for the ground to shake as Gai landed in front of him. The binding juinjutsu had been broken by an extremely strong release of chakra—something possible because of the violently flowing Eight Gates chakra within the man.
Danzō didn't have a chance as Gai's fist met his face with a similar monstrous force.
Gai's eye twitched as Danzō disappeared. One moment, he felt orbital bones cracking under his knuckles; the next, he was swinging through the air.
"Again?" he said, turning around to see Danzō running away.
He turned to give chase, only to find himself reeled in by a powerful vacuum. Gai frowned at the suction from Baku's trunk, strong enough that even kicking against the air wasn't enough to escape its pull.
Gai could escape, but it would require an amount of exertion that might leave him in a delicate condition. Danzō had somehow survived two of his attacks, but maybe another Morning Peacock would do the trick. But that would be the end of it; he wouldn't be able to use his arms without a major risk of fracturing them. It wouldn't have come to this if he had some time between his consecutive Morning Peacocks, but using his special move multiple times so close to each other had put too much stress on his arms.
"I'm lacking conditioning," Gai said, breathing in to ready himself.
If his arms were out of the equation, then he would just continue fighting with his legs.
But then, the suction suddenly disappeared. Gai turned around to see Chōza, who had been flung away, swatting Baku with his super-sized staff in equally super-sized hands. The beast trumpeted and fell to one knee with a furious look in its eye as it focused exclusively on Chōza.
"Go, Gai!" Chōza shouted.
Once again, Danzō found Gai right above him. Unlike the previous two Morning Peacocks, the barrage of punches was delivered directly to Danzō.
Gai blinked. The strange phenomenon had happened once more. Just when he had inflicted lethal damage upon Danzō, the man disappeared. He stopped punching, and as he expected, felt a tremendous strain and fatigue in his arms and shoulders and even some in his torso.
Suddenly, a great amount of opaque smoke erupted in increasingly larger concentric circular waves, clouding the entire region. A couple of hundred metres away, a completely uninjured Danzō ran through the smoke towards the undamaged forest. His right eye was shut, and the light in his Sharingan had completely vanished. The protection of Izanagi had passed. He felt a deep regret. His best avenue for gaining control over the Hidden Leaf, which he paid with the blood of some of his best talent, was now gone.
After today, ROOT would be a shadow of its past. He was once again further from his objective, but had to escape so he could live to plan another day.
However, just then, Danzō heard the chirping of a thousand birds. He whipped his head around, but the smokescreen blocked his vision as much as it did his enemies'. Hatake Kakashi was nearby. Danzō immediately weaved hand seals, but it was too late as the chirping grew all the more louder until it was right behind him. He neither had the time to complete his ninjutsu, nor the chance to turn around to defend himself.
Kakashi's arm, spearheaded by his Chidori, pierced right through his heart from his back.
Danzō looked down at the palm crackling with blue lightning sticking out of his body. If it had been only a few seconds ago, he could have made the injury go away like an illusion, bending reality to his will, and yet, he was helpless now.
If only he could have possessed more Sharingan.
"You knew about Izanagi," Danzō said, blood spilling out from the corner of his mouth. Even the First Hokage's cells couldn't help him recover from this injury.
"Izanagi? I can't say I do," Kakashi replied, pulling his arm out. "I don't know how you did it, but my guess was that it had to do with the Sharingan. Your eye gradually closed through the course of the last minute. I didn't see any clear injury—even though you got your skull bashed in—so it had to be something, because I don't believe you'd be foolish enough to impair Shisui's Sharingan facing Gai."
"You have always been smart," Danzō whispered, his body growing cold. "… In the end, I couldn't become the Hokage, eh, Hiruzen?"
Danzō looked back at his life and what shape it had taken.
While Hiruzen was a tree leaf upon which light shone, he was nothing but a foundation hidden in darkness. He was jealous; he wanted to be that shining leaf as well. Perhaps he knew that it would never come true, so he accepted his role in the darkness, made something out of it, serving the village from the shadows. However, in the end, despite the enormous scope of his work, he couldn't accept it and still wanted to be the shining leaf.
In the end, he had failed to catch up to the man who always ran in front of him—the man he once called his closest friend. A part of him simply wanted to stand on the same stage.
"Any last words?" Kakashi asked.
Even in his current state, Danzō could kill Kakashiwith a sacrificial juinjutsu, but that would only harm the Hidden Leaf. He had already caused too much damage. His ROOT jōnin would have been assets to the village, but Danzō could only assume that at least some of them would be dead by the end of the day.
The same could be said for the jōnin on the Leaf's side.
He turned to look at Kakashi standing behind him; the young prodigy had grown into a fine young man in the blink of an eye. He thought of Might Gai and his monstrous might; if the Sixth Gate was so terrifyingly powerful, then he could only wonder how strong the Seventh Gate would be. He even recalled the few seconds he had seen the Akimichi clan head, who had come at the last moment; Chōza had been capable and reliable since his youth.
The Hidden Leaf was in safe hands.
"Tell Hiruzen to step down. Allow the next generation to take over," Danzō said, his breathing so laboured that the death rattle became audible.
Danzō lost all strength, and his body fell. Kakashi steadied him as he fell, gently resting his body on the ground.
"Tell Hiruzen to bury me in the village… hide it from my clan and everyone else," Danzō continued. The pain was slowly disappearing; his end was nearing. If the Shimura clan knew that his body had survived, they would be obligated to bury him in their clan's burial grounds; such were clan ties, even if it would bring them trouble.
"Tell him to plant a sapling over my grave; let it use me to grow… i-into a… mighty… tree."
And with that, Shimura Danzō, the Shinobi of Darkness, closed his eyes forever.
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