That was in the best interest of everyone in the village and Kakashi knew it. It was why he was entertaining such thoughts. After all, letting Danzo become the Hokage was akin to spitting on the grave of every other Hokage before him.
'Can I even kill him now?'
It was different before when there was only ROOT supporting him, now even if Kakashi didn't want people to and even if it felt wrong to him and to them, most of the village would support the Hokage now.
Kakashi sighed deeply and after a little more time mucking things up in his mind, he lay down on the bed to fall asleep.
Kakashi didn't get to sleep peacefully that night however.
The nightmares that had stopped some time earlier after saving Haruto had returned.
And they returned with full force.
Kakashi watched himself stab Rin about a hundred times that night.
For some reason he couldn't break out of the dreams, a strange force of regret and despair forced him to watch the occurrence again, and again, and again, non stop on repeat.
When Kakashi finally broke out of the loop, he woke up drenched, his pillow wet from his sweat and his blanket uncomfortably hot.
"What the hell was that…" Kakashi groaned as he wiped the sweat off his forehead.
Unlike most dreams he remembered this one peculiarly vividly.
"Why were my eyes like that in the dream…"
Kakashi touched his sharingan and pondered for a moment.
'Mangekyou Sharingan?'
Minato had told him about that before but it was a little hard to believe.
'Did I awaken it on that night?'
Kakashi wasted little time in trying to test it out.
He walked up to the bathroom mirror and focused chakra towards his left eye, letting it flow unhindered unlike the usual where he kept the chakra flow to an absolute minimum.
Kakashi stared at the three tomoe sharingan unblinkingly, waiting for it to transform or do something only-
'Nothing happened?'
'....it was only a dream after all…'
'It was my fault for taking it so seriously.'
Kakashi was about to step out of the bathroom when he paused.
A thought struck him in that moment that he couldn't get rid from his mind.
'I remember Minato sensei explaining to me that the Sharingan's evolution was tied to emotions…'
'What happens if I pour spiritually enhanced chakra into the sharingan…'
Kakashi at the gate of his bathroom generated some spiritually enhanced chakra in his chakra circulation system and dragged it towards his left eye effortlessly.
He felt nothing.
And just as his hopes were going to be dashed, Kakashi looked at the mirror.
His body froze as did his mind for a second. It was only after a drop of water dripped from the leaky pipes in the bathroom that he broke out of his shock and surprise.
'A Mangekyou sharingan…'
'I really did awaken it that day…'
Kakashi gulped dryly before quietly walking up to the wash basin and staring at every detail of his left eye. The black pinwheel design on his red eyeball caught his attention first and the vibrant detail he could see using this newly enhanced eye grabbed his attention next.
The magnification was to such a degree that he could even see the microbes in the air. It was as if a microscope were stuck to his head.
'I can still feel something from this new eye…'
'It feels like pouring in a little bit more chakra will activate something trapped inside it.'
'I wonder if that is the true ability of this Mangekyou sharingan.'
Kakashi looked around his bathroom but decided not to test out whatever ability he could awaken from his eye inside his house.
He would go to a secluded training ground or to the forest of death during the day and test out his ability there instead.
For now, Kakashi felt spent, since even keeping the mangekyou sharingan active took a lot of chakra from him. He quickly deactivated the mangekyou sharingan and went to take a quick shower to wash off the sweat.
Only, as soon as Kakashi came back to his room to wear fresh clothes, he spotted a simple paper on his bedside desk.
Kakashi instantly went on alert.
His instincts sharpened to their limits and his body tensed in preparation of an attack. He used his sharingan to instantly detect anything amiss.
But when after about a minute of thick tension, Kakashi sensed no one nearby and did not find anything out of place in his house other than the piece of paper on the table by his bedside, he felt confused.
'How did they get past my sensory range?'
'My sensory range was still active while I was showering…'
Kakashi frowned in thought until he remembered something similar happening earlier.
'Was it the Uchiha who attacked me before?'
'He too vanished like this…'
Kakashi pulled out a kunai and slowly inched towards the piece of paper on the table.
When he didn't detect any traps, he flipped the piece of paper using the kunai, afraid of getting poison on his hands.
Kakashi's eyes fell on the writing on the paper and he instantly became stunned.
'Protect Haruto Hayashi.'
'Huh?'
***
"This is not good Danzo!" Homura tried to argue but Danzo sat there like a stone faced block. He looked at Danzo with an infuriated glare, but Danzo just sat there on the Hokage seat with his eyes jaded as if whatever Homura was saying fell on deaf ears.
Seeing no response from Danzo, Koharu finally stepped in.
"Danzo, forcibly conscripting children to learn from the professionals while they should be in the academy will only lead to children dying on missions. Nothing good will come of it, it will only burn your good will with the clans. Your standing is already on thin ice with them right now, any more and it'll risk your seat as the Hokage."
That finally seemed to get a reaction out of Danzo so he looked at Koharu with a furious glare before speaking harshly, "The leaf village needs geniuses right now. Hiruzen just died and there are no more top level fighters in the village. Thin ice with the clans? What clans will exist if the Village hidden in the leaves won't itself!?"
Koharu shrank under Danzo's firm stance.
But Danzo apparently hadn't finished ranting, "I'd reminded Hiruzen again and again to train the Jinchuriki from a young age! If he had, we could at least use him as a deterrent against the other villages right now! But now we literally have only a handful of useful Jonin in the village who might be able to step up in a war. No minato, no Tsunade, no Sakumo, no geniuses!! They're all gone! Whatever I'm doing is for the village! Why can't you understand that!?"
"But Danzo, if you only get more children killed before they even become genin, what good will that do to the quantity of our forces?" Homura tried to support Koharu logically.
"Oh spare me the bull crap!! We have genin for ages!! We have nearly twice the number of genin in our village than all the other villages combined! What we need now is cream! If we can't generate cream by putting our children through the grinders, then we better turn over like dogs and show all the other villages our bellies in the next year to come!!"
"But Danzo… Sensei taught us-"
"Sensei taught us when the times were different!" Danzo argued, "During his time the village didn't have the burden of feeding nearly twenty thousand genin every single day with missions! Do you guys think missions grow on trees?! If we can't show the Daimyo that we have capable shinobi on our side, even the missions will dry out by the end of the year! And then when the Uchiha attack the village what then!? Will you lay your lives down to protect babies still wetting their pants at the mention of danger?!"
***
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