Everyone stood frozen in their spots.
They couldn't believe their ears.
"What?" Someone finally said with disbelief.
Danzo looked at the person who asked that question and calmly repeated himself, "From today, effective immediately, you are to take up an able ninja student on your missions along with yourselves."
A growing sense of dissent began to rise among all the Jonin present but Shikaku was the first to speak. Even though this act brought the spotlight on him and gave him a troublesome task, he had to do it! He was the only one who could be calm and level headed in a situation like this. Better him asking a question than some hot headed shinobi who couldn't keep his brains from leaking from his ears.
"Hokage-sama… you mean to say we must accept a candidate among the many Chunin of our village? Correct?"
The purpose of this question was two fold, one was to tell Danzo that no one was happy with his previous statement, and the second was to give him a way out of all this mess.
But Danzo only smirked.
Shikaku suddenly had a bad feeling.
"No. I meant any able bodied child in the village that has yet to graduate from the academy."
The words sent a deathly still silence across the room.
And before the room could explode, Danzo observed them quietly before adding sharply.
"If you're not interested in a child, that child will automatically be taken by the ANBU."
Shikaku's eyes widened.
Danzo was threatening clan kids.
If they didn't sire their children well then Danzo would take them like the bogey man they used to scare their kids with to go to sleep during the night.
"Could you please reconside-" Shikaku opened his mouth but before he could even finish Danzo spoke over him.
"The Jonin commander will be changed to Fu Yamanaka from today, effective immediately."
Everyone's gaze froze.
No one knew who Fu Yamanaka was, but they all realised what it meant at the same time.
'A ROOT shinobi…'
Someone who'd lived their entire lives in the darkness and filth that Danzo wallowed in like a pig in mud.
Everyone's gaze slowly shifted towards Shikaku, their current Jonin Commander, they all held a look of either disbelief of rebellion in their eyes but Shikaku quietly shook his head indicating them not to take any action.
Danzo wasn't a man who'd move recklessly.
If he was so openly showing hostility towards the village, it meant he'd already employed certain safety precautions against them to be activated if needed.
A few people like Kakashi had realised that far.
But Shikaku's mind took things a step further.
'There's only one thing that could stop us at this moment…' Shikaku's pupils trembled. 'Our kids… he's done something to them…'
'What did he do!?'
Shikaku's eyes rapidly spun around the room, bouncing from one corner to another until they landed on one particular ANBU member with his finger outstretched in front of his mask.
Curiously there was an insect on that finger.
An insect.
Suddenly an old information that he'd long buried in his mind arose into his cognition.
Jubakuchu, the curse binding insect of the Aburame clan.
An insect that could burrow itself into any body seamlessly and wrap tightly around the heart of the host. If ordered at any point in time, it released a strong poison that stopped the heart instantly.
Shikaku's eyes met Danzo's as Danzo's smirk widened.
'He did not!' Shikaku tried to console himself, but looking at the confident gaze with which Danzo was practically daring him to step out of the line he feared for his son, Shikamaru.
Finally after a long battle within himself Shikaku slowly dropped his gaze to the floor, defeated as a shinobi and wrought with pain as a father.
Danzo said a few more things after that but Shikaku didn't have the energy to listen to it any more. He was debating to himself how he would explain what he had deduced to his friends Inoichi and Choza.
After all that Danzo finally dismissed them giving them only three days to pick a student.
Before they left however, Danzo singled out Kakashi.
"Kakashi, come to the Hokage office after this meeting."
Kakashi nodded listlessly, his mind still on the note that had found him in the early hours of the morning.
'Did that note mean for me to pick Haruto in this?'
'But how did they know that Danzo was going to make this decision?'
'Was it Danzo who sent that note through a ROOT shinobi?'
'Is he playing with me?'
Eventually after a while Kakashi found himself standing before the Hokage office.
Danzo hadn't arrived yet so he waited outside debating if he would choose Haruto for his team.
'Would Haruto like it?'
Soon Danzo arrived, and called him into the office.
Kakashi entered and knelt on one knee as a form of faux respect before Danzo began speaking.
"Kakashi…"
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
"I have an assignment for you of your team member."
Kakashi's eyes widened.
"Yes… Hokage-sama? May I know who it is?"
Danzo looked at Kakashi with a blank face, his expressions giving out nothing of his emotions as he spoke calmly, "Naruto, Naruto Uzumaki."
Kakashi's eyes instantly shot wide open as he looked at Danzo directly.
"Pardon?"
"If you don't want him I can assign him to another ROOT member." Danzo said causing the gears in Kakashi's head to turn.
'Why would he give me this opportunity?'
'The opportunity to train the village's jinchuriki?'
'The opportunity to train sensei's son?'
'Why not just assign it to some random ROOT shinobi instead that he's threatening me with?'
Kakashi didn't have to think for long before an answer came to him in the form an image in his mind.
It was of a shinobi he'd just seen recently at the funeral but hadn't worked up the courage to go talk to.
'Jiraya-san…'
Jiraya had probably caught wind of the situation before it had occurred and instructed Danzo to let Kakashi keep Naruto.
'Was it him who gave me the note about Haruto then?'
'How did he even know?'
Kakashi quickly spoke up after that.
"I'll take him Hokage-sama…"
Danzo harumphed at that admission and waved him away, hoping Kakashi would vanish from in front of his sight, but Kakashi stayed behind for some reason, not budging from his spot.
"Do you have something else to say to me?"
Kakashi nodded and started softly, "If possible Danzo-sama, I'd like to take on another student too…"
Danzo's eyes narrowed, another student?
His aim was clear, if it was someone good, deny Kakashi's request and absorb that other student directly into ROOT.
So Danzo paid attention and nodded, "Who's it?"
Kakashi, ever the young teenager, spoke up eagerly, "It's Haruto Hayashi Hokage-sama."
Danzo was about to deny automatically when he paused realising he recognised that name.
'Wasn't that the child who the Uchiha were after?'
'What good will he do to me?'
Even still just to be thorough Danzo spoke up out loud, "Bring me Haruto Hayashi's file."
And ANBU shinobi jumped out of hiding and presented a file at Danzo's desk immediately.
Danzo picked up the file and flipped through it casually, only he immediately saw something that nearly popped his eyes out of his sockets.
'Scorch Release!?'
***
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