"You're late, Orochimaru."
The voice carried a faint smile, and the moment it reached his ears, Orochimaru tensed.
But just as quickly, that tension eased.
He recognized the speaker at once.
It was Hikaru.
Looking up, Orochimaru saw that Hikaru was no longer dressed as before. The mask was gone, and those azure eyes had returned to their normal black.
He looked as gentle as ever, the sort of man whose very presence seemed to invite trust, like a spring breeze brushing across the skin.
That expression alone made Orochimaru breathe easier.
"Yes, I am rather late."
He licked his lips and stopped walking, looking up at Hikaru on the branch above. Then, with deliberate subtlety, his gaze flicked toward a nearby patch of brush.
"But Minister Hikaru did not come all that quickly either. Otherwise I wouldn't be in such a miserable state."
"No. In all things, one must rely on oneself. You had to find your own way out."
Hikaru leapt lightly down from the tree and walked toward him, his gaze settling on Uchiha Itachi.
"If you escaped, then we are partners. Everything we discussed still stands."
"But if you had failed to escape, then as the head of ANBU, I would naturally have had to fulfill the duties of my office."
His words were brutally direct, but Orochimaru felt no urge to argue.
He had expected no less.
Hikaru had always been this sort of man. Every choice he made leaned first toward his own interests.
If you had value, he would help you.
If you did not, then even if he did not kill you outright, he certainly would not lift a hand for you again.
That was what working with Hikaru meant.
As long as one remained useful, his support was real.
But the moment that value vanished, one's fate became one's own burden to bear.
He might offer a trace of pity.
Yet for a proud man, such pity was almost worse than receiving none at all.
Shaking those thoughts aside, Orochimaru lowered Itachi onto the ground and slowly stepped backward.
"I crossed blades with the Minister," he said with a faint smile, "and in the end I was forced to recognize reality. I could not defeat you. And if I kept carrying this child, I would never be able to escape quickly."
He licked his lips again, then retreated to a distance of roughly ten meters before forming seals at speed.
Chakra surged through him.
An enormous serpent appeared before them.
Under his control, it lashed wildly through the nearby forest, smashing trees apart one after another.
He did not stop there. His hands flashed through more seals, and the earth began to tremble. Earth Release techniques overlapped and intersected, tearing through the terrain until the ground itself seemed remade.
The destruction looked violent enough to terrify anyone who saw it.
And, more importantly, it looked real—exactly the sort of devastation left behind by an intense battle between high-level shinobi.
Hikaru nodded in satisfaction.
Orochimaru truly knew how to read the moment.
What he was doing now was giving them both a battlefield, a visible story.
To anyone who came later, it would be obvious that a fierce clash had taken place here.
Naturally, Hikaru played his part as well.
Sage chakra rose within him, and he formed a seal.
"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence."
This was the first time he had used high-level senjutsu in earnest.
He had possessed the power for some time already, but until now he had never needed to draw on it.
Most of his recent enemies had simply not required that sort of effort.
Between the divine Eye and its chakra mode, he already had more than enough tools to deal with most threats before him.
But that did not mean he would ever neglect senjutsu.
This was one of the highest powers in the world—a force capable of injuring even those who wielded Bloodline Expansion.
The ground split open.
Massive trees roared upward and swallowed the surrounding landscape in an instant. Orochimaru's summoned serpent vanished amid the surge.
The old forest was consumed, and in its place rose a new one, dense with Hikaru's chakra.
He watched the result calmly, then dusted off his hands.
A boy in glasses, around ten years old, stepped out from the shadows.
"This child will serve as the link between us," Hikaru said evenly. "And you will see to his training."
Orochimaru turned to look at the boy.
For one fleeting moment, he could not help wondering whether the child had some connection to Hikaru. They shared the same silver hair, after all.
But he did not pursue the thought.
It was enough to do as Hikaru asked and preserve the peace between them.
"I understand," Orochimaru replied. "I'll train him properly. After all, he is someone the Minister has taken an interest in."
Hikaru only nodded and turned to Kabuto.
The boy had edged closer, fear plain in his expression.
"I know you are afraid," Hikaru said.
He took out a kunai and handed it to him.
"But you would do well to master that fear. I think highly of you, and I expect you to accomplish something in time."
"If you do well, the orphanage will profit from it too."
"You may not understand that now, but once you return to Konoha, you'll see how meaningful all this truly is."
"This is a Flying Thunder God kunai. If Orochimaru runs into trouble, you can use it to find me. Remember—only you."
Once the practical matters were settled, Hikaru rose and stepped over to Uchiha Itachi.
The boy was still unconscious.
Without ceremony, Hikaru lifted him into his arms and turned away.
As far as Orochimaru was concerned, things had come to an end.
So long as Hikaru brought the child back, then the outcome would be exactly what he wanted—
profit and reputation both.
He had laid the groundwork for too long and waited too long not to savor the results now.
Before leaving, Hikaru looked back once at Orochimaru and Kabuto as they headed off into the forest.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"There will be no more Three Legendary Sannin in Konoha," he thought. "They've already been broken apart. What lies ahead is a wholly new Konoha—and a wholly new ANBU."
With that, his chakra stirred, and he vanished.
Inside Konoha, in a small sealed meeting room within the Hokage Tower, the three people who truly held the village's highest authority sat around a square table.
This was a closed meeting.
No clan heads had been invited.
The matter at hand was not something they could be allowed to hear.
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado in silence.
Danzō was absent, of course. In his current state, he had no right to be here.
Hiruzen sighed heavily.
Even now, he had not fully recovered from the blow Orochimaru's defection had dealt him.
"Hiruzen, you were soft-hearted."
Koharu sighed, her tone weary.
"I understand your reasoning. I do. But you should never have handled it like that."
Homura stroked his chin and spoke with the same restrained seriousness.
"I agree. No matter that he was your disciple, what he did was unforgivable."
"To be frank, if you had been harsher, the result might even have been better. At the very least, that boy wouldn't have gained so much from it."
Hiruzen listened in silence.
He offered no answer, but inwardly he was thinking the same thing. Had his decision truly been the right one?
Within Konoha, the three of them stood at the highest level of authority.
Setting aside Namikaze Minato—who could not presently perform the duties of Hokage—and Hikaru, who now controlled ANBU, the village still largely lay under the influence and restraint of these three.
Koharu and Homura might receive little attention in the official record, but no one could alter their status at the top of Konoha's power structure.
They were old retainers of the Second Hokage.
And in the present day, they controlled diplomacy, logistics, and—at least in part—even finance.
Strictly speaking, many of those responsibilities should have belonged to the Political Affairs Division.
But Nara Shikaku was a smart man. He knew very well when he could step in and when it was wiser to stay silent.
So while foreign policy and official statements all passed through Koharu and Homura, they were rarely the ones forced to stand at the front and answer for them.
In that sense, they held authority while neatly avoiding much of the burden that came with it.
Beyond that, logistics and finance were the foundation of the village itself. Their hands reached into every corner of Konoha's operations.
They were, beyond question, among the true rulers of the village.
The only time they had truly suffered a serious loss in recent memory had been at Hikaru's hands.
He had stripped a layer of flesh from them so cleanly it still hurt to think about.
All in all, their influence extended throughout the village.
They were genuine masters of Konoha.
"So tell me, Hiruzen," Koharu asked at last, watching him sit there in silence, "what exactly was your role in this affair?"
"If you hadn't approved of it on some level, Orochimaru could never have gone this far. But attacking the Uchiha—especially the clan head—that was too much. So what exactly was happening behind the scenes?"
"I don't know."
Hiruzen finally shook his head.
"To be honest, I have more questions in my mind than either of you. I truly do not know what Orochimaru was thinking."
"That man has gone too far."
There was fury in his voice now.
He had known, in some sense, that Orochimaru was dangerous. But even so, when the truth erupted so violently before him, he had still been shaken.
That wretched boy had attacked the Uchiha.
Worse, he had gone after Uchiha Fugaku himself.
What did that mean?
It meant he no longer cared about Konoha. No longer cared about the village's rules. No longer cared even about him, his teacher.
And yet, what could Hiruzen do now?
He had already let Orochimaru go.
And though he strongly suspected Danzō's involvement in all this, he still could not fully grasp what Danzō had been aiming at.
Had he gone mad as well?
"I think we should let the Orochimaru matter rest there," Homura said quietly. "Keep an eye on it, yes—but do not dig too deep now."
He was right.
There were more urgent matters to discuss.
"Let's talk about that boy from the Senju clan instead," Homura continued. "He's made quite a name for himself this time."
At the mention of Hikaru, all three of them fell silent.
This time, they had truly taken a loss.
Hiruzen had released Orochimaru in part because he wanted to present himself as sentimental and compassionate—and also because he had wanted to hang some of the blame around Hikaru's neck.
After all, during the earlier phase of pursuit, ANBU had not mobilized in full.
If Orochimaru escaped and took Uchiha Itachi with him, then Hikaru, as head of ANBU, would naturally have to shoulder part of that responsibility.
And if they handled the narrative carefully, it would not have been impossible to make ANBU bear the bulk of the blame.
It would have been a neat little act of revenge.
What none of them had anticipated, however, was that while ANBU as a whole had not responded in time, Hikaru himself had.
He had personally gone after Orochimaru, struck him down, and returned with Uchiha Itachi.
By his own account, Orochimaru had still escaped using a secret technique—but after others saw the battlefield where the clash had taken place, almost no one doubted his version of events.
The result was clear.
Hikaru had not only salvaged ANBU's reputation—he had turned it around.
And as a result, Hiruzen had swallowed the bitter end of the stick.
His original plan had been sound enough.
But compared to Hikaru's actions, it made him seem old, unable to protect the village's people.
For him, that was a devastating image to project.
He was only the acting Hokage.
The true Hokage was still Minato.
And Minato was young.
"We really do need to free up some room to guard against him now," Koharu said, nodding slowly. She felt no personal affection toward Hikaru—but neither did she hate him. This was simply a conflict of positions.
"He has ANBU in his hands, and now he's expanding it aggressively. Even if you wanted to restrict him, Hiruzen, it wouldn't be easy."
"So we counterbalance him," Homura said at once, looking at Hiruzen with firm seriousness.
"I admit Danzō went too far before. But he's been out of office for over half a year now. I would say he has learned his lesson."
"In extraordinary times, we need extraordinary means. And those means are Root."
"Hiruzen, with your current burdens, can you really manage everything—and also keep Root properly in hand by yourself?"
Hiruzen sat in silence.
Still, he had to admit that he was tempted.
Truthfully, the thought had arisen in his mind the moment Hikaru expanded ANBU.
Only then, Danzō's attempted assassination and everything surrounding it had left him too bitterly disappointed to act on that thought.
But so many years of shared history could not simply be erased.
And Danzō was, beyond doubt, still the most suitable man to control Root.
So it was hardly strange that Hiruzen's resolve wavered.
What he needed was an excuse.
A step.
And now Koharu and Homura had laid that step before him.
If that was so, perhaps he could indeed afford to be "magnanimous."
After all—
"Bringing Danzō back would also show your generosity," Koharu added softly.
"A Hokage who is broad-minded and remembers old bonds... that kind of image may help recover more than you think."
"Then it's settled."
Hiruzen nodded at last.
But then another thought crossed his mind.
"Root can be expanded along with ANBU," he said, "but Danzō must be kept under control."
"That's simple enough," Homura replied, the lenses of his glasses flashing faintly.
"We just let certain truths about him become known."
"For instance... that he was removed from office because he was suspected of attacking the Hokage."
He paused, then looked at Hiruzen.
"What do you think of that, Hokage-sama?"
In the Land of Rain, Nagato sat quietly in a dim room, eyes closed, sensing the world beyond.
The rain itself had long since become his means of detection.
At fixed times each day, he would sit like this and observe everything within the village.
This was his village.
The land of his birth.
The place where he had grown up.
The place where his closest friend had been buried.
After seizing it from Hanzō, he had devoted himself to governing it and making it better.
To him, seeing the villagers wearing smiles and living in peace was deeply meaningful.
"Nagato."
A voice interrupted his observation, and he slowly opened his eyes.
The concentric ripples of the Rinnegan spread out before him.
The most terrifying and exalted eyes in the world.
They had granted him power beyond imagination.
They were also quietly devouring his life.
Of course, Nagato himself did not know that.
When his gaze fell on Konan, the usual coldness in his expression softened a little.
There were very few people left in this world who could stir his heart.
Konan was undoubtedly one of the most important among them.
Once, the three of them had survived together.
Now only two remained.
"You're back, Konan?"
Nagato's voice was hoarse, his body so thin and frail now that even speaking seemed to take effort.
"You still haven't fully recovered. There was no need for you to go out in person."
"I'm much better now," Konan replied, shaking her head. Her eyes were steady. "And the organization is short-handed. Don't worry. I'm fine."
She had indeed been injured.
Badly.
And she was not the only one. Sasori had fared poorly as well.
Even Kakuzu—a man so old he was practically a relic of Hashirama's era—had died on the spot.
To this day, Konan could not forget what she had seen.
That enormous black sphere of chakra.
That suffocating power.
That destruction.
And the man who seemed to wield the Nine-Tails' power as though it were his own.
Even now, one of the reasons she persisted in taking missions personally was because she hoped to uncover some trace of that figure.
Someone like that—especially if he belonged not to a single person but an entire hidden force—was not the kind of enemy one could afford to provoke lightly.
"You're safe now. That's enough."
Nagato sighed.
He knew he could not truly talk Konan out of things, so he let the matter drop.
Still, he understood very well what she had gone through.
And the rage it stirred in him was real.
That man had come dangerously close to taking from him one of the very few people left who still mattered.
But rage alone solved nothing.
His own body was too weak now. He could not go chasing enemies across the world.
As for the danger Konan described, Nagato himself had not yet taken it entirely to heart.
He possessed the Rinnegan.
He was the god of this world.
If the chance ever arose, he fully intended to deal with that man himself and avenge both Konan and Kakuzu.
"Did you find anything this time?" he asked at length.
"Not about that man. He's too mysterious."
Konan shook her head.
"But I did hear something else. Orochimaru, one of Konoha's Three Legendary Sannin, has defected. He attacked a member of the Uchiha clan, and when it was exposed, he fled."
"And while he escaped the Third Hokage's pursuit... he was eventually intercepted by Konoha's Nightingale, the Senju head of ANBU. He was defeated there."
Nagato's interest sharpened immediately.
"Orochimaru? One of Jiraiya-sensei's peers?"
That alone would have been enough to catch his attention.
The fact that such a man had defected from Konoha made it even more interesting.
"How amusing."
He looked at Konan.
"And what do you think?"
"You already know what I think," Konan said quietly.
Nagato's expression grew thoughtful.
"Find him."
He raised his head slightly.
"We'll go meet him."
"And if the chance is there... bring him into our organization."
"So you've finally stepped back onto the stage."
Looking at the report in his hand, Hikaru could not help but smile.
"I've been waiting for you for quite a while, Danzō."
Some time had passed since Orochimaru's defection.
During that period, Hikaru had stayed in Konoha and gone nowhere.
He had not even visited the private grove that served as his seed garden.
The reason was simple:
There were too many things to deal with.
He had to remain in the village.
Orochimaru's defection had struck Konoha exactly as Hikaru had anticipated.
It had been a terrible blow.
The departure of one of the Three Legendary Sannin meant the complete disintegration of that once-celebrated name.
And unlike Tsunade and Jiraiya, Orochimaru had left under circumstances that nailed him to Konoha's pillar of shame.
He had experimented on his own villagers.
He had attacked someone of high status within the village.
He had abducted a child by force.
The cruelty of his methods and the ugliness of the consequences were hard to overstate.
He had become a true missing-nin of Konoha.
And not just any missing-nin.
He had once been one of the war's chief commanders.
He had once been considered a candidate for Hokage.
There had been no shortage of shinobi in Konoha willing to follow him.
If not for the rumors that had already begun to circulate around him during the Fourth Hokage selection, and if not for Minato's meteoric rise, the Fourth Hokage's cloak might very well have gone to Orochimaru.
So his defection had shaken the village badly.
ANBU had immediately moved to second-level alert.
And the moment Konoha trembled, every concealed snake and rat in the village tried to emerge.
The foreign spies hidden in Konoha, in particular, had no intention of missing such a chance.
ANBU had been worked nearly to exhaustion.
The village prison had filled to nearly twice its normal population.
At the same time, some people had also begun quietly steering public opinion to blame ANBU for how the crisis had unfolded.
That was only natural.
Whenever something went wrong, there was never a shortage of those ready to shift the burden onto someone else.
Still, for some, Orochimaru's departure had also been an opportunity to "eat well."
And no one had profited more than Hikaru.
Orochimaru had attacked the Uchiha and escaped with Itachi.
ANBU's slow response at the outset had indeed invited criticism.
But Hikaru himself had gone after him.
He had tracked down one of the Three Legendary Sannin, defeated him in battle, and brought back Uchiha Itachi alive.
In an instant, the reputation of ANBU had begun to recover.
And Hikaru's own reputation had soared all the higher for it.
He was Konoha's Nightingale.
The Minister of ANBU.
A descendant of the Senju.
When people now looked toward the Hokage Monument, it was becoming harder and harder for them not to think of the First and Second Hokage when they thought of him.
In truth, even the symbolic nature of Konoha's election customs boiled down to a simple principle:
The more positive exposure you earned, the more support you gathered.
In a certain sense, it was little more than a grander form of performance.
Hikaru was not especially fond of systems like that. The country of his previous life had not done things that way.
And he did not believe such a system necessarily produced competent rulers.
A man elected on spectacle alone—what did he really understand of governing?
More than that, different leaders always represented different interests.
To Hikaru, the biggest flaw in that style of politics was the damage it did to continuity.
Long-term policies required time.
Resources had to be invested.
But the moment a new administration took power and discarded everything that came before, all of that effort—and all of that money—was simply wasted.
The people themselves then had to live through the shock of sudden reversals.
He remembered very well how little certain seasoned bureaucrats in his old world had thought of politicians who endlessly revised and overturned policy according to short-term advantage.
Konoha had its own version of elections.
Even if much of it was symbolic and performed for the shinobi, under the pressure Hikaru had created, the system now carried rather more weight than before.
In the matter of Orochimaru, Hikaru had earned a tremendous amount of favor.
That favor would not all cash out immediately, but it would return to him in time.
Even now, traces of that return were already visible.
Danzō's reappearance was proof of it.
It meant Hiruzen was beginning to feel pressured.
He needed to find some way to strip away at least a portion of Hikaru's growing influence.
"Good," Hikaru thought, tossing the report aside and stretching slightly. "Come back. I was only afraid you wouldn't."
By now, the matter of Orochimaru had ended in almost the best way possible.
Hikaru had obtained everything he wanted—
and more.
The Mangekyō Sharingan was undoubtedly one of his greatest gains so far.
In fact, the value of that eye might not be any less than what he had gained from Hashirama's flesh.
"It's a pity I've been too busy to plant it yet."
Fugaku's eye still rested sealed inside a scroll.
Hikaru intended to wait until the aftershocks of this crisis subsided before doing anything with it.
As for Fugaku himself, the man had more or less recovered.
Hikaru had not struck to kill in the first place.
Though Fugaku had lost one eye, that alone was not enough to ruin his life.
His mental state, however, was another matter entirely.
That much was understandable.
Any Uchiha would suffer if someone tore out one of their eyes by force.
"And besides him, Kimimaro has finally been 'picked up' and brought back as well. He's already entered ANBU."
Kimimaro's return to Konoha had also been part of Hikaru's design.
The boy had arrived right in the middle of the chaos surrounding Orochimaru, and so drew almost no attention.
That suited Hikaru perfectly.
Kimimaro was, after all, one of the last survivors of the Dead Bone Pulse.
Hikaru fully intended to let the boy develop that bloodline further.
If he did, perhaps Hikaru would truly obtain one of the most basic powers of the Ōtsutsuki line.
"Everything is moving in the right direction," he thought with a faint smile. "The future really is full of light."
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