"Cough..."
Danzo coughed up a mouthful of vivid red blood. The tremendous vitality granted by the First Hokage's cells meant that even with a hole driven clean through his chest, he did not die immediately.
He looked down at the cavity in his chest with enormous difficulty, his voice barely audible, filled with disbelief. "You... cough... why..."
"Are you surprised that I know this much about you?"
The Sharingan in Sasuke's eyes turned slowly. His expression was entirely detached. "Because these eyes can cut through darkness. These eyes can see what lies ahead, Danzo."
Looking at Danzo's ruined state, Sasuke felt nothing stir inside him. No satisfaction, no pride.
He had spent a full month preparing for this fight. He had gone over every ability and jutsu Danzo had displayed in the original timeline, turning them over in his mind again and again.
He had run through the battle between them countless times in his head, identifying every gap, every contingency.
Danzo had known almost nothing of Sasuke's real capabilities. Sasuke had known Danzo's entirely.
Beyond an absolute and irreversible gap in power, intelligence was one of the most decisive factors in any fight between ninja.
This battle had been a near-perfect example of intelligence taken to its limit.
Viewed from above, Danzo's every response had been accounted for from the very beginning.
"Cough, cough."
Danzo coughed again, feeling the strength drain from his body with every moment.
The boy's figure in his vision was growing indistinct.
'... Sasuke will grow into someone who carries the Will of Fire like a mirror, passing it forward.'
In a daze, Danzo recalled what his old friend had said about the boy that night.
'Uchiha Sasuke...'
Hiruzen. We were both wrong about him. Heh.
A mind this deep. A strength this great. A coldness this absolute.
A person like this would become one of Konoha's greatest threats.
For the village's sake, he cannot be left alive.
"For the shinobi world. For Konoha. I cannot allow you to live!"
Danzo seemed to surge back to life in one final burst. The helplessness in his eyes was replaced by iron resolve, and he roared out the words.
As he spoke, mysterious seal markings rose across his shattered body. A powerful wave of chakra erupted outward.
Reverse Four Symbols Sealing!
'... Teacher. It is finally my turn. Just as you once did, the time has come for me to give everything for Konoha.
The Uchiha are an evil clan, as you always said. Then let this last bloodline of that wicked clan go down to hell with me.
A shame I never became Hokage.
Hiruzen. In the end, I could never surpass you.'
The thought of the Third Hokage, fighting above Konoha at this very moment, brought a fleeting shadow of regret into Danzo's eyes.
The chakra in his body surged more violently than ever, and countless streams of ink-black chakra poured out from him in every direction.
"Admirable resolve. Unfortunately, I know about your Reverse Four Symbols Sealing as well."
Sasuke looked at Danzo with quiet amusement, stepped back a few paces, and drew a scroll from his pouch.
"You know something, Danzo? Life needs its ceremonial moments."
There was a deep and unhurried mockery in Sasuke's voice. What he enjoyed most was watching people who believed they had everything under control discover, in the moment it mattered, that they controlled nothing at all.
The look on their faces in that moment was something he found genuinely interesting.
"Farewell."
Sasuke said this quietly, tore the scroll open, and threw it toward Danzo, who had begun pulling everything around him into a consuming void. Then Sasuke turned and leapt clear of the hall in a single bound.
A loud bang rang out. The smoke cleared. An enormous black cauldron had emerged from the scroll.
Danzo stared at it. The iron certainty on his face faltered, but the Reverse Four Symbols Sealing, once set in motion, could not be stopped.
He could only watch as the massive black cauldron came down over him.
Boom!
A sound like a vacuum rupturing tore through the hall behind him. The corner of Sasuke's mouth lifted slightly as he moved away.
He had gone to considerable lengths to find a cauldron like that.
He knew it was completely pointless. But it was satisfying.
That was enough.
Sasuke shook his head, glanced at Danzo's severed right arm in his hand, sealed it away into a storage scroll, and moved toward another part of the Root headquarters.
Danzo had placed the Tongue Binding Death Curse on every Root member's tongue.
Anyone subjected to it who spoke of anything related to him would find their entire body seized, unable to speak or move.
Danzo had used it to bind his subordinates, preventing them from ever revealing his secrets.
But with Danzo dead, those cursed seals had lost their power.
The other Root members had almost certainly felt their leader's death by now. They would be converging on this location quickly.
There were still things here that Sasuke needed. And he had no intention of letting anyone know he was the one who had killed Danzo. He had to move fast.
Whoosh!
He moved like a ghost, swift and completely silent. Using the information he had drawn from Torune's mind earlier, Sasuke navigated the layout without hesitation and made his way to the Root organization's biological research laboratory.
What he needed was in there.
Inside a laboratory somewhere in the Root headquarters, voices suddenly broke into alarm.
"The Tongue Binding Death Curse just disappeared?"
"Does that mean Lord Danzo..."
"Keep quiet. Lord Danzo cannot be gone. But we need to get there now."
The researchers inside were still arguing when Sasuke pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The sudden appearance of a stranger sent the dozen-odd researchers into a panic. They began shouting questions.
"Who are you!? Ah!"
Sasuke scanned the room, said nothing in response. These ninja were essentially administrative personnel. Their combat ability was negligible.
He let the Sharingan in his eyes turn. Lightning condensed into countless needle-like strands and eliminated every person in the room instantly.
This biological laboratory had been Danzo's facility for researching the First Hokage's cells and the Sharingan.
With them dealt with, Sasuke gathered the First Hokage's cell samples and every document and research material on the tables and sealed them all into storage scrolls.
Then he turned his gaze to the rows of glass jars, each holding crimson eyes suspended in nutrient solution, and the dozen or so corpses preserved in formalin.
He was quiet for a moment.
"Dust to dust. I hope none of you hold it against me too much."
Sasuke murmured this softly, then sealed the nearly hundred pairs of Sharingan and the dozen corpses into storage scrolls as well.
He intended to keep using the eyes. As for the Uchiha bodies, he planned to find a proper time to give them a real burial.
Call it a small consolation to ease his conscience after desecrating their eyes.
Once that was done, Sasuke touched the tip of one finger lightly to the air. Black flames erupted from it, and in an instant they spread into a consuming tide of black fire, burning everything remaining in the laboratory to ash.
Sasuke moved on toward the next location. Beyond everything he had already taken, there was still something else here he was looking for.
The jutsu recorded in the Scroll of Seals.
The Scroll of Seals was a forbidden tome kept by the successive Hokage.
But judging from the Third Hokage's visible shock when Orochimaru had used the Impure World Reincarnation, Orochimaru had clearly not learned it through any legitimate channel.
Either he had stolen it, or Danzo had provided it to him during one of their past collaborations.
The information Sasuke had pulled from Torune's memory had contained nothing about where Danzo kept the Scroll of Seals. He would have to find it himself.
He searched through the Root headquarters for a while. He turned up a few other useful items, but found no trace of the Scroll of Seals anywhere.
"Forget it. I'll get it from the Hokage Tower instead."
Sasuke shook his head and gave up the search. He had already sensed the bulk of the Root forces converging on the location.
He flickered and vanished from where he stood, making his way up toward the surface.
What Konoha or the Root organization would do upon discovering Danzo's death was not something Sasuke concerned himself with.
Orochimaru killed him. What does that have to do with Uchiha Sasuke?
Heh.
___
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