Chapter 171: Danzō's Calculations
"Why do I have a cut on my forehead?! And is that a blood scab?! Outrageous — who attacked Jiraiya from the shadows?!"
In his agitation, Jiraiya shifted his weight, and the bin shifted with him. His expression flickered. He tipped sideways — a fall that would have been deeply undignified — but he was, whatever else could be said about him, a shinobi of considerable experience. A puff of white smoke, the solid weight of a substitution log dropping into the bin, and Jiraiya reappeared three or four metres away, on his feet, entirely out of the container.
He looked at the overturned bin. Looked at the street. Looked at the sky.
And then, gradually, the last hour assembled itself.
The restaurant. The young man. The extended monologue. The invitation to go first.
Jiraiya's face went slightly rigid.
He actually did it.
He had told the kid to go first. The kid had gone first. At some point between go ahead and the inside of a refuse container, Jiraiya had been unconscious, and he had no memory of the transition because there had been nothing to remember — no windup, no telegraph, no detectable shift in intent. Just a before and an after with nothing in between.
If the intent had been lethal, Jiraiya wouldn't have woken up in a bin. He would simply not have woken up.
That's — not a comfortable thought.
He was a Sannin. He was one of the three most powerful shinobi Konoha had produced. He had fought wars. He had survived things that killed lesser people. And a teenager — who might not even be eighteen — had put him in a refuse container between one breath and the next, without Jiraiya registering so much as the decision to move.
Now he understood why Minato's voice had taken on that particular weight whenever Ryū came up in conversation.
The information was humbling. It was also, if he was being precise about it, deeply embarrassing. He'd been performing — doing the whole garrulous-uncle routine to wear the target down and manufacture a pretext — and the target had simply stepped outside the routine entirely and ended the encounter on his own terms.
At least he hadn't been shouting. The restaurant had been full, yes, but maybe most of them hadn't registered what happened. The young man seemed disinclined to talk. Possibly this wouldn't circulate.
Then again, people had presumably watched him get carried out and deposited in a bin.
Jiraiya swallowed quietly.
Maybe I should leave the village for a while.
Orochimaru, watching this internal drama unfold across Jiraiya's face, had already reached his own conclusions and had lost interest in explaining them. He turned to leave.
"Orochimaru! My house got destroyed — yours is nearby — I'll stay the night, yes? Silence means consent."
Orochimaru stopped. "…Fine."
He resumed walking, slower now, with the gait of someone who has accepted an outcome they knew was inevitable.
"You look like you can't stand the sight of me."
"I don't."
"You absolutely do! You're making that face! I'm hurt, Orochimaru-kun, I'm genuinely hurt, after everything we've been through — "
"Shut up, you're nauseating."
"There it is! You said you weren't making that face — "
"I will kill you."
"You'd kill me! After you said you weren't being difficult — ow ow ow, hey, I'm moving, stop — OW — "
The sounds faded into the distance.
In a secluded part of Konoha that didn't appear on any civilian map, a man in a formal kimono sat motionless on a meditation cushion with his eyes closed.
Then they opened.
A masked shinobi stood before him — present without any sound of arrival. The uniform read as ANBU at first glance. A second glance found the divergences: small details of cut and equipment that placed the figure in a different organisation entirely, one that operated under the same village but acknowledged no oversight above its own commander.
The coldness radiating from this shinobi was specific. Not the alertness of a soldier, but something more like the quality of things that live permanently underground — an absence of warmth that ran deeper than temperature.
Despite all of this, in the presence of the seated man, the agent was unmistakably deferential.
"My lord. The individual you asked us to watch — Ryū — has returned to the village. We don't know how he left or how he came back, but his presence has been confirmed."
Shimura Danzō opened his eyes the rest of the way.
"He's back. The man who defeated the Nine-Tails."
A flicker of something crossed his face — a rare concession to surprise.
He had ordered surveillance on Ryū some weeks ago. The subject had left the village without the watchers noticing — slipped out without detection, been absent for over a month, and apparently returned the same way.
When the absence was first confirmed, Danzō had seized the opportunity. A team had entered Ryū's residence and conducted a thorough search. They'd found nothing useful — a few unidentifiable objects of uncertain purpose, which they'd photographed and replaced exactly as found, leaving no trace of entry.
Nothing. No documents, no records, no indication of how an apparently ordinary civilian with no shinobi background had developed the capacity to suppress the Nine-Tails.
The search had been disappointing.
The return was worse.
Danzō thought through the variables with the methodical patience of someone who had spent decades navigating Konoha's internal power structures.
A man who could defeat the Nine-Tails. Younger than Minato. Not a shinobi, which meant no oath of loyalty, no institutional binding, no chain of command he was embedded in. The great lords of the various nations would notice someone like this. They noticed anyone like this. If Ryū ever developed ambitions toward the Hokage position — which Danzō could not rule out — he would be positioned to acquire it before any of Danzō's own preparations came to fruition.
Minato was a problem. Hiruzen was a problem. Now there was a third obstacle, potentially more significant than the other two, and unlike the other two, entirely outside any framework Danzō could currently apply.
Once Orochimaru extracts something more from the First Hokage's cells — once the Sharingan collection reaches the necessary depth — the picture changes. But until then, engaging Ryū directly would be premature. The cost-benefit is unfavourable. Provoking him before the plan is ready accomplishes nothing except alerting a very dangerous person that he should watch his back.
The rational conclusion was patience.
He was reaching that conclusion when the masked shinobi spoke again.
"My lord — one additional report. There was an altercation between Ryū and Jiraiya of the Sannin today. This agent witnessed it directly." A pause. "Jiraiya was rendered unconscious with a single strike. He was then placed in a refuse container on the street."
Danzō's expression did not move.
"Jiraiya was defeated in a single strike."
"Yes, my lord. No resistance. No visible defence. He was simply — incapacitated."
A silence.
"I see," Danzō said. "Discontinue active surveillance on Ryū."
The agent hesitated, visibly. "My lord — you previously ordered sustained monitoring — "
"That was before. This is now. Fewer words, more action."
"Yes, my lord."
"…"
The agent withdrew.
Danzō sat for a long time after, with the expression of someone revising several plans simultaneously.
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