Chapter 348: Danzō's Dread
The Hokage Building, roughly a tenth of it already collapsed, hung thick with the faint haze of construction debris.
Minato watched the teetering building with a grim expression, and once the last clerk had made it out, he couldn't help letting out a small breath of relief.
Honestly, even as the Fourth Hokage, he had no idea what was actually going on.
This didn't feel like a natural earthquake to him — Konoha simply didn't sit anywhere near a fault line, after all.
The last "earthquake" had been Ryū-kun punching the ground outside the village.
The one before that had been aftershocks from the fighting during the Nine-Tails incident, kicking up a sizable minor quake of its own.
So what was this one, then? The Nine-Tails acting up again seemed unlikely.
The beast had only been sealed away for a little over half a year now — nowhere near enough time to break free of that seal.
Ryū-kun, then? That seemed unlikely too. Minato didn't know him especially well, but he'd picked up a little.
From what he could tell of Ryū's character, the man wasn't the type to go causing trouble for no reason.
Especially not when Konoha had treated him so well.
Something feels off. Like a storm's about to break — the kind of feeling you only get during wartime. My instincts have always been pretty reliable. Is something bigger coming?
A grim look crossed Minato's face as he murmured to himself, his gaze shifting to the areas beyond the Hokage Building.
Those other areas looked far worse off than the Hokage Building — which, after all, was one of the sturdiest structures in the whole village.
Even under this violent an earthquake, it had lost only about a tenth of itself.
The other buildings hadn't fared nearly as well — reduced entirely to rubble, nothing left but debris.
Screams of fear, furious shouting, panicked murmurs, the crackle of burning wood, the crash of collapsing houses...
The ground splitting open, trees toppling over, the terrified whimpers of stray cats and dogs...
All of it wove together into a single portrait of disaster.
By now, a great many of Konoha's shinobi had already thrown themselves into evacuating civilians.
Since Konoha wasn't earthquake country, most people had no instinct for how to handle one — and plenty of ordinary folk were making exactly the kind of mistakes that got people killed.
The shinobi were working to move civilians to open ground, where at least falling buildings couldn't crush them — the village's population had already been thin enough after the war as it was.
Losing more people on top of the Nine-Tails incident's death toll, if this turned into another wave of casualties...
Konoha could end up stuck in a genuinely rough spot — a shortage of people, of labor, of any real economic activity.
"Lord Hokage... this earthquake seems to have hit the entire village, and even areas outside Konoha are reporting a clear tremor. Houses on the village outskirts have already started collapsing. The damage this time could be severe."
An ANBU Jōnin appeared abruptly behind Minato, the ground's shaking nearly knocking him off balance.
Fortunately, a Jōnin's experience served him well — he steadied himself quickly and relayed everything he'd seen and heard.
At the Jōnin's words, Minato's expression darkened further. Even the houses on the village's edge had come down?
This wasn't confined to just the village anymore — the tremors were probably reaching well over ten kilometers beyond Konoha's borders.
How could a disaster this massive strike so suddenly, and of all places, right here in Konoha?
As irresponsible as it might have sounded, Minato would have rather this earthquake hit some other nation's shinobi village entirely than his own.
Just as Minato was about to say something, a few small figures came running from one direction, one of them calling out urgently: "Lord Hokage! Ryū-oniisan sent me with a message!"
The words "Ryū-oniisan" caught Minato off guard for a beat.
Minato wasn't the only one wearing a grim expression — Danzō, Hiruzen, and Konoha's other old-guard powerhouses looked equally uncertain, equally unsure what was actually going on.
Danzō had already left his little ROOT hideout — the last thing he wanted was for the place to cave in on him unexpectedly.
Standing out in an open clearing, Danzō wore a shadowed expression, muttering to himself. One major incident after another under that Minato's watch. Might there be some small use I could make of that?
Though what's with this ominous feeling? No sense of satisfaction in it at all — just this strange, heavy dread instead. Am I just not sleeping well lately? Or is something genuinely strange about to happen?
Under normal circumstances, a disaster like this would have had Danzō looking for an angle to exploit within seconds.
Impeaching Minato, say — accusing the Fourth Hokage of dereliction of duty for failing to spread earthquake-preparedness awareness in time, that sort of thing.
But to his own surprise, he found he had no interest in that at all right now, his uncertain gaze fixed on the fine cracks in the ground, where sand and pebbles kept bouncing and trembling.
Danzō couldn't shake the feeling that something was down there beneath the earth — though surely that couldn't be right?
If something really were down there, wouldn't Konoha's sensor-type shinobi have picked up on it by now?
Just as Danzō sat weighed down by his own thoughts, a familiar voice suddenly spoke up from behind him. "I half-expected this to be your doing. Doesn't look that way, though."
Danzō blinked, frowning as he turned — and there, some dozens of meters behind him, stood an old, familiar face.
That "old, familiar face" turned out to be none other than the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi!
Danzō's expression stayed as shadowed as ever. He gave a noncommittal "tch" and said, flat, "I haven't done a single thing. And aren't you worried, always suspecting me like this, that I might actually start harboring some disloyalty toward the village?"
Hiruzen's voice carried over. "We fought side by side once. I know you. You might do all manner of things that cross the village's lines — but there's exactly one thing you'd never do, and that's leave Konoha."
Danzō fell silent for a moment, offering no rebuttal — whatever lay beneath the earth kept pulling at his attention regardless.
He couldn't say why, but he was certain something dangerous was down there.
Something that left him with a genuine sense of dread. A feeling of... fear!
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