Chapter 27: Muddy Waters
Hiruzen tore through his entire desk before finally accepting the truth: Sakura's Will of Fire essay had indeed been taken by Danzō.
But chasing after the man now wouldn't change anything. If he'd taken it, he'd already read it. Whether or not Hiruzen got the paper back was irrelevant at this point.
Dammit...
Hiruzen's brow creased deeply. He knew Danzō's personality far too well.
The chances of Danzō seeing that strategic blueprint and not being moved by it were roughly the same as the chances of a pig lining up to jump in a river.
The move had caught him completely flat-footed. It hadn't occurred to him for a second that Danzō would be bored enough to rifle through the exam papers of a freshly graduated genin.
But — what now?
Try to restrain Danzō? Prevent him from implementing the plan?
There was no such thing as defending against a thief forever. You could only catch thieves, not guard against them indefinitely.
Or perhaps pin some fabricated charge on Danzō and confine him to his residence?
At that thought, Hiruzen's mind went to Homura and Koharu.
Individually, neither of them could stand against himself or Danzō. But the two of them together were a different equation entirely. They would absolutely not sit idle and watch Danzō get locked up for no discernible reason.
What to do?
Hiruzen sat in the Hokage's chair, his aged, weathered fingers tapping the desk.
All he wanted to do right now was raise Sakura properly and let her grow. Everything else, he was too tired to deal with anymore.
He had poured his entire life into Konoha. He was genuinely exhausted. He wanted to rest.
And now, of all times, this had to happen.
"Someone."
At his word, an ANBU operative materialized on one knee before him.
"Bring Sakura to me."
Even if he had no intention of executing Sakura's "Will of Fire" plan, there was no denying how brilliantly sharp the girl was.
He had once said that Itachi Uchiha had possessed the mind of a Hokage at the age of seven.
In hindsight, he'd been fooled by Itachi's calm exterior.
After all, a normal person didn't do what Itachi had done. It meant the boy hadn't been able to see through to the root of the problem. He'd gone for the most drastic option — wiping out his entire clan in one stroke — and that had sent Konoha's overall strength plummeting overnight.
But Sakura was different. Armed with nothing more than the Konoha war histories taught in the academy, she had been able to identify the specific weaknesses of every major nation and weave them together into a master strategy for dominating the entire shinobi world.
That breadth of vision, that strategic ambition — even though Hiruzen hated to admit it, the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju himself, couldn't have matched Sakura in this particular area.
Before long, Sakura — who had been on her way to pick up Ino from school — found herself back in the Hokage's office.
"Master?"
She looked at him, confused. Is there something else?
"Sakura. That exam paper of yours..."
There was no point in tiptoeing around it. Hiruzen laid out everything plainly — including the existence of Danzō Shimura, and the long-standing rift between the two of them.
"..."
Sakura's green eyes widened slightly.
Excuse me?
Danzō Shimura walked off with my exam paper?!
Internally, Sakura was in the early stages of a meltdown.
The reason was simple — that paper had a problem.
From start to finish, Sakura had deliberately ignored one particular player.
The Akatsuki.
That underground organization of rogue ninja, all pursuing their own twisted vision of "peace."
Saying the Akatsuki wasn't strong would be laughable. Sakura was confident that if the full roster mobilized, they could breach the defenses of any single Great Village. Maybe even two.
If Danzō actually followed the plan as written — the first step, manipulating grain prices, might go smoothly enough. But the trouble started at step two.
At that stage, the Land of Wind, the Land of Earth, and the Land of Lightning would all turn their hostility toward Konoha. The plan called for allying with the Land of Earth to form a strategic pincer.
But between the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire, in addition to the Land of Grass, there sat the Land of Rain.
You couldn't make moves on that scale and expect to hide them from the White Zetsu agents inside the Akatsuki.
What Obito Uchiha or Nagato Uzumaki would do in response was completely unpredictable. Most likely? They'd stir up the waters themselves — muddy them, then fish in the chaos.
Obito might be an ungrateful bastard, but that didn't change the fact that his fists hit really goddamn hard.
If White Zetsu acted as an intermediary between the Land of Wind and the Land of Lightning, the entire Land of Fire would get dragged into a wartime quagmire.
And that was just one White Zetsu's worth of interference. Now scale it up to the entire Akatsuki.
Bear in mind: the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, was still alive right now. Plus there was Gaara's One-Tail, Granny Chiyo, the Raikage of the Land of Lightning, and his two Perfect Jinchūriki — that added up to six Kage-level combatants on the opposing side.
And the Eight-Tails was the strongest Tailed Beast after the Nine-Tails. Without at least two Kage-level fighters to contain Killer B, there was no winning that matchup.
Even if the Hidden Stone Village allied with Konoha — so what?
They'd still be sinking into the mud of an unwinnable war.
A single White Zetsu was enough to push Konoha into total strategic collapse.
The whole reason Sakura had crafted her Will of Fire essay the way she had was because she knew Hiruzen's personality. He would never actually execute the plan.
She had not anticipated it ending up in Danzō Shimura's hands.
And with that man's temperament? You could figure out what he'd do with your ass — he would absolutely, one hundred percent, try to implement it!
"So, Master, you're telling me my strategic plan has fallen into the hands of a hard-liner elder with real power and serious influence in the village?"
Calm down. Stay calm.
Panicking wouldn't help anything. Sakura was, at this particular moment, a little too calm.
"Yes. Sakura — do you have any ideas?"
Hiruzen looked at the girl with something approaching genuine hope.
From the moment he'd seen that plan, he had accepted Sakura's brilliance. That was precisely why he'd summoned her for consultation.
Sakura sank into the sofa, her mind churning through possible solutions.
The simplest option was to take Danzō down directly.
But that was obviously impossible.
Danzō had spent decades bouncing around the shadows with impunity for a reason — he knew how to protect himself. And trying to bring him down now, without any concrete charges? If it went wrong and someone got clever with the narrative, it could destroy Hiruzen's reputation instead.
Besides, the opening phase of the plan only involved manipulating grain prices — even if someone noticed, it wouldn't prove anything sinister. And that first phase was designed to unfold over five years. Even harder to pin anything on.
If only we had someone inside the Akatsuki...
The thought surfaced almost on instinct.
If they had someone inside the Akatsuki, they could make targeted countermoves in real time...
Someone on the inside...
A light flickered behind Sakura's green eyes.
Itachi Uchiha!
In a very real sense, Itachi already was their man inside!
When you've already boarded the Konoha ship, you might as well use the Weasel. Waste not, want not.
That thought settled her nerves a fraction.
She turned to Hiruzen and spoke.
"If we can't stop it—"
"Then we don't."
???
Hiruzen rubbed his temples, feeling a headache blooming behind his eyes.
The person who had created this entire mess was sitting right in front of him, and here he was, asking her for advice.
Maybe I really am getting old...