Naruto : Monsters

One look at Danzo's face gave me all the answers I needed.

Itachi fucking mutilated Danzo. Holy Shit!

...

I couldn't imagine the rage Itachi must have felt when he cornered Danzo and demanded answers, only to discover he didn't have any. And with his Sharingan, he would have been able to see through any lie, so he must have known Danzo was innocent, and yet he still ripped Shisui's eye straight out of his skull.

I wonder what it must have felt to see so many of his dead relative's eyes – relatives that he himself had murdered – looking up at him through Danzo's arm. A sight so horrific it would have driven anyone mad and I'm honestly surprised that Danzo managed to survive the encounter.

Did Itachi do it for revenge or did he still carry some vain hope that Danzo was lying and tried to force some answers out of him? Did he rip one eye after the other from Danzo, starting with the ones in his arms and ending with one in his skull, hoping he would spill the beans on his brother's whereabouts? Or did he do it as a form of punishment for his failure to protect his brother?

Who could say?

I didn't know, and I doubted I ever would. But there is one thing I can say for certain.

Itachi, you freaking rock!

It was all I could do not break out in hysterical laughter as I felt a giant burden lift off my shoulders. Without Shisui's Mangekyou, Danzo had no way to influence my mind. 

I wasn't safe, not yet, not when I was trapped in a building alone with him and a hundred Root operatives who were probably all too willing to kill me should he give the command, but at the very least I knew that no matter what happened tonight, my thoughts were my own.

"When I first approached Itachi he had been even younger than you are now. He had already made Chunin at the time, and it was clear to everyone that it wouldn't be long before he reached Jonin as well, but even so, I was reluctant to start his training. Prodigy or not, young minds are different from a grown one. Children are much more than just tiny adults. 

mTraining meant to harden and temper an adult's mind could just as easily cause a child's to snap, ruining him forever. It was for that reason why I rarely bothered with children so young, they were too hard to train without breaking, but I had my orders. On the command of the Hokage, along with Fugaku's approval, I was to approach Itachi and have him trained."

Well, that answers one mystery. It always bugged me how Danzo had managed to get his claws on Itachi. Like me, Itachi was a Clan Heir and a prodigy to boot; it shouldn't have been possible for Danzo to get close enough to Itachi for him to exert his influence on the boy without his Clan noticing. But if Fugaku had sent him to get trained by Danzo – and possibly act as a double agent – then things began to make sense.

"But despite my initial misgivings, Itachi proved me wrong. Not only had he passed through the training I usually reserved only for the best of Anbu operatives, he excelled. 

Both in ability and mindset, he outclassed those who were a full decade his senior by leaps and bounds. Over the many years I had trained countless shinobi, but there had never been one that came closer to fitting my ideal image of a perfect shinobi than Itachi had. Sacrificing, loyal, humble, he was everything a ninja should be and more. 

It was then, when I had truly begun to comprehend the full extent of talent that I had been given to mould, that I proposed a plan to Hiruzen. While he had been caught off guard by it at first it didn't take him long to come around to it, not after he had been given the opportunity to get to know Itachi and understand what kind of a person he truly was. And so it was decided, Uchiha Itachi would become the next Hokage."

-What!?

After all the shocks I had suffered through over the last few minutes, you'd think I'd be at least somewhat used to it by now or if not, then at the very least numb to it all. But no, this latest revelation hit me just as hard as the rest had and I felt my thoughts screeching to halt as my mind tried to cope with what I had just heard.

"I take it your father has already informed you about the truth behind the Uchiha Incident," Danzo asked, causing me to nod numbly in response, still dazed due to the latest in the series of shocks. "If there had ever been a bigger group of fools than that clan then I had yet to have the displeasure of meeting them. They were a paranoid group, obsessively so. 

They saw plots and schemes where there were none, watched every shifting shadow with suspicion and searched for insults in even the most innocuous of gestures. They had somehow managed to get it into their foolhardy minds that the entire village was out to get them. They had honestly believed that all of us, from the lowly street sweeper all the way up the Hokage, were all conspiring behind the scenes together to bring them down.

"It was utter nonsense, but they were so thoroughly convinced of their own delusions that nothing we did or said could persuade them otherwise. Any attempt at reconciliation from our part was just met with suspicion as if it were some kind of convoluted trap to lure them in, and as a result every year the Uchiha continued to grow more isolated from the rest of the village. 

There is nothing quite as dangerous as a man who has convinced himself he's trapped and driven to a corner, an entire clan of such men is beyond words. We were just beginning to grasp how dire the situation had become and, with no obvious fix in sight, we began to fear the worse. But Itachi, he changed everything.

"It was the perfect solution. By making him Hokage, we would be able to bring the Uchiha back into the village, repairing the rift that sprung up between us and proving once and for all that we valued their clan. 

For his skills and prowess, Itachi was adored and respected by the villagers, while the ninjas that had fought beside him loved him for his dedicated and peaceful nature. The boy certainly had enough talent for the position, more than enough. Genjutsu, taijutsu, ninjutsu, he was skilled in them all. Not since Hiruzen himself was a child had I seen so much potential in one so young. Not even the Sannin could have matched him at his age.

"Above all else, the boy was loyal. Not to his clan or a single individual, but to the village as a whole. The boy loved the Leaf, what it stood for and all that lived within its walls, he loved them all. 

So much so that he had been willing to put down his entire clan if it meant protecting the village from harm. Hiruzen calls it the will of fire, I didn't think the same but maybe he was right, maybe the boy did have the will of fire in him, but whatever one chose to call it we both knew that we had nothing to fear from the boy abusing his position. Itachi would have made a fine Hokage.

"It really was the perfect solution, one that would have solved all our problems in one fell swoop. And it was working too. Simply mentioning that we were grooming Itachi for the position of the Fifth Hokage was enough to placate the Uchiha and helped restore their relationship with the village to better than it had been in decades. Yes, making Itachi Hokage was the correct choice. It was the perfect solution. Absolutely perfect."

Danzo had drifted into silence, staring blankly ahead into open space as he was lost in his own thoughts, in the past.

Then he moved.

Faster than I thought it was possible, Danzo raised a clenched fist and brought it slamming down onto the wooden counter, sending a tremor running through the entire countertop, tableware rattling, splinters flying into that air even as fractures ran through its surface.

"Then," Danzo spoke calmly as if he hadn't just nearly smashed the counter in two, "we found out the boy was dying, and everything went to shit."

Neither his voice nor expression betrayed the torrent of rage that I knew hid beneath the surface, he masked it perfectly, it was only by watching his chakra fluctuate did I know he felt anything but indifference as he pondered Itachi's fate.

"An autoimmune disease centred primarily on the lungs, one with no known cure. Not even chakra could fix it, it only ended up aggravating the symptoms; by definition, it was an illness in which the body destroyed itself, so strengthening his body only made his condition worse. As if that hadn't been bad enough, this particular brand of the disease responded especially violently to chakra. 

The medics concluded that through proper medication Itachi may yet be able to live a long life so long as he limited his use of chakra. If he doesn't, then it was unlikely he'd live to see the end of his second decade. In other words, for Itachi to live he must never use chakra again, his career as a shinobi was as good as finished.

"Needless to say that all plans of making Itachi Hokage were scrapped. We couldn't afford to have a dying Hokage, not after losing the Fourth so young. 

The Uchiha, of course, were predictably furious when they received the news. That their Heir and hope for the future was dying was bad enough, but once we informed them that Itachi would no longer be considered as Hiruzen' successor the relationship with the Uchiha reverted back to how it had been before. No, if anything the situation was even worse off, they seemed to take the news rather personally and, illogically, seemed to blame us for it.

"In the end the situation accumulated in the incident known as the Uchiha Massacre, and what a mess that turned out to be. There had been no winners on either side. Konoha ended up losing an entire bloodline, along with more than a hundred talented ninjas, over the course of a single night, all due to the stubborn pride and paranoia of a single clan. 

I too was rather vexed with the situation at first as I thought of all the countless hours I had spent training on what ended up proving to be an unsound investment, of all the years I wasted training a dying man. But then, Itachi managed to prove me wrong. Even when dying, Itachi found a way to serve his village. Till the end, he was the perfect ninja."

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