Chapter 257: Danzo's ploy

Danzo had a few bad days behind himself.

When he came back from the Emergency Council meeting he organized, he found out the three of his five remaining ROOT ANBU were killed while guarding his house. He couldn't even think about how Tsunade managed that feat, considering she was present at the said meeting. He was far too angry and... he loathed to admit it, slightly fearful. His house was, after all, overstuffed with protective seals and traps.

On another, more important, note, his power base in the village was slowly evaporating and all it took for this to happen was four days! It was maddening. Years of work gone just like that...

First, his ROOT was annihilated, which was arguably a crippling blow that set him back by at least a decade but it was not that big of a deal. He could recover from it. All he needed was time and good usage of his five remaining subordinates.

Second, Tsunade came back like a whirlwind.

And then everything went to shits.

First, she got Hiruzen out of his seat with one expert and utterly unavoidable move. She simply exerted her right as the descendant of Hashirama and nobody could refute that. But that single move shook the village on a fundamental level. And she did that without even using a single punch! Danzo really did not expect a brute like Tsunade to use politics and good arguments of all things.

If that was it, then all would have been great in the world... but Tsunade just had to dismiss Koharu and Homura, smoothly taking out the more important half of Danzo's support base in the council as if to spite him. Worse yet, the second half that resided among the civilians was properly cowed by Tsunade's ploy. At any other time, he would have applauded her, thinking that there was finally somebody acting as a Kage should, not covering before the civilians. Now though? She effectively crippled him politically in under twenty minutes flat using only words.

It was him who was supposed to be the master manipulator in the village, dammit!

And then, when he thought it simply couldn't get any worse, he came home and found three of his remaining five operatives dead, their bodies mockingly placed on the couch so they would be the first thing he saw after entering the living room.

Danzo's sense of urgency increased many-fold after that. He was being attacked by Tsunade who was pretentious enough to even let him know his failings are the result of her sabotage. And he could not do anything about it.

As desperation and a bit of despair set in, he decided to go to the Hokage and try his luck on influencing the man a bit. While trying to fool a Nara was indeed very foolish, Danzo knew the trick in tricking them was in being indirect. He could not manipulate Shikaku directly, using misdirection on the facts the man knew about. Shikaku would have analyzed it in seconds and see right through Danzo. No, Danzo had to use facts Shikaku had no idea about, then he had to portray his agenda believingly and logically with the support of facts that Shikaku did know, so he could make his own image. It was all in the wording and the hard facts he was about to use.

He would not directly state Tsunade was in the criminal organization Yozora. The Nara and Senju clan were allies and in the end, it wouldn't really even matter. No, his plan was simply to get Yozora declared as the enemies of Konoha first and only then oust Tsunade as a member and then branch from there. The fact that Shikaku had no reaction during the Emergency Council Meeting when she showed the Yozora mark, Danzo reasoned that the man had no idea about it. It was time to exploit that lack of knowledge.

Oh, Danzo had no doubt this would be a rigorous path filled with many obstacles and it was apparent he would have to avoid Tsunade detecting his machinations. For that purpose, he made sure she would be swarmed with paperwork by the civilian businessmen who were renting land from her.

"Er... Danzo Shimura is here to see you, Shikaku. Should I let him in?"

That sentence brought Danzo back to the present. He always could pull wool over Hiruzen's eyes and while Shikaku Nara was definitely a whole magnitude smarter than the old monkey, he was also a lot less experienced.

"Yes, send him in." Danzo heard Shikaku's voice sound from within the Hokage office.

It was showtime.

Without even waiting for Yoshino to present him, he calmly but confidently strode past her, right into the office with his head held high.

"Thank you for accepting me on such short notice, Lord Hokage." Those words left his mouth with a great reluctance while he discreetly looked around the empty office. Now that Hiruzen's things were no longer inside, it was really somewhat barren. For some reason, the sight brought sadness to Danzo's heart, which he promptly squashed.

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"No problem, Shimura-san." Shikaku's eye twitched, almost as if in amusement, "You will have to excuse me but I do not have much time nowadays. Please state your business so we can move on."

Danzo frowned at such bluntness. He loved obedient bluntness from his subordinates but this was time for politicking. There was no place for such straightforward dismissal.

"Very well..." He said, put out, "I came to warn you about the threat of Yozora. As you probably know, they are responsible for a series of murders inside of our village. That simply can't go unanswered. We will look like fools in front of other villages if that comes out!" He coldly stated, fully counting on the information getting out. He did put a lot of work into making preparations to spread rumors about it. "You might not know about it but Yozora is a less-known group of S-rank criminals who seven years ago made a fool out of every single hidden village bar Konoha. These incidents, however, can be called just small pranks compared to the outright act of slaughter that was committed in our village. Will you let the murder of our villagers go unanswered, Lord Hokage?" Danzo thanked his foresight to register fake identities for his ROOT ANBU and make them full-fledged villagers. At least now they could not simply be overlooked.

"About that..." Shikaku sighed, causing Danzo to lean forward, "you will have to consult with her." He pointed behind Danzo who stiffened.

Slowly turning around, Danzo was caught flat-footed as the air shimmered around a certain spot on the couch, revealing a smug-looking Tsunade who eyed him like an animal who is desperately clutching at straws to run from her.

"So you have a problem with Yozora, eh, Danzo?" Tsunade grinned, "How do we know the two hundred kills are not your job though?"

"Excuse me!?" Danzo snapped, not expecting such a come-back.

"You are quite famous in the village for being a schemer and someone with a lot of secrets. It would have been so easy to pre-arrange the evidence. Picking a target such as Yozora, a group that seldom shows itself was definitely smart. They are not very well known to the average ninjas while they would hardly defend themselves from the accusations since nobody heard from them for years. Yes... with your track record, this is definitely something you would have done, Danzo. So, give us proof it was not your doing." Tsunade relished pinning the blame on him. He might have been the next coming of sunshine out of the ass in the civilians' eyes but anyone above chunin-rank knew well who Danzo Shimura really was and what he did for a living. Or at least, they knew some rumors that were enough of a warning to get mixed up with him.

"I was at the council mee-" He gritted his teeth.

"Inconclusive. You could have prepared it beforehand. You know that. Your entire trade is about things like that." Tsunade indifferently shrugged.

"You demand proof I did not commit a crime perpetrated on me?" Danzo crossly asked.

"Bullshit." Tsunade chuckled. "There was no crime perpetrated on you. There was, however, a crime perpetrated IN your living room. Now, if I know anything about you, it is that you are a quite accomplished Seal Master focusing on security seals. How could anyone just walk inside your own living room that is over-trapped with various seals, set up a crime scene without setting even one of the said seals off, and then leave with no one the wiser about his identity? And on top of that, you want us to believe it was actually done by a group of people who nobody saw or heard from for the last six years? Are you taking us for total idiots?" Tsunade looked mockingly at him as if he was stupid, causing him to gape at her audacity.

The realization of what exactly he was overlooking as if slapped Danzo right on the head the second Tsunade uttered these words.

"Yeah... no. Pull another one." Shikaku nodded in agreement. He knew something was suspicious in that entire matter but now that Tsunade pointed out Danzo's house was basically a death trap for anyone other than the owner... He gave Danzo a suspicious look. "Parts of over two hundred bodies were found in your house... are you sure you don't have anything to say about that?"

Hearing Shikaku, Danzo shut his mouth with a click. In a huff, he turned around and walked right through the door without even excusing himself.

'That bitch played me from the start to the beginning!' He gravely thought as the door closed behind him.

Inside the office, Shikaku looked weirdly at Tsunade. "You know he will get away with it, right? There is no conclusive evidence to prove his involvement. I still have no idea why you are letting him live. From what you divulged about the Uchiha clan's demise, he deserves to be executed. Moreover, I am not stupid. This is personal for you. I can see that. Putting the facts together was not a hard thing, Tsunade. He is definitely responsible for the Senju clan's demise too and you either have proof or at least heavily suspect so. You would never be so ferocious towards him if it was not like that." He drawled. "So... why not just kill him and be done with it?

Tsunade lifted her eyebrow and snorted in distaste, "Killing him? That would have been a mercy. He did a lot of nasty stuff but he also did a lot of good for the village. So... no, Shikaku. I don't want him dead. I want him to live. To live in despair and desperation. To be frustrated, scared, on his toes at all times. To feel his hope slowly fade. I want him to suffer the worst fate imaginable for a ninja. The feeling of uselessness and hopelessness as a trap closes in. I will systematically take away his options, destroying any and all influence he has in the village, leaving him alone, isolated, and without any support. And when I deem he gave up enough resistance, I will permanently seal his chakra and throw the keying matrix to the sea." She finished with a finality that inwardly horrified Shikaku, causing him to slightly shiver.

Giving her a deadpan look in order to cover the chill that went up his spine, Shikaku groaned before quietly muttering, "Troublesome woman..."

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