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Inside the BBQ joint, the two friends chatted about their recent lives, swapping war stories and marveling at how much the other had been through.
About forty-five minutes later, feeling like they'd finally walked off the food coma, they stumbled out of the restaurant, leaning on each other for support.
They had barely taken a step outside when the hushed whispers of two people in a nearby corner drifted over to them.
"Did you hear? Elder Danzo is collecting Uchiha eyes."
"That's nothing. I heard a bunch of Uchiha ninjas went out on missions and just... vanished. You think..."
"It's tragic. The village's founding clan, and they're getting picked off like that..."
Taiichi and Kakashi exchanged a glance. Simultaneous smirks crept onto their faces.
The operation was a success. The rumors were already self-sustaining.
Rumors are like a virus. It doesn't matter how they start; once they spread, they mutate, becoming more twisted and exaggerated with every retelling.
And since Taiichi and Kakashi had flooded the market with a dozen different varieties of "Danzo is Evil" stories, who had the bandwidth to care about Sakumo anymore?
Plus, Taiichi knew something the villagers didn't: a lot of these "rumors" weren't actually fake. They were solid intel.
By the time Danzo caught wind of this, he wouldn't have the time to worry about burying Sakumo. He'd be too busy trying to put out the fire in his own backyard.
The two swayed their way toward the training ground. They'd burned most of their chakra, but the day wasn't over. They still had daylight to burn on sword drills.
---
That night, deep beneath the village.
In a massive underground complex, men and women who had discarded everything—names, emotions, pasts, futures—moved in the shadows.
They were the roots that grew in the dark so the leaves could dance in the sun.
This was Root.
Or at least, that was the sales pitch. Whether the organization still lived up to that noble ideal or had morphed into something else entirely... well, that depended on who you asked.
At this moment, an agent was briefing Danzo on the day's intelligence.
Initially, Danzo was pleased.
The primary objective recently had been to smear Hatake Sakumo, and the results were excellent. The "White Fang" brand had taken a massive hit. The calls for Sakumo to be the Fourth Hokage had completely evaporated.
Just as Danzo was mentally patting himself on the back, the agent's next words hit him like a bucket of ice water.
"Sir, starting today, a new wave of rumors has appeared. But... they're about you."
"Specifically: Illegal human experimentation... abandoning allies to die... assassinating fellow Leaf ninjas..."
"Here is a summary of the topics currently circulating. Please take a look."
Danzo snatched the scroll from the agent's hand. His fingers trembled as he broke the seal.
The first line made his pupil contract violently: Wood Style Human Experiments.
As he scanned down the list, cold sweat soaked his back.
These weren't rumors. This was a greatest hits collection of his darkest secrets. Almost every accusation on the list was something he had actually done.
Danzo slammed the scroll onto the floor, his aged face twisting in rage. The veins on the hand gripping his cane bulged.
"Find them!" His voice was low, venomous, and sharp. "Turn this village upside down! I want the rats who started this dragged in front of me!"
The agent kneeling on the floor was sweating bullets. "Sir... it happened too fast. We only caught wind of it this evening. By the time we investigated, the instigators had vanished."
"Useless!"
Danzo kicked the agent over. His lone eye gleamed with cold malice.
"Activate every sleeper agent. Monitor the bars, the hospital, the markets—anywhere people gather."
He paused, tapping his cane rhythmically against the stone floor.
"And put extra eyes on Hatake Sakumo. I want to know exactly what he's been doing."
The agent scrambled up, bowing repeatedly, and rushed out to execute the orders.
Once the room was clear, Danzo waved his hand. Three figures wearing bird-beak masks emerged from the darkness behind his chair.
"Rat. Take a team. Disguise yourselves as civilians and infiltrate the markets. Find the source."
"Ox. Go to the Archives. Copy the list of everyone who has accessed classified files in the last three months."
"Tiger. Investigate the Hokage. I want a list of everyone he's met with recently."
"Go. Report back immediately."
The three shadows vanished as silently as they had appeared. Tools without voices.
Alone again, Danzo finally let his composure snap. He flipped his heavy desk over.
Crash!
His porcelain tea set shattered against the stone wall, mirroring his fractured state of mind.
The rumors were too precise. Some of these operations were so old even he had almost forgotten them, yet the rumors referenced them in detail.
There is only one person who knows this much.
"Hiruzen..."
Danzo stared in the direction of the Hokage Tower, his gaze seeming to penetrate the earth and stone.
"You think this petty trick will stop me? I am not Sakumo. You can't shame me into submission."
In Danzo's mind, the culprit was locked in. It had to be the Third Hokage. Only he had the motive and the clearance.
---
The next day.
Taiichi and Kakashi didn't meet up. They stuck to the plan: split up, cause chaos, stay safe.
However, shortly after Taiichi sent out his third wave of Shadow Clones, a memory popped into his head.
Flashback: One hour ago.
A Taiichi clone was in the market, chatting up a middle-aged man.
They were hitting it off, acting like old friends. Taiichi subtly steered the conversation toward the recent gossip.
"It's a shame about Lord Sakumo, right? Every ninja fails a mission eventually. He saved his teammate, and now people say he's not fit to be a ninja?"
"Tell me about it. I burn dinner sometimes, doesn't mean I stop cooking. People are just mean."
"By the way, did you hear the new stuff about Elder Danzo?"
"Danzo? Who's that?"
"Oh, you're out of the loop! Let me tell you... human experiments... leaving buddies to die..."
As the clone spilled the tea, the man's jaw dropped. His eyes lit up with that special spark people get when they hear juicy political scandal. A small crowd started to gather.
Just as the clone was getting into the rhythm, he felt a gaze.
It was subtle, obscure, but it carried a weight.
I'm being watched.
The clone glanced toward a corner without turning his head. He didn't see anyone specific, but his instincts screamed danger.
"Anyway, gotta run! My wife is gonna kill me!"
Ignoring the crowd's pleas for more details, the clone ducked out.
He pulsed his sensory chakra. Someone was tailing him.
The clone smirked. He zig-zagged through the streets, ducked into a dead-end alley, and waited. When the tail didn't appear immediately, he dispelled himself.
Poof.
When the tracker finally rounded the corner into the alley, he found nothing but empty air.
Back to the present.
Taiichi absorbed the memory. So, I've kicked the hornet's nest.
It barely took a day for Danzo to mobilize. He needed to be more careful.
He created two more clones. "Go find Kakashi. Tell him the heat is on. Then dispel."
---
On the other side of town, Kakashi was having an even worse morning.
He hadn't even left his block when he felt eyes on him.
"Marked already?" Kakashi thought, keeping his pace steady.
He slowed down near a dango shop, pretending to check out the menu. Using the reflection in the glass, he spotted a "villager" picking vegetables at a stall nearby. The guy kept glancing over.
Kakashi bit into a dango stick. The sweetness spread over his tongue, but it couldn't mask the cold feeling in his gut.
He turned and walked into a narrow alley. Before the tail could catch up, he used the Shadow Clone Jutsu.
The clones immediately transformed into random civilians.
When the tail reached the alley mouth, he saw Kakashi brush past two strangers. The agent ignored the strangers and kept following the "Kakashi" walking away.
Kakashi repeated this trick at every corner, shedding clones like layers of skin.
Once he had enough decoys running around, he headed to Training Ground 7, where he "coincided" with Taiichi.
One look at Kakashi told Taiichi everything. He's being followed.
Danzo wasn't playing around. He had eyes everywhere.
They exchanged pleasantries loudly for the benefit of the surveillance, while using hand signals and subtle whispers to trade intel.
"I lost a clone earlier. They're onto the method," Kakashi whispered under the guise of a cough. "I'm being watched right now."
"My clone got tailed in the market too," Taiichi murmured. "We have to stop. The fire is big enough. If we keep adding fuel, we'll get burned."
"Agreed."
Business concluded, Taiichi raised his voice. "Hey, since we're both here, want to spar? I need to work on my sword forms!"
"Sure! Let's see what you've got!"
Under the watchful eyes of the Root agent hidden in the trees, the two engaged in a fierce, flashy, and completely innocent kenjutsu duel.
Meanwhile, thanks to their efforts, the Danzo rumors were spreading like wildfire. They had mutated beyond control.
The latest version on the street was that Danzo was planning a coup to seize the Fourth Hokage position by force.
You had to hand it to Root, though. By noon, they had hunted down and popped every single Shadow Clone in the village.
But the damage was done. The villagers were now spreading the gossip for free. Taiichi and Kakashi didn't need to lift a finger.
---
That afternoon. Root HQ.
Danzo was listening to the latest report. His rage had boiled over into a cold, destructive fury.
He swept his arm across his new desk, sending everything crashing to the floor again.
"Garbage! All of you! The village spends a fortune training you, and you can't even stop some gossip?!"
After venting, he glared at the trembling subordinate.
"What about Sakumo?"
"Normal, sir. He hasn't left his house all day. His son, Kakashi, went out, walked around the village, bumped into Matsushita Taiichi, and they've been sparring at the training ground for hours."
"And the ones spreading the rumors? Did you catch them?"
The ninja shook even harder. "Sir... they were very cautious. They were all Shadow Clones. As soon as we moved to apprehend them, they dispelled themselves."
Snap.
The ceramic cup in Danzo's hand pulverized into dust.
"Get out!"
The ninja fled the room as if escaping a demon.
Silence returned to the darkness, broken only by Danzo's heavy breathing.
He reviewed the reports from his elites.
Rat: No one suspicious in the markets.
Ox: No unauthorized file access.
Tiger: The Hokage's meetings are standard.
The feeling of losing control was suffocating.
The operation was airtight. The agents used Shadow Clones. They left no trace.
In all of Konoha, only two people had the motivation and the capability to pull this off.
Sakumo? No. If he was going to fight back, he would have done it days ago. And he wouldn't know about the secret operations mentioned in the rumors.
That left one option.
"Hiruzen..." Danzo whispered. "You've finally decided to play dirty."
"If you want to be ruthless, don't blame me for escalating."
"Rat."
"Here." A figure materialized from the shadows.
"Take a team. Spread new information..."
As Rat listened to the orders, even his emotionless eyes flickered with surprise.
The village was already a stormy sea. Now, Danzo was about to drop a depth charge.