Ino finally relaxed her focus, her arms freely falling next to her body as she let out a long breath. Her face scrunched up from the overload of information she had gotten in the last hour, fourteen minutes, and thirty-seven seconds she had spent scouring Danzo's brain for his life story. The beginning of a headache was already forming, and Ino let out a moan when she felt Hinata's fingers gently push against her temples, pulsing with the oh-so-comforting medical chakra.
Haa~, the bitch had her uses.
Just as that thought formed in her mind, a very weak jolt of lightning chakra suddenly went from Hinata's right hand, pointing finger to her left hand pointing finger, with Ino's head between them.
Ino gasped in shock as a sharp pain spiked in her head, and her eyes widened before cringing as the sudden movement only aggravated her new headache.
"I said that out loud?" Ino asked with a pained groan, getting only a huff from Hinata in response as she once again started massaging the medical chakra into her temples.
Ten seconds later, Ino once again sighed in relief, her head no longer hurting. Only small aching echoes remained, but these were more of a mental problem, and Hinata could not help her with them.
"Are you going to wake him up?" Hinata asked as she returned to sit on a chair to the side.
"Of course. Gloating in his face is the most important part of this whole operation!" Ino proudly answered in her well-practiced uppity way.
Despite a small, amused snort, Hinata opened her mouth, most likely to once again say how stupid it was to not simply plunge a kunai through his head, but in the end, she wisely gave up on that endeavor as she closed her mouth and let out a resigned sigh.
"Okay. Let me fetch Ren, then. He should be done with the Hokage Monument by now." She grumpily said and shook her head as she walked out of the room in search of Ren's clone that could dispel and call the original that way.
"Heh." Ino chuckled with a smirk once she was alone in the room. She understood why Ren and Hinata didn't like her plan. But they drew straws and she won fair and square. Danzo's fate was up to her, and she wanted to give it a bit of pomp before she sent him off to his next great adventure, as Ren jokingly called it.
Besides, she really, really wanted to gloat.
Looking back at the sleeping Danzo, Ino nudged him with her chakra. It wasn't subtle. It wasn't gentle. It was practically a shove to his chakra network, and it did exactly what Ino intended.
Danzo instantly woke up, realizing there was a threat nearby. He willed his body to spring up and started molding his chakra into a wind-natured one in preparation for releasing a jutsu... only for his mind to slam 'face-first' into a mental wall Ino put up and reel back.
Ino giggled.
Despite his daze and the rising panic Ino could feel coming from him, Danzo's struggles only intensified. He mentally pushed his unresponsive body to move, his sluggish chakra to flare and mold. He certainly did not give up, slamming against the constraints of Ino's control with unceasing determination fueled by dread-filled rage, full of increasing fear.
Danzo was a control freak. He needed control. There were only a few things that still scared him, and losing control was one of them. And Ino had just taken control of his body from him.
She watched his resistance with amusement. It wasn't focused. It was akin to a scared wild beast trashing. It only served to tire him out. Ino let him.
But Danzo was an experienced ninja. He calmed down soon enough as the clarity returned to him. He almost regained his composure, and that's when Ino spoke, throwing a rock into the sea that was his calmness.
"Oh? Done with struggling?" Ino asked, inwardly relishing how Danzo mentally froze. Both because he was so panicked earlier that he hadn't even considered there might be a threat in the room with him, and that made him want to scold himself, and because he totally recognized her voice.
Now that was curious for Ino because she was sure she had never met the guy in her life, except for that time he exited Sarutobi's office.
It almost made her want to go and rummage through the knowledge she had gotten from his head, but she shook off that urge. She was going to need at least a few hours to properly go through the story of his life. Now was not the time.
"Have you come to kill me?" Danzo harshly asked, only to be taken aback a second later when he realized he could talk!
The rational part of his mind decided that he needed to keep Ino talking, at least until his ninja noticed something was wrong.
Ino chuckled at that thought, and with a small shrug that Danzo could not see because his unresponsive body was lying on his back and staring at the ceiling of his room.
"You could say that." Ino said simply.
"That is treason, Yamanaka."
"Only if they catch me."
"I have some of the best ninja working for me. They WILL catch you. You might be an S-rank kunoichi, but even those can be felled. Nobody is invincible. Poison, ambush, and many other means can still assure your downfall."
"You HAD some of the best ninja working for you."
"What?"
"We killed everybody in the entire base. Nobody is coming to save you, Mister Danzo."
Ino noticed the sinking feeling of hopelessness Danzo was experiencing, but he refused to give up.
"You don't want to do this, Yamanaka."
"Oh, and why is that?" Ino playfully asked, despite knowing what he was about to say, thanks to how deeply she was entrenched in his mind.
"Maybe you killed my men in this base, maybe you didn't." Danzo tried to sound nonchalant. "But I have more bases." No, he didn't, but Ino's lips quirked up. She was not going to interrupt him. "I have more ninja out of the village. What do you think they will do when they return?"
Danzo paused, and Ino let the question linger. If Danzo could see her, he would realize it didn't have the effect he wanted the second he noticed her bemused expression, but he couldn't see her and took her silence for consideration of his words.
"You and your two lovers are the biggest threat I currently have against me in the village. If I die, my ninjas have standing orders to eliminate you. For you, in particular? My ninjas are going to hit your family. Not immediately. One day, when you are least expecting it, you will find your mother in your living room with her throat slit. Your father might be called for a mission, only for it to go wrong. And when your vigilance wavers? That's when assassins will come for you, girl." He gravely said, even starting to sound menacing.
Ino would have praised him, but her attention was drawn to Ren and Hinata, who entered the room.
Danzo chuckled, managing to make it sound cruel as he thought his words were getting to his captor, "They won't even need to fight you, to be honest. After all, you have chased away an entire army. Killing you head-on would be tricky. But we don't fight head-on. What do you think your dear Hinata Hyuga would do if her sister were kidnapped and brutally killed before she could save her? And if she got to know that it was a result of your actions, Yamanaka?"
Danzo was about to continue when Hinata's deadpan voice interrupted him as she spoke to Ino. "Is this the moment where he tries to persuade you that it is not too late to stop and turn back?"
That froze Danzo's blood in his veins, and Ino could clearly feel a spike of fear go through his mind. The man was afraid of her, sure, but he was absolutely terrified of Hinata after what she had done and shown during the invasion.
"Aww~, Hina-chan! Interrupting is not cool! I was interested in his story!" Ino complained, adding a nice whine to it. "He was going to tell me this whole fantasy about how he ordered his ninjas to start a civil war in Konoha." She laughed and felt Danzo's despair as he realized his bullshitting had been seen through by her.
Because really, if there was one thing Danzo considered sacred, it was Konoha. He dedicated his whole life to the higher ideal of the village's prosperity. Even if he believed it could only properly prosper under his rule, he would have never done anything to harm Konoha.
These supposed orders to attack Ino and Hinata's families? That would absolutely start a civil war if they had succeeded in the manner he described. And that was something Danzo would have never, ever done.
Ino didn't need to be in his head to know that. But it helped.
"So, you are a traitor, too, Hyuga." Danzo's defeated voice resounded through the room, and Hinata hummed.
"You have too big an opinion of yourself, councilor." Hinata's lips formed a small, knowing smile, "All we do is for the Will of Fire."
That made even Danzo speechless while Ren and Ino almost burst out into laughter. It took a few moments for them to calm down and for Danzo to finally find his words.
"... At least don't be a coward and look me in the eyes as you do the deed, Yamanaka." Danzo solemnly said in the tone of a man who accepted his fate.
But Ino only snorted, "Yeah, no. Good try. But how nice of you to remind me..."
Danzo felt his arm involuntarily raise, and an alarm went through his mind as it bent, his hand nearing his face. His fingers slid underneath the tight wrapping of his supposedly missing eye, and he suddenly realized what Ino was about to do...!
Before he could protest, he could feel his own fingers digging into his eye socket and plucking out the eye that was not supposed to be there. The pain hit him, and he wanted to scream from anger at losing his most potent weapon and his only hope to survive. But he refused to give his captors the satisfaction and only let out a pained grunt through his gritted teeth as his hand, holding the eye, was outstretched toward Ino.
"Here you go, Hinata. One fresh Mangekyo Sharingan, just as you ordered." Ino said, and Danzo could hear footsteps coming closer to him as he felt blood streaming down the right side of his face out of his now-empty eye socket.
Hinata took the eye and stored it in a specially-prepared jar before she sealed it into a storage seal. She then leaned over Danzo and started healing the wound. Not fully, but enough to ensure the injury was not going to hinder whatever Ino had prepared for him.
Honestly, Hinata kind of pitied his bad luck. If it were her who won the straw-drawing competition, she would have just killed him in his sleep and been done with it. There was no need to draw it out or be intentionally cruel. Then she would go and spend the rest of the night riding Ren in bed rather than dedicating it to torture the man.
Well, she was going to do that anyway after they were done here, but the point was, Ino was different. Vindictive.
She was totally fine taking her time to show her displeasure to him by making Danzo's death rather unpleasant. How? Hinata had no idea. Neither Ren nor she could muster the care to actually ask. But if she were to guess, Ino was going to kill him in a way he was going to hate.
Angering a vindictive mind-reader had its downsides.
Finished with her healing, Hinata sighed and walked away from Danzo, whose body slowly stood up from the bed and approached them.
"Well, then! We are going on a small educational excursion." Ino told Danzo in high spirits with a mischievous grin, "And we will be learning all about taking a leap of faith!" She excitedly clapped her hands.