Before Danzo could get out of his shock at the answers and the complete disregard for Konoha he got from the two S-rank kunoichi, Ren and Hinata were gone. He was left alone with Ino, reeling as he realized what an absolute failure his last scheme was. He hadn't failed this hard in a long time, and it mentally shook him to the core, knowing that his actions made Konoha three S-rank enemies with nobody the wiser.
He... he needed to salvage the situation somehow! He had to send this intel to Hiruzen. Or Koharu. Hell, even Homura would do! Somebody, anybody!
But his body still refused to move, no matter how desperately he tried to shuffle just his foot.
"And then there were two." Ino gleefully said and excitedly clapped her hands with a smug grin.
She had a front row seat to Danzo's freakout. And honestly, she was inwardly rolling her eyes. Of course, the old warhawk would instantly label them enemies of Konoha just because they refused to be the village's whipping boy and girls.
She was actually starting to see what Ren meant when he said he was tired of this, 'If you are not with us, you are against us' mentality that the ninja world had.
They did not want to make Konoha suffer, duh. They were born here, had family and friends here. But were they supposed to suffer because the Konoha leaders decided so?
No, that Ino vehemently refused, and if they called her a traitor because of it, then so be it. Well, for now, it didn't matter. For now, the leaders only wanted to get rid of Ren, and he had already made up his mind on how to proceed.
Unfortunately for Hiruzen and his flunkies, Ino was not Ren. She was not as forgiving or tolerant as her boyfriend. He said that Hiruzen's crippled status was enough of a revenge for this. After all, he did wait until the old man's hand was lopped off before he intervened in his match with Orochimaru.
Sigh. But it was not enough for Ino. No. She had decided that she was going to mess with Hiruzen's plan to make Asuma the Sixth Hokage. That would be her revenge.
Besides, she knew her lazy-ass teacher well enough to know he detested the very idea. She was practically doing Asuma a favor here.
She let Danzo to his own devices for a moment as he tried to find a way out with renewed vigor, if only to hammer down how useless it was and make him despair more.
In the meantime, Ino unsealed a comfortable recliner chair and spent a few seconds locating a level enough ground to park it there. Then she took out a small wooden bedside table and put it next to the chair. The last item she unsealed was the third book in the Icha-Icha Paradise series, with a bookmark somewhere in the first quarter of the book, before she prepared it on the table.
Happy with her set-up, Ino nodded to herself and sat down in her chair before she turned back to Danzo, who was silently staring at her, feeling a complicated cocktail of emotions when nothing he could do actually worked out for him.
"Say, before we proceed with the more pleasant part of your execution, there is one thing I wanted to ask you about. Would you mind terribly answering me?" Ino politely asked, stifling a chuckle at the irritation and grim determination oozing from her prisoner's mind.
She knew he was nowhere near ready to give up his attempts to at least leave a hint for the other old stooges, so she decided it couldn't hurt to give him more time to dig himself into a deeper hole of hopelessness.
After all, why put in the effort into torturing him when he was doing so well torturing himself?
"Shouldn't you have these answers already? Didn't you go through my head?" Danzo gruffly bit out, but he was just stalling. He still had hope that somebody would notice something amiss. They were on top of the Hokage Monument, and the ANBU should be patrolling here often.
So, why the hell did no patrol notice them yet!?
"I did, but I didn't go through the information just yet. Besides, reading memories and figuring out motivations and feelings behind actions are two different things." Ino nonchalantly shrugged. "I'd like to hear it from your lips."
The fact that she could confirm if he spoke the truth or not, thanks to her hold on him, went unsaid but was understood.
"I'd like to ask about the Uchiha clan." Ino continued, not waiting for Danzo's answer because she knew he would take at least a minute to reply. "Why kill them all?"
Part of the reason why she was asking was for Sasuke. Maybe she could offer this information as a 'Sorry, not sorry' present if she ever told him she took the possibility of revenge from him.
But the bigger part was asking for herself. For her clan. She wanted to see what could drive one of the most influential men from the village to exterminate an entire clan. She'd rather avoid that fate for her Yamanaka brethren in the future if at all possible. A decade or so later, she might even be able to slip the true story about the Uchiha clan's demise into her clan chronicles so the next clan head can learn from it.
"Why do you care?" Danzo coldly asked.
"Sasuke was my classmate." Ino simply replied, and Danzo derisively snorted.
"I see that old crush on the last Uchiha is still there somewhere. What would your current boyfriend say if he knew-"
"Well, if you don't want to talk about it..." Ino interrupted his taunt with an exasperated gesture as Danzo's body started turning around.
"Wait!" He shouted as loudly as he could. "Uchihas. You want to know about Uchihas? I can tell you!"
With a raised eyebrow in amusement, Ino turned him around again so he would be facing her once more. With a look, she beckoned him to start.
Danzo paused for a moment, but then he started grumbling a bit under his nose before he slowly started speaking. "Everybody thinks they were such angels. The treasure of this village. One of its founding clans. Hah. What a load of bullshit."
"Why do you think the Kurama clan is near extinction? They were the only clan with better genjutsu than the Uchihas. They were a strategic resource for the village. One of their ninjas in the backline, affecting a battlefield with their drawing, could shift the entire battle in our favor. They were instrumental in Konoha winning the First and the Second War. A Small clan they might have been, but they were still one of our most important ones." Danzo slowly explained, but his eyes shone with unrestrained hatred and disgust.
"But the precious Uchihas couldn't have that. Oh, no. Their ego couldn't handle that they were not the best at something where their eyeballs gave them an unfair advantage. By the time the Third War rolled in, the number of Kurama ninjas had mysteriously declined, and the village almost lost many battles because of it." Danzo's eyes narrowed, "That's when I first noticed something amiss."
"Uchihas always knew how to play ninja. The Kurama clan was not the only casualty of their greed. We could never prove it, but it was always extremely suspicious how the Senju clan practically died out. The crumbs led to the Uchiha clan, but what could we do? They were too numerous and too useful for the village. And then there was the Hatake clan." Danzo bitterly said, but then he shrugged, at least mentally, since his body was still unresponsive.
Ino could feel the bitterness shift into a sense of contented glee as the old warhawk smiled at the mild, intrigued surprise on Ino's face, "What? Did you think all that mistrust and suspicion aimed at their clan after the Kyubi attack came out of nowhere? That we sucked it out of our collective thumbs?" Danzo asked with a tone full of sarcasm. "No. Tobirama-sensei was correct. The only good Uchiha is a dead Uchiha. We just didn't see it soon enough. They tried to stage a coup, and that was a step too far even for Hiruzen's lenient rule, and now they are all dead. Good riddance."
Ino hummed, pondering Danzo's words. Ren did share some suspicions about how Danzo was responsible for the downfall of the Senju clan and Hatake Sakumo's suicide. And yet, Danzo's words rang true during his speech.
Then again... if Hatake Sakumo was a threat to Danzo's path to the Hokage seat, then he would also be a similar threat to other factions in the village with similar aspirations. Factions Ren probably didn't know or think about. After all, anybody could overlook things.
But Uchihas? Well, could be. Ino supposed she would know if Danzo had a hand in these events once she went through his memories.
"Thank you for the riveting story." Ino gave him a grateful nod. "I would even believe that your intentions were only noble if not for your right arm."
Danzo's body moved, and his left hand slowly unrobed his right arm before unclasping the chakra restraints. The Sharingan eyes embedded in the pale, wrinkled arm instantly opened and activated.
A spike of elation shot through Danzo as he grinned at Ino and instantly used Izanagi now that his right arm became usable. The stupid girl gave him a way out!
Seconds passed, chakra flared... Ino and Danzo stared at each other under the night sky, but the reality refused to be rewritten.
As Danzo's face fell and his eyes dulled in despair, an owl hooted somewhere nearby while Ino's lips twitched, "Did you really think it would be so easy?" She mirthfully asked him. But inwardly, she respected the attempt.
Her eyes slid across the monstrosity of an arm. One, two, three... ten. She counted ten Sharingan eyes. She could kill him ten times. Sure, she could disarm him, but where would be the fun in that?
"Well, then, no time to waste." Ino declared, and Danzo didn't even protest, still reeling from the fact that his Izanagi did not execute. He was trying to figure out how, but he had no idea.
Danzo's body turned around and walked toward the edge of the Hokage Monument, where he stopped and turned back toward the gently smiling Ino.
"Ready for your leap of faith?"
He blinked, his mind catching up. Leap of faith. She was going to...!
"Learn well." Ino waved at him as he urgently opened his mouth, protests on his tongue. But his body betrayed him as it involuntarily hopped back, straight off the edge of the Hokage Monument.
Danzo screamed in his head.
His chakra flared and tried to do something. It would have been so easy to save himself if he could just channel it properly! But whenever he got a tentative grasp on it, it slipped from his reach.
The air whished and whooshed around him, ruffling his hair and clothes. Desperation surged within him. He had to do something, anything!
And just as he was almost near the ground, his chakra control returned.
'Did I get out of her technique's range?' Danzo idly wondered, but he had no time to contemplate it further. Joy filled him as he activated Izanagi and felt one of his Sharingan eyes go blind.
He was going to survive th-!
His body met the ground and went splat.
His bones shattered, his flesh ripped, and his organs ruptured. But because he fell feet-first, he didn't instantly die. Danzo was left wheezing in agony on the ground, a fine bloody mist coming out of his nose with every labored breath from his collapsed lungs as the world was slowly going dark.
The moment passed, and the squished Danzo on the ground suddenly disappeared, only for a new, whole, and healthy Danzo to appear out of nowhere right next to where he had crashed.
His expression became furious. His hands balled tightly into fists. His teeth ground against each other. The muscles in his body coiled, almost painfully, yet he relished the sensation because it spoke of newly regained control.
He looked up, toward the peak of the Hokage Monument with a glare. He was going to have his revenge. First, he decided to go to Hiruzen and report this murder attempt. They will mobilize the ANBU and hunt the trio down.
He was especially going to make his threats come true. He had Ino's parents to kill and Hanabi Hyuga to kidnap, and he needed to do this before his would-be killers realized he was not yet dead.
With no time to spare, Danzo channeled chakra into his feet and was about to body-flicker toward Hiruzen's house... only for his technique to fail halfway through, and the only thing he accomplished was tripping over his chakra and crashing face-first into the ground, breaking his nose in the process.
With a groan, the bewildered Danzo was about to stand up, only for terror to flood his body when he once again completely lost control of his body.
'I was not fast enough.' He thought, and his stomach sank while his body stood up and started leisurely walking toward the stony stairs leading to the top of the Hokage Monument.
For the next ten minutes, Danzo had plenty of time to drown in his anguish as his body slowly climbed the stairs. When he arrived back at the top, he walked toward Ino, who was reading the Icha-Icha Paradise book, lounging in her recliner chair. She turned her head toward him and gave him a cheeky grin.
"The mother of all learning is repetition." She said, and Danzo found himself running toward the edge before he jumped off it with his body doing a silly T-pose.
The wind once again whooshed around him, but now there was a spark of hope. Hopefully, the stupid girl did not notice him regaining control for that brief moment. He neared the ground and once again, he regained control of his chakra just as he was about to crash.
With no time for anything else, Danzo activated Izanagi again.
He just might survive th-!
He went splat. Again.
...
"Oh my," Ino muttered under her nose, her cheeks going pink as she read a particularly spicy scene in the Icha-Icha Paradise, inwardly giggling and wondering if she could talk Ren into recreating it in the bedroom somehow.
Steps suddenly interrupted her enjoyment, and she looked up, only for her amusement to deepen as Danzo once again climbed to the top of the Hokage Monument.
Nine Sharingan eyes on his arm were blind. Only one remained.
The man was almost on the verge of a mental breakdown by now. With each leap, his hope for survival surged, only to be denied, again and again. Each failed attempt weighed on him more and more; each climb of the stairs chipped away at him, plunging him into a deeper and deeper pit of despair, piece by piece.
Even somebody as composed as Danzo was starting to get really desperate.
"Ready for another dip?" Ino gave him the customary quip, enjoying the fury and fear he felt as he silently glared at her, resigned to what came next.
He had experienced it nine times already. He was ready for it. Maybe this time...
That's why Ino decided to break the monotony of their situation. With a smirk, she threw a kunai at Danzo. His eyes widened. The last Sharingan eye on his arm went blind. And the kunai sank deep into his forehead. His body fell to the ground, dead.
A moment later, the body disappeared, and Danzo reappeared... and even the last vestige of his fury turned into a deep, profound fear when the control he expected to regain for a moment was nowhere to be found.
"Y-You..." Danzo almost breathlessly stuttered, looking at Ino with fright as he realized there was no opportunity to survive. From the beginning, it was just Ino toying with him.
Mentally flinching at the cold blue eyes of the girl, Danzo's mind was in turmoil when Ino spoke, "You had a good run. But all good things must come to an end eventually. Ta-ta."
And Danzo's body started to involuntarily move toward the edge once more.
"No, no, no, NO!" The closer he got, the more hysterical his protests became. There was no more Izanagi to save him. "NOT LIKE THIS!" He screamed... and his body jumped off head-first.
Ino snorted. Danzo was not afraid of death. He would be happy to die for Konoha. But he was afraid of dying meaninglessly. And that was exactly what Ino delivered to him.
For what was more meaningless than jumping off a cliff?
For the last time, Ino heard a faint thud as Danzo went splat against the ground.
Standing up from her recliner chair, Ino stretched her stiff muscles. "Well, time for a clean-up, I guess." She huffed in resignation.
---
Author Note:
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