Chapter 42: Ōnoki, Is Your Waist Okay?
The dying embers of the sun bled across the horizon, casting Konoha's formidable walls in long, sinister shadows. Beyond those walls, a sea of hostile figures gathered, their collective chakra a palpable, oppressive weight in the twilight air.
The Kage of the great villages had taken their positions at the fore, symbols of gathered might. Standing among them, like a vulture amidst wolves, was Shimura Danzō, his single visible eye cold and calculating beside the stoic, aged figure of Ōnoki, the Third Tsuchikage.
"People of Konoha, hear me!" The voice of the Fourth Raikage, 'A,' boomed like thunder, echoing off the village walls with sheer physical force. "Surrender the jinchūriki, Namikaze Raimon, and this army will turn back!"
Danzō, lacking such a prodigious lung capacity, raised a megaphone to his lips. His voice, amplified and metallic, slithered over the Raikage's echo. "I am Shimura Danzō. And before this gathering, I must denounce the crimes of the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen!"
He didn't wait for a reaction.
"Do you recall the name Orochimaru?" he began, and like a master storyteller weaving a tale of horror, Danzō recounted the sordid history of the Sannin's forbidden experiments. The truth, of course, was a tangled web.
The experiments could never have reached such a scale without Danzō's own covert funding from Root's black coffers.
And Hiruzen?
In the beginning, he had turned a blind eye, a silent approval born of desperate hope.
Who in Konoha's upper echelons didn't dream of reclaiming the lost power of Wood Release?
A single success could have restored the village to its pinnacle overnight!
In his narration, Danzō meticulously excised his own role, painting a picture solely of Hiruzen's weakness, his negligence, his fatal indulgence of a beloved student gone mad.
A murmur of confusion rippled through the ranks of Konoha shinobi manning the walls. To them, the Sandaime was a kind, grandfatherly figure, a steadfast leader. This portrait of a corrupt enabler was alien, unbelievable!
Unbeknownst to them, Sarutobi Hiruzen had already ascended the wall the moment the combined forces appeared. Clad in his battle armor, the Monkey Staff in hand, his face darkened with each damning sentence from his former friend. The accusations were exaggerated, yes, but the core of them… eighty percent was undeniable truth.
A cold dread settled in his gut.
How could he refute it? Danzō, his shadow for decades, held far too many of his secrets.
The eyes of the village were turning toward him, seeking denial, seeking the reassurance of his righteous anger.
Hiruzen's expression shifted through shades of guilt, rage, and finally, steely resolve. His legacy, his image as the 'Professor,' the benevolent Hokage—it couldn't shatter here.
If I cannot refute, he thought, a familiar, cynical calculus taking over, then I must redirect. Defeat Danzō, and history will be written by the victor. If we fall… then it will not matter.
He drew himself up, his voice projecting decades of authority. "Konoha! Do not listen to this traitor's lies! Shimura Danzō is a rogue ninja, who once dared to orchestrate an attempt on my life, your Hokage!"
He thrust a condemning finger toward the outside. "His wickedness knows no bounds! The orphans of our village, those who should have been under Konoha's protection… he fed them into the grinding machine of his Root, turning children into emotionless assassination tools!"
A stunned silence was broken by a raw, furious shout from a chūnin in the ranks. "Damn you, Danzō! You deserve death!"
Spittle flew from his lips. His own young cousin, placed in the orphanage after his father's death in service, had vanished without a trace. All inquiries were met with cold threats from Root agents. Now, the horrible truth seemed confirmed.
"My poor cousin…!"
A wave of visceral anger swept the defenders. The battle hadn't formally begun, so they hurled what they could—insults, scraps, even a few rotting vegetables sourced from who-knows-where—in Danzō's direction. The solemn pre-battle atmosphere devolved into chaotic vitriol.
"Hiruzen!" Danzō snarled back, his composure cracking. "You speak so righteously! But you knew! You had to know! What, now you wash your hands and lay all the sins at my feet?!"
And so it began—the spectacular, unedifying spectacle of the two old warhorses of Konoha politics slinging mud in public. Hiruzen, however, had decades more experience in the art of political deflection. Danzō, the master of shadows, was out of his depth in this open forum. Every accusation he flung seemed to boomerang back, stained with his own fingerprints.
"You conniving old fool!" Danzō roared, frustration getting the better of him. "If I am a beast, then you are a hypocrite of the highest order! Tell them, then! Tell everyone what happened to the noble Senju clan, the bloodline of our Shodaime-sama!"
On the wall, Senju Tsunade, who had arrived moments earlier with Namikaze Raimon at her side, went very still. Her golden eyes, usually blazing with passion or dulled by grief, now fixed on Hiruzen with an intensity that could melt stone. Raimon, standing beside her, placed a calming hand on her shoulder.
"Not now, Tsunade-hime," he murmured, his voice low. "The enemies before us are the priority. The ghosts of the past… they can wait a little longer."
Hiruzen's face paled. "They… they acted of their own volition! For the glory of Konoha!"
He could never admit to the quiet pressures, the patriotic persuasions he'd allowed to be exerted. In the power vacuum after the deaths of Hashirama and Tobirama, with Wood Release lost, Konoha's position was precarious.
Desperate times called for desperate, and quietly monstrous, measures. One by one, the proud Senju had volunteered their bodies for the dream of resurrecting their founder's power, until only Tsunade remained.
"Is that all you have to say?" Danzō's mouth twisted into a vindictive smirk. The time had come for his trump card. "Very well. Witness the fruit of Konoha's true dedication! Yamato, step forward!"
From the ranks behind Danzō, a young man with empty, shadowed eyes moved mechanically into the open space. His movements were stiff, devoid of will.
"Show them! Show them the legacy that Hiruzen failed to protect!"
The young man—Yamato—formed a series of familiar hand signs with robotic precision and slammed his palm onto the earth.
"Mokuton: Jukai Kōtan!" (Wood Release: Birth of Dense Woodland)
The ground erupted. A massive tree, thick and vibrant with life, spiraled skyward from the barren field in a matter of seconds.
A collective gasp, then a roar of excitement, swept through the Konoha defenders.
"Mokuton! It's the Shodaime's power!"
"Wood Release has returned to Konoha!"
The sight of that legendary kekkei genkai ignited a fierce, desperate hope. With this power, what village would dare challenge them?
"See?!" Danzō crowed. "Who is the true guardian of Konoha's future? Hiruzen Sarutobi is a decaying relic, all soft words and hidden rot!"
The tide of public opinion on the wall began to sway dangerously. The allure of power was potent.
"He even stole from you!" Danzō pressed his advantage, going for the jugular. "Your mission rewards, your hard-earned ryō! Where did it go? To line the pockets of the three thousand strong Sarutobi clan! He grows fat on your toil and blood!"
This was a blow that struck home in the gut of every rank-and-file shinobi. They risked their lives for money, for family, for stability. Theft of their rewards was an unforgivable betrayal.
"Lies!" Hiruzen thundered, his voice cracking with feigned outrage. "Every ryō diverted went to fund Danzō's unsanctioned Root! Look at that Mokuton user! Do you see any life in his eyes? Danzō stole this asset from Konoha and shackled him with his vile Tongue-Eradicating Seal! A seal only his Root employs! He is a rogue ninja, and you are all his dupes!"
Hiruzen's counter was swift and brutal. He pointed at the clearly controlled Yamato. "He is a victim! A Konoha citizen held captive! Konoha shinobi! Slay the traitor Danzō and reclaim what is ours!"
The emotional whiplash worked. Fury, once directed inward, was now forcefully turned outward. With a mighty battle cry, the front lines of Konoha's defenders surged forward. From the walls, a brilliant, chaotic volley of ninjutsu—fireballs, lightning bolts, torrents of water—arced into the darkening sky toward the allied forces.
From his vantage point, Namikaze Raimon watched the two old men tear each other's reputations apart with a detached, cold amusement.
"Heh… like a pair of rabid old dogs fighting over a bare bone," he muttered to himself. Even without this war, the Sarutobi clan's fate was sealed. The Military Police Force and the 'noble' clan's own hubris would have seen to that eventually.
The battlefield below dissolved into chaos as the forces clashed. Notably, the Kage and elite jōnin held their positions, a tense standoff. The presence of the legendary Tsunade on Konoha's side granted the defenders a crucial surge of confidence.
On the allied side, peculiar formations could be seen. Sand shinobi erected dense, multi-layered shields of sand, while Cloud ninja wove nets of crackling lightning. Their eyes kept darting nervously toward the walls. These were not standard offensive formations—they were paranoid, last-ditch defensive measures.
'Aha,' Raimon realized, a faint smirk touching his lips. 'All this… for me? How flattering. And how utterly futile.'
He shook his head slowly. He would have to intervene eventually. Tsunade's ascension needed to be uncontested, her authority cemented in fire and victory. What better way than to clear the stage for her?
Without fanfare, he brought his hands together in a single, fluid seal. Not the rambling series of his early days, but the precise, efficient motion of a true master. "Fūton: Ayumu Kyokū." (Wind Release: Shunpo)
Dozens of micro-cyclones, invisible to most, whirled to life beneath his feet with a sound like a hundred whispered exhalations. They lifted him gracefully from the wall, as if ascending an invisible staircase. He walked forward into the open air, high above the clashing armies below, a figure of impossible calm.
All eyes, friend and foe, were drawn upward. The din of battle seemed to hush for a fraction of a second. He ignored the gathered Kage, his gaze passing over the furious Raikage, the calculating Mizukage, and the watchful Kazekage, until it settled on the diminutive, floating figure of the Tsuchikage.
His voice, amplified by chakra and cutting through the battlefield noise with casual ease, held a tone of almost mocking concern as he asked the question that was utterly irrelevant to the war, yet spoke volumes of his sheer, terrifying audacity:
"Ōnoki-jii… is your back feeling better?"