Naruto : Monsters

"Sometimes there was nothing to go back to but burned husks of ruins and shallow graves. Once they see with their own two eyes what their fates would have been had I not stepped into their lives, I give them a choice: Leave or stay."

"You let them go?" I managed to ask through my steadily growing shock.

...

Danzo just waved a hand in front of his face dismissively, as if he was swatting away a fly. "You think me a fool Hyuuga? What use do I have for an unwilling assassin? Better to let them roam free than have them turn their blades on my back when I least expect it. It is why I give them a choice to opt-out early on before they were properly trained, so there would be no danger in letting them go. Only if they choose to stay will they be allowed to be properly trained in the shinobi arts."

"And how many choose to stay?"

"More than you might imagine." Danzo replied, "As I said, a little bit of kindness and they would bleed for me."

"You know," I smiled sardonically, "I find it ironic that after all this talk about only accepting those who willingly follow you, yet here you are, manipulating me like a puppet to force me to do what you want."

"You misunderstand me Hyuuga, if you feel so adamant about it then, by all means, feel free to leave." Danzo snorted derisively, "All I have done is made you aware of the circumstances that already exist around you so that you may be better equipped to make a choice. 

No matter what you decide, those circumstances will not change. I have no intentions of coercing you into anything, should you refuse I will allow you to leave this place freely. You may be valuable to my plans but you are far from irreplaceable. No one is. 

There are others I can pick from, perhaps not quite as qualified to the role as I would hope, but good enough for me to work with. So take solace in knowing that should you decide to refuse, I would only allow someone to succeed me if I had absolute faith in their ability to keep the Hokage safe. Of that, you have my word."

I blinked, not expecting that. "I'm honestly not sure what to think about that." I admitted, more than a little stunned, "From the rumours, I would have thought you wouldn't have given me the option to refuse."

Danzo scoffed and turned towards me, setting his chopsticks down, "You make me repeat myself Hyuuga. I know very well what the rumours paint me out to me, I was the one who created many of them in the first place, but I am also very much aware of the dangers of an unwilling tool. No ninja should ever risk his life relying on weapons that they do not trust. Better to go without."

"Then all those things about Root being nothing more than emotionless husks of men are false?" I probed, trying to feel out the truth from the lies.

The existence of Root was something of an open secret in Konoha. Everyone knew they were real, but no one knew what they did or who they were. So outside of rumours and the occasional horror story, I knew very little of how Root operated. And as I have already learned the hard way that my knowledge from the show could not be trusted.

"Nonsense," Danzo replied, a hint of disapproval leaking into his voice. "What use would a ninja that cannot feel be to me? The vast majority of Root act as spies and covert agents, how would they be able to perform their duties if they cannot express emotions? 

Look at my men surrounding us, even knowing who they are can you tell them apart from ordinary citizens? Anger, fear, love, frustration, they need to be able to fake all these emotions well enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing if they wish to fool those around them, and how would they be able to do that if they have never felt them?

"Beyond that, emotions serve other roles; they can be both the greatest of teachers and motivators. Fear teaches a man how to survive, how to look before he leaps, without it we'd all run recklessly to our deaths. 

While pain, it too serves a lesson; it teaches us not to repeat our mistakes and motivates us to try harder in order not to fail and feel it again. And then there is loyalty. I believe I do not need to explain why having a man trained to kill lacking such sentiment would be a bad idea. The perfect ninja is not one who cannot feel, but one who can put aside their feelings when needed."

"This is why while I have had all of Root undergo an extensive emotional control program, not to burn out their emotions but to control it. While the outward result of such training is such that it could easily be confused as rendering its subjects emotionless, in truth, it is anything but. Every member of Root can care and feel just as well as you can." Danzo paused to think on it for a moment, before he amended, "Perhaps even better if your psychic evaluation is anything to go by."

More and more, I was beginning to steadily lose all faith in my knowledge from the show.

Maybe I was being too naive but talking to him like this, I was beginning to feel all the fear and trepidation I had initially held for the man begin to drain away. Danzo…he might not be anywhere near as frightening as I first thought he might be.

Dangerous, no doubt, but maybe not necessarily evil.

By all reports, this Danzo was genuinely loyal to Konoha and the Hokage. Unlike in the show where he was underhanded, manipulative, heartless monster that controlled the events from the shadow while all the while plotting to usurper the Hokage and take his place, here he was underhanded, manipulative, heartless monster that controlled the events from the shadow while being completely loyal to the Hokage and was fiercely protective of the man.

Meeting the real-life version of the man instead of a caricature from a child's story – which had proven to be an inaccurate representation of reality – I realised that maybe, just maybe, Danzo wasn't that bad after all.

Then I noticed someone staring at me.

Turning to look to my right, I found myself facing a little girl standing not two paces away.

She couldn't have been more than nine, maybe less. She was a tiny little thing, looking even smaller in her white summer dress with dirty-blonde hair that curled down to her shoulders. I didn't personally recognise her but she was one of the small handful of children who were brought along with her parents – though if what Danzo implied was true then they probably weren't her real parents.

But that wasn't what had caught my attention.

She wouldn't stop staring.

She just wouldn't stop.

She kept looking at me, eyes wide and unblinking. Empty eyes. Blank. Not cold, not hardened, they were just empty. There was nothing there, no spark of life. Just listless lifeless eyes of a corpse wrapped up in a doll's dress. It was as if someone had drilled holes into her face, filled them with glass beads and called them eyes. Her expression was little better, so plastic that it better suited a manikin's face than a living child.

She was broken.

What made it worse was the way everybody around us acted as if they couldn't see her.

She stood in the middle of the path, yet no one made a move to get her out of the way. Instead the waiters smoothly walked around while people from both sides of the aisle talked to each other through her - literally as if she wasn't standing there between them. Never acknowledging her existence. It was as if she didn't exist. They just carried on with what they were doing as there wasn't a statuette girl staring blankly at me.

They continued to laugh, to drink, eat and chat while she stood there in the middle of it all, invisible to a crowd of people with the sole exception of me.

It was like they were playing their part of a script, extras to the scene of a movie. None of them were allowed to disturb the scene without the director's permission so they ignored everything happening around the main cast to not break the illusion.

"I never did well with children," Danzo confessed, catching sight of the girl who was still staring at me. He frowned as he looked her over, "Their underdeveloped minds never cope well with the program, it leaves them rather… incomplete at times. Which is why I rarely bother with anyone so young anymore."

Danzo reached out to grasp her shoulders before spinning her around and sending her forward with a firm push to her back, towards where her 'parents' sat chatting. She complied obediently, showing no resistance, but even then she didn't look away and kept staring. Her head swirled around almost completely backwards, and I could see the tendons on her throat stretching to their breaking point from the attempt, but she kept those blank eyes trailed on me.

Stiffly, I turn around to face the counted, fully unnerved by the experience.

Okay, everything I just said about Danzo not being too bad, I take it back. I take it all back, he was evil. Pure fucking evil.

Looks like Danzo might have understated the side-effects of 'emotional control program' just a tad bit. If Itachi was put through something like that then it was no wonder he managed to murder his entire clan without breaking down.

It made me wonder what other things Danzo might have understated or embellished or even left out entirely. How many of the things he told me were outright lies?

I had no idea, but I couldn't take anything he said to me at face value. I sincerely doubted that Danzo was the type of person to have any hangups about lying.

"You need not answer me tonight," Danzo said as he pushed himself up. Bending down, he picked up a cane that I hadn't noticed leaning against the side of the counter. Turning, he looked down at me. "My end may be drawing near but I'm not about to pass away anytime soon. There is time enough to think on the matter before a decision is to be made."

Danzo walked away, his cane thumping on the ground with every step, but he barely made it more than a couple of paces away before stopping.

"There is one more issue you need to be aware of." He looked back at me over his shoulder. "In two weeks time, a B-Rank mission will be arriving from the Land of Waves. Hiruzen will assign the mission to your team. 

Due to several factors, it is imperative that the mission is completed successfully. Make sure that it is. No matter what the cost, do everything in your power to make it so. Consider this as an example of the work you'd be expected to complete in the future should you accept my offer."

Then, before I had a chance to get a word in, Danzo turned and hobbled away, his cane thumping on the ground with every step. A path seemed to appear in the crowded restaurant as he walked, waiters smoothly moving out of his path or customers pulling their seat in to give him room but they did it in a way that appeared so natural, that if I hadn't known they were all Root I wouldn't have realised what they were doing.

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