This time, the one Hikaru intended to deal with was not just Danzō.
As far as he was concerned, Danzō was already a dead man. The fact that the old bastard was still breathing only meant Hikaru still wanted him to stir up even more trouble.
And the truth was, Danzō had performed even better than Hikaru expected.
Because Hikaru himself had not anticipated that Danzō would manage to enrage so many people.
The reason Shibi Aburame had been so humble in front of Hikaru was because he had truly been driven to the brink.
But in reality, Shibi still possessed considerable influence within Konoha.
The Aburame clan might not be counted among the great clans, but it had been part of the village since its founding. On top of that, Shibi himself had fought in the Second and Third Shinobi Wars, and had even gone on missions alongside Akimichi Chōza and Namikaze Minato.
His network within Konoha was extensive.
Even Hikaru had to admit that he had underestimated this clan head.
After discussing matters with Hikaru, Shibi began moving behind the scenes.
He sent the talented youths of his clan—especially the ones he believed Danzō had his eye on—into the ANBU.
On the surface, that did not look much different from sending them into Root.
But Shibi understood that some sacrifice was necessary.
More importantly, the ANBU allowed retirement.
That alone was something Root could never compare to.
Beyond that, the ANBU would offer protection—to him, and to the clan members he sent in.
Once they entered the ANBU, the conflict would no longer be between the Aburame clan and Root.
It would become a clash between ANBU and Root.
Or, to put it more accurately, a clash between the Fourth Hokage and the Third Hokage.
And Hikaru truly did give him that protection.
The conflict between Root and ANBU quietly began intensifying, which was exactly the result both Hikaru and Shibi wanted.
"The more that conflict escalates, the more Danzō's attention stays fixed on me. That gives Shibi room to move," Hikaru thought.
If they wanted to deal Danzō a fatal blow, they needed enough momentum—enough force that no one could ignore it.
Without Root's eyes constantly fixed on him, Shibi finally began using his full ability.
Over the next half year, he reached and gathered far more people than even Hikaru had expected.
"No wonder no one stepped forward to help Hiruzen when he faced Orochimaru alone," Hikaru mused as he looked over the list of names in his hand, then shook his head lightly. "It's because no one wanted to help him."
The list was filled with joint signatures from one small clan after another.
It was Hikaru who had opened Pandora's box for Danzō with his own hands.
It was Hikaru who had pushed Orochimaru out of Konoha and forced Hiruzen into reactivating Danzō.
The expansion of Root—coupled with Hiruzen's urgent need to use Danzō to hold the ANBU in check—had inflated Danzō's ambition and greed to an absurd degree.
Even though Hikaru knew that, with or without him, Hiruzen would one day end up confronting Orochimaru personally in order to preserve his dignity and keep outsiders from interfering in his "family matter," he had still shoved that process forward hard.
And under his push, the situation had become even worse than in the original timeline.
Strictly speaking, even though Danzō had gone completely overboard, Hiruzen still had not yet reached the degree of total exhaustion he had in canon.
Back then, Hiruzen had been squeezed from every side.
There had been the Hyūga affair, which forced him to think about how to placate the Hyūga.
At the same time, the Uchiha issue had grown more and more volatile, and he had been forced to keep trying to mediate.
There was no denying that the Uchiha massacre happened with Hiruzen's tacit approval.
But there was also no denying that he had genuinely tried to mediate things before that, hoping to steer the village through peacefully.
Accepting Shisui and Itachi into the ANBU had been his attempt to build a bridge with the Uchiha.
In that sense, his approach had not been much different from Uchiha shin's.
But the Nine-Tails Incident had become a thorn, one driven deep into both Konoha and the Uchiha.
As long as no one stepped forward to tell them the Sharingan seen in the Nine-Tails' eyes that night had nothing to do with Konoha's Uchiha, that thorn would only sink deeper.
And that was why Hiruzen eventually permitted the extermination of the Uchiha and sent Itachi away as the scapegoat.
"Itachi was out of his mind, so there's no point judging him too much. But Hiruzen's handling of the whole matter only made the village even more uneasy. On top of that, he still had administrative work to deal with. There was simply no way he could spare the attention to keep Danzō in check."
The current Hiruzen was in a similar situation.
The difference was that, instead of being overwhelmed by the objective pressures of the original timeline, he was now being driven half-mad by Hikaru.
He was old.
And after taking over the Hokage's duties again, the little energy he had left was already stretched thin.
Then Hikaru's newspaper hit him like a hammer, forcing him to divert even more of his attention just to respond.
The spread of that newspaper had gone far beyond what Hiruzen ever imagined.
To be honest, even Hikaru himself had not expected it to grow so quickly.
Or rather, he had not expected the merchants of Konoha to have such sharp instincts.
Once the paper expanded into towns and cities across the Land of Fire, Hikaru had begun considering how to turn it into a source of profit.
The purchase rate of the Shinobi World Daily had remained consistently high.
Part of that was because Hikaru had deliberately kept the print numbers relatively low.
But according to the Nara clan shinobi in ANBU who handled calculations, their print volume had been based on the minimum likely readership.
And with that distribution, only a few locations still had leftovers at the end of the day. In most places, every single copy sold out.
With that kind of sales ratio, combined with the paper's rich and daring content, it very quickly gained widespread praise.
And that popularity made the merchants realize something at once—
this was a perfect platform to advertise their goods.
So before Hikaru could even make a move, merchants had already begun approaching him, hoping to buy promotion space for themselves.
Naturally, Hikaru had no intention of refusing.
Only with enough money could the media office continue to expand and develop, eventually becoming self-sustaining instead of draining ANBU's budget.
So over those six months, the Shinobi World Daily had become something known across the entire Land of Fire.
Even though Hiruzen tried everything he could to launch a rival paper of his own, he still could not truly compete with Hikaru.
At present, Hiruzen's paper only circulated inside Konoha.
And worse, it was funded directly from Konoha's own treasury.
It was bleeding money.
That situation dragged away even more of Hiruzen's energy.
And with governance still sitting on his shoulders, he no longer had the time to monitor Danzō's behavior.
Danzō was absolutely the kind of vicious dog that needed a leash.
If no one held him back, the damage he could cause would be beyond imagination.
And as the master of that dog, Hiruzen would ultimately have to bear every consequence.
After all, when the dog bit someone, no one was going to turn around and bite the dog back.
"Still, this isn't enough to completely bring down Hiruzen," Hikaru thought as he put the file down. "But it's enough to smash his prestige badly."
As Hokage—even only acting Hokage—Hiruzen was not someone who could be toppled easily.
But that did not mean it was impossible.
Hikaru was waiting for the right opening.
Or more precisely, he was waiting for a few key clans to fully tip over to his side.
Those clans—
were the Uchiha and the Hyūga.
…
"How are things on your side, Shibi?"
Inside a yakiniku restaurant in Konoha, Shibi Aburame sat with several old friends.
From the outside, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary gathering among acquaintances.
But lately, gatherings like this had become a little more frequent than usual.
Even so, they were keeping a low profile.
More importantly, none of them were from the most powerful clans in the village.
And since many of them had fought together in past wars, ordinary people would see nothing strange in such a gathering.
But in truth, the purpose of these meetings was anything but simple.
The number of people involved had steadily grown, and the number of clans represented had grown too.
By now, even the Inuzuka had been quietly drawn in.
All of them had been brought in by Shibi.
All of them were clan heads who had suffered the same sort of treatment at Danzō's hands.
The difference was that their situation had not been as fortunate as Shibi's.
Under Root's pressure, they had been forced to hand people over.
And because they did not understand ANBU well enough—and because they feared getting caught between the upper-level power struggle—they had never dared contact ANBU.
But once Shibi found them and discreetly revealed certain things, they were instantly filled with regret.
Because after reading those newspapers and privately piecing together certain implications, they realized they should have acted sooner.
Still, Shibi's situation also gave them a path.
They could resist too.
They might hate the idea of taking sides.
But Danzō had gone too far.
And Hiruzen's indulgence of him had made them furious down to the bone.
There had been almost no difficulty in bringing them together.
After carefully confirming that none of them were compromised, Shibi told them some of what Hikaru had said.
It made them uneasy.
But by now, they had no choice.
Either they resisted and fought for a future for their clans—
or they continued down this road, endlessly crushed, sending one gifted child after another into a death trap.
"The situation on the ANBU side isn't fully clear," Shibi said carefully as he looked at the people around him. "But I believe Minister Hikaru has his own plans."
Even though a soundproof barrier had already been set up, he still kept his voice low.
The truth was, he knew far more than he was letting on.
After all, he had been the first one to contact Hikaru.
So Hikaru had not hidden too much from him.
He knew Hikaru was planning to move.
And he knew that move would likely happen soon.
But to prevent leaks—to stop the other side from making the first move—Shibi still believed it was best to keep that information sealed.
After all, too much was at stake.
The man they were preparing to strike at stood under the Hokage's protection.
Or more accurately—
they were preparing to push back against the Hokage himself.
If word leaked, every one of them, along with their clans, would be ruined.
"So that's how it is."
The others looked disappointed, but none dared complain.
They had already chosen to join this course of action.
Now, all they could do was follow the arrangements.
And given how dangerous all of this was, caution was the most reasonable path.
Suppressing the helplessness in their hearts, they let the matter drop.
Shibi quietly let out a small breath of relief.
He knew his answer would disappoint them, but he had no way to explain the full truth.
Fortunately, the others soon shifted the conversation away from the matter, turning instead to lighter topics.
The atmosphere quickly relaxed.
On the surface, it really did begin to look like nothing more than a normal gathering of old friends.
But then, two people walked over to their table.
The moment Shibi saw them, his expression changed.
"Why are they here?"
The newcomers were hardly strangers.
They were Akimichi Chōza and Yamanaka Inoichi.
To Shibi and the others, both men were deeply familiar.
But the clans they represented stood on an entirely different level from theirs.
Even though all of them came from hidden-technique clans, the political reach and long-term leverage of the Yamanaka, Akimichi, and Nara was in another league.
The alliance of Ino–Shika–Chō, backed by the influence each family held in Konoha, was truly formidable.
But that position was not something others could imitate.
After all, those three clans had been allied even before Konoha was founded.
The current village leadership would never allow a similar structure to arise again.
Even if no one had openly said so, the truth was obvious—
they had deliberately isolated the clans from one another.
That isolation served a major purpose.
It prevented them from growing too powerful and joining hands against Hiruzen's rule.
Hiruzen came from the Sarutobi clan, which was not one of the village's great clans.
And he had risen to power without any true election. Plenty of people had never fully trusted him.
In order to control Konoha, he had tried every possible method.
The path he ultimately settled on was to keep the clans separated while elevating the status of civilian-born shinobi.
That "isolation" did not mean pushing the clans outside the village.
Hiruzen was not stupid. He knew exactly how important those clans were to Konoha.
What he did instead was cut the connections between them one by one, preventing the emergence of another ironclad alliance like Ino–Shika–Chō.
Konoha already had two towering giants—the Hyūga and the Uchiha—and one perfectly interlocked alliance in the Ino–Shika–Chō.
He would never allow more such power blocs to form.
"Everyone, it's been a while."
Before anyone at the table could say a word, Chōza cheerfully greeted them.
The more reserved Inoichi simply gave them a small nod.
Strictly speaking, many of them were classmates.
Some had fought together.
Some had even been teammates—just a few years ago, Chōza himself had gone on missions with Shibi.
"Clan Head Chōza, Clan Head Inoichi…" Shibi started, but Chōza cut him off at once.
"Don't call us that. Isn't that too stiff?"
Chōza shook his head and lightly punched Shibi in the shoulder.
"We've been teammates, and we're old friends too. Do we really need to act like strangers?"
"…All right. Understood."
Shibi hesitated, then nodded. He knew resistance was pointless.
"Good. The reason we came today is actually very important."
Chōza sat down with Inoichi, then glanced around at everyone present before letting out a quiet sigh.
"To be honest, your gatherings had already caught our attention. We simply chose not to interfere.
And Shikaku had more or less guessed what your purpose was."
At those words, the expressions around the table shifted sharply.
The atmosphere turned hostile in an instant.
These were all men who had been to war.
Chōza recognized those looks immediately.
Inoichi did too.
As a man who specialized in intelligence, and one who often helped departments like ANBU extract information from living captives, he had seen all kinds of eyes before.
Still, he understood perfectly well why these old comrades—and in some cases former teammates—were now looking at them like that.
After Shikaku's analysis, the three of them had concluded that these clan heads were almost certainly engaged in something extremely dangerous.
And that danger likely revolved around Danzō and Hiruzen.
Every clan head at this table came from a family with unique talent in reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, infiltration, or assassination.
After ANBU expanded and later received a massive influx of funding, the implication had been obvious—
the Minister of the ANBU, or rather the Fourth Hokage's side, had likely reached some sort of understanding with the Third Hokage.
If ANBU expanded, then Root would be allowed to expand as well.
That could even be seen in the financial traces.
Yes, much of the village budget no longer ran directly through the ordinary administrative channels—
but for someone like Shikaku, that was enough.
Naturally, an expanded Root needed more top-tier recruits.
But everyone knew Root's reputation.
And everyone here knew what kind of man Danzō was.
The things he had done were too numerous to count.
Every person seated here had likely been "visited" by Root.
And those visits had contained not a shred of goodwill.
It was not hard to guess why they were meeting now.
They had been careful, of course.
Even their gatherings had been kept discreet.
And this yakiniku place itself helped shield them from surveillance by Root or even ANBU—
but it belonged to the Akimichi.
It could block outside eyes.
It could not block the Akimichi's own.
Under normal circumstances, Chōza and Inoichi would never have interfered.
That was precisely why these clan heads had felt safe enough to gather here.
After all, the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi had always outwardly maintained neutrality.
Or rather, they helped anyone—
but only to a point.
In the end, they always gave their full support to the winner.
But now things were different.
Their own interests were under threat.
Because Inoichi, too, had already been "visited" by Danzō.
"There's no need to look at us like that," Inoichi said with a quiet sigh before Chōza could continue and before Shibi could respond.
"Honestly, we never wanted to disturb you. But unfortunately… I'm in the same boat as all of you now."
Shibi's eyes narrowed.
"Inoichi… do you realize what you're saying?"
"Of course I do." Inoichi forced a bitter smile. "Because I've already met Danzō too. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here."
At those words, the room stirred.
Even Shibi's expression changed.
He truly had not expected even Ino–Shika–Chō to be targeted by Danzō.
Had that man really become this unrestrained?
Granted, Shibi knew the authority and power in Danzō's hands were enough to make most of Konoha back down.
But had he truly never considered the consequences?
What he was doing was nothing less than undermining the very structure of Konoha.
Nothing less than tearing apart the cohesion of the village itself.
To put it bluntly, Shimura Danzō was destroying Konoha.
He was dragging it toward ruin.
Even if Danzō had at least followed some rules—if Root had possessed clear regulations and a visible retirement system like ANBU did—people would not have hated him nearly this much.
But entering Root meant one thing:
unless you died, you never escaped.
Yes, Nono Yakushi had technically left Root.
But even after that, Root's eyes had remained on her.
If Danzō had not been removed from office, and if ANBU had not interfered, then once he returned, the so-called Walking Shrine Maiden would never have been left in peace.
In the eyes of these clan heads, the former Witch of the Root, who had hidden herself away in an orphanage, would eventually have been dragged back in regardless.
Enter Root, and unless you died, you never truly left.
That was common knowledge.
"I see."
After a long silence, Shibi let out a slow sigh and nodded.
"So that's how it is."
The pressure they had been enduring.
The resentment they had carried.
The line they had finally reached—
it was no longer theirs alone.
And once Ino–Shika–Chō had reached that same point…
everything became very different.
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