Game On! 4.0

Chapter 4: Roots And Leaves

It was a few days after both team 7 and 8 had arrived back from their first C-rank missions that the Sandaime was visited by a somber Shikaku, Jiraya seemingly appearing out of nowhere thanks to his chameleon jutsu as soon as the village leader had secured his office.
"Our investigation are complete. And it's far worse than expected."
Hiruzen sighed as they dropped several heavy files on his desk and started leafing through them, face becoming darker as the pages went on. Eventually, after a long moment he sighed deeply, pushing his chair away from the desk.
"I guess I was fooling myself, hoping our old friendship would mean something to him. It should have been clear with the Uchiha disaster it wasn't the case, yet..."
"You can't help but believe in people." Jiraya pointed out not unkindly "There are worst failing out there, old man."

"Not when the whole village is suffering from it." Hiruzen contradicted, face hard "I want him gone by the end of the week."
"We can't act rashly, he's managed to maintain a good reputation with the civilians and some of the more radical elements among shinobi." the Nara clan head pointed out "Publicly taking him down would destabilize the village enough that the other hidden village would try to take advantage of the situation."
"I know." a shrug "But Danzo and I are just old man in the end... Even the best shinobi can't win against old age."
"You mean to arrange a natural death?"
"I may hate the shadier dealings necessary in running a military organization, I still do understand they're unavoidable." Hiruzen shrugged "I have turned a blind eye to his shadier dealings for years, but it's because I've always been persuaded Danzo only ever acted to the village benefit by doing what I was too weak to do... I didn't expect his vision of the village's benefit to be quite that contrary to mine." a sigh "But there's a reason why I never appointed him as the Anbu head commander, despite his natural inclination to underhanded manipulations."

An Anbu stepped out of the shadows, making even Jiraya jump. The man was wearing the standard black uniform of the special force, swirling tattoo clearly displayed on his shoulder, and a canine mask with two violet strips on the cheek, rather reminiscent of Yagami and Ren' marking, if not for the color.
"About time you decided to do something about the old fart, Hiruzen."
"I should have listened to you far sooner old friend, I'm sorry." he turned toward Jiraya and Shikaku "This is Mongoose, he's the Anbu commander."
"Alright, so if your Anbu commander had already told you that Danzo was a bastard, why did you make us do this investigation?"
"Because he's a stubborn old man." Mongoose answered irreverently "And also because I was already expanding too much energy keeping the crafty old bastard out of my Anbu."
"Not quite successfully."

"I had to choose my battle." the Anbu admitted "I choose which of my men I could let him get his paws on because I knew those were men that would always come back to me."
"And did they?" Shikaku wondered
"They did." they couldn't see his predatory smile, but it was clearly present in his voice "Because that underground organization he's so proud of isn't quite as convincing as he'd hoped when the members aren't brainwashed children."
"And the seals?"
"That, I can't do anything about." the other admitted, any levity leaving his voice

"Time to change that." Jiraya smiled, taking a large scroll out "Danzo is good at fuuinjutsu, but he's not Uzumaki-level good." the scroll rolled open, letting a large seal appear "This is a counter for the curse seal applied on all Root agents. We've already tested it, and it works."
"You've put your hand on one of Danzo's pawns and he hasn't noticed?" the Anbu commander whistle, clearly impressed
"He though the boy was already dead;" Jiraya shrugged "He was only mostly dead, so I dragged Ren to heal him, and the boy's been working with us ever since."
"Voluntarily?"
"The brainwashing isn't as universally efficient as Danzo hoped. This boy was rather extroverted naturally, so the emotion-suppression training the kids go through wasn't completely effective. And apparently Shin has got a friend still inside, so he's been helping us as much as he could."