(A/N: The current year is 69. The Hyuga affair took place between Years 68 and 69. By now, Hinata is four years old—the same age as Akai. Kabuto will defect and kill Nono Yakushi in Year 71, which is two years from now. And the Uchiha massacre is in Year 72)
The futon had already been folded and tucked away with care, its crisp lines a quiet testament to Elder Takahiro's lifelong discipline.
The faint moonlight slipped through the wooden lattice, tracing pale silver patterns across the tatami floor of the traditional Hyūga estate room.
Elder Takahiro sat in front of his short, aged writing desk, a stillness enveloping him. His hands, weathered with time, held a photo framed in simplicity.
In the picture stood his daughter, her pale Hyūga eyes soft, yet sparkling — an arm affectionately wrapped around the man beside her. An Uchiha. She smiled, truly smiled.
Takahiro's expression faltered. Not quite sorrow, not quite joy — just a heaviness. The man beside his daughter was the boy she had chosen.
And the boy that came to his mind... their son. His grandson. The child whose absence made the room feel colder than the night air slipping in through unseen cracks.
The memory was vivid — those defiant eyes, wide with disbelief, staring at him with something between betrayal and hatred. Takahiro had sent him away. To the Uchihas. For reasons he still justified, though they grew heavier by the day.
His hand trembled slightly.
And then, the flicker of emotion within him shifted.
Anger.
Sudden. Heavy. Sharp.
The photograph was set down slowly, carefully, yet the storm had already begun within him.
Names echoed in his mind.
Genzou.
Danzō.
The Clan. The Elders.
The faces of those who shaped the rot festering in the roots of the village flickered in Takahiro's vision like specters summoned by fury and sleepless nights.
Lord Third did nothing. Not when it mattered. Not when Danzō moved in the shadows like a serpent feeding off the weak and the desperate. His hands are always tight, the rotten parts of the tree were too much that he can't even make a stern discission in the council.
(A/N: No, this isn't character bashing. That kind of approach is for beginners—we don't do that here. I'm simply pointing out that, much like in Kishimoto-sensei's original work, Hiruzen likely won't have much screen time as the story moves toward the climax of the conflict in this fic.)
The whole village is his family, he always say. But, that is not the important part.
"If he won't move simply because everyone else is his family... then fine," Takahiro muttered, voice low and raw. Not a whisper. A verdict.
His breath deepened — a pull from the pit of his lungs — slow, steady, like a storm drawing power from still air.
The room trembled.
White eyes gleamed with ghostly light. Then flared.
Byakugan — activated.
The veins around the skin of his eyes bulged, but that wasn't all. The veins began to redden, subtly at first, then glowing faintly crimson — a strange and unnatural reaction.
Takahiro did not blink. Even as his eyelids shut, it was as if they were mere curtains before a mind that never stopped seeing.
His vision stretched beyond physical limits — houses cloaked in slumber, towers casting long shadows, trees rustling in the midnight wind. Bodies, still and restless. Everything. Everyone. Every chakra line, every thread of intent, now laid bare before him.
The entire village was caught in his grasp.
And yet, he stood still. A man alone in a room now much too small for the weight of his mind.
They once called him a genius.
But that was before his enlightenment.
Before this trance.
It wasn't peace like the kind Akai found in his strange, quiet breakthroughs — no serenity or happiness touched Takahiro now. This was fire. This was iron. This was rage forged in silence, a war waged in the chambers of his soul.
And this time, Takahiro chose to see it all.
He rose from his seat, bones slow but deliberate, the wooden floor groaning beneath his feet. The veins along his temples pulsed, red now — not just from effort, but from a strange fusion of inner fury and perception so sharp it cut through reason.
Then, in a whisper so clear it cut the air:
"I should also play with their games... Don't you think so, Yakushi?"
The name spilled from his lips like poison.
From the shadows — not the floor, but the ceiling's dark recess — something stirred. Something detached from the silence like a breath too long held.
A figure emerged.
She landed soundlessly behind him, her descent as effortless as the wind that had no place in this sealed room.
A woman. Young, yet marked by a lifetime. Light brown hair fell softly to her shoulders. Square glasses framed eyes the color of wet leaves — emerald, alive yet hollowed by history.
She wore the uniform of Root. The mask in her hand confirmed it, but her face — visible, bare — was what lingered most.
Takahiro did not turn to look at her. He didn't need to.
His voice was colder this time, nearly scornful. "It seems you forgot how to speak, Nono Yakushi."
She remained still. Her lips trembled — not from fear, but effort. Yet nothing came.
A silence followed. Heavy. Suffocating.
She couldn't speak.
Not with that cursed seal still upon her tongue — the brand Danzō had left as a leash on her will.
A memory flared in her mind. The orphanage. The pleas she made to the directors to take in one more — just one more.
A nameless boy with lost memories and hollow eyes. She had given him warmth. A name. Kabuto. As if naming him might build a bridge toward a future neither of them understood.
The "Wandering Miko" — that's what they called her. A healer. A mother to the forgotten. A saint in a village of soldiers.
Until three years ago.
Until the past clawed her back.
Danzō. Orochimaru. Two figures at the threshold of her sanctuary, casting long shadows into her world.
"Your skills are needed again," Danzō had said, his voice as dead as his gaze.
She had refused. Of course she had. She begged to be left alone.
But their threats weren't toward her.
They were toward the children.
The home.
Everything she had rebuilt.
And so, she relented. Sent to infiltrate Iwagakure. To gather intelligence like in the old days — a spy cloaked in mercy.
But she never expected what came next.
Kabuto.
He had overheard them. She didn't know how. But when Danzō asked for a child to replace a fallen Root operative — Kabuto volunteered. Without hesitation.
He wanted to help.
He thought it would protect her.
And she couldn't stop him.
Not then.
Not now.
Not long after, Orochimaru defected from the village. With Danzo always having him as a body guard, there's no way Nono could trust that man again. That Danzo...
Her fingers clenched around the mask. Her eyes — once filled with purpose — now stared at the floor.
Takahiro finally turned to look at her. And though his voice came soft, it struck like iron.
"When your village turned their back on you... did you still pray for their forgiveness?"
Nono didn't reply. Couldn't. But her tears answered.
And Takahiro, for all his rage, looked at her — and saw a tool broken, not by battle, but by loyalty. Just like this village always did.
Back in his days, Takahiro was a genius. That was the whole reason he was allowed to live without the cursed mark etched into his forehead.
His genius wasn't the brooding, arrogant kind often flaunted by prodigies who thought the world owed them reverence. No — Takahiro knew how to please his higher-ups with words as sharp as any kunai, and as smooth as a fox slipping through grass.
That was why Genzou saw him as loyal. And that was why he had such wide connections. Most clans knew him. And he knew them.
Because of his Byakugan, Takahiro was never so thick-headed as to limit himself to just his clan's techniques. He had learned the Eight Trigrams Revolving Palm and most of the techniques traditionally reserved for the main house — but his skill set went far beyond that.
By the age of eighteen, he had begun to understand how even the most exclusive jutsu of other clans worked — simply by watching them. As if the Byakugan itself had turned into a Sharingan when placed in the hands of a mind like his.
He never used their techniques directly. Instead, he built sub-techniques — adaptations crafted uniquely to suit his own style.
One of them was born from observing the Yamanaka clan.
He turned his gaze toward the woman before him — Nono Yakushi — and spoke without moving his lips.
'That seal in your mouth is useless. Talk to me in your head.'
She froze.
That voice—where had it come from?
Her hand had already moved toward the ink and scroll she had prepared to use to communicate. The curse mark on her tongue prevented her from speaking of anything tied to Root. She had expected to write.
'Elder...'
But now...
'...is this, the Yamanaka's?' Her thoughts pushed out, unsure.
Takahiro remained seated, expression still as water.
He did not control her mind. He did not dig into her memories. Through careful imitation of the Yamanaka method, he had created a crude yet effective telepathic link — one that simply allowed a private channel to speak and hear.
No one knew about it.
And now, one more did.
Nono had intended to share what she knew of Danzō's actions through writing, she was hoping to fine anyone who'd shown hostility towards the elder, by that, she was only able to find one who is reachable and seem to have that much reason to act against Danzo, which is Takahiro.
But now... now she stared at the Elder of the Hyūga clan, one who had been silent while Root schemes festered unchecked.
He had finally moved.
That was when she saw a glimmers of hope.
'Danzō came back for me three years ago," her thoughts formed with difficulty, "He wanted my skills again. For intelligence gathering.'
'You agreed.'
'The orphanage was barely surviving. I didn't have a choice. And he threatened me... along with Orochimaru beside him.'
She did not mention the boy. She kept her thoughts clean — focused.
'Iwagakure was the assignment. But now... if Elder Takahiro would see a few reports from the village people are vanishing again. Quietly. Orochimaru and Danzo is involved.'
At the mention of those name, Takahiro's attention sharpened — subtly, but clear.
Danzō. Orochimaru.
An alliance was formed — silent, but certain. One forged between the quiet fire of an old genius and the remnants of a betrayed healer.
POOF.
The clone dispersed in a puff of smoke — its brief existence collapsing into nothingness. Takahiro didn't flinch.
He already knew.
It had never been the real Nono standing before him. A shadow of her chakra — yes. But her mind? Her thoughts? All real.
He let out a slow, silent breath, neither surprised nor offended. A shadow clone with sustained range from Iwagakure — that took extraordinary control. She had sent a fraction of herself through enemy lines, across borders, to whisper secrets from within the lion's den.
He offered no words of praise.
Just a small nod of acknowledgment.
"Not bad," he thought, eyes dimming back to their natural shade. "She hasn't dulled. Even while buried under stone."
.
.
.
Far from Konoha — deep within Iwagakure.
A sharp gasp split the quiet.
Nono Yakushi collapsed forward onto her hands, breath ragged, sweat dripping from her chin. Her chest rose and fell like she'd just surfaced from drowning — chakra nearly gone, body trembling from the strain of maintaining a high-level clone across that distance.
Her uniform clung to her, damp with effort. The stone floor beneath her was cold, grounding. She stayed still for several long moments, letting the pain settle, letting her senses return.
The room was bare. One cot. A shelf of scrolls. A faded candle nearly burned to the base. There was no comfort here — only the space she needed to survive.
For two years, she had kept her cover airtight.
Rising to chūnin in the Stone village had taken careful effort. She had masked her identity, blended seamlessly into their ranks, and played her role with flawless precision.
She looked younger than she was — twenty-nine going on eighteen. Most of the men around her didn't question it. Her beauty, subtle and effortless, gave her a kind of camouflage. She was easy to underestimate.
And the way she performed her persona — soft-spoken, eager to serve, diligent but not ambitious — well...
If this were some absurd world with cameras and makeup and school uniforms, she'd be playing a high school girl in a movie cast entirely with thirty-year-olds. The role would fit like a glove.
But this wasn't a movie.
This was war behind enemy lines.
And she was already on her next act.
She reached beneath her bedroll, retrieving a folded scroll — hand-written, marked only with ciphered notes. Her field data. Clues. Movements. Patterns. Traces of chakra no Iwagakure shinobi could explain.
One name kept surfacing in her findings.
Danzō.
She stared at the ink. Her breath steadied.
Then, under her breath, as if daring the walls to hear her:
"At last... my plans are going toward the right path."
A flicker of firelight danced along the wall — but there was no warmth in it.
Just shadows.
And just like that, she moved again.
A tremble passed through her limbs, not from the strain of maintaining the clone — though that alone had nearly drained her chakra reserves dry — but from the memory that surfaced like a breath held too long underwater.
It always began with Kabuto.
The quiet boy she had given a name, a roof, and a reason to keep waking up. He arrived at the orphanage with nothing. Not even his sight. Nearsighted, like her. She had given him her old pair of square glasses — a makeshift solution at the time, but one that made her heart ache with maternal resolve.
A year later, he saved up what little money he could. A humble, clumsy attempt to return the favor — square glasses in hand, wrapped in thin cloth. Too big for his little fingers. Too precious for her heart.
Moments like those were rare. Genuine. The kind of exchange that, if this world had been a kinder place, would've been the start of a beautiful story.
But life in the shinobi world wasn't a stage for fairy tales.
That warmth, however, had seeded something deeper — a fragile hope. And that hope grew stronger during one specific night.
Years before the fire consumed everything, two more infants had arrived at the orphanage's doorstep. One of them — a baby with unusual whisker-like markings on his cheeks — was met with gentle hands at first. But as time passed, whispers thickened like smoke after a hidden fire.
Kyuubi. Demon. Curse.
The caretakers, once nurturing, began to tiptoe around the boy, their kindness shrinking with each hushed rumor. Nono never joined them in their judgment, but the isolation this boy experienced left an imprint on her — and on Kabuto too, who was just old enough to notice.
But it was the other child that etched itself deepest in her memory.
Pale skin. A single white Byakugan settled in his left eye — the unmistakable legacy of the Hyūga clan. But the rest of him? Cyanotic. His lips and fingers tinged with blue, his breath shallow. The diagnosis became obvious quickly: congenital heart defect.
For a moment, she feared he would die before anyone ever claimed him.
Then, days later, a visitor arrived. Not a kind one. Not at first.
Elder Takahiro.
His entrance had been stiff and judgmental — the way elite clan figures always seemed to carry themselves, as if the world should apologize for burdening them with its imperfections.
"Tch. Only one Byakugan... the other black eye must've come from his moronic father," he muttered, his tone like sandpaper on glass.
Nono had dealt with types like him before — men who saw bloodlines as currency and children as extensions of legacy. The paperwork confirmed he was the child's grandfather, but that didn't mean he'd act like it. Elite clans had a history of discarding anything less than perfect.
But then, something happened.
He picked the child up.
And smiled.
It was slight, accidental even, but unmistakable — the corner of his mouth curved with something genuine. Something human.
"If you become a disgraceful, arrogant thing like that Uchiha brat, I'll kill you. You know that?" he said coldly.
And the baby — now named Akai — responded not with fear, but joy. "Daa!" His tiny hand grabbed hold of Takahiro's beard and yanked, giggling with the unfiltered mischief only a child could summon.
"This little twerp!" the elder snapped, forming a chakra scalpel with a swift flick of his wrist and slicing off the tuft of beard Akai had snatched. It came off unevenly, of course.
Takahiro stared at the damage, face caught somewhere between despair and disbelief. He looked less like an elite elder in that moment and more like a man freshly mugged by life itself.
Yet even then — even with that precious morning-trimmed beard dangling in the baby's hand — the smile returned. Just briefly.
When his eyes met Nono's, it vanished again.
"I'll need to borrow your bathroom" he grumbled. "Might as well shave it all off if I'm going to raise this demon spawn."
She couldn't help it. A laugh slipped out. Just a small one.
It wasn't the words. It was the contradiction.
The man was fire and ice. Harsh in voice, warm in action — and in a world where power-hungry elders clung to influence like dried roots choking young growth, Takahiro stood out for the simple fact that he had room left in his heart to grow something new.
The memory faded.
Back in her modest apartment room in Iwagakure, Nono Yakushi sat quietly, still catching her breath.
Her voice came soft, barely more than a whisper. "If it's that person... it should be fine."
There was no need to name him aloud. She knew who she meant.
Danzo's face flashed through her mind like a cold wind returning to a half-healed wound. That man — that shadow masquerading as order — still moved pieces across the board.
But Takahiro had begun to move too.
"His tyranny shall be over," Nono said, more firmly this time.
She stood, sliding her glasses back on — the ones Kabuto had once gifted her — and straightened her uniform. Sweat still clung to her back, and her limbs felt like stone, but her heart had found its rhythm again.
She stepped outside.
Mission resumed.
And though the village saw only a quiet Chūnin from the outer ranks, something deeper stirred behind those emerald eyes — the makings of a reckoning, slowly taking shape.
.
.
.
To be continued.