A jutsu.
The boy the weapon had been consorting with had created a jutsu.
At eleven years of age, with minimal training and unimpressive physical talents, he had invented a technique. All while developing a new training method that would make it easier for others to do the same. He had to have him.
For the good of konoha.
The things that boy could create, given the right training and the right perspective...
Under Hiruzen's guidance, the boy would become even softer than his civilian background already suggested. But Root would teach him what it truly meant to be a weapon. And in turn, he would forge tools to help his comrades become the blades in the dark—silent shadows who kept Konoha's enemies at bay. From the samurai of the Land of Iron to the stormy mountains of Kumo, they would strike fear into the hearts of all who opposed the village.
The boy's potential was too great to waste.
And who better to unearth that potential than him?
If only he could convince Hiruzen of this.
"You have to see that letting him gallivant around, playing civilian, is a waste of a capable resource," Danzo nearly growled, but his discipline held. He was far too controlled for such needless displays of emotion.
"You want him for his gift of creation," Hiruzen replied, as though reading his thoughts. "But Root would burn that out of him."
"I believe it would focus him instead," Danzo said smoothly.
"Agree to disagree," Hiruzen said, serene and pleasant as ever. He let the insult of a direct contradiction wash off him like water off a duck's back—one of the few concessions allowed by their long years of shared history. At least, that's what Hiruzen believed.
Kotoamatsukami.
The power to bend any mind with nothing but a glance. To change beliefs. Reshape personalities. Mold a person's very soul.
What was that, if not the power of a god?
Since the day he took it from young Shisui, it had never failed him.
Except once.
Against one man.
It made perfect sense: that the divine would only falter against the divine.
The might of Kotoamatsukami met the mind of Hiruzen Sarutobi—The shinobi no kami—and was found wanting. Or rather, Danzo was.
Though Kotoamatsukami gave him the power to rewrite minds, it required that he first understand the mind he wished to alter. But the mind of the Professor was not so easily comprehended.
Even in old age, Sarutobi's thoughts were a twisting, coruscating web—dozens of threads of reason, each with their own roots and branches. Danzo could barely follow the pathways of his conclusions. Every action was grounded in a dozen motives, and each motive had layers of subtext and buried origins. That was only the conscious mind. His subconscious was an abyss—deep, dark, and unknowable—humiliating to even witness.
Danzo had never believed himself to be Hiruzen's equal—not on the battlefield, and certainly not academically—but he had not realized the gap was so vast.
Still, Konoha needed him, not Hiruzen.
Left to his own devices, Hiruzen would endanger the village for sentiment. Danzo could not condone that.
Yet any attempt to truly alter Hiruzen's worldview would collapse under the weight of his endless, rigorous internal reasoning.
The genjutsu just wouldn't hold.
Luckily, Sarutobi had easier vulnerabilities. His love—and his trust—for those he called comrades.
All Danzo had to do was deepen those feelings in regard to himself.
Now he operated with far more freedom, Hiruzen secure in the belief that Danzo would never betray the village.
And he wouldn't.
Though Danzo suspected that he and the Hokage had very different definitions of betrayal.
"Hiruzen… the boy. You know as well as I do—he's too valuable, and too unshaped. He needs proper direction. He belongs in Root." Danzo said
"He's not a tool, Danzo." Hiruzen said his tone of warning.
"he's a weapon—as all shinobi are—whether you acknowledge it or not. I offer him discipline, purpose, a chance to hone that brilliance. You let him drift, aimless, useless." Danzo replied.
"He is a child." the fourth replied, his smile having dropped.
"A child who created a jutsu from nothing. A training method with long-reaching potential. With my oversight, he could become a blade worthy of legends." tone growing firm—firmness bordering on disrespect, as close to gritting his teeth as he would allow.
"No." Hiruzen said sharply.
"You let him waste his gifts playing civilian. You let your sentiment lead you and betray our home once again." Danzo said some emotion slipping into his voice, poking old rotting wounds. Wounds that he helped inflict.
A step too far.
"Say another word, Danzo, and I will consider it treason." Hiruzen said, the Shinobi no kami peeking through years of Genjutsu Conditioning.
"For seeking to strengthen the village? for speaking the truth?" Danzo continues regardless of good sense, his patriotism spurring him on.
"For trying to harm one of my charges. For reaching for the future of Konoha with blood-stained hands. I will not allow it." Hiruzen said this time his face and voice losing all emotion, his agitation reaching a point where he abandoned emotions entirely for logical thinking.
Him at his most dangerous.
"Very well... Hokage-sama." Danzo said and left the office with a bow.
He had over extended. such displays of emotion were beneath him but Hiruzen did always have that effect on him.
Regardless, plans had to be made. He glanced down at his bandaged arm, contemplating what lay beneath. Brimming with power he could have never attained on his own.
One civilian-born genius had made this possible—but she was now out of reach, having revealed herself as the traitorous scum that all of Hiruzen's students eventually became.
He could only imagine the power he might attain if such talent were honed by his methods.
Konoha would remain strong—its roots deep and ever growing.
Danzo swore this on all that he was.
Kakashi was a genius.
He had been one his whole life.
He also hated himself.
So was it really a surprise that he hated geniuses?
To be fair, it wasn't so much hatred for them as it was for how the world reacted to them—how people fawned, expected, and obsessed. How that, in turn, shaped these brilliant children into complete assholes, irredeemable psychopaths, or more often than not... corpses.
His one hope—that it didn't always have to end that way—was short lived and disastrous.
Itachi was a wound that hadn't even scabbed over yet.
Just another entry in an untreated collection of emotional injuries—festering, raw, and unspoken.
Then the Hokage saddled him with an Uchiha look-alike.
As if he needed more ghosts.
The boy was—shockingly—even paler than the Weasel had been. His hair was longer, and his eyes were a wine red instead of the crimson of the Sharingan, but the resemblance was uncanny.
Kakashi fully expected the following months to be an exercise in pain. A slow spiral of nostalgic agony.
He was ready for it.
He deserved it.
At this point, pain was all he really lived for.
That's why it was so disappointing not to get it.
Izuku was nothing like the other geniuses Kakashi had known. No obsessive drive. No backbreaking effort. No towering ego. Just a bright, curious boy with a fascination for jutsu.
He woke up, made breakfast, washed his clothes, went to class, hung out with his friends. He trained with discipline and consistency—but no spitting blood, no cracking bones, no muscle-tearing exhaustion.
The closest he came to the kind of effort he expected from a prodigy was this morning's meditation session.
He just seemed to be… a well-adjusted child who happened to be brilliant.
It brought Kakashi a peace he thought long beyond his reach. To witness a boy who reminded him of so many past comrades—men and women who had either perished or broken under the weight of their own potential—living such a mundane life...
It soothed something deep inside him, just watching.
But peace was silent.
And silence brought the voices.
The voices brought guilt.
And pain, lots of pain.
A familiar ache, but excruciating one the less.
The ache of having what his comrades never would. Of finding comfort, however small, when they no longer could.
So Kakashi made a decision.
He was going to teach him.
He'd been stretching his orders, leaning on the fact that no timeline had been specified, using that as an excuse to delay his involvement with the kid, not teaching him the moment they met. But that excuse was crumbling.
If teaching Izuku meant confronting the ghost of Minato-sensei—or the shadows of every lost friend and student—then so be it. If it brought pain, good. Maybe it would be enough to drown out the voices.
Speaking of his teacher...
Kakashi watched from the canopy as the last piece of Minato-sensei—and the closest thing to a mother he'd ever had—dozed off against the boy he was supposed to be observing.
For someone who had lost so much, Kakashi saw ghosts everywhere.
Even this picturesque scene wasn't immune. He could see Kushina-neesan in her daughter. Minato in Izuku. Itachi and that loud little firecracker that had been mooning over him. Himself and Ri—
He bit his tongue under his mask, grounding himself in the sharp taste of blood. This was why he didn't stay in the goddamn village.
Even Icha Icha, blessed escapism that it was, wasn't helping anymore.
Where was a suicide mission when you needed one?
To his relief, a flare of chakra below drew his attention back to the kids. The Hyūga heiress had ended her sparring match with the civilian girl and was sitting off to the side, while the resident prodigy ran through hand signs.
Kakashi had been listening, regardless of his wandering thoughts.
Izuku was working on a variation of the Bunshin that Naruko could use.
Kakashi approved. The stronger she was, the safer she'd be.
Some might say it was hypocritical—after all, hadn't he abandoned her?
But to them, Kakashi would simply point to his track record.
Did association with him really lead to long and happy lives?
Still, the boy helping the last thread of his family meant something.
That was a point in Izuku's favor.
Watching him dissect the jutsu was... incredible.
Kakashi was known in certain circles as the Copy Ninja, the man with a thousand jutsu. Second only to the Fourth in sheer volume. The number might have been exaggerated, but not the skill.
And yet here was a kid, playing with basic zodiac hand signs—the kind taught to academy students—and turning them into something new. Something unrecognizable.
It was humbling.
It reminded him of something Minato used to say: There's always someone more talented.
Before he realized it, his headband was up, and he was using the Sharingan to track the chakra flow, watching how it molded and danced around each seal.
He analyzed each shift, each alteration—the sequence abandoned, the one chosen, the why behind it all.
It was fun.
Kakashi hadn't had fun like this in a long time.
By the time the boy seemed satisfied with the jutsu, he didn't fire it off. Which was good—because based on what Kakashi had felt, the chakra cost would have killed him. It would've killed anyone without jonin-level reserves.
Kakashi had jonin-level reserves.
And a consistently absent sense of self-preservation.
So he cast it.
A puff of chakra smoke erupted on the branch opposite him—excess chakra from a lack of control, which was forgivable. It was a prototype jutsu, and the fact that it even worked at all was impressive.
Then things got weird.
His vision split. Not like with the Sharingan, but entirely.
Sight, sound, touch, smell—everything mirrored through the clone that stood before him, headband raised just like his.
The affinity with genjutsu that his sharingan afforded him allowed him to sense the strand of yin chakra flowing from both his foreheads.
It was a strange feeling being in two places at once, being able to watch himself with Obito's eye, seeing his chakra flowing through two identical networks.
Two perfectly indistinguishable networks.
He took back everything—this kid was going to be a problem.
He watched himself—one red eye, one dark—staring back.
His ANBU mask sat on the side of his head.
He hadn't seen his own reflection in a long time.
He looked like his father.
Another reminder not to take the easy way out.
With a breath, he dispelled the clone and turned his attention back to the kids. Naruko was mimicking the hand seals, ready to try the jutsu herself.
He considered stopping her.
But honestly, with her chakra capacity, she wasn't in danger of burnout. At most, she'd pass out from sensory overload.
Which would be a good lesson, honestly.
Don't use random jutsu your friend cobbled together in an afternoon.
Was it hypocritical, given that he could intervene?
Maybe.
But nothing sets the stage for a dramatic entrance like someone fainting.
I watched—helplessly—as Naruko keeled over, her eyes rolling back in her head like a puppet with its strings cut.
She hit the grass with a soft thump, the sound landing in my ears like a death knell.
Naruko Uzumaki lay sprawled on the ground, unmoving.
Beyond the occasional twitch, she looked terrifyingly still.
My vision narrowed. My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
Two identical copies of my friend—one the original, one the clone—lay collapsed in front of me like corpses.
Did… did my jutsu lobotomize her?
"Yo."
The voice behind me made me jump so hard I nearly bit my tongue.
Somewhere along the line, I'd fallen to my knees, and now my hands were trembling, my fingers digging into the dirt.
I whipped my head around to find Hinata and Kuromaru frozen in place—one locked in wide-eyed horror, the other practically wagging her tail in what looked disturbingly like fascination.
And behind me stood Dog.
Mask tilted to the side. Face visible for the first time.
Except he was still wearing a mask underneath.
Who wears a mask under their mask?
He stepped forward without hurry, knelt down, and placed one hand on Naruko's forehead and the other on the clone. A soft flare of chakra rippled between them. The clone vanished in a wisp of smoke.
Naruko didn't move.
"Hmm. Shame."
"What? What is it?" My voice cracked with the effort of holding back panic.
"She's dead," he said flatly.
The world fell silent.
No birds. No breeze.
Just the faint rustle of leaves—mocking in its serenity.
My stomach twisted, bile rising up my throat. My heart was beating so hard it hurt.
Had I just killed my best friend?
"She's not dead."
Hinata's voice rang out, cold and sharp—more steel than I'd ever heard from her.
I turned. Her Byakugan was active, veins bulging around her eyes.
She looked terrifying.
"She's breathing," she added. "Her heart's beating."
She didn't even look at me. All her fury was locked onto Dog, who took it without blinking.
"Oops," he said mildly. "Guess I jumped the gun on that one. Should've checked her vitals first. My bad."
He managed to smile with just one eye. I didn't even know that was possible.
I collapsed from my knees onto the grass, the breath finally leaving my lungs. Relief hit like a wave—too overwhelming to leave space for anger.
"Let's call it a learning experience all around," Dog said, plopping down in front of me like we were at a picnic. The unmistakable rustle of a book followed. Of course.
I looked up, still shaky, to find him watching me with one serious, onyx eye.
Gone was the lazy nonchalance. In its place, something sharp and aware.
"I won't declare any more children dead prematurely," he said, holding out a gloved hand. "And you don't test out experimental jutsu without an adult present. Deal?"
I stared at the offered appendage.
Was what he did an asshole move?
Absolutely.
Did it serve a purpose?
"...Deal," I said.
I took his hand. He helped me sit up.
Lesson learned.
"Great!" he said, voice snapping back to its usual lazy drawl as he stood and dusted himself off. "Looks like it's time for another trip to the Hokage! What fun."
He tugged me to my feet like I weighed nothing.
"Oh, you guys can come too, I guess," he added, glancing at Hinata—who was still glaring—and Kuromaru, who looked positively delighted by the chaos.
Hiruzen considered the paperwork before him, even as his mind wandered toward the recent happenings in his village.
Young Naruto had made a friend. A talented, gifted friend—one with wisdom beyond his years, and a rare spirit Hiruzen had encountered no more than four times in his long life. An inquisitive mind and a creative fire.
Danzo threatened that fire.
It was not the first disagreement they had had, nor would it be the last, he was sure—but it was one that grated on him greatly.
The Uchiha massacre was an avoidable tragedy, one that poked at his conscience—what little was left of it—every day. It was a failure that would haunt him to his grave, and it was a direct result of Danzo's actions.
But Danzo only acted for the good of the village.
His propensity to kidnap talented children for clandestine operations was a practice that turned Hiruzen's stomach. But Danzo assured him there were actors and elements he was not aware of—threats that necessitated such sacrifices.
And Danzo only acted for the good of the village.
All for the prosperity of their people. Even... even the loss of Orochimaru—a loss that might have been avoided if Danzo had been more forthcoming—was only the result of his devotion to maintaining their roles. To being the darkness to Hiruzen's light. The darkness Konoha needed.
Because at the end of the day,
Danzo only acted for the good of the village.
A/N: It always rankled me that a man who could produce three Hokage level combatants. Face Hashirama senju himself and his brother, nerfed as they were and was known as the goddamn professor, made as many obvious blunders as he did in cannon.
My solution?
Danzo did it.
I know, I know. Well worn and cliche, but I like it. If you don't. comment why. I'm curious about other perspectives and always open to feedback. Thanks for reading.
Unto the end credits!
Will the Professor ever escape his bonds?!
Can he do so in time to avoid tragedy?!
What will Kakashi do as a teacher?!
Will Izuku learn from this scare?!
All this and more! NEXT TIME ON FOR THE LOVE OF KUNGFU!
P.S. Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed it please comment and like, if not please comment why. Again, thank you for reading! Have a nice whatever-time-it-is, wherever you are!