The sterile scent of antiseptic and aged parchment in Tsunade's office did little to mask the lingering tension, thick as river mud after a flood. Naruto stood near the window, the rebuilt Konoha sprawling below, bathed in weak morning light that did nothing to warm the chill radiating from him. His posture was rigid, every line screaming exhaustion held at bay by sheer, corrosive will. The deep gash across his chest, hastily sealed by Tsunade's iridescent green chakra, throbbed beneath his torn shirt – a visceral reminder of the Gedo Statue's backlash and the unnatural flecks that had surfaced in his blood. The Rinnegan's drain was a constant, icy counterpoint to the physical pain, a vacuum slowly devouring him from within.
Kakashi materialized beside Tsunade's desk, not through the door, but in a silent swirl of leaves – a testament to his own heightened alertness. His visible eye, sharp and uncharacteristically devoid of its usual lazy cover, scanned Naruto's battered form before settling on the Hokage. He placed a slim, cipher-locked metal dossier on the polished wood with deliberate quietness. The sound was unnaturally loud in the strained silence.
"Three locations," Kakashi stated, his voice taut, stripped of inflection. "Verified through ANBU Black Ops channels Danzō *doesn't* control. Root's primary black labs." He tapped the dossier. "Lab Alpha: Beneath the old Uchiha Shrine catacombs. Focus: Human-Path Grinder – live shinobi integration for Path augmentation." A muscle twitched in Tsunade's jaw. "Lab Beta: Deep within the Forest of Death's northern quadrant. Focus: Ten-Tails Cell Cultivation." He paused, letting the monstrous implication hang. "Status: *Failed*. Containment breaches logged… and covered up."
Tsunade snatched the dossier, her knuckles white. "Ten-Tails…? That damned fossil! He's playing with extinction-level fire!"
Kakashi's gaze flickered to Naruto, then back. "Lab Gamma: Coordinates embedded in a dead-drop cipher only Danzō's inner circle uses. Remote site. Focus: **Ōtsutsuki Artifact Recovery**." He met Tsunade's furious gaze squarely. "Primary Site Designation: *Ruins of Kaguya's Moon Palace*."
The name landed like a physical blow. Tsunade paled. "Kaguya's…? The Rabbit Goddess myth? Danzō experimented with *Ōtsutsuki cells*? Is *that* how he stabilized Shisui's eye implant? How he circumvented the rejection?"
Naruto moved then. Not a flinch, but a slow, deliberate turn from the window. The faint violet light of the Rinnegan seemed to intensify in the room's gloom as he stepped towards the desk. He didn't reach for the dossier; his gaze dissected it from a distance, the swirling rings processing the encrypted text and diagrams with inhuman speed.
"Not just stabilized," Naruto's voice rasped, colder than the mountain wind. He tapped a specific section of an autopsy report Kakashi had flagged – **Subject Uchiha Shisui: Post-Mortem Analysis (Section 7: Chakra Pathway Degradation)**. The text was dense, technical, heavily redacted, but the Rinnegan saw through the obfuscation. "See the necrosis patterns? The accelerated cellular decay localized around the optic nerve junction? Not rejection. Not damage." He locked eyes with Tsunade, the emptiness in his gaze terrifying. "**Soul resonance decay.**"
Tsunade recoiled. "Soul resonance? That's forbidden Jashinist theory! You can't—"
"Danzō didn't just steal Shisui's eye," Naruto interrupted, his voice flat, relentless. "He harvested Shisui's *soul residue* at the moment of death. Used it as a sacrificial buffer, a living anchor woven into the implant's matrix to bind the Kotoamatsukami to his stolen flesh and the invasive Ōtsutsuki tissue he grafted onto himself." His finger stabbed down onto the final page of the Gamma Lab report. Not text, but a symbol rendered in near-invisible ultraviolet ink, glowing faintly under the Rinnegan's perception: **A stylized tomoe swirling around a sharp, inverted crescent moon.** "His personal seal. His brand of blasphemy."
Kakashi's Sharingan snapped into focus, spinning rapidly. He pulled the encrypted scroll Naruto had recovered from the Root leader from his own vest. Holding it at a specific angle to the weak light, the same **tomoe-and-crescent** symbol shimmered faintly into view on its leather casing. "This seal… it's on the scroll. Danzō's signature. Proof he authorized the Ruins expedition." His voice was grim. "He's been looting Kaguya's tomb for years. He *knew* the Ōtsutsuki were more than myth. He knew they'd return."
Naruto's lips twisted in a razor-thin approximation of a smile, devoid of humor, filled with icy certainty. "He didn't just know. He *counted* on it. Konoha's destruction… Pain's assault…" He gestured vaguely towards the window, towards the visible scars of rebuilding. "It was the perfect smokescreen. Maximum chaos. Maximum diversion. While the village bled and we fought for survival, Root teams slipped into the shadows. They weren't defending Konoha. They were scavenging Kaguya's grave goods under the cover of war." He met Tsunade's horrified, dawning comprehension. "He let Konoha burn. He let thousands die. To grab power scraps left by the very monsters he knew would come to finish the job."
A heavy silence fell, thick with the weight of betrayal and the chilling scale of Danzō's ambition. The implications were staggering, monstrous. Konoha's near-annihilation wasn't just an attack; it had been *leverage* for a madman's power grab.
Outside the rain-streaked window, perched on a gargoyle overlooking the Hokage Tower, a seemingly ordinary crow ruffled its damp feathers. Its head tilted, one beady black eye fixed intently on the lit office window. Then, with unnatural smoothness, the bird's *left* eye shifted. The black iris dissolved, replaced by the intricate, spinning crimson pattern of a **Mangekyō Sharingan**. It focused for a fleeting second on Naruto's back, on the faint violet aura of the Rinnegan, before the eye snapped back to avian normalcy. The crow took flight, vanishing into the grey drizzle, carrying its stolen glimpse back to the masked master who watched from the shadows beyond Konoha's walls. The unseen eye had seen the weapon… and the depth of the fracture within the village it was meant to protect. The game had just gained another, far more dangerous player.