Chapter 48: I Am the Hokage, Because I Am the Hokage
Danzo's voice was as frail as a guttering candle, yet carried an unyielding obstinacy.
"Cough... cough... No matter how fiercely I clashed with Hiruzen, no matter how deep our disagreements..."
He gasped for air after every few words. The grievous wound from the Blazing Rasengan on his chest, combined with the rampaging Hashirama cells, was voraciously devouring the last of his life force.
"That... that was all business within the Leaf! Every single thing I did... every last act... was for the Leaf! I would never do anything to harm the Leaf's future!"
"Pretty words, Elder Danzo."
Rubik cut him off coldly, his crimson Sharingan seeming to pierce straight through to the soul.
"Then, reducing the Akatsuki to a shattered shell, plunging them entirely into darkness... was that also for the Leaf?"
Danzo's cloudy, remaining eye contracted sharply. A flicker of shock and wariness flashed deep within his pupils, before dissolving into a resigned, dead calm.
"Heh... heheh... So you even know about... that..."
He struggled to raise his one remaining arm, pointing a withered finger at Rubik, his voice a rasp.
"Just... just who in the hell are you? ...No... never mind..."
He let his arm fall limply, his eye now holding only grim finality.
"It doesn't... matter anymore. Because now... you will be joining me... in the afterlife!"
Summoning every last shred of strength, he clawed at his own bloodstained robes with his good hand, trembling yet resolute, and tore them open! Across his bare chest sprawled a complex, grotesque, ominous pitch-black curse mark. At its center gaped a void so deep it seemed to swallow all light itself.
"Reverse Four Symbols Sealing..."
Rubik's voice was flat, as if he had seen it coming all along.
Watching Rubik's still utterly unruffled expression—tinged even with a hint of understanding—Danzo's face twisted into a hollow, helpless, almost relieved bitter smile for the first time.
"Heh... heheheh... You... know about this too... don't you?"
He coughed up several mouthfuls of black blood mixed with splinters of wood.
"I was... right to want you dead! What a pity... the entire base has been completely sealed off by my barrier... No one else can undo it! You... have no escape!"
Rubik didn't press him about the barrier. He stepped forward, his gaze burning, and posed that weighty question once more, his voice cutting through the suffocating silence before the seal activated:
"You still haven't answered me! Why leave the Root members here to die with you? Aren't they still valuable fighting forces for the Leaf?!"
Danzo let out a low, rasping "heh-heh" laugh at that—a laugh dripping with arrogant contempt, as if mocking Rubik's naivety.
"In the end... still just a brat. A child... wielding a sharp blade... with no grasp of statecraft..."
He gasped, his tone carrying a rare, almost conversational ease now. Stripped of his sinister politician's shell, he was just a spent old man.
"Fine... since we're both... bound for the dust... a little talk... won't hurt..."
He turned his head with difficulty. That cloudy, remaining eye gazed with inexplicable longing toward the barrier's edge, as if it could pierce the invisible wall and see the sunlit Leaf Village beyond.
"Just as... I said..."
Every word came out with excruciating effort, yet with startling clarity.
"Everything... is for... the Leaf..."
"The Root members... were all personally trained by me. The only thing carved into their very marrow... is absolute loyalty to me! I cannot guarantee what they might do after my death. For the sake of the Leaf's... peace and... stability..."
His gaze abruptly turned cold and cruel.
"They... must... be buried here... alongside me!"
The dozens of elite Root operatives surrounding them stood like soulless stone statues, utterly motionless. Their icy stares remained locked on Rubik, utterly indifferent to their own impending doom. They were the purest extension of Danzo's will—even their deaths were a pre-programmed command.
Rubik gave a slow nod, a complex, unreadable glint passing through his eyes.
"I see..." he said in a low voice, his tone impossible to read as either pity or mockery.
The words had barely left his lips when his wrist snapped!
Shwing—!
A kunai sliced through the stagnant air like a black lightning bolt, straight for Danzo's face! So fast and so angled that the dying man had no time to react!
"Urgh!" Danzo's pupil shrank. Driven by primal survival instinct, his body made the faintest, most desperate attempt to lean aside! But this pathetic struggle was utterly clear to Rubik.
The corner of Rubik's mouth curled into an icy, amused smirk.
"So... even someone who constantly spouts 'shinobi are nothing but tools and machines'..."
His voice was like frost scraping across stone.
"...still instinctively tries to 'survive' when death stares him in the face?"
"I thought your backbone was as rigid as your preaching."
"Sharp... tongue..."
Danzo, stung by the exposure of that deepest, most shameful instinct for self-preservation, croaked out the words through clenched teeth, only to be drowned out once more by agony. Yet on his contorted face bloomed a grotesque mix of relief and madness.
"It doesn't matter, boy..."
He fixed Rubik with a death glare, his single eye blazing with its final light.
"Come to hell... with me—!!!"
At that very instant!
Bzzzzzz—!!!
The Reverse Four Symbols Seal on Danzo's chest erupted, unleashing a darkness that swallowed all light! Countless thick, python-like chains of jet-black runic script, radiating an aura of utter annihilation, burst from his body like a torrential black flood! The very air groaned under the strain—light warped, matter disintegrated! That terrifying tide of blackness, carrying the will to erase everything, surged madly toward the Rubik standing right before him—and everything else within the barrier!
---
Leaf Hospital.
The window of the ward was gently pushed open.
Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi, clad in a plain hospital gown, his frame somewhat stooped, leaned on the sill and slowly straightened up. His lined face still bore the pallor of recent illness, but his eyes were deep and profound as they swept past the hospital courtyard, past the layered rooftops, and settled in the distance on the Hokage Rock—specifically, on his own stern, stone-carved face.
Silently, he took out his pipe and lit it. Wisps of blue smoke rose, blurring his deep gaze.
He took a long drag. The glow of the burning tobacco flickered in the dimness, reflecting the inexpressible worry in his eyes.
---
Danzo's consciousness, like a guttering candle, was beginning to fray and drift beyond his control, tormented by both searing pain and the rampaging cells.
Though his cloudy, remaining eye still stared fixedly, defiantly, at Rubik just before him, his thoughts had sunk into the quagmire of memory.
Fragmented images flashed through his mind: the newborn Leaf in his childhood, sunlight dappling the training grounds through fresh leaves; youthful comrades standing shoulder to shoulder, sharing a dream; their formidable, awe-inspiring master, Tobirama Senju; and... that Hokage hat and stone face—so close, yet forever beyond his reach.
A bitter, rueful, self-mocking smile crept slowly across Danzo's twisted lips.
Looking back on my life... the one thing that stays with me... is you, Hiruzen...
In that dying moment, his unfocused gaze, as if pulled by invisible threads, drifted weakly, unconsciously, toward another direction.
But what met his eyes was like a lightning bolt tearing through his soul, shattering all his stupor and reminiscence in an instant!
Fear! Unbelievable, ice-cold fear, like a rope coiling around his heart!
It was that kunai!
That very kunai Rubik had used to mock him moments ago—the one he'd instinctively dodged with a slight tilt of his head—now lying embedded in the ground not far away!
What was fatal was not the kunai itself.
It was the formula carved deep into its hilt—
—the Flying Thunder God formula!
"No... IMPOSSIBLE!!!"
A hoarse, shattered cry of utter despair and madness tore from Danzo's throat like a dying beast!
His remaining eye bulged, nearly splitting its socket, as he fixed his gaze on that all-too-familiar mark!
"How did you... how COULD you... know the Flying Thunder God?!"
Rubik looked down upon Danzo, collapsed like a beaten cur, spiraling into madness, with icy contempt—as though staring at a disgustingly pathetic piece of filth. He spoke slowly, his voice not loud but hammering mercilessly onto Danzo's crumbling psyche:
"Fool. Why would you naively believe that barrier jutsu—the one that completely sealed this entire base—was known only to you?"
The corner of his mouth curled into a supremely contemptuous smirk.
"Did you really think you were the Leaf's sole mastermind? Have you forgotten..."
Rubik's voice abruptly turned to chilling ice:
"...who the true leader of the Leaf really is?"
Hiruzen!
It was Hiruzen Sarutobi!
That man he'd pursued all his life, envied all his life, fought as a rival yet was forced to acknowledge as his superior... the Third Hokage! He was the only one who could have known and possibly leaked the core secret of this barrier!
And the Flying Thunder God... did he give that to him too? The thought wormed through Danzo's remaining reason like venom.
"Take him down! NOW! At all costs! TAKE HIM DOWN—!!!"
Danzo had completely lost his mind, shrieking hysterically, his voice cracking from sheer terror and fury!
The Root elites surrounding Rubik moved instantly! Like the finest murder machines, they unleashed their final, deadly intent!
But—
Bzz.
In a single instant—
Space rippled like water.
Rubik's figure vanished—cleanly, completely, as if erased with an eraser—from the very center of all their converging attacks.
He had activated his Edo Tensei Tobirama trial card the moment he'd set foot in this base.
In that final instant before completely escaping this death trap, Rubik's gaze pierced the invisible distance and fell once more upon the writhing, worm-like figure of Danzo, still clinging to the edge of death. A final, mocking smile played on his lips:
"This ending... truly suits you, old man."
"That 'heroic face for the Leaf' you just put on..."
"...absolutely revolting."
"A hypocrite who wraps his filthy desires in the sugar-coating of 'righteousness.'"
"And you dare spout your hollow platitudes at me?"
His voice, like the chill wind of the underworld, left a permanent curse upon Danzo's sinking consciousness:
"You will regret this—HIRUZEN—!!!"
"You WILL regret this—!!!"
Danzo's last shred of rationality finally snapped! Like a mad dog with its spine ripped out, he poured his final strength into one last, soul-wrenching howl—a howl of utter spite, bitterness, and defiance against his lifelong friend, against fate, against the entire world!
"AAAAAAGH—!!!"
---
Leaf Hospital.
"Lord Hokage, you really need to rest! In your current condition, you absolutely should not be out of bed, let alone smoking!"
The nurse pleaded anxiously, gently closing the ward door behind her.
Click.
A soft sound, sealing off the outside world.
Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi remained by the window, as if he hadn't heard her at all. His wrinkled fingers absently stroked the warm pipe. Outside, the last glow of the setting sun stretched his aged shadow long across the floor.
His deep, clouded gaze seemed to pierce across vast distances, fixed upon some unknown corner—a place now being swallowed by darkness.
An almost imperceptible sigh—a sound blending utter weariness, resolve, and profound pain—dissipated like smoke in the silent ward:
"Forgive me... Danzo..."
"...I am the Hokage."
"...Because... I am the Hokage..."
Shhh!
A faint spatial ripple flickered briefly in the warm living room of the Tachibana household.
The figure of Uzumaki Rubik appeared like a ghost, landing steadily upon the Flying Thunder God marker he had engraved earlier.
Familiar, cozy air, tinged with the faint scent of cooking, immediately enveloped him.