Night had already begun settling over Konoha by the time the second operative left Danzō's office.
The door closed behind him without a sound.
Danzō remained seated.
Root's headquarters lay far enough beneath the village that the change from evening to night meant little here.
There were no windows in his office, only stone, lamplight, and the reports spread across his desk.
He did not touch them yet.
The two men had given nearly identical accounts.
Nearly was the part that mattered.
Danzō preferred hearing the same incident more than once, particularly when something had gone wrong.
Loyalty reduced certain problems.
It did not remove fear, pride, mistaken perception, or the simple human tendency to remember events in whichever order made one's own decisions look most reasonable.
So he listened.
Then he compared.
The incident itself had begun as nothing worth remembering.
A chūnin attached to an administrative department had drawn Root's attention after irregularities appeared around information passing through his work.
Nothing important enough to involve the Hokage directly.
Enough to justify determining whether the man was careless, compromised, or deliberately communicating with someone outside the village.
Danzō had ordered him taken quietly.
No arrest.
No public detention.
And, naturally, no paperwork for the Military Police to find.
That had been the first problem.
The second was that the man's family had reported him missing.
Neither concerned Danzō greatly on its own.
The interrogation would have ended, the man would either have been released or dealt with appropriately, and the disappearance could have been explained afterward.
Then the Police had begun following the correct trail.
Efficiently, too.
That had interested him more.
By the time the safehouse reported that several Uchiha officers were working their way toward the building, the prisoner had already become secondary.
Then the name of their captain reached him.
Fugaku Uchiha.
Danzō had changed the instructions.
The prisoner was moved.
Anything that could identify the location as a Root facility was removed or secured.
The building itself remained.
So did two operatives.
Not enough to expose Root.
Enough to see what Fugaku would do when an investigation placed him against an authority he could not immediately identify.
Danzō had wanted a useful assessment of the boy for some time.
That had proven inconvenient.
The Uchiha trained their important heirs exclusively within their own compound, and Fugaku's previous Police duties had offered little that justified ROOT taking a closer look.
Observing from a distance could reveal habits and routine.
It revealed considerably less about how someone reacted under pressure.
His recent promotion had changed that.
Sixteen years old, already commanding his own Investigation unit, and now approaching a position ROOT happened to control.
There was no reason to waste the opportunity.
The instructions had been simple.
Obstruct him.
Do not identify Root.
Do not use lethal force unless the situation changed drastically.
And if Fugaku insisted on pushing past them, test the response.
Danzō had expected several possibilities.
Fugaku might withdraw and take the matter back to Police headquarters.
He might demand formal authorization.
He might attempt to force his way through.
Any of those would have told Danzō something.
Instead, the boy had taken one step forward, the mental technique had been initiated as ordered, and an operative's strike had connected almost immediately afterward.
Then Fugaku had fallen.
That alone was not strange.
The test had been designed to divide his attention.
The problem was what happened after.
He had not recovered.
According to both men, Fugaku had looked disoriented before the physical strike even landed.
Not merely distracted.
For an instant, he had seemed unable to understand where he was.
Then the blow knocked him backward.
He struck the cabinet on the way down and lost consciousness.
His officers reacted predictably after that.
One attempted to reach him.
The second Root operative intercepted him.
The others prepared to engage before the situation was halted rather than allowed to become an actual fight between ROOT and the Military Police.
Messy.
Manageable.
What interested Danzō was everything before Fugaku hit the floor.
His fingers tapped once against the arm of his chair.
The Sharingan had never appeared, for example.
That contradicted what Danzō had expected more than the collapse itself.
Perhaps the reports concerning his eyes had been exaggerated.
Or perhaps something else had happened when the technique reached him.
Danzō disliked perhaps.
That was why the two field operatives had been dismissed.
Their part was finished.
There was still one account he had not heard.
The only one that mattered more than theirs.
Danzō looked toward the closed door.
He had deliberately ordered her to report separately.
A minute later, footsteps approached from the corridor outside.
Then came a knock.
"Enter."
...
The door opened.
A woman stepped inside and closed it behind her.
She wore the same dark uniform and animal-style mask used by Root, plain enough to erase most signs of individuality.
It did a less convincing job of hiding her figure.
The fitted layers followed a mature, distinctly feminine build before disappearing beneath the heavier pieces of equipment around her waist and thighs.
Auburn hair, somewhere between brown and muted orange, had been pulled tightly into a high ponytail.
Discipline demanded practicality.
A few thick bangs still escaped around the front of her mask.
Setsu Yamanaka.
Within Root, Mu.
Code name - Nothingness.
She crossed the office without hesitation and lowered herself onto one knee before Danzō's desk.
"Mu reporting, sir."
Her voice was cool and perfectly controlled.
It had always been an inconveniently pleasant voice.
Even stripped of warmth, there remained something naturally charming underneath it.
Danzō gestured once.
"Report."
Setsu raised her head slightly.
Outwardly, there was nothing remarkable about her.
No hesitation.
No resentment.
No trace that she hated the man sitting in front of her more than anyone alive.
She had become very good at that.
Being near him still brought back the same memory.
More than fifteen years had done surprisingly little to weaken it.
She had been nine when the message reached the Academy.
Her parents were dead.
Both had served during the First Shinobi World War.
Setsu remembered very little about the explanation afterward.
Locations, units, casualties, condolences.
Adults had a remarkable ability to turn death into administrative language.
Before that, she had been a bright child.
Talkative.
Curious.
Good enough at the Academy that instructors had already begun mentioning her name to visiting clan members.
Afterward, she trained harder.
There had been no great revelation behind it. Nothing noble.
Studying and training simply gave her something to do besides return home and remember why it was empty.
By the time she was ten, the war had ended.
That was supposed to be the good part.
There were many orphans in Konoha.
Far more than there should have been, but she was hardly unique.
The Yamanaka clan provided for its own.
Setsu still had a place to live, food, instructors, relatives who checked on her, and perhaps another year or two before graduation.
Her generation had at least been spared being thrown directly into the war.
She would graduate.
Become a kunoichi.
Take missions.
Eventually build some sort of life that belonged to her.
That had been the expectation.
She had also become, by then, the most talented student of her year.
Not merely among the Yamanaka.
Across the Academy.
Her parents' deaths had probably contributed to that too.
Setsu had already been gifted.
Grief had simply made her obsessive enough to sharpen the gift faster.
Then one afternoon, after lessons, she returned to the clan compound and was told the patriarch wanted to see her.
She remembered noticing the looks before she understood anything else.
Clansmen who normally greeted her looked away.
One older woman gave her a smile that failed halfway through.
A man near the entrance seemed angry, though not at Setsu.
Another simply sighed.
Nobody said anything.
That was almost worse.
Even at ten, Setsu understood the feeling.
Something had already been decided about her.
She entered the patriarch's room and found two men waiting.
The first was the head of her clan.
The second she knew by reputation.
Shimura Danzō.
He had been much younger then, somewhere in his twenties, though to a ten-year-old that hardly mattered.
He had already carried himself like an older man anyway.
Still.
Straight-backed.
Cold.
Watching.
Setsu remembered that gaze particularly well.
He had not looked at her like an adult meeting a child.
He had looked at her like someone evaluating an unusually valuable object before deciding where to place it.
The patriarch spoke first.
"Setsu, you've been selected for a special assignment."
She had looked between them.
"What assignment?"
The patriarch's expression tightened for barely a moment.
"One important to the village."
Danzō said nothing.
The patriarch continued.
"You will accompany Lord Danzō. From now on, you will serve under his command as part of a new organization operating directly for Konoha's security."
Directly for Konoha.
Setsu remembered that phrase.
Adults liked phrases like that.
"How long?"
No immediate answer.
That had been the answer.
Setsu looked at her patriarch again.
She was ten, not stupid.
"Will I still come back here?"
His eyes shifted.
Only slightly.
That was enough too.
"You have been given an important duty," he said. "The Hokage has approved it."
The new Hokage.
Hiruzen Sarutobi had inherited the position after the Second Hokage's death and the end of the war.
Setsu understood the message immediately.
Her clan patriarch had ordered it.
The Hokage had approved it.
And Danzō, one of the Hokage's closest comrades, was standing there waiting to take her.
There was nowhere to appeal.
No adult above them she could run to.
No rule she could quote that mattered more than the two authorities already sitting in front of her.
She remembered wanting to ask why.
Why her.
Why now.
Why her parents could die for the village, only for the village to decide afterward that their daughter belonged to someone else.
She asked none of it.
Refusing would only make whatever happened next worse.
So Setsu bowed.
"I understand."
Something passed over the patriarch's face.
Relief, perhaps.
And shame.
She had hated that look almost as much as Danzō's.
At least Danzō had never pretended he was doing her a kindness.
She left the compound with him that evening.
Setsu had imagined special training.
Secret missions.
Perhaps an isolated branch of ANBU.
She had not imagined Root.
The first months had taught her quickly.
Sleep became something allocated.
Food became something scheduled.
Conversation became unnecessary.
Privacy disappeared almost completely.
Training filled whatever remained.
Physical conditioning until her legs stopped responding properly.
Chakra exercises until migraines blurred her vision.
Yamanaka techniques repeated until entering another consciousness felt less strange than speaking to another person.
Then came everything designed for a different purpose.
Obedience drills.
Isolation.
Punishment for emotional attachment.
Exercises intended to suppress hesitation.
Repeated lessons that names, family, preferences, fear, affection, and personal ambition interfered with duty.
A shinobi did not need a self.
A tool did not question the hand using it.
Danzō preferred tools.
Setsu learned that early.
She also learned how to survive him.
That had been easier for her than for some.
She had entered Root at ten.
Young, certainly.
But not young enough.
She had already known her own name.
Already loved people.
Already hated things.
Already understood that adults could lie.
Most importantly, she remembered life before Root.
That memory became something the organization never quite managed to remove.
Setsu learned obedience.
She never learned devotion.
She learned how to lower her voice, blank her face, control her breathing, and answer before Danzō needed to repeat himself.
She learned how to let instructors believe another piece of her had disappeared.
Inside, she remained stubbornly present.
Perhaps damaged.
Certainly less cheerful.
But present.
She never developed the strange loyalty some operatives eventually did.
Never convinced herself Danzō's approval meant affection.
Never mistook dependence for gratitude.
She hated him.
Quietly.
Carefully.
For fifteen years.
And somewhere beneath that hatred sat the same embarrassingly persistent wish she had carried since childhood.
Freedom.
She had stopped expecting it.
That was different from no longer wanting it.
Root had grown considerably around her in those years.
At first, many recruits had come from similar clans.
The arrangement was rarely discussed openly, but Setsu understood it well enough.
The Aburame sent talent.
The Nara did.
The Akimichi.
The Inuzuka.
Other clans too.
Usually, young shinobi judged particularly promising, often somewhere between ten and twenty, were reassigned into Danzō's organization under one justification or another.
The Uchiha did not.
Neither did the Hyūga, as far as Setsu knew.
Both were too large, too proud, and too protective of their internal affairs to casually surrender their most talented children.
Most other clans had less room to refuse.
As Danzō's organization grew, refusal became even more difficult.
The Third Hokage's authority had strengthened alongside it.
So had Danzō's.
Officially, many things Root did occupied a conveniently uncertain space.
Unofficially, that uncertainty never seemed to stop him.
Then the children began arriving.
Not children like Setsu had been.
Younger.
Much younger.
Five.
Six.
Sometimes younger still.
Some obviously came through orphanages in Konoha.
Others from similar settlements throughout the Land of Fire.
A few appeared without any history Setsu could verify at all.
Perhaps they truly had no families.
Perhaps some had.
She had learned not to ask questions whose answers she was not supposed to survive knowing.
One thing bothered her more than the rest.
They were rarely ordinary children.
Too coordinated.
Too perceptive.
Unusually strong chakra.
Quick learners.
Sometimes a clear affinity appeared within months.
Danzō was not simply collecting whoever happened to be available.
Someone was finding them.
Setsu had eventually formed her own suspicion.
She was not the only Yamanaka in Root.
There had been others after her.
Older members.
Less talented and powerful nowadays.
Some spent long stretches outside Konoha on assignments never discussed with other operatives.
Yamanaka were useful for many things.
Interrogation.
Mental techniques.
Communication.
And sensing.
Finding a talented child among thousands of ordinary people would be difficult for most shinobi.
For the right sensor, considerably less so.
Due to her talent and background, Setsu had eventually become one of Root's strongest and most senior operatives, if such a distinction even meant much beneath Danzō himself.
It was precisely that position, and the access that came with it, that allowed her to notice so much.
Setsu had never acquired proof.
She did not need much imagination to fill in the rest.
A talented orphan could be recruited.
A talented child with living parents created complications.
Root disliked complications.
The younger recruits were different from her generation.
Quieter.
Emptier.
Many barely remembered anything before the underground halls.
Some had no memory at all.
Perfect tools, raised by Danzō before they were old enough to understand that a person was supposed to belong to themselves first.
That was the shinobi world Setsu had eventually come to understand.
Not the one taught at the Academy.
She still remembered one of Hiruzen Sarutobi's first speeches after becoming Hokage.
He had visited the Academy during her last semester there.
The Will of Fire.
The village as family.
Older generations protecting the young so the young could grow and inherit the future.
Setsu had believed him then.
She had been ten.
That excuse had expired quickly.
Over the years, she had stopped wondering whether Hiruzen knew what Danzō was doing.
There was no possible way he did not.
Perhaps he avoided details.
Perhaps Danzō deliberately kept certain methods from him.
Perhaps the Hokage preferred having enough ignorance to remain comfortable.
Setsu no longer cared which version was true.
Root had grown beneath his village for years.
Clan children disappeared into it.
Orphans entered and never returned.
Operations happened without public authorization.
Danzō accumulated men, information, and power.
And Hiruzen Sarutobi remained Hokage.
The distinction between approval and useful blindness had long since stopped impressing her.
"Mu."
Setsu returned fully to the present.
Not that anything had shown on her face.
Danzō was watching her.
The same cold eye.
Older now.
Still evaluating.
Setsu lowered her head slightly.
"Sir."
"Tell me exactly what happened when your technique reached Fugaku Uchiha."
Her hands remained still against her knee.
"Yes, sir."