Journey of the Three Failures

Chapter 23: Encroaching

Journey of the Three Failures

Chapter Twenty-Three: Encroaching

Part One: Course of Action

Neji ネジ

"Orochimaru!"

My lord frowned thinly behind his desk at the grizzled voice that came booming up the hallway outside. Kabuto merely sighed with a low mutter. "I'd actually forgotten about that one since my death. It was nice..."

I turned with the sharpest scowl I dared to face the one who barged through the double doors uninvited – an old man sporting dulling brown hair atop the mess of bandaging that masked half his face, an old scar on the hard chin below it. I bristled as he lifted his nose at my lord; still, it was a trial not to smirk at the yowling, heavily bandaged Koneko, flailing in disagreement as he towed her by ear into the office. He flung her to the ground before us. The ANBU was dressed casually on her day off, clearly not having anticipated this sudden audience with the Hokage.

"Danzo." Unimpressed with the spectacle, said Hokage drew the name out in an oily drizzle of something hinging on contempt. "What brings you here in so sour a mood, good friend? I don't recall myself ever manhandling your darling ANBU."

"Is what your Cat says true, Orochimaru?" Danzo demanded gruffly. "Never mind that you concealed your trip to the prison from me – such an opportune situation unfolded around you, and you chose to pass it by? Perhaps you are not so powerful as you claim..."

"Neji-kun," my Lord said calmly, catching me as my mouth opened. I bit back the venom on my tongue. My lord knew best; he understood things that we could not. I relaxed and contented myself in regarding the old geezer with a cool eye, confident he would be subdued swiftly enough by whatever intricacy may lie at the heart of Orochimaru's brilliance.

"For one thing, I did not have my visit concealed from you – you simply needn't have known. And for another... why would you suppose I am Hokage, and you reside yet in command of the underground, dealing only in shadows?"

Danzo's lip began to curl. Cold and efficient in a manner very unlike m'lord, he was a man of limited patience for the adornments of rhetoric. He desired his facts – his answers – straight information and nothing more.

Orochimaru paused to let the words sink in. Only when Danzo began to scowl pointedly did he continue.

"There are times, you will find, when crushing mere men is not enough. Crushing a life is simple; crushing a heart, a mind, a generation – an entire culture – is a matter of the utmost delicacy. It requires time and thoroughness..."

"I've had enough of your games, Orochimaru. Get to the point."

"Kukuku... Is your ancient mind so rigid in its wisdom that you still do not see it? You're right – I could have killed quite the number of them, but I did not. My power arises in that they know I could have. To be drawn taut and yet spared at the very foot of destruction – do you know of such unimaginable torment? Every waking moment, every beat of their hearts left to echo hollowly upon a dread and hopelessness of my creation...!"

"You merely toy around for your own satisfaction," Danzo growled. "We suffered casualties at that prison, and you neglected to recompense for this? Instead you used the lives of our own shinobi to demonstrate to them your cruelty, but to what gain? This blethering of hearts and illusion..."

My lord only shook his head. "We may have lost lives, but we have gained something of far greater worth. You sorely underestimate how very real these things can become, if devised properly; you'll simply have to believe me for now, good friend. When you hold a shinobi's heart in your hands, and leave it beating at your mercy... Knowing this powerlessness, and continuing to live it, that shinobi will imprison and drown himself in the very futility of his existence..." The weight of the calmly chilled words on the air seemed only to affirm the assertion. The Hokage's tongue slid across his lips. "We will not lose this war, Danzo."