Darkness Falls

Chapter 15

ROOT Headquarters

It had been over a week since the young blonde had revealed his heritage to the council, and Danzo was none to happy. This single action had disrupted everything he had planned, not only for the blonde jinchuriki, but his future operations as well. The reason being?

The brat had claimed all assets of the Namikaze vault and completely liquidated it. Merging it with his mothers account, as well as transferring large sums to two additional accounts. One being the boys private account, and the other into an unknown account in a reserve operated by a third party company that specialized in private accounts. Putting everything out of the old war hawks reach. In truth, Danzo had been using the Namikaze account to fund his ROOT program as well as other projects as per the previous Hokage's instructions.

Though due to legal issues that would arise, it had been a quiet affair. The Fourth never considered the chance of his son actually claiming his family heritage. The plan had always been for him to be beaten into submission and isolated from his peers, so when Danzo's ROOT took him, no one would question what had happened to the young blonde. Of course, that had all changed after the boys sixth birthday. Something had awakened in the child that day.

To compound issues further, he had also discovered that Naruto had completely cleaned out the Namikaze residence of anything of value. Scrolls, books, equipment, and so forth. Leaving the compound completely barren, even the pictures were removed. Almost as if the blonde was erasing the very existence of his father. To add further insult to injury, all of the security seals around the compound had been changed, completely cutting off any access he once had to the property.

This of course made the bandaged elder frown slightly in thought.

'Could it be possible he learned of Minato's plan?' The man mused. As outlandish as it sounded, he did not want to leave anything to chance. He had already lost a rather sizable amount of money due to underestimating the blonde brat. Of course he had other sources to finance his operation, but having access to Minato's bank account had made it far more accessible.

Of course this lead to Danzo's biggest problem for his immediate plans. How to acquire Naruto. Now that he was recognized as the heir of not one, but two notable clans in the village, any sudden disappearance of him would surely be noticed. Especially from his current fiances, both of which were very capable to combat his own ROOT long enough to attract attention to them. Something he absolutely wanted to avoid.

As he continued to ponder a solution to his problem, a small grin appeared on his face. It was a simple plan, yet it would be effective.

"ROOT!" He called out.

Immediately, six black clad shinobi appeared in front of him. All with blank masks that gave no indication of their identity. In reality they had nothing to claim any sort of identity. Just mindless drones that were blindly loyal only to the man they now knelt before.

"You are to find and secure Naruto Uzumaki and bring him to me." Danzo instructed them. "You are not to act until he is alone. I do not want any attention brought to us."

"Hai, Danzo-sama!" They all said in unison before disappearing.

As they left, Danzo grinned. All he had to do was wait until they brought him the boy and he would force a loyalty seal on him. That way he would secure the boys obedience while not having anyone question his disappearance. Once he was loyal, he would have Naruto sign over everything to him, and perhaps even have his fiances forced into his ROOT forces as well.

Nothing would stop him.

Training Ground 7

Both Sakura and Naruto were leaning against one another near one of the posts, waiting for the other two to finally arrive. The pinkette was reading through more scrolls she had come across for her elemental affinities while playing with a silver necklace that hung around her neck, whilst Naruto was reading one of the scrolls he had secured from his fathers property. Studying how to perform one of his fathers signature techniques, the Rasengan.