The Beautiful Peerless Green Beast of Konoha!

The underground was always dark.

ROOT's facility sat beneath Konoha like a second village, and the corridors were lit by oil lamps. Neji had lived in this light for months. He had trained in it, eaten in it, slept in it, killed for it. The surface was for missions, a world of sunlight and color that existed above, close enough to see and too far to touch.

He walked the main corridor with Sai one step behind him. The ink bird had been sent from the ridge outside Iwagakure, but Danzo would want the report in person. The door to Danzo's chamber was guarded by two operatives who did not move or speak as Sparrow approached. They knew his mask. They stepped aside.

The chamber was large and spare. A desk, a chair, a lamp. Danzo sat behind the desk with his cane resting against the wall and his one visible eye fixed on a scroll he was reading. He did not look up when Sparrow entered. He finished the scroll, set it down, and then his eye moved.

"Report."

Sparrow removed his mask.

"The Chunin Exams in Iwagakure gave vital information that I doubt anyone expected.” Neji began to speak.

"Continue."

"During the finals, three Kage were present in a shared private box. The Third Tsuchikage, the Fourth Raikage, and the Fifth Mizukage." Neji's voice was level. "I activated my Byakugan and read their lips across the duration of the Chunin Exams."

Danzo's eye did not change.

"They are planning a coordinated invasion of Konohagakure. Three fronts. Stone from the northwest. Cloud from the east. Mist from the south. The Raikage's negotiations over the captured jinchuriki are a deliberate stall to buy time for the alliance to prepare. The Tsuchikage referenced Konoha's strength being spread thin and specifically named Rock Lee as a single-point vulnerability. 'The boy is one person. He cannot defend three borders.' The Mizukage asked when they planned to move. I was unable to confirm the exact timeline, but the Raikage referenced force positioning that suggests months, not weeks."

The chamber was quiet as Danzo processed this information.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, Lord Danzo."

"Good work. This intelligence is valuable." Danzo picked up another scroll from the desk and began reading it. "Dismissed."

Neji did not move.

"Lord Danzo."

"You are dismissed, Sparrow."

"What are you going to do with this information?"

The scroll lowered. Danzo's eye found Neji's, and the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees.

"That is not your concern."

"Three Great Villages are coordinating an attack on our home. The Hokage needs to know. The council needs to know. If this intelligence is not acted on immediately..."

"I said," Danzo's voice did not rise. "that is not your concern."

Neji stared at him. The old man's face was stone. There wasn’t any anger or alarm by the intelligence that described the potential destruction of everything he claimed to protect. Just nothing. The same face he wore when he sat in his bunker during the invasion and let their village be attacked.

"You're going to do nothing." Neji looked at him with disgust.

The words hung in the dark air of the chamber like smoke.

"You are going to take this information and do nothing." Neji's voice was still calm, barely. "Why?"

Shadows moved at the edges of the chamber. Neji's Byakugan was not active, but he didn't need it. He could feel them. Six ROOT operatives, eight, positioned behind the pillars and in the alcoves. They had been there the entire time. They were always there.

"You question me." Danzo said it simply. "I had hoped that tendency had been addressed."

"You want to protect Konoha from the darkness. That is what you tell every operative who kneels where I am standing. That is what you told me the night you pulled me out of that cell." Neji's hands were fists at his sides. "But you are watching our village be marked for annihilation and doing nothing. How is that protection?"

"You do not understand the full scope of my plans."

"Then explain it to me."

"I do not explain myself to children or to tools."

Neji’s teeth ground against each other.

"Do you know what Rock Lee is doing right now?" Danzo suddenly asked. "He is a Special Jonin. One of the youngest in Konoha's history. He has three genin students of his own. He trains them every morning. He takes them on missions. He teaches them taijutsu and values and the meaning of being a shinobi." Danzo's voice was mild. Conversational. "His name is in two bingo books at S-rank. He defeated two jinchuriki. Killed one tailed beast. He won two border clashes for a foreign nation by himself. And he is fifteen years old."

Neji said nothing. His knuckles were white.

"That is the boy you tried to murder in a hospital." Danzo continued. "That is the rival you threw away because you could not accept that effort might outweigh destiny. And every day he climbs, every rank he earns, every legend he builds, you watch it from down here in the dark. Because this is where your choices put you."

The silence stretched.

"I gave you a second life." Danzo said. "Without me, you would be a civilian. A branch family member stripped of rank, a slave in all but name with that mark on your forehead, watching the boy who proved you wrong walk past your window every morning with students who call him sensei. A pitiful existence that no one in this village would remember. I gave you purpose. I gave you missions, training, growth, and a chance to become something greater than the cage the Hyuga built for you."

Neji's jaw was tight as the frustration and rage boiled beneath the surface. He couldn't say that Danzo was wrong, because he wasn't. If it wasn't for ROOT, he would be a civilian. He would be watching Lee's career from the outside, hearing about his promotions from shinobi, hearing the stories from strangers on the street. He knew that if he hadn't tried to kill Lee that day, he might be a Special Jonin alongside him right now. His own students. His own team. Walking in the sunlight instead of standing in a lamp-lit cave arguing with a man who held his leash.

It was a sobering thought. And somewhere underneath it, one he dreamed of living.

"The intelligence needs to reach the Hokage." Neji said.

"The intelligence will be used as I see fit."

"People will die."

"People are always dying. The question is which deaths serve the village and which do not."

Neji stared at the old man and saw, for the first time with perfect clarity, the shape of what Danzo actually was. He wasn’t a protector or a patriot. He was a senile old fart who had confused the village with himself so completely that he could no longer tell the difference between serving Konoha and serving Danzo, and who would let the walls burn if the ashes arranged themselves in a shape he preferred.

"I will not allow that." Neji said.

Danzo's eye narrowed.

"I cannot go to Guy-sensei in person. He would recognize me. Lee would recognize me. Even in disguise, even in a mask, I feel like they would know how I breathe, how I move, how I stand." Neji paused. "But there are other ways to deliver a message. And if you will not act on this intelligence, I will find one of them."

Danzo studied him for a long, quiet moment. Then he exhaled through his nose, the only sign of emotion the old man had shown in the entire conversation.

"I knew you would do this." Danzo said. "You did it during the invasion. You were ordered to stand down and you went to save the rejected Hyuga heir. You were punished for that. And here you stand, in the same room, making the same mistake, because you are fundamentally incapable of understanding that obedience is not a choice in the Foundation."

He raised one finger.

"Subdue Sparrow."

They came from everywhere.

Eight ROOT operatives materialized from the shadows, the pillars, the alcoves, blades drawn, moving in coordination. Two from behind, two from the sides, four from the front, converging on Neji in a collapsing ring.

The first one reached him and died standing up.

Neji's palm hit the operative's chest multiple times in the frame of a second and every tenketsu from collar to navel sealed shut. The operative's eyes went wide before he dropped where he stood.

The second operative came from behind with a tanto aimed at the back of Neji's neck. Neji didn’t even need to turn as he swayed out of the way of the blow. His elbow shooting backward and hitting the ninja in the gut. The operative fell to his knees before he was kicked away by Neji.

The remaining six continued forth.

He was faster than they expected. Faster than their reports said. Faster than the watchers Danzo had planted on his squads had ever recorded, because Neji had been training in the dark for months, pushing himself past every limit ROOT's regime demanded and then past the limits he set for himself, and he had shown none of it to the eyes that were always watching.

Two Gentle Fist strikes took the third operative in both shoulders. His arms went dead and a palm to the jaw crumpled him. The fourth threw a jutsu, a wind blade, and Neji split it with his palm and closed the distance and struck her multiple times in the chest. Her breath hitched violently as she dropped. The fifth and sixth came together, coordinated, blades crossing, and Neji dropped under both swings, planted both palms on the ground, and swept their legs with a spinning kick that sent both of them airborne.

Neji walked toward the remaining ones standing and they saw his eyes, the Byakugan blazing, every vein at his temples standing proud, and whatever they saw in those pale eyes made the seventh coat his blade with wind chakra and the eighth weave through hand signs.

The two rushed Neji and Neji did the same. Slash after slash, Neji used the minimal amount of movement necessary to avoid the extended lethal range of the wind sword, just as he was about to counter with a palm thrust to the core, a blazing stream of flame came toward him as the sword-wielding shinobi leaped into the air.

Neji didn’t bother avoiding it as he leaped forward into the flames while spinning. A dome of spinning chakra deflected the flames as Neji barreled into the shinobi, knocking him out. Then as he left the protective shield, behind him, the shinobi that leaped into the air was slashing down with his blade. In an instant, Neji spun and swayed out of the way of the strike before retaliating with a double-palm blow that sent the sword-wielder flying away.

Neji stopped. He stood in the center of the chamber, surrounded by eight disabled ROOT operatives and he looked at Danzo.

The old man had not moved from his chair.

"You've been hiding your true skills." Danzo observed. His voice carried no surprise.

Neji didn’t respond.

"Impressive. Foolish, but impressive." Danzo's eye moved past Neji's shoulder. "Hoheto."

A presence behind Danzo, stepping out of the deeper shadow behind the chair. A figure in a ROOT mask, smaller than the others, with pale eyes visible through the eyeholes.

A Hyuga.

Hoheto's hands formed a single seal.

The curse mark on Neji's forehead ignited.

Every nerve, every synapse, every thought, every memory, all of it compressed into a single white point of agony that erased everything else. His legs gave out. His knees hit the stone. His hands hit the stone. His forehead, the mark burning like a brand pressed fresh, hit the stone.

He screamed.

The sound filled the chamber and bounced off the walls and came back to him and he could not stop it. His body was no longer his. The seal owned it. His Byakugan, the eyes he had trained and sharpened and pushed past every boundary ROOT could set, shut down. The veins smoothed. The world was now dark and small and agonizing.

Through the screaming, through the white, through the part of his brain that was still capable of forming words, Neji spoke.

"Kill me now." He forced the words through his teeth, through the seal, through the fire in his skull. "Or tell them yourself. There are no other options."

The torture continued. Seconds stretched into minutes. Neji's fingers clawed at the stone floor. His body convulsed. The sound coming out of him was not something a person should be capable of making.

Danzo watched.

He watched the boy on the floor, the prodigy he had pulled from a cell and shaped into something useful for him, screaming and bleeding from his orifices and refusing to take back what he said. He watched the fingers crack against the stone. He watched the body seize.

Kill me or decide.

There are no other options.

For one moment, brief and unwelcome, Danzo heard another voice saying something similar. A younger voice. His own voice, decades ago, standing in front of the Second Hokage and saying words that sounded very much like those. At least in intent.

He raised his hand.

"Enough."

Hoheto released the seal. The fire went out. Neji collapsed flat on the stone, his body twitching, his breath coming in shallow broken gasps, his face pressed against the floor, tears and blood mixing in a thin line beneath his cheek.

Danzo stood. He took his cane. He walked around the desk, past the eight disabled operatives, and stood over the boy on the floor.

"Do not forget your place." Danzo said. "And do not think you accomplished anything with this display. It simply changes the methods I was originally going to follow."

He looked down at Neji, who was conscious but could not move, who was staring at the base of the wall with eyes that had nothing left in them but the faintest stubborn spark.

"You belong to me now. Do not forget that. You are my tool, and tools do not question, tools do not disobey, and tools do not give ultimatums." His voice dropped. "A tool, even a highly talented and prodigious one, that cannot do its job, is a tool to be discarded."

He turned and walked toward the chamber door with his cane, Hoheto falling into step behind him. At the door, he paused.

"Hoheto. See that he is moved to the medical wing. He is to be treated and returned to active duty within forty-eight hours."

"Yes, Lord Danzo."

Danzo walked out of the chamber and down the corridor, his cane tapping against the stone in a steady rhythm, and the sound of it faded into the dark.

He did not go to his quarters. He went up. Through the passages that connected ROOT's facility to the surface, through the hidden entrance behind the monument, and into the evening air of Konoha, where the sun was setting over the rooftops and the village was warm and bright and full of people who did not know what lived beneath them.

He went to the Hokage's tower.

He requested a meeting with the council.