Chapter 148: A Long-Awaited Dream Finally Fulfilled — The 3.5th Hokage!
Four villages. Simultaneously.
Kirigakure, Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Sunagakure — all four Great Nations, declaring war on Konoha at the same time.
Standing on the platform with thousands of shinobi watching from below, Hiruzen Sarutobi found himself doing something he hadn't done since childhood.
He was questioning his karma.
What exactly had he done in a past life to deserve this? These four villages despised each other under normal circumstances — centuries of blood feuds, territorial disputes, and deep-seated hatred ran between them like fault lines. Getting even two of them to cooperate on anything was considered a diplomatic miracle.
And yet here they were. United. All pointing in the same direction.
At him.
Calm down. He pressed the thought down hard. You are the Hokage. The Hokage does not panic. Not here. Not in front of every shinobi in this village.
He breathed in slowly. Then again. Then once more, until he felt the hammering in his chest begin — only slightly — to ease.
It didn't help that his vision had started to blur at the edges. The recent weeks had not been kind to his body. Certain... extracurricular activities had left him more drained than he cared to admit, and two sudden stress-induced bleeds in quick succession hadn't exactly improved his condition.
He gripped Koharu Utatane's arm beside him, keeping his voice barely above a whisper.
"Koharu. Homura." His jaw was tight. "Go and bring Danzo. Now."
Koharu recognized immediately that this was not the moment for political calculation. "Hiruzen, stay with us—"
She didn't finish.
Because another ANBU operative had materialized at his other shoulder, moving with the controlled urgency of someone carrying news that absolutely could not wait.
"Hokage-sama. Urgent report from the field — regarding the Kumogakure situation."
Hiruzen steeled himself. Whatever this was, it almost certainly wasn't good. But Minato, Kushina, and Kazuki were all unaccounted for, which meant he had no choice but to hear it.
"Report."
"Minato Namikaze has been successfully recovered," the operative said. "He is currently en route back to Konoha with Uzumaki Kushina. Both are alive."
The tension in Hiruzen's chest loosened just enough to breathe properly. His shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.
Good. At least there's that.
"And Uchiha Kazuki?" he asked, almost as an afterthought. "What's his status?"
The operative went very still.
They lowered their head — the specific kind of lowering that preceded words no one wanted to say out loud.
"Uchiha Kazuki..." They paused. Swallowed. Then, in a voice that had clearly steeled itself: "Uchiha Kazuki killed the Third Raikage in single combat within the Hidden Cloud Village. The Third Raikage was bisected at the waist and killed. Kazuki's current whereabouts are unknown."
The world stopped.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stared at the operative for a long, hollow moment.
"...Say that again."
The operative's voice didn't waver, even though the words were clearly costing them something. "Uchiha Kazuki killed the Third Raikage of Kumogakure in single combat. The Third Raikage was cut in half at the waist. Kazuki's current whereabouts remain unknown."
Hiruzen's mouth moved.
Nothing came out.
Then, very slowly, something that might have been a smile crossed his face. It didn't reach his eyes. It didn't look like a smile a sane person would wear.
"He..." Hiruzen's voice came out as barely a murmur. "He killed the Raikage?"
A soft sound escaped him. Almost a laugh.
"He killed the Raikage." The smile widened. "He actually killed the Raikage. Hah. Hahaha—"
"Hiruzen." Koharu's voice was sharp with alarm.
The veins on his forehead had surfaced. His vision had gone red at the edges. There was a metallic taste building at the back of his throat — familiar and unwelcome — and the ringing in his ears was getting very loud.
"He killed the—"
The blood came up before he could finish the sentence.
A sharp jet of crimson. Then the dizziness hit like a wall, sudden and total, and the platform lurched beneath his feet in a way that had nothing to do with the platform moving at all.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, Third Hokage of Konohagakure, tipped backward.
Koharu lunged — but there wasn't enough time. She watched, frozen for one awful second, as he struck the edge of the steps, rolled, and tumbled off the platform entirely.
The sound his body made hitting the ground below was not a sound that belonged in a moment like this.
"HIRUZEN!"
"Hokage-sama—!"
The plaza erupted.
Thousands of voices broke at once. Genin who had been standing rigidly at attention grabbed each other's arms. Chunin pushed forward instinctively before ANBU lines closed around the platform. A handful of senior Jonin broke through the perimeter, dropping to their knees beside the fallen figure.
Koharu Utatane was down the steps before she'd consciously decided to move, grabbing Hiruzen's shoulders, pressing her fingers to the side of his neck.
Pulse. Weak, but present.
"Hiruzen! Stay awake! Look at me!" Her voice was cracking in ways it almost never did. "You cannot collapse right now — do you hear me? Konoha needs you standing! Wake up!"
His eyes fluttered.
There was still enough consciousness left in him to understand what was happening — and more importantly, what it meant. With four nations simultaneously mobilizing against them, Konoha could not afford to look leaderless for even an hour. The symbolic weight of the Hokage was as important as any army. If the village saw their leader carried off unconscious before a single battle had been fought, the damage to morale would be catastrophic.
Someone had to step forward. Now. Immediately.
His mind moved through the options with the grim efficiency of a man who had been making impossible calculations his entire adult life.
Minato — still traveling, injured, hours away.
Jiraiya — somewhere outside the village, not responding to recall orders.
Tsunade — same.
Orochimaru — unfit for this. The trust simply wasn't there anymore, and this was not the moment for a gamble.
Kazuki — absolutely not. The Uchiha clan taking the Hokage seat, even temporarily, would ignite political fires that the village couldn't survive on top of everything else.
Which left only one name.
Hiruzen grabbed Koharu's sleeve with what remained of his grip strength. His eyes found hers. His voice came out barely above a whisper, rough and strained and carrying the weight of a decision he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to undo.
"Koharu... get Danzo. Tell him..." He coughed. Winced. Pushed through it. "Tell him to assume the Hokage position. Temporarily."
Then his head fell to the side, and the Third Hokage lost consciousness.
Koharu Utatane knelt in the rain beside him for exactly half a second.
Then she stood up, turned to the nearest of Hiruzen's personal guard — a veteran ANBU operative named Rinkaku — and looked at him with an expression that left absolutely no room for hesitation.
"You heard the Hokage's order."
Rinkaku didn't move immediately. Something crossed his face — reluctance, or perhaps a quiet recognition of exactly what this moment was going to set in motion.
Then he closed his eyes briefly. Opened them. Nodded.
"...Yes, Advisor."
"Then stop standing there. Go."
He went.
Root's underground headquarters felt different at night.
The corridors were darker, the silence deeper, the faint hum of sealing arrays more noticeable. Rinkaku walked through them with the particular discomfort of a man entering territory that, despite his rank and authority, he knew didn't truly belong to him.
He found Danzo in the main chamber.
The figure seated in the shadows was, as always, somewhat jarring to look at — not because of the transformation itself, but because of the absolute wrongness of seeing that particular silhouette in the particular way it now sat. Danzo had the bearing and posture of someone who had spent decades cultivating a certain kind of intimidating, weathered authority.
That authority looked... different now.
Rinkaku dropped to one knee.
"By direct order of the Hokage—" He kept his voice even with some effort. "—Lord Danzo is requested to temporarily assume the position of Hokage, effective immediately."
The silence that followed lasted exactly thirty seconds.
Danzo sat completely still, as if the words were still traveling across the room to reach him.
"...What happened?" The voice came out carefully. Controlled. "Tell me everything."
Rinkaku relayed the sequence of events plainly and completely: the war declaration from all four Great Villages arriving simultaneously, the news about Kazuki killing the Third Raikage, Hiruzen's collapse on the platform in front of the entire village, and his final order before losing consciousness.
By the time Rinkaku finished, Danzo had not moved.
Another silence stretched out — shorter this time.
"I understand." The tone was deliberately composed. Almost too composed. "You're dismissed. I'll follow shortly."
Rinkaku bowed and withdrew without another word, his footsteps fading down the corridor.
The heavy door closed behind him.
And then, in the darkness of the chamber, with no one left to perform restraint for—
Danzo laughed.
It started quietly. A low sound, barely audible, almost disbelieving.
Then it grew.
"Hahaha—"
"Hahahaha—"
"Hahahahahaha—"
The laughter bounced off the stone walls, filling the underground chamber with something that sounded less like joy and more like the release of pressure that had been building for decades. That beautiful, striking face — still strange to inhabit, still carrying that unsettling feminine charm — was twisted now into an expression of pure, unfiltered triumph.
"Finally."
The word came out between breaths, saturated with everything that word could possibly contain.
"Finally, Hiruzen — it's my turn!"
From the far corner of the chamber, Aburame Ryoma stepped forward from the shadows. His expression was, as always, completely unreadable — the flat, practiced neutrality of someone who had trained their face into a mask so complete it had essentially become a second skin.
He dropped to one knee.
"Congratulations, Lord Danzo." His voice was entirely steady. "With this, Root's reach can expand once again. Everything you've worked toward is within reach."
Danzo's laughter faded gradually into a wide, satisfied smile. Plans were already taking shape — the kind of plans that could only be made from a position of actual authority rather than shadow influence. The kind of plans that required a Hokage's seal.
This time, Danzo thought, I'll reclaim everything.
Ryoma remained kneeling, head bowed.
And on his face, invisible to the woman celebrating in front of him, was a very quiet, very private smile of his own.
Root was expanding.
That was true.
But Danzo would never know that the Root she believed she controlled — had rebuilt from nothing, had bled and sacrificed for across an entire lifetime — no longer answered to her alone.
It hadn't for some time now.
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