Chapter 37.1- Gamer of the Desert

While my old friend d’s student was busy carrying out my orders, I went on with the next step of my plan. This was a plan years in the making and that had required decades of planning, foresight and patience. So close to the finish line, I could not bear to fail. It would have been inconsiderable ten years ago. Now? To fail the Leaf now would be to damn it with my death. There was no one who would be ready or capable to do what was neccessary to keep the Great Tree alive and healthy apart from myself. I’d stress about finding a successor when this was all over. When the smoke cleared with me on top. Maybe that Sai boy that was tearing his way through training and completing mission after mission. A natural talent for fuinjutsu and a unique ninjutsu technique like that would  make a great Kage with the right combination of training and individual effort. 

My thoughts left me as I felt the air conditioning flow over my wrinkled skin upon crossing the door. I did it alone, unescorted. No mere elder of the Leaf ought to have an Anbu escort. Root still loyally followed and watched over my every step, however. It was one compromise I could not make. Fu was doing a good job in his surveillance over the Suna Kazekage, but I would be a fool to act like the threat of him slamming his immense power on the hospital and killing us all was an impossibility. 

Hiruzen had been foolish in allowing the boy remain. In even allowing the boy live for a second longer after Jiraiya’s arrival. The Toad Sage was a pervert, and a fool, but he was also a powerful and skilled ninja. All of my old Rival’s students were. Powerful but useless. I’d correct his mistakes when I took the seat. “Please direct me to the Hokage” I said to the receptionist, a woman with the highest level of clearance to ensure that certain things in the hospital could be well looked after and taken care of. The Doctors must have felt high and mightily while looking down on her, never knowing that she was more useful as a servant to the Great Tree than they ever would be. 

“Of course, Danzo-sama” She said, bowing, and abandoning her post to save as my guide. Hiruzen had been a fool among fools to allow me so much leeway. The second Tsunade had left Konoha, ostensibly never to return, I’d began to work. I sunk my agents, feelers and tentacles into the hospital  from all angles. If there was one place in Konoha-proper that was under my complete control, it was this hospital. It was the only reason that fool Kabuto had been able to go undetected by the Hiruzen’s people for so long. The Hospital was a blindspot that no Kage should ever hacve allowed, and was another display of Hiruzen’s weakness and sentimentality. He thought of the wrong things and had the wrong priorities. 

She led me on a winding route, that I knew was filled with fuinjutsu traps just waiting to go off, and watched over by invisible and nearly undetectable anbu agents. Hiruzen suddenly slumping earlier this evening had been the cause of much worry and panic. At least, among those high up enough in the ladder to know. The anbu were running around like headless chickens and the rest of the village was in a state of confusion and uncertainty. The news was yet to be released, but people could be shockingly perceptive when they wanted to be. 

I walked past hordes of doctors, patients, and other staff who never hesitated to greet me with a quick bow, and a “Danzo-sama”. None of the supposedly undetected anbu saw nothing wrong with the show of deference. If only Kakashi of the Sharingan could have been here to see this day. I was not a petty man, but the last student of the man that thad delayed my plans by decades being alive to see my ascension would have been a perfect addition to the day as it was. The day of perfection, may ascension. 

Just outside the room stood another great disappointment that Sarutobi had allowed. His own son, Asuma. The boy watched me warily but said nothing as I stepped in. Inside, it was still. Deathly still. In his last moments, Sarutobi lay alone. I blinked. It was almost like I saw Biwako sitting next to him in this last moment. It would be painless. I’d made sure of that. After all, this man was still my friend beyond it all. He would not be the first friend I’d sacrifice for the Great Tree, Uchiha Kagame came to mind, but he would be the closest. It wasn’t too late. I could slip him the antidote in my sleeve right here and now and call this whole thing off. Watching the man I grew up with. My friend, my rival, my brother, sit there made me ache to do it. It made everything that had previously been ideas on a drawing board suddenly mbecoime much more real and feasilble. Could I lose him? The last echo of my childhood? My first and last friend? I asked the question internally, and the answer wa s resounding yes. Yes, Hiruzen was my first friend, but Konoha was my first love. It was all for the Great Tree, I told myself that truth and steeled my heart. Shinobi, blade over heart, I recited mentally and stepped closer to him, out of the doorway. 

I would like to believe that I could see the moment when his body registered my presence and what I carried within myself, but I knew it was just a fanciful notion. The poison that did the Great Hiruzen Sarutobi in was a subtle thing. Developed by our sensei himself in one of his variant interests. Nearly untraceable and entirely undetectable if one didn’t know to look for it or its signs. It was a multi-stage poison, designed to operate o separate independent doses of completely different components whose interaction would create the needed death, while simulating a completely natural one. 

As a sitting Hokage, any poison that was even slightly less complicated would have failed to the myriad security measures around him. In fact, I’d had to modify the poison itself to increase its speed to make all this possible. The first dose wasn’t administered during the surgery. No, that was too obvious. And the doctors were watched by close to a dozen anbu agents every step of the way. Instead, the poison had been introduced during the recovery. When things were far less likely to be so heavily scrutinized. Included in his medication, day after day, until today when the second to last dose brought him down, to this state. The final dose wafted off my person in an aerosol. This was the one bit of sentimentality that I would indulge myself in. If my brother was to be killed for the sake of a greater Konoha, then I would be the one to deliver the deathblow. He deserved nothing less. I watched and waited as he inhaled the final ingredient. There was nothing to show any difference. For this, I’d allowed the original formula take precedence. This final ingredient would take hours to work, and I sat to wait. My agents were doing what was necessary for the future of Konoha. I would leave them to it, and sit here to watch my heart finally die. For the next few hours, at least. 

When Asuma entered again, it was clutching the hand of the Kyubi Jinchuriki. The normally exuberant boy’s bright blue eyes landed on Sarutobi in the bed, and I watched as the finality of what was happening sunk into him. “Grandpa” He shouted before collapsing to his knees and crawling over to the bed to put the old man’s hands in his. “How long?” He asked the smoking disappointment, and he replied.  “A few days now. He’s been getting sicker since the invasion” The bearded Jonin said, answering the wrong question. 

“Not that. How long does he have left?” The boy reiterated 

“He won’t survive the day. That’s what the doctor’s say” I replied instead, watching the Jinchuriki crumple in the face of that news and break into tears. Loud, ugly tears. Total and consuming. Normally, tears would irritate me to no end, but for some reason, they were perfect for this occasion. Sarutobi deserved these tears. To die while being sung to sleep by the wailing of the boy he would have given the world for. It was a fitting death that made me consider my own mortality. Who would sing at my grave? What eyes would weep at my passing? 

When he breathed his last, hours later, it was obvious. The doctors did not enter the room, pronouncing him dead from the doorway, leaving us to grieve. Those he had been closest to. The Kyubi’s tears had long since dried, and just when I thought he could cry no more, the pronouncement had him wailing anew. 
I stood, and walked towards the boy, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Hiruzen Sarutobi was a great man. A great shinobi. Konoha will never see his like again” I said, before turning and leaving the room. I had work to continue. 

A/N; Well, that’s a doozy. For some reason, writing this made me feel a tad melancholic. I’ll continue later. Hiruzen is dead now, and there is nothing I feel up to including to this today.