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Danzo sat in his hospital bed, his body and half of his face wrapped in bandages, his face twisted in a tight scowl. Six Root operatives—gone. Killed in the Chunin Exams. No witnesses, no survivors, just corpses left in the forest. Aika, his rising star, had been destroyed by an explosive tag. Her body, the weapon he had honed for years, was now nothing but fragments. The other five operatives had been found dead in the aftermath, their mission a complete failure.

Danzo's hand tightened around the report, his mind simmering with anger. He didn't have to guess who was responsible. He knew exactly who had done it—Haruto. Aika's mission had been clear: target Haruto. The boy had been a thorn in his side ever since that damned essay. Haruto's words had stirred the village, subtly undermining years of Danzo's carefully laid groundwork. It had been an insult to everything he had built, and he had sent Aika to silence him.

But instead, she had been killed. Not just killed—blown to pieces. No body left to retrieve. A fitting irony for someone who had spent years in his service, but still, the loss of her skills and the other Root operatives stung.

Danzo ground his teeth. Haruto's team—Shisui and Daichi—must have been involved as well. The way Aika had operated, there was no way she would have been taken out so easily. Together, they had defeated her and wiped out an entire unit of his operatives, two full teams that had gone into the forest under false identities. The Hokage's Anbu wouldn't find anything suspicious about their deaths—after all, to them, they were just regular genin. But Danzo knew the truth.

And Kento—he had hoped the skilled Hidden Sand genin would make things difficult for Haruto, perhaps even injure him enough to make the next part of the exams impossible. But the boy had handled Kento with ease, dispatching him with that two-part Lightning Ball Jutsu that had even made the Hokage take notice. The genin wasn't just a nuisance anymore—he was a problem. A problem Danzo could no longer ignore.

Six years of work, ruined. Six years of training operatives to move undetected, to execute missions with precision, wasted because of a child. Haruto had done more damage than he likely even realized. The resources spent and lost. Damn it.

Haruto had to be dealt with—but not now. The Anbu were digging, and the Hokage would be watching carefully after this. Danzo couldn't afford any more mistakes, not now.

But one day, he would make Haruto pay. For ruining his operatives, for the essay, for all of it. Even if it took years.