Naruto - Minato Namikaze SI - Chapter 285 - Konoha Civil War 09.

[Chapter Size: 2500 Words.]
Third Person POV
Konoha, Year 42.
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...

Nawaki took a step forward after hearing Minato's statement.
"I was the victim of those damned dogs of Danzo. My name is Nawaki Senju and I am the current leader of the Senju clan. Let's start by talking about the ambush I suffered during the end of the Second World War."

The entire place fell silent as they began to listen to him.

"On one of the missions... my team was in the Land of Rain when we were ambushed and only realized it when it was too late. Somehow, those ninjas knew about us, I don't think it was just a coincidence... It was as if they already had our mission data..."

"When I managed to activate the seal for Minato, my entire team had been killed and I had already lost an arm. I thought it would be my end, but I only survived thanks to Minato, who rescued me."

"After we analyzed the bodies, it was easy to discover they were ninjas belonging to some clans of Konoha, due to certain abilities..."

Nawaki pointed at the bodies while looking at the Hokage with anger — an anger he had never been able to express since the war ended and had been building up inside him.

"Konoha's own ninjas betrayed and killed my comrades. Those who were supposed to be fighting by my side tried to kill me, all to try and take my arm that I couldn't recover at the time!" he said.

Meanwhile, a spark of doubt certainly arose among ninjas on all sides.

"These were from Root, the organization of your companion Danzo. Tell me, Hokage, are you going to say you had nothing to do with this?" Minato was the one speaking this time, at his side, waiting for a response from the Hokage, while all eyes turned to the man.

"I would never have authorized something like that, Minato! How can you say I would allow such a thing? And for what? What use would it be for me and the village to kill Nawaki Senju?" he asked, omitting some points that Minato had said earlier.

"You talk as if you didn’t try to ambush and kill me on that same day, Hokage! Don’t come to me with defensive excuses! You have no shame in sacrificing anyone in Konoha for your goals... And I’ve already said this, you desire the power of the cells that the last members of the Senju clan represent," Minato growled.

This added an even greater air of suspicion, for he had just admitted they tried to ambush Minato.

"That brat... He’s trying to turn the village against us!" grumbled one of the elders behind the Hokage, his voice weak but filled with fury.

"How do we know what you’re saying is true about these bodies, Minato? We must investigate this thoroughly," the Hokage replied.

"Well, we can do that. But first, I want to expose to all the ninjas of Konoha the proof of what you and your friend have been doing to the village and the people all these years!" Minato began to speak.
"Shall we continue?" he asked, while looking directly at the Hokage’s face.

"You asked what reason they had to attack Nawaki? Well, I'm really going to answer that better than before. I know very well that, in the end, you're no Shinobi God like they usually say in the village, or the greatest of all Hokages. No. Quite the opposite. You’re beneath the first two Hokages, especially the first, Hashirama Senju. And you and Danzo needed, somehow, to grow stronger. Because in the village, powerful ninjas had arisen over the years, and you knew you would be surpassed," Minato began.

"That’s why you first coveted the power of the man who was once called the Shinobi God — my grandfather. You wanted his Mokuton. Am I wrong? Answer me!" Minato roared.

"No!" the Hokage roared back. And even Tsunade, beside her brother, seemed to grit her teeth.

"You and Danzo were after the First Hokage’s power! Admit it, old man! You even asked me to do some research for you and that fool who kept failing to develop it... Don’t lie to me!" Tsunade said with deep disgust in her voice.

"Tsunade... You can’t be saying this too..." the Hokage murmured, almost like a lament, to his apprentice.

"Don’t give me that now, sensei. Your companion tried to kill my brother, and it doesn’t matter if you want to do an autopsy or not. We already know this. I checked the bodies myself, and they were ninjas disguised from within Konoha, with the symbol on their tongues. We have photos and documents. Now that Danzo is dead, the seals have disappeared."

"If you're going to say we’re wrong, if you don’t seek the power of the First, Hokage, what do you say about the attack on the Senju clan, where they tried to rob the grave? I personally dealt with those damned thieves while, to you, I was outside the village leading my anbu team. I knew you coveted that and asked Tsunade to weaken the defenses around the First Hokage’s tomb and his wife’s on purpose," Minato said before the Hokage could offer any excuse. He stepped forward and began pulling out several bodies of Root members he had killed.

"Here are more bodies. Danzo’s ninjas trying to desecrate the First Hokage’s corpse," he said, while people whispered among themselves.

"Also... Lady Tsunade, don’t look at this." Minato warned and took out more scrolls and began summoning more corpses. Tsunade turned her eyes away.

On one side, several members of the Uzumaki clan with holes in their bodies, being experimented on.

"We’ll talk about the Uzumaki clan members murdered by Root later," Minato said, frightening everyone with that.

He summoned one more body — none other than Danzo, but without his head.
"His arm... supposedly damaged, is actually a Mokuton arm."
He lifted the arm and opened eyelids on it, revealing lifeless sharingans. Blind eyes.
"Danzo had a Mokuton arm and sharingans."

The moment he said that, the voices grew louder, the Uchihas were outraged and demanding answers, while the three elders looked somewhat cornered.

"Don’t try to place Danzo’s actions on us. If he really did that, he should have been punished in a trial. But you killed him!" one of the elders shouted.
Minato held back a smile, as the elders were beginning to lose their patience.

"He was the Hokage’s watchdog. There’s no way he could have committed these atrocities for years without his authorization. Otherwise, what’s the point of your red hat with the fire symbol? He’d been doing this for years. There’s no way the Hokage didn’t know. Maybe Kushina was right... You’re not a Hokage," Minato said in a dark tone as he turned his final words toward the Hokage.

"Mazu Uchiha, would you like to step forward?" Minato said, looking toward the clans, while the Uchiha didn’t waste time and leapt onto Gamabunta as well. Minato had invited him to explain the situation during the village attack.

The first thing he did was look at the sharingans in that strange arm, wondering what had happened for them to lose their vision, as they were blind eyes.
With even greater rage, Mazu began to report the pressure they had been under in recent months, while Minato recounted the case of the two Uchihas who were found at the border.

Automatically, the elders turned against the Uchiha clan, even without any real proof that those two rogue ninjas were associated with Konoha’s clan.

Some members of the Hyuuga clan had just arrived, and even elders came to check the situation with the Hokage and the village. Meanwhile, the Hokage was feeling more and more cornered by the evidence against him.

Minato continued, now returning to the attack on the Uzumaki clan. He said he had found evidence of a planned attack by other villages and that he had asked the Hokage for help at the time with that proof.
The Hokage not only told him to forget about it and gave him an S-rank mission to silence him, but also removed him from his original team, which he led, and placed him in a team full of Root members — to monitor and execute him when the opportunity arose.

He himself had invited the very ninjas who survived the trap used against him, proving to everyone that they were indeed ninjas under the Hokage’s command, who were forced to admit it when Minato pointed at them.

"I challenge you to say he’s lying about today’s ambush," he declared.
And they ended up confirming it.

The Hokage kept trying to stay calm the entire time, even as more and more questioning eyes turned on him and the elders. Even the members among his allies now seemed to hold some doubt.
After all, even if Hiruzen tried to pin all the blame on Danzo — a man who had died — he had still been his right hand in the village, known by many at the time, someone the Hokage was supposed to keep under control.

Minato soon began to speak about Root’s base, the evidence he had gathered and would be making available. He also spoke of the Uzumaki bodies — emissaries who had come to ask for help to save their clan, and what they received instead: death at the hands of Root ninjas on their way back, while Danzo dissected their bodies in search of the secrets of their language.
Something that disgusted most of the ninjas present.

"I do not take responsibility for most of Danzo’s actions. But I still maintain that everything that was within my reach, I did it all for the village. All to maintain peace!" he continued to claim.

Minato merely raised an eyebrow. Certainly, his position wouldn’t last much longer after this. He was receiving disapproving looks from all the ninjas.

"We also have one more matter here. Sakumo Hatake. Please, come here," Minato requested, while the only member of the Hatake clan present — and one of the only two surviving members of the clan — jumped onto Gamabunta’s back as well.

Minato turned back to everyone.
"The entire village accused this man of failing a mission after saving his comrades, which supposedly cost the village greatly. But what’s strange here... I ask: what did it really cost the village? I don’t see Sakumo’s action as wrong. He saved his comrades. That’s how Konoha should be. After all, this place was made to protect people, not to trample over your comrades in pursuit of mission success."

"This is the Will of Fire. And the very Hokage before you — a man full of flaws — wants us to do things his way, without question. But is it trustworthy to obey him blindly?" Minato said, as Sakumo wore a slight smile.

Kakashi was among the crowd of neutral-positioned ninjas. He simply stopped pressing his lips together inside his mask, lost in his own thoughts.

"You know what’s strange? The destruction of Sakumo’s reputation was also planned by the elders. He held a strong position to become the next Hokage. But, in my analysis, I believe his elders were afraid of losing their power. That’s why they used their influence within the village."

"Danzo could influence some ninjas. But the two elders behind the Hokage have more civilian control over Konoha’s population. Agents who may very well be infiltrated throughout the village — and that’s what they did."

"Because the whispers and gossip about Sakumo weren’t natural. The same thing happened to me. In recent weeks, Konoha began to speak ill of my reputation, saying I’m as incompetent as Sakumo for not completing a mission. Even though I wasn’t authorized to pursue the ninja I tracked to the Land of Wind — he only did that when he tried to manipulate me into a trap he orchestrated with the Kazekage himself," Minato said.

"And what do you plan, Minato? Tell everyone! You want to overthrow me?" Hiruzen shouted.

Minato simply shook his head. He knew he would hold the Hokage position after the Third War.

"I will become Hokage when the village truly desires it. I don’t need to overthrow you. After all, it’s only when everyone accepts me and calls upon me, truly. Only then will I wear that hat — not before. In any case, we’re here for one goal, Hokage. You are very incompetent... and you’ve betrayed our allies."
"We want the village to not take that path and to welcome the Uzumaki clan into the Land of Fire and protect them against the other nations. I know we can do this!" Minato said.

"It’s not that simple. Do you really want to return to war?" the Hokage shouted to the crowd once again.

"War is inevitable, Hiruzen. Before I left there, I killed the Kazekage himself," Minato said, making the entire place fall silent.

Even his allies stared at him, as the only ones who had heard this before were Tsunade and Nawaki. Everyone else fell into a stunned silence.

"You killed the Kazekage...? You’re joking, Minato?" Hiruzen raised his eyebrows and grimaced.

"Yes. I removed his head while he tried to ambush me, still attempting to kill Orochimaru... Suna’s forces appeared in the desert and I had to deal with them."

The Hokage looked shocked by this.

"This is quite complicated..." Shuran Nara muttered beside the Uchiha clan leader.

"What do you think, Lord Nara?" Minato turned to him.

"The Land of Wind won’t let this slide. They’ll want, at the very least, your head," he said.
"So the Hokage is going to want to make me a sacrifice too." Minato openly mocked.

"But the war is coming anyway," Shuran turned his attention to the Hokage, saying that with Minato’s revelation, his analysis shifted the entire scenario.

Everyone looked at the Hokage now, anxious to know what he would do, while Hiruzen sighed, trying to calm himself as he looked at everyone.

"I truly failed as Hokage," he began to admit. "There’s no hiding my sins and my failures. Danzo committed unforgivable crimes. Even though I would have preferred a trial over an execution, let’s postpone certain things. We don’t need to deal with that now. But I’d like to propose something, then, to the whole village."

"I will announce right here: I intend to retire after this entire situation settles. I will step down. And if I am truly unworthy... I will no longer wear the Hokage’s hat," he said to the whole village, while people seemed quite surprised.

Minato had him. He knew there was no way to not be associated with Danzo’s actions — all he had to do now was minimize the damage.