Chapter 23
Chapter 23: End of the Line
Sakura sat with her team at the table. Sasuke calmly shoveled rice and soup beside Naruto, who sat across from her, humming happily and eating like a man who had never seen food before. Such dramatics. Tazuna and his daughter Tsunami sat across from them. Beside them was a quiet boy named Inari, barely touching his food.
Kakashi, seated beside Sakura, was watching her. His visible eye was calm, though his face remained unreadable behind the mask. Without a word, he began piling food onto her plate.
"Sakura, eat more. You're too thin," he said.
"Ah, thank you? Tsunami-san, your cooking is delicious. I love home-cooked food," Sakura replied with a polite smile, though she suppressed a twitch. She glanced at Kakashi, who was still fussing over her plate like a concerned parent.
It struck her as funny. Danzo had never allowed them to have cooked food. Since he killed her parents and she lived on her own she never bothered to cook anyway. Food rations, soldier pills, and cardboard-dry, tasteless meals—that had been her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even though Danzo was gone, Sakura never brought herself to eat anything else but those rations. Habit? Trauma? Maybe. When she was with her team or friends, she ate. But her stomach was small, unable to hold much, a lingering remnant of her time in ROOT.
At home, she still kept those tasteless rations in her pantry. She wondered when the last time she cooked a proper meal for herself had been.
An old, suppressed memory surfaced—a rare moment when Danzo wasn’t around, and she had cooked for the other ROOT agents. Some of them had died on missions or in her hands.
She shook the morbid thought away. Her team could never know. No one could know the sins of the blood on her hands.
Sasuke looked up and coughed. "I guess we could invite you to my place more often after Team Mission or training." His cheek was tinted rose red.
"Yep! My mom cooks great, too!" Naruto smirked, his face full of excitement.
Sakura’s stomach dropped. She didn’t deserve this much attention. Being in the Uchiha district, and eating with Sasuke’s family—was too much. She had killed children of his clan, for heaven’s sake. She should be in a ditch somewhere, dead for her crimes!
But she never showed it. She plastered a fake smile on her face. Kakashi reached over and patted her head, his singular eye looking at her with subtle worry.
"Mah, I suck at cooking, but my dad could kick out decent dishes," he said with a chuckle. Why did he keep insisting on being kind to a monster like her? Sakura thought bittler but her fake smile was on her head as she bubbly talked back. Her mask of happiness and energy was the one she wanted them to see not her true self.
The table erupted into a discussion about food—comparing the dishes popular in Nami no Kuni and Hi no Kuni.
As expected, fish was more prominent in Nami, bordered by the Land of Water. Meanwhile, in Hi no Kuni, rice-based dishes dominated.
But Sakura was only half-listening. She had no right to be treated this kindly. If Kakashi, Sasuke, or Naruto knew the truth...if the village knew...
She would be executed.
She deserved it.
How many children’s skulls had she tortured, cut up, and forced to awaken their Sharingan prematurely—only to rip those eyes from their sockets and implant them into Danzo’s arm to create his beloved "Izanagi"? How many Hyūga agents’ arms had she broken and healed, only to shatter them again to raise their pain thresholds? How many baby skulls had she crushed with her hands?
The screams. The blood. Danzo praises her for being effective.
The strain of DNA, the injections, the stabs—done to children her age, younger, babies, or older. All to awaken special traits from clans within clanless orphaned kids.
How many did she kill under Danzo? 1.689 souls, she had a good memory she had to save more to make up for the mess she made.
How many times had she stood up to him, only to face electric shocks, sensory deprivation, or worse? Fingernails ripped off for rebelling. Cuts and whippings for disobedience. Eventually, she would cave into the punishments, crying with anger as she continued her evil procedures.
And when she cried over her "failures" or "weaklings"? dying under the procedures. She was punished for that too. Beaten by other agents—victims, like her—to keep everyone in line.
Danzo controlled more than half a million soldiers, each capable of killing Kage-level shinobi. Yet none could kill him. They were brainwashed to serve him, no matter what. After all, she killed him way too late.
her predecessor entrusted her with the will to fight before she was such a drone as the other agents
If her team knew what she truly was...
Not the happy, sweet kunoichi Sakura Haruno.
But the demon. The chimera monster—Petal. The one who killed children, massacred small villages and funded a fanatic bastard like Danzo.
Konoha Police Station
Itachi stood before the ginormous whiteboard, his dark eyes scanning every detail. What was once a storage room had been repurposed into an intelligence hub for unraveling the massive debacle surrounding Danzo Shimura's death which unearthed things even the shinigami could be jealous of.
The walls were covered in photos, snippets of interviews, and pinned notes. Behind him, his father, Fugaku, was scribbling in his notebook. Itachi knew better than to disturb him.
It had been months of digging, but the deeper they delved, the darker the revelations became. The rabbit hole seems to be endless. Itachi had been pulled from Anbu by the Fourth Hokage to assist in investigating this mess.
The Uchiha clan, as Konoha’s police force, had been Danzo’s primary victims. The files unearthed revealed evidence of agents infiltrating the Uchiha compound, stealing children, and falsifying deaths in the hospital records. The precision and stealth were unnerving. Even seasoned shinobi in the Uchiha district hadn’t noticed.
Danzo could have continued his secret operations for decades if not for his untimely demise.
Itachi stepped back, focusing on the center of the room. Sometimes, starting over from the beginning helped reveal overlooked details.
In the middle of the board was the image of Danzo’s lifeless body. The photograph captured him in the snow, his head severed with surgical precision, his face frozen in shock. His arm had been similarly removed with clinical accuracy. Blood seeped into the snow beneath him.
Itachi allowed himself a grim thought: if anyone deserved such a fate, it was Danzo.
A red thread connected the photo to another image—a group of ROOT agents. Most were children and teenagers, with only a few adults. Beneath the photo was a note labeled: Victims.
Itachi followed the threads to a paper with summarized notes:
ROOT
"The Root nourishes the tree, protecting it from the shadows." — Danzo Shimura.
ROOT was established during the Second Shinobi War. Inspired by the Second Hokage’s battlefield tactics and fueled by grief for his mentor’s death, Danzo created ROOT to support Konoha from the shadows.
Initially, ROOT had a noble cause. Its first generation consisted of orphans trained to protect the village. The oldest known surviving member was 34.
However, during the Third Shinobi War, ROOT spiraled into fanaticism. Danzo’s methods grew more brutal. Obsessed with creating the perfect shinobi, he initiated the “Revival Project,” attempting to recreate the First Hokage’s Wood Release.
Over 60 children were abducted and experimented on. Only one survived.
Despite the Third Hokage’s order to disband ROOT, Danzo continued operating in secret, tightening his grip and implementing privacy seals. These seals prevented agents from speaking about ROOT—an attempt to leak information or rebel would result in their tongues burning, their chakra systems overloading, and instant death.
It's known that Danzo did more than 400 projects. About 20% were successful.
ROOT Roster
Stages:
- Recruitment: Orphans were abducted and marked as deceased to avoid suspicion and brought to Konohagagures orphanages where Danzo would " visit" and take them away.
- Initiation: Recruits were stripped of names and given numbers. They underwent harsh training at a Chunin level, often blindfolded to prevent identifying one another.
- The Empty Stage: Recruits were forced to suppress emotions, becoming tools for the village.
- Danzo’s Test: Recruits were required to kill a partner to prove loyalty.
- Naming Stage: The best-performing agents were granted code names.
Danzo permitted only 200 code names, with four elite agents ruling over 50 subordinates each:
- Agent 01: Venom – Identified as Torune Aburame, abducted from his clan.
- Agent 02: Ink – Known as Sai, though his full name remains unknown.
- Agent 03: Petal – A female medic-nin, believed dead, who survived the Chimera Project. Danzo forced her to conduct experiments on others. She often rebelled and died under mysterious circumstances. No name was found. She seemed to know a lot about the various projects.
- Agent 04: Fire – Presumed to be Sai’s brother, Shin. His full name also remains unknown.
These four among the 200 were special and given in rotation. So if Agent 01 died his name was given to a reserve agent.
Itachi stepped away from the summary, his gaze returning to the image of Danzo’s corpse.
How had Petal killed Danzo when records confirmed her death?
And how had she bypassed the privacy seal? The seals were absolute, binding ROOT agents to Danzo’s will.
Ruffling his hair in frustration, Itachi muttered, “Who was Petal? Where have they gone? We need more answers. More leads.”
The police force was at their wits’ end. The deeper they dug, the darker the truths they unearthed about Danzo’s betrayal and the roots of his evil.
They were at the End of their lines. They needed someone who had much knowledge like Petal to finally close this mad case. Even if he didn't deserve any respect they need to find out how he died, and why! It was an assassination aka a murder case after all.
They truly were at the end of their line.