"I will not bow to fear, for fear is the enemy of clarity."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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[First Person POV – Otis]

The first thing I felt was the taste of iron. Sharp, bitter, coating the back of my tongue like rust. Blood. Not fresh—it was old, thick, and clinging, like it had been sitting in my mouth for hours. My throat was as parched as old bark.

Pain followed. A dull ache pressed into my ribs with every shallow breath. The ropes binding me cut into the skin, sticky where blood had dried into scabs.

I forced my eyes open.

At first there was nothing. Just a suffocating blackness, the kind that presses in on you like a coffin buried too deep. Then my vision adjusted, and I realized there was a sliver of light—pale sunlight leaked through a crack high above. The thin beam cut across me, leaving half my body drowned in shadow, the other painted in sickly light.

The chair beneath me was iron, cold, biting into skin. My arms were twisted behind the backrest, wrists tied so tight they'd gone numb. My chest burned from shallow breaths, but at least the bleeding had stopped. That much, I could tell. Whoever patched me up didn't care about comfort—just keeping me alive long enough to rot in this hole.

I tilted my head, eyes dragging across the room. Stone walls, damp, with moss creeping into the cracks. And beneath it all, faint but impossible to ignore, the smell of rot—like something had died here and no one had bothered to move it.

My head lolled forward, and for a second, I almost drifted off again. Then I heard it.

Tap.

The sharp click of a cane echoed through the chamber.

Tap.

Each strike landed like a clock counting down.

Tap.

Someone was coming.

The sound grew closer until finally, a shadow slid into the edge of that single knife-slice of light. He stepped forward, and the sight of him cut through the haze in my head like a blade.

Danzo Shimura.

(Pic)

Even if I'd never seen him before, I would have known.

Even in this dim glow, the man looked like a relic dug out of a grave. His face was gaunt, skin pulled tight like old parchment, deep wrinkles carved as if time itself had been gnawing at him. His right arm—bandaged and useless—hung limply at his side, while his other hand gripped a cane that clicked faintly against the ground. A strip of cloth covered one eye, his other a cold, calculating slit that seemed to weigh Otis like a butcher inspecting meat.

I stared at him in silence, mind sluggish but sharp enough to piece details together.

So that's him. Creepy bastard looks worse in person. Like someone carved a scarecrow into human flesh. That arm… not full of Hashirama cells yet. The snake hasn't played surgeon on him. And that covered eye… Shisui's still alive, so it's either empty, or he's hiding another trick in there.

He froze when he saw me. Just for a breath, but I caught it. The faintest flicker—his fingers tightened on the cane, and the other hand trembled, almost invisible. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was afraid.

No. He was afraid. I don't know why, but that look—just for a heartbeat—wasn't calculation. It was fear. Or maybe I'm just going crazy in this dungeon.

[First Person POV – Danzo]

My boots scraped against the stone floor as I entered, cane tapping softly, rhythm steady. But then I froze.

The boy.

Bruised. Bleeding. Strapped to a chair in the dark, yet his presence filled the chamber as if the shadows bent around him. My hand trembled—just slightly,

Not of the boy. Not of Hiruzen. Not… of her. The ghost I could never kill. A face long buried, now flickering in the boy's eyes.

My jaw tightened. I forced the tremor still, burying it under years of discipline.

I stepped into the weak sunlight, my voice flat, rough, yet sharp as broken glass.

"How… how can you lose so many elite operatives to him?"

I wasn't looking at him when I spoke. My one good eye turned instead to the corner, where a Root operative stood stiffly, half-swallowed in shadow. He didn't blink, didn't breathe, but shame radiated from him like heat from a forge.

I struck the cane against the floor. The sharp crack echoed.

The operative bowed his head low. "He was too strong, Danzo-sama. He… he detected us before we struck. From behind. Every trap, every shadow—he saw it all."

Silence

The boy tilted his head back against the chair and rasped a laugh. It sounded like breaking glass.

"Too strong, huh?" His voice was cracked. "Guess that's one way to say your elite ninja got turned into fireworks."

The Root operative didn't move, didn't react. Good little puppets. No fear, no pride. Just meat waiting to be ordered around.

But the boy's words cut, nonetheless.

I turned my eye on him, studying. Truly looking. That gaze of mine had flayed shinobi stronger than him, stripped them bare with fear alone.

He met it.

Bound. Bloodied. Half-dead. And still, he didn't look away.

"You find this amusing?" I asked.

He grinned—or tried to. His lips split and bled, but he still showed teeth. "A little. What can I say? I'm a people person. And by people, I mean watching yours explode."

The cane slammed against the stone again, sharper, harder. "You misunderstand your situation. You are not in control here."

He rattled the ropes binding him, leaning back with a smirk. "Really? 'Cause from where I'm sitting, you seem pretty interested in me for a guy who claims control."

His words clawed at me. Insolence, yes—but also truth.

My eye narrowed.

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(A/N)

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