Exposed shadow and despair

Exposed shadow and despair

(Normal pov)

I sat quietly in the center of the room meditating while my mind wondered as I allowed the natural energy to lead it as it willed. It was humbling and calming to witness the totality of the worlds power for miles in every direction at once. Every insect, snake, bird or other animal and every plant that existed within my range was all seen by me like a massive constantly changing movie. I felt small in a way witnessing it all but yet at the same time I also felt like a god because I knew it would take just a small flex of my will to change the flow of natural energy and spare or kill any of these things.-

It was a rare occasion that I stopped holding back and let my sage senses extend fully. Despite my mind being literally made to handle it this was still such a massive amount of information to process that I could not do anything else while like this. Even though this was the case every now and then I felt the need to just let my troubles slip away as I watched the world.-Yôur favorite stories at novelhall.com

As a bonus there was no hiding from me when I did this and I could see all the shinobi prowling the forest in search of me under Danzo's orders as well as the secret Root base located below ground here. It was well hidden with many sensory deprivation seals all over it to stop people from doing exactly what I was and discovering and peering into it without permission. The thing was however that there was no stopping natural energy and by extension my senses that were perfectly blended with it. -

I took a small gamble as a result and willed the natural energy to surge into the arm while it was being examined. Why? Because I knew thanks to historical records that the first hokage was a "perfect" sage and it was my hope that his cells remembered that and drew in natural chakra wildly to turn Danzo into a statue. I knew from experience that you needed to balance natural energy with chakra in order to create sage chakra but through my own tests I also knew that if you failed you'd turn into stone.-

The reaction to my gamble was immediate but not quite what I had hoped would happen. At first Danzo and the lab worker panicked as the activity readings started spiking from the arm but rather than turn to stone the whole arm turned into wood, including the sharingan's, before it was hastily cut off and turned into a tree in the middle of the lab. Not a small tree either but one that grew up and up until it burst through the surface.-

I was pleased to find however that Danzo had weakened DRASTICALLY after the arm started changing. Clearly the thing had stolen a lot of vitality from his body before it had been cut off as his originally black hair had turned grey and more wrinkles had appeared on his face. He was still alive unfortunately but at least it looked like he could keel over any moment and the best part? I was totally untraceable to the incident. As far as any readings were concerned the cells simply did like they tended to do and went on a rampage costing their host heavily in the process.-

There was something deeply satisfying about watching the man despair after a series of tests on his new condition told him he had months at most left to live. The reason for that is that his vitality was now about the same as someone with a sickly constitution at the age of ninety. Thanks to this I no longer even NEEDED to personally act as he'd die all on his own if left alone. That said I fully intended to make the last little bit of his life miserable after the new Hokage was appointed by handing over those files the Third left for me.