Toshiko woke up on a dusty floor and resisted the urge to teleport away from Konoha immediately.

No. This was her home. If there was something she didn't like, it was her job to take care of it . Her friends were here . She couldn't just abandon them to their fates, which she knew to be dreadful. Still, the suffocating feeling from chakra of the Hashirama trees didn't make things easier.

She didn't know what to do. The only lives she had been able to get her Root friends out of their had been when she had told on Danzo. The massacre hadn't happened in those lives but that was only because of Shisui's brainwashing Sharingan. No, that can't happen again, she shuddered, as she remembered the feeling of her being taken apart and remade according to his wishes. She wouldn't wish that on anyone, even those wrinkly elders on the Uchiha council.

Telling on Danzo now, however, would further escalate the tensions between the village and the clan, especially since a Sharingan would be discovered on the elder. The clan hadn't been happy about that, the last time. In hindsight, perhaps that had led to increased support for the coup plans amongst the Uchiha.

Not telling on Danzo now meant leaving Fu, Shinki and Katsu to a life in hell, that was if they all survived, which was unlikely.

All right, then. It looked like she was going back to root, she thought, letting out a hysterical giggle. There must be something really wrong with her to even consider going back there willingly.

It was probably an hour later that she was standing in the same clearing in which she was once kidnapped, keeping herself from glancing warily towards the tree cover where she was able to sense two muted chakra signatures.

It took everything she had to not retaliate when the Root members hit her on the back of her head and let herself be knocked out. She woke in the same dark room, with Danzo standing there like a creepy old man, as she had last time.

"You are Uchiha Toshiko?" He asked.

She nodded. "I am."

Danzo regarded her silently. "Aren't you afraid?"

"No." She answered, truthfully, suspecting he could sense her emotions through her chakra. She had been pretty spooked the last time she was here. But now, considering that she had faced a reanimated version of Uchiha Madara on the battlefield, Toshiko didn't find Danzo that scary anymore. Don't get her wrong, she knew that Danzo could easily kill her, it was just a bit hard to care about dying when you'd wake up again a hours back to do it again.

"Hmm." Danzo had a gleam in his eye. "Perhaps you wouldn't require much of emotional training. Put her with Kinoe." He ordered to the Root shinobi standing gaurd. "Keep me updated on her progress."

As Danzo said, Toshiko wasn't roomed with Fu this time, but with an older boy called Kinoe. Only, Toshiko remembered meeting an older version of him on the island in Kumo. He was called Yamato. She hadn't had much interaction with him, but he definitely hadn't been a Danzo fanatic, unlike Kinoe who basically worshipped the ground the Warhawk walked on. The one and the only time she tried to obliquely complain about Danzo, he was extremely quick to shut her down by telling her how Danzo-sama had saved him and how Danzo-sama knew what was best for Konoha. He was also eleven, and much further in his training to become an emotionless zombie than Fu had been.

He also had the Mokuton, not to the capacity of his future self though, which was natural. It was just far less impressive when she had already seen him use it to constraint a massive turtle.

The interesting thing, however, was that Kinoe was already a Root operative. He had already been doing missions for quite a while and Toshiko couldn't understand why Danzo had ordered to room her with him. She gave up trying to figure it out after a few days. Trying to think like his twisted mind made her nauseous.

She had forgotten how much she hated Root training. She had tested out of standard training on the first day, courtesy of already having done it once. Advanced training on the top of being one-on-one, was worse. Even though she was far better than she was the last time, her instructors didn't give her a moment's reprieve, let alone a word of praise. For every jutsu she mastered on the first try (because she already knew it), another one was sent her way with the same expectations. It would have been easier if she could use her Sharingan, but she had been careful with it even the last time when she didn't know that Danzo was an eye stealing bastard. There was no way she was going to let a glimpse of red appear in her eyes while she was here.

Days started to blur together after some time, which she had expected. The only reason she didn't know her actual age was because of the time she had spent her last time. She didn't know how old she had been when she had died by Fu's hand. It was becoming a pattern for her wasn't it? Being killed by friends.

Either way, her original haphazard plan of inciting a rebellion amongst the recruits had failed spectacularly, by the simple obstruction of never having an opportunity to talk to them. She needed to do something before she was forced to fight someone to death, possibly Kinoe, and she didn't want to do that. Despite his wooden personality, he had grown on Toshiko. Living with someone tends to do that. This was probably Danzo's intention in making his recruits kill their roommates. Only those that didn't have a shred of emotions left in them would be able to do that.

But why had he put her with Kinoe? Kinoe had the Mokuton. He couldn't possibly want him dead. Maybe, he wanted Toshiko dead. But then, why not kill her himself? Why go through the trouble of recruiting her and training her? Was he waiting for her to activate her Sharingan so he could kill her and steal them? But then....

Okay, stop! No more trying to figure out Danzo's motivations. She would go mad, more than she already was, which would be good.

She needed to do something. Something to get the children out of her. Something to prevent Itachi from killing the Uchiha clan. Something to prevent the fourth shinobi war. There were so things to achieve, and Toshiko didn't have any idea how to achieve that. Getting into Root was a mistake. There was no way she could have successfully got everybody out of here even if she had found an opportunity to incite a rebellion in emotionally suppressed children.

"What is a Hokage supposed to do?" Kinoe spoke up from his side of the room.

Toshiko stared at him for a few seconds, caught off gaurd with the abruptness of the question and the fact that Kinoe had never initiated a conversation before.

"Umm..The Hokage is supposed to protect the village. Like the Fourth Hokage saved the village from the Kyuubi by sacrificing his own life." She answered.

"He didn't." Kinoe said, frowning, which was progress because it was an expression. "The village was destroyed. Everything was rebuilt."

"The village isn't buildings, though, it's the people. He saved the people."

Kinoe had probably grasped something from that as he didn't speak again, contemplating silently.

Toshiko's mind, on the other hand, had just stilled.

A Hokage is supposed to protect the village. That's what Toshiko intended to do. Becoming Hokage would get her the power to do something about the issues she wanted to fix.

She would have to become Hokage.

Having that realisation might have been a big step, but there were multiple problems in that plan. For one, Toshiko is somewhere between six to eight years old. Even if she managed to escape Root, become a Konoha ninja and stay in the village long enough, there was no way she could become the Hokage before she was in her twenties. Only, by then it would be too late.

"Is Sandaime-sama a good Hokage?" Kinoe piped up again.

Toshiko wanted to answer 'definitely not', but she controlled herself. "Why do you ask?"

Kinoe visibly hesitated. "Danzo-sama tried to assassinate him." He eventually said.

"What."

"He wasn't satisfied with how the Hyuuga affair with Kumo was handled, making Konoha appear weak. He took a team of Root shinobi with him, including me, to kill the Hokage yesterday."

"What happened?" Toshiko gasped. "And why are you telling me this?"

"We were defeated and the Sandaime decided to spare us, after giving a warning to Danzo-sama." He answered. "I'm telling you because you had asked me if I thought what Danzo-sama did was right. I didn't think that this was right."

"Shit. Sarutobi actually let Danzo go after he tried to assassinate him. The old man has lost his marbles." She swore.

Kinoe's face displayed a barely noticeable frown. "You agree with Danzo-sama about Sandaime-sama not being a good Hokage?"

"No! I don't agree with Danzo over anything. And yes we need a new Hokage."

"That's contradictory." Kinoe responded.

"Deal with it." Toshiko snapped, thinking about possible candidates for the position of the Hokage. Hatake- too young. Nara Shikaku- too unmotivated. Jiraiya-too perverted. "C'mon, isn't there any Konoha shinobi who could be a good Hokage?" She muttered.

"Tsunade-sama is a good candidate, except for the fact she hasn't stepped a foot inside Konoha for years." Kinoe offered.

Toshiko wanted to bang her head against the wall. Tsunade was the Hokage during the fourth shinobi war. Why didn't she think of her?

"Do you know the way out of here?" She asked.

"Why?" Kinoe replied, suspiciously.

"We are going to get Tsunade back to Konoha." Toshiko announced.

It was actually much harder to convince Tenzo to agree to leave without telling Danzo, but Toshiko managed in the end. It was much easier to know which buttons to push when you've been living with someone for years.

Kinoe and Toshiko snuck out of Konoha, to look for Tsunade, scaling the North wall, and the irony wasn't lost to her. She had decided for them to start checking out Tsunade's usual haunts, but they were stopped only a few miles outside Konoha by a squad of Root ANBU.

Kinoe tried to explain the situation rapidly using hand signals (although how he could explain desertion, she couldn't guess), but they didn't get him a chance and soon moved to restrain the both of them. Toshiko didn't resist and neither did Kinoe. They knew it wasn't a fight they could win.

Soon enough, Toshiko was presented, bound with chakra suppression cuffs, on front of Danzo.

"Uchiha Toshiko." He observed. "Which village do you work for?"

Toshiko blinked at that. "Konoha." She answered, only to be rewarded with a ringing slap on her right cheek.

"Liar. I knew there was something up with you when you arrived her, probably the Uchiha trying to plant a spy. That is the reason I put you with Kinoe instead of other recruits. You were more resourceful than I thought, though. Getting Kinoe to betray the village...." Danzo monologued.

"Kinoe didn't betray the village." Toshiko interupted. "Because you aren't the village. You are just a sick, twisted, old man." She didn't wait for the other slap to land and instead channeled a trickle of chakra to her hands to use strength augmentation technique and broke the chakra suppression cuffs.

Danzo was quick to send a wind jutsu in her direction, which she dodged. Not completely though, Toshiko noticed, as she felt a slice of pain over her right arm and blood trickling down. She quickly used Kamui to escape only to appear near the Uchiha compound. She healed her wound and started running towards the Uchiha compound, before changing her mind midway.

The Uchiha couldn't be involved with Danzo. That was the whole point of infiltrating Root instead of exposing Danzo.

A moment later, she felt four muted chakra signatures closing in on her position. They must have known she'd go to the Uchiha. Changing directions, she ran towards the Nara forest, making her remember her first death when she had ran there carrying Sasuke only to caught by Itachi at the border.

She was much faster now. She crossed the border and felt the chakra of boundry seals activating wash over her. Her persuers weren't far behind, as she ran deeper into the forest, hoping the alarm would get the Nara gaurds to her.

She sighed in relief as she saw the Nara Clan Head ahead along with two of his clansman. The relief didn't last as the next second her throat was pierced by a wind chakra coated kunai, killing her instantly.