What exactly was Konoha trying to achieve?
Facing Hiruzen Sarutobi across the table, Dodai's mind churned like a storm.
If these thousand Cloud shinobi never made it home—if they vanished completely—what would that do to Kumogakure? What ripple would it send through the village?
Before the war, Kumogakure had fielded roughly fifteen thousand ninja in total.
Six thousand had been committed to the front. Four thousand seven hundred lay dead. Three hundred had escaped with the Raikage. And now one thousand sat in Konoha's cells.
One thousand men. One-fifteenth of their pre-war strength.
In any shinobi war, that was a catastrophic loss.
No hidden village could swallow the annihilation of one-fifteenth of its forces without consequence—especially when those men hadn't fallen in open battle. They had been erased, cleanly and deliberately.
And the one who would suffer most from that erasure wasn't the village itself.
It was the Raikage.
Dodai's heart stuttered as the realization slammed into him.
Konoha wasn't after the prisoners. They were after the Raikage's head—politically speaking.
They wanted him broken. Forced to resign.
The memory of Hatake Sakumo flickered unbidden through Dodai's mind—Konoha's White Fang, once the pride of the village. One failed mission, one public crucifixion, and the man had been driven to take his own life.
The Fourth Raikage had started this war himself, brash and loud as always. Victory would have silenced every critic. Defeat, however… defeat was already festering in the village. Thousands dead on the battlefield. Whispers in the streets. Resentment brewing beneath the surface.
If word reached Kumogakure that another thousand men had been slaughtered because negotiations collapsed—if the Raikage's own arrogance was painted as the cause—his position would become untenable. Resignation would be the only path left.
On the surface it might look harmless: one hot-headed leader stepping down, another taking his place. But Kumogakure wasn't like the other villages. Power here wasn't inherited or appointed—it was taken by the strongest. The Raikage was more than a title; he was the living embodiment of the village's pride.
And right now, there was no one ready to replace him.
Not even Killer Bee.
A jinchuriki. Feared and resented since childhood. The day the Eight-Tails had once rampaged through the village still haunted every citizen old enough to remember. Only the Third Raikage's sacrifice had stopped the beast. To this day, people crossed the street when Bee walked by.
No clear successor. No unifying figure.
A power vacuum.
A village spiraling into chaos while its disgraced former leader—blamed for a crushing defeat and the deaths of a thousand more men—sank into despair. Maybe even followed Sakumo's path.
And Konoha? Konoha could nudge the narrative with a few well-placed rumors. They were masters at that game.
Refuse to return the prisoners—so Kumogakure could never fully recover.
Force the Raikage out and leave the village leaderless.
Destroy him with public hatred until even his iron will cracked.
Three birds with one stone.
How vicious. How utterly cold-blooded.
Dodai's pulse thundered in his ears. He had come here expecting the usual diplomatic fencing—posturing, demands, eventual compromise. Instead, Konoha had thrown the rulebook into the fire.
That unprecedented water assault on the battlefield flashed through his mind again. A tactic no one had ever seen before.
Jiraiya.
Of course it was Jiraiya.
The man who wandered the world gathering intelligence, who wrote bestselling novels in his spare time, who could invent entirely new strategies on the fly. A mind that sharp didn't follow conventions; it rewrote them.
To think the loud, womanizing Sannin everyone laughed off as a pervert harbored this kind of ruthless calculation. He and Orochimaru really were cut from the same cloth.
Dodai's gaze drifted, almost against his will, to the man seated calmly in front of him.
Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Both Sannin had once been his students.
Whatever darkness lived in Jiraiya and Orochimaru… how much of it had been nurtured under the Professor's own hand?
Dodai kept his face a mask of stone, but inside he was reeling.
Well played, Jiraiya.
Well played, Third Hokage.
Thejor
The world had underestimated you—and your disciples—badly.
Hiruzen's voice cut smoothly through the silence. "Have you come to a decision, Lord Dodai?"
Dodai hesitated, eyes flickering. When he spoke, his voice came out rough. "I do not have the authority to accept these terms. I must return to the village and consult with the council."
Hiruzen smiled, mild as ever. "Of course. Please do so quickly. It would be unfortunate if those thousand men grew… restless in the meantime. One can never predict what desperate shinobi might do."
The veiled threat hung in the air like smoke.
Dodai's expression tightened. He rose slowly, every movement deliberate. "Then I will take my leave."
He strode down the corridors of the Hokage Tower, flanked by his escort. Cloud shinobi in full battle dress moving through the heart of enemy territory. Staff and ANBU alike watched them pass in uneasy silence.
"Lord Dodai…" Darui began, voice low with worry.
"Not now," Dodai cut in, sharp and urgent. "We're going home. Immediately."
His mind was already racing ahead, piecing together the bigger picture.
Konoha had changed.
For decades, since its founding, the Hidden Leaf had worn the mantle of the strongest village—yet it had never been the aggressor. First War, Second War, now the Third—Konoha had always fought defensively, reacting, enduring.
But this treaty? This calculated cruelty?
No. The tiger was old, wounded, bleeding from a hundred cuts—Danzo, Orochimaru, countless elite dead or gone—but it had finally bared its fangs.
Old tigers don't lose their edge. Their claws only grow longer from a lifetime of killing.
Dodai stepped out of the tower and into the sunlight. The sky above Konoha was flawless blue, the breeze gentle and warm.
What a beautiful cage, he thought bitterly. And its master was no longer content to stay inside it.
From the window high above, Hiruzen watched the Cloud delegation disappear into the streets below. He took a slow pull from his pipe, eyes narrowed behind curls of smoke.
"Pass the order to Shikaku," he said to the empty room. "He is not to return yet. Take the troops north along the Land of Frost coast. Set up camp. Begin constructing what looks like shipyards."
A soft rustle of movement, the faint disturbance of air.
"Yes, Lord Hokage."
Then nothing.
Only the smoke, and the glint of something dangerous awakening in the old man's gaze.
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