The world erupted into a prism of lethal intent. The ambush was not chaotic; it was a choreographed execution, a kill-box designed to obliterate anything at the gate.
Renjiro moved before the first technique had crossed half the distance. There were no orders, no conscious thoughts beyond a singular, wired imperative:
'Threat. Between it and the principal.'
His body was a streak of obsidian, a flicker-step so swift it seemed to bend the dying light. He did not place himself near Hiruzen; he interposed himself completely, his back to the Hokage, his frame now the first and only barrier before the storm of techniques. It was an instinct older than his current life, the fundamental calculus of the bodyguard: the attack must pass through him first.
As the whistling wind blades were mere meters away, as he drew a single breath to summon a counter, Hiruzen's voice cut through the cacophony, sharp as a senbon and twice as cold.
"Do not kill them."
The command landed amidst Renjiro's rising chakra. A spike of pure, tactical irritation flared in his mind—' They're trying to kill us!'—and was instantly quashed by a higher-order understanding. This was not a battlefield of declared enemies; this was a diplomatic threshold. Lethal force here would have consequences far beyond this gate.
'Containment, not combat.'
His recalibration took less than a heartbeat.
The attacking shinobi, roughly twenty in number, burst from the gate and the flanking grass, their faces set in masks of desperate aggression. They expected a frantic defence, a lethal retaliation. What they got was a silent, precision hurricane.
Renjiro met them not with grand ninjutsu, but with oppressive, intimate efficiency. His Sharingan was not activated, but its predictive legacy was in his bones.
He saw the lead attacker's shoulder dip a millisecond before the kunai thrust, the shift of weight before a kick. He didn't block the kunai; he let it pass an inch from his ribs, his own hand slapping a pale chakra-suppression tag onto the man's wrist as the weapon extended. The shinobi stumbled, his arm going numb, his chakra flow seizing up as if plugged with ice.
He moved through them like a ghost. A spin avoided a wind-enhanced punch; his elbow found a pressure point on the attacker's bicep, causing the arm to drop, useless.
A low sweep took legs out, and before the shinobi hit the ground, Renjiro's fingers had brushed his neck, leaving a tiny, intricate seal that glowed faintly before sinking into the skin—a short-term chakra lock.
He used their momentum against them, parrying a sword strike into the path of an incoming earth projectile, disarming both in a clash of steel and shattered rock.
His voice, when he used it, was flat, a command issued mid-pivot as he disarmed a kunoichi with a nerve strike to her forearm.
"Stand down."
It was over in less than a minute. The barrage of ninjutsu had sputtered against a suddenly-erected earth wall—Hiruzen's casual, one-handed intervention—and the close-quarters fighters were now a scattered field of groaning, struggling bodies. Some were pinned by their own immobilised limbs, others lay gasping, their chakra systems in lockdown, staring up with dazed horror.
Not a single fatal wound. No blood, beyond a few nosebleeds from glancing strikes. Renjiro came to a standstill, his breathing even, his clothes barely dishevelled.
The main gates creaked fully open. From within, a figure hurried out, flanked by two older aides. The Kusakage was a lean man with weary eyes and hair prematurely streaked with grey, his face a mask of frantic apology.
He wore the traditional Kusa headpiece, but it seemed too large for him, a symbol of authority he could not fill. He bowed deeply from the waist before Hiruzen, his attendants following suit.
"Hokage-sama! A thousand, thousand apologies!" His voice was strained, trembling with a fear that went beyond political embarrassment.
"This… this unspeakable act! It was not sanctioned! It was the work of rogue elements, I assure you! A catastrophic failure of command!"
Hiruzen looked down at the proffered bow, his expression carved from aged granite. He did not offer forgiveness. He did not tell the Kusakage to rise.
"Rogue elements who just happened to be manning your main gate with pre-prepared trap seals and coordinated attack patterns," Hiruzen stated, his voice deceptively quiet.
"Explain. Now."
***
The meeting hall of Kusagakure was a dim, wooden structure that smelled of damp timber and anxiety. The Konoha trio sat on one side of a long table. Across from them, the Kusakage and his council fidgeted, their faces illuminated by the flickering light of oil lamps that did little to dispel the gloom.
The Kusakage, after many hesitant starts, laid it bare. "Our village… is broken, Hokage-sama. The war did not end for us when the major villages declared it. Iwagakure's occupation was… brutal. They took what they wanted, conscripted our shinobi for their front lines, left us with nothing but scorched earth and divided loyalties."
He wiped his brow. "Now, we are split. One faction, which I lead, believes our only path to survival is to rebuild trust with Konoha, to honour our old agreements. The other… they call themselves the 'Defiant Stem.' They believe Konoha will never forgive our weakness, that we will always be seen as collaborators. They think pre-emptive defiance, a show of strength, is the only language a great village understands."
He looked at his hands, a picture of impotent shame. "My authority over the military wing is… tenuous. The shinobi at the gate… they were theirs. I did not know they would go this far. I swear it."
Hiruzen listened, his face unreadable. He took a long, slow draw from his pipe, exhaling a cloud of smoke that hung in the tense air between them. "You speak of factions and forgiveness," Hiruzen began, "Let me speak of facts. Your village, regardless of faction, allowed Iwagakure forces free passage through your territory. You became the anvil against which they hammered our border. Your lands were the launch point for attacks that killed thousands of my shinobi and devastated the Land of Fire." He leaned forward slightly, "That is not neutrality. That is, at best, hostile negligence. And today, your soil—your very gate—was the site of an attempted assassination of the Hokage of Konoha. So. Setting aside your internal dramas… how do you intend to settle this debt?"
The question hung in the air, cold and heavy. This was not a conversation between allies. This was an audit.
What followed was not negotiation; it was a strategic dismantling. Hiruzen's demands were focused, economic, and devastating. He spoke of the chakra-conductive ore mines in the hills north of Kusa, of the rich metal deposits, of exclusive harvest rights to the medicinal forests that bordered Fire Country.
"The mines will be jointly operated, with Konoha overseeing security and receiving sixty per cent of the refined yield," Hiruzen stated, his tone leaving no room for barter.
"But… Hokage-sama, those mines are our primary source of income! Without them—" a Kusa elder spluttered.
"Without them, you would have nothing to offer for your continued existence as a village," Hiruzen interrupted, his gaze icy.
"Iwa strong-armed you, you say. Yet at no point did you send a messenger to Konoha, to your supposed ally, begging for aid or warning us of your plight. You chose silence. Then, you chose violence. These are the consequences of those choices."
One by one, the concessions were wrung from them. Each protest was met with a reminder of the day's events or the shadow of Iwa's occupation.
The Kusagakure delegation deflated, their spirit breaking under the relentless, calm pressure. They capitulated, their signatures on the provisional scroll a confession of utter defeat.
As Renjiro watched the economic noose tighten, a cold, personal dissatisfaction churned within him.
This village's weakness, its chaotic indecision, had provided Iwa the corridor to attack. Those attacks had stretched Konoha's forces thin, had created the desperate fronts where people like Hiro had died.
A part of him, the part that remembered a friend's laughter silenced too soon, wanted fire and retribution. He wanted the Defiant Stem and the diplomats alike to feel a fraction of the loss their chaos had caused.
But another, colder part observed Hiruzen's method. No punishment would bring Hiro back. Burning Kusa to the ground would only create a power vacuum, another problem. This way, Konoha gained resources, crippled a potential future threat, and set a brutal example for any other minor village contemplating betrayal. It was clean, efficient, and utterly merciless.
It was statecraft.
Renjiro forced the heat of his personal anger down, smothering it under the cold weight of this logic. He reined himself in, accepting the necessity of the Hokage's restraint even as he despised its cause.
The proceedings concluded. The scrolls were sealed. The Kusakage looked like a man who had signed away his village's soul, which, in essence, he had.
Hiruzen stood. "We will stay the night within your walls. We depart at first light for Tanigakure." He said it not as a guest, but as a sovereign exercising a grim privilege.
=====
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