"There's going to be an attack."
Renjiro's Sharingan, still active, caught the micro-adjustment in Kakashi's posture—the subtle tension that preceded a serious tactical report. He gave an almost imperceptible glance toward Hiruzen, who stood a short distance away, engaged in low, formal conversation with Mifune about the logistics of the four-hour recess. The Hokage's back was to them, but Renjiro knew the old man missed nothing.
He raised his hand slightly, brushing two fingers against his own wrist—a small, coded signal in the silent language of Konoha shinobi. 'Potential threat. Need discrete consultation.'
Hiruzen's response was barely a nod, a fractional dip of his chin as he continued speaking with Mifune. Permission granted.
They slipped into a smaller chamber adjacent to the main hall—a room intended for aides and translators, now empty, its single window offering a view of the relentless snow. Before Kakashi could speak, Renjiro raised a hand, his expression one of focused caution.
From his pouch, he retrieved a small, folded seal tag, no larger than his palm. It was unremarkable—pale paper, black ink, the kanji for "stillness" at its centre. He knelt, placing it on the stone floor. His hands moved through a series of subtle, precise signs—a whisper of chakra, a murmured release.
"Shhhh"—a soft, expanding hum.
The seal bloomed. Thin lines of fuinjutsu script spread from the tag like living roots, crawling across the floor, climbing the walls, threading across the ceiling. The symbols pulsed once with a soft, blue-green light, then faded to near-invisibility. A dome of contained silence formed around them, a bubble of absolute privacy.
"Auditory surveillance blocked," Renjiro said quietly, his voice now safe within the bubble. "Chakra detection suppressed from outside. Transmission seals—anything trying to broadcast our conversation—will hit this barrier and dissolve. Now we can talk."
Kakashi's visible eye widened a fraction—not at the seal's existence, but at its sophistication. This wasn't standard shinobi equipment. This was Uzumaki-grade counter-intelligence fuinjutsu, refined and personalised. He filed the observation away for later analysis.
"What did you notice?" Renjiro asked.
Kakashi's response was measured, clinical—the report of a sensor, but not of chakra. Of bodies.
"During the escalation. When the Raikage was shouting, when the chakra was spiking… I was watching the Kiri guards. Two of them, specifically." He paused, letting Renjiro's mind catch up.
"One loosened his shoulder guard. A deliberate movement, not a nervous adjustment. He wanted it loose. The other shifted his blade angle—rotated the sheath so the hilt was forward, the blade edge facing inward toward his own body."
Renjiro's mind raced, correlating the data. "Preparing for controlled injury," he murmured. "They were bracing to be struck, not to strike."
Kakashi nodded. "Exactly. Battlefield instinct reads intent in posture. Those weren't defensive adjustments. They were staging."
He continued, his voice dropping even lower within the sealed bubble. "And there was something else. One of the Mizukage's guards—the same one with the shoulder guard—briefly suppressed his chakra signature. Almost completely. Not the kind of suppression used for hiding. That's sustained. This was a pulse, a drop, then a return to normal. Like someone waiting for a cue, ready to react."
Renjiro's internal response was a cold wash of self-recrimination. 'I missed it.'
His focus had been locked on Yagura's chakra—the threads of genjutsu control, the confirmation of manipulation. He had been studying the storm, the grand, chakra-based architecture of the puppet regime. Kakashi had been watching the raindrops—the micro-movements of individuals, the body language that revealed intent regardless of chakra.
'I was analysing the quality of the power. He was analysing the mechanics of the players.' The distinction was humbling and vital.
Kiri's plan, they deduced, was elegant in its brutality. During the four-hour recess, when delegations were scattered, guards were relaxed, and the samurai's attention was diffused—a "failed assassination attempt" would be staged on the Mizukage. A loyal Kiri operative, perhaps one of the very guards Kakashi had observed, would strike at Yagura. Another guard would "heroically" intercept, taking a wound in the process.
The narrative would write itself: 'Even here, in neutral territory, the enemies of Kirigakure reach for our leader.' The Mizukage, already a figure of suspicion, would be transformed into a victim.
Konoha, bound by its public stance of forgiveness and unity, would be forced to condemn the attack, to stand with Kiri against the unknown assassins.
The other Kages—the Raikage, the Tsuchikage, the Kazekage—would be pressured to distance themselves from suspicion, to offer platitudes of concern, to fracture any emerging counter-alliance.
And if suspicion could be subtly redirected—a dropped Kumo-style kunai, a whisper of Iwa-made poison—trust would shatter completely. Negotiations would stall. The peace would weaken. All without a single shot fired in open war.
'Strategically brilliant,' Renjiro thought, a chill of admiration mixed with dread.
'No outside involvement. No reliance on enemy cooperation. All actors are controllable. And Yagura—a puppet under absolute genjutsu—is the perfect centrepiece. He can be made to react perfectly, to play the victim without ever knowing he's acting.'
Even if discovered, the scheme would appear as an internal Kiri instability, not an orchestrated false-flag. Deniability was baked into its very structure.
But the implications extended beyond this summit. Renjiro's mind, calibrated to the long game, spiralled outward.
'This is a test. Madara's camp—whoever is pulling the strings from the shadows—is testing us. They're probing reaction speeds, political cohesion, and Konoha's willingness to protect Kiri. They're mapping the fault lines.'
The thought was followed by a surge of something rare for Renjiro: panic. Not the visceral fear of combat, but the cold, intellectual terror of losing control over the future he thought he understood.
'If the summit collapses—if the peace treaty is delayed or derailed—the villages rearm. Tensions spike. Akatsuki may accelerate their timeline, seeing opportunity in chaos. Madara's long-game destabilization compresses. Everything I know, every piece of foreknowledge I've relied on, becomes useless if the order of events shifts.'
His internal voice was sharp, urgent. 'I need gradual decay. Calculated mistrust that follows the original timeline. Not an immediate fracture. If chaos accelerates…' The thought trailed into a void.
He met Kakashi's gaze, the mask hiding the weight of his realisation. "We need to inform the Hokage. Now."
---
The seal retracted with a soft whisper of fading light, the script dissolving back into the small tag, which Renjiro pocketed. They emerged from the chamber and, with a minor administrative excuse about reconfirming security protocols, pulled Hiruzen aside into a momentarily unobserved alcove.
Kakashi delivered his report concisely—the body language, the suppressed chakra, the staged positioning. Renjiro added the political analysis, carefully omitting any mention of Madara, framing it instead as a logical deduction based on the summit's dynamics.
"The goal," Renjiro concluded quietly, "isn't to kill Yagura. It's to create a narrative. If he's 'attacked,' the Raikage will blame Kiri's instability. The Tsuchikage will demand security reforms that undermine the Land of Iron's neutrality. The Kazekage will question whether any agreement signed here is worth the paper it's written on. And if we—Konoha—appear too defensive of Kiri, too quick to shield them…" He let the implication hang.
Hiruzen's aged eyes, which had seen every variety of political treachery in his decades of leadership, narrowed. Not with surprise, but with the grim recognition of a pattern he had seen before. He understood instantly. This wasn't about injuring Yagura.
It was about narrative control.
It was about testing how unified the fragile Konoha-Kiri rapprochement truly was. Would Konoha instinctively shield their former enemy-turned-ally? Or would they hesitate, revealing cracks that could be exploited?
The Hokage's voice, when he spoke, was calm—the calm of a man who had long ago accepted that peace was not a destination, but a constant, exhausting negotiation.
"You will prevent the incident." He looked from Kakashi to Renjiro. "Do not expose it or confront Kiri publicly. Don't accuse them. Prevent it. Ensure that whatever they have planned… fails. Silently. Without destabilising this summit."
=====
Bless me with your powerful Power Stones.
Your Reviews and Comments about my work are welcome
If you can, then please support me on Patreon.
Link - www.patreon.com/SideCharacter
You Can read more chapters ahead on Patreon
Latest Chapter: 765-Quiet Calculations