Killer B's howl was full-on from the soul. You could hear pure despair and rage in it.
But in the end, Uchiha Yorin still walked over.
"Surrender," he said, closing the distance. "Your big brother's bleeding out. If he doesn't get treated soon, he will die."
Hearing that, Killer B's pupils shrank behind his sunglasses.
It was true. The arm Yorin had cut off was still spraying blood like crazy. If nothing was done, A was done for.
Killer B's face twisted with struggle. If it were just himself, he could die, whatever. But no matter what, he didn't want his big brother to die.
"You've probably figured it out, Bee," Yorin continued calmly. "The war's over. Kumo lost. There's no point thrashing around anymore."
"If you're smart enough, brave enough, and love your brother enough, then what you should be doing right now is manning up and admitting defeat."
"…I don't trust you," Killer B answered honestly and warily. "If we surrender, will you really treat us, and not just wipe us out?"
"Exterminate you?" Yorin snorted. "Don't be ridiculous, I'm not some demon."
"I've never planned to destroy Kumo. As for why, I could spend hours explaining—but your brother doesn't have hours."
"…"
"So what's your choice, Bee? You gonna roll the dice?"
"…"
In the end, Yorin got what he wanted.
The Fourth Raikage A, and his little brother, the perfect jinchūriki Killer B, became prisoners of the Konoha army.
With that in hand, the general surrender of the routed Kumo forces went smoothly. Aside from a few who ran fast, hid deep, or were utterly die-hard, almost all the Kumo shinobi chose to give up.
Because the battle had ended so quickly, not that many had actually died.
Aside from the three thousand lost in the initial probe, and about a thousand more during the march, Kumo's casualties during the main clash were under a thousand.
Which meant nearly fifteen thousand Kumo shinobi ended up as Yorin's captives.
That number was almost equal to the fifteen thousand Konoha shinobi under his command.
Thankfully, while this world has no seastone, it does have sealing jutsu, or this would be a nightmare. Even stripped of weapons, a shinobi's body is a weapon in itself.
Put a more ruthless commander in charge—say, a certain Pot-Kage—and he'd probably already be thinking about massacring the lot.
Fortunately, Uchiha Yorin was not that guy. He treated the captives "humanely."
No special privileges—other than treating the wounded—but everyone else got basic chūnin rations.
Even so, the Kumo ninja awkwardly realized: Konoha's basic rations were better than what they usually ate.
Being a Kumo jōnin wasn't as good as being a Konoha prisoner.
So even in different world, once again the only path open to the "brothas" was… prison, huh?
…
The Fourth Raikage woke up on the third day.
When he opened his eyes, his whole body felt weak; he couldn't even lift a finger.
He groaned instinctively and croaked, "Water…" only to get nearly torn open again by his little brother's flying tackle.
"Big bro—waaah! You're finally awake! Thank goodness you're still alive!"
At first A was annoyed, but looking at Bee sobbing snot and tears all over his chest, his anger died.
"My arm's gone, huh… Forget it. In that situation, living at all is already a blessing. Bee, did you save me? Where are we? Did we make it back to the village?"
He'd lost consciousness, but faintly remembered Bee's shouting and crying at the end, so he had to ask.
Bee's expression turned a bit awkward.
"Ah, uh… how to put this…"
Seeing his brother's face, A understood immediately. "We lost, didn't we? Captured… right? And this wound, the treatment—was that Konoha?"
Bee looked even more embarrassed.
"So this is Konoha camp?"
"Not exactly."
A voice came from the door: Uchiha Yorin's.
The Anbu guarding the room had reported his awakening the second it happened. Yorin closed the scroll he'd been reading on Kumo's lightning techniques and came over.
"…"
Because he'd been out for three days, A's last memory of Yorin was mid-fight. His first reaction when he saw him was a defensive stance.
Then the stiffness turned to something else—embarrassment.
He realized a simple truth: the war was over. He'd lost everything. Putting his guard up now was meaningless. If Yorin had wanted him dead, he wouldn't have waited for him to wake up.
"Still got some spirit."
Yorin ignored the posture entirely. He smiled, pulled a chair up to the bedside, and sat.
"So—how's our Konoha medical work?"
As the birthplace of modern medic-nin, Konoha's medical skill was naturally first in the world.
Not that Yorin had come to brag medicine.
"What do you want?" A stared, voice serious. "You defeated me. You could have killed me. You could have wiped out Kumo. But you didn't. What's your goal? What's your scheme?!"
By the end he was almost shouting, coughing from the strain. With his chakra sealed, he wasn't a Kage anymore—just an ordinary, seriously injured man.
"Strictly speaking, I should be the one asking that."
Yorin didn't mind the anger. He kept smiling.
"In this war—did you learn anything?"
…
Of course he had. Strategically, tactically, even in concrete jutsu, A had gained a lot. His eye wasn't Sharingan, but it was sharp. Trading blows with someone at Yorin's level was invaluable experience.
But he doubted that was what Yorin meant.
"What the hell are you getting at?" he demanded.
"What I want to do?"
"I want to end hatred," Yorin said quietly. "I want to end war—truly—and bring peace to the world."
The Raikage looked at him like he was some kind of monster.
"So right now, I've got two paths in front of me." Yorin's tone was gentle; his words were ice-cold. "First path: I wipe out Kumo completely. I can. We're in Kumogakure right now. I could turn it into history."
"And later, I might do the same to Iwa—if they keep pushing Konoha."
Both brothers shivered from head to toe at how casually he said that.
They wanted to refute him—strongly—but in the end, they didn't say a word.
"Of course there's another path."
Yorin let his aura mellow; his voice softened. A instantly understood where this was going.
"You want Kumo to become another Mist," he growled. "A vassal of Konoha—Konoha's slave?"
"Not slaves. Allies." Yorin corrected. "Equal-status allies. And on top of that—have you heard of the Ninshū?"
"…"
He'd heard the name, sure, but he had no idea where Yorin was going.
"I'm going to rebuild the Ninshū," Yorin told them. "I will rebuild it."
"Konoha, Kumo, Kiri—and later Sunagakure and Iwagakure too. All shinobi pulled together into one new organization. To put an end to war everywhere."
The two brothers fell silent.
If he'd said that before the fighting, everyone in Kumo would've just laughed, thinking he was scared and babbling nonsense.
But this was after the war.
Reasons, excuses, narrative—it didn't matter. Fact was, Kumo had been utterly defeated.
In that position, a man had to read the room.
"If we agree to join this Ninshū… does that mean as allies we can skip…"
"How could it?" Yorin cut off A's wishful thinking. "You think you get to skip ceding land and paying reparations? How would that be fair?"
"In fact, Kumo will have to hand over all its tech and secret arts. And both of your village's jinchūriki as well. That's the minimum to show 'good faith' about peace."
"You—"
For a moment A almost choked, nearly shouting, "You might as well kill us!"
"Get this straight: you've lost. Completely. You have no bargaining power. No room to haggle. All you can do is cooperate as much as possible and hope we treat you relatively fairly. There is no second road."
The Raikage fell silent again.
Under normal circumstances he was the one who pressed down on others. But here, there was no pressing to be done.
He could only respond with silence—and that silence was as good as tacit agreement.
On the side, Killer B was still sulking. He couldn't help feeling Kumo got the short end of the stick compared to Kiri and Suna.
It wasn't like those two were models of obedience, either.
Why did they get nicer treatment after allying with Konoha?
Must be the women, right?
It had to be the women.
He thought back: Sunagakure sent their daughter Temari as "envoy," but they all knew she was there as Yorin's girlfriend. Kiri went even further: their new Mizukage, Terumi Mei, straight up took the job and the man both.
It was ridiculous.
B had to admit: Yorin's biggest flaw was being too lecherous.
But he was also impressed by the man's… success rate.
"As for cute girls, we Kumo aren't lacking either," he thought. "Yugito's one. Sure, she's a jinchūriki, which makes things awkward. But we've got non-jinchūriki cuties too—Samui, Mabui…"
"Maybe I should convince big bro to send them to seduce Yorin…"
While Bee was plotting, Yorin was already handing a draft treaty to the Raikage.
Like the Marshall Plan for Kiri, this agreement focused on controlling Kumo's economy.
On top of punishing Kumo with heavy war reparations and forcing them to hand over every secret technique, it demanded a full restructuring of ownership.
From public utilities to farmland to the most critical asset—mission contracts—Konoha wanted a finger in every pie.
Politically and diplomatically, the treaty rules were strict: caps on Kumo's army size, restrictions on ninjutsu and tool R&D. Once signed, Kumo breaking free of Konoha's orbit would be basically impossible.
Legally, economically, militarily—they'd be under Konoha's thumb forever. Their relationship would be like a certain other timeline's Japan or Europe with the United States.
Of course, it wasn't all bad for Kumo.
Joining Konoha's trade and logistics network would give them powerful cashflow and jobs. Konoha capital could accelerate Kumo's own research into "new energy" tech.
Soon, the vehicles roaring across the shinobi world wouldn't just be creaking green carts—they'd be sleek "bulletheads." And beyond that—pickups, personal cars, ships, perhaps even planes.
Konoha's logistics had hit a new bottleneck. Ox-drawn wagons couldn't keep up with industrial output. Factories were making tons of goods that couldn't move; when Watergate saw stock pile up, his hairline receded another millimeter.
Yorin had just told him, "Don't worry—Kumo's lightning-powered cars, ships, and planes will cover it. Leave that to me."
At the time, Minato could only smile bitterly. Kumo's lightning-tech wasn't just secret; it was sacred—worth more than most secret techniques. Selling some outdated designs for lightning ships was already a stretch. How would they ever hand over core tech?
Yorin hadn't argued. He'd just told Minato to wait for good news.
And once the Fourth Great Ninja War kicked off, well… problem solved.
For that matter, the Land of the Sky had some very interesting zero-tail tech—an artificial chakra beast powered by "pain." Sacrifice a few dozen people, and you could lift a flying fortress.
Pain extraction sounded horrible—but criminals, POWs, spies… none of those have rights. Shinobi already had an entire toolbox for torture and interrogation. A little genjutsu, and you'd have all the "pain" you needed.
Zero-Tails was a very tempting tech path, and Yorin had originally thought, "If Kumo's hard to crack, I'll start with Sky." In the end, Kumo broke first.
Sky's method and Kumo's probably weren't compatible. But with Konoha rich as it was, they could pursue multiple branches at once—build their own patents, build walls, and let everyone else crash into them.
"If there are no issues, let's sign," Yorin said with a smile. "It's good for both of us."
Raikage A stayed silent. Sensing the atmosphere going sideways, Killer B jumped in:
"Yo, hold up, let me spit a verse—
Big bro, live to fight another day, that's the best!
Sign the deal, sure it stings and hurts,
But if we're still alive, we can flip it later, check it out, word!"
Yorin: "…"
He was pretty sure if Bee ever held a concert, he'd lose money hand over fist.
Having hyped up his brother, Bee turned to Yorin:
"Yorin-shonen, you say you want peace, hey,
But you got us all pissed, now Kumo's not okay.
If we're gritting our teeth, smiling but we're sore,
Peace'll be far off, maybe nevermore."
Yorin: "You… do make a good point. But even so…"
Seeing him maybe wavering, Bee pushed harder:
"Our village got beauties too, I ain't jokin',
I know a lot of fine ladies I can put in motion.
Show some mercy, let Kumo off the hook,
I'll introduce them all, just gotta say the word, look."
Yorin didn't answer him. Instead, he turned to look at A.
Because the one who'd decide wasn't B—it was the Raikage.
"…I won't sell out my subordinates' happiness over something like that," A said at last. "But… if it's you…"
"I can arrange a banquet."
"Okay. Then it's a deal."
Yorin grinned. "Let me be clear: the economic parts of the treaty—those aren't changing. But the arms limits and reparations, those can be negotiated."
"How much we shave off will depend… on your sincerity."