The negotiations between Yorin and the A-B combo wrapped up—for the moment.
Hearing Yorin's tone soften, both Killer B and the Fourth Raikage finally relaxed a little. They felt like his attitude had improved, and that there was still hope for Kumo to rise again someday.
Anyone with real political sense would immediately notice the risks of tying the village's economy too tightly to Konoha's. Such a person would rather pay extra in reparations and secret techniques than let Konoha's capital sink its claws into Kumo's foundations.
But expecting the A-B combo—two career killers raised from childhood as professional soldiers—to grasp that level of nuance was asking a bit much.
To them, solid ryo and inherited ninjutsu were the true core of Kumo's strength.
They weren't entirely wrong.
Economic control kills you later. Crushing reparations kill you now.
Early death, late death—it's still death. But better to live scrappy than die pretty.
What if?
What if they endure this humiliation for a while and Kumo miraculously produces some heaven-sent monster who flips the board? What if Konoha suddenly stumbles into some massive internal disaster and takes heavy losses?
Then the balance might swing again.
Uchiha Yorin: "Heh. Naive."
He didn't even need genjutsu to see exactly what the brothers were thinking.
Everything was exactly where he wanted it.
For today's Konoha, a few extra wagonloads of reparations were nothing.
And secret techniques, while nice, weren't decisive either. Konoha was already the empire of secret arts, and they hadn't even finished sorting the mountain of scrolls they'd seized from Kiri.
Bringing home another cartful of jutsu would just add to their happy headache.
On both points, Yorin had already planned to make some concessions—to throw Kumo a bit of sugar and display his magnanimity.
And now, on top of that, he might get to bring a few Kumo beauties back home for some "international cultural exchange." This was an unexpected bonus.
We could probably mark this timeline as: "Only Tsunade got hurt."
Who knows how she'll react when she hears the news—whether she'll explode, regret saving that Raikage idiot's life, and curse herself for not letting him bleed out on the battlefield.
Either way, the trap that Raikage had set had, ironically, formed quite nicely.
They called it a "high-level banquet to strengthen ties," but everyone knew it was basically a matchmaking session.
On the way to the big Cloud Grand Hotel, the A-B combo were still worrying, muttering instructions to their girls, telling them to "sacrifice their charms a little for the village" and so on.
And then—yeah. The girls weren't thinking about it like that at all.
First to speak was tanned beauty Mabui.
"Huh? This counts as a sacrifice? And an S-rank mission?" Her tone was full of disbelief. "I actually thought… isn't this basically an employee benefit?"
Right after her, the freshly full-figured cool beauty Samui followed up:
"That's right. Uchiha Yorin… is pretty cool~"
"...He's not."
Watching their reactions, the A-B combo really wanted to complain—but they swallowed it.
After all, they were the ones who suggested sending the girls to "make contact" in the first place. If you rounded up their motives, this was basically pawn-your-daughter-for-glory. Just thinking about it made them want the lights turned off, let alone griping out loud.
And in that awkward silence, they noticed that beside Samui and Mabui—who were clearly taking this way too well—there was a third girl who hadn't said a word.
Yugito Nii.
By common sense, once you became a jinchūriki, your life more or less matched that of the Monkey King with the headband on: joys and sorrows of the world didn't really concern you. Or to put it less poetically: married life was basically off the table.
Even for a "perfect jinchūriki," respected by villagers and shinobi alike, Yugito had never considered marriage.
She'd long ago made her peace: she and Matatabi would just live out their days together.
That's how it should have gone.
But with Uchiha Yorin's appearance, things changed.
This now-dazzling Konoha was oddly fond of jinchūriki.
From Hashirama, to future Naruto, and now Minato—Konoha's leaders had a very suspicious affection for "monsters in human skins."
In the propaganda of other villages, this was always used as proof that Konoha had no morals at all.
You even go after jinchūriki? How are you better than those Earth-42 guys who fall in love with their chatbots!?
Still… for someone like Yugito, that was not entirely bad.
Her jinchūriki status might be a curse in most places, but to Uchiha Yorin, it was… an interesting challenge. A bonus layer of difficulty—and bragging rights—if he "cleared the route."
And Yugito Nii was not exactly lacking in confidence.
As the perfect partner of the Two-Tails, she was extremely proud and self-assured. Becoming a perfect jinchūriki didn't happen by luck alone. She had the backbone to face down a tailed beast and win.
If she could conquer Matatabi, then conquering a man would be trivial.
Battling on the warfront, winning a man on the lovefront—what's the difference? To her, it was just a matter of shifting where the battlefield was.
She might not match Samui's frankly overpowered figure, nor Mabui's petite cuteness and melanin-fueled charm, but Yugito had her own advantages.
Her looks were an easy 9/10. And her aura and status? Higher than both.
For ordinary people, "jinchūriki" meant endless trouble and doom. For someone like Yorin, it meant "spicy content unlocked" and a satisfying challenge to conquer.
That badass aura combined with that proud expression was enough to stir up all sorts of interesting instincts in certain kinds of men.
As she studied her reflection in the mirror, Yugito smiled, satisfied.
Yes. That's it.
She was going to conquer Uchiha Yorin in love the way she had conquered the Two-Tails in battle.
She had full confidence: in the end, Yorin would be just like Matatabi—her obedient, purring little cat.
Just imagining it made her lips curl into a pleased, queenly smile.
"Ohohohohoho…"
"…"
"Forget it," thought the A-B combo, exchanging a helpless glance.
Here they'd been worrying themselves sick, and on the other side the girls were already plotting how many positions they'd try after flattening Yorin.
It was… comforting, in a way. And also exhausting.
But at this point, A and B could only mutter a bit in their hearts, then force on a smile and escort the ladies to wait for Yorin's arrival.
Whoever came up with the rule that "the higher-status party always arrives last" had a lot to answer for.
Because right now, Uchiha Yorin was the five-star Emperor-McCaesar of Kumo's fate. Making them wait on him was only "appropriate."
In the meantime, the three kunoichi of Kumo went over their game plan.
Yugito, the proud one, would handle the nagging and teasing. Mabui would play the soft, gentle peacemaker. Samui wouldn't need to talk much at all—her job was simply to weaponize her figure as hard as possible.
To translate: Yugito was on Yukinoshita duty, Mabui was playing Yuigahama, and Samui was… Totsuka Saika.
With the three of them coordinating, ganging up on a single Uchiha Hikigaya didn't seem all that hard.
As for the A-B combo, once they'd handled the formal introductions, they were free to tactically retreat.
After setting up their three-person combo, the kunoichi all smiled like cats with a fresh bowl of cream—just waiting for Yorin to arrive so they could surround him, push him down, and turn that into a political merger: marrying into Uchiha and, by extension, Konoha.
Back in the day, it had been the Iberian "royal wedding": Aragon provided the king, Castile the queen.
Languages and crowns merged into Spain—but the main bloodline and the real power ended up firmly in Queen Isabella's hands.
All of Aragon's territories—Naples, Sicily, Sardinia—became her spoils.
King Ferdinand II of Aragon probably never imagined that "marrying up" would lead to his country being digested so thoroughly.
And who's to say history couldn't rhyme again?
Right now the Uchiha and Konoha were on top. But someday, one of the three Kumo kunoichi could rise up as a queen in her own right—using marriage as her ladder to seize control of Kumo, Konoha… and maybe the entire shinobi world.
~~~
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