Chapter 229 - Two Heads Are Better Than One
The rain over Amegakure had only been gone for about half an hour before nature reasserted itself. Clouds rolled in from every direction to fill the void left in the sky above the village, and the familiar drizzle began to fall again.
But the god who had called that rain was never coming back.
When the news of his death reached the Rain ninja, no serious unrest followed. On the surface it looked like upheaval, but in reality almost nobody stepped forward to avenge their god. The majority quietly accepted an outcome they had already been bracing for.
That reaction made sense. Pain had ruled Amegakure for only a few years, and his rule had not been particularly good for anyone. The original Akatsuki members and the native Rain ninja alike had gained very little from living under his authority.
So their god was dead. Life had to move forward.
This was not the moment to mourn. The urgent question was what would become of Amegakure next - handle it poorly, and the village might cease to exist entirely.
The Rain ninja's jonin elected five of their most respected members to form a provisional governing body. Those five then opened negotiations with the five great villages, and in the end the Rain ninja chose to place themselves under Konoha's protection - becoming a client village, much like the Hidden Hot Springs Village in the Land of Hot Water had done - preserving the village's continuity and survival.
The Sand and Rock delegations voiced their displeasure. Neither was happy to see the Rain ninja fall into Konoha's orbit.
But they had no power to stop it.
Konoha sat at its zenith, as brilliant and unreachable as the sun at midday. The Sand and Rock villages were hardly in decline, but they lacked both the means and the nerve to challenge Konoha directly. In the end they could only accept the fact of Amegakure's new allegiance.
The village looked the same as it always had in the rain. But the Konoha ninja appearing in every street and alleyway told anyone paying attention that Amegakure was no longer what it had been.
Minato spent approximately three days moving everyone back to their respective villages in stages. The reason it took that long was deliberate caution - he refused to let his chakra drop below sixty percent, keeping the reserve available for whatever emergency might arise without warning.
Fortunately, the missing-nin Uchiha Tatsuhata never showed himself. Not a single move.
That said, Minato and his inner circle did not allow themselves to relax. Nara Shikaku went so far as to suggest simply destroying the Rinnegan in public and removing it as a target entirely, cutting off Tatsuhata's reason to come after them.
Minato rejected the suggestion.
The Rinnegan was too valuable to discard. And more to the point - would destroying it actually stop Tatsuhata from fixating on Konoha? Almost certainly not.
The answer came shortly afterward, when Yamanaka Iai read the Moon's Eye Plan directly from Nagato's preserved brain. Once the village's leadership had absorbed the full scope of what that plan entailed, the importance of the Rinnegan became impossible to overstate. It was a central, irreplaceable component. Without it, the Moon's Eye Plan could not proceed.
If Tatsuhata still intended to push the plan forward, he would have no choice but to find a way to reclaim the Rinnegan.
Destroying it would not make Konoha safe. It would only eliminate the bait and potentially drive Tatsuhata into an act of pure, unrestrained revenge against the village. That was worse.
So the Rinnegan was kept.
Hiruko, serving as Hokage Advisor, took the lead in assembling a dedicated research unit. Specialists were drawn from the ANBU, the Military Police, the Border Defense Corps, and the Medical Division - nearly twenty people altogether - to form a department focused exclusively on studying the Rinnegan.
The word "specialists" was used loosely. Konoha had never trained researchers in that sense. Talents like Orochimaru and Hiruko had developed through their own drive and curiosity, not through any institutional program.
But a forest that large eventually grew every kind of tree.
Among Konoha's ten thousand-plus ninja, there were always going to be unconventional minds, and unconventional minds were what this work required. None of them could match Orochimaru or Hiruko, but each brought something of their own. Yakushi Nono, who had participated in the Amegakure operation, was among those selected - her medical ninjutsu expertise was deep enough that it might prove useful somewhere in the process of studying the Rinnegan.
Might prove useful. That was the most honest assessment available.
There was no precedent for this work. They were feeling their way forward in the dark. The initial approach was simply to gather everyone who might conceivably contribute and see what happened. Personnel would be adjusted as the research progressed - those who proved useful stayed, those who didn't were let go.
Hyuga Ritsu was assigned to the department as well.
His title was Deputy Chief of what Hiruko had named the "Cultural Relics and Archaeology Division."
This was not nepotism. Ritsu's Byakugan had practical value in studying the Rinnegan. Beyond Ritsu, Uchiha Shisui was also brought in - while the Byakugan's analytical depth exceeded the Sharingan's, both had their distinct strengths, and any edge was worth having.
So Konoha began its stumbling, uncertain research into the Rinnegan. The Sand, Rock, Cloud, and Mist villages each sent their own elite personnel to observe and monitor the work, per the Five Kage Summit agreement.
Minato honored the arrangement without obstruction. He let all of them in.
He had no intention of breaking his word. He intended instead to work within the terms of the agreement - and find whatever room existed there.
Time moved. By the end of August, approximately one month remained before the Nine-Tails jinchuriki's due date. And per the Five Kage Summit agreement, each village was permitted to hold the Rinnegan for a maximum of two months before passing it to the next.
Two months had now elapsed.
Per the agreement, it was time to transfer the Rinnegan to the Rock Village.
The reason Iwagakure held second priority was the result of an argument between the four other villages' delegations - one that had produced no clear winner, since none of them had actually contributed meaningfully to the operation. Konoha had handled everything. In the end they ranked the order by casualties suffered: Rock had lost three jonin and ranked second. Cloud had lost two jonin and ranked third. Sand had one dead and one critically injured and ranked fourth. Kirigakure had lost nobody through sheer luck and was bumped to last.
The Mizukage was furious at being pushed out by the Tsuchikage.
The Kazekage had her own complaints - she had personally participated in the operation and felt that deserved better than fourth.
The Mizukage was more aggrieved still, convinced Rock and Cloud had deliberately sent sacrificial fodder to pad their casualty numbers.
But none of them could produce a better argument for a different ranking, and continuing to argue would mean the Rinnegan stayed in Konoha's hands indefinitely - which none of them wanted at all.
So they swallowed their frustration and accepted the order.
When the two-month mark arrived, the Rock Village's envoy came to Minato and raised the subject of the transfer. Minato did not refuse. Instead he summoned all four resident envoys - Sand, Cloud, Rock, and Mist - to his office.
"I will not break my word."
He looked at the four of them, his expression calm. "But none of you have forgotten the other clause in our agreement - that the Rinnegan must be kept secure, not damaged, and not stolen by any criminal party."
His gaze shifted to Bunka, the Rock Village envoy. "Your village is welcome to take the Rinnegan right now. But the moment you do, you accept full responsibility for its safety. If you cannot demonstrate to my satisfaction - and to the satisfaction of the three envoys representing the Kazekage, the Raikage, and the Mizukage - that Iwagakure is capable of protecting the Rinnegan from Uchiha Tatsuhata, then I'm sorry, but I will not hand you something to deliver directly into his hands."
Bunka's expression tightened.
He held his silence for two seconds, then steeled himself and said, "Hokage-sama. Uchiha Tatsuhata is Konoha's missing-nin."
"I know."
Minato cut him off before he could continue. "Uchiha Tatsuhata is Konoha's missing-nin - that's correct. But once someone becomes a missing-nin, whatever they do afterward is no longer Konoha's responsibility. Just as when Cloud Village's missing-nin - the Gold and Silver Brothers - killed our Second Hokage, we never asked the Cloud Village to compensate us for that."
Beside him, the Cloud envoy Dodai's expression darkened considerably.
His own village had just caught a stray arrow.
And he remembered well that during the negotiations at the Land of Hot Water frontline, Hiruko and Hyuga Ritsu had used the exact same argument to deflect responsibility for the same issue.
It was becoming clear that these insufferable Konoha people had coordinated this line very carefully in advance.
Dodai's feelings were complicated.
On one hand, watching the Rock Village get stonewalled was satisfying. On the other hand, allowing Konoha to hold the Rinnegan indefinitely was genuinely intolerable. The past two months had produced no results, but that was how all difficult research began - the hard part came first. Given enough time and the right breakthrough, the advantages Konoha could extract from the Rinnegan were incalculable.
Konoha was already powerful enough to make breathing difficult. If it kept growing stronger, would there be any room left in the shinobi world for the other four villages?
Dodai's brow furrowed. A bold idea surfaced in his mind. He hesitated for perhaps three seconds, saw that Bunka still hadn't found words, and decided to speak.
"Hokage-sama. I don't believe the responsibility for protecting the Rinnegan should fall on any one village. None of us want to see it fall into Uchiha Tatsuhata's hands and be used to advance the Moon's Eye Plan. So I propose that all five great villages jointly escort the Rinnegan as it rotates between us."
Bunka turned and stared at Dodai like he had just grown a second head.
Ever since Iwagakure killed the Third Raikage, relations between the Rock and Cloud villages had been glacial. Bunka genuinely had not expected to hear something like this from Dodai.
Minato was also caught off guard.
He studied the Cloud envoy - an unremarkable-looking man on the surface - and thought privately that it was no accident this person had been trusted by two consecutive Raikage. The nerve it had taken to say that out loud should not be underestimated.
The Sand envoy Baki spoke next. "I think Dodai-dono makes an excellent point. Protecting the Rinnegan should not be any single village's burden. We should cooperate to ensure it isn't stolen. The Sand Village is prepared to send elite personnel to participate in a joint escort."
After saying so, he turned and glanced at the pale-faced young man beside him.
Mangetsu Hoshigaki looked unwell. He had fallen seriously ill while staying in Konoha recently and had come close to dying - fortunately, Minato had decided that having a foreign envoy die in the village would reflect poorly on Konoha, and had assigned top-tier medical ninja to pull him back from the edge.
Even so.
Even if Konoha had just saved his life.
Mangetsu Hoshigaki still put his village's interests first. "The Mist Village agrees as well."
Bunka looked overwhelmed. Dodai spoke again.
"Hokage-sama. Does this arrangement put your concerns to rest?"
Minato didn't answer immediately.
He held Dodai's gaze. This apparently ordinary Cloud ninja had just handed him a genuine problem - and somehow the Sand and Mist envoys had fallen in line immediately. He hadn't seen that coming.
He reflected.
He had underestimated how much the four other villages feared Konoha's growing power. Clearly, when sufficiently motivated, they were willing to set aside old grudges and present a unified front. That was worth remembering.
"This is a significant matter. I'd ask all four of you to contact your respective leaders and bring me their confirmed answers before we proceed."
He reached for time.
It was the best he could manage on short notice.
Bunka finally found his voice. "Hokage-sama, I will report this to the Tsuchikage immediately." He left at once.
"Hokage-sama, please allow me to take my leave. I'll return with the Raikage's authorization as quickly as possible." Dodai bowed and departed.
Baki and Mangetsu followed without delay. Both had spoken confidently in the room, but privately neither was certain their own Kage would endorse what they had just volunteered. There was work to do back home.
When the four of them were gone, Minato pressed two fingers against his temple and rubbed.
"What a headache."
He exhaled heavily.
Dodai's move had put him squarely on the back foot. If the Kazekage and the Mizukage genuinely agreed to help Iwagakure protect the Rinnegan, then the clause he had been relying on was effectively neutralized. The clean internal argument fell apart.
In short - if the loophole closed, blocking the transfer would require going outside the agreement entirely.
But perhaps there was another way.
One person thinking alone runs out of ideas. Two people thinking together find the path.
If he couldn't see the answer himself, the answer might still be in the room - it just hadn't spoken yet.
"Someone get me my people."
Minato called out.
Members of the Shadow Guard appeared in the office. Moments later they were dispersing through the building, carrying the Hokage's summons.