Chapter 163: Five Years
"Enough of this!"
A Kumogakure negotiator's palm hit the stone table to match the energy across from him, squaring up against Kurama Asuna with the look of someone deciding whether to throw something.
"What, we're supposed to be polite after you won? Then what was the point of winning?!"
Asuna's expression was all challenge.
"Whatever you couldn't take on the battlefield, you don't get to take at a table. Does that not strike you as obvious?!"
Yamanaka Sawa pressed the advantage before the man could regroup:
"Anything you couldn't hold with your swords, you can't collect with your words. Try and keep up."
"You—you—"
The Kumogakure negotiator choked on his own fury. But he had no real answer. The war was lost. The empty threat of renewed conflict would only invite laughter.
Everyone in the room knew why the war had started. Everyone knew how much had been consumed getting here. The domestic situation in the Land of Lightning was not a secret.
"And let me be clear!"
Asuna stepped onto her chair, then all the way up onto the table.
"Not just reparations and an apology — a thousand ri north of the Frost Country snowline, that's Konoha's. All of it."
"Absolutely not!"
"That's past our border! Those are our people! And the mines—!"
"I don't want your people, I want your mines. Take the people with you when you leave."
The room had been running this way for a while.
Documents flying. Volume escalating. Both junior delegations essentially in open rhetorical warfare, while "Dodai" and Koharu sat with their tea and watched the proceedings without comment.
Both of them were waiting. Whoever spoke first put themselves at a disadvantage.
Sakura had been watching and revising her understanding of diplomatic process significantly.
She had come in expecting something closer to a chess match. What she was witnessing was more like two produce vendors at adjacent stalls who had each decided the other was encroaching.
The distinction, she realized, was straightforward: there was no personal risk. Both sides knew the other side couldn't do anything physical in this room. The backing of a thousand-man unit behind them removed whatever restraint might otherwise have applied.
Koharu made a quiet sound. Asuna, reading it immediately, stepped down from the table and sat.
"Let's not drag this out," she said, shifting into something closer to professional. "Here's what your war is going to cost you."
She slid the document across.
The Kumogakure negotiator read it.
And kept reading.
And his face did a variety of things.
Public apology from the Land of Lightning and Kumogakure. Five billion ryō in reparations. Full transfer of mission allocations from Frost Country, Hot Spring Country, and Rice Field Country. And — Kūra City under Konoha administration.
Kūra was Kumogakure's largest port. The city from which they'd launched this entire campaign. Geographically placed on high ground, with the rare flatlands of the eastern Lightning Country opening behind it — a hundred ninja holding Kūra could defend against a thousand.
Reparations. Territorial concession. Garrison rights. All three, in one document.
"This is completely out of the question!"
"Forget the five billion for now — Kūra is not negotiable! You're asking for permanent strike capacity on our homeland!"
"And you want us to garrison it on top of that?!"
"That's generally what happens," Yamanaka Sawa said pleasantly, "when you start a war and lose it."
He continued: "And this is just the land route. There are sea approaches we haven't discussed yet."
The threat was explicit. The math was simple. With the Raikage dead, the Two-Tails captured, the Eight-Tails as the sole remaining major combatant — Kumogakure had nothing left to counter a sustained Konoha push.
The Kumogakure negotiator looked at "Dodai."
"Dodai's" expression didn't change.
This is where I earn the character, Zetsu thought.
"Five billion is excessive. One billion."
"Kūra is off the table. Mission allocations — those we can discuss."
Mission allocations were primarily about controlling Kumogakure's operational reach. And compared to five billion ryō and a port city, they were the smaller concession. The daimyō could compensate for lost allocation income over time.
The Kumogakure delegation's relief was visible.
Dodai came in and cut two-thirds of the demand in one sentence.
Yamanaka Sawa and Asuna exchanged a glance and looked to Koharu. The senior negotiators were entering the room now — everything else had been positioning.
"War is what it is," Koharu said, slowly.
"Nations clash, people die, soldiers fight. When one side exhausts itself, the cost falls entirely on the defeated."
"Dodai. I don't think you need reminding of this."
"We haven't been fully defeated," "Dodai" replied. "There's still the will to fight."
"And if terms are too punishing, certain... complications might arise."
He held the line with the steadiness of someone who had spent decades in exactly these rooms.
Don't push a wolf so hard it has nothing left to lose. Koharu knew this principle. She'd learned it under the Second Hokage.
"Forty billion. Kūra. Half the mission allocations."
"Fifteen billion. Mission allocations in full."
Kūra was immovable for both sides. They circled it.
The room held for a moment.
Sakura was bored.
I could be home roasting sweet potatoes.
The only reason she was here was the possibility that talks would break down and someone would need to be hit, and the matter of Turtle Island.
"I'll propose something different."
Koharu's voice broke the quiet, some time after the cycle had stalled.
"We've heard Kumogakure keeps a tortoise — enormous, island-sized, with a waterfall on its back."
Killer Bee's eyes opened.
The killing intent was immediate and total — dense enough to physically press.
Koharu continued drinking her tea. She'd marched with the Second Hokage. She'd survived the Gold and Silver Brothers. Bee's intent, while impressive, was not the worst she'd experienced.
Jiraiya was already looking at Bee. Both their presences pressed against each other and the stone walls held it poorly.
Bee was in agony.
They know.
They went through his brother's mind and they know.
He wanted to kill every person in this room. He understood exactly what losing Turtle Island would mean.
He also understood what it would cost him to start fighting right now.
The Konoha unit waiting outside. Kakashi and the Kirigakure woman holding him while Sakura and Jiraiya were free to engage the rest. The arithmetic didn't work.
Hold.
"Zetsu" looked at Bee and signaled with a slight movement — settle.
"Excuse me. Momentary fatigue." Bee said it through closed teeth.
He sat still and didn't move.
Sakura was watching him. There was something that might have been disappointment in her expression.
You were so close.
"The tortoise is not transferable." "Dodai" shook his head.
"Put that idea aside."
CRACK.
An old hand hit stone.
"Kūra stays off the list. Fine. The tortoise, too. Fine."
"But if you think Konoha can be walked over—"
Koharu stood up from her seat.
"We are done here!"
"The battlefield is right outside!"
"As the old saying goes — those who understand the times are the ones who survive them!"
"Does Kumogakure not understand its situation?!"
The room registered surprise in varying degrees.
Sakura registered something closer to interest.
"Self-Awareness. Now!"
Koharu turned to her and Jiraiya.
"Secure the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki!"
The brass knuckles were on Sakura's hand before anyone could react.
"STOP."
Zetsu was out of the chair.
This girl was the problem. The old woman was clearly bluffing — the entire outburst was calculated escalation. But the pink-haired idiot didn't know how to read a bluff, or chose not to, and was physically about to—
Blue and pink chakra ignited on Sakura's fist. She swung at Bee.
At the same moment: Darui interposed with his sword. Jiraiya's hand closed around Sakura's wrist.
Bee didn't move. He sat there like a statue while Sakura's full-force punch stopped at Darui's blade — the cat-face impressions from the last time still visible on the metal.
The fist, the blade, Bee's face: one behind the other, separated by inches.
The room held itself completely still.
Jiraiya's expression was slightly pained.
He was ninety-five percent sure she'd understood Koharu perfectly. He was also ninety-five percent sure she'd done this deliberately.
"What are you stopping me for?" Sakura looked back at him. She blinked once, slowly. "Hit him?"
The implication was transparent.
Kumogakure is still negotiating in bad faith. Someone needs to remind them of the current situation. I'm happy to be that reminder.
Koharu, watching this, had raised a hand to her chest.
She did not want to be in the room if this erupted. But she kept her composure.
"It appears Konoha's younger generation is somewhat restless."
She sat back down.
"Kūra — we'll let it go. Turtle Island — we'll let that go too. But this negotiation is clearly not being conducted in good faith. We're leaving."
She moved to stand again.
"Wait."
Bee's voice.
"Kūra stays off the table. Turtle Island — you can have access. One year."
One year. He'd thought about it. Achieving a perfect jinchūriki state even with the Falls of Truth available was not something that happened quickly. The process required facing one's own inner darkness — and without a guide, without the framework an experienced predecessor could provide, it was close to impossible.
He himself had needed over a decade with Gyūki's full cooperation, his brother's guidance, and access to the Falls.
The previous Eight-Tails host had been unable to complete it even with the location available. That failure had ended in a rampage.
He was betting that one year wasn't enough for someone without support to finish what he'd spent over a decade building.
"One year?" Koharu's voice was blade-sharp. "Fifty."
"Three years. That is the absolute limit."
"Three years."
The sunglasses hid his eyes entirely.
Koharu studied that opaque surface for a long moment.
Nothing came back.
"Five years. Kumogakure publicly apologizes for the war. Reparations of two and a half billion. Full mission allocation rights transfer to Konoha."
"Agreed."
(Chapter End)
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