Chapter 256: A Nameless Person
Jiraiya stared up at the Hokage — the focal point of every gaze in the desert — his expression genuinely difficult to read.
This is...
What exactly is she doing?
Is Sakura deliberately stirring up everyone's hatred?
Jiraiya had to admit — the goal of rallying the army's morale had technically been achieved.
But this was so far removed from what he'd imagined, it barely resembled the same idea at all.
Wasn't unifying an army's spirit supposed to look like everyone coming together in harmony — talking about peace, about a shared better future, everyone setting aside their old grievances and standing together happily?
Right now, all Jiraiya could see was twenty thousand shinobi burning with pure, unfiltered hatred, seething with resentment over old grudges — and if anything, the fire and cold fury in more than a few of their eyes had only grown more intense.
The only real difference was that their hatred had been redirected.
Their target now was the Hokage on that platform, and the incoming army of Mōryō.
"Lord Hokage's..."
Ōnoki, watching the same thunderous, roaring crowd, let out an inward sigh.
He hadn't expected her choice here at all.
But considering her usual habits, he supposed it made a certain amount of sense, in hindsight.
As for whether anyone might try to kill her over this?
Please. Not a chance.
As far as Ōnoki knew, this Hokage's medical ninjutsu rivaled Tsunade's own — and there was solid, confirmed intelligence that she'd once been run clean through by Obito Uchiha on the battlefield and had gotten right back up, none the worse for it.
Still, watching that mass of roused, furious shinobi below, Ōnoki couldn't shake a faint, nagging sense that something wasn't quite right.
He just couldn't put his finger on exactly what.
"Well then. Morale's usable now, at least."
Gaara, watching quietly as a single speech turned every heart in the assembled army, couldn't help feeling a flicker of admiration.
She'd killed his father, sure — but this wasn't the moment to dwell on that.
Mōryō was the immediate priority. Gaara understood exactly where his priorities needed to be right now.
At that moment, no one noticed that Tsuchidai — who'd been quietly observing everything from a distance — had vanished from sight entirely.
Black Zetsu, having lived for a thousand years, had, for the first and only time, sensed something new.
A new ideology had just been born.
Born here, in a shinobi world where the concept of class had lain buried, unquestioned, for a thousand years.
Are kings and generals born of noble blood?
Black Zetsu didn't know that particular phrase, but he'd landed close enough to the same idea.
He believed he now understood exactly what this Hokage was after.
No.
He both understood it, and he didn't.
He understood her ideology, the shape of her goal — but he didn't fully grasp what it would mean, the first time an idea like this actually revealed its true power.
And at the same time, so much else about the Land of Fire suddenly made perfect sense.
The previous Daimyo dying inexplicably amid the Seven-Tails incident.
The current Daimyo now permanently residing inside Konoha itself.
The nobility of the Land of Fire gathering, in significant numbers, at the Fire Temple.
Piece by piece, everything clicked into place at once.
Black Zetsu decided this Hokage was worth reaching out to.
After all, Nagato's original goal — gathering the nine tailed beasts to build a weapon terrible enough to force peace on the shinobi world through sheer terror — wasn't so different in spirit from whatever this Hokage was building toward.
If he could talk his way into an alliance with her, so much the better.
That would produce the single most favorable outcome imaginable.
The world's most violent, most feared organization's leader would become his sharpest possible weapon.
One that could clear every obstacle in the path of resurrecting his mother — Kaguya Ōtsutsuki.
And even if no alliance ever materialized, simply exposing this Hokage's actions to the world would be enough to strike straight at the nerve endings of every noble across the shinobi world.
That entrenched aristocracy would never allow a "rebellious Hokage" like this to keep living.
At which point the entire shinobi world would rise against her in unison!
Sakura would never have guessed that the person who understood her most clearly wasn't Sasuke standing beside her, wasn't Kakashi, wasn't anyone close to her at all.
It was Black Zetsu — her enemy.
Then again, that only confirmed an old saying.
The people who truly understand you best are rarely your friends. More often, they're your enemies.
—
Night
The temperature swings across the desert were brutal — forty, fifty degrees Celsius during the day, dropping well below freezing by night.
Sakura sat wrapped in a heavy cloak inside the central command tent, warming herself by the fire, flanked by Ōnoki, Killer Bee, Gaara, and Utakata.
"With morale settled for now, all that's left is waiting for Mōryō's army to arrive and completing the prisoner exchange."
"Then we find some way to hold onto Shion afterward."
Gaara, noticeably more at ease than he'd been earlier in the day, spoke up.
"We could consider using Flying Thunder God to extract her during the exchange itself."
Utakata suggested.
"That's not really an option."
"Mōryō already sensed the Flying Thunder God marker on Tsuchidai earlier. And according to Deidara's report, this man can absorb chakra directly."
"It's hard not to worry that the marker itself might just get absorbed the moment we try to use it against him."
"We can't afford a failure on this."
Killer Bee shook his head.
"Hokage. What's your take?"
Ōnoki turned to the pink-haired girl currently flipping sweet potatoes buried in the campfire coals.
"I'm using my eyes."
Sakura said nothing more, entirely absorbed in turning the potatoes.
Lord Hokage, what's your take. Lord Hokage, what's your take.
At this rate she was going to start feeling like some kind of oracle they consulted for every decision.
"Then let's assign ten jōnin to handle it — they strike the moment the exchange happens."
By now, Ōnoki had gotten a decent read on this Hokage's temperament.
Flighty and casual most of the time, but reliable when it actually mattered.
Listening to Ōnoki's proposal, Killer Bee nodded along without asking why they weren't sending their strongest fighters, and without questioning why the Kage themselves wouldn't handle it personally.
Frankly, powerful, renowned shinobi were, by definition, well-known. And by now, no one in the tent doubted that Mōryō had already gathered plenty of intelligence on the shinobi world.
Information on the strongest fighters was easy to come by.
Let alone information on the five Kage themselves.
If any of them personally handled the prisoner exchange, it might as well come with "this is a trap" written across their foreheads.
"It's getting late."
Gaara said quietly, looking out at the ink-black night beyond the tent flap.
"Based on the terracotta army's marching pace, they'll likely arrive around noon, the day after tomorrow."
Ōnoki had already calculated Mōryō's march timeline precisely.
Sakura peeled back the charred outer skin of a sweet potato, revealing the golden, steaming flesh beneath, blew on it lightly, and took a small bite.
Sweet, soft warmth burst across her tongue, and she couldn't help but narrow her eyes contentedly.
Perhaps noticing how absorbed Sakura seemed in her snack, Gaara glanced at the remaining sweet potatoes still in the coals, reaching for one — only for Sakura to speak up suddenly.
"Don't touch those."
"Been poisoned. Don't say I didn't warn you."
Gaara's hand froze mid-air.
Poisoned?
"Those little brats!"
"They actually went and poisoned it!"
Ōnoki's mind connected the dots instantly, and he shot to his feet, storming furiously out to go confront whoever ran the mess kitchen.
Everyone in the tent, Sakura included, watched him go without a word.
Just as Ōnoki reached the tent flap, he suddenly bent double, one hand clutching at his lower back, his face contorted in pain.
"Ohh, my old back's acting up again."
"Quick, quick, Lord Kazekage, come help this old man out."
Gaara's mouth twitched, but he said nothing, playing along with Ōnoki's obvious performance.
Someone below poisoning the Hokage — that was literally something the Hokage herself had explicitly invited earlier, in front of everyone.
If Ōnoki now went and actually punished whoever had done it, the morale so carefully forged that afternoon would collapse instantly.
Ōnoki, old as he was, wasn't stupid enough not to know that — he was simply putting on a bit of theater to smooth things over quietly.
More than Ōnoki's performance, though, Gaara found himself more concerned with the pink-haired girl still calmly gnawing on her sweet potato.
Is that really safe to just... eat like that?
"Sweet-potato-flavored sweet potato — want to try one, old man?"
Sakura tossed the peel she'd finished into the fire and rolled another sweet potato out of the coals, offering it toward Ōnoki.
Sweet-potato-flavored sweet potato?
More like poison-flavored poison, surely.
"I'll pass. This old man's not fortunate enough to deserve it — enjoy, Hokage."
Ōnoki rubbed at his lower back, wearing an expression of pure resigned helplessness.
Whatever had convinced those below to go through with actually poisoning their own Hokage, it couldn't have been an ordinary poison.
Shinobi-grade poisons typically killed on contact — enough to drop a full-grown boar instantly.
And yet this Hokage was eating it like it was nothing, clearly unaffected. Her medical ninjutsu had apparently reached a point of near-total immunity to poison altogether.
Genuinely, deeply enviable, that.
—
Exactly as Ōnoki had predicted, at noon the following day, Mōryō's army finally reached the vast desert.
At the far edge of vision, a dark, oppressive mass stretched across the horizon, like a black storm cloud slowly rolling toward them.
Feeling the faint tremor of the sand beneath his feet, Gaara couldn't help but swallow hard.
Their enemy's numbers outstripped their own roughly fivefold.
Fortunately, despite their overwhelming numbers, the terracotta army was slow-moving and limited to a single fighting style — their own side's superior shinobi mobility gave them a fighting chance.
"They're here."
Killer Bee, in full battle gear, seven ninja swords strapped across his back, watched the slowly advancing army through his sunglasses, expression grave.
Ōnoki said nothing, equally grave, watching that terracotta host approach.
Matching the darkness looming on the horizon, the desert sky had — for once — lost its usual brutal sun. Heavy clouds rolled overhead instead, thick and ominous, as if a violent storm might break loose at any moment.
Under that grim atmosphere, even the wind against bare skin carried an unmistakable chill.
Minute by minute, second by second.
As time crawled forward, the tremor beneath their feet grew steadily clearer, until finally, the enemy stood directly before the assembled shinobi coalition.
In that moment, the full form of Mōryō's army was revealed to everyone at once.
Every single soldier, built entirely from stone.
Swordsmen with shields, spearmen, archers — and among them, even the silhouettes of what looked like cavalry.
Even Sakura, seeing a force of a hundred thousand for the first time in her own life, couldn't help but feel a genuine flicker of awe.
But that flicker faded quickly, replaced almost immediately by something closer to mild disdain.
No wonder.
Every single one of them was short.
The tallest of them barely cleared five foot seven.
"Shinobi."
The terracotta host came to a halt before the twenty-one-thousand-five-hundred-strong shinobi formation, and a voice rang out from somewhere within their ranks.
Not loud — and yet it reached every single ear present.
"I am Mōryō."
"Lord of demons, a thousand years past."
"Now, returned once more to this world. I offer you all a chance to surrender immediately, and spare yourselves an unnecessary death."
The voice was low, weighted with an unmistakable ancientness — clearly, Mōryō himself was the one speaking.
"Where are our people."
Killer Bee had no interest in exchanging further words, cutting straight to it.
"Heh. Since you refuse to know your place, I will send you all to your final rest instead."
With those words, Mōryō fell silent, and from within the stone ranks, three stone carts were slowly rolled forward, each escorted by a white-robed figure.
Clearly, these were the three subordinates of Mōryō that Deidara's intelligence had described — each carrying some measure of real strength.
Atop the carts sat Kakashi and the other two, weighed down with stone shackles, each looking visibly weakened.
At the same moment, a gap opened in the shinobi formation as well, and a squad of ten jōnin escorted a girl in ornate robes forward.
"The Shrine Maiden is here."
The squad's leader spoke, calm.
"Three. Send three men to escort the Shrine Maiden forward."
The lone woman among the three white-robed figures called out.
The lead shinobi's brow furrowed slightly at that, glancing back toward the five Kage at the center of the formation.
Receiving a confirming nod, seven of the ten jōnin quietly withdrew back into the ranks.
"Release their bindings."
The lead shinobi stepped forward, offering a condition of his own.
The three white-robed figures paused a moment at that, then released Kakashi and the other two from their restraints.
"Move forward!"
The shinobi called out again.
The moment those words left his mouth, the entire shinobi formation erupted in unison:
"MOVE FORWARD!"
"MOVE FORWARD!"
"MOVE FORWARD!"
Twenty thousand voices, shouting as one, deafening, thundering straight up into the sky — and the three white-robed figures visibly paled at the sudden roar.
That single, unexpected moment instantly elevated the coalition's presence by an entire order of magnitude!
"Heh. Just like humans, a thousand years ago."
"Leaning on tricks like this to bolster their own confidence — it only proves how weak they truly are."
"Only the weak ever need to bolster their confidence."
Seated atop his position amid the terracotta army, Mōryō gave a cold laugh, entirely unbothered.
Beneath that heavy, clouded sky, both armies stood facing each other across the vast desert, every eye fixed on the small handful of figures slowly closing the distance at the center.
Kakashi watched the figures approaching from the opposite side, letting out an inward sigh.
But right now, there was absolutely nothing he could do about any of it.
Closer. Closer. Closer...
The two groups exchanging prisoners drew nearer, step by step.
An almost imperceptible flash of crimson flickered through the lead shinobi's eyes.
Famous shinobi make for easy intelligence targets?
Then simply use shinobi with no reputation at all.
Hikaru Uchiha had only been dug back up out of her own grave three years ago.
And in all that time since, she hadn't been sent on a single official mission — she'd spent the entire span quietly training Sasuke inside Konoha.
The most recent time she'd taken any action at all had only been during the Five Kage Summit, just days ago.
Perhaps, centuries ago, Hikaru Uchiha's name had once carried real weight across the shinobi world.
But right now, in the present day, Hikaru Uchiha was, functionally, a complete unknown.
No one had any real idea what her true strength actually was.
Which meant, of course, that she had zero reputation to speak of at all.
With the two groups now less than ten meters apart, Hikaru raised a hand, signaling the approaching party to halt.
Ten meters.
To her, that distance was next to nothing.
"Shrine Maiden. Go."
Hikaru spoke, calm.
At her words, Shion's body trembled, but she nonetheless began walking, one step at a time, across the sand toward the other side.
Meanwhile, Kakashi and the other two, at the white-robed figures' signal, began walking toward the shinobi coalition in turn.
A cold, biting wind swept across that grim, boundless desert...
And just as Kakashi and the others crossed paths with Shion, passing each other in the middle—
Hikaru Uchiha...
Moved...
(End of chapter)
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