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"As a front commander, do you have any understanding of what is happening right now?"
Danzo's composure, the quality that most defined how the shinobi world perceived him, was absent from his voice. The jonins gathered at the command post lowered their heads and absorbed it without attempting to defend themselves. The shame of the situation was sufficient that even the most senior among them did not feel the objection was worth raising.
Namikaze Minato, who had assumed command of the front lines after Jiraiya was wounded, had simply vanished.
The reason required no investigation. It was obvious to anyone willing to think about it for a single moment. Love. The jinchūriki had arrived at the front and Minato had stopped being a commander and started being a husband, and the front had been left to manage itself during one of the most critical stretches of the entire war.
Even Nara Shikaku, who had arrived with Danzo's column and received the briefing on the situation, could not restrain the long heavy exhale and the hand that moved to cover his face. He understood Minato. He did not excuse Minato. There was a specific type of exhaustion that came from watching brilliant people make entirely predictable mistakes at the worst possible moment.
Kushina had not helped matters by being here at all.
"Strip Namikaze Minato of all ranks and positions," Danzo said. His voice had returned to its usual register, which was somehow more serious than the roar had been. "Upon his return, he is to be imprisoned in Konoha's detention facility. The jinchūriki alongside him. Let them enjoy their reunion there."
The eyelids of every jonin in the room twitched in near unison.
........
"Danzo-sama." The first voice to speak was careful but present. "Namikaze Minato committed a serious offense. No one disputes this. But we are at war, and he is the only shinobi on this front capable of matching the Third Raikage's movement speed. Stripping him now, before the front stabilizes, will cost us lives we cannot replace."
"The jinchūriki's presence at the front is arguably not a violation," another voice added. "Kumogakure deployed A and B together. Her chakra capacity is a legitimate military asset."
Murmurs of agreement moved through the room. The troops in the Lightning Country front had formed under Jiraiya's command, and most of the jonins here maintained stronger loyalty to the Hokage's faction than to Danzo's. The severity of the proposed punishment had reached a threshold where even people who would normally stay silent found themselves unable to.
"If the Will of Fire had any presence in Namikaze Minato's mind," Danzo said, "he would not have abandoned his comrades for a woman's feelings." He let the pause that followed carry its own weight. "Like teacher, like student."
Jiraiya, who had been gathering himself to speak, closed his mouth.
The parallel was uncomfortable precisely because it was accurate. During the Second Great Shinobi War, at the height of the fighting, Jiraiya had departed the village for three years to care for three orphaned children in the Land of Rain. By the measure of human feeling, the act was genuinely noble. By the measure of military obligation, it was a desertion with better intentions than most.
He had no ground to stand on here, and he knew it.
........
"Danzo-sama." Nara Shikaku's voice carried the particular quality it always carried, the flatness of a mind that had already processed the emotional content of a situation and moved past it to what was actually useful. "The immediate concern is ensuring Kumogakure does not notice anything is wrong. If they realize the command structure has fractured, Minato and the jinchūriki become vulnerable targets rather than an embarrassment."
Danzo sat down.
His gaze moved to Jiraiya, who looked pale and thinner than the last time they had shared a battlefield, the cost of the wounds and the Hermit Mode's aftermath still visible in the lines of his face. Whatever else this man was, whatever failures of judgment had marked his career, the technique he carried was not a small thing.
Danzo had fought beside Jiraiya against the Third Raikage and had experienced directly what Hermit Mode produced. The physical characteristics, the chakra capacity, the regeneration rate, the speed and reaction time, everything increased to a degree that transformed the least militarily disciplined of the Sannin into something approaching Sarutobi Hiruzen's level of universal combat capability. Only the First Hokage had previously possessed a technique of equivalent natural amplification.
The first Hermit Mode engagement against the Third Raikage had cost Danzo his right eye and left Jiraiya barely standing.
"Report the battlefield situation," Danzo said.
........
Jiraiya gathered himself.
"Limited intelligence from the last forty-eight hours. The Third Raikage is commanding the main front personally, advancing with his bodyguard formation, steady rather than aggressive but consistently forward. A and B are operating against our supply lines in rotation, which is creating cumulative pressure on the rear. While Minato was holding the line we maintained equilibrium, but after my wounds forced me to pull back and Minato moved to cover the front directly, the situation degraded substantially."
He paused.
"If Akimichi Chōza's supply column had not arrived ahead of schedule, the front line would already have been pushed back to the border of the Land of Fire."
Danzo was quiet for a moment, tracing the cross-shaped scar on his chin with one finger.
"The absolute limit is the Land of Hot Springs," he said. "The front does not move into the Land of Fire under any circumstances. That is the Daimyo's highest standing order."
The small nations caught between great powers always paid the price that the great powers found it inconvenient to pay themselves. It was one of the few consistent laws of the shinobi world.
The Land of Hot Springs and the Land of Frost occupied the corridor between Fire and Lightning. The Frost Country had always leaned toward Kumogakure. Hot Springs had maintained its relationships with the Land of Water. At the war's opening, before the front could be established on Fire Country soil, Danzo had moved forces into Hot Springs and pushed the contact line there, keeping the fighting off Konoha's own territory.
The Hot Springs Daimyo had been escorted, with firm courtesy, to a long-term residency in the Land of Water. Faced with the personal attention of Shinobi's Darkness, the Daimyo had found that requesting political asylum was the most comfortable available option.
........
"A and B working in combination is a manageable problem," Shikaku said. He had been building the picture in his mind since the briefing began, placing pieces against each other and rotating them until the shape of the situation became clear. "The central issue is the Raikage's advance on the main front. Everything else is secondary to stopping that movement."
"Danzo-sama." A woman in a white mask and blonde hair spoke from the edge of the room, her voice carrying the particular calm of someone delivering information they have already assessed for reliability. "According to my source, Iwagakure has assembled thirty thousand ninja along the borders of the Land of Waterfalls, the Land of Grass, and the Land of Rain. The Third Tsuchikage is commanding the formation personally."
The room changed.
Shikaku stood up. The movement was controlled but immediate.
"How reliable is this source?"
"The best I have."
Danzo looked at the masked woman for a moment.
"Wandering Miko," Shikaku said, and something in his voice shifted from skepticism toward the specific quality of a brilliant strategist who has just received a piece of information that reorganizes everything. "If the source is her, the information is reliable." He was already moving through it, the calculations running in parallel with his speech. "Thirty thousand under Ōnoki's personal command. Konoha can field perhaps ten thousand at this moment. Combined with Kumogakure's current strength that is comparable to the full military capacity of both Fire and Lightning combined."
He began to lay the shape of it out.
"Waterfalls, Grass, Rain. All of them border both Konoha and Iwagakure. The truce Ōnoki proposed was not genuine de-escalation. It was a diagnostic, a way of testing whether Konoha would lower its guard, and a way of extending and deepening the conflict between Konoha and Kumogakure before he committed his own forces. Iwagakure has already absorbed most of the Wind Country's valuable territories. It was not enough. It is never enough for him." He paused. "He is waiting for either Konoha or Kumogakure to show weakness before he moves."
........
Danzo rose.
The icy calm in his eyes was the expression of a man who has seen the shape of the board clearly and has already decided what his next move is.
"Ōnoki has thirty thousand shinobi," he said. "Konoha has me. Hiruzen. Orochimaru. Jiraiya. Tsunade. And the criminal Namikaze Minato, currently indisposed. Even with a thousand shinobi at his back, Ōnoki does not have the courage to engage us in open war directly. His target has never been Konoha."
He looked at Shikaku.
Shikaku's eyes were already bright.
"The Land of Lightning," the strategist said, the plan arriving in his voice with the particular clarity of something that had been partially assembled and just received its final piece. "If the Third Raikage is eliminated, A and B are too inexperienced and too newly established to resist Ōnoki's tactical patience. The Tsuchikage's actual objective is Kumogakure's collapse." He let the full shape of it settle. "We must force the Raikage to retreat. Make him understand concretely that continuing to press Konoha leads only to his own death. When he withdraws from the Land of Hot Springs, he will move toward the Land of Rice Fields, and from there toward the Land of Waterfalls."
The room was completely silent.
"Where Iwagakure is waiting for him," Shikaku said, "and where we will have positioned ourselves to control the outcome of what happens next."