Outside the Hidden Cloud Village.
Ohnoki and his delegation spotted the Leaf Anbu squad while they were still some distance off.
"Lord Tsuchikage." The squad captain stepped forward. "This way, please."
Ohnoki gave a small nod, and his group followed the four Anbu to the base of a nearby mountain.
"The Five Kage Summit will be held here," the captain said. "Please wait until nine o'clock."
"Here?" Ohnoki's brow furrowed. "There isn't so much as a place to sit."
"Lord Hokage's orders," the captain replied, perfectly level.
"This is an insult!" A Hidden Stone Jonin couldn't hold it in.
Hard to blame him, either.
There were no tables. No chairs. Just a flat patch of open ground — and not a drop of tea or water to go with it.
Were they expected to conduct a summit standing in a field?
Ohnoki shook his head. His own expression was far from pleasant, but when you're under someone else's roof, you keep your head down.
The four Anbu paid the outburst no mind at all, turned, and left.
A short while later, Pakura arrived with the Hidden Sand delegation.
"Lord Kazekage." Ohnoki considered it briefly, then went to meet her.
The enemy of my enemy. With the Hidden Leaf towering over all of them, the remaining four villages were natural allies now.
"Lord Tsuchikage," Pakura returned, her face composed.
"The Leaf really has gone too far with this." Chiyo looked around the empty field, plainly annoyed.
"The Leaf has the strength to do as it pleases," Ohnoki said with a sigh.
Chiyo had no answer to that. She caught the meaning underneath it, too.
Footsteps sounded. Mabui and the Hidden Cloud delegation were approaching.
Ohnoki, Chiyo, and the others watched them come, and what they felt was closer to pity than anything else.
Of the five great villages, none had been gutted like the Cloud. The Third Raikage, the Fourth, Blue B, Killer B — every name anyone recognized was dead, leaving a village full of unknowns. And the newly installed Raikage was a teenage girl.
A puppet, obviously.
The Hidden Mist arrived last, right on schedule, with Terumi Mei at the head.
Mei was young herself, but she outstripped Mabui in reputation and raw power alike. More to the point, the Mist had spent this war standing beside the Leaf. Compared to the Hidden Stone, they were sitting comfortably.
The delegations settled in to wait.
Nobody said it out loud, but resentment simmered in every one of them. The shinobi standing in that field were their villages' senior officials and finest Jonin, left to stand around in the dirt like day laborers.
Time crawled by.
The leaders of the smaller villages trickled in one by one. They didn't approach Ohnoki's group; by unspoken agreement they gathered a respectful distance away.
"What is this? Why are we holding a Five Kage Summit here?"
The complaint rang out across the field, and every head turned to find the source.
Jiraiya. And behind him, Yahiko, Nagato, and a contingent from the Hidden Rain.
"Natsuki-sensei must have a reason." Yahiko didn't understand it either, but he chose to trust.
"So mysterious," Jiraiya muttered, mouth twitching.
9:00 AM.
Natsuki arrived exactly on time, with Tsunade, Nawaki, Minato, Mikoto, and the rest.
"Welcome, everyone." He was all smiles.
"Lord Hokage." Ohnoki couldn't restrain himself. "Are we really holding the summit here?"
"Of course not." Natsuki shook his head. "Far too cramped. This won't do at all."
"Then... where?" Ohnoki blinked.
"There." Natsuki raised a hand and pointed at the mountain.
Like the Land of Earth, the Land of Lightning was mountain country. The peaks ran high, and high peaks drew lightning — hence the name.
"On the mountain?" Ohnoki was more baffled than before.
The thing hadn't been cleared in the slightest. It was a wall of trees and undergrowth. By no reading of the situation was it a venue.
Mei, Pakura, Tsunade — none of them followed either.
Natsuki crooked a finger, and Minazuki materialized in his grip.
Then chakra came surging out of the Black Holy Grail, endless and unrestrained. Since it had swallowed the Eight-Tails, its reserves might as well have been bottomless.
Natsuki lined up the mountain and swung.
A golden beam tore free of the blade — chakra compressed until it took on the visible shape of a sword, and the sword kept growing until it was larger than the mountain itself.
In one instant, the entire peak simply ceased to be, ground into dust.
The beam carried on without losing an ounce of momentum. Ridge after ridge flattened in its path, and when the light finally died, what stood before them was a freshly minted plain stretching thousands of meters into the distance.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
Every shinobi in that field was an elite Jonin at minimum, and more than a few were Kage-class. They had seen spectacle before. Some had watched Tailed Beasts go to war.
To a person, they knew that nothing they had ever witnessed came close to that single swing. Tailed Beast Bombs included.
A Tailed Beast Bomb could break a mountain and split the earth, certainly. But in reach and sheer output, that sword strike left it in the dust.
More than one mind went to the Valley of the End — the landmark carved out by Hashirama and Madara at the height of their duel.
This was that, in miniature.
It was a threat display, plain and simple. And not one person there could afford to dismiss it, because not one of them could have done it.
Even Uchiha Madara, watching from concealment, felt something cold move through him.
He'd seen Natsuki's Excalibur before. What he hadn't realized was that Natsuki had been holding back.
Matching that swing would take him at his absolute peak — and the Rinnegan on top of it.
"Konan." Natsuki sheathed Minazuki.
Konan moved at once, Anbu in tow.
A table went up in short order, with five chairs: one at the head, two flanking on either side. Below it, two more rows were arranged for the rest.
Natsuki sat down in the head chair without hesitation.
Ohnoki, Pakura, Mabui, and Mei shook themselves out of their stupor and took the remaining seats one after another. Their shinobi arrayed themselves behind them, and the leaders of the minor villages filled the rows below.
[You have awakened the Saint Imu Nerona template.]
Natsuki paused just as he was about to speak.
That name rang a bell.
Imu — from One Piece?
His mood picked up considerably.
Imu, the so-called King of the World. One of the founders of the World Government, its true architect, hidden away for centuries and unknown to the public at large.
On that basis alone, the trigger made perfect sense.
Natsuki was, at this exact moment, the king of the shinobi world — the hand behind all five great villages. And Ohnoki, Mei, Mabui, and every last one of them had no idea what he'd already done.
[Name: Saint Imu Nerona][Period: The Eight-Nation Revolution][World: One Piece][Rank: S]
[Ability 1: Immortality — UNLOCKED][Effect: A body that neither ages nor dies.]
[Ability 2: Devil Fruit — LOCKED][Effect: Transform into a demon, wield demonic aura, create pentagrams, and bind others through demonic contracts.][Unlock Condition: Defeat a non-human mastermind.]
[Ability 3: Sovereign Weapons — LOCKED][Effect: Wield the arms of the twenty sovereigns who founded the World Government, including the Heaven's Punishment Sword, Xingtian's Axe, and the Sea God's Sword.][Unlock Condition: Establish a Shinobi Village Alliance, install the Five Elders, and take your place as the power behind them.]
Natsuki's eyes lit up.
Only three abilities — and every single one of them broke the rules.
Ability 1: Immortality.
He'd already gained immortality once, when he awakened the Kibutsuji Muzan template. But that version had holes in it.
For one, fire. For another, if his five brains and seven hearts were destroyed and all one thousand eight hundred fragments of his body were wiped out simultaneously, the immortality broke.
The Imu version appeared to have no such caveats at all.
Ability 2: Devil Fruit.
The name alone promised something out of the ordinary, given that "Devil Fruit" was the umbrella term for the entire category.
In One Piece, Imu had displayed a whole spread of powers.
Transforming into a demon — capable of attacking directly or taking possession of others. Wielding demonic aura on top of that.
Creating pentagrams — usable as anchors for long-range teleportation, or for summoning those bound to him.
And that led to the third piece: the demonic contract.
Functionally similar to the blood curse from the Muzan template. It turned the target into a demon, granting enormous power and immortality, and left them able to use the pentagram network to teleport or be summoned.
There was a derived function as well — a forced conversion. Willing or not, the target got the contract.
Taken together, the demonic contract was a straight upgrade over the blood curse. Bigger power boost, no blood required, and it came with teleportation attached.
Unlock condition: defeat a non-human mastermind.
Natsuki's mind went immediately to Black Zetsu and Otsutsuki Kaguya.
Black Zetsu especially. That one qualified without question.
Ability 3: Sovereign Weapons.
Twenty sovereigns had founded the World Government, and Imu had been one of them. This granted access to the whole armory. Every weapon in it was catastrophic in its own right.
The unlock condition looked steep. For Natsuki, as of today, it was almost trivial.
"Let's begin," he said, returning to the moment. "First order of business. I intend to establish a Shinobi Village Alliance to preserve peace across the shinobi world by joint effort."
The words landed, and Konan, Yahiko, and Nagato lit up. Peace was the whole of their dream.
Jiraiya and Minato looked outright shocked.
Ohnoki and Mei, by contrast, had more or less braced for it. That Natsuki had called a summit at all meant he had no intention of erasing the other villages wholesale.
"The Sand agrees," Pakura said first.
Mei, Mabui, and Ohnoki followed in quick succession.
An alliance was a guarantee, after all — a written promise that the Leaf wouldn't annihilate them, and that their villages would continue to exist.
The minor villages joined without hesitation. In every previous world war, one careless step had been enough for the great villages to erase them.
"The Alliance will install Five Elders to handle day-to-day governance." Natsuki paused. "Each of the five great villages selects one."
No one saw a problem with that.
The four villages promptly nominated their own Kage.
The Five Elders would hold enormous authority. Outside of a Kage, nobody in any village was remotely suited to it.
"The Leaf's Elder will be Nawaki," Natsuki said, with a glance at Tsunade.
His original pick had been Tsunade herself. Knowing her temperament, he'd gone with Nawaki instead — which came to the same thing.
"Huh? Me?" Nawaki stood rooted to the spot.
Confusion rippled through the assembly. Everyone had assumed the Five Elders would simply be the five Kage.
Then most of them worked it out.
If the four Kage became Elders — where did that leave Natsuki, the Hokage?
Above them. Necessarily above them.
Which rewrote, in a single stroke, the old arrangement in which five Kage stood as equals.
Natsuki had a second motive, of course: Ability 3. Its condition required installing the Five Elders and standing behind them.
Imu had never been one of the Five Elders. Imu had been the one they answered to.
The same would be true here.
Ohnoki and the others reached that conclusion at roughly the same moment, and their expressions curdled. There was nothing to be done about it — furious, and in no position to say so, they swallowed it and moved on.
Nawaki, meanwhile, was still standing there in a daze until Tsunade raised an elbow and jabbed him in the ribs.
If Natsuki had handed the seat to her, she'd have turned it down flat. Handing it to Nawaki left her no easy way to refuse.
She knew what her brother's dream was. One of the Five Elders was, in a sense, half of it, already achieved. In the Leaf — in the entire shinobi world — he now stood one rung below the top and above everyone else.
The only downside was that the debt she owed Natsuki had just gotten considerably heavier.
"The Alliance won't operate like a hidden village." Natsuki looked to Konan. "The specifics are in the scrolls."
Konan gave a small nod and led the Anbu out to distribute copies to everyone present.
The reading began. It didn't take long for surprise and bewilderment to start spreading across the field.
Natsuki's design broke roughly into two halves.
Each village would retain whatever armed forces it genuinely needed. Every shinobi beyond that number would be redirected into production — into industry, into building things.
To Ohnoki and the rest, it read as lunacy.
They had no intention of refusing it, either. Because Natsuki had specified that all work would be compensated according to output.
Outside the Leaf, every one of the great villages was strapped for money. What this amounted to, from where they sat, was an enormous influx of missions. Missions of an unfamiliar sort, granted — ones that didn't require anyone to fight.
Only Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan could guess at what Natsuki was really doing, and only because the Hidden Rain and the Land of Rain had been running this model for years.
Shinobi take missions for money.
Give them enough money, and there's no reason left to start a war.
Combat missions had always paid poorly. What Natsuki was offering paid well and came in volume — more volume, in all likelihood, than the villages could absorb any time soon.
And there was one more objective, naturally.
Make the other villages economically dependent on the Hidden Leaf.
Given enough time, the way the average shinobi thought about the world would change on its own.