"Knock!"
"Knock!"
"Knock!"
A brisk, decisive Knokc shattered the oppressive quiet in the Tsuchikage's office. Onoki didn't startle. His knuckle stopped its tapping.
"Enter," he commanded, his voice gravelly but carrying the accustomed weight of authority.
The heavy stone door swung open revealing a figure who seemed carved from the same enduring granite as Iwa itself. Inugami, Head of Iwagakure's Intelligence Division – Onoki's shadow, his strategist, his most trusted blade and pillar.
He was indeed well in his years, perhaps a year or two younger than Onoki, but time had sculpted him differently. Where Onoki was compact, Inugami possessed a wiry, coiled strength.
He stood tall and lean, like a weather-beaten cedar clinging stubbornly to a cliff face. His eyes, however, were his most striking feature – a pale, almost lupine yellow, sharp and utterly devoid of warmth, constantly scanning, assessing, missing nothing. They were the eyes of a predator who had survived countless hunts.
This was the man outsiders might whisper of as Onoki's 'Danzo', the master of secrets, the wielder of Iwa's darker necessities. But the comparison ended there. Where Shimura Danzo was a coiled Viator of ambition operating in the shadows against his Kage, Inugami was a pillar beneath his.
They had been genin squadmates, scraping knees and learning the brutal calculus of survival on the same unforgiving training grounds. They had fought shoulder-to-shoulder through the horrific meat grinders of the First and Second Great Shinobi Wars.
There existed no one alive in Iwagakure, perhaps in the entire world, who knew Onoki's mind, his burdens, his ruthlessness, and his deep, often-buried vulnerabilities, as intimately as Inugami Hakumei.
Inugami stepped fully into the room, he moved with a silent and economical grace that belied his years. He stopped precisely three paces before the desk, his posture rigidly respectful yet lacking any trace of subservience.
"Tsuchikage-sama," he greeted.
Onoki didn't return the greeting verbally. He simply raised his head, his own eyes meeting Inugami's. He held the gaze for a beat, and then his lips barely moved as he breathed, "Leave."
The effect was instantaneous and utterly silent. One moment, the shadows in the corners seemed merely deep. The next, they shifted. Not with movement, but with a sudden, profound absence. Four ANBU operatives had simultaneously employed high-level concealment and Body Flicker techniques, vanishing without a whisper of displaced air, leaving behind only the profound stillness of genuine privacy.
Inugami's sharp eyes narrowed. The dismissal of the ANBU wasn't standard procedure, even for private briefings.
His gaze snapped back to Onoki, the furrows on his brow deepening into crevices. The respectful formality dropped, replaced by the blunt familiarity forged in decades of shared fire.
"Alright," he rasped, "What's crawled up the mountain and died in your water supply? That level of clearance…" He trailed off, his predatory gaze fixed unblinkingly on Onoki's face, "What's wrong?"
Onoki didn't answer immediately. He leaned back in his imposing stone chair his small frame looking almost swallowed by it.
Finally, a long, slow sigh escaped him.
"It's Gani."
Inugami's posture didn't change, but his eyes widened a fraction.
"Gani? What about her?" His voice was carefully neutral.
Onoki dragged his gaze back to his old friend. "She returned this morning. From Suna." He paused, "The mission… successful. Flawless, according to her report. Precise, efficient. Exactly as ordered."
Inugami waited, sensing the 'but' hanging heavy in the air.
"But the problem…" Onoki continued, "It was her, Inugami."
He met Inugami's gaze directly, "I believe… I fear… my daughter is under someone's genjutsu."
The silence that followed was deafening. Inugami didn't flinch, didn't gasp. But the air around him seemed to crackle with sudden, suppressed energy.
"Genjutsu?"
The word was a venomous hiss, sharp enough to cut the thick air. His lean frame seemed to coil tighter, every muscle taut with sudden, dangerous alertness.
"Gani? Under a genjutsu powerful enough to fool you? Here?"
The incredulity in his rasp was layered over a bedrock of cold, rising fury. The implications were staggering.
"Wasn't she just on a mission in Sunagakure?" Inugami pressed, his mind already racing through possibilities, discarding them as quickly as they formed.
Onoki gave a single, grim nod. "She was. She returned recently. The report was delivered within the hour of her arrival."
He tapped the obsidian surface, "The timing… the nature of the discrepancy… it points there. To Suna."
Inugami's lips thinned into a bloodless line. "Suna?" he echoed, scepticism thick in his tone.
"The Kazekage needs our alliance. Needs our strength against Konoha and Kiri. Sabotaging that by placing the Tsuchikage's daughter under genjutsu? It's madness. Counterproductive. They gain nothing but our immediate, overwhelming wrath."
He stopped pacing, turning to face Onoki fully, "Unless they're counting on us not discovering it. Their hatred for the Stone began long before we drew our first breaths. To think they'd simply set it aside now, embrace us as brothers-in-arms without some hidden blade aimed at our spine…" He shook his head sharply.
"It defies their entire history. Their nature."
Inugami was right. Suna's desperation for an alliance didn't erase centuries of blood-soaked rivalry, betrayal, and mutual suspicion. The Kazekage, Satetsu… a man known for ruthless pragmatism. Was desperation making him reckless? Or was this calculated audacity?
'Could Satetsu be that subtle? That brazen? To infiltrate the very heart of Iwa, to compromise my own child?' Onoki's mind raced.
'He knows my power. He knows the cost of discovery. War with Iwa would obliterate Suna in its current state. Is he gambling everything on this? Or… is he arrogant enough to believe his puppeteer could fool me indefinitely?' His fist clenched on the desk forcing it to groan faintly under the pressure.
He forced the rage down, locking it behind the stern mask of the Kage. "You speak the truth, Inugami," he conceded, "Satetsu is many things, but a fool he is not. Such an overt act, if discovered… and it would be discovered eventually… would shatter any hope of alliance and invite annihilation. It seems… disproportionate. Uncharacteristically crude for a man who plays the long game."
Inugami gave a curt nod, "Perhaps. But crude or not, the possibility cannot be ignored. Suna's desperation could breed recklessness. Or," his eyes narrowed further, "it could be a feint within a feint. Make us think it's Suna, while the true puppeteer watches from another shadow."
He stepped closer to the desk, "But speculating on the who is a luxury we may not have time for, Old Man. The immediate question is the what. What do you require of me?"
Onoki met his gaze, "I need you to look at her, Inugami. Not just look. See. Use your Eye."
Inugami's eyes were a unique, kekkei genkai-derived sensory technique passed down in Inugami's bloodline, rumoured to pierce illusions and perceive the true flow of chakra with unsettling clarity.
It was one of Iwa's most guarded secrets, rarely deployed outside of absolute necessity.
Inugami didn't hesitate. "Consider it done."
He straightened up, but his intense gaze never wavered. "And if our fears… are confirmed?"
The question hung in the air, heavy as a tombstone.
"If Gani is compromised? What then, Onoki?"
The Tsuchikage froze. The political ramifications were a wildfire. The personal cost… it was an abyss he dared not peer into. The mask of the Kage threatened to shatter completely.
He opened his mouth, the words forming slowly, painfully, in his throat…
"FWOOSH!"
The sudden displacement of air was violent. An Iwa ANBU operative materialized in a blur of grey and white porcelain mask – a Badger design – kneeling rigidly on the stone floor midway between the door and Onoki's desk.
The abrupt intrusion shattered the suffocating intimacy of the moment like a hammer blow.
Onoki's head snapped up, the paternal anguish instantly buried beneath a surge of Kage authority, his eyes sharp and dangerous.
"Report!" His voice was a whip-crack.
The ANBU operative remained kneeling, "Tsuchikage-sama! Forgive the intrusion! Priority report just received via messenger hawk!" He paused, "A distribution village…"
A cold dread began to coil in Onoki's gut.
The ANBU's next words dropped like stones into the silent room, each one a hammer blow:
"It's gone, Tsuchikage-sama. Utterly destroyed. No survivors were reported."