The Mizukage's office was a tomb of polished coral and damp sea-stone, perpetually chilled by the mist that coiled against its single, vast window overlooking the turbulent waters of the Nada Sea. The air was heavy with the scent of salt, old parchment, and the faint, metallic tang of blood that never truly left this village.
Hiroshi, the Third Mizukage, sat behind a desk carved from the fossilised jaw of some leviathan, his fingers steepled, his face a mask of impassive granite. The only light came from a single globular lamp filled with bioluminescent algae that cast a sickly, shifting green glow across the room.
"So," his voice was a low rumble, like distant waves crashing against a cliff face. "They are dead?"
Before him, Matsui, one of his most trusted intelligence operatives, stood at perfect attention. Her posture was rigid, but a faint tremor in her hands, which she kept clenched behind her back, betrayed her anxiety. She was a woman who dealt in facts and shadows, but delivering this particular news felt like handling live explosives.
"Yes, Mizukage-sama," she confirmed, her voice carefully neutral. "The entire squad. There were no survivors."
Hiroshi leaned back in his chair, the ancient whale bone groaning softly under his weight. The movement was slow, deliberate, giving no hint of the inferno that was igniting within him. Externally, he was the picture of calm leadership. Inwardly, he was a maelstrom of pure, incandescent rage. It was a cold, deep-burning fire that started in his gut and spread through his veins like poison.
It wasn't just the loss of life. Shinobi died; that was the unspoken contract of their existence. It was the specific, targeted nature of the loss. Among the dead were two of his Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. Yuji, a brash and fiercely loyal man who wielded the twin fangs of the Kiba blades with lightning-fast precision. And Honda Minako, the only kunoichi to ever master the Shibuki, the explosive-release sword, as well as Katsu, a tactical genius whose loss was a blow to the village's strategic mind as much as its combat strength.
These were not mere foot soldiers; they were pillars of Kiri's military might, symbols of its power, and they had been snapped like twigs.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Matsui dared not move, her eyes fixed on a point just past the Mizukage's shoulder.
Hiroshi's mind, sharp and calculating even through the rage, moved to the most critical piece. His voice, when it came again, was deceptively soft. "What about Ayame?"
Matsui's composure flickered. She swallowed, the sound audible in the tense quiet.
"The Sannins… they did not recover her body."
The inferno inside Hiroshi roared. The image that flashed in his mind was not one of battlefield death, but of capture. Of the Third Raikage, that lightning-wreathed monster, dragging the unconscious form of the Six-Tails Jinchuriki back to Kumogakure like a trophy. What would they do to her? Experiment on her? Extract the beast? The possibilities were nightmares made flesh.
Ayame wasn't just a weapon; she was a person. A friend. And the thought of her in the hands of that brute…
'He wouldn't have moved so boldly unless he was prepared for the consequences,' Hiroshi's thoughts raced, cold and strategic despite the fury.
'Taking a Jinchuriki is an act of war unlike any other. It means he's ready. He's preparing to unleash his own beasts. The Eight-Tails… and the Two-Tails. This isn't a skirmish; this is the beginning of an all-out biju war.'
His history with Ayame made the wound personal, which in turn made it a political vulnerability. They had been genin teammates, decades ago, three children learning to kill together in the bloody mists of Kiri's academy. That shared history had been the bedrock of his rule. Leading Kirigakure was not like leading other villages.
It was less a unified nation and more a precarious alliance of fractured, bloodthirsty factions—the clans, the hunters, the revolutionaries, all held together by a thread of fear and a Kage's strength. Ayame's loyalty, as a Jinchuriki and a former teammate, had been a key stone in that shaky foundation. Her loss wasn't just a military setback; it was a potential catalyst for internal collapse.
A darker, more paranoid thought surfaced, a necessary poison for a leader in his position.
"Could it be a ploy?" he mused aloud, his eyes narrowing.
"Konoha's Sannin were there. They 'rescued' the Uchiha boy. Could this be an elaborate ruse by Sarutobi to get his hands on the Six-Tails?"
Matsui, to her credit, didn't flinch at the implication. She was a rationalist. "Unlikely, Mizukage-sama," she replied, her voice firm. "Konoha's doctrine regarding their Jinchuriki is well-documented. They do not employ them as front-line weapons as we… or the other villages do. Sealing the beast into a new host without our knowledge would be an unimaginable risk for them, with little strategic gain. The Raikage's way of doing things is far more direct. This bears his signature."
Hiroshi knew she was right. The logic was sound. But the rage needed a target, and the convenient, duplicitous image of the Hokage was a tempting one. He let out a slow breath, the anger banked but not extinguished, a simmering volcano beneath a calm sea.
"And the Uzumaki boy?" Hiroshi asked, shifting the subject to another puzzle. "Renjiro. What of him?"
"He survived," Matsui reported. "According to the fragments of intelligence we've gathered from Konoha, the Sannin extracted him from the confrontation."
Hiroshi's eyebrows rose a fraction. "The Raikage attacked him and let him live? That is unlike him. He does not leave loose ends."
Matsui paused, choosing her next words with extreme care. "The reports are… unclear. It is possible that the presence of Jiraiya and Orochimaru served as a sufficient deterrent. The Raikage may have calculated that engaging two Sannin over a single jonin was not a tactical advantage."
Hiroshi fell silent for a long moment, his gaze turning inward, processing the variables. He slowly shook his head. "No," he murmured, a note of grim astonishment in his voice.
"You misunderstand. If the Raikage truly wanted that boy dead—and after such a confrontation, he absolutely would have—the presence of two Sannin would not have stopped him. He would have considered it a worthy trade: two Sannin and a future Kage-level threat eliminated, even at the cost of significant injury to himself." He leaned forward, the green light casting deep shadows across his face. "The only logical conclusion is that the boy was not a loose end the Raikage could easily tie up. Renjiro Uzumaki is now powerful enough that the Third Raikage, one of the strongest shinobi to ever live, would not dare take the risk… or perhaps, could not kill him before the Sannins' arrival."
The implication of his words landed in the room with the weight of a falling star. Matsui's eyes widened imperceptibly, her professional composure finally cracking.
'He's barely more than a teenager,' her mind raced, a silent scream against the Mizukage's cold logic. 'To force the Raikage into a calculation of risk… to be such a threat that even that monster hesitates… What kind of power has Konoha been cultivating?'
The image of the young Uzumaki she'd seen in briefing files was replaced by something far more terrifying and vast.
Hiroshi stared out the window at the roiling, grey sea, his expression unreadable. The silence stretched once more, filled now with a new and dreadful understanding.
"Still," he said, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, yet it carried through the room with absolute clarity, "our shinobi died. Ayame is lost… while Renjiro of Konoha survived."
The sentence hung in the air, a monument to injustice and shifting power dynamics. It was a statement of fact, but beneath it lay an ocean of bitterness and a stark assessment of the new world order.
He turned his head back to Matsui, the momentary vulnerability gone, replaced by the flinty resolve of a Kage who has just seen the board change irrevocably.
"Since the Raikage has made his move," Hiroshi stated, his voice once again the commanding rumble of the Mizukage, "we must make ours. Recall all long-range patrols and place the remaining Swordsmen on high alert. And prepare the containment corps." He held her gaze, his eyes like chips of obsidian.
"The Raikage has escalated this war to a new tier. Things are only going to get worse from this point. And Kirigakure will not be left behind."