The news of the Raikage's assault on the Kiri team and his confrontation with Renjiro did not travel by bird or messenger and did not only reach the Mizukage. It travelled through the earth itself, a seismic tremor of chakra and consequence that reverberated through the offices of the other Kages, shaking the very foundations of their war strategies.
In the heart of Sunagakure, buried deep within the wind-scoured mesa, the office of the Third Kazekage was a bastion of dry, controlled heat. The air smelled of sun-baked clay, old scrolls, and the faint, metallic scent of his unique Iron Sand, which lay dormant in a large, sealed urn in the corner. Saitetsu had long returned and now stood before a massive map of the Elemental Nations, his fingers tracing supply lines and front positions.
Opposite him, Rasa, his face grim, had just finished his report, the words hanging in the air like a bad omen.
"He did what?"
Saitetsu's voice was a low, dangerous rasp, like sand grinding against stone. He wasn't a man given to outbursts; his power was a silent, oppressive thing. But this… this was idiocy on a monumental scale.
"He engaged a Kiri extraction team personally," Rasa repeated, his tone neutral, though his eyes held a flicker of shared frustration.
"He captured their Jinchuriki and killed two of their Seven Swordsmen. He also… confronted the Konoha operative, Renjiro Uzumaki."
Saitetsu turned from the map, his eyes, sharp and flinty, fixing on Rasa. "The fool. The reckless, muscle-bound fool!" He slammed a fist on the table, not in rage, but in pure, exasperated disgust.
"We have the numbers. We have the momentum. We could have chipped away at both Kiri and Konoha, drained their resources, stretched their lines thin. It was a war of attrition, and we were winning it! This… this is a sledgehammer to a chessboard."
He began pacing, his movements stiff with contained fury. "He's escalated a border conflict into a fight for survival. They will respond in kind. Jinchurikis will be unleashed. Kages will take the field. The death toll will be catastrophic." He stopped, his decision made.
"There's no more slow grind."
He strode towards the heavy, reinforced door of his office. "Where are you going, Kazekage-sama?" Rasa asked, a note of concern in his voice.
Saitetsu didn't look back. "To the front. To end this war before the Raikage's stupidity drags the entire continent into a biju-fueled apocalypse."
Rasa moved swiftly, not to block him, but to intercept, holding up a sealed scroll with a distinctive lightning-bolt wax seal. "A moment. This arrived just before my report. From Kumo."
Saitetsu froze, his hand on the door handle. He turned slowly, his eyes narrowing at the scroll. The Raikage wasn't just acting; he was communicating. That changed things. He took the scroll, his mind already recalculating. The fool was bold, but perhaps not entirely without a plan. The question was, what kind of plan demanded such a violent overture?
=====
High above the rocky terrain of the Land of Earth, in a chamber that floated like a stubborn cloud, Onoki received the same news from a masked ANBU who had appeared in a silent swirl of dust. The old man listened, his wizened face, etched with the lines of a hundred battles, growing darker with each word.
When the ANBU finished and vanished as silently as he came, Onoki let out a string of curses that would make a sailor blush. "That blundering oaf! That lightning-brained, over-muscled buffoon!" He pounded his small fist on the arm of his floating chair.
"Rushing! He's rushing everything!"
He floated over to his own strategic map, far more complex and layered than Saitetsu's, covered in shifting, miniature earth formations representing troop movements.
"I was waiting! The longer this war went on, the more it would tax Konoha, Kiri and even Suna! Their economies would strain, their morale would crack, their young blood would be spent. We could pick the continent clean! Now? Now he's gone and kicked the hornet's nest. He's made it personal for everyone!"
His grumbling was cut short by the arrival of a second messenger, this one a standard courier, who presented another scroll from Kumo. Onoki snatched it, his irritation palpable. He broke the seal and unrolled it, his eyes scanning the contents. The missive detailed the Raikage's encounter, but it spent an inordinate amount of space on a single subject: the abilities of the Konoha shinobi, Renjiro Uchiha.
Onoki's face, already dark, went ashen. The scroll trembled slightly in his hands. All his anger at the Raikage's recklessness evaporated, replaced by a cold, ancient dread. He saw the descriptions: the intangible flames that devoured chakra, the spectral, giant form of immense power.
His lips barely moved, the word a dry, horrified whisper lost in the vastness of his chamber. "Mangekyo…"
It was not just a name. It was a legend. A nightmare. It was the ghost of Madara Uchiha, a spectre that had haunted the five Kage since the dawn of the village system. A power that could command tailed beasts, that could lay waste to armies. And now it was here again, in the hands of a Konoha shinobi.
Suddenly, the Raikage's brutal, pre-emptive strike didn't seem quite so foolish. It seemed desperate. And Onoki felt a chill that had nothing to do with the altitude.
======
In the Hokage's office, the air was thick with the smell of tobacco smoke and stale anxiety. Hiruzen Sarutobi felt every one of his years as he listened to Jiraiya's report. Orochimaru stood silently in the shadows, a pale, watchful statue.
Jiraiya spoke plainly, holding nothing back. He described the devastation, the raw power of the Raikage, and most importantly, Renjiro's shocking, desperate response. The green flames. The towering, silver skeleton wreathed in chains. The Susanoo.
Hiruzen listened, his face a carefully composed mask of calm, but his pipe had gone cold in his hand. Inside, his mind was a tempest.
'He faced the Third Raikage and lived. Not only lived, but he also fought him to what sounds like a standstill. A boy of his age…'
The pride was there for a son of Konoha. But it was instantly drowned by a tidal wave of profound apprehension.
'The Mangekyo Sharingan,' he thought, the name a heavyweight in his soul. 'It always comes with a price. It twists the mind, corrupts the heart. It is a power born of trauma and loss, and it leads only to darkness. Can such a thing ever truly be a pillar of Konoha? Or is it destined to become our greatest liability?'
His thoughts turned to the Uchiha clan, to Daichi, to the ever-widening chasm between them and the village. Renjiro had always been an anomaly, a bridge of sorts due to his Uzumaki heritage. But this… this power was purely, undeniably Uchiha.
It was the clan's ultimate legend made manifest. It would embolden them, make them more insular, more demanding. It would make Renjiro a symbol for their faction, whether he wanted it or not. Could he control it? Could Hiruzen control him? Or would he become a vortex that pulled the entire village into the Uchiha's escalating conflict?
He saw the two paths diverging: one where Renjiro became the new, fearsome guardian of the Leaf, a deterrent to all their enemies. The other, a path of civil war and unimaginable destruction, with a corrupted Renjiro at its centre. The burden of that uncertainty was crushing.
Then, the Hokage's eyes hardened. The pipe was placed back in its stand with a definitive click. The moment of introspection was over. The strategist, the commander, reasserted himself.
"Jiraiya. Orochimaru," his voice was low, but it carried the full authority of his office, cutting through the smoky haze. "The Raikage has made the first move of the endgame. He believes his show of strength will make us hesitate, make us sue for peace from a position of weakness."
He stood up, and in that moment, it was as if the Hokage had regressed in years.