Itachi folded the letter from the Raikage once, twice, then placed it on the lacquered desk with the deliberate care of a man setting a piece on a chessboard. The seal of Kumogakure still smelled faintly of iron and storm—an invitation wrapped in caution. The Kage Summit. Politics in the open. Or a blade hidden beneath ceremony.
The Fourth Great Ninja War loomed like a gathering storm on the horizon. Rumors were already colliding with fact: many of Akatsuki's members lay dead or scattered, old alliances fraying, and ambitious men thirsty for power. If he was honest with himself—if he allowed the brief, dangerous luxury of ambition—then the summit offered a rare opportunity. Unite the shinobi world under a single will, or control the flow of its resources well enough to make that will irrelevant.
He looked up at the map of nations pinned on the wall, fingers tracing borders as if reading pulse-lines. Control resources. Consolidate power. Prepare for Ōtsutsuki. Time was short. The system had already gifted him tools that made the impossible feasible: Eternal Mangekyō, Indra's perfected chakra, Yin–Yang mastery, Perfect Sage Mode. With those, Konoha's rise need not be subtle—but subtleties won more wars than showy power.
The letter's edges had been neatly unrolled to the place detailing the summit: Land of Iron, neutral ground, an assembly of the five (or more) Kage and their advisors. A display of strength disguised as diplomacy.
He rose and moved quietly through the tower. The village breathed around him—soft lantern light, the distant laughter of late-night patrols. Beside his deeds lay the living: the clan, the people who trusted him. He owed them stability; he owed them victory.
Shisui waited in the courtyard, cloak billowing like ink. He greeted Itachi without surprise, the familiar easy loyalty of two men who had earned each other's trust in a hundred silent ways. "You received the summons," Shisui said.
"Yes." Itachi's voice was calm. "We leave shortly."
At the gate, Kakashi stood in the dim light, one eye visible and alert. He had been Itachi's blade in the foreign streets of New York; now he would be a shield between diplomatic smiles and assassination. Beside him, an ANBU escort—silent, masked—completed the small retinue. Itachi selected two more trusted operatives from the inner cadre to accompany them: one for field intelligence, one for communications and seals. He traveled light; discretion was part of strategy.
"Plans?" Kakashi asked, pragmatic as always.
"It is a summit," Itachi said. "We will show strength but speak of unity. I want to listen more than declare. Gauge the ambitions of the Raikage, the Mizukage's intent, and the tone of the remaining villages. The war will not start at once—but it will come. We must be ready to direct it, or at least profit from it."
Shisui's lips twitched. "And if someone moves against you?"
"I will respond," Itachi replied simply. He did not elaborate. Preparation was his language; consequence his dialect.
Before departing, Itachi gathered precisely what he required: seals prepared for emergency extraction, medical parcels for battlefield trauma (Sakura's protocols sealed inside), and a small selection of system-purchased items reserved for extreme contingencies. He also arranged encrypted lines to the Konoha base in New York—Kabuto and Sakumo would remain in place; his hands would not be everywhere at once, but his eyes could be.
They left under the muted glow of pre-dawn. The Flying Thunder God mark, perfected and invisible to mundane senses, was placed on a stone near the gate; with two taps of his fingers, it swallowed space and spat them out a heartbeat later at the edge of the Land of Iron. The journey was small, but in that smallness it held a thousand considerations: who sat where at the table, who laughed too loudly, which guards watched too closely, what concealed weapons might glitter beneath hems.
The Land of Iron greeted them not with open arms but with a measured chill. The meeting hall was a compact fortress of industry—metal and discipline. Kage banners flew, but Itachi's eyes noted the micro: the way Kuma's envoy shadowed the Raikage, which Mizukage advisors carried sigils of covert alliances, who from the smaller nations seemed nervous in their seats.
He adjusted the robe around his shoulders—the white Hokage cloak, the silent proof of his authority. In this era, showing the face of leadership had value. It signaled not just power but accountability, a claim he was ready to make.
Inside the hall, conversations fluttered like nets cast into a dark sea. Men measured words. Itachi listened, always listening—each phrase cataloged, each glance annotated in a mind sharpened by Master Tactician and years of hard decisions. The Raikage's voice was blunt; the Mizukage's calm had a razor edge. Old wounds surfaced in subtle jabs. Between the words, a current of fear: the war had chosen them whether they wished it or not.
When the time came to speak, Itachi rose. His voice carried easily, not loud but absolute. He offered a line of logic rather than a sermon: unity for survival, coordinated resource exchange, central contingency for Ōtsutsuki-level threats, and a shared intelligence network—under Konoha's technical and ethical oversight—for fast response. He framed his ambition as prudence, his control as necessary stewardship.
Eyes flicked to him—some skeptical, some envious, some calculating. The seeds were sown. Not every leader would accept his terms, but every leader heard them. That was all he needed for now.
As he sat back down, Kakashi at his side and Shisui watching the room, Itachi's mind was already unfolding next moves: diplomatic favors to buy mayors' loyalties, controlled leaks to discredit covert adversaries, and—if necessary—surgical strikes that would be blamed on other hands. He was not naive; consolidation required sometimes ruthless calculus. But above all, it required time and resources—the two things he now worked tirelessly to gather across worlds.
The summit would end in protocols and promises. The war would come. And Itachi would be ready to shape it rather than be swept by it.