'Are you sure about this?' Shiba's thought pulsed through the link, sharp as a kunai point. It carried the full weight of his apprehension, the Nara clan head's instinctive aversion to unnecessary conflict colliding headlong with the Hokage's directive.
Hiruzen didn't turn. His mental voice, when it came, was a bedrock of weary resolve, worn smooth by decades of command and loss.
'We have to, Shiba. There is no need to put much thought on it.'
The dismissal of deep analysis, coming from the Hokage to a Nara, was jarring.
'If he does not take the bait, we keep piling on our attacks until he relents.'
The mental image accompanying the words was stark: pinpoint strikes flaring across the Land of Lightning map like ignited gunpowder trails, converging not on a military target, but on the pride and temper of one man – the Third Raikage.
Shiba felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach, unrelated to Yuriko's chakra that was making the connection possible. He remained silent within the link, the quiet stretching like a taut wire. In the physical room, the only sounds were the faint tick-tock of a wall clock, the rustle of a scroll shifting slightly in a draft, and Yuriko's steady, almost inaudible hush-hush exhale.
Shiba's own fingers drummed a silent, restless rhythm on his thigh, the only outward sign of his turmoil. He thought back to the Hokage's orders. This wasn't the measured strategist who had navigated the treacherous currents of the Second War.
This felt… desperate.
'You know that this is the path with the most resistance?' Shiba finally sent, the thought heavy with unspoken accusation.
'The path of maximum bloodshed, maximum risk. We provoke the Raikage directly, force him onto the field… it invites disaster. Not just for our forces, but for the other villages. He is not a man who escalates half-measures.'
Hiruzen's sigh resonated through the telepathic link, 'I understand that, Shiba. Believe me, I do. But this… this escalation… it is the necessary evil. Look at the map. Look at the reports. The war grinds on, consuming villages, clans, and generations. A stalemate is a slow death sentence for Konoha, for the Will of Fire itself.'
His mental voice gained intensity, painting grim historical pictures. 'Think! How did the First War end? With Tobirama-sensei's sacrifice at the hands of Kumo's Gold and Silver Brothers. His death created a vacuum, a shockwave that forced a ceasefire, however uneasy.'
The image of the Second Hokage, proud and resolute, falling in a hail of lightning and betrayal, flashed starkly in the shared mental space.
'The Second War? It ended when the titans clashed and fell – the Second Raikage assassinated, the Second Tsuchikage crippled by the Gold Dust, the Second Kazekage falling to internal strife. Their deaths created the space for negotiation, for exhaustion to set in.'
Hiruzen's mental tone was grimly pragmatic. 'This is the brutal calculus of our world, Shiba. Sometimes, peace only emerges from the ashes of the highest stakes. To end this war, we must force the Kage themselves onto the board. Make the cost of continuing unbearable for them, personally. The Raikage is the key. His pride, his strength… we make him the fulcrum. If he moves, the others must respond. It concentrates the conflict, makes its resolution inevitable, one way or another.'
'Necessary evil…' Shiba's silent thought was a cauldron of simmering disagreement.
He knew Hiruzen, the man who had been his Hokage for most of his life, the leader who had steered Konoha through the brutal victory of the Second War.
Hiruzen was a good Hokage. Wise, powerful, deeply invested in the village's well-being. But Shiba, with the Nara's cold clarity, saw the crack in the monument.
'Ever since Tobirama-sama died… something fractured in him.'
The thought was treacherous, but undeniable. The Second Hokage's death hadn't just been a loss of a leader; it had been the severing of Hiruzen's final tether to a cooler, more calculating era.
Tobirama, for all his pragmatism bordering on ruthlessness, possessed a glacial logic that could temper Hiruzen's underlying sentimentality, his deep-seated aversion to sacrificing the few for the many when the 'few' were people he knew.
'He carries Tobirama-sama's death like a wound that never healed,' Shiba analysed silently, his gaze fixed on the Hokage's tense back. 'And it warps his judgment on matters that echo that sacrifice – like these great wars, where Kage fall as pawns.'
He recalled the Second War. Hiruzen had been younger, yes, but the burden had been shared. The powerful presence of the senior elders had acted as a crucial counterbalance.
They had commanded divisions, held strategic command posts, and their voices carrying immense weight directly from the front lines. They hadn't just advised; they had commanded, and Hiruzen, while Hokage, had listened, debated, been reined in by their collective experience and sometimes brutal pragmatism.
'They were his anchors,' Shiba realised. 'His bulwark against the despair and the temptation of grand, desperate gestures.'
Now? Now they sat in the High Command, venerable but distant. Their influence was still significant, but it was filtered through layers of bureaucracy, through the lens of retirement and physical remove from the visceral horror of the trenches.
And without those anchors, without those voices of tempered steel who had seen the abyss up close and knew the cost of missteps, Hiruzen's natural inclination – to seek a decisive, even cathartic, end, no matter the risk – was surging unchecked.
'The weight is crushing him,' Shiba thought, 'and in that crushing, he's reaching for the biggest hammer he can find, consequences be damned. Renjiro is that hammer. Provoking the Raikage is the anvil. He's trying to force the ending Tobirama-sama's death provided, blind to how different the board is now, blind to the inferno he's deliberately pouring oil onto.'
Shiba felt a profound weariness settle over him, deeper than physical fatigue. Arguing further felt futile. Hiruzen had made up his mind. The wheels were already in motion.
He took a slow, deliberate breath, both physically and within the telepathic space, a subtle signal to Yuriko that he was shifting focus. 'There's no need to argue the point further, Hokage-sama,' Shiba sent, his mental voice deliberately flat, drained of its earlier challenge.
'The die is cast. Renjiro's mission is likely reaching its climax as we speak. The bait is laid.' He paused, the weight of responsibility pressing down. 'What we must focus on now is ensuring Konoha is prepared for the consequences. The Raikage will respond. And his response will be… thunderous.'
The logistical nightmare unfolded in his mind, a counterpoint to Hiruzen's grand, dangerous gamble.
'That,' Hiruzen's thought pulsed with cold assurance, 'is already covered, Shiba.'
He gestured vaguely, ' 'They' are already moving. We are ready for the storm Renjiro is summoning.'
Shiba felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. Hiruzen's confidence wasn't reassuring; it was terrifying. "Ready for the consequences" meant Hiruzen and Danzo had already embraced the worst-case scenario – total escalation, the Kage stepping onto the battlefield – and were preparing Konoha not just to weather it, but to win it, or die trying.
Shiba saw no triumph in Hiruzen's eyes, only the bleak acceptance of a commander committing his entire force to a single, devastating roll of the dice. The necessary evil wasn't just the escalation; it was the embrace of the very shadows Konoha purported to fight, all for the chance to force an end born from the ashes of Kage.