Sakura rose to her full height, her breasts jostling against one another in her top as she jabbed an accusing finger at the Raikage.
"If you go through with this, then it's war," she snarled. "Mark my words, I will personally raze your poor excuse for a village to the ground unless you cancel the chakra cannon's firing."
Startled, Darui stared at Sakura, trying to make out if she was serious… but she didn't look like she was kidding. Honestly, he hadn't been expecting anyone to double down after announcing that his village basically had the capacity to destroy anything within the cannon's range.
"Sakura!" Shizune hissed from behind the fire curtain. "We're on air!"
In her anger, Sakura had momentarily forgotten that this was the first-ever Gokage Summit being broadcast to a wide audience.
For the past two years, the vast majority of the world's civilians had been led to believe that the Hidden Leaf Village had been wiped from the map, despite the insistence of numerous conspiracy theorists that this was not the case. Only the denizens of the Great Shinobi Villages knew the truth; for millions of people, however, this was the first time they were seeing the face or hearing the voice of Konoha's Sixth Hokage. And from all appearances, she seemed very much the warmonger she had been portrayed as…
…but she was really pretty, though!
"Wha... are you for real? You're going straight to war!?" Darui spluttered. "Why would you go that far? I thought we were doing the public a service by doing this, honestly. I didn't think I'd get any opposition to this, we're even doing it for free..."
"Hokage," Ōnoki said in a measured tone. "Is there any reason in particular why you oppose the Raikage's plan?"
As always, Ōnoki was more than ready to plant his withered old butt on the fence and wiggle his crack until he was sitting perfectly between both sides… even though it was basically an Iwa tradition to run fades with Kumo for no reason, he was ready to defend Darui's viewpoint this time around, even if Sakura scared the living lights out of him.
Sakura sighed.
"Well, if you must know, we of Konoha have improved the Flying Thunder God Jutsu so that it can teleport its user wherever they wish to go, even without special jutsu formulae acting as coordinates," she explained, lying as easily as she breathed. "Without going into too many details about whom I sent to the moon to resolve this issue, they're very important to me, and if you blow up the moon, they'll blow up along with it."
The face of a certain Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails suddenly popped up in each of the Kage's heads. As this blondie was Konoha's resident human weapon of mass destruction, the Hokage would indeed be justified in declaring war if Kumo took action against him… thoughit would be nice if they did manage to kill him, Ōnoki and Pakura quietly thought to themselves.
"So…" Mangetsu said, frowning. "At the end of the day, you're still destroying the moon?"
Sakura shook her head.
"The Moonfall is no natural phenomenon, there's a culprit behind it," she said very seriously. "You see, the moon is actually hollow, and moon people live on the inner side… according to a trusted source I unfortunately can't disclose."
The other Kage stared at Sakura as if she were insane. What next? Was she about to propose that lizard people lived under their feet, and that the Earth was actually flat? Well, the lizard people part wasn't that far off from the truth…
"What are you all looking at me like that for? I'm telling you the truth! They live in a big castle inside the moon!" Sakura said, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. "The moon has to be hollow. It was created a thousand years ago by the Sage of Six Paths to hold a monster that threatened to destroy this star! Just ask Killer B how it feels to be trapped inside my Chibaku Tensei, he'll tell you I'm right!"
It suddenly occurred to Sakura that apart perhaps from Ōnoki, none of the other Kage seemed to give her the respect she deserved. None of them knew just how powerful she had grown towards the end of the Fourth Shinobi World War, and how much stronger she had become since then…
Sakura's green eyes abruptly turned into a pair of Rinnegan.
"See?" she said, pointing at her face. "The Sage's Eyes; I know what I'm talking about, shannarooo!"
Ōnoki and Darui weren't especially surprised, since they already knew she possessed the dōjutsu, but the reveal of her Rinnegan came as quite a shock to the other two Kage.
"…what exactly are you proposing?" Ōnoki said cautiously.
"Wait, and believe in the power of friendship… specifically the power of my friends," Sakura said lightly. "The problem will solve itself on its own, so please don't shoot down the moon… I've got bigger things to worry about than this doomsday scenario, thank you very much."
The other Kage exchanged dubious glances. That wasn't especially reassuring… none of what she had just said was.
"Another thing," Sakura said, glowering at Ōnoki. "I was nearly assassinated this morning... by Tsuchigumo clan members."
Ōnoki blanched.
"It wasn't me!" he said quickly. "They often take contracts independently of the village system, that was the condition they set for accepting to join the Hidden Stone!"
The other Kage frowned. Why was Ōnoki so terrified of Sakura? She was very strong, yes, but surely not to the extent of making the head of a hidden village tremble in his sandals… could she be?
"If it's all the same, I'm going to give you some advice, for old times' sake," Sakura said lightly. "If I were you, I would denounce the Tsuchigumo and banish them from the Land of Earth."
"This tangent is both irrelevant to the purpose of this Gokage Summit and unproductive," Mifune interjected. "The Hokage has no say in the matters of the Land of Earth, so let us return to the topic at hand…"
Sakura waggled her finger at Ōnoki.
"I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, just in case one of you ladies or gentlemen were responsible for the attempt on my life earlier today, but to borrow Darui-dono's words from earlier…" she said fiercely. "This isn't a threat, it's a promise. If you persist in protecting those monsters of the Tsuchigumo clan that would make children into human bombs, then I will make you regret it, Ōnoki… believe it."
Millions of viewers remained stunned as Sakura's final words hung over the airwaves…
For the second time in just a few minutes, she had threatened one of her fellow Kage, seemingly completely unbothered by the fact that those fighting words could very well ignite a conflict far bloodier than the Fourth Shinobi World War two years ago!
"…the Tsuchigumo are overly ambitious and bloodthirsty, they have been a thorn in my side for far too long already," Ōnoki said at last, grimacing. "Do what you want with them… just not inside my borders."
Darui breathed a sigh of relief. Since the Tsuchikage had backed down first, then he wouldn't look too weak if he offered a concession as well… it would even make him look downright reasonable by comparison!
"Kumogakure is ready to wait a few days," he said a few seconds later. "But should the moon threaten to fall on our heads, we will shoot it down."
Sakura nodded. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
"It seems like we're all in agreement: Konoha's forces on the moon will eliminate this existential threat to Earth, and Kumo will fire their cannon should they fail," Mifune said in relief. "If you Kage can continue to work out your differences like this, perhaps peace in our time may be possible after all…"
However, Pakura and Mangetsu, the leaders of the two weakest Great Villages, were not so certain. This time, Kiri stood with the Hokage, but Kumo and Iwa had yielded to the tyrant of Konoha. What of the next time, and the time after that? Would they continue making concessions until the behemoth that was the Hidden Leaf Village encroached upon their very doorstep…?