News of Akatsuki Village forming a military negotiation team spread through the ninja world together with a statement titled Final Ultimatum of Akatsuki Village.
Meanwhile,
in the Land of Lightning, the First Raikage of Kumogakure threw his head back and laughed in his office.
"Ha ha ha!"
"They've run out of tricks."
"A military negotiation team? Akatsuki really knows how to put on a show. Looks like Konoha and Akatsuki realized intimidation and extortion won't work on us. They strutted around before, but now they're getting burned by their own public opinion, aren't they? At last they're willing to send a delegation to make peace with us."
The First Raikage still didn't believe Akatsuki would do anything drastic over this matter.
At most, it was bluff and blackmail.
Now that they saw Kumogakure wouldn't take the bait, they finally couldn't help sending envoys to wrap it up quickly and appease opinion back home. To save face, they even dressed it up as a military action group, when in truth it was a negotiation team. They probably planned to make peace with us and then go home and boast that they'd won big.
"Lord Raikage, what should we do? Should we hurry and meet Akatsuki's delegation to make peace?"
One advisor asked. The uproar had gone on long enough and the whole ninja world knew. Letting it drag on did Kumogakure no good.
After all, it touched on the two great villages of the Land of Fire.
"Hmph, as if."
"You think Kumogakure is made of mud? No rush. Let's toy with them first. I need to vent this anger."
"When Akatsuki's envoys arrive, show them no courtesy. Make Konoha send people themselves."
The First Raikage spoke with brazen arrogance.
Akatsuki had been mouthing off so long their eyelids were touching the sky. How could he possibly let them wrap this up so easily? It was only Akatsuki. Konoha had to come in person.
"And if Akatsuki truly plans to move against us, then we…"
Another advisor disagreed. His eyelids had been twitching for days, as if something bad were coming. What if Akatsuki meant to go all the way?
"Ha ha, how could that be?"
"Over such a trivial matter, would they actually go to war with Kumogakure?"
His laughter grew louder.
At that moment,
Uchiha Makoto had already set out with more than 3,600 Akatsuki ninja, slipping in secret across the borders of several small countries and heading straight for the Land of Lightning's frontier.
A few hundred li from the border,
inside a temporary tent.
"Remember, we're not here for war. We're here to demand justice for Akatsuki's fallen ninja. It's just that we brought a teeny tiny bit too many ninja."
Seated on a low stool, Makoto repeated it again and again. Though he had brought over three thousand troops to the Land of Lightning's doorstep, he would not casually accept the stigma of starting a war without authorization.
Peace mattered to Akatsuki.
They were here for their Chunin, to demand justice from Kumogakure.
How could it be for starting a war?
"Er… Makoto, saying that now is a bit much, isn't it?"
"Slurp."
Uzumaki Shinji spoke as they stood at the brink, the arrow nocked. Makoto was still worrying about formalities.
He licked his ice-cream cone.
The heat was rising, and a cone after a long march truly lifted the spirit. Akatsuki's extravagance was unbelievable. They did have Ice Release ninja to chill drinks, but they'd even brought the ingredients for cones.
That was outrageous.
From a glimpse you could see the whole picture. Akatsuki's logistics were terrifyingly strong.
Ice cream was delicious.
"Of course."
"We're here to negotiate, not to start a war. The village whose ninja throws the first kunai takes the blame for escalation."
"I'll repeat it. We're here to negotiate."
After calming the excited senior staff around him, Makoto issued his orders.
"First, send several teams to Kumogakure's forward post. Provoke their ninja and make them strike first. We will respond only in self-defense."
"Akatsuki has prepared special recording devices. You've all been to the movies."
"We're here in good faith to settle this."
"They were the ones who started it."
Yes.
Even in this still backward technological era, movie theaters existed, with films released every year. The audience tended to be dignitaries and some of the middle class.
Most people watched bootlegs.
Certain rogue ninja and underworld syndicates loved to make risqué short films. The craft was crude and the reels only a few minutes long, but for their purposes it was enough.
It sounded absurd, but the ninja world really had sprouted a whole cinema tech tree, certainly with some help from ninjutsu. It felt like black tech.
You could call it a ninja-world specialty.
Orochimaru would one day handcraft a smart, mechanical Nine-Tails Naruto.
Even now, Sunagakure likely had living human puppet techniques.
And Senju Tobirama was probably sneaking around in his lab, trying to develop that heaven-defying and sinister Impure World Reincarnation. That technique made Uchiha Makoto ache with desire.
Compared to those black technologies,
cinema sprouting up was nothing surprising.
Once Makoto learned of it, he even planned to recruit handsome men and beautiful women to shoot films promoting Akatsuki.
Cultural victory and external messaging could hardly do without film.
It was a weapon for exporting ideology.
But that was for later.
"And after Kumogakure strikes first?"
"Do you have to ask?"
"Empty your explosive tags on them, then fire a flare. The main force will roll in right after."
Makoto finished,
asked for a cone of his own, and ate with relish.
The senior staff laughed.
Lord Light Shadow was brilliant and devilish.
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