Chapter 99: The Fourth Shinobi World War
Night. Haruno residence.
Sakura sat on the living room couch with wet hair, reading through a medical ninjutsu scroll. Karin knelt behind her, working a towel through the damp pink strands with focused attention.
Sakura had tried to decline. Her system was: get it roughly dry, shake it out, let air finish the job. That was how she'd handled it for years.
Would she catch a cold?
She could punch through a wild boar. Her immune system could handle damp hair.
Karin's enthusiasm had overwhelmed her objections. She'd given up.
"Heh heh heh~~~ Sakura's hair~~~"
A sound was coming from behind her. An unsettling one.
The weeks Karin had spent at the Haruno house had begun to erode her restraint in certain departments.
Her more devoted tendencies were becoming harder to conceal.
"Karin."
Sakura's voice landed precisely.
"Mm?"
Karin surfaced from whatever state she'd been in, wiped the corner of her mouth, and recovered her composure.
"How much longer on the residency paperwork, roughly?"
Karin scratched her head through the towel.
"Almost done. Konoha's intelligence division is thorough — they even turned up records on my great-grandfather." She paused. "Apparently I have a distant relative who was registered here at some point. Someone called... Kushina Uzumaki? But she's dead."
Sakura went still for just a moment.
"...Right. I see."
Karin noticed the shift in Sakura's tone but didn't press it. After a moment she deflated slightly.
"I guess once the paperwork clears, they'll assign me housing. I won't have a reason to stay here anymore..."
Sakura heard the undercurrent in her voice. She set the scroll down and turned.
"Well... if Karin passes the genin exam."
"I could keep you on my team."
"???"
Karin blinked.
The standard Konoha model was three genin to one jōnin-sensei. That was just how it worked.
Sakura pointed at the green flak jacket hanging by the entrance.
"I'm actually a Special Jōnin~~"
Karin looked at the jacket. Looked at Sakura. The confusion on her face dissolved into something bright and sudden.
"Sakura—!"
The red-haired girl had never learned the art of hiding her feelings. She tackled Sakura into the couch cushions immediately.
Sakura blinked up at the ceiling with the expression of someone who had once again underestimated the force of this particular reaction.
Knock knock — knock knock knock.
The front door.
Sakura extracted herself, crossed the room with still-damp hair, and opened it.
An ANBU operative in a mask stood at the door.
"Sakura Haruno. The Hokage requests your immediate presence at the Hokage Tower."
At this hour?
Sakura looked at the operative with mild puzzlement.
It's almost midnight. The old man has never sent for me this late.
Something's happened.
Late night.
A small figure cut through the dark sky toward the Hokage Tower.
Despite the hour, the building blazed with light from every window. Even from a distance, Sakura could see the silhouettes of staff moving back and forth inside — busy, purposeful, the movement of people managing something urgent.
Her chest went slightly cold.
She went in fast, nodded to a few familiar faces on the way through, and pushed open the office door without knocking.
A wall of pale blue smoke hit her.
It rolled out like a tide. The entire office had achieved a level of second-hand smoke density that could generously be described as atmospheric.
Through the haze, two figures were dimly visible: Hiruzen and Shikaku Nara, seated, generating the atmosphere in question.
"Oh — Sakura."
Hiruzen's tight expression loosened when he saw her. He started to wave her in—
—and noticed she wasn't moving.
She was standing in the doorway with a look that made the air temperature drop slightly.
Hiruzen caught up with himself and had the decency to look sheepish. He stood, pushed open the window, and ran a small wind technique through the room. The "atmosphere" cleared.
Sakura walked in.
"You're almost seventy. You smoke like this."
"You're going to shorten what's left of your life."
She glanced at Shikaku as she said it. The look communicated clearly that this commentary applied to him as well.
The pineapple-haired man looked at the girl, then at the cigarette burning between his fingers — barely half-gone — and pressed it quietly into an ashtray that was mostly previous cigarettes.
"Alright, old man. What did you need?"
Sakura settled onto the couch and looked at both of them.
"It's like this..."
Hiruzen let the fresh air settle him, then began.
Reports from Frost Country, corroborated by multiple intelligence sources inside the Land of Lightning. The picture was confirmed.
Cloud had moved.
He'd anticipated Cloud would eventually respond. What he hadn't anticipated was how fast and how decisively they'd done it.
Sakura listened. Thought. Then looked sideways at Shikaku — who had not said a word since she entered, content apparently to observe.
"Cloud moved the moment the Kazekage left. Can I conclude they had some prior arrangement with Sand?"
Shikaku's eyes narrowed fractionally.
He'd considered the same possibility. Without confirmed intelligence, the most honest assessment was: highly probable, not certain. But if Wind and Lightning had coordinated, the Fire-Earth alliance lost a significant portion of its strategic value immediately.
"That's exactly what concerns me."
Hiruzen exhaled. The furrow that had briefly eased when Sakura arrived returned to his brow.
"What's there to be worried about."
Sakura picked up the clean cup on the table and poured herself water.
"You already knew this was possible, didn't you, old man?"
Hiruzen looked at her.
He thought about his career. Decades as Hokage. The Second War. The Third War.
And now, as he was finally working to build his successor—
Was the Fourth Shinobi World War arriving on schedule?
(End of Chapter)