Chapter 150: The Witch
Dodai handled the village's administrative affairs as he always had.
Both the Third and Fourth Raikage shared the same character flaw: neither of them had any patience for governance. Which was where Dodai came in.
Getting documents from the village to a forward camp was inconvenient, but the Sky-Delivery Technique made it workable.
He looked at the stacks on his table and suppressed a sigh.
Time to start training a successor.
He was pushing sixty. Well-preserved, but he was the Third Raikage's contemporary — that said something. If the Raikage's administrative blind spot was going to persist across generations, Kumogakure needed someone dedicated to managing it. Someone capable but not so strong they'd be a political threat.
He looked through the tent window at the wind and snow outside.
Karui.
The girl's face appeared in his mind. Patient. Steadfast. Loyal to the Raikage without reservation. Careful, with an instinct for the larger picture.
A good candidate.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of someone who made him want to frown just by entering the tent.
A certain quality of wrongness about a person — the sense that the madness inside them was contained by only the thinnest surface.
"You came after all."
Dodai kept his voice steady.
"My, my. Even out here at the front, the Raikage's advisor is filing paperwork." The black-haired man with the thick purple rope around his waist glanced at the documents. "What dedication."
Dodai didn't acknowledge the mockery.
They weren't the same kind of person and never would be. Orochimaru was here because weathering Konoha's retaliation required a scapegoat, and Kumogakure served that purpose. Dodai needed Orochimaru's combat capability and intelligence to occupy Konoha's upper tier.
Mutual use. Nothing more.
"You probably didn't expect Konoha's counterattack to hit as hard as it did."
He was referring to the joint assault on the Third Hokage — which had ended with Orochimaru's forces routed, Rasa losing an arm to Kakashi, and Sound Village effectively ceasing to exist as a military entity.
"Hm. The old man surprised me." The gold, slit-pupil eyes moved across Dodai without much interest. "Does that matter, in the end?"
"Less talking. Tomorrow at noon — the full assault pushes south. Be there."
Dodai didn't want this conversation to last any longer than necessary. With Orochimaru present alongside the Raikage and Killer Bee, three of the highest-tier combatants in the current conflict would be concentrated in one place.
He couldn't see a path to losing this.
And he'd already coordinated with Sunagakure — simultaneous assault, two fronts, Konoha forced to divide its attention.
"If there's nothing else." Orochimaru turned toward the exit with the unhurried ease of someone who had already decided how this conversation ended.
Dodai said nothing.
The gold eyes swept the Kumogakure guards patrolling outside with visible contempt.
Dodai alone is worth anything. The rest of them — chickens and dogs. The Raikage included.
Though even Dodai can't escape what a ninja is.
Orochimaru left.
Not long after, a shadow appeared in Dodai's tent without a sound.
"Hello there—"
Dodai spun.
He saw who it was.
And the decision he'd already made — to eliminate this particular entity the moment opportunity arose — detonated in full force.
Shhk.
A black arm punched through his chest from behind.
"You—"
His face went white. Blood hit the back of his throat and came up.
He was elite jōnin. Not at the Raikage's level, but not nothing. And this thing had called out to him first — put him on full alert — and still reached him in the same motion.
It was hiding what it could do. The whole time.
Of course it was.
This war escalated so fast. Three months to this scale. That had this thing's fingerprints all over it.
And now with him gone—
The Raikage. The village. The war. Everything behind all of this—
Something feral and desperate came into Dodai's eyes. The will to survive erupted beyond what Zetsu had expected.
I can't die yet.
He staggered toward the tent entrance, blood and fragments of himself leaving a trail. He went down but kept crawling. His lungs felt like a broken bellows — the puncture had destroyed his breathing — but his body kept moving.
"Interesting."
Zetsu walked toward him, placed a foot on his back.
Nothing Dodai could do with it.
"People should really be a little less intelligent."
"Clever ones don't last."
The body, the blood, the viscera — all of it slowly sank into the earth.
Zetsu's form shifted. Compressed. Rebuilt.
Dodai stood in the tent.
His face. His voice. His chakra signature — absorbed cleanly, perfectly, undetectable by even the Byakugan.
A millennium of accumulated experience, and becoming one person was trivially easy.
The new "Dodai" looked at the empty space where the body had been, then walked to the tent entrance.
"Lord Dodai."
The guard straightened respectfully.
"Go clean the tent and air it out."
"Yes sir."
The guard went in. "Dodai" walked away without looking back, with the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Now. Find the Raikage. Start the assault.
Fight. Keep fighting. Let it get more and more vicious.
Orochimaru. Jiraiya. The Raikage. Haruno Sakura — all of them, ideally dead.
River Country front — Chiyo, Kagami, Nara Shikahisa — all of them too.
The more of the strong ones that died, the easier the later collection would become.
Every major combatant lost now was one less obstacle when Akatsuki came for the tailed beasts.
White hair snapping in the wind.
Jiraiya had anticipated a decisive engagement. He hadn't anticipated it arriving this suddenly, this openly — no feints, no maneuvering, just Kumogakure's full force walking straight at him.
He hadn't anticipated the absence of any strategy whatsoever.
His eyes were uncertain.
The behavior was inconsistent with everything he knew. Even the Raikage at his most reckless didn't operate this way.
But they were here, and he had no time to question it. A clean, direct engagement fit his own interests. Sakura's instincts had been right — end this fast. Knock out Kumogakure, turn immediately to Suna, and the war would collapse before the third front could open.
As for Kirigakure deciding to move afterward—
By that point, they'd better reconsider.
The problem was what stood opposite him. If the AB Formation was assembled and he was wrong about his ability to handle it—
He closed his eyes.
Opened them.
The calculation was clear. Whatever came, he wasn't losing today.
The snowfield stretched in every direction. Two armies, total, under twenty thousand. But twenty thousand ninja weren't twenty thousand soldiers. Twenty thousand ninja were a force that could tear through a million ordinary humans.
Wind howling. Snow falling.
Neither side showed anything on their faces. The Konoha and Kumogakure ninja alike looked the same in this moment — blank and final.
Sakura stood at Jiraiya's side and watched without expression.
"Look at all of this, Sakura."
Jiraiya's voice was even.
"When you stand high enough, a single decision shapes the fate of tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. More."
"If you want to be at the top, you carry all of it."
Sakura didn't respond to that. Her eyes drifted briefly to the people standing not far behind her — Kushina, Ino, Sasuke, Shino—
And Kiba, at the edge of the group, watching her.
She turned back. Her voice was quiet when it came.
"This world has been in chaos for too long."
"What it needs, Jiraiya, is someone to forge it into one nation."
"Even if that nation only lasts a few years. Ten years. A hundred years."
"Once the precedent exists, the people who come after will keep trying. Eventually it holds."
Jiraiya's brow tightened slightly. He didn't like where this was going.
Everyone deserves their own life. Their own choices. You don't forge people into something.
"Sakura. What this world needs is peace—"
"Peace is precious because war exists."
She said it the way someone states a fact.
"A healthy person can't feel what the sick feel. A god of compassion requires a demon of cruelty to give the compassion meaning. Good needs evil. Without both, neither has definition."
"There is no permanent peace. And if there were — the people living in it would stop understanding what they had. They'd take it for granted. Go numb. And then, in a single choice, someone would light it on fire."
Jiraiya had no response.
He didn't get time to find one. The engagement was beginning.
"JIRAIYA!"
The Raikage's voice tore through the falling snow like a physical force.
"Konoha has leveraged its resource advantage to strangle the other nations — leaving their people hungry and desperate!"
"Today, Kumogakure raises the banner of the ninja world! We will break Konoha's grip and distribute what has been hoarded to all people!"
"If you have any conscience remaining, surrender now — and I will show mercy!"
Sakura blinked.
That was... surprisingly articulate. Who wrote that for him?
"HA!"
Jiraiya's laugh rolled across the snowfield — open contempt in every syllable.
"Raikage!"
"Kumogakure has provoked Konoha three times! Three times, Konoha showed restraint! Three times, we chose not to escalate!"
"But there is a limit!"
"You don't get four!"
"The Land of Fire's resources belong to the Land of Fire! When did that become your concern?!"
"What we do with our own property is our own business!"
"If we wanted to throw it to the dogs, we could! If you want some — go fight the dogs for it!"
"HA!"
A ripple of barely-suppressed laughter ran through the Konoha side.
Jiraiya had cut through the rhetoric cleanly. Raising the banner of the ninja world — from people who had been stealing, raiding, and starting wars since the First Shinobi World War. No verification required. Kumogakure's track record spoke for itself.
They took what they needed. They always had.
Which didn't mean they were simple. Mistaking that directness for stupidity was a fatal error. Kumogakure's history was full of feints nested inside feints, brutality wielded with precision.
"Jiraiya — times have changed!"
"The resource restrictions have created suffering across the entire ninja world!"
"If you behead Haruno Sakura — the one responsible — here and now, I will withdraw immediately!"
The declaration hit the field like a stone into still water.
Nearly every head turned toward Sakura.
A twelve-year-old girl.
That's the one who started this war?
A child this young — and already this calculating?
The whisper moved through the ranks.
Konoha's witch.
(Chapter End)
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