Chapter 161: Hell Stab, Turtle Island, the Falls of Truth
Night.
A country that should have been only wind and snow — but the Konoha camp blazed with light. The celebration had wound down, but the ninja weren't sleeping. They gathered in small groups around fires, talking, the relief still too fresh to let anyone fully rest.
Sakura had made a brief appearance at the victory dinner and gone straight to the medical team.
A force of several thousand, and thirty medical ninja to serve them. Since returning to camp she hadn't stopped.
"Thank — thank you. You're Sakura-sama, aren't you? The Hokage's student?"
The man in the bed tried to push himself upright. Sakura pressed him back down.
"The wound isn't healed. No bathing for the next seven days. Keep it away from water."
She was already packing up to move to the next patient.
Too many injured. A decisive battle meant exactly that — close to a thousand serious casualties, over two thousand minor ones. The serious cases needed surgery, roughly an hour each. The math didn't work. Untreated, serious wounds became fatal wounds on a predictable timeline.
She had no time to acknowledge the gratitude. Every minute she spent talking was a minute someone else's condition worsened.
She'd already lost some.
She wiped nothing from her face and moved.
Someone was helping the medical team nearby — a certain young man with dark eyes who'd apparently decided to contribute and kept making mistakes because he couldn't stop glancing at the pink-haired figure across the tent.
"Are you even paying attention?!"
"If you can't focus, get out! I've been patient long enough!"
The medical ninja turned on Sasuke.
"I'm — I'm sorry."
He ducked his head.
She followed his gaze to where Sakura was working, then turned back to him with the expression of someone who has identified the problem.
"Sakura-sama just defeated the Raikage. That doesn't mean you get to come in here and be distracted. Out."
Faced with a critique he couldn't argue with, Sasuke apologized sincerely and promised his full attention. The medical ninja accepted this with visible reluctance.
The battle result had spread through the camp without any deliberate announcement. Sakura's kill of the Raikage had detonated across the unit within hours. Jiraiya had also, during the victory dinner, inadvertently let slip the earlier capture of the Two-Tails jinchūriki.
After the Fourth Hokage, here was another name.
What struck the ordinary ninja — the ones without clan bloodlines, without inherited techniques — was that Haruno Sakura was one of them. No kekkei genkai. No family legacy. A civilian background.
That, without anyone organizing it, had created a certain undercurrent of feeling.
But that was a story for later.
While Sakura ran surgeries, another department of the Konoha camp was operating at equal intensity.
The Raikage's body.
A village's Shadow. One of the five highest-ranking figures in the ninja world.
The moment it arrived at the intelligence section, the Yamanaka specialists present had reacted the way predators react to opportunity. Even the high-level mental protection techniques on the Raikage's mind were, for them, a complication rather than an obstacle.
Jiraiya sat to the side with tea and read as the transcriptions arrived.
Methodical. Thorough. Nothing left out.
"Jiraiya-sama — these are the cultivation methods for Lightning Release Chakra Mode, Lightning God Armor, and the associated techniques."
The hand holding the teacup stopped.
Here it is.
Lightning Release Chakra Mode. The hereditary secret technique of every Raikage generation — unmatched defense, movement like lightning itself, penetrating attack.
He flipped through the index rapidly.
Lightning God Armor. Lightning Oppression Horizontal Push. Lightning Plough Hot Knife. Combined Lightning Plough. Thousand Layers Thunder Dance. The AB Formation technique—
He turned to the end.
Hell Stab.
The Third Raikage's signature technique. The one that had let him hold a line against ten thousand Iwa ninja. The technique whose penetrating force could punch through anything Iwagakure's combined Earth Release could produce.
He read it.
His brow furrowed.
"This isn't complete?"
The intelligence officer shook his head.
"It's complete. But the Fourth Raikage didn't know this technique. He only had partial understanding of the theory."
Jiraiya thought about it. The Fourth Raikage had never used it — not once during the entire campaign. That absence had been real.
"What a waste."
He exhaled.
The Third Raikage had been something else. Without Hell Stab's penetration, no one person could have broken through sustained combined Earth Release from ten thousand ninja.
"Before you leave — there's something at the end you should look at more carefully."
Jiraiya glanced back.
More important than the Raikage's secret techniques?
He turned to the last page. Read it once. Read it again.
Short. One page of text.
He took a while to read it anyway.
Snap.
He closed the folder.
"How many people know about this?"
His voice had gone very careful.
"Four who did the extraction, myself, and now you."
"Good. You know what needs to happen without me saying it."
The officer nodded once. Intelligence department — the first day of training was about confidentiality. They understood before they were told.
"Keep going. Don't stop. I'll be back."
He took the folder and walked out into the dark and the snow.
This needed to reach Hiruzen immediately. Before the negotiation team arrived. If handled correctly — if this was actually possible — it changed the entire strategic picture going forward.
Konoha's Nine-Tails jinchūriki would stop being a deterrent that couldn't be deployed.
Turtle Island. The Falls of Truth.
Even at significant cost, this had to be part of the settlement. Some form of access. Some arrangement that gave Konoha a claim to what was there.
If they got it — one more reliable anchor of strength, and an end to the risk of another Nine-Tails incident.
Two days passed.
Sakura walked out of the medical section with dark circles and the specific variety of exhaustion where thinking feels like moving through water.
Not a drop of chakra remaining.
I am a small and suffering creature. Please have mercy on me.
She made it back toward her tent and found Jiraiya waiting in her path.
"Sakura—"
She walked past him. Eyes forward. No acknowledgment.
"I'm sleeping. Come back later."
Medical work at this scale after a battle of this scale was not survivable on ordinary rest. She'd fought the Two-Tails and the Raikage and come out feeling better than this.
"Ah."
Jiraiya looked at her — upright only by habit, the pink hair completely without its usual energy — and closed his mouth.
She needed sleep. This could wait.
Sakura reached her tent, went inside, lay down fully clothed, closed her eyes, and was gone.
Some time later she rolled over and found something soft in her arms.
She pulled it closer. Nice. Warm.
Ino, who had come to check on her and somehow ended up functioning as a pillow, looked down at the face buried in her shoulder.
Hmm.
The warm breath against her neck was slightly ticklish.
She looked at the sleeping face. The usual sharpness was absent — just a girl, actually quite pretty, peaceful in a way she rarely was when awake.
She'd known her since they were both small children. She'd been the one who stepped in when the other kids were cruel. She remembered the girl who cried. She didn't recognize her in this person who had killed the Raikage.
Except she did. It was the same person.
Sakura is a woman among women.
She reached out and touched the pink hair, moved it gently away from her face.
Whoever eventually ended up with this person—
She felt a purely reflexive and slightly alarming impulse toward preemptive violence on that person's behalf.
She pinched Sakura's cheek.
"Mm~"
Ino froze.
"Mm... more..."
"SAKURA—!!!"
Morning. A Yamanaka girl's yell nearly took the tent down.
Ino stood with her arms crossed and her expression conveying everything she felt about recent events.
Sakura, who had been punched awake, took a moment to locate herself.
Who am I. Where am I. What happened. Why is Ino looking at me like that. What did I do.
She thought about it.
There was something Jiraiya wanted to tell me.
The negotiation.
Right. The negotiation was today. And she had a very strong opinion about how much of Kumogakure's dignity would be intact when it was over.
"Sakura, you actually—"
Ino started, building to something.
Sakura, already moving, grabbed her kit from the bedside with careful hands, glanced at both of them.
"You two catch up. I have things to do."
"Good luck."
The tent flap opened. Cold air.
"AHHHH! HARUNO SAKURA—!!!"
Ino stamped her foot twice, alone in the tent except for the cold.
Kushina appeared in the doorway with a bowl of rice porridge, took in the scene, and looked around.
"Where's Sakura?"
"USE YOUR EYES."
"Huh?"
"You STUPID OCTOPUS—"
"Excuse me?! WILD BOAR—"
Two foreheads pressed together. Neither willing to throw the first punch. Neither willing to back down.
The porridge cooled.
The tent entrance opened again. Sakura had come back for something she'd forgotten. She collected it, looked at the standoff, and delivered her verdict:
"Both of you are doing great. Keep it up."
She left.
Ino and Kushina stared at the space she'd occupied.
Then at each other.
(Chapter End)
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