Chapter 185: Arrival at River Country
"River Country, hm..."
Mei studied the pink-haired girl in front of her, repeating the name quietly.
Since arriving in Konoha, the village hadn't done much to her beyond lightly restricting her movement, and she'd used the past few days gathering information on the Land of Water. Her operating range wasn't large, but it wasn't negligible either — that range was exactly what had let her intercept Itachi a few nights earlier.
"That's right," Sakura said. "If you're willing, we leave in three days."
Mei didn't answer immediately. She was thinking.
She wasn't a Konoha shinobi. Strictly speaking, she was a Kirigakure missing-nin with no intention of formally joining this village. Her actual goal was using Konoha's strength to break the invisible hand currently controlling Kirigakure from behind the scenes.
She preferred to think of herself as a partner, not an asset.
But—
One person, alone, wasn't a credible counterweight to something the size of Konoha. She didn't have the standing to call herself a partner on equal footing. What she'd offered so far had been a demonstration of good faith, nothing more.
Sakura read the hesitation and understood it immediately.
This was the original Fifth Mizukage. Whatever else was true about her, her loyalty to Kirigakure ran deep. Asking her to fight under Konoha's banner outright wasn't going to land easily.
"Didn't you tell me yourself," Sakura said, "that the hand behind Kiri belongs to the Wind-Lightning alliance? Kumogakure's already lost its war. Sunagakure is standing alone against the combined Fire-Earth alliance."
"As long as we don't know whether Kiri has actually deployed yet, Sand has to hold the line against everything Fire and Earth are throwing at them. Taking Suna down fast is what frees us up to actually help you."
Mei's expression shifted slightly. Being read this cleanly by a thirteen-year-old grated, but the logic was sound.
"And besides — this campaign doesn't depend on you specifically."
That wasn't quite true. Mei's contribution mattered considerably. Kakuzu had already absorbed the nanotech parasites, and the Aburame clan's last two heads had been locked in research for ages without producing anything usable. Mei's Boil Release — wide coverage, serious lethality — filled a real gap.
"And afterward? How do we deal with the hand controlling Kiri once this is over?"
Mei looked at her directly.
There it is. Sakura kept her expression even, though something in her settled.
"That's not complicated. March on Kiri. Kill everyone who opposes you."
...
Do you hear yourself right now?
Mei's brow furrowed. She clearly didn't agree.
"You think the faction controlling Kiri will simply hand over power because you showed up with Konoha troops at your back?"
Sakura's expression cooled slightly.
"Authority in Kiri currently sits with the Fourth Mizukage. Even if he's genuinely a puppet, the people pulling his strings only need to manage the narrative slightly to paint you as a traitor to the village."
"Even if we win the fight, even if we put you in the Mizukage's chair — the people of Kiri will already hate you by the time it's done."
Each sentence landed like a blade. Mei's eyes widened slightly.
"The clean play is a proper Mizukage election in Kiri, with you serving as the liaison between Konoha and the village."
Mei's jaw tightened.
"That makes me a puppet too."
"What's the difference between that and what's happening now? The only thing that changes is which power is pulling the strings — Wind-Lightning becomes Konoha."
"You didn't see this coming when you came to us in the first place?"
Sakura's voice went flat.
"Asking an outside power for help means accepting that outside power gets leverage over you. That's not a complicated principle. Did you genuinely need me to explain it?"
"Or did you assume Konoha would clean up Kiri's internal politics for you out of pure goodwill, on the strength of one piece of intelligence?"
"That's naive."
Mei's eyes went wide.
She'd had no path back from the moment she left Kiri. No one stood behind her anymore.
Ao. Chōjūrō.
Lord Mizukage, what should I do—
"Think it over. Fight for Konoha, deal with the hand behind Kiri, and become the liaison between the two villages."
"Or—"
Sakura didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
Mei said nothing, pressing her lips together, looking at the girl whose eye color was nearly identical to her own.
Thirteen.
This person is thirteen years old.
Something familiar settled over her — the same helplessness she imagined the Fourth Raikage must have felt, near the end.
What is it about this village.
Genius after genius, generated out of nowhere. Every time Konoha looked weakest, something extraordinary appeared and pulled the whole structure back from collapse. Hashirama died, Tobirama appeared. Tobirama died, White Fang appeared. White Fang died, the Three Legendary Sannin appeared. The Sannin scattered, Minato appeared. Minato died, and now this.
"...Fine."
The word came out hard, but it came out.
The moment she said it, something in her chest loosened — exhaustion that felt heavier, somehow, than the fight against the Eight-Tails had been, over a conversation that had taken minutes.
Sakura's expression brightened instantly. She clapped Mei on the shoulder.
"Glad to have you. Thanks!"
"Noon, three days from now, Konoha's main gate. Be ready."
"Oh, and good news — Kakashi's coming too~~"
She left without checking Mei's reaction, walking off cheerfully.
Mei watched her go, eyes lowering.
Kakashi. That man.
A faint, complicated sound that wasn't quite a laugh escaped her.
At the entrance to Mei's quarters, a plain-faced man leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed watched Sakura approach.
"How'd it go?"
"Smoothly. Though I think she's a bit too idealistic, honestly."
Sakura waved a hand, signaling it was fine.
"Good enough."
Tobirama fell into step beside her, unsurprised that she'd talked Mei into it.
"How's the yang-release technique coming along?"
He kept his eyes on the street and the people moving along it as they walked.
"Better than expected. It's like..."
Sakura stopped walking. She raised one hand, fingers spreading, as if reaching to catch the sun overhead.
Light fell through the gaps between her fingers, warm across her face.
"...like it was made for me."
Tobirama's mouth curved slightly.
"Sounds like a perfect match."
Developing a technique from nothing was always the hardest step. Hiruzen had supplied a quarter of the foundation. Sakura's own physical aptitude had supplied half. Tobirama had filled in the final quarter — completing the hardest part of the equation.
"You should name it."
Sakura glanced sideways at him.
"It just got created. We haven't even tested it properly. Isn't this a little fast?"
"It's coming eventually either way."
"Fine. Yang Release Body Technique."
"...That's incredibly lazy."
Tobirama pressed a hand to his forehead.
This was the same person who'd developed Flying Thunder God, Impure World Reincarnation, Multiple Shadow Detonation. Real names. Names that sounded like they belonged to something dangerous.
And this was what she landed on?
"Why bother dressing it up. If it works, it works." Sakura waved the criticism off. "Worst case, it ends up like Kumo's Lightning Release Body Technique — keeps branching into new derivatives, and we name those individually when they show up."
"As you like. It's your technique." Tobirama exhaled.
Choosing to abandon a Kekkei Genkai-tier inheritance like Wood Release entirely in favor of yang-release alone — when nothing actually prevented her from developing both, at thirteen years old, with time to spare — was a choice he still found himself turning over.
But that single-mindedness was, in its own way, exactly why he wanted to see how far this yang-release path of hers could actually go.
Three days later.
Konoha's main gate.
The supply convoy bound for the River Country front assembled.
Sakura sat in the wagon, idly turning her brass knuckles over to pass the time. Kushina sat beside her. Across from them: Kakashi and Mei.
This was the kill team, Sakura at the head, assembled specifically for Kakuzu.
The original plan had included Asuma, but something had come up and he couldn't make it. Jiraiya and Guy's team had already left the previous day, escorting Naruto toward Turtle Island off the coast of the Land of Fire.
Which meant Hiruzen and Tsunade were the only ones holding down the village. Konoha had nothing left in reserve.
Sakura had wanted to bring Sasuke — a Mangekyo user was a genuine asset — but Hiruzen had declined, citing Sasuke's ongoing Lightning Release training. It was obvious enough what was really happening: the old man wanted River Country to be Sakura's stage alone.
Hikaru wasn't a consideration either. She wasn't ready to fight for Konoha, and given everything she'd lived through, an aversion to war made complete sense.
So Sakura had brought Kushina instead. Her sensory ability was unmatched in the ninja world, and Inoichi was already on the River Country front — meaning Kushina could run the Whirling Mountain Formation with him the same way she normally did with Ino.
With Kushina present, the moment Kakuzu surfaced, they'd find him immediately.
Kushina sat beside Sakura with a scroll open in her lap, working through a new technique even mid-transit.
Sakura leaned over, curious.
"Want to look?" Kushina noticed and slid the scroll toward her.
"No, just curious what you're studying."
"The Third tested my chakra affinity yesterday, and combined with how I performed on the field, he gave me this as a reward." Kushina flipped to an earlier page, smiling. "Apparently my chakra profile matches yours, actually. Yin, yang, water, earth — all four."
The scroll's title came into view on the earlier page.
Water Release — Great Waterfall Technique (Second Hokage's Revised Edition).
"That's a little stingy of him," Sakura said, mouth twisting. "Just the one water technique?"
"Oh — no, that one's from Lady Tsunade. The Third gave me these."
Kushina pulled out a second scroll.
Water Release — Hardened Vortex Water Blade.Water Release — Water Dragon Bullet.
Tobirama's signature S-rank water technique, plus his own refined version of the Water Dragon Bullet.
Sakura nodded, satisfied. Kushina and Ino's combined Whirling Mountain Formation had been decisive in the Frost Country campaign. An S-rank and an A-rank from Hiruzen was a real investment in her.
The selection made sense, too — Tsunade and Hiruzen were clearly building Kushina into a mobile artillery platform, leveraging her unusually deep chakra reserves directly. She'd come from Kusagakure with a comparatively thin foundation in basic technique, and rather than grinding through fundamentals from scratch right now, the more efficient path was overwhelming firepower — answer whatever the opponent throws with a large-scale water technique and let raw output do the work.
Kakashi, chin propped on one hand, eyed the scroll across from him and pulled a face.
The rich get richer. If he tried running three consecutive Great Waterfall Techniques, he'd drain himself dry on the first one.
"Heh, I just started, though — still working through the basic Waterfall Technique." Kushina rubbed her nose, sheepish. "Once I'm further along, I'll actually be useful to you, Sakura."
"You're already useful to me."
Sakura's expression softened slightly, looking at her.
She'd originally pulled Kushina into her orbit purely to solve the Yin Seal problem, back at the start. In hindsight, however that decision had begun, getting her out of Kusagakure had turned out to be unambiguously good — for both of them.
The convoy finished its final checks and moved out toward River Country.
River Country. The Sand front.
Command tent.
"You're sure about this intelligence?"
Chiyo rubbed her temple, headache visible.
Konoha had swapped commanders recently. Homura wasn't as unconventional or unpredictable as Danzō had been, but he wasn't soft either — his offense, defense, flanking, and border management were all solid across the board, nothing flashy, but consistently above the line. Beating him would take a tactical edge sharp enough to actually overwhelm him outright. Otherwise the old man simply refused to die.
"Reliable. You've never had reason to doubt our intelligence before."
A tall man in the black-and-red cloak, face partly masked, counted a stack of bills without looking up.
Chiyo watched him count and felt her mouth tighten.
This particular monster was older than she was, and apparently the only thing he genuinely cared about in this world was money.
"So what now?" she said. "Konoha's witch isn't even something the Fourth Raikage could handle."
The Frost Country campaign had concluded a while back, and the details had circulated widely since — particularly everything connected to Sakura.
The consensus across the ninja world by now was essentially unanimous: this entire war had started because of her. The Raikage had said so himself, publicly, in his exchange with Jiraiya during the campaign.
Thirteen years old. Calculating. Devastatingly strong. Captured a jinchūriki alive. Killed a Raikage in open combat.
This wasn't within the normal range of what a shinobi was supposed to be capable of, at any age. Even Minato, in his prime, hadn't produced numbers this absurd this early.
If someone had told Chiyo, before any of this, that a thirteen-year-old would beat the legendary Raikage in single combat, she'd have assumed they were joking with her.
It wasn't a joke. It had actually happened.
Chiyo wasn't laughing anymore.
And because the whole situation was so far outside normal, idle gossip had already attached a nickname to her: the Witch.
"What now?" Kakuzu raised a pair of green eyes toward the old woman.
"Fight or run. It's that simple."
He finished counting his stack, lifted it to his nose, and breathed in the ink smell with his eyes closed, savoring it.
Money. Genuinely the finest thing in this world.
Chiyo watched him and felt something close to physical discomfort.
A hundred thousand ryō per Konoha shinobi killed. How much had this man already extracted from Sunagakure's treasury at this point?
If the Daimyo of Wind Country hadn't poured serious backing into this war, Sunagakure couldn't have sustained the cost at all.
"Then we'll have to make sure the Witch dies here."
Chiyo's voice was low.
Running wasn't an option — Sand was already alone, holding against both Konoha and Iwagakure. Konoha had just finished a grinding campaign against Kumo and needed time to recover before redeploying the troops from Frost Country onto this front, which bought some breathing room. And Iwa, despite holding the Four-Tails jinchūriki, the Five-Tails jinchūriki, and Ōnoki himself — three serious powerhouses — still hadn't managed to bring down Ebizō and Kisame, which told its own story. They weren't actually trying very hard.
Earth Country's pressure on this front was barely felt at all.
And word from Kirigakure suggested they were preparing to move soon — crossing the sea, landing in Whirlpool Country, using it as a staging ground against the Land of Fire.
On the surface, the Wind-Lightning alliance looked half-defeated. In reality, it had quietly transformed into a Wind-Water alliance, while the Fire-Earth alliance was, in practice, just Konoha shouldering the entire weight against both Wind and Water.
Earth Country's actual battlefield behavior told its own story: there was clearly a second opinion forming internally. As long as Konoha kept winning, Iwa would maintain the surface-level alliance while quietly doing as little as possible. If Konoha lost — whether the alliance shifted back to Wind-Earth-Water, or stayed Wind-Water alone, was genuinely unclear.
Chiyo looked down at the photograph on the table. The pink-haired girl.
Thirteen.
This one cannot be allowed to grow up.
A thirteen-year-old already operating at this level — what happened in five years? Ten?
Watching Chiyo's resolve set, Kakuzu looked up at the old woman.
"This operation is clearly targeting me specifically. I've been carrying real weight for Sand on this front. Some compensation seems appropriate."
Chiyo went quiet for a moment.
"Kill Haruno Sakura. One hundred fifty million ryō."
"Deal! Elder Chiyo, generous as always!"
Kakuzu's expression lit up.
The pink-haired girl's market value had been climbing steadily since the campaign ended — now sitting somewhere comparable to the standing of an active Kage, arguably higher. Not just because she'd killed one. Because of how young she was when she did it.
Outside Konoha, nobody wanted to see this particular prodigy live long enough to mature.
"I'll have the Kazekage bring reinforcements personally."
"You, me, the Kazekage's jinchūriki — four of us, combined, in the middle of the chaos. We end her there."
Chiyo's voice was cold and final. A kunai came down, pinning the photograph to the table through Sakura's face.
"Sounds good to me."
Kakuzu's grin, visible even through the mask's edge, stretched nearly ear to ear.
He wasn't just on board with the plan. He'd already done the math on the broader picture: the girl was traveling with one Uzumaki, one Kakashi, and Mei Terumi. Jiraiya — the genuine senior threat — wasn't part of this deployment at all. And Kirigakure's movement meant the only serious defenders left in Konoha itself were the Hokage and Tsunade, both of whom would be needed to hold against Kiri directly.
Which meant: no real heavyweight backup anywhere near this operation. Just the girl, alone, if the supporting cast could be peeled off.
The Kazekage tying up Mei. Kakashi handled by whichever unit got assigned to him. Isolate the girl from her support, and she'd have nothing left to lean on.
A man with the Kazekage's standing surely wouldn't lose to a nobody like Mei Terumi.
Kill the girl, and the payout was substantial in every direction.
River Country. Konoha's forward position.
"Good work getting out here."
Mitokado Homura came out personally to receive the supply convoy.
The girl who used to trail behind Hiruzen everywhere had, by this point, grown into someone even he didn't take lightly anymore.
"Elder Homura."
Sakura smiled at the old man.
Compared to Koharu and Danzō, this particular elder had always carried real perspective. Whatever bias she'd once had toward him had worn off entirely over time.
If he'd wanted to contest the Hokage seat, he'd genuinely have been a credible rival to Hiruzen.
"You've grown taller."
Homura looked her over with a small smile, then signaled his people to start receiving the supplies before leading Sakura's group toward the command tent.
"Any complications on the way out here?" he asked, falling into his usual habit of checking in along the walk.
"My route's been compromised."
That stopped him mid-step. He frowned, said nothing further, and led the group quickly into the command tent, sealing it against eavesdropping the moment they were inside.
"Tell me."
He didn't wait once the flap closed behind them.
"The convoy wasn't hidden. It moved in the open — practically announced itself." Sakura's tone stayed even. "There's no way Sand's scouts missed that kind of movement. And they didn't act on it."
Right on cue, Homura's attention shifted toward the tent entrance.
The flap opened. A man with a pineapple-shaped haircut walked in, followed by a tall man with pale-yellow hair and a third, broad-shouldered man with red hair.
Shikaku Nara. Inoichi Yamanaka. Chōza Akimichi.
The current heads of the Ino-Shika-Cho clans — Konoha's strongest combined formation currently in the field.
"Which confirms it. Your position's been leaked, Sakura."
"Sending an attack force after a supply convoy that obvious would just be throwing lives away. They didn't do that."
Shikaku regarded Sakura with mild, easy attention, then nodded once toward Kakashi — old acquaintances, evidently.
"Using a public, low-stakes move to verify whether your information's actually compromised — that's a standard intelligence test."
Shikaku worked through the logic out loud, evidently having reached the same conclusion Sakura had, independently and immediately.
☆☆☆
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