Chapter 162: A Diplomatic Duel — With Appropriate Decorum
"Jiraiya!"
"Sorry, I'm a bit late!"
The pink-haired girl burst into the command tent before she fully arrived, her voice preceding her through the entrance.
"Ah, Sakura's here. Right on time."
Jiraiya smiled and gestured to the seat beside him. She had visibly just woken up.
"Hmph. No manners."
A voice, edged with age.
Sakura looked around properly for the first time. Besides Jiraiya and Kakashi, there was an elderly woman close to seventy, and two younger faces she didn't recognize — one man, one woman.
She clocked the old woman's expression.
So that's who the old man sent as lead negotiator.
She clicked her tongue quietly, pulled out the chair on Jiraiya's right, and sat down.
I'm the bigger person here. Respect your elders. She's not worth my energy.
Toneri Koharu's already-lined brow drew tighter.
"Come on, let's not start," Jiraiya interjected cheerfully, before anyone could say more. "Sakura's contribution to this campaign speaks for itself, Koharu-senpai."
He didn't pause long enough to let Koharu answer.
"Now that everyone's here — we've got a little time before the meeting. Let me run through what we're working with."
He produced a scroll and spread it on the table.
Two days of intelligence extraction from the Raikage's mind. And the list of what Konoha wanted from this.
Sakura glanced down the length of it and felt a quiet satisfaction.
Good appetite. I approve.
"First, and unsurprisingly — war reparations." Jiraiya's finger touched the top line. "Working figure is five billion ryō."
Sakura did the arithmetic automatically.
About a hundred and forty-three Asumas.
"Which is obviously a starting point," Jiraiya added, catching her expression. "Cloud Country's terrain doesn't exactly lend itself to surplus income. We're negotiating, not demanding the impossible."
She gave him a look that clearly said I know that, thank you.
He covered the rest quickly — reparations, territorial concessions, garrison rights, material alternatives to cash if their treasury was as empty as everyone expected.
"And the last item. Most important."
His finger stopped on a single line.
Four words. Falls of Truth.
Sakura read it.
She didn't react.
With the Raikage's body in Konoha's custody, extracting information about Turtle Island and the Falls of Truth had been entirely achievable. If anything, Yamanaka specialists not finding it would have been the surprise.
"If we secure this one location — everything else on the list becomes secondary. The reparations, the garrison rights, all of it — even if we settle for symbolic amounts across the board, the strategic gain outweighs all of it combined."
No one else reacted. They'd clearly been briefed before Sakura arrived.
Jiraiya looked at her, waiting for the question.
She looked back at him with the expression of someone who already knows.
"Sakura," he said, a touch disappointed, "you're not curious what this place is?"
She registered the room's expectation. Composed her face into something appropriately wide-eyed.
"Oh wow, what's that place?" she said, voice full of precisely calibrated enthusiasm. "Tell me everything~"
Jiraiya laughed despite himself. Koharu's expression did something more complicated.
"You insufferable girl. Did Hiruzen teach you nothing about comportment?"
"Comportment?" Sakura met her eyes. "My comportment is my comportment."
"Is that what you call it? You think a bit of battlefield success gives you license to act however you please?"
"Yes."
Direct. Unhesitating.
"I used that bit of battlefield success to beat Kumogakure. What exactly are you going to do about it?"
In the three days since the battle, the story had moved — through the camp, through messenger birds, out to the River Country front. Sakura's name wasn't just new generation of Konoha anymore. It was new generation of the ninja world.
And the medical work after — two days without sleep, treating whoever came through without regard for rank — had started to draw certain comparisons. Tsunade's reputation had been built partly on exactly that. The granddaughter of the First Hokage, yes, but also the woman who treated every soldier the same.
Koharu's chest was visibly rising and falling.
"You little—I have put up with quite enough—"
"And I've put up with you, old woman."
Sakura was out of her chair.
"Sakura—!" Kakashi's hand landed on her shoulder.
"What did you just say to me?!"
"What Hiruzen actually taught me—"
(A long way away in Konoha, Hiruzen sneezed.)
"ENOUGH."
Jiraiya's hand hit the table. The sound stopped everything.
"This is a forward operating base, not a market. Save it for the village. Both of you."
A tense moment.
Koharu settled. "Given Jiraiya's presence, I'll let it pass this once."
"Don't flatter yourself," Sakura said, quieter.
"Did you not just hear—"
Jiraiya's look landed on Sakura with enough weight to communicate the rest.
She accepted the look. Sat back down.
One side down. The other side took another beat, then also subsided.
"Right," Jiraiya said, with the energy of a man who has successfully defused something and wants to move past it quickly. "We're all on the same side. Dinner's on me when we're back at the village."
The meeting concluded. People began moving.
As they walked toward the designated location, Sakura fell into step beside the male assistant — the Yamanaka, who had introduced himself as Yamanaka Sawa, and who was clearly aware that Sakura was his clan head's daughter's closest friend.
"How does this work? Negotiation, I mean."
"Two nations across a table is a contest of words," he said, with what seemed like genuine goodwill. "The key is maintaining form. Polite. Measured. That restraint is itself a demonstration of a great nation's confidence."
He added: "Sakura-san isn't here to negotiate directly, of course — just to be present. Watch and learn."
She nodded, thinking it over.
Measured. Restrained. The form of a great nation.
She was genuinely curious how that looked in practice.
The meeting location: a small stone room assembled by earth jutsu. A stone table at its center, also earth jutsu.
Kumogakure was already seated.
No Obito. No Orochimaru. Neither of them belonged in a room like this, for different reasons.
Across from the Konoha delegation: Killer Bee as the anchoring presence, Darui as the other. "Dodai" leading, with two or three others behind him.
Sakura sat beside Jiraiya, directly across from Darui.
Darui had one elbow on the table, cheek in his hand, chewing something. His expression was approximately that of a man counting down the minutes until he could leave.
"Dodai. It's been a while."
Koharu opened with the tone of two people who have a history.
"It has."
"Dodai's" response was even. No tell.
A thousand years of accumulated experience, Zetsu thought somewhere inside the borrowed face. This should be manageable.
Though Koharu's expression had shifted, very slightly. Something felt off to her — she couldn't locate it.
She put it aside. Jiraiya and Sakura were present. The thousand-strong unit was close behind. Whatever her instincts were saying, the risk was contained.
"Then let us begin."
Koharu gave a slight nod.
One of the Kumogakure negotiators was already talking.
"We register our strongest protest—"
He hadn't fully arrived at the word protest when:
"—against the Fire Country's deliberate strangulation of food exports, which has caused widespread starvation and suffering across our nation, for which the Fire Country bears full responsibility—"
Sakura's mouth twitched.
High ground. Taken immediately. Interesting opening.
"Protest my backside!"
Yamanaka Sawa, who had sixty seconds ago explained the importance of measured, polite, restrained diplomacy, was now pointing across the table.
"What the Fire Country does with its resources is the Fire Country's business! And while we're talking about responsibility — should we start with the two kidnapping attempts? The Nine-Tails' jinchūriki? The Hyūga heiress? Should we start there?!"
Sakura stared at him.
...Measured. Restrained. Form of a great nation.
"Exactly right!"
The female assistant — Kurama Asuna, Sakura now learned, who looked like she could quote classical poetry and probably could — had her palm flat on the stone table.
"When has the Fire Country's internal management ever been the business of outsiders?! You want our food? Be grateful we ever sold it to you! On your knees! Grateful!"
"This is an outrage—!"
"The outrage is that you started a war over this and then lost it and now you want to sit across from us and negotiate yourselves to the result you wanted anyway?!"
"You think this world is a story where you get everything?!"
Asuna's hand had moved to hit the table for emphasis. The stone was, unfortunately, stone.
She winced. Kept going.
"Not one good thing do you miss! You fired first and now you want soft terms?! The nerve—!"
Sakura sat very still.
I see, she thought. This is what "appropriate decorum" looks like.
I have learned something today.
(Chapter End)
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