Chapter 31: For Foreign Affairs, Ask Sakura
Hiruzen Sarutobi's brow creased slightly as he read through the mission report Tenzō had handed him.
"All right. You've all had a long day. Go get some rest. Sakura, stay behind."
At his word, Tenzō and the others withdrew without hesitation — clean, crisp, professional.
Only Sakura was left.
The moment the others were gone, Sakura immediately peeled the mask off her face. The thing had terrible ventilation and had been suffocating her for hours.
She flopped down onto the office couch, poured herself a glass of water without asking, and downed the whole thing in one long pull. From the moment the mission ended until now, she hadn't gotten so much as a sip.
Hiruzen paid her little ritual no mind. He was absorbed in the mission report.
Ordinarily, a smuggling bandit ring like this one wouldn't have registered on his radar at all.
But Sakura's Will of Fire essay had opened his eyes. It had never occurred to him before that you could suppress a rival power through resources — what she had called economic warfare.
And now that Danzō had also read that essay, Hiruzen couldn't afford to just sit back. If he couldn't stop Danzō, he would have to start taking this seriously himself.
"Sakura. What's your read on this?"
He came over and sat down next to her, passing the report across.
Sakura took Tenzō's mission write-up and, internally, let out a long sigh.
I am a genin. I've been out of school for less than a month.
Oh well. I picked this road. Have to crawl it on my knees if I have to.
Her green eyes scanned the report rapidly.
The power behind that bandit crew was a fairly substantial merchant guild based in the Land of Wind — and the same guild maintained ties to a second merchant guild inside the Land of Fire. The domestic Fire Country guild needed the bandits to move its goods into Wind Country. The bandits were simply middlemen. Goods came across the mountains from the Wind Country side; the bandits collected them and relayed them to the Fire Country guild, skimming a cut off the top.
And given how this report read, this particular bandit group was almost certainly just one of many such links in the chain. There had to be plenty more operations exactly like it.
"Is Master planning for the future?"
The future being, of course, the situation around Danzō's stolen copy of her essay.
"If we can't stop him, we can't allow him a free hand either."
Hiruzen had his own logic here. A plan of the scale Sakura had drafted required modeling out countless contingencies, which meant the rollout would take years. Since he couldn't keep Danzō from starting the music, he had to be the one holding the conductor's baton — controlling the market.
If he wanted a particular resource's value to rise, it rose. If he wanted it to fall, it fell.
Sakura caught his meaning instantly.
"Then give me a couple of days, Master. I need a little time."
Hiruzen had no objection to that. If Sakura had produced a fully polished plan on the spot, that would have been the suspicious part.
"Of course. I'll wait for your good news."
He patted her soft hair with a quiet smile.
Sakura returned to ANBU headquarters at high speed, feeling somewhat speechless about the whole affair.
She was a genin. Why did it feel like Hiruzen had started treating her as his personal Zhou Yu — internal affairs he handled himself, foreign policy he ran past Sakura?
When she reached the changing room, she found Yūgao Uzuki halfway through changing out of her gear.
Yūgao was, objectively, stunning — probably the only kunoichi in Konoha right now who could rival Kurenai Yūhi for "village flower" status. And as it turned out, her figure more than held up its end of that reputation too.
No wonder Hayate Gekkō always looks like he's running on fumes, Sakura thought unrepentantly. If I had a girlfriend at that tier, I'd cling like a barnacle too.
"Oh, you're back, Sakura. Don't forget to come along for dinner later. Call it your welcome dinner for joining the squad."
Yūgao pulled her long purple hair back and tied it into a crisp, efficient ponytail. She paid absolutely no mind to Sakura's appraising stare — every woman cared about her own figure, and Yūgao was more than pleased with hers. She simply assumed Sakura's look was admiration.
Eventually, Sakura tore her gaze away with visible reluctance and dipped her head slightly. Of course, it wasn't the kind of reluctance Yūgao was imagining. She was simply mourning for a certain past-life happiness that was now permanently out of reach.
By the time Yūgao and Sakura emerged from the ANBU base, Tenzō and Raidō were already waiting. Sakura had changed into her civvies too.
Yūgao, predictably, couldn't resist picking on Sakura's outfit — too boyish, she said. Sakura ignored her entirely.
"Good, everyone's here. Let's go eat some hot pot."
Tenzō was dressed exactly the way he appeared in canon — standard jōnin uniform, with a forehead protector very similar to the Second Hokage's.
Not one of them asked what Hiruzen had kept Sakura behind for. It wasn't a secret in the village that Sakura was Hiruzen's final disciple. Any shinobi with even halfway-decent information channels knew. And these four were ANBU.
A girl in pink pajamas, her cherry-blossom hair now grown out past her shoulders, sat at the desk in her bedroom, twirling a pencil between her fingers. In front of her was a blank sheet of paper.
At the top, in clear, neat handwriting, she had written the title:
Proposal: Raising International Grain Prices
Next to her elbow sat the stack of materials Hiruzen had sent over — policy reports on the current state of grain prices, both inside the Land of Fire and across the international market.
Sakura stared at the blank paper for a long moment. Then she uncapped her pencil.
The rise or fall of any one resource always shook a dozen different sets of interests.
Cutting off someone's money is the same as killing their parents.
That saying held everywhere in the world, and it held here too.
And grain prices were only the opening move. Iron, medicine, ore — those were the real heavy plays. When those started moving, there was going to be enormous resistance.
But were any of these people really Sakura's problem?
A bunch of fat-bellied corrupt officials and greedy, conscience-free merchants. That was all.
Sakura was confident that with shinobi standing behind the policy, even if there were some bumps, the measures would get implemented fast.
That said — the materials Hiruzen had sent over weren't comprehensive enough. She needed more. Not just Fire Country data. Wind Country, Earth Country, Lightning Country — she needed substantial material on all of them too.
And honestly, at this stage, there was nothing wrong with raising grain prices. At the very least, the farmers at the absolute bottom of the ladder — the people actually working the soil — would earn a little more for their trouble.
Provided that Hiruzen and the Daimyō of the Land of Fire didn't lose the plot and let some money-grubbing parasites get their fingers into the policy, the whole thing could work cleanly.
Because this was economic warfare, the support of the Fire Daimyō himself was non-negotiable.