The briefing room occupied the ground floor of the Intelligence Division's east wing, a broad, rectangular space with low-raked rows of wooden chairs facing a raised platform at the front. The ceiling was high enough that Hinata could stand without hunching, which she noted with quiet relief as she ducked through the doorway. A slide projector sat on a wheeled metal cart in the center of the platform. Behind it, a white cloth screen had been pulled down from a ceiling mount, its surface rippled faintly by the air vent above.
She had arrived early. The room was not yet populated, but it was far from empty.
Naruto's clones were in motion.
One was on his hands and knees beneath the projector cart, threading a power cable through a gap in the floorboards. Another stood at the platform's edge, shuffling a stack of folders into an order. A third was tacking a large topographical map to the wall behind the screen.
Tsunade stood at the left side of the platform, her arms folded beneath her chest, her honey-brown eyes tracking the map-tacking clone with faint impatience. Shizune was beside her, clipboard in hand, murmuring something and gesturing toward a stack of sealed document packets on the corner of the platform. Sakura stood on Tsunade's opposite flank, her white hospital coat exchanged for her standard red top, her green eyes serious as she listened.
Near the projector itself, Anko leaned against the cart with one hip, a thick folder open in both hands. She was reading its contents with a focused look that made the dark circles beneath her eyes look deeper. Her loose violet hair had been pulled into a rough, low tail, but strands still escaped around her ears. She looked like she had dragged herself here by force of will alone, which, knowing Anko, was probably the literal truth.
Karin stood beside Anko, close enough that their shoulders were almost touching. The redhead's posture was deceptively casual, her arms folded, but her dark red eyes were fixed on Anko's face attentively. Every few seconds, her gaze would flick to Anko's throat, reading the pulse point, then back to her face, checking the color beneath the skin. Monitoring.
Hinata took in the room in a single, sweeping pass. Then she moved toward the back.
The last row of chairs sat against the rear wall, directly beneath a pair of narrow windows that let in rectangles of afternoon light. She reached the row and looked down at the chair. It was standard Intelligence Division issue, a flat wooden seat on metal legs, with a low back.
She turned and lowered herself.
The chair accepted her weight with a faint metallic groan. Her wide hips pressed against the edges of the seat on both sides, the wooden surface too narrow to contain the full breadth of her lower body. The armrests, such as they were, two thin strips of flat metal, dug into the outer curves of her thighs. She shifted, trying to distribute the pressure evenly, and the chair legs scraped against the floor with a screech that drew a brief glance from one of Naruto's clones.
She settled. The fit was poor, but functional. She had endured worse.
We should construct a personal seating, Venom observed from the deep, their tone carrying the dry weight of a problem that had been noted. Transportable. Reinforced. Designed for our dimensions. This is becoming a recurring indignity.
I have considered it, Hinata admitted silently.
Consider it harder.
Despite the tight fit, she could see the entire room clearly from here. The raised platform, the projector, the screen, the map, Tsunade's profile, the top of every head in every row ahead of her. The last row had its advantages.
Minutes passed. One by one, the Naruto's clones completed their tasks and turned to Naruto, who stood near Tsunade with the real folder under his arm, his blue eyes surveying their work. He gave each a sharp nod and they dispersed themselves.
The first new arrivals came through the door.
Kiba entered with his shoulders rolled forward and his chin tucked, the posture of a man who understood the gravity of where he was going. Akamaru padded beside him, the massive white dog's claws clicking on the wooden floor, his ears swiveling as he took in the room's scents. Behind them, Shino moved in silence, his high collar and dark glasses concealing everything but the faintest sliver of his expression.
Kiba's eyes swept the room, passed over the platform, and locked onto the back row.
He grinned. It was brief and contained, the muted version of his usual fang-baring enthusiasm, but it reached his eyes.
"Hinata." He raised a hand in a short wave as he walked toward her, his voice pitched low enough that it didn't carry past the third row. "You look like you're sitting on a kids' bench."
"Good to see you too, Kiba," she said. The warmth in her dual-toned voice softened the resonance.
Shino appeared at Kiba's shoulder. He inclined his head once, a precise silent greeting without saying anything.
Hinata returned the nod.
Kiba dropped into the chair on her right, sprawling with his legs stretched out, ankles crossed. Akamaru circled the chair beside Kiba, sniffed the seat, then hopped up and sat with his haunches on the wood and his forepaws on the floor, occupying the space with the entitlement of a shinobi who had earned his place. Shino took the seat on Akamaru's far side without comment, his posture straight, his hands resting on his knees.
The door opened again.
Asuma came through first, a cigarette tucked behind his ear rather than between his lips, his trench knife visible at his hip. Ino followed, her platinum-blonde ponytail swinging as she turned to say something to Choji, who was already reaching into the bag of chips tucked under his arm. Shikamaru trailed at the rear, his hands in his pockets, his dark eyes already scanning the room's layout.
Their greetings were quick. Asuma gave a short nod toward the back row. Ino offered a small wave. Choji raised the chip bag in a gesture that was either a salute or an offering. Shikamaru didn't wave at all, but his gaze found Hinata's and held it for a beat longer than the others before he turned toward the second-to-last row.
The next arrival announced itself before the door was even fully open.
"YOSH! The flames of this mission shall burn brighter than a thousand…"
"Guy-sensei, please, we're inside."
Might Guy swept into the room like a green hurricane, his bowl cut gleaming under the fluorescent light, his teeth catching the glare in a blinding flash. Rock Lee flanked him on the left, his posture a near-perfect mirror of his teacher's, his eyes shining with the same enthusiasm, though he was at least making an effort to moderate his volume. Tenten came through the door behind them with the resigned expression of someone who had long ago accepted that her teammates would never enter a room reasonably. Neji walked at her side, his long dark hair falling past his shoulders, his pale eyes calm and measured.
Guy and Lee strode toward the rows. Tenten followed with a quieter step, selecting a seat in the row ahead of Team Ten. Lee sat beside her. Guy took the end of that row, his posture ramrod straight.
Neji did not immediately sit.
His pale gaze had found Hinata the moment he stepped through the door. Across the rows of chairs and the heads of his teammates, their eyes met.
The corner of his mouth lifted. A small, quiet thing, visible only to someone who was looking for it. He dipped his chin once, a gesture that carried the weight of acknowledgment, respect, and something familial that words would only diminish.
Hinata returned it. The same small curve. The same inclination.
Then Neji took his seat beside Tenten, and the moment passed.
The room was filling. Yamato entered with Kakashi. Kakashi's visible eye swept the room once before he settled into a chair near the middle of the third row, pulling out an orange-covered book. Yamato sat beside him and folded his hands.
A heavier presence followed. Nara Shikaku came through the door, his scarred face set in an expression of grim readiness. Yamanaka Inoichi was half a step behind, his blonde ponytail tucked over one shoulder, his sharp blue eyes cataloguing faces as he moved. Morino Ibiki filled the doorway after them, his massive frame and bandana-wrapped skull casting a shadow that briefly dimmed the overhead light.
The three of them did not sit. They moved directly toward the platform, where Tsunade was waiting. Their voices dropped below the threshold of casual hearing as they converged, but Hinata's enhanced senses caught fragments. Shikaku was confirming slide order. Inoichi was relaying something about a final interrogation session. Ibiki simply stood behind them both, his arms folded, his scarred face revealing nothing.
The door continued to open and close. The elders, Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado, entered together. Since the conference, the aura they had carried for so long, that invisible mantle of untouchable authority, had dimmed. They still commanded deference in the way that age and experience always would, but the political teeth behind that deference had been pulled. They selected seats in the second row, near the aisle, and settled without speaking.
Behind them came others. Jounin and chuunin whose faces Hinata recognized from the hallways of the Intelligence Division, from passing nods on the streets or brief exchanges during overlapping missions. They filtered in twos and threes, filling the middle rows, their voices low and clipped. None of them carried the easy chatter of a routine gathering. They knew what this was about.
The room began to hum with murmur.
To her right, Kiba leaned toward Shino, his voice a low rasp that barely cleared the space between them.
"This got a lot bigger than a regular brief." His eyes were tracking the crowd, counting heads. "Look at who's in here. Shikaku? Ibiki? The elders?" He shook his head. "Whatever this is, they're not messing around."
Shino's response was inaudible to anyone but Kiba. A brief adjustment of his collar, a single quiet sentence that Hinata didn't try to catch.
Ahead and to the left, the rhythmic crunch of Choji's culd be heard.
This is going to be interesting, Venom murmured from the deep, their voice threading through Hinata's thoughts. The symbiote's consciousness had risen from its resting state. We can feel it. The tension in this room. The elevated heart rates, the shallow breathing. They are all preparing for something significant. We anticipate a challenge.
So do I, Hinata replied silently.
The symbiote's satisfaction pulsed warm in her chest.
At the platform, Sakura and Karin broke away from Tsunade's group. Sakura moved down the short steps and crossed to the row where Ino was sitting. She slipped into the seat beside her, and the two of them leaned toward each other, exchanging rapid, whispered words. Karin followed a moment later, settling into the seat on Sakura's other side.
Naruto remained at the front. He stood near Tsunade's right flank, the folder still under his arm. His blue eyes moved from face to face across the assembling room. Beside him, Shikaku and Inoichi had arranged themselves on either side of the projector cart, and Anko had moved to the projector itself, a box of slides in her hands.
Tsunade stepped forward.
The room fell silent. Every head in the room turned toward the platform, and every conversation died in its throat.
Tsunade's eyes swept the assembled shinobi. Her voice, when it came, was level and clear, the voice of a Hokage addressing her forces.
"The mission briefing has officially begun. All conversation stops now." She paused, letting the silence to form. "I will hand the floor to Nara Shikaku, who will present the compiled intelligence."
She stepped aside and turned toward Shikaku with a short nod.
Shikaku moved to the front of the platform. He did not stand behind the projector or beside the map. He stood at the center, facing the room directly, his scarred face unreadable, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. He let the silence hold for three measured seconds before he spoke.
"Over the last two weeks, every branch of the village's forces has been working together." His voice was a low. "Field teams, interrogation units, analysis sections and counter-intelligence. The data we've collected from multiple sources during this combined investigation has finally returned meaningful results." He paused. His dark eyes tracked the room. "Against Orochimaru."
The name landed with a weight. No one shifted. But the quality of the silence changed.
Shikaku glanced toward the projector. "Anko."
Anko moved. She slid the first slide from the box and placed it onto the projector's glass surface with a precise click. The machine hummed, its lamp brightening, and a large, full-color image blazed into life on the white screen behind Shikaku.
Hinata recognized it immediately.
The image showed a dim, room lit by harsh industrial lights, its walls of bare concrete streaked with moisture stains. Metal shelving units lined the sides, crammed with sealed containers and binders. A heavy steel door hung off one hinge at the far end, buckled inward by an impact that had crumpled it like wet paper. The floor was strewn with shattered glass and overturned furniture. In the upper-right corner of the slide, a second image had been inset: a man's face, photographed from the front, starkly lit against a grey background. His features were hollow. His eyes were wide and ringed with swollen, bruise-dark circles, the skin beneath them sagging with the unmistakable ravages of sleeplessness and sustained fear. The bounty broker.
"This individual," Shikaku said, his hand lifting to indicate the mugshot, "had been operating an underground black market bounty hub within the borders of the Land of Fire for over a year." His tone was clinical, stripped of emotion. "The hub accepted and distributed contracts on a range of targets: missing-nin, active shinobi from Konoha and other villages, and civilians. Significant effort was invested in concealing its existence. When our forces shut it down," he glanced briefly toward the back of the room, and Hinata felt the weight of that glance pass across her row, "it became apparent that the level of concealment had required outside assistance."
He looked at Anko.
Click. The slide changed.
The new image was a composite of several photographs and documents arranged side by side. Hinata recognized the cold, utilitarian aesthetic of Root facility documentation: personnel files stamped with the blank-masked insignia, operational logs written in cipher, schematics of underground chambers. Beside these, a row of photographs showed men and women in featureless ANBU-style gear, their masks removed, their faces exposed and exhausted. Surrendered agents.
"Shimura Danzo," Shikaku continued, "had been using his influence within the village's command structure to keep this bounty hub operational beneath Konoha's detection threshold." He let the statement breathe. The elders, in the second row, did not move. "Intelligence recovered from dismantled Root facilities and the testimony of captured agents has confirmed the reason. Danzo maintained this channel as a covert link with Orochimaru."
A muscle twitched in Anko's jaw. She stood beside the projector, one hand resting on the box of slides, her knuckles white.
"The arrangement worked as follows." Shikaku's voice remained flat, methodical. "Orochimaru, through intermediaries, would place bounties on civilian targets in the countries where his bases were located. These civilians were regional administrators, local law enforcement officials, and investigators who had begun to notice or actively probe his operations. Danzo's operatives would execute these targets, collect the prepared bounties, and then redirect the funds into the procurement of specialized equipment and supplies. Medical instruments. Laboratory materials. The kind of things a man running underground research facilities would need in quantity."
The room absorbed this. Hinata could hear the faint creak of leather as someone shifted in their chair three rows ahead.
"In return," Shikaku added, "Orochimaru provided Danzo with access to experimental data and biological materials. The relationship was not cooperative. Orochimaru had accumulated enough evidence of Danzo's involvement to ensure his silence. Blackmail."
Click.
The third slide showed a different set of documents. A worn leather folder, its cover stamped with a symbol Hinata recognized, the mission seal from the Three-Tailed Beast operation. Inside the folder, the visible pages showed the contents of dossiers.
"This folder was recovered during the mission to seal the Three-Tailed Beast," Shikaku said. "Danzo had been planning to sever his connection with Orochimaru. Permanently." He turned toward the screen. "He had been attempting to make direct contact, and to plant an agent within Orochimaru's inner circle, by offering classified Konoha intelligence as currency. Simultaneously, he was conducting his own reconnaissance to locate Orochimaru's primary bases of operation."
Shikaku looked at Anko once more.
Click.
The final slide filled the screen. A map. It was large, detailed, covering the breadth of several countries. The familiar outline of the Land of Fire dominated the center, but the surrounding nations, the Land of Rivers to the southwest, the Land of Grass to the northwest, and the smaller territories beyond, were rendered with equal precision. Three points had been marked in red ink, each circled and annotated with coded designations.
Hinata's gaze rested on the red marks, but her thoughts were turning inward, sorting through the months of accumulated context.
They had been chipping away at Orochimaru's infrastructure for two years. Supply routes severed. Forward laboratories burned. Proxy networks dismantled, one thread at a time. She had been on those missions. When the Root facilities fell and Danzo's records spilled into the light, the scope of the contamination had become clear. Danzo's shadow had been shielding Orochimaru from exactly the kind of pressure Konoha had been applying. Every successful raid, every disrupted supply line, had brought Danzo closer to exposure. He had been running out of ways to keep his involvement hidden.
And now Danzo was dead, and his records were theirs.
"According to the compiled data," Shikaku said, stepping closer to the map and lifting his hand to the first red mark, "from the bounty hub, from the intelligence provided by captured Akatsuki member Sasori, and from Danzo's own bases and agents, we have located three major Orochimaru bases in three separate countries."
His finger tapped the southwestern mark.
"First. The Land of Rivers." He traced the annotation. "The data indicates an underground laboratory complex with the capacity to house a significant number of personnel. Based on supply requisition patterns, this facility has been active for at least three years."
His hand moved northwest.
"Second. The Land of Grass." He tapped the second mark. "This correlates with intelligence obtained from Sasori's interrogation. The base functions as a general-purpose staging area. Our analysis suggests it contains an extensive network of subterranean chambers, sufficient to host what appears to be a major garrison force."
His hand shifted to the third mark, further northeast and isolated.
"Third. The Land of Tea." He paused. "Several years ago, a Konoha team led by Jiraiya-sama discovered that Orochimaru had lost operational control over most of his infrastructure in that country. One small facility remained, situated deep in the interior, far from major population centers. According to the data, it functioned as an isolated detention site. A small prison."
Shikaku lowered his hand and turned back to face the room.
He is filtering, Venom said.
The observation rolled through Hinata's mind. She felt the symbiote's vast consciousness lean forward, pressing against the edges of her perception.
The information they extracted from those sources had more than what is being presented here. He is showing them only the pieces relevant to this operation.
I noticed. Hinata's internal response was measured. There will be other meetings. Smaller. More restricted. For the rest of it.
The briefing room had gone very still. The map glowed on the screen, its three red marks holding every eye in the room.
Tsunade stepped forward. She stood beside Shikaku with folded arms.
"We have reason to suspect that the Akatsuki organization is attempting to recruit Orochimaru back into their ranks." She let the implication settle. "The intelligence we've gathered indicates that something has happened to Orochimaru. Whether he is dead, alive, or incapacitated to the point where he can no longer fight, we do not yet know." Her eyes swept the room. "But we have a window. And we are going to use it. This mission is a simultaneous wide-area reconnaissance and strike operation across all three bases."
The silence cracked.
Quiet murmurs rippled through the rows, a rising tide of low voices that swelled and overlapped before being held in check by the weight of the room's mood.
To her right, Kiba leaned toward Shino again, his whisper carrying a rough edge that wasn't excitement but wasn't far from it.
"We should have been doing this a long time ago." The words came through his teeth. "Two years we've been picking off his scraps. Convoys. Labs. Supply caches. And the whole time he's been sitting in one of those holes." He shook his head.
Shino's glasses caught the light from the projector. He said nothing, but the slight incline of his head acknowledged the point.
Ahead, in the row below, Hinata's hearing caught a different thread. Ino had turned toward Sakura and Karin.
"Is this about what happened to Anko-san this morning?" Ino murmured, barely moving her lips.
Sakura's response was a short nod.
Karin, on Sakura's far side, hadn't responded to Ino at all. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, and her expression had shuttered. When Ino glanced at her, Karin's lips pressed into a thin line.
"I hate that country," Karin said, barely above a breath. Her dark red eyes were fixed on the map, on the mark in the Land of Grass.
Tsunade raised a hand. The murmurs died.
"Due to the narrow time window, we need to act on all three locations simultaneously." Her gaze held the room. "Questions before I continue."
A beat of silence.
Then, Yamato spoke.
"Tsunade-sama." His voice was calm and precise. "An operation of this scope, conducted across the sovereign territory of three neutral nations, is going to carry significant political implications. The Land of Rivers and the Land of Grass in particular have maintained their neutrality through careful diplomatic balance. Large uninvited Konoha strike teams on their soil could destabilize those relationships."
Tsunade met his gaze.
"We are aware," she said. "Which is why this operation will include dedicated diplomatic teams. Specialized units will make contact with the Feudal Lords of each nation prior to and concurrent with the strike teams' movements." She paused, measuring her next words. "Our intelligence suggests that certain factions within these countries may have assisted Orochimaru's construction of these bases. However, more recent signals indicate that his activities are backfiring against them. The cooperation we are extending is not entirely unwelcome. It simply requires the proper framing."
Yamato inclined his head, satisfied.
The room settled.
Hinata let her gaze drift from the map to the platform, then across the assembled rows. The brief calm that had followed the hospital, the morning tea at Kurenai's, the quiet walk through the village, all of it felt like a breath drawn before a plunge. She could feel it in the air, in the posture of every shinobi in this room, in the way Naruto's hands had tightened around the folder he held.
Inside her, Venom stirred. Not a comment, not a word. A slow, coiling movement through her torso, a tightening along her spine, the symbiote's biomass shifting beneath her skin with the restless anticipation of a predator hearing the herd begin to move.
Tsunade turned to Shikaku and gestured toward the projector. Anko, who had been standing rigid beside the machine for the duration, immediately reached for the next slide.
Click.
A new image appeared on the screen: a detailed operational diagram, color-coded and annotated with route lines and staging markers. Shikaku stepped toward the wall map with a wooden pointer on his hand, and the briefing shifted into a more direct mission descriptions.
The plan was built around a single point. A small border village near the western edge of the Land of Fire, close to where the territories of the Land of Rivers and the Land of Grass nearly touched. The village currently served as a patrol checkpoint for Konoha shinobi assigned to border routes, staffed by a modest garrison. Under this operation, it would be expanded into a temporary forward base from which all subsequent movements would be coordinated.
From that base, multiple teams would deploy simultaneously into the three target countries. Two groups per nation. The first group in each pair would move directly to the country's capital, tasked with initiating contact with the Feudal Lord and negotiating the diplomatic clearances necessary to operate on foreign soil. The second group would proceed to the identified Orochimaru base. The Land of the Tea, situated far to the northeast, presented the longest transit distance, the team assigned there would require significantly more travel time than the other two. All three strike teams would depart from the forward base within the same window.
Upon reaching their targets, the strike teams would enter a reconnaissance phase. Map the facility's layout. Assess defences and personnel strength. Identify entry points, traps, and escape routes. If the situation allowed, they were to proceed to infiltration, or if confrontation became unavoidable, direct engagement. The objectives were multiple. Recover any intelligence that could be extracted, capture personnel alive for interrogation wherever possible, and determine the current status and location of both Orochimaru and Uchiha Sasuke.
Hinata saw Sakura's spine go rigid in the row ahead when Sasuke's name crossed the briefing. The pink-haired medic's hands flattened against her thighs, pressing down, holding still. She did not speak. But the tension in her shoulders was visible from the back of the room.
Shikaku emphasized the rules of engagement. Any confrontation with Orochimaru was to be approached with extreme caution, regardless of reports suggesting he was weakened or incapacitated. He was not to be underestimated under any scenario. If the teams encountered Sasuke, the standing order was to attempt capture first. Lethal force was authorized only as a last resort.
All recovered intelligence, seized materials, and captured prisoners would be funneled back to the temporary forward base for processing and further decision-making. Outside the direct strike and diplomatic teams, additional shinobi units would be deployed along the routes as communication relays and couriers, maintaining a continuous chain of information between the field teams and the base. No group would operate blind.
The plan was aggressive. Hinata could see that plainly, and she suspected everyone else in the room could as well. It relied heavily on field commanders making real-time judgments as conditions on the ground shifted, with minimal opportunity to consult the base before acting. There was no buffer for delays, no fallback staging point, no second wave waiting in reserve. The entire framework was built on the premise that the window of opportunity was narrow and closing, and that speed mattered more than caution.
Tsunade reclaimed the floor for the final declarations. The operation would be partitioned into a cascade of individual missions, each classified according to the risk profile and role of the participating unit. C-rank courier and relay assignments at the lowest tier. B-rank for the diplomatic escort teams. A-rank for the strike teams approaching the bases. And S-rank designations for the units most likely to encounter Orochimaru's inner circle, or Orochimaru himself.
Every person in this room had just received deployment orders. Staging areas by sundown. Individual operational packets with specific assignments, routes, and chain of command distributed within the hour. Deployment at dusk.
Tsunade's final words carried the quiet gravity of someone who understood what she was asking. Prepare. Pack. Speak to the people who mattered. Then move.
The brief calm had ended.