The alarm came through the radio, through the telegraph, through the fastest summons, and through scouts.

By the time the telegraph arrived, Konoha was mostly empty, and the summons and scouts just had to spin around when they found the main party, explain whatever additional information they had while running back to the battleground.

The combatants, after all, weren't about to stop.

Each message was worse than the last—

First, the warning of the Iwa party already nearly at the Kannabi bridge.

Then, the warning that the Land of Canyons was now firmly behind Earth, had in fact actively hidden the movements of Iwa with surprising capability.

Then, clarifications on the size of the army: large, larger, larger, huge, massive, larger even than the entire body of Konoha. (The truth didn't matter—what mattered was the impression—and the impression was becoming increasingly bleak.)

Dead, came the next messages, more and more dead—

Konoha's forces were dwindling, disappearing against the swarm of Iwa bodies.

The backup forces tried to force themselves to be quicker, force themselves to move faster.

Then more news—both the four- and five-tails were on the scene.

Faster, faster.

It seemed insane, utterly futile to put one's entire force into an attack.

If the force really was as large as the reports said, Iwa was likely leaving its own city wide open, open to Suna, open to the East, open to anyone.

Back in Konoha messages were being sent saying just that to Suna—they'd make Iwa regret it, make Iwa feel their stupidity.

Assuming, of course, that the attack didn't succeed.

Iwa's Kage had just launched an attack that no other would ever risk.

Even now Konoha was still holding back a contingent, still maintaining their fronts in the east, north, and west, protecting themselves.

They were sending many, but not all.

Hopefully, it would be enough.

At the scene…

Well, things looked quite a bit bloodier.

Minato dripped, sweat and blood and tears pouring off of him, but he couldn't stop.

He'd run through all of his oldest seals already, was now throwing out all the experimental ones and hoping for the best.

It had been at least fifteen minutes since he last saw an ally, but they were still at least five minutes away from the bridge at their current place—he just had to hope that was enough.

Every part of him ached.

He was going to fall, soon, and he wouldn't be able to do anything then.

He threw out another seal—didn't even know what it was for, couldn't remember—and thanked every kami he could think of that the jinchuuriki were hanging back.

It likely wasn't for a good reason (preserving strength, no doubt, for when his reinforcements arrived) but he'd have been dead otherwise.

Instead, he'd already killed hundreds.

A throat slit every few seconds.

An explosion—often one of Iwa's own, knocked back with a blast of wind—and a couple more mangled bodies every half minute or so.

Dead, and dead, and dead.

They were throwing everything they had at him, likely thought he should have been killed minutes ago, but he was holding on.

Holding on.

Holding—

He stumbled, caught himself just in time to leap out of the way of the next earth jutsu.

He couldn't hang on much longer.

The ground rumbled.

He couldn't think of why.

Everything—

He couldn't—

More dead.

Just a few more.

He felt them, then, the reinforcements.

Still so far off, it seemed.

A mere minute or two from the bridge, now—it was all he could do to keep anyone from slipping by him, getting to his students.

He hoped they'd crossed the bridge before destroying it.

He hoped they'd already destroyed it.

He hoped he hadn't missed any enemy.

There were so many—why were there so many?

Even a full assault, as large as possible, should have been smaller than this.

So many bodies.

So many dead.

And they kept coming, kept coming despite their clear terror of him.

The ones he fought couldn't seem to sense his backup, didn't seem to be worried.

He wondered if they just hadn't been told—they had to have some long-range sensors, after all, just based on their pure size.

He—

He couldn't—

He stumbled, again, watched a flurry of long-range earth jutsu headed right for him—

And watched as a different earth jutsu shoved them away.

Dozens of shinobi suddenly surrounded him, fighting and killing and being killed as those closest to him shoved him to the ground, shoved iryo-chakra into his body.

He groaned.

"My—my kids—my team…"

"Where are they?"

"Bridge…"

The person—the one who asked, he thought—said something, but he couldn't hear.

Couldn't think.

He closed his eyes, and couldn't force them open again.

The ninja around him had no such luxury, not even as many more came streaming north.

Minato Namikaze had been effective, had killed so many that Iwa's zombie bloodline was, if anything, becoming more problematic than their living enemies.

But there were still so many left.

It took hours.

Usually the only kinds of battles that lasted hours were those intended to do so, those on battlelines marked by meters of progress every day.

This was not that.

This was a battle to kill, on a massive scale, where—because it was quickly confirmed that Kannabi bridge was gone, was floating in pieces down the wide, turbulent, river—Konoha's shinobi didn't really care about Iwa making progress.

They just wanted to kill, punish Iwa's foolhardiness.

By the time the line broke early the next morning many on Konoha's side were dead. Just over three hundred, in fact, the most in a single day's battle from the entirety of the war—and that didn't include the countless injuries that just about every shinobi sported.

Iwa's deaths were quickly estimated to be well over two-thousand, and they'd broken first, fled with their remainder.

Minato next opened his eyes in the hospital several days later. He was wrapped up in bandages and blankets, had two different iv drips attached to him and more monitors than he'd personally had to deal with before.

He opened his eyes to Kakashi.

He tried to speak.

Couldn't.

It didn't seem that Kakashi cared.

The second he'd open his eyes the boy had begun sobbing.

Doctors arrived, swarmed him.

They let Kakashi get close, though, hold his least-injured forearm while they checked on all his other injuries.

The boy didn't stop sobbing.

It took some time, but Minato finally noticed Juro behind him, watching Kakashi carefully.

He stared at him.

Juro swallowed, then stood. "All three are alive."

Minato tried for a smile.

Juro didn't. "Obito's badly injured. Something—something to do with his sharingan. The Uchiha took him from the hospital, are treating him themselves."

Minato tried to speak again, couldn't. Mouthed it instead: 'what happened?'

Kakashi caught the question. "We crossed the bridge, put your seals all over—Obito had an idea about… about how to do that. Get them all to go off at once, so the whole of the bridge was definitely destroyed. I didn't trust it, but Rin believed him, so we did that, and… it required him to be closer than I thought. We fought, about who would have to risk their bodies, and then I shoved him back and started the explosion. He… he didn't like that, tried to jump to do it himself. He tripped, fell into the river." Kakashi took a gasping breath, and Minato tried to do the same. "We caught him, down the river, but he had… hypothermia. Frostbite. It took us a while—it took me a while. The reinforcements were on the other side of the river, too, so it took them awhile to get to our side. I couldn't figure out how to get him out." Kakashi paused, then continued, quieter. "Obito would've figured it out. He's good at stuff like that."

Minato wanted so badly to reach out, to defray Kakashi's guilt. But he couldn't move, couldn't speak, and Kakashi wasn't even looking up. Juro, thankfully, realized what he needed to do. He put a hand on Kakashi's shoulder, made him look at Minato.

'Good job.' He mouthed.

"But I—"

'Good job.'

And Kakashi began crying again.

.

As Juro, Kakashi, Minato, and Minato's many doctors dealt with his recent awakening, the world outside the doors of the Hospital continued on.

There was one key way that it did so.

Three Kage were having a meeting.

The Land of Mushrooms' new shinobi village was more than willing to sacrifice their security for the publicity of the meeting occurring in their recently built walls.

The Great Three were just content that it wasn't happening inside any of the others'.

The room was quadruple-checked, more manpower than strictly polite was brought, and tea, provided by the Land of Wind, was served.

The Hokage and Kazekage drank.

The Tsuchikage did not.

In a matter of about twenty-four hours the total manpower he relied on had been more than halved, and that was just what he admitted to. The Hidden Village was successfully attacked by Suna despite the improvements since the Konoha ANBU attack. The jinchuuriki were still around—were likely the only reason there was an Iwa left, having been called back to stop Suna's attack—they hadn't succeeded, not totally, but had at least slowed the attack enough.

The war, by all accounts, was over.

Now the paperwork just had to reflect that.

It would have been better, the Hokage considered, if Konoha had been the sole reason for Iwa's suffering. If the Tsuchikage had been smarter, had only sent a thousand or so warriors, then Minato would have apparently been able to take them on single-handedly—a mark which would have by itself immediately led to Iwa's surrender, and Konoha getting the right to decide every term.

Instead, the Tsuchikage had decided to take an even stupider risk.

And the Hokage's forces hadn't been situated to take advantage.

The Kazekage, at least, was thrilled with the outcome, and Konoha still came out looking very strong indeed.

Still, if it were up to him…

They'd talked, some, through messages, him and the Kazekage. Tried to figure out what they would ask for.

Or, more accurately, the Hokage had tried, unsuccessfully, to talk the other man out of what he would ask for.

"We want you to remove the dam on the Sunagakure river."

"No."

"Then we'll keep on sieging your village."

"We'll survive."

"Will you?"

All three of the kage, of course, knew he wouldn't. There was a reason that no one would ever commit to such a large attack, and that was even without taking into account all of Konoha's long-distance communications systems.

The Hokage was rather surprised the Tsuchikage hadn't already been assassinated.

Of course, there was the young man standing in the corner to take into account, too; Onoki, grandson of the first Tsuchikage.

With how often the Tsuchikage was glancing at him it was pretty clear who was really in charge.

It was also obvious that the grandson saw no reason to hide that he was fully intending to usurp his uncle.

As for what kept the uncle alive—familial ties, perhaps?

Regardless, it likely wasn't enough.

Hiruzen wouldn't be surprised to learn that he was only being allowed to stay in power long enough to make this deal; letting him take the brunt of the popularity hit was a wise move.

"Moreover, I want him—" Everyone turned to look at Onoki "—to agree to keep the river flowing too."

A hesitation, and then the nephew moved to the table. "Let's talk."

Hiruzen all but choked on his surprise. He'd thought that the river would be a no-go to begin with, would inevitably lead to more and more fighting until the Western nations joined together to keep Wind from taking control of Earth and growing too powerful.

He'd pushed the Kazekage to ask for other concessions, instead, for promises of peace and trade. The other man had ignored him, had asked for the river back.

And instead of the destruction of the dam being a complete roadblock to any sort of deal—

The Kazekage grinned.

"Let's."

The soon-to-be fourth Tsuchikage leaned forward, and the deal began to form.

.

Obito wasn't doing well.

Something about the cold, and his sharingan, and—

Something.

He was healthy otherwise, to be sure, the other effects of the hypothermia and frostbite were easily dealt with, but…

He twitched on his bed, his eyes still wide open, and the Uchiha doctors talked.

They knew so much about the sharingan.

They knew so little.

This—

There had been issues like this before, issues—

But that didn't mean they knew what to do about it.

Obito kept twitching, his eye kept flickering but never, ever closing, and they talked.

Those outside their clan compound wanted in, they knew. The boy's teammates had tried visiting repeatedly, the boy's sensei had sent multiple letters to be read to Obito until one of them could visit the other…

Even inside the compound the other Uchiha wanted more information, wanted news about the nice young man who was always willing to lend a hand.

But the Clan Head had been very clear; no information should be leaked.

Not until they fixed him.

The boy twitched, his eye spasmed, and his doctors kept talking, kept looking for a solution that did not seem likely to emerge.