Iwagakure's Tsuchikage office was smoke-stained and grimy, with tea stains and ink marks everywhere that had never been properly cleaned.
Agreements were piled on the desk like a small mountain, every one stamped with the red seals of the great Kage from various lands.
Ōnoki was kneeling behind the desk covered in gold-trimmed carpet, counting those red handprints one by one.
The old man's facial flesh trembled with his grin, and half a crumb from last night's biscuit was even caught in his sparse white beard.
"We struck it rich. This time, we really struck it rich."
He slapped the map with one hand, crumpling the already wrinkled map of the Land of Lightning even further.
The mineral-rich region belonging to the Hidden Cloud Village was now filled with Iwagakure's registration information.
It was a fat, dripping piece of meat—the kind that would let Iwagakure eat meat at every meal from now on, with more soup than they could ever drink.
"Quit standing there grinning like an idiot."
Uchiha Yoru leaned against a broken wicker chair missing one leg, casually resting both feet on the edge of the nearby stone platform.
He spun a gold bar he had swiped from the Land of Fire Daimyo's Court in his hand, with dried blood from the troublemakers he had just dealt with still lodged beneath his fingernails.
His Mangekyō Sharingan were half-lidded like a lazy cat that had just woken up, carrying a casual air that made one's heart tremble.
"Are you really planning to send people personally to mine those villages' mineral veins?"
Ōnoki straightened up, his Tsuchikage hat hanging crookedly over his forehead in a ridiculous sight.
"If we don't send people to mine them, should we let those Leaf Village deserters do it?"
"Our Iwagakure people have been playing