I stood atop the Giant Buddha's head, ten thousand meters in the air, looking down at the little wreck of a cart in the mud pit.
The gale whipped the torn strips of my coat across my face.
Paper leaves and the smell of gunpowder mingled in midair, forcing their way up my nose.
The Giant Buddha's huge wooden skull creaked in the fierce wind.
Most of the Paper Tree Fortress had long since collapsed, scattered across the ground as soggy pulp.
"Plant... trees everywhere?"
Nagato lay beside the broken planks, the concentric rings in his Rinnegan contracting sharply.
He raised his gaunt, withered face, covered in grime and black blood.
His voice sounded as weak as a broken bellows on its last wheezing breath in the gale.
"Sen Senju... are you joking?"
"You don't understand God's baptism of pain, yet you think planting trees can solve war?"
"Everyone in Konoha really is a laughably naive fool."
With both hands tucked into the pockets of my tattered trench coat, I gave him a cold laugh.
"Naive? I call this being practical. What the hell do you know?"
"You people in Amegakure fight every day because you don't have enough land or resources, don't you?"
"If the whole Shinobi World were covered in crops and trees, only someone with a full belly and nothing better to do would fight."
"If anyone still wanted to steal, I'd flatten them with one slap from this Thousand-Hand Giant Buddha."
"That's loving peace through physics, and sending people to the afterlife through physics. Get it?"
Nagato coughed violently in the muddy water, more streaks of black blood seeping from the corners of his mouth.
"The greed of the great nations... can't be satisfied with ten thousand trees..."
"As long as there are interests at stake,