"Good."

"And you?"

"I will be- unavailable, for a day or two. There is a conversation I need to have."

"With Shukaku?"

"Yes."

"...Be careful."

"I intend to."

"Don't forget about the report."

"We have a week."

With the immediate business settled and the other two in position to keep an eye on developments, she feels confident in departing for a cave she knows a ways away. It's not hard to slip out, things being as they are. She blocks the cave's entrance and spreads down a cushion of sand to sit on, and focuses inwards, looking for the place where the beast lurks.

She's successful.

"You dare disturb my slumber?" a deep voice rumbles from behind her, sounding like sand scraping against stone.

"You've felt more than free to curtail mine, these past years."

"Pah. You humans have no resistance."

"I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"On my sufferance only."

"And the Uchiha girl's. She and her friends dealt with you quite neatly."

"I wasn't even fully out yet! If not for you, I could've won that!"

"Alas, then, that we must work with the world as it is. You do have me. And I am stuck with you."

"A few years more, and I won't be."

"Perhaps. But tell me. Are you truly content to sleep all the ages of the world away?"

"You are a fool if you think I will not outlive your entire system. You humans are gone in but a blink of an eye to me."

"Why settle for outliving it, when you could aid me in reshaping it?"

"Hah! As if someone like you could teach the world anything."

"And what do imagine that I am like?"

"A typical human. Selfish. Violent. Short-sighted. Treacherous."

"Selfish and violent I do not deny, and do not view as points of shame. Short-sighted I contest, for if I was that, I would have long since given you free reign to utterly destroy my village. Treacherous likewise, for those deal fairly with me I have dealt fairly in return."