Sunagakure · Conference room
The teacup in Elder Chiyo's hand cracked and shattered under her grip. Scalding tea dripped down her bony fingers, but she did not seem to notice.
"Orochimaru... disguised himself as the Kazekage?!" The words seemed to come through clenched teeth, her aged face twisted with rage.
The Suna ninja kneeling before her to make his report trembled all over. "Y-yes! Lord Baki saw it himself. Orochimaru used some forbidden technique to resurrect the First and Second Hokage... and..."
"And what else?!" Chiyo slammed her hand on the table and shot to her feet.
"A-and... Lord Fourth Kazekage..."
Dead silence fell over the conference room.
Chiyo's pupils contracted sharply. Rasa's ever-serious face flashed through her mind. Sunagakure's Kazekage had died an unnatural death long ago, yet they had been manipulated by the enemy into turning their blades against an ally!
"What about the One-Tail?" she suddenly demanded.
"L-Lord Gaara was captured by Konoha... and more than a hundred ninja failed to retreat..."
"Useless!!"
Her furious Chakra erupted, shattering the cups throughout the conference room. The elders stared in terror at the old senior who ordinarily lived in seclusion and rarely ventured out.
Sunagakure's dignity has been trampled, the Kazekage has been murdered, and the Jinchūriki has been captured...
We actually became Orochimaru's pawns!
Chiyo panted heavily, then suddenly gave a cold laugh. "Good... very good..."
She tore off the sash that marked her as an elder, a startlingly sharp light bursting from her clouded eyes. "Pass down the order. Sunagakure will send an envoy to Konoha immediately—"
"Lady Chiyo! Are we going to surrender?" an elder asked in alarm.
"Surrender?" Chiyo gave a bitter smile. "No, we're going to atone."
She turned and walked toward the door.
"I'll go to Konoha myself... and bring our children home."
Night had deepened. Thin clouds veiled the moon over Sunagakure, casting a hazy glow. Chiyo's fingers paused on her ninja tool pouch, her rough fingertips rubbing along the edge of a seam.
A single oil lamp flickered in the room, stretching her shadow long and sending it swaying across the wall like a restless ghost.
"Rasa..." she murmured, her voice unusually clear in the quiet room.
Scrolls and medicine bottles lay scattered across the table, every one of them checked repeatedly. It was a habit she had developed over the years—making certain nothing could go wrong before a mission. But tonight, her thoughts kept drifting to the man who was no longer there.
Sand pattered against the window outside, like countless tiny fingers tapping on the glass. Chiyo looked through it toward the Kazekage's office building.
It should be empty now. Ever since Rasa's death had been confirmed, an eerie calm had settled over Sunagakure's center of power.
"When you conspired with that venomous snake," she continued to herself, her fingers tightening unconsciously around the Kunai at her waist, "didn't you ever wonder why he was being so kind?"
Chiyo closed her eyes.
"Orochimaru..." She forced the name through her teeth, her disgust unmistakable. She knew that missing-nin all too well; their paths had crossed during the Second Shinobi World War. That snake never did anything without something to gain, and venomous fangs lurked behind every smile.
The oil lamp's flame suddenly flickered, and Chiyo's eyes snapped open. She realized her breathing had quickened and her chest felt as though a stone were pressing down on it. Slowly exhaling, she resumed packing, sorting the antidotes and specially made Military Rations Pills.
"And just like that, you died in a conspiracy..." She shook her head, her white hair gleaming silver in the lamplight. When Rasa's body was found, it was no longer recognizable as human. That was Orochimaru's usual method—discarding people once he was done with them, without even leaving their bodies intact.
Chiyo stopped what she was doing and went to an old cabinet in the corner of the room. She opened the bottom drawer and took out a tightly wrapped scroll. After she undid the seal, she found a financial report on Sunagakure from recent years inside. She did not need to look at it again—those numbers were already etched into her mind.
"The village can no longer afford a war..." she sighed, her fingers brushing over the deficit marked on the scroll. Sunagakure's economy was in even worse shape than outsiders knew. The Daimyo of the Land of Wind cut its funding year after year, and even Rasa's prized Gold Dust Technique could not fill that bottomless hole.
She went to the window, letting the night breeze disperse the room's stuffy air. On a distant training ground, a few Chunin were still doing extra training, their figures looking especially slight in the moonlight. Chiyo remembered that when she was young, Sunagakure had more than three times as many ninja as it did now.
"The funding cuts..." she murmured, recalling the argument at the most recent Jonin meeting. There were not enough mission commissions or enough funds to train new recruits. Even basic maintenance of ninja tools had become a problem. Rasa's proposed "elite strategy" sounded good, but in practice...
"We say the Suna ninja are following an elite strategy," Chiyo said with a bitter smile, "but their numbers have fallen so far that they can no longer support a war." She thought of her grandson Sasori, that extraordinarily gifted child. If he had not killed the Third... no, she could not dwell on that.
Chiyo returned to the table and began checking the mechanisms of the puppets Father and Mother. The smell of machine oil calmed her a little. At least these old companions would never betray her. She carefully adjusted the gears in their joints, but her thoughts wandered even farther.
Rasa's decision had not been entirely unreasonable. Sunagakure did need to change, and it needed a powerful ally. But why did it have to be Orochimaru?
That missing-nin who could even betray his own village? Chiyo's fingers suddenly pressed too hard, and a tiny spring popped out, rolling across the floor and disappearing.
"Foolish..." she muttered at herself, bending down to look for the missing part. At her age, she still could not control her emotions. She was only getting worse as she grew older. But when she knelt on the ground and her fingers touched the cold floor, a sense of helplessness suddenly washed over her.
Sunagakure was in decline. That was an undeniable fact. Rasa had seen it, which was why he had taken such a desperate gamble.
Chiyo found the spring and slowly got to her feet. Her knees creaked in protest, reminding her that age spared no one. But at this moment, she felt more clearheaded than ever.
"If war really breaks out..." She did not dare imagine the consequences. With its current forces, Sunagakure would likely struggle to sustain even a medium-scale conflict. Rasa's plan had been to use Orochimaru's power to restore Sunagakure, but he had not considered the cost of failure.
Chiyo put the last ninja tool into her bag and tightened the straps. Tomorrow she would set out to face the ally they might already have betrayed and clean up the mess Rasa had left behind. She did not know what awaited her, but as an elder of Sunagakure, it was her responsibility.
She blew out the oil lamp, plunging the room into darkness. In the last of the moonlight, Elder Chiyo's gaze grew resolute.
"At least," she said softly, "I won't be like you, Rasa."
Konoha lay beneath the lingering smoke of war. Among the ruins of collapsed buildings, ninja were busy clearing the battlefield.
Princess Tsunade, who had assumed the position of Fifth Hokage, stood by the window of the Hokage's office. Her golden hair shone in the setting sun, but her brow was tightly furrowed. The mountains of documents on her desk—casualty reports, reconstruction budgets, and diplomatic papers—all reminded her of the burden on her shoulders.
"Shizune, how are things with the medical team?" Tsunade asked without turning around, weariness in her voice.
"All the critically injured have been stabilized, but twenty-seven Genin still need continuous observation." Shizune held Tonton in her arms, worry written all over her face. "Lady Tsunade, you haven't rested in three days..."
Tsunade waved a hand to interrupt her. "Has Sunagakure responded?"
"We just received word. Elder Chiyo will come in person to negotiate."
Tsunade snorted, her fist clenching involuntarily. She turned and grabbed the green robe hanging over the back of her chair. "I'm going to the hospital to check on the injured. Tell Shikaku to have a negotiation plan ready before I return."
As Tsunade walked down the street toward the hospital, she could feel the villagers' gazes on her—some reverent, some expectant, and some holding a hint of reproach.
The disaster at the Chunin Ninja Exams had cost Konoha too much. The Third's sacrifice weighed on her heart like a boulder, and Sunagakure's betrayal had only rubbed salt in the wound.
The medical department was filled with the pungent smell of medicine. Tsunade had barely entered when she heard a heart-rending cry from the end of the corridor. "My legs! Why can't I feel my legs?!"
She hurried toward the sound and pushed open the door to a hospital room. A Genin of about twelve was frantically pounding his heavily bandaged lower body. A medical-nin stood helplessly beside him.
"Quiet!" Tsunade barked, and the room fell silent at once. She walked to the bed, her hands glowing with emerald-green Chakra. "Let me see."
After examining him, Tsunade's expression eased slightly. "The nerves aren't completely severed. They can still be treated. But..." She looked straight into the boy's terrified eyes. "Keep moving around like that, and they really will be ruined."
The boy fell silent at once. Tsunade turned to the medical team. "Prepare an operating room. I'll handle it myself."
"But Lord Hokage, you've already..."
"That's an order."
Meanwhile, in a forest on the border of the Land of Fire, Baki, a Sunagakure Jonin, had set up camp with the remnants of his force. Beside the campfire, Temari rubbed the Three-Star Fan anxiously. "Sensei, Gaara..."
"Konoha won't harm a Jinchūriki lightly," Baki said gravely, though the lines between his brows betrayed his worry. "Lady Chiyo has already set out. We have to trust her ability to negotiate."
Kankuro slammed his fist into a tree trunk. "Damn it! This was Orochimaru's conspiracy, so why do we have to suffer the consequences?!"
"Because we did take part in the attack." Baki closed his eyes wearily. "All we can do now is hope Lady Chiyo can persuade Tsunade. After all..."
His unfinished words drifted away on the night wind—after all, Chiyo and Tsunade had crossed paths on the battlefield years ago.
Konoha...
At the end of a dim passage, Danzo sat alone in a stone chair, rubbing the conical hat that represented the Hokage Position. Flickering candlelight cast shifting shadows over half his face, while his right eye, hidden beneath bandages—the eye that bore Shisui Uchiha's transplanted Sharingan—ached faintly.
"The time has come..." he murmured, his voice echoing through the empty underground space.
When the Konoha Crush Plan began, he had held his forces back, watching coldly as Orochimaru and the Third fought to the death.
He had calculated everything long ago—when the village was driven into a desperate situation, when the Third fell in battle, when everyone was left leaderless, he, Shimura Danzō, would step forward, turn the tide, and become Konoha's new leader.
But when he finally led Root's elite ninja out from underground, ready to take control of Konoha, the sight before him made his pupils contract—
In the streets, ninja were clearing the rubble and treating the wounded in an orderly fashion, and everyone was talking about the same name:
"Lady Tsunade has already agreed to become the Fifth!"
"With Lady Tsunade here, the village is sure to be rebuilt!"
"As expected of one of the Sannin, her Medical Ninjutsu is incredible!"
Danzo's knuckles turned white as an indescribable rage burned in his chest.
"Tsunade... it's her?!"
He had assumed that after the Third died, the advisers would immediately nominate him to succeed as Hokage. After all, when it came to seniority, methods, and control over Konoha, he considered himself unmatched.
But reality had slapped him hard across the face—he had been passed over without even being nominated!
His face dark, Danzo marched straight into the advisers' office in the Hokage building.
Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu were discussing reconstruction. Both froze when he suddenly barged in.
"Danzo? What are you..."
"Why Tsunade?" Danzo interrupted coldly, his voice low and dangerous. "The Third fell in battle. The Hokage Position should have been decided through discussion among the village leadership, yet you nominated her on your own authority?"
Mitokado Homura pushed up his glasses and sighed. "Danzo, what Konoha needs now is a leader who can reassure the people. Tsunade is the First Hokage's granddaughter and one of the Sannin. Her Medical Ninjutsu is unmatched in the Shinobi World, and both the villagers and the ninja trust her."
"Trust?" Danzo sneered. "How many years has she been away from the village? Can her knowledge of Konoha compare to ours, when we've been here protecting it all along?"
Utatane Koharu shook her head. "Danzo, this isn't the time to fight for power. The village has just suffered a great calamity. Tsunade can quickly rally the people behind her; she's the most suitable choice."
"Suitable?" Danzo's voice rose sharply. "What about me? Am I not fit to become Hokage?"
The two advisers exchanged a glance, a trace of helplessness flashing in both their eyes.
"Danzo..." Mitokado Homura said slowly, "we're all old. Perhaps it's time to leave this era to the younger generation."
"Hah, old?" Danzo laughed mockingly. "Your cowardice doesn't mean I have to back down too! Konoha doesn't need a gentle healer. It needs a ruler with an iron fist!"
"Danzo!" Utatane Koharu frowned. "Tsunade already has the Daimyo's and the Jonin Commander's approval. All that remains now is the ceremony. It's settled, so you... stop making a fuss."
Those words stabbed into Danzo's heart like a knife. He stared hard at his two former comrades and finally realized—they had never truly considered making him Hokage.
After leaving the Hokage building, Danzo stood in the shadows, looking toward the brightly lit medical department in the distance. Through the windows, he could just make out Tsunade treating the wounded, surrounded by countless admiring gazes.
"Hah..." He slowly clenched his fist, his nails digging deep into his palm.
"Since you won't give it to me... I'll take it myself."
He turned and disappeared into the darkness, his single eye glinting coldly in the night.