I stood in the rain-soaked black mud.
The two dark green vines beneath my feet twisted gently, making dry scraping sounds.
Muddy water crept up through the tread of my shoes, thick and sticky.
Purple light flickered violently in Nagato's Rinnegan.
His already bloodless old face tightened further.
"Hits... harder?"
A few rust-flavored words squeezed out of his shriveled throat.
"Sen Senju, you actually use strength as the measure of peace?"
He clawed at the wheelchair beneath him, which had been reduced to rotten splinters.
He gripped so hard that blackened machine oil and charred paper ash packed beneath his nails.
With both hands in the pockets of my tattered trench coat, I tilted my head with brazen indifference.
"If we don't talk fists, what do you expect us to do, sit here cracking sunflower seeds and chatting?"
"Just look at the state of you."
"You look like a strip of cured meat left drying for three years. You can barely even stand."
"And you still have the nerve to talk about bringing some god's peace to the shinobi world?"
"You smashed a huge hole in my Noodle Shop first thing in the morning."
"I didn't even get a bowl of hot noodle soup. You're asking for a beating."
Konan lay in the mud, pushing herself up on trembling, blackened hands.
Her swollen red eyes brimmed with defiance and despair, and she shook all over.
"Nagato... Nagato did it for Amegakure, for Yahiko's dream!"
"Why should small nations like ours bleed for the great nations' conflicts?"
"How could people born in Konoha possibly understand our pain?"
She shouted herself hoarse, biting her lips until they turned white.
I curled my lip and spat out a mouthful of dirty, gritty saliva.
"Don't give me that fucking Konoha crap."
"When I was