"Tsunade? Hiruzen Sarutobi?"
Ōnoki hovered in midair, his gaze fixed on the figure charging toward him.
His pupils contracted, and unmistakable shock flickered across his face.
"Why are you here?"
He had addressed both of them, but his eyes remained locked on Tsunade.
The moment those two figures entered the battlefield, Danzo and Uchiha Feiquan had swiftly broken off their confrontation with him.
They retreated behind Tsunade and stood respectfully half a step behind Hiruzen Sarutobi.
That detail made Ōnoki frown even harder.
Who was Danzo?
A central figure among Konoha's hawks, the founder of Root.
An old man who barely even respected the Hokage.
Since when had he ever stood so obediently behind a woman?
And then there was Uchiha Feiquan.
The Uchiha Clan's de facto leader, a man known for his arrogance.
Yet he, too, had silently withdrawn to that woman's side without the slightest objection.
Both men stood even farther back than Hiruzen Sarutobi.
That formation showed subordinates deferring to a superior.
Ōnoki's heart sank.
"Could it be..."
He left the thought unspoken, but it had already lodged in his mind like a fishhook he could not shake loose.
Konoha had a new leader.
Tsunade ignored his probing.
She stood on a jutting rock at the bridgehead, her long golden hair whipping through the smoke of battle.
She looked coldly at Ōnoki and spoke.
"A is dead. All five thousand troops from the Land of Lightning have surrendered."
That single statement made Ōnoki's eyelid twitch.
A was dead?
He stared intently at Tsunade's face, searching her expression for any hint of a lie.
He found none.
The woman's eyes remained calm.
There was no triumph, no boasting, only a simple statement of fact, delivered with a chilling calm.
"The Third Mizukage has been killed. Kirigakure lost over