The next day, the square outside the Military Police Force Building was packed with people.
The sky had not fully brightened. A thin line of pale gold shone along the edge of the eastern clouds, and the morning breeze carried its light past the treetops and across the stone-paved ground, casting a hazy glow over the tightly packed heads.
Konoha villagers, spies from other ninja villages, merchants from the Five Rings Trading Company, and an envoy from the Daimyo of the Land of Fire—all kinds of people mingled in the crowd.
They filled the square from east to west, then pressed back from west to east, leaving gaps barely wide enough for one person to slip through sideways.
Near the front of the crowd, two figures, one tall and one short, stood among the people in drab, coarse-cloth kimonos.
The shorter one was Tsunade, and the taller one was Jiraiya. Both had used the Transformation Technique to take on unremarkable faces. Among the commoners dressed in equally rough clothes, they drew no attention.
After a long, painful wait, the public trial was finally about to begin...
Jiraiya peered between the shoulders of the people ahead of him at the dark-brown desk in the center of the platform.
The morning light traced a thin golden line along the desk's edge. A rosewood gavel rested at its upper-right corner, its dark surface gleaming softly in the light, echoing the plaque behind it that proclaimed "Justice and Benevolence."
Jiraiya had once thought it all looked imposing and magnificent. Now it made him sick!
Justice above, benevolence below? Bullshit!
An Upright Magistrate? He's a demon!
That bastard fooled all of Konoha!
The more Jiraiya thought about it, the angrier he grew. His teeth ground together so loudly that Tsunade shot him a withering look.