Tsunade stood amid the ruins with her head tilted back, her Kage's Ceremonial Robe snapping in the Void Storm and her long golden hair plastered across her face.
Her whole body trembled from head to toe.
"Those crazy girls..."
Her voice cracked, coming out hoarse.
"Every last one of them acts like her life means nothing."
Her fingers clenched into fists, her nails digging into her flesh. Beads of blood seeped between her fingers and fell soundlessly onto the rubble. She was the Hokage, she was the Fifth, she was Tsunade. If the sky fell on Konoha, she had to hold it up. She couldn't leave.
But her man was in that darkness.
Her sisters had followed him in, one after another.
Yet she had to stay behind, guarding this battered wreck of a place.
Her gaze shifted.
The balcony window on the Ramen Shop's second floor was still open, light spilling out from inside. Jiraiya lay on a stretcher, his lone arm draped limply over its edge, with Sage Fukasaku and Sage Shima crouched beside him.
That shameless old Pervy Sage was looking at her with his head tilted, his face saying it all: I knew you were going to pull something.
Tsunade suddenly laughed.
It wasn't a bitter laugh, nor was she putting on a brave face. She laughed out loud, wild and unrestrained, until tears streamed from her eyes. She roughly flung aside the golden hair covering half her face, revealing the most beautiful face in the Shinobi World.
Thirty years. From being the First's granddaughter to wearing the Fifth's Hokage robes, she had worn these shackles long enough.
"Jiraiya."
Her voice rose from the ground, cutting through the wind and the grinding of rubble to reach the second-floor balcony, steady and clear.
"You understand, don't you?"