Crack!
The sky split open like a shattered dam. Sheets of rain battered the Land of Rain, turning heaven and earth into a gray curtain. The stillness was so suffocating it seemed to crush the air itself.
The mud clung to Nawaki's ankles like it was alive. Every step came free with a wet squelch.
His brand-new green chūnin vest?
Unrecognizable. Covered in mud, tangled grass, and a dark red stain that refused to wash out, he looked like a walking rag.
"Damn it!" Nawaki shouted, stomping the ground in frustration.
Thud!
Mud splashed upward, coating his face and even peppering Mikoto a few steps away. Her black uniform was instantly speckled brown.
Mikoto's brows twitched slightly. Rain streamed down her soaked black hair, plastered to her pale cheeks.
She said nothing, quietly stepping aside, out of range of Nawaki's mud barrage, her empty gaze sinking back into the endless gray rain.
Only the sound of rain remained.
They circled the outermost ring of the massive encampment, the muddiest buffer zone, again and again. Defense? Purely symbolic.
The assignment was miserable, monotonous, and exhausting. Whatever war hero dream Nawaki had was long gone.
"Ryo!" Nawaki wiped mud from his face and shouted toward the broad-shouldered figure walking ahead in a dark, battered rain cloak.
The rain distorted his voice. "How long are we going to rot here? We haven't even seen a single Suna shinobi! My new blade's gonna rust!" He slapped the scabbard at his hip, splattering more mud.
Ryo didn't respond. His steps were steady, boots pressing through the sludge.
The hood hid his face, revealing only a sharp jawline.
"Rusty blades," a voice colder than the rain replied, "are better than broken people."
"…."
Nawaki swallowed his retort, cheeks burning beneath the mud.
Restless, his gaze darted toward Mikoto. "Mikoto, say something, will you? What's the point of walking in circles like mud monkeys? Can't we get a real assignment? I'll even go as bait if it means action! Look at my sensei, Orochimaru."
His head was filled with visions of glory, but he was trapped here instead, simmering with frustration.
Called out, Mikoto finally turned her empty eyes toward him.
"Mm." The shortest answer possible, cold as frost. Her lashes trembled with raindrops before she lowered her gaze again.
A dull camp. Boring patrols. Compared to the storm in her chest, it was nothing.
Her grandfather's expectations, the elders' pressure, and Kushina's bright, trusting smile, all tangled around her heart like a frozen serpent. The rain couldn't extinguish that fire.
"Nawaki! Shut your mouth!"
Tsunade's voice erupted like a whip.
She stopped abruptly, her crimson cloak flicking a spray of mud. Nawaki nearly collided with her back.
"You've been whining the entire way. Tired of living already?!" She spun around, her golden hair plastered to her face, her eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. The rain couldn't wash the fury from her expression.
"Keep talking and I'll send your name straight to Danzō's suicide squad! You want to serve Konoha? Go die gloriously, how about that?!"
Nawaki shrank under her glare, his neck retreating into his shoulders.
"Hmph." Tsunade snorted, done wasting breath. Her gaze slid past Ryo's solid back and landed briefly on Mikoto, whose shoulders stiffened slightly.
Tsunade's tone dropped low, edged with the bitterness she carried from the infirmary.
"You two, keep an eye on this loudmouth. This is the west-wing buffer. Orochimaru and Jiraiya are fighting Hanzō's main force. As for Danzō…" Her lip curled in contempt. "Who knows what kind of snakes he's hiding in his gut. The infirmary…"
At that word, her eyes flashed with fury. Her teeth clicked hard. "I risk my life and use these hands to clean up his messes. He better have every hand and herb ready when I ask. If he's missing one needle…"
Her fist clenched. "Then no one rests!"
That rat in the gutter, Shimura Danzō. Ever since they arrived in this waterlogged hell, he hadn't stopped his schemes.
"'Tsunade's medical expertise is vital, she must not be moved.'"
"'The camp's stability depends on Tsunade's unit, they cannot be deployed to the front.'"
Utter nonsense. Her elite squad should have been the spearhead breaking the stalemate in Ame, but Danzō had pinned them in the mud, disguised under noble-sounding excuses.
"Securing the flank"? A joke.
The Princess of Konoha, reduced to a patcher of wounds in a swamp? It was humiliation, deliberate and political. He had buried her under logistics, away from the command table.
She remembered the day she first entered the camp. The stench nearly made her gag.
She pulled open the flap and stepped into hell. Harsh lamplight illuminated rows of wounded piled on stretchers, blood and pus seeping through filthy cloth. The muffled cries pressed against her throat like a hand.
The med-nin?
Drained husks, hollow-eyed and bloodless, stumbling between bodies, trying to stitch, stanch, and heal. Their faces were gray and lifeless.
This was Konoha's infirmary? No. It was a slaughterhouse.
To tighten his grip, Danzō had planted the camp in a low, muddy sink, perfect for his Root to lurk and perfect for burying the wounded.
When Tsunade stepped in, rage exploded in her skull. She wanted to storm the command tent and crush Danzō to paste. She was born to break lines, not to be chained to a blood-soaked table. She refused to clean up his filth.
But she didn't move.
Hashirama's blood gave her monstrous strength and a compassion too heavy to ignore.
Something stronger than rage forced her to stop. A healer's duty is to save lives. That voice from deep in memory restrained her.
By sheer will, she swallowed the fury.
She ripped the tarp from a wounded recruit, half-conscious from pain, his leg rotting with green necrosis. Her voice snapped: "Medical Unit Four, everyone, here, now!"
She shoved stretchers aside. Hands that could crush stone were slick with blood as she grabbed a stunned medic by the collar. "Don't just stand there! Herbs, serum, clean cloth, move!"
Days passed without sleep. Tsunade became a relentless machine, an angel of death wielding a scalpel like a god.
Through sheer authority and discipline, she dragged the chaos back under control. She brewed antitoxin serum to counter the salamander's poison, enforced isolation and sanitation, reorganized teams, redrew sectors, and issued do-or-die orders.
The "Tsunade Iron Code" was burned into every medic's mind. They spent every drop of chakra and will, and finally, the death toll slowed.
The price? She was spent, her heart turned to ice. This wasn't who she was meant to be. She was a fighter, not a surgeon. Every stitch was another scar on her pride. It was degrading.
The moment she caught her breath, Danzō's vultures came calling.
"Tsunade-sama, Danzō-sama requests your presence!"
"Tsunade-sama, Danzō-sama awaits to discuss strategy!"
"Tsunade-sama, to the command tent. Frontline intelligence needs your analysis!"
Excuses piled high as corpses.
"Crisis at the front." "Defense adjustment." "Logistics review."
Empty words. Every time, that old face put on the same mask of "sacrifice for Konoha," preaching about "the greater good" and "necessary balance," wearing her patience thin.
Again and again, he provoked her, testing her limit, hoping she would explode.
She wasn't naive. He was trying to force her into a mistake.
If she lost control, he could send her unit into the grinder, and once she was gone, Ryo's team would be "headless." In Danzō's camp, taking a genin was as easy as pocketing a kunai.
Even if she stayed, could she restrain herself forever?
He had plenty of excuses to scatter her subordinates, sending them to meaningless patrols or abandoning them to the mud.
And most of all, Ryo.
The boy Danzō wanted most.
To Danzō, someone like Ryo belonged in the shadows of Root, the perfect weapon.
That greed bloomed the moment he read Ryo's file:
"Innately cold, near-emotionless. Absolute rationality. The essence of his power, pure annihilation."
A born assassin. A perfect killing machine.
And then?
The "benevolent" Hiruzen snatched him away with talk of "humanity" and "the village's future."
Worse, Tsunade stood against him, her Senju influence protecting the boy right under his nose.
Every time he remembered that, Danzō's eyes burned. He had lost his perfect specimen.
Tsunade's fists tightened until her knuckles turned white. Her nails dug into her palms.
Standing in the cold rain, the dried blood washing off her cloak, she could feel the fire in her chest burning hotter than ever.
Danzō wanted to steal the tiger from her mountain?
Her lips curved in a predator's smile. Her eyes sharpened like blades.
Shimura Danzō, do you take me for a fool?
Step.
A ghostly figure emerged from the rain, boots striking through half a foot of sludge with hard, steady steps. One of Danzō's loyal Root operatives.
A puppet dug up from a grave, his dead eyes swept over Tsunade's cold face, then fixed like poisoned needles on Ryo's back.
His voice rasped like metal on stone. "By order of Danzō-sama. Genin Kamiyama Ryo, report to the command tent. Immediately."
The air froze. Only the rain kept falling.
Nawaki and Mikoto stiffened, forgetting to breathe.
A killing intent so cold it seemed to freeze the air burst from Tsunade like a tidal wave.
Boom!
A visible shockwave erupted, blasting mud into a fan of spray. The Root operative's cloak snapped like a flag.
"An order?!"
Tsunade stepped forward, mud shattering underfoot. In an instant, she was face-to-face with the pale Root agent. Her crimson cloak flared like fire.
Her voice dropped, molten pressure boiling beneath it. "Ryo is mine."
She stepped closer. Instinct made the Root agent recoil half a step, mud splashing at his boots. "Tell him to crawl out here and say that to my face. Hiding in his little den, barking orders like a coward? If he loves hiding so much, he can crawl back into his mother's womb!"
The last word struck like a hammer.
For a moment, fear flickered in the man's dead eyes, then vanished. He straightened again, rigid as a corpse. "Tsunade-sama, this is Danzō-sama's direct order. I only deliver it." He avoided her gaze and gestured stiffly toward Ryo. "Genin Ryo, please."
Fwoom!
Tsunade's cloak snapped upward like a banner of flame.
The fire in her eyes wasn't sparks anymore, but shards of molten fury.
The west wing of the camp turned ice-cold, the air twisting with invisible heat.
"Shimura Danzō!"
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)