Iruka's muscles were already so tense that they hurt, despite remaining perfectly still. His students and the other children in the shelter had been getting restless and impatient. He wasn't sure if the fact that they had quieted when distant booming echoed through the tunnels to them was good, although their whispers were much easier to think and listen over than the whining and chatting had been.
'I have no idea what I'm hearing,' he thought with frustration, not for the first time. Fighting had obviously begun, and it wasn't close. That probably meant the village was under direct attack. But there weren't many shinobi he could imagine would be loud enough to hear from such a distance—an Akimichi, perhaps.
At least no one seemed to be nearby. That didn't mean he was relaxing at all. Chuunin instructors were some of the best shinobi in the village because they were entrusted with Konoha's most valuable resources, but he had never specialized in detection of any sort. There was always a possibility that some of the attackers were a distraction for opportunists interested in a few bloodlines.
Those thoughts were why he came shamefully close to throwing a shuriken at the source of abrupt movement. Iruka wheezed in panic, trembling. He'd barely caught the blade between his fingertips in the same instant that he'd reflexively tossed it.
The surprised looking huddle of children who had jerked downwards didn't even notice that there had nearly been blood, though their kunoichi teacher gave him a murderous look.
"Where'd the doggies go?" someone whined plaintively.
'Oh, that's right,' he realized dimly. 'They were snuggling Aiko's ninken.'
It took a moment for him to connect the dots there. The children using that fluffy dog as a pillow had all knocked their heads on the floor when it had ceased to be in the shelter. It was… No, was it even possible for a ninken who had already been in the human realm to respond to a summoning? Iruka frowned, carefully tucking away his weapon and plastering a bright smile onto his face to avoid letting onto his increasingly dark thoughts. As far as he knew, that wasn't possible. He could be wrong, of course. But it seemed much more likely that the chakra sustaining the summons had cut out.
'Aiko could have passed out from chakra exhaustion,' he theorized. That wasn't a good option by any means, but it was better than the only other explanation that came to mind.
His female colleague met his eyes with an expression of grim understanding before she regained her post, having finished soothing a boy who had gotten a good knock to the head. She had come to the same conclusion.
He really wished he knew what was going on. Iruka had to stop himself from tapping his fingers against the side of his pants. His students knew his nervous tics well enough by now that he couldn't allow himself to forget what his hands were doing. It would do no good to panic them.
~~~
Jiraiya threw himself to the ground at the sound of an explosion, half-expecting the attack to be much closer. His reflexes were wasted, however. Whatever detonation that had been had been both large and loud, but the plume of smoke he spotted in the distance showed that it was a good half-mile away. The attack hadn't been for him.
He cursed his paranoia, even as he leapt to his feet and moved to ensure that Nagato-kun didn't manage to hurt Tsunade-hime while he was lazing about on the ground. The shock he saw on the Ame nin's face stopped him in his tracks. Tsunade stepped back, visibly wary of a trap. Katsuya bubbled menacingly, dissolving and dividing into smaller slugs than the large beast that had shielded hime from the last attack.
It was for naught.
"Impossible," Nagato said quietly, turning to stare off at the rising cloud of dust as if he had forgotten he was in a fight. "I… failed. How could I fail?"
Something uncomfortable crawled in his belly, a suspicion that Jiraiya couldn't quite verbalize.
"What are you talking about?"
Apparently, Tsunade wasn't struck by the same sense of cautiousness that told him that anything more than a whisper might break their odd stalemate, because her tone was firm and not entirely pleasant.
"I was going to demonstrate that you were wrong." Nagato blinked, and turned back to the older shinobi, looking a little lost and unnerved. "That your people would surrender to me instead of dying for you."
"It's obvious that they weren't going to surrender," Tsunade rebutted fiercely, frowning at him. "They've been fighting you since you came here."
"I meant the others," Nagato muttered distractedly. "I gave no chance for quarter to your Jounin. The genin and civilians, however, did not have to die."
"What did you do?" Jiraiya asked hopelessly, fearing the worst.
"Nothing."
Well, that hadn't been what he had expected.
"I did not have a chance to offer them terms." Nagato slowly shook his head, giving the Sannin a strange inquisitive look. "The last Path I possessed who could go to them is dead. I have no others but the path outside the city. Even if I beat you here…"
He trailed off, but Jiraiya knew what he meant. Nagato would have no clean victory. All three of them were bloodied and battered, but not ready to stand down. Nagato might fall to one or both of the Sannin, and his invasion would fail. Even if he won, he would be weakened. Someone, somewhere, among the Konoha survivors would find him and bring him down. He was no immortal. If he had thought he could take Konoha alone, he would not have brought other fighters.
"Paths?" Tsunade asked, uncertain.
"Like the story of the Rikkudo Sennin," Jiraiya explained quietly. "The Rinnegan is the power from that story. It's real. That's how he did this. The other intruders are him."
He had been all but certain, but seeing Nagato's head nod slightly in agreement hit home. God, when had one of his kids become so powerful? Jiraiya tried not to laugh, because if he did, he was going to cry. He was a failure of the highest order. He had been less of a disgrace back when he thought his students were all dead. His apprentice was still dead, as was sweet Yahiko. Nagato and Konan were criminals bent on Konoha's destruction and the deconstruction of the entire shinobi way of life. Naruto… He could have done so much more for Naruto. But he'd looked at that boy and seen his father's face and his mother's spirit and been torn between drinking away the memories and pushing him away so that he couldn't be hurt again when the boy died.
Naruto had forced his way in past his guard, but that was through no virtue on Jiraiya's part. He was a disgrace to Konoha, a pathetic failure as a teacher, and an utterly worthless godparent. God, he didn't even know what had happened to his goddaughter. He hadn't seen her since the fighting started. Was she dead? Probably. Half of Konoha seemed to be.
Nagato's quiet voice cut through his despair. "It seems that you were correct. I cannot best you." Jiraiya pulled his attention outward to see Nagato looking up at the sky, staring into the distance contemplatively. "I yield, Hokage-sama, Jiraiya-sensei. I was wrong."
"What." Tsunade said ungracefully.
"If your shinobi are willing to blow their very bodies up to keep me from their civilians, I cannot believe that I will find what I thought I would here." Nagato shook his head slowly. "Konoha is not what I thought it was."
"What makes you think I would accept your surrender," Tsunade demanded, half-hysterical, tears of anger welling up and her face twisted in sick, trembling outrage. "You killed hundreds of my people! I want your blood. Why would I let you walk away?"
For the first time, Nagato seemed to really look at her. He shrunk slightly in the face of her obvious grief, apparently shaken by the realization that he had hurt real people and was going to be held accountable for it.
"I can fix that," he said quietly.
Tsunade threw her head back and laughed until she cried, great gasping sobs that shook her shoulders. "You can fix it," she repeated thickly, shaking her head and hugging her chest. Now that the adrenaline had gone and the fight was over, she was falling apart in front of his eyes. Jiraiya swallowed hard, and quietly moved to wrap an arm around her waist. She leaned into his chest and rolled her head to keep Nagato in her sight. "Are you mad, boy? You're going to fix this. What are you going to do, give hand-written apologies to every widow and orphan? Will you rebuild my city by hand?"
"No," Nagato answered, looking her directly in her eyes. He stepped forward seriously, hands curling slightly at his side. "Tell your people to stand down. They are still fighting my last path. I will bring the Naraka path here." He paused deliberately, as if he knew that the next words would be disbelieved. "The Rinnegan has the power over life," Nagato said quietly. "True resurrection, not a perversion or theft from the Shinigami."
Jiraiya felt his jaw drop. That was in the stories, yes, but stories couldn't all be true. It was perfect, it was unrealistic, it was-
"Impossible!" Tsunade breathed, curling her fist into Jiraiya's vest. He couldn't see her face even when she lifted it, but he knew the fury that would be on it. "You mock me."
"I do not." Nagato raised his head to make eye contact with Jiraiya. He met the gaze steadily, torn between disbelief and hope. "Jiraiya-sensei, you know I do not lie. I can do this. The Samsara of Heavenly life technique restores a body to the state it was in before death. I can rebuild what was lost, attach limbs, and breathe life back into damaged tissue. They will not be in perfect health," he admitted honestly. "I believe that there may be remnants of fatigue or imperfections in chakra level, and I do not know what would happen to a man who had lost a limb years before, for example, but I can restore your people to life in penance."
"In penance," Tsunade repeated slowly. "So you're sorry, boy?" She stared at him, coming to a decision. It didn't take long. Jiraiya knew what she would choose. There was only one choice, no matter how angry she was. Their people came first.
"Katsuya-sama, spread out and make sure everyone knows to stand down!" Tsunade ordered hoarsely, not taking her gaze off Nagato. "I'm going to let him try. I'll need your help to heal any injured, however. Nagato. Are you claiming that your technique only needs genetic material to rebuild a body and restore it to life?" she clarified, eyes hard. At his nod, Tsunade took a deep inhalation. "So a body should become as it was meant to be," she concluded quietly, running a hand through her left pigtail and tapping a scuffed, bloody heel against the ground.
A body should become as it was meant to be.
Hope swelled up in his chest, despite the grimness of the situation. Tsunade was obviously disgusted by Nagato, but he didn't feel guilty about talking to him under the new circumstances.
"What happened?" Jiraiya asked quietly, hating that he'd forgotten about his initial upset when his goddaughter had disappeared earlier. She had taken Nagato away—and he was now certain it was Yahiko's body, though he hadn't gotten a good view before—and had never returned. But Nagato had.
His old student gave him a careful examination. "What do you mean?"
"My goddaughter," Jiraiya clarified, oddly surprised that Nagato hadn't known. It seemed so obvious to him. "She- earlier, when we – first arrived"- 'Before Choza and Shikaku and Inoichi died' , he thought bitterly –"the girl who-"
Thankfully, Nagato interrupted his awkward stumbling for words. "Uzumaki Aiko," he clarified slowly.
For the first time, Jiraiya remembered that Nagato was an Uzumaki too. How was he related to his godchildren?
Nagato looked guilty, and Jiraiya's heart sank. Even as he told himself that Nagato would fix it, that he would bring her back, Jiraiya wanted to go see for himself. To find his goddaughter and apologize to Minato for failing him so completely.
"Dead," Nagato admitted. "Although I did not kill her with these hands. She took me out of Konoha, to the land of Rain in hopes of keeping me from the fight. She did not know that the Animal path could summon me."
"Then why is she dead," Jiraiya asked quietly, accusatively.
"That was the explosion."
His legs buckled under him and Jiraiya sat heavily. 'Maybe I already knew,' he realized dazedly. 'That wasn't an explosive tag. That was a big explosion. From something like the seal Aiko took from Danzo.'
Kami, how horrific. But, that didn't answer-
"How did she die," he demanded hoarsely. An explosion would be a monstrous way to die, but the seal was meant to go after she was dead. That had just been her body, not her. Maybe the truth was less cruel. Even as he grasped at straws, Jiraiya knew he was being irrational. She was dead. Dead was dead, and it certainly hadn't been peacefully in her sleep. Knowing wouldn't make him feel any better.
"Suicide," Nagato admitted quietly.
And his heart stopped somewhere between terror and confusion, even as the younger man continued talking.
"I don't know how she did it. One of her companions was dead, and the Preta path moved to finish the other while he was down. I had intended to have him go to the refugees after they were dead and was weary of playing with them. She leapt at the Preta path." Nagato looked oddly disturbed, as if noting a detail for the first time. "She was smiling," he finished quietly. "She didn't even try to reach out. Her head went first, and then-" Nagato cut himself off sharply, as if remembering that shinobi tolerance of gore and grief might falter in the face of such a personal connection.
Jiraiya bowed his head, feeling a despicable failure. He didn't even care when a tear drop hit his knees. "And you can bring her back?" he asked quietly. A body that had been the fuel for an explosion like that… half of it might be outright gone as ash, the rest scattered. Was it even possible to restore full function after something like that? Would she remember the experience? It must have been a horrible way to die. It might be kinder if she didn't have to count such an experience in her recollection.
"I can bring her back," Nagato promised solemnly. "And then…" he paused uncertainly, probably knowing that it was a terrible time to ask favors, but unable to resist. "What happened in Ame?"
Surprised by the question, Jiraiya had to blink three times before he made the connection. He'd pushed that affair back in his memory in his current preoccupation. It just didn't seem important at the time. But of course Nagato would be interested.
"I don't know much," Jiraiya admitted. "A toad came to me asking what was going on while I was fighting before you came back and told me that Naruto was actually in Ame, but I don't know when the situation changed. If there was a message from the borders about an excursion into Ame, it either hasn't made it here or the messenger abandoned their post to join in the fight."
"I see." Nagato seemed troubled. Jiraiya could sympathize.
Tsunade couldn't.
"Who are we waiting for exactly?" she asked crisply, pacing a small circuit.
"My last remaining path," Nagato said quietly. "I should probably make you aware that there are also four Ame shinobi present. I took our strongest team in order that someone might protect my actual body. In any case, the Naraka path is channeling a power that will allow me to perform the Samsara technique of heavenly life."
"And will this kill you?"
Jiraiya recoiled, but Tsunade was matter-of-fact. The question made sense. Most kinjutsu had a heavy price to pay. Life for life seemed fitting.
"I may die in the attempt," Nagato admitted. "I doubt it, however. I have a path left to aid me and a great deal of chakra still." He met her gaze for a moment. "I will use as much as it takes," Nagato said quietly. "I have not used this technique before."
"Why didn't you?" Tsunade asked suspiciously. "If this friend of yours is dead, why didn't you bring him back?"
A flash of pain crossed Nagato's face. "I had not mastered the technique," he said bluntly. "And by the time I had, it was far too late. I cannot bring back those who are long dead without dying myself, and Konan would not have forgiven me if I attempted the technique and failed. When I suggested it, she felt that the risk of failure outweighed the possibility of having Yahiko back, and that she would not choose between us."
'She didn't want to be alone,' Jiraiya realized sadly. Konan had always been a sweet girl. Skilled, clever, but not a leader herself. No wonder she had clung to her surviving companion.
They waited in unhappy silence until the 'path' came to them, impassive and dull-faced. Nagato directed it to stand nearby and took a deep breath. "Tsunade-sama, I can do nothing for your injured," he warned a final time. "It is still possible that any who are trapped under rubble will perish after I have performed this technique. They will remain lost. But if we delay, those who have perished already will be out of my reach."
"I understand," Tsunade said quietly, obviously pained. "Save as many as you can. I'll set them to searching for survivors and heal them with Katsuya's help."
'I'll never get a chance to see anything like this again,' Jiraiya knew when Nagato raised his arms slightly and began channeling a truly godly amount of chakra. 'I should pay attention so I can remember the way it looks.'
But it was all he could do to hold his old teammate's hand and try to soothe away her shaking as they both silently prayed that this would work.
~~~
The sky was blue through heavy overhanging dust, and her neck was hurting. She moved slightly, and the jagged rock that had been poking her flesh up rolled over to a blunter side.
That still wasn't great, but it seemed like as good a solution as any.
It took a moment for the realization that something was not right to set in. Cataloguing her senses took some time. The stinging in her eyes wasn't pleasant, but it didn't set off the danger alarms. Nothing did, until she forced herself to sit up and realized that she was completely naked.
She was naked, and she wasn't alone. Eyes wide, she crossed her arms over her chest convulsively and brought her knees up to shield some small part of her dignity.
'What's going on? Where am I?'
She couldn't even bring herself to question why she was naked, because she couldn't imagine an answer that wasn't terrifying. She didn't even see discarded clothes nearby. The situation didn't look good. She was sitting in a field of rubble. A starburst pattern of blood painted the grey and white stones. That was a lot of blood, but she didn't see where it had come from.
Is it possible to have your heart convulse so fast that it bruises your chest? Because that's what it felt like.
The man walking toward her split his face in an enormous grin, widening his hands in some gesture she didn't appreciate. The hair that fluttered behind him was white, where it wasn't red or dusty.
So, this was someone who had been involved in whatever had happened to her, she grimly judged.
"Aiko-chan!" At this distance, she could see that his face was tanned and faintly lined. It was also filthy, with slightly cleaner lines blurred downward where he had obviously been crying at some point in the day. He was older than his macho, careless body language and pleasant voice implied. That advanced age didn't correlate to physical infirmity. Strength was obvious in the casual grace of his movement and his enormous frame. "Shit, girl. That was stupid of you. But we're all alright now. Tsunade-hime's got almost everyone rounded up." He sounded oddly relieved to see her.
And he wasn't respecting her personal space. Face burning, she scrambled backwards, watching warily.
This seemed like a situation she should remember getting into. Blood that didn't seem to belong to anyone, broken buildings, hot scorch marks… it looked like she'd been in the middle of a fucking battlefield.
'Nice place you have here,' some irreverent part of her murmured, rather unconvincingly fronting nonchalance in the face of her fear. She couldn't make the words come out, though. Her mouth was too dry.
And the stranger was still looking at her. His grin made her very uncomfortable. In another situation she might have identified it as boyish or playful, but it felt distinctly predatory right now. Her right foot slipped on a jutting nail in her retreat, and the soft uncallused heel split open like a ripe fruit. She flinched, curling her leg inward. His smile slipped as he glanced down at the liquid that was warming the underside of her foot.
"Is something wrong?" Even as he spoke, he was slipping the oversized scroll that hung off one shoulder onto the ground. She tensed, but all he removed was the coat he wore. It was filthy and sticky against her bare flesh. But when he tossed it to her; she hastily wrapped it around her body and held it closed with one hand.
She still hadn't responded.
"Aiko, talk to me." The stranger's brow furrowed. He moved in slowly, as if trying to be unthreatening. She should reply. She wasn't convinced of his benevolence, but manners never hurt. "Are you dizzy? You look disoriented."
Her voice was raspy, but she managed words. "Where am I?"
~~~
Tired and uncertain, Tsunade allowed Nagato to leave, the one path that had survived escorting him.
"It's strange," she said quietly, not turning to look at her apprentice. Shizune had been a little frightened and jumpy since she had been revived, but doing her best to hide it. For her dignity, Tsunade pretended not to notice and tried not to break down and cry when the girl crept off to a corner to recover her composure.
Finding her apprentice wandering disoriented among the rubble had been terrifying as it had been a relief. Shizune had been equally streaked with tears and blood, clutching her torn kimono shut and all but incoherent. She hadn't been told what had happened. And Tsunade hadn't dared to ask. If Shizune wanted to talk about it, she would eventually. But now, they needed to pull together and take care of the village as best as they could.
"That he left the Ame team behind?" Shizune asked, not making much effort to falsify her usual bright tone.
"That, and something he said before," Tsunade acknowledged thoughtfully. "I think he's planning on seppuku." She turned away, disinterested in watching that man walk into the distance.
He could kill himself, but it wouldn't erase the memory of what he had done. It would make sense, though. Seppuku was historically used to erase disgrace and restore honor. His personal honor was beyond repair, but he still cared for Ame and Konan.
They hadn't managed to contact the other nations yet, but she thought she knew what international response to this whole mess would be. No one else had been battered nearly as much as Konoha, but that didn't mean anyone would accept the continuance of Nagato's unofficial reign as the kage of Ame.
No, he had to either die or be executed for them to have anything resembling a fresh start, no matter what Jiraiya thought. She suspected that he intended for Konan to take over as Ame's kage, actually. It sounded like a poor plan to her, but it wasn't her village to worry about.
Nagato had postured, as if he was attempting to convince her that he had something important to say. That seemed doubtful. Now that she'd finally heard from her people in Ame, it seemed clear that Akatsuki was taken care of. Whatever he was withholding could be found in another way without having to condescend to deal with that Konan woman until it was clear there were no other options. Tsunade wouldn't be an instrument in a plan to strengthen Konan's authority by acknowledging her as Ame's representative.
'Why am I wasting time thinking about these people?'
Disgusted, Tsunade wished good riddance to bad rubbish and took a moment to wonder what Jiraiya was up to. She had lost track of him in the hours that followed Nagato's resurrection technique and then her impromptu healing. It was all a long, dirty blur of digging and searching and trying to convince shell-shocked, traumatized shinobi to pull out of their personal sorrow and phantom pain to help her save everyone else before being trapped under rubble killed them again.
And Sarutobi-sensei was dead, permanently dead. She tried to shy away from the memory of finding him—breathing perfectly well, but the man she remembered was not inside the cage of flesh. When she took into account that he had apparently traded his life to the death god to destroy a path, Tsunade wasn't surprised that it had been impossible to revive him. She was miserable and sick with grief, but not surprised.
At least the digging had revealed that all was not quite as lost as they had thought. Downtown had been hit the hardest, but only several blocks were completely unsalvageable. Most of the city was broken and buried, but the infrastructure was still there. With work and time, it could be restored to something usable.
'It doesn't hurt to have an extra four sets of hands, but I'll need more than Ame nin to get this done before the Tsuchikage thinks to take advantage of our weakness,' Tsunade thought grimly. Everyone would have to be recalled from Ame. They couldn't afford to waste the manpower on a foray that wasn't even making money.
"Tsunade-sama? May I be excused?"
"Hmm?" She actually turned at that. "What do you mean, Shizune?"
"I would rather be working in the hospital," Shizune said quietly.
Her brow furrowed. It didn't seem like the best allocation of one of her best administrative resources. There were so few wounded… Well, physically wounded, in any case. There were more than a few instances of phantom limbs, cases of short-term memory loss from stress, confusion, and panic attacks, and a few who were still sleeping off whatever trauma they had endured that Nagato's resurrection couldn't rectify. Shizune was vastly overqualified to deal with the physical injuries present, and under-qualified to do anything about the sudden rash of psychiatric needs.
But she wouldn't deny her apprentice anything, and certainly wouldn't push her past her breaking point. Shizune wouldn't have asked on a whim.
"Of course," Tsunade conceded. "I'm sure you know the evacuation team is leaving soon. You'd better go join them."
The relief visible on her apprentice's face erased any regret she had. Impulsively, Tsunade reached out and pulled Shizune into a hug as she hadn't in years. She breathed in deeply, nose tucked into lank, dirty hair. "I love you kid," she murmured. "You know that, right?"
She wasn't an expressive woman. The thought of losing the girl she had raised had curdled her blood and made her regret every day where she hadn't made that perfectly clear.
"I know," Shizune sniffled in return, embracing her firmly. "I love you too."
Tsunade pulled away, holding Shizune at arm's length to drink her in for a moment before tiredly joking, "All the feelings in here are making me uncomfortable. Go on now, you'll miss your group."
She didn't have to cope with loneliness for long. Twenty minutes after Shizune left, her surviving teammate stumbled into her requisitioned office in a bank (of all the things) that had survived the destruction.
"You look terrible," Tsunade said bluntly.
Jiraiya couldn't quite muster up a smile. "It's been a long day, hime." He looked at her with something that wasn't quite fondness and wasn't quite sorrow—a desperate, grateful look that made her uncomfortable enough that Tsunade turned her face down.
"It has," she agreed quietly. After a moment, she cleared her throat. They'd never communicated about their feelings much, but if there was a day to express concern, this was probably it. Tsunade opened her mouth, and then closed it uncertainly. "So… Did you find-"
"I don't want to talk about it," Jiraiya cut her off sharply. At her shocked look, guilt crossed his face. He slumped, enormous shoulders curling inward. His enormous physical presence couldn't be diminished to something comparable to another man's, however. Even at his lowest like this, Tsunade looked at her teammate and couldn't see the scrawny boy she had grown up punching. He wasn't quite foreign to her, but sometimes when she looked and saw a man where she expected an irritating tween, it threw her for a loop.
"I'm sorry," Jiraiya apologized, glancing up at her through pale lashes ringed with soot. "That was bratty, wasn't it?" He heaved a sigh, apparently not needing a response. The kunoichi watched him warily, wanting to help but not sure what to say. "Yeah, I found Aiko."
"Was she…" Tsunade started cautiously.
Her teammate shook his head. "No, she's not dead," he said bluntly.
Tsunade avoided the impulse to say, 'that's good, right?'. He didn't seem happy.
Jiraiya inhaled deeply and looked up to the tacky gold-leaf ceiling. "She's not right, either." His lips twisted into something ugly. Tsunade found herself holding her breath, not sure what might set him off. "Didn't recognize me, or know where she was."
The Hokage winced. "Well, to be fair, she has a right to be shaken," she tried to say diplomatically. "And Konoha doesn't look much like itself right now."
That hardly explained why she wouldn't recognize Jiraiya. It wasn't like he had a particularly common face. That failure was hardly a good sign. Something could be severely wrong in her head. Nagato did say that there might be some complications… She couldn't know without some idea of the physical damage, though. She did have the presence of mind to know that it wouldn't be diplomatic to ask Jiraiya for the gory details so that she could form a working hypothesis as to the problem.
Tsunade did have suspicions as to what had happened. There were other instances of what appeared to be serious brain damage in shinobi who had been posted along the wall, where that horrific ray had burst through. What were the odds that Nagato's technique was absolutely perfect enough to reconstruct and attach brain cells that even the best doctors didn't understand? She chewed the inside of her cheer unhappily. Even if the cells were all perfect, the electrical connections between them were the result of years of signals being transmitted in very individual ways. Could that really be rebuilt from scratch?
'I'll have Shizune send me an update,' Tsunade decided. Now that she was curious, she wanted to know. Actually, she should remind Shizune that there was likely to be an incident. It wasn't uncommon for shinobi waking up in hospital to lash out, but the medic nin could usually take care of themselves. With all the civilian nurses and doctors that would be helping out, it might be a good idea to exercise extra precaution…
Jiraiya noted the obvious exclusion, and gave her an amused look that told her he hadn't been tricked into thinking nothing was wrong. She gave him a queasy smile. It wasn't like she was going to lie to him.
"I must be even worse than I thought," Jiraiya sighed, scratching his filthy neck depreciatingly. "My godkid didn't recognize me. She was scared of me, hime," he stressed, voice going up a little.
A deep sadness pulled at her chest. Unthinkingly, Tsunade crossed the distance and pulled her oldest friend into a slow hug. She wasn't a particularly small woman but she felt petite when her forehead rested against his pectorals. "We're a right pair, aren't we?" she murmured. "I always said I didn't want kids, but here we are. If Shizune and Sasuke aren't my brats, I don't know what they are." She tightened her arms protectively. "You did a good job with those kids," Tsunade stated firmly. "They're old enough to understand why you couldn't take them in, and it's obvious that you care. You did what you could. Naruto thinks the world of you, you know."
He gave an aborted laugh that expanded his chest enough that Tsunade's grip nearly slipped. "Not for long," Jiraiya joked uncomfortably. "I may have sent a toad or two to spy on him after everything calmed down."
Tsunade was surprised into a laugh.
"Hey, it's not that funny," he grumbled with a pout.
She shook her head and drew back, poking his chest. "It's not that. Katsuya is with Sasuke now. Great minds think alike, I think." She'd sent her summon to her student as soon as a dirty, yelping dog had limped his way to her after the fight. The note attached to the poor thing's collar had been illegible, but the blue vest marked him as one of Hatake's. When she'd seen it, Tsunade had discovered a new capacity to feel ill. She'd instantly assumed Sasuke was in trouble. Of course he wasn't, though. Hatake had apparently managed to rout Akatuki and snatch Ame… Which she needed to sit down and have a long debriefing about, apparently. Tsunade made a mental note.
"Paranoid old coots think alike," Jiraiya countered amiably. He didn't even wince when she whapped his chest. Instead, he took the blow with a smile, and rubbed the spot her palm had connected with. "I'll continue to be creepy tonight, I suppose. I don't want to scare her again, but I'd like to see that she's alright. Shizune isn't going to tattle on me if I come by while she's sleeping, right?" The expression on his face slipped slightly.
'He probably doesn't want to find out it wasn't a fluke that she didn't recognize him,' Tsunade assumed quickly, averting her gaze. 'It's not real if he doesn't deal with it, in a way.'
Politely, she pretended not to notice the drop in his composure. There was no point in mentioning it. He was hardly going to fool anyone who knew them into thinking that he was really alright, and crying was hardly going to get what needed done or help keep the village in line. "I doubt it," Tsunade said wryly. "Not if you ask nicely."
Jiraiya was being a bit of a coward, but he probably wasn't wrong. It might be best not to surprise Aiko with too many new faces in a day, Tsunade figured. Waking up in the hospital would be overwhelming enough. She was hardly a mental health specialist who knew how best to approach someone best after an incident like yesterday's.
'Shizune probably already knows to contact a civilian specialist,' Tsunade decided. 'Probably several specialists, actually, since our worst casualties appear to be psychosomatic or otherwise non-physical.'
They didn't have the capacity for so many mentally compromised shinobi at the best of times. When their own specialists were among the injured, the lack was profound. Already making plans, she turned back to her work.