If anyone could hear Azula's thoughts, they'd probably think she'd been spending too much time in the Nara forest.
Mito didn't need mind-reading to get the gist, though. After decades as a jinchūriki and wife to the world's most energetic do-gooder, she'd gotten pretty good at reading people, especially when the person is one supremely talented, profoundly impatient Uchiha.
The girl wasn't a procrastinator. Oh no. Azula's particular brand of madness was ambition on fast-forward.
Mito could practically see the thought bubble over her student's head: Why waste years buttering up old men on the council when she could just become Hokage tomorrow?
It was less a career path and more a hostile takeover plan, complete with imagined fireworks and a very annoyed Monkey.
But Mito also knew something else—something Azula hid beneath all that Uchiha pride and precision. The girl valued bonds like a miser valued gold.
She'd give you the shirt off her back if she decided you were hers, then set anyone who looked at you funny on fire, which is, somehow, a normal Uchiha trait. In other words, fiercely loyal.
Mito's gaze then drifted to her granddaughter. If Mito's heart ached for Azula's driven isolation, it throbbed for Tsunade's burdened shoulders.
The poor girl had been shadowed by a prodigy since they could walk, and then every achievement of Tsunade's was met with, "Well, she is Hashirama's granddaughter."
No one saw the sweat, the broken training dummies, the stubborn tears she'd never shed—all just to keep pace with a friend who seemed to move at the speed of light.
Suddenly, an impulse struck Mito—the kind that should have been buried with her youth, yet somehow sparked to life. Before her better judgment could protest, she was moving.
Tsunade barely had time to blink before she was engulfed in a hug.
Tsunade froze and her brain short-circuited.
Grandma? Hugging? In broad daylight? She couldn't remember the last time she'd been held like this—probably before her mother died and, well, by Azula a few days ago.
She felt a somewhat warm and terrifying vulnerability threatening to rise in her chest, but being the strong one, she shoved it down. Her face remained a masterpiece of controlled confusion.
After a few seconds, the warmth was rapidly being crushed out of her by Senju-level granny strength.
"Grandma," she wheezed, her voice muffled against Mito's shoulder. "I'm fine, but could you… um… release me? My ribs are tapping out."
Mito chuckled. "Well, you're certainly not dead. My hugs would've finished the job if you were."
She released Tsunade, who gasped dramatically for air, and sighed. "Living as long as I have… it's like being the last one left at a very depressing banquet. My husband, then my son, his wife, my brother-in-law, my sister, my parents… Everyone who got an invitation to my heart left early."
She reached out and gently booped Tsunade on the nose, her expression softening.
"But the banquet isn't over. I still have you and Nawaki. You two are the last, most precious heirlooms of a clan that specialized in stubbornness and fabulous hair. And I will protect my heirlooms. Even," she added, her voice dropping into something steelier, "from my own grandson's sometimes-foolish student."
"Azula showed me a future. Your future, Tsunade. And let me tell you, you ended up utterly alone, worse than I was. Me, Nawaki, your lover, that ridiculous Jiraiya, even someone you considered as a little sister… gone. You became so terrified of blood you'd faint at a paper cut."
She ticked the catastrophes off on her fingers. "Like Azula said, the Uzumaki were wiped out, the Uchiha almost extinct, your fellow Orochimaru disheartened left and became a rogue ninja. Konoha itself was reduced to a smoking crater full of ghosts."
She turned fully to Tsunade, her gaze sharp enough to make anyone bow down. "Azula wants to change all of this. Stop this cyclical nonsense of villages fighting over scraped knees, and unite them against the real monsters waiting outside the Ninja World. And Hiruzen… as good as he may potentially be, isn't up to this task."
"What we need is someone to rebuild the world with sheer, terrifying willpower. We need Azula as the leader, and we need it before I join the great reunion in the pure lands."
She spoke in a daze, her voice like a whisper. "I don't have much time left. So I need you to ask yourself, what do you truly want? How far will you go to protect what you have? And what risks are you willing to take—not for a title to prove a point to your grandfather's ghost—but for a future where you don't have to mourn everyone you've ever loved?"
Feeling she had said enough, she chose to leave and let Tsunade have the time to think about it thoroughly.
...
...
...
"So… it's really coming to this, huh?"
Jiraiya let out a long, theatrical sigh, slumping back as he stared at the orders stamped with Hiruzen's seal. "War again. You'd think the world would get bored of it by now."
He'd felt it coming for days. Anyone with half a brain—and preferably both eyes—could tell the ninja world was wound tighter than a paper bomb with a faulty fuse.
Borders locked down, missions canceled, patrols doubled. At this point, even a stray cat trying to leave the village would've been interrogated.
Strangely enough, Orochimaru didn't seize the opportunity to mock him.
No snide remark, no unsettling grin, no comment about Jiraiya's inevitable dramatic death on some battlefield.
Instead, Orochimaru stood beside him, golden eyes fixed on the roiling clouds overhead, pale fingers tucked into his sleeves. He looked… contemplative.
Dangerous, yes—but quiet. As if he were pondering the mysteries of life. Or death. Or how to dissect both.
Jiraiya glanced at him sideways.
…Yeah. Definitely unsettling.
Orochimaru had been like this for weeks now, and Jiraiya had learned the hard way that if he didn't get to the point soon, the man would simply stop listening and start rereading Hiruzen's letter out of spite.
"The old man says Uzushiogakure was attacked," Jiraiya said, dropping the joking tone. "Not just one village either. Iwa, Kumo, Suna, and Kiri, all of them. And apparently the Mizukage himself was leading the charge."
That did it.
Orochimaru's eyes sharpened, the distant haze evaporating in an instant.
"Uzushio… attacked by that many forces at once?" A thin smile crept onto his lips. With hidden concern in his eyes for Azula and Tsunade, he couldn't help but murmur about the other villages attacking. "How ambitious."
He hadn't been in the village when Tsunade, Azula, Mito, and the Senju and Uchiha forces that followed them left.
He'd been away on a mission—but even then, news like that had a way of spreading to someone like him. After all, it wasn't every day that the wife of the Shodai Hokage reminded the entire village why her name still carried weight.
No techniques, no seals, no attack—but just chakra, a very pure and overwhelming chakra so dense it turned gold, spilling into the air like a living thing. The pressure alone had pinned elite shinobi to the ground, bodies refusing to move as if the world itself had decided they weren't allowed to.
Since then, Orochimaru had found himself with a familiar problem.
Curiosity.
An irritating, persistent curiosity—specifically directed at Mito.
At first, he only meant to glance at the reports, just a purely academic peek. But the deeper he dug, the more his interest slithered out of control… until it wrapped itself tightly around his mind.
And then came the shock.
This woman—this supposedly retired relic of history—might very well be the strongest living being in the entire shinobi world.
Orochimaru had always known that anyone Azula acknowledged as a teacher couldn't possibly be ordinary. Still, he had assumed the reason lay solely in Mito's sealing techniques. Fuinjutsu was, after all, the one subject Azula consistently displayed genuine curiosity toward.
Now?
Now that assumption felt laughably naïve.
What truly unsettled him wasn't just Mito's power—but how decisively everything had ended.
As if sensing the serpentine gleam in Orochimaru's eyes—an expression that screamed I am about to dissect this information mentally for the next six months—Jiraiya continued.
"According to Tsunade," he said, arms crossed, tone uncharacteristically serious, "every single attacking force was wiped out, no survivors."
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed.
"She personally defeated—and killed—the Mizukage," Jiraiya added. "She alone, using some newly developed Water Release Chakra Mode. And Uzushiogakure didn't lose a single person."
"…It seems," Jiraiya finally murmured, voice low and almost… wistful, "that I still have a long way to go before catching up to her."
The admission sounded almost painful.
Silent for a few seconds, Jiraiya continued, "The old man believes the other villages won't stay quiet much longer. A few days without news, and someone like Kumo will undoubtedly lose patience."
"That's why he wants us on full alert. Reinforcements are already moving—Hyūga, Ino–Shika–Chō, the works."
Jiraiya and Orochimaru's units had been dispatched to the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Hot Water the moment they returned from their last mission—barely three days after the Azula team departed.
Normally, Orochimaru would've dissected this strategy to pieces, but this time, he didn't care.
The only thing occupying his thoughts was the impossible fact that Uzushiogakure had survived an attack from four major villages—unscathed.
And the Mizukage, a man at the very pinnacle of the shinobi world… gone.
Thinking of it, Orochimaru felt an unexpected twinge of something resembling sympathy.
"So even a Mizukage," he said softly, "cannot escape the hand of death… reduced to nothing more than a memory."
"HEY!" Jiraiya nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Are you seriously zoning out again?!" he yelled, pointing at Orochimaru. "I'm talking about potential war, and you're over there philosophizing like a creepy funeral monk!"
Then he paused, squinted… and sighed.
"…Still," he muttered, strangely relieved, "guess it wouldn't be Orochimaru if you weren't rambling about death and eternity."
Orochimaru smiled. It was thin, unsettling—and very much familiar.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
I'm finally back, and see you tomorrow at the same time