Seeing Azula study him with that knowing smirk, Tajima realized he really understood the truth but just didn't want to accept it.
"He's basically crossing his fingers and hoping the other villages decide to play nice," Azula said with a shrug. "Maybe he thinks they're scared of Konoha's strength, maybe something else. But yeah, his whole strategy is 'please don't attack me.'"
If anyone else had said this, he would've laughed in their face. But this was Azula.
The Hokage, the student of Konoha's biggest hawk, the Second Hokage himself. And his chosen successor was... this? A pacifist playing dice with enemy nations?
Even Fugaku, who'd been quietly lurking in the corner this whole time, couldn't stay silent.
"A Hokage who relies on his enemies being nice isn't a Hokage," he said flatly. "He's a gambler, and gamblers always run out of luck."
Tajima found himself nodding before he even realized it. Unfortunately, harsh truth was still truth.
"Now I get it," Tajima muttered, and for the first time in years, he didn't tack on Hokage after Hiruzen's name. Somewhere around year five of the monkey's reign, Tajima had stopped bothering with formalities in private. "Now I really get why you never liked him."
Azula just waved a hand.
"Doesn't matter anymore. Their best shot was when I was stuck in Kiri." Her eyes sharpened. "I'm here now, which means the war's over."
She didn't elaborate and didn't need to. Tomorrow, she'd be raiding Kumo's base in the Land of Frost directly because she didn't see a reason why she would waste her time waiting until they attack.
None of the Uchiha in that tent doubted her for a second. Even Tajima, who usually made it his personal mission to remind his daughter that arrogance got people killed, kept his mouth shut.
Some things just weren't worth arguing.
•••
"Hey. Psst, did you hear?" a ninja whispered, his voice so low it was practically subterranean, yet absolutely vibrating with the kind of excitement usually reserved for discovering a new fascinating art. "The Uchiha Matriarch showed up on the frontline yesterday."
His companion's eyes went wide enough to compete with the full moon. "What? Are you serious?"
"As serious as a Hyuuga's resting murder face. I saw her with my own two eyes. She was standing right next to Tsunade-hime this morning."
A profound silence fell between them. Words weren't necessary. Their eyes did all the talking, sparkling with the kind of manic glee you'd expect from kids who just found out the cafeteria was serving dessert first.
And if you scanned the camp, you'd see it was a contagion. Every ninja on the frontline had the same look. It was the look of people who just got a massive, fire-wielding security blanket.
And why wouldn't they be excited? Who makes Azula's current reputation so exaggerated?
In the village of Konoha, her name wasn't just golden; it was forged from indestructible legendary chakra metal.
The official, polite, surface-level agreement you'd use in mixed company was that she was the second strongest person in the village, right after the Hokage, of course.
But the unspoken agreement shared over a clandestine cup of sake after a mission was a whole different story.
Everyone knew, deep down in their ninja guts, that the strongest person in the village was a fourteen-year-old girl. (Okay, yes, there was a technicality. The older generation would mumble about Mito Uzumaki, but the new generation just saw that as ancient history.)
Her resume was less a list of accomplishments and more a collection of historical events she personally set on fire.
She's the one who essentially folded the Land of Water's ninja village like origami, made Kiri regret every life choice that led to that moment.
Basically, if strength was a currency, Azula was the economic superpower.
The general consensus around the campfire was that she was a lock for the next "God of Shinobi" title once she finished growing into her adult-sized pedestal.
Which is why it was so incredibly, perfectly on-brand for Azula to be planning something that would launch her reputation not just to the next level, but into a whole new orbit around a different planet.
Just as she'd mapped out the day before, she was gearing up to slip away for a little solo trip to visit the Hidden Cloud Village camp. It was the perfect plan, a classic two-birds-one-stone situation.
Bird one: Show Kumo why poking the Fire Country bear is a terrible idea. Bird two: Give the rumor mill enough material to run for a decade so that it'll not be strange when a fourteen-year-old girl becomes the first female Hokage.
"You're planning to attack Kumo, aren't you?"
Azula, who had been plotting her glorious, one-woman invasion while staring blankly at a wall, jerked so hard she nearly performed an unscheduled evacuation of her chair.
She whipped her head around to find Tsunade. And there was that smirk that said, "I am brilliant and smart."
Since when did she become so easy to read? Azula wondered. It was an unfamiliar sensation, like wearing someone else's clothes, they fit, but something felt fundamentally off.
Tsunade was sitting cross-legged on her cot, with the manga she was reading closed because of course, she somehow managed to get a new book delivered to a war zone before essential medical supplies every day, a girl has her priorities.
"You got me this time," Azula admitted, setting down her quill with a small nod of acknowledgment. "I didn't realize my intentions were so transparent."
"Though that raises an interesting question, when did your brain actually start functioning? I was under the impression you'd lost it somewhere between your last gambling debt and your questionable taste in manga."
Tsunade's eyes looked at Azula with intensity, the manga crumpling slightly in her grip. "Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"
Her voice pitched upward with indignation, but there was no real heat behind it. "I'll have you know I'm brilliant. I just don't feel the need to perform intellectual gymnastics every five minutes like some people who shall remain nameless but whose name definitely starts with A and ends with zula."
Azula raised an eyebrow, genuinely curious despite herself. Tsunade wasn't wrong about the performing part—Azula did like people to know she was the smartest person in any given room. It wasn't arrogance if it was simply true.
But this sudden insight into her thought processes was new.
The truth was simpler than Azula might have guessed. After yesterday's rather awkward moment, Tsunade had found herself doing something unusual.
She'd actually thought about things from Azula's perspective. Not to win an argument or prove a point, but to genuinely understand her friend better.
This morning, waking up on the frontline with the tedium of waiting settling over the camp like fog, Tsunade had asked herself a simple question: what would Azula do?
The answer had been so obvious it almost hurt. Azula didn't wait. Azula acted. Azula saw an opportunity and took it, because waiting meant giving control to someone else, and Azula didn't do that. Not ever. Not for anyone.
"So," Tsunade had pieced together, "you're planning to attack. Probably alone. Probably after breakfast but before lunch, meaning at any moment."
And now here they were.
"Sure, if you say so." She returned her attention to her maps, but her mind was already somewhere again, turning over this new development.
Maybe it was maturity, or maybe Tsunade had been starting to pay attention, which, well, still is maturity.
Tsunade set her manga aside completely now, giving Azula her full attention, not going to let the latter think thoroughly. "Since you're planning something this monumentally stupid, don't you think you should at least loop me in?"
"What if I hadn't figured it out? Would you really just disappear in the middle of the day like some kind of angsty protagonist from one of Jiraiya's terrible works?"
She already knew the answer before she asked. But she asked anyway, because hope was stubborn like that.
"Yes."
Azula didn't even hesitate, blunt with her words. "I wasn't planning to inform anyone. The Raikage is one of the very few people in this entire shinobi world who might actually push me to fight seriously. Adding his elite Kumo ninja into the equation? They might even force me to reach my absolute limit."
A small, almost imperceptible smile curved her lips. "That's not an opportunity I'm willing to waste on bureaucracy, permission slips and nonsense."
She was replaying yesterday in her head, and yeah, she'd not only popped the Sharingan without meaning to, but she actually felt that little click like when it evolved from Two Tomoe to Three Tomoe.
She got so hype she nearly pushed straight to Mangekyō.
But she missed it.
The only silver lining was she didn't have to come up with some weird excuse about how it happened. 'Oh yeah, I awakened it because I walked in on my best friend naked' is... not the flex.
So instead, she locked in on the next best emotional trigger: a real fight. The kind that makes your soul vibrate.
In the current ninja world, only the Raikage really fits the bill. Well, him and the old man who like'em young.
A's Lightning Release Chakra Mode means she doesn't have to hold back. She can actually hit him. His speed matches hers, so no awkward "oops, too fast" moments and no Mito-style restraint.
Just raw, life-or-death chaos.
Basically she can go all out. And if anyone can push her buttons hard enough to unlock Mangekyō through sheer adrenaline? It's him.
The grin tugging at her lips was impossible to miss, especially for Tsunade.
Tsunade could only sigh. "You know, for someone so sharp, you can be weirdly one-track. All you care about is whether they'll push you. You ever think about the 'what if' where things go sideways?"
What worried her wasn't Azula's ambition; it was that unshakable belief she'd walk out alive no matter what.
"You mean dying?" Azula didn't even blink. "It's not arrogance, Tsunade. It's confidence. Confidence in the grind I've been on since I was three. Confidence that I've already run the numbers on just about every worst-case scenario I could stumble into."
"And none of them end with me dead. I'm sure of it."
The certainty radiating off her was almost blinding. Tsunade felt something twist in her chest, part envy, part reluctant respect. For the first time, she started to actually accept something she'd been dodging for a while:
Azula wasn't just more talented than her. She'd also earned her strength. The training, the obsession, the sleepless nights all added up. Of course she'd ended up on top.
Tsunade exhaled. "Alright. That was your plan before I knew about it. Now that I do know, you're taking me with you."
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Yesterday's chapter, I will write today's after iftar, see you later and don't forget to vote, thanks