Chapter 51 — War Orphans of the Land of Rain
What would the Akatsuki trio have become if they'd never met Jiraiya?
Ren had thought about that question before—
But he could never picture it clearly.
Now, in this world, the answer was right in front of him.
Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan were still war orphans, fighting stray dogs for scraps in the Land of Rain.
Even though they lingered near the capital, life was still brutally hard.
They had a Shiba Inu—Nagato's dog.
It was cute, clever, and sometimes, by drawing people's attention, it helped them steal fruit to eat.
But the good days didn't last.
One day they were caught stealing, and the Shiba was beaten to death.
Even in its last moments, it smiled, trying to lift its broken leg into their hands…
In the muddy wasteland of the Rain Country, the three of them found a patch of ground just dry enough to bury it.
"Better this way," they thought.
No more sickness, no more pain—no more endless fear.
The dog was gone, but the three still had to wander in search of food.
It was then, by chance, that the Rain Country's front lines became desperate. Transport crews were short-handed, so the three children were conscripted as civilian labor.
Maybe heaven took pity—
The work was grueling, but nobody stopped them from sneaking bites of what they carried.
For a while, they lived in rare comfort.
But heaven soon played another cruel joke.
The Three Sannin of Konoha marched in with their army.
In an instant, the children were hauled back to the capital—and not given a single grain of rice.
Lord Hanzō declared: "Scorched-earth defense. Hold the line and counterattack."
Half a month of hunger followed.
Then Rain ninja came into the civilian camp, looking for promising recruits.
Those chosen would at least get to eat.
The oldest, Yahiko, was picked.
After basic training in substitution techniques and chakra control, he became a genin of the Hidden Rain.
By genin standards, Rain's level was far below Konoha's—Konoha genin often had a solid foundation, sometimes even a mastery of one or two elemental releases.
Still, Yahiko's life improved.
He could eat, and so could Nagato and Konan.
But humans are never content for long.
Once food was no longer a problem, Yahiko began thinking: I need to make Nagato and Konan ninja too.
The chance came quickly.
Hanzō returned triumphant from subjugating the Three Sannin, but Rain's ANBU had suffered losses—one of the slain had been the heir of an ANBU captain.
According to Rain law, ANBU members could learn more advanced techniques—and were allowed to pass them on to family.
Yahiko joined the open selection.
Children his age from across the village gathered to fight, to claw, to kill.
Some weren't even five years old.
Even those with talent died in the arena of the ANBU tryouts.
From his high seat, Hanzō watched the children die with an unblinking gaze.
Yahiko's heart hardened.
This isn't right, he thought.
If he became ANBU—if he even became an ANBU captain—he would change this.
At the very least, children should grow up before competing like this.
The genin at the tryouts had little real skill, so Yahiko's street-fighting experience carried him to victory.
Like ANBU in Konoha, Rain's operatives all had codenames.
Yahiko received a new one—Peace.
Peace was his callsign, but more than that, it was his ultimate dream.
Rain was a battlefield for every war.
Because of war, no crops grew.
Because of war, families wept.
Because of war, children never had the chance to grow up.
So Yahiko came to hate war.
He would bring peace to the Land of Rain.
When Hanzō reviewed the list of new ANBU codenames, his finger paused for several seconds over Peace.
It reminded him of the man he once was.
"Assign 'Peace' to External Affairs," Hanzō ordered. "If he shows potential, give him special training."
And so it was done.
The so-called "External Affairs Department"…
was, in truth, the Hidden Rain's robbery division.
The village's income relied on two things: bustling trade from caravans—and plunder.
The Land of Rain was tiny, and its farmland was pitifully small.
Without plunder, there simply wasn't enough food to survive.
Since Hanzō's authority barely extended beyond Amegakure itself, the "External Affairs Department" had two clear targets:
First—raid merchant caravans from other ninja villages.
Second—rob the very civilians of the Land of Rain, so long as they lived outside the village walls.
The days Yahiko spent in External Affairs were the darkest in his memory.
He longed for peace—yet his hands were forced to kill.
He loved his own countrymen—yet to feed the village's shinobi and townsfolk, he had to slaughter those very same people.
That relentless contradiction twisted his temperament.
By thinking deeply on his own, Yahiko gradually began to view problems from the "Rain Shadow's perspective."
The Land of Rain's core problem, he concluded, lay in two things:
First—Hanzō himself.
Second—the lack of farmland.
Hanzō's policies were flawed. He should not have made enemies on all sides.
The territorial disputes with the Land of Fire could be resolved through trade.
All the Rain needed was enough farmland to feed itself.
As for so-called "strategic locations"—they couldn't hold them anyway. Better to exchange them with Konoha for fertile soil.
In truth, his time in External Affairs stripped away the idealism his counterpart in the original story once had.
What replaced it was hard-nosed realism—a mindset that, for all its coldness, was at least actionable.
But to Konan and Nagato, this was betrayal.
They had promised each other from the start: to fill every heart with love, to end the wars of the shinobi world.
That grand and beautiful vision—how had Yahiko turned it into this?
Even without his "siblings'" understanding, Yahiko pressed on.
He discovered Nagato's prodigious talent: once Nagato had enough to eat, he shot up in height, his chakra reserves soon surpassing Yahiko's.
More importantly, his eyes—an unfamiliar bloodline limit no one in the shinobi world had seen—could control both attraction and repulsion. A terrifying power.
Within six months, Yahiko leveraged his mission performance and his growing network to become one of Hanzō's favored elites, promoted to jōnin.
Nagato entered ANBU under the codename "Coil."
Konan was assigned to logistics.
From afar, Yahiko heard whispers of Konoha's Three Sannin and the "Twin Stars" of the Leaf.
As a genius personally recognized by Hanzō, he didn't see himself as inferior to Konoha's new generation.
Hanzō made him an offer:
If Yahiko could eliminate the Twin Stars, he would inherit the vacant position left by the late Yoru Kurayami—and perhaps even become the next ANBU captain… or Rain Shadow itself.
By then, the endless wars had brought famine back to Amegakure.
Intelligence reported that Konoha's Sakumo Hatake had inexplicably rotated out of the front lines, leaving a gap.
The External Affairs Department pushed for a massive raid, and Hanzō approved.
At the same time, Hanegawa received orders: Rain shinobi had already infiltrated the Land of Fire, massacring several villages.
The border guard requested Konoha's aid.
And as fate would have it—Ren and Minato Namikaze had already decided to leave the village soon… to quietly take Hanegawa out.