The Hokage's office smelled faintly of ink and lacquered wood, a steady, administrative scent that tried and failed to disguise the low, persistent tension threaded through the room.
Tsunade sat behind her desk, elbow propped, her thumb dragging along her jawline.
Mid-morning light poured through the tall windows, clean and bright, slicing the office into warm gold and cool shadow. Dust motes drifted lazily in the beams, indifferent to strategy, politics, and the fact that two separate enemy operatives had just been eliminated by children.
Children.
Tsunade's jaw tightened.
"How," she said, her voice low and edged, "did we accidentally take out two of the Sound Four?"
No one answered immediately.
Shikaku leaned against the far side of the desk, arms crossed, posture loose in that deceptively lazy way of his. His dark ponytail cast a thin shadow down the back of his flak jacket. Inoichi stood beside him, one hand resting at his hip, his neck tendons tight despite his relaxed stance.
Shizune stood to Tsunade's left, papers clutched to her chest, TonTon nestled in the crook of her arm.
They all traded glances.
Shikaku finally exhaled through his nose. "This generation is something else, isn't it?"
Inoichi nodded, a faint, almost proud smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Our children have grown into… remarkable individuals."
Tsunade dragged her hand down her face and groaned. "Luck."
The word dropped like a stone. The idea of relying on luck twisted her stomach. If she built strategies on chance, the village would burn.
Shizune stepped forward, placing a neat stack of documents onto the desk, her grip tight enough to whiten her knuckles. "How has your work been progressing with the long-range communication, Inoichi?"
Inoichi straightened slightly. "I'm glad you asked, Shizune."
A sharp, high-frequency chirp cut through the air, vibrating uncomfortably against the small bones in Tsunade's ears.
Tsunade's eyes flicked instantly toward the sound, her chakra suppressing instinctively to mask the movement.
The windowsill.
A grasshopper. Large. Reddish-brown. It sat perfectly still, its long wings flat along its body.
"Actually—" Inoichi began.
Shikaku's hand came down in a firm clap against Inoichi's shoulder, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Tsunade watched the thick scar on Shikaku's cheek tighten as he timed his intervention. He didn't look at the window, but the slight shift in his stance confirmed the anomaly. A micro-beat of silence passed. Tsunade held her breath, testing the insect. It didn't react to the sudden cessation of speech. It wasn't tracking sound alone.
It chirped again.
Inoichi's eyes flicked to it. Just for a fraction of a second. His throat bobbed in a hard reset, swallowing the aborted sentence.
A cold prickle of irritation washed over Tsunade.
Shikaku's voice resumed, tone shifting seamlessly back into casual laziness, masking the spike in tension. "We're still working out the kinks. Summons are… finicky when dealing with individuals outside their original contractor. There's always a risk of infiltration if the network isn't secure."
Inoichi caught the thread instantly, falling into the deception. "Yes. The chakra compatibility creates… friction. Especially when attempting to push the range. We can't afford any range instability with unknown variables listening."
Tsunade narrowed her eyes slightly, playing her part. She paced her exhales to match a relaxed rhythm, though the muscles along her jaw ached from the sustained tension. "Katsuya has always had a stick up her—"
She cleared her throat.
"—standards."
"Anyway," Tsunade continued, waving a hand dismissively, subtly shifting her weight to see if the movement triggered another chirp. It didn't. "We still have plenty of work to do. At this rate, we won't have a stable link for years." Her gaze sharpened, pinning both men. "And we don't have years. The signal bleeds too much over distance."
"Besides," she added, "we have more pressing matters."
"Oh?" Shikaku said, arms tightening across his chest.
Tsunade's eyes flicked down to a report on her desk. "Team Asuma was supposed to return here following their encounter with Kabuto and the flute girl."
Inoichi's brow furrowed. "But?"
Tsunade's lips thinned. "The girl is terrified of Konoha."
A beat.
Shikaku tilted his head slightly. "For good reason."
Tsunade didn't disagree.
"And?" he prompted.
"They will be heading directly to Sunagakure."
Shikaku shifted his weight. "Sending a traumatized asset across the desert right now invites unnecessary exposure. We could hold them at the border."
Tsunade shot him a flat, uncompromising look. "They go to Suna. Now."
The words settled into the room. Tsunade watched the grasshopper from her periphery. It didn't react to her movement. It ignored changes in tone. She couldn't confirm what it was waiting for.
Inoichi and Shikaku exchanged a look—brief, dense with implication—then both nodded.
Logistically inconvenient.
Politically necessary.
Emotionally… complicated.
"I should inform my wife," Inoichi said, rubbing the back of his neck.
Shikaku let his head tip back. "Ugh. What a pain. Mine's going to be furious."
Tsunade almost smirked.
"You should go," she said.
They both gave a shallow bow, turning toward the door.
TonTon wriggled in Shizune's suddenly rigid grip, her fingers pressing tightly into the pig's side, then slipped free with a determined little huff—plop—landing on the polished floor. She trotted after Inoichi, her tiny hooves clicking rapidly.
"Oink!"
Inoichi paused, crouching slightly to meet her halfway. He reached down, gently patting her head between her ears.
"Oink!"
A small, genuine smile broke across his face.
Then he stood and left.
Shikaku followed, muttering something under his breath.
The door slid shut behind them with a soft, final sound.
Silence settled.
Tsunade kept her gaze on her paperwork, but her peripheral vision remained locked on the windowsill. The spy was still there.
TonTon turned.
Her nose lifted.
She sniffed.
Once.
Twice.
Then she trotted toward the window, her tiny hooves clicking loudly against the wood.
Tsunade didn't move to stop her. She needed to know how the insect would react to a direct, non-verbal approach.
The grasshopper remained still.
TonTon's entire posture changed. Her tiny body stiffened, ears flicking forward. She marched toward the window with the determined stomp of something ten times her size.
"Oink."
The grasshopper chirped again. A thin, cutting sound that scraped uncomfortably against the small bones in Tsunade's ears.
TonTon's cheeks puffed.
"OINK! OINK OINK!"
The outburst shattered the stillness.
The grasshopper finally reacted. Its hind legs coiled—snap—but instead of launching directly out the window, it shot upward, hitting the glass pane with a sharp clack. The window frame rattled, a brief harmonic ring vibrating through the glass as the air compressed against the sudden impact. It bounced off, disoriented by the sudden noise, and landed heavily on the sill, its wings fluttering frantically.
Tsunade's hand moved instantly. She grabbed a heavy glass paperweight from her desk, the cold, smooth texture biting into her palm. Her knuckles whitened under the grip strain as she rapidly calculated the throw arc against the constraint of keeping the office silent. She prepared to crush the spy if it tried to move inward.
The grasshopper recovered its footing. It paused for a single, agonizing microsecond—a slight, unnatural delay suggesting remote control latency. Had it transmitted the last ten minutes? Did it react to the pig, or to the micro-shift in Tsunade's shoulder? Before she could decide to strike, it launched again, its wings snapping open with a dry flicker as it darted out the open window. A sudden shift in air pressure pulled through the room, a cool draft taking its place.
Tsunade slowly lowered the paperweight, her jaw locked tight. The unnatural absence of the insect's high-pitch noise left a ringing void, slowly filling back in with the ambient, distant murmur of the village.
Tsunade let out a slow, rigid breath. The skin around the edges of her eyes felt suddenly tight, a brief lag in her transformation stability as the sustained stress demanded its toll. The hostile presence was gone, but her nervous system refused to downshift. A low, grinding irritation gnawed at her—they had no way to know what data had just bled out of this room.
Shizune exhaled. Slow. Controlled.
She stepped forward, scooping TonTon up into her arms again.
"Squee!~" the pig chirped.
Tsunade stared at the animal. The pig's sudden, aggressive protector instinct... it clawed at something buried deep in her chest. A ghost of an intrusion. Someone small, fiercely guarding something broken.
Then Shizune turned.
"Tsunade."
Tsunade didn't look up from her paperwork, her heart rate still elevated, her mind wrestling with the breach. "What is it?"
Shizune hesitated for just a moment, her eyes softening as she looked down at TonTon.
"Do you remember when you met her?"
The question hung in the air. Tsunade blinked, her brain stalling as it tried to process the mundane inquiry against the adrenaline still flooding her veins.
Her pen stilled.
Her eyes lifted.
Just slightly.
The diamond mark on her forehead seemed to catch the light. The fatigue around her eyes, no longer completely masked, bled through for a second.
"Of course I do," she said quietly.
Her gaze drifted—not to Shizune, not to the empty windowsill—but somewhere far past both.
"She's only here because of me."
The words landed softly. And as the morning light stretched across the desk, the present began to blur at the edges—making room for the past.