Akira could sense the insecurity beneath her calm.
Her appearance might have been frozen in youth, but more than fifty years of life experience could not simply be erased.
And though Akira looked sixteen, he had lived two lives. In truth, his mental age was not all that far from hers.
For the first time in the solemn Hokage's office, Akira boldly slipped an arm around her waist and murmured, "Once the world settles down, we'll have a whole houseful. The boys can be strong like me, the girls can be beautiful like you... though maybe with gentler personalities."
Tsunade raised a brow and narrowed her eyes dangerously. "Are you calling me bad-tempered?"
Akira instantly shifted into survival mode. "No, I'm saying I hope our daughters are as bright and lively as you. Just... maybe a little quieter."
Tsunade gave a soft snort, then leaned into him and sighed. "I just hope our children can be born into an era without war."
It was the simplest wish of someone who had lived through far too many battlefields.
Akira patted her back lightly. "They will. I promise."
The next day, Akira put together a personalized hellish training plan for Naruto.
The location was an abandoned training ground deep in the Forest of Death, with a ten-kilometer radius. Plenty of room for Naruto to tear things apart.
Yamato stayed with him the entire time as a full-time chaperone. Deal or no deal, safety precautions still mattered.
For the next month, the ninja world remained calm on the surface.
Akira actually enjoyed a rare stretch of quiet days. Most of his time was split between sitting in the Hokage's office reading beside Tsunade and burying himself in old books inside the Senju clan archives.
A month later, the results were impressive.
Naruto could now control up to four tails' worth of chakra with ease, and even in a seven-tail state he could still barely hold on to a sliver of reason.
At that point, Naruto had firmly crossed into Kage-level territory. Beating the current Sasuke would have been no problem at all.
Just as Naruto was settling into that first taste of real power, an urgent report from the Fire Temple shattered the peace.
Inside the Hokage's office, the mood turned heavy.
Tsunade looked at Team Seven standing before her—Naruto, Sakura, Sai, and Yamato leading them.
"This is an S-rank mission. You are to investigate the theft of bodies from the Fire Temple cemetery. The bodies that were taken belonged to former members of the Guardian Ninja Twelve, the men once assigned to protect the Daimyo."
Naruto looked completely lost. "The Guardian Ninja Twelve? What's that supposed to be? Can you eat it?"
Tsunade rubbed at her temple. "All you need to know is that they were twelve of the most powerful elite jonin in the Land of Fire. If someone is stealing their bodies, then they're up to something."
Naruto's eyes widened. "Twelve elite jonin? The Land of Fire had that many monsters?"
In his mind, jonin were already on another level, and elite jonin were so rare Konoha probably didn't even have more than a handful.
If all twelve of those people were brought back, that would be a terrifying force.
And if someone planned to control them with Edo Tensei...
At that thought, Yamato's expression darkened immediately.
Akira also knew Edo Tensei, and had even perfected it, but someone at his level had no interest in playing with the dead. At most, he would see them as disposable shock troops.
Seeing Naruto still caught up on the number, Akira stepped out from behind Tsunade and picked up the explanation.
"The Land of Fire runs deeper than you think. There are powerful people everywhere. The real point of this mission is to figure out the motive. Who is behind it, and what exactly do they want with those corpses?"
"Are they planning to use Edo Tensei? Or are they just out to make trouble?"
Naruto snapped upright at once. "Got it!"
These days, Akira had begun stepping out from the shadows and into the spotlight in Konoha.
Tsunade seemed to be deliberately building up his standing. Akira himself would still rather push Kakashi into the role, but Kakashi clearly was not ready yet.
So Konoha's leadership structure had gradually settled into a new balance. Tsunade handled the government. Akira dealt with major threats. Yamato oversaw ANBU. Kakashi handled defense.
Mission briefings like this used to be the Hokage's responsibility. Tsunade had deliberately let Akira speak this time to strengthen his authority among the younger generation.
Not that he really needed it. With the strength he had shown, Akira's name already carried enormous weight across the ninja world.
Once Yamato led Naruto and the others away, the office door clicked shut behind them.
Silence returned to the room, though it still seemed to hold the warmth of the conversation that had just ended.
Tsunade leaned against her desk, brows drawn tight, worry lingering in her eyes as she looked toward Akira by the window.
"Do you think this... could be Akatsuki?"
Backlit by the sun, Akira's outline was edged in gold. He shook his head slightly, his tone calm.
"Unlikely. Why would they bother stealing a few corpses? There's nothing in it for them. No profit, no real point."
Hearing that, some of the tension in Tsunade's shoulders eased. Her fingers tapped lightly against the desk.
He was right. Logically, it didn't fit.
Still, Akatsuki had been moving too much lately, hanging over her like a sword ready to fall. It had made her jumpy. Every disturbance started to feel connected.
"These are miserable times," she muttered, rubbing her aching temple. "There's never a quiet day."
Akira kept his gaze on the lively streets of Konoha outside the window, his face unreadable.
"Take it easy. Things like this have happened before. They just seem louder now because everything's piling up at once."
His voice was calm and steady, the kind that made it sound like even the end of the world could be managed.
"The bodies belong to members of the former Guardian Ninja Twelve. Whoever stole them is almost certainly targeting Konoha. Plenty of those men weren't exactly fond of the village."
At that, a faint chill passed through Tsunade's eyes.
The so-called Guardian Ninja Twelve had once served as the Daimyo's personal guards, carrying all the prestige that came with the title.
But in the end, they had split apart from within.
They all agreed the Daimyo stood at the top of the Land of Fire, but some of the more extreme members decided the Hokage wasn't just unnecessary, but a threat that had to be eliminated.
The others thought those men had lost their minds.
One disagreement led to another, and soon enough it ended in blood.
Honestly, even the Daimyo himself had thought the radicals were out of touch and had quickly distanced himself from them.
But those fanatics never let go of their fantasy of abolishing the hidden village system and putting the Daimyo above all else.
They were political idiots.
They never understood that the Daimyo and the hidden village were business partners, bound together by mutual interest.
The Daimyo handled money and civilian rule. The ninja handled war and national defense.
Destroy the hidden village, and what then? Was the Daimyo supposed to manage a population of superhuman assassins on his own?
Across the Five Great Nations, the Daimyo and the Five Kage used each other. Every now and then a Kage even had to smile politely to keep the budget flowing.
But in the end, the Daimyo always wanted the hidden village to stay strong. If the village lost, the Daimyo lost land, wealth, and power right along with it.
Just look at the Wind Daimyo. He cut Sunagakure's funding, sure, but he never once considered cutting them off completely.
That was because Sunagakure had been struggling, and the Land of Wind wasn't exactly overflowing with money either. Everyone was tightening their belts.
As for what happened in the Land of Water, that was a different kind of madness entirely. Kisame Hoshigaki had a mind all his own.
The Bloody Mist policies had spiraled out of control while the Daimyo couldn't have cared less, and before Kisame defected, he made sure to kill the Daimyo too.
That stunt was in a class of its own.
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