Epilogue 1.1- Gamer of the Desert

ONE YEAR AFTER THE DEATH OF KABUTO YAKUSHI

TSUNADE SENJU

She stared at the report and had to force herself to avoid grinding her teeth together. It was a hbabit that she’d found herself taking up more often than healthy after her ascension to her Grandfather’s seat. Orochimaru’s words were clear. His division was outnumbered, and being steadily driven backwards on the warfront along the land of Grass.

Jiriaya was not here, but she knew that he would say if he was. He’d tell her that he told her so. That he’d always known it was bad idea. That they should have emulated Suna and stayed out of the mess that had been brewing in the elemental nations. But like always, his opinion would be shortsighted and weighed down by his personal beliefs. The death of both his students had done something to him. Broken her teammate. Especially after the second rebellion against Kabuto. But she did not have the luxury of wallowing in her grief at what had once been. She did not have the privilege of pacifism. She was the Hokage, and she had to protect her Grandfather’s village.

So when the letter from Suna had arrived, she had seen the writing on the wall. War. A heart bigger than any one that had ever been fought before. So she did the only logical thing. She struck first. Under Kabuto’s rule, they had been forced to abandon their claim to the Land of Grass, but she had left enough behind to make taking it again even easier than it had been for Danzo, and that was what she did. She took Kusa, fended off the poking attacks from Taki, and hunkered down for war.

And War came. Kumo and Kiri were burning each other half a world away, and she had to deal with Iwa alone. Kurotsuchi of the Lava Release, had against all odds, grown into a Kage worthy of her Grandfather’s hat. She’d managed to fight Orochimaru to a standstill on six separate occasions already, and considering her numbers were greater than his in every one of those occurrences, she’d managed to force him to retreat at all those occasions.

Now, the Iwa Army had taken the rebuilt Kanabi bridge and were maintaining a strong push into the Land of Grass. That meant she had to do something that she would rather not. A desperate measure for a desperate time.

“Tsunade-sama, he’s here” Shizune said, as she poked her head into the doorframe. She made sure to spare a smile for Dan’s niece even as she felt unimaginable sorrow at the look in the woman’s face. Shizune had aged three decades in the past five years and it showed in the wrinkles that framed her face and made her look even older than she was.

“Send him in then, Shizune” She replied, keeping a firm voice. She did not want to do this. Her hand was being pulled in the most annoying way possible.

He walked in, and she had to blink to remove his father’s image from her eyes, even though both men were essentially mirror images of each other. In the years since she’d met him, he’d grown into himself. Tall frame, kind blue eyes, and a smile that shone with the brilliance of a thousand smiles. For all that his looks came from his father, that smile belonged to the little girl that had clung to her grandmother in the last years of her life even as Tsunade spent her time going on mission after mission, trying to ignore what she knew was coming and pretend it wasn’t. Kushina. It was Kushina’s smile. And it was that smile she was going to have to destroy to win this war.

“Hey Ba-chan. Shizune-nee said you said you wanted to see me” When had his voice grown so deep.

“How many tails now, Naruto?” She asked him. She knew the answer. He sent her a poorly written report every other week about it since he’d become what was essentially the Leaf’s greatest military force.

“I can go up to Eight now when the Furrball is cooperating. Anything after that is just too much for my body” He said to her with a sheepish look, somehow managing to be disappointed in himself for being the most successful jinchuriki in Konoha history. But she knew that was not enough for him. Even now, he compared himself to Gaara of the Desert. That bastard.

“Good. I will be sending you out with a thousand shinobi. You are to reinforce Orochimaru at the Land of Grass. Your mission is twofold. First, you must halt the advance of Iwagakure’s shinobi into the Land of Grass. Ideally, you’d toss them all the way back to Iwa as well. Secondly, you must capture or kill Kurotsuchi of the Lava Release” She said, ignoring the way his breath hitched as she said the word ‘kill’. Just like Jiriaya had been broken by the constant conflict, so had his student. He had seen so much death in the attack on Konoha that he’d sworn never to take a life. It was why she had included the word ‘capture’ in his orders. She knew someone like Kurotsuchi would rather suffer a dozen deaths than surrender herself into Leaf custody, but she put it there to soothe his sensibilities. What a Kage, she was.

XXXXXXX

Much can be said about the wars that broke out after the death of Kabuto Yakushi. Much has, indeed, already been said, and much more will be said in time, but nothing can be said with more accuracy than the fact that the war created a new generation of heroes who led the shinobi world into a new greater era. The first, and perhaps greatest of those heroes was the one and only Naruto Uzumaki, the Jinchuriki of the Kyubi no Kitsune, the Last Jinchuriki, if the writings of Gaara of the Desert are to be believed. 

He rose to fame with his presence on the Second Battle for Kanabi Bridge. His clones alone were enough to subdue thousands of Iwa Shinobi, and the original faced Kurotsuchi of Iwa in Single Combat while Orochimaru of the Sannin found himself harried by a whole anbu platoon. The fight between Tsuchikage and Leaf Jounin was not even close. It is said that he beat her so many times and gave her an unlimited amount of opportunities to stand and continue the fight, and that she did not surrender until he had beaten her no less than a dozen times. It is also said that after the battle was done, he personally picked her up and took her to his own medical shinobi for treatment while she and he laughed all the while. Perhaps some of this is said to exaggerate his actions for the name he would come to bear in time. Naruto The Conciliator, but with a lack of contradictory reports, this author is forced to replicate the claims made in the extant reports. It does call for some questioning, as nothing from that time period would support the claim that the Hidden Stone Village was persuaded to sue for peace with the Hidden Leaf because of the actions of a single Jounin even if that is what the reports claim.

-Excerpts from the writings of Professor Hiroshi Sato, Chancellor of the Sunagakure History and Research Centre titled “A million Wars and One: The World before Unification”