STIN: Chapter 81/83

Chapter 81: Do You Take Me for a Fool!?

Crack!

The sky split open like a shattered dam. Sheets of rain battered the Land of Rain, turning heaven and earth into a gray curtain. The stillness was so suffocating it seemed to crush the air itself.

The mud clung to Nawaki's ankles like it was alive. Every step came free with a wet squelch.

His brand-new green chūnin vest?

Unrecognizable. Covered in mud, tangled grass, and a dark red stain that refused to wash out, he looked like a walking rag.

"Damn it!" Nawaki shouted, stomping the ground in frustration.

Thud!

Mud splashed upward, coating his face and even peppering Mikoto a few steps away. Her black uniform was instantly speckled brown.

Mikoto's brows twitched slightly. Rain streamed down her soaked black hair, plastered to her pale cheeks.

She said nothing, quietly stepping aside, out of range of Nawaki's mud barrage, her empty gaze sinking back into the endless gray rain.

Only the sound of rain remained.

They circled the outermost ring of the massive encampment, the muddiest buffer zone, again and again. Defense? Purely symbolic.

The assignment was miserable, monotonous, and exhausting. Whatever war hero dream Nawaki had was long gone.

"Ryo!" Nawaki wiped mud from his face and shouted toward the broad-shouldered figure walking ahead in a dark, battered rain cloak.

The rain distorted his voice. "How long are we going to rot here? We haven't even seen a single Suna shinobi! My new blade's gonna rust!" He slapped the scabbard at his hip, splattering more mud.

Ryo didn't respond. His steps were steady, boots pressing through the sludge.

The hood hid his face, revealing only a sharp jawline.

"Rusty blades," a voice colder than the rain replied, "are better than broken people."

"…."

Nawaki swallowed his retort, cheeks burning beneath the mud.

Restless, his gaze darted toward Mikoto. "Mikoto, say something, will you? What's the point of walking in circles like mud monkeys? Can't we get a real assignment? I'll even go as bait if it means action! Look at my sensei, Orochimaru."

His head was filled with visions of glory, but he was trapped here instead, simmering with frustration.

Called out, Mikoto finally turned her empty eyes toward him.

"Mm." The shortest answer possible, cold as frost. Her lashes trembled with raindrops before she lowered her gaze again.

A dull camp. Boring patrols. Compared to the storm in her chest, it was nothing.

Her grandfather's expectations, the elders' pressure, and Kushina's bright, trusting smile, all tangled around her heart like a frozen serpent. The rain couldn't extinguish that fire.

"Nawaki! Shut your mouth!"

Tsunade's voice erupted like a whip.

She stopped abruptly, her crimson cloak flicking a spray of mud. Nawaki nearly collided with her back.

"You've been whining the entire way. Tired of living already?!" She spun around, her golden hair plastered to her face, her eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. The rain couldn't wash the fury from her expression.

"Keep talking and I'll send your name straight to Danzō's suicide squad! You want to serve Konoha? Go die gloriously, how about that?!"

Nawaki shrank under her glare, his neck retreating into his shoulders.

"Hmph." Tsunade snorted, done wasting breath. Her gaze slid past Ryo's solid back and landed briefly on Mikoto, whose shoulders stiffened slightly.

Tsunade's tone dropped low, edged with the bitterness she carried from the infirmary.

"You two, keep an eye on this loudmouth. This is the west-wing buffer. Orochimaru and Jiraiya are fighting Hanzō's main force. As for Danzō…" Her lip curled in contempt. "Who knows what kind of snakes he's hiding in his gut. The infirmary…"

At that word, her eyes flashed with fury. Her teeth clicked hard. "I risk my life and use these hands to clean up his messes. He better have every hand and herb ready when I ask. If he's missing one needle…"

Her fist clenched. "Then no one rests!"

That rat in the gutter, Shimura Danzō. Ever since they arrived in this waterlogged hell, he hadn't stopped his schemes.

"'Tsunade's medical expertise is vital, she must not be moved.'"

"'The camp's stability depends on Tsunade's unit, they cannot be deployed to the front.'"

Utter nonsense. Her elite squad should have been the spearhead breaking the stalemate in Ame, but Danzō had pinned them in the mud, disguised under noble-sounding excuses.

"Securing the flank"? A joke.

The Princess of Konoha, reduced to a patcher of wounds in a swamp? It was humiliation, deliberate and political. He had buried her under logistics, away from the command table.

She remembered the day she first entered the camp. The stench nearly made her gag.

She pulled open the flap and stepped into hell. Harsh lamplight illuminated rows of wounded piled on stretchers, blood and pus seeping through filthy cloth. The muffled cries pressed against her throat like a hand.

The med-nin?

Drained husks, hollow-eyed and bloodless, stumbling between bodies, trying to stitch, stanch, and heal. Their faces were gray and lifeless.

This was Konoha's infirmary? No. It was a slaughterhouse.

To tighten his grip, Danzō had planted the camp in a low, muddy sink, perfect for his Root to lurk and perfect for burying the wounded.

When Tsunade stepped in, rage exploded in her skull. She wanted to storm the command tent and crush Danzō to paste. She was born to break lines, not to be chained to a blood-soaked table. She refused to clean up his filth.

But she didn't move.

Hashirama's blood gave her monstrous strength and a compassion too heavy to ignore.

Something stronger than rage forced her to stop. A healer's duty is to save lives. That voice from deep in memory restrained her.

By sheer will, she swallowed the fury.

She ripped the tarp from a wounded recruit, half-conscious from pain, his leg rotting with green necrosis. Her voice snapped: "Medical Unit Four, everyone, here, now!"

She shoved stretchers aside. Hands that could crush stone were slick with blood as she grabbed a stunned medic by the collar. "Don't just stand there! Herbs, serum, clean cloth, move!"

Days passed without sleep. Tsunade became a relentless machine, an angel of death wielding a scalpel like a god.

Through sheer authority and discipline, she dragged the chaos back under control. She brewed antitoxin serum to counter the salamander's poison, enforced isolation and sanitation, reorganized teams, redrew sectors, and issued do-or-die orders.

The "Tsunade Iron Code" was burned into every medic's mind. They spent every drop of chakra and will, and finally, the death toll slowed.

The price? She was spent, her heart turned to ice. This wasn't who she was meant to be. She was a fighter, not a surgeon. Every stitch was another scar on her pride. It was degrading.

The moment she caught her breath, Danzō's vultures came calling.

"Tsunade-sama, Danzō-sama requests your presence!"

"Tsunade-sama, Danzō-sama awaits to discuss strategy!"

"Tsunade-sama, to the command tent. Frontline intelligence needs your analysis!"

Excuses piled high as corpses.

"Crisis at the front." "Defense adjustment." "Logistics review."

Empty words. Every time, that old face put on the same mask of "sacrifice for Konoha," preaching about "the greater good" and "necessary balance," wearing her patience thin.

Again and again, he provoked her, testing her limit, hoping she would explode.

She wasn't naive. He was trying to force her into a mistake.

If she lost control, he could send her unit into the grinder, and once she was gone, Ryo's team would be "headless." In Danzō's camp, taking a genin was as easy as pocketing a kunai.

Even if she stayed, could she restrain herself forever?

He had plenty of excuses to scatter her subordinates, sending them to meaningless patrols or abandoning them to the mud.

And most of all, Ryo.

The boy Danzō wanted most.

To Danzō, someone like Ryo belonged in the shadows of Root, the perfect weapon.

That greed bloomed the moment he read Ryo's file:

"Innately cold, near-emotionless. Absolute rationality. The essence of his power, pure annihilation."

A born assassin. A perfect killing machine.

And then?

The "benevolent" Hiruzen snatched him away with talk of "humanity" and "the village's future."

Worse, Tsunade stood against him, her Senju influence protecting the boy right under his nose.

Every time he remembered that, Danzō's eyes burned. He had lost his perfect specimen.

Tsunade's fists tightened until her knuckles turned white. Her nails dug into her palms.

Standing in the cold rain, the dried blood washing off her cloak, she could feel the fire in her chest burning hotter than ever.

Danzō wanted to steal the tiger from her mountain?

Her lips curved in a predator's smile. Her eyes sharpened like blades.

Shimura Danzō, do you take me for a fool?

Step.

A ghostly figure emerged from the rain, boots striking through half a foot of sludge with hard, steady steps. One of Danzō's loyal Root operatives.

A puppet dug up from a grave, his dead eyes swept over Tsunade's cold face, then fixed like poisoned needles on Ryo's back.

His voice rasped like metal on stone. "By order of Danzō-sama. Genin Kamiyama Ryo, report to the command tent. Immediately."

The air froze. Only the rain kept falling.

Nawaki and Mikoto stiffened, forgetting to breathe.

A killing intent so cold it seemed to freeze the air burst from Tsunade like a tidal wave.

Boom!

A visible shockwave erupted, blasting mud into a fan of spray. The Root operative's cloak snapped like a flag.

"An order?!"

Tsunade stepped forward, mud shattering underfoot. In an instant, she was face-to-face with the pale Root agent. Her crimson cloak flared like fire.

Her voice dropped, molten pressure boiling beneath it. "Ryo is mine."

She stepped closer. Instinct made the Root agent recoil half a step, mud splashing at his boots. "Tell him to crawl out here and say that to my face. Hiding in his little den, barking orders like a coward? If he loves hiding so much, he can crawl back into his mother's womb!"

The last word struck like a hammer.

For a moment, fear flickered in the man's dead eyes, then vanished. He straightened again, rigid as a corpse. "Tsunade-sama, this is Danzō-sama's direct order. I only deliver it." He avoided her gaze and gestured stiffly toward Ryo. "Genin Ryo, please."

Fwoom!

Tsunade's cloak snapped upward like a banner of flame.

The fire in her eyes wasn't sparks anymore, but shards of molten fury.

The west wing of the camp turned ice-cold, the air twisting with invisible heat.

"Shimura Danzō!"

(To be continued.)

Chapter 82: Danzō Makes Grand Promises

Ryo stood on the training ground. Tsunade's fist was still hanging in midair, anger trembling through her like a volcano about to blow. Bloodshot eyes, voice squeezed out between her teeth.

"Ryo, what petty trick is that old viper up to now? Don't stop me. Let me go smash Danzō's office."

She stamped her heel. A thin crack split the ground.

She was Tsunade-hime, Konoha's princess, quick to flare and fierce to explode, especially where Danzō was concerned. He was always scheming in the dark, and lately he had been making a mess on the Ame front. Just hearing it made her see red.

"Calm down, Tsunade." Ryo's hand settled lightly on her shoulder, steady and unmistakable.

It wasn't that he couldn't block her punch. At his near-Kage level, even if Tsunade went wild, he could diffuse it.

He just disliked trouble.

Tsunade was a straight arrow. If she stormed in hot, it would only breed bigger problems.

"Go rest. I'll handle this."

Tsunade glared toward Danzō's camp and growled low, but Ryo's eyes hit like a splash of ice water. She ground her teeth and let it go.

In the end she exhaled and flicked her sleeve. "Have it your way. But if Danzō plays dirty, I'll tear his Root out by the stalk."

She vanished into the trees, leaving Ryo alone.

Silence rolled back over the training ground. The rain kept hammering down.

Ryo rolled his neck.

Time to pay Danzō a visit. Overdue.

In a past life as a programmer, he had seen all the big-company tricks, bosses drawing pie in the sky, shifting blame, sowing division. Call it what it is, corporate gaslighting. The shinobi world wasn't any different. Same game, new wrappers. But Ryo wasn't here to play.

He had the power. He didn't eat from anyone's hand.

Observation Haki sharp as a knife, swordsmanship at a high tier, Flying Thunder God under his belt. Only his physical hardware lagged. Once his body caught up to awaken Armament Haki, even Kage-class wouldn't necessarily be his match.

He turned and set off.

Danzō's post was a "secret" compound behind the main base, ringed by bamboo.

Ryo didn't hurry, but every step bit solidly into the dirt.

Tsunade's anger flickered through his mind. His resolve didn't.

Tsunade was a friend. Ryo's rule was simple, stand alone, stand strong.

Hiruzen's high-table games. Danzō's shadow-hand recruiting. Not worth his eyes.

Worst case, he would take Kushina and walk from Konoha, vanish into the mountains for a few years.

With Flying Thunder God, the world was a blink wide.

Half an hour later, the bamboo path ended at Danzō's hideaway.

Not a shack, a carefully appointed washitsu with sliding doors, sound dampened so even insects seemed to hush.

Two Root operatives flanked the entrance, black-clad and masked, eyes cold on Ryo.

He didn't break stride. One stepped out. "This way. Danzō-sama has been waiting."

Ryo glanced once, cold as a drawn edge.

The man yielded half a step and held the door.

Ryo slid it open. Incense coiled in the air, rich and oppressive, like a wake.

Warm lamplight. Danzō sat at the head.

The "Nabekage" of Konoha, the internet's "Fifth-and-a-Half Hokage," actually made Ryo blink.

Danzō was in his prime. Hair combed razor-neat, black garb crisp as iron, all limbs intact, no bandages blinding his eye, pupils hawk-sharp.

Clearly, this was an earlier Danzō.

He nodded faintly at Ryo, a thin smile tugging his mouth. "Ryo-kun, sit."

Low, magnetic voice. Hard-edged presence.

Decent stagecraft, Ryo thought.

Square face, tight thin lips, short beard, he wore the warlord look. Cool, steady, in control.

Ryo smirked inwardly.

Looks and aura? In his past life, the suits were sharp and the knives sharper.

He dropped into a seat without ceremony. "Danzō-sama, speak plainly."

His gaze skimmed the room, maps lining the wall, a tasteful tea set on the table.

Danzō wanted mystique?

Ryo refused to play along.

Danzō didn't flinch. He poured tea himself and passed a cup over, practiced and smooth. "Hard work at the front. Tsunade's temper hasn't given you too much trouble, I hope?"

It sounded like concern. Ryo heard the angle, sowing discord. He took a sip. "Tsunade is my teacher. You didn't summon me for small talk."

Danzō's eyes narrowed with approval, aura ticking up a notch. "Straight talk, I like that." He leaned in, voice dropping. "But Konoha's situation, you see it as well as I do. Sarutobi Hiruzen postures as virtuous, but underneath he is soft. On the Ame front his command leaks like a sieve. Do you know how many lives that has cost? I, as commander here, have grown Root quickly. Coercion? Bribes? No, we are talking power. I have recruited elite from other villages and expanded enough to counter the elders."

His cadence quickened. The tone turned rally-speech. "Sarutobi is a paper tiger. A talent like you, why follow him? Join Root, and your future, limitless."

Ryo's face didn't move.

Sky pie. He had seen it a thousand times in conference rooms, execs hyping numbers, building fiefdoms, sweet-talking overtime.

Danzō was the same.

Tearing down the Third?

Cute. Hiruzen was still Hokage. Danzō was just the shadow hungry for the throne.

Ryo drummed a slow finger on the table.

Danzō shifted tactics at once.

He leaned back, the voice turning weighty. "Ryo-kun, you are strong. But there is one issue you cannot ignore. Kushina is a Jinchūriki." The tone cut cold. "The other elders will oppose you two. Sarutobi will not risk his feathers for her. He will not let the Nine-Tails become a scandal."

He paused, then leaned in again, eyes like blades. "But I am different. I have the will to clear your path. Root has strength. Stand with me, and I will move obstacles. Your matter with Kushina, I will press it through."

Confidence sparked in his eyes. He had started to believe his own expansion, Root swelling fast under his command post.

He had imagined it a hundred times. Ryo joins him, Root power spikes, he squeezes Sarutobi, Hokage's seat, within reach.

Ryo couldn't help a short, dry snort.

Hot air, end to end with a side of threat, classic. Back when he coded for a living, bosses sold you glory, then crushed you with performance quotas.

What could Danzō give, fight for him? Train him? As for high-table politicking, he couldn't care less. He wasn't Orochimaru, neck-deep in forbidden labs.

He had already struck his bargain with Hiruzen. Kushina's protection was a line in Ryo's terms.

More importantly, any chips Danzō offered, resources, rank, Hiruzen could match. Why choose the black-gloved middleman?

Silence stretched. Danzō's smile began to crack.

Ryo stood. "Lively speech, Danzō-sama." His voice was cool. "But I don't lean on anyone. Kushina is my concern, not yours. As for other elders, any who come at me will learn manners from my blade."

He met Danzō's eyes. "Good day."

He turned and walked out, without leaving a scrap of face.

Danzō froze.

All that set dressing, the mystic washitsu, the cultivated gravitas, wasted.

The door slid back. Rain struck Ryo's face.

Danzō managed, "Go safely, Ryo-kun," in a cultured tone that rang hollow.

Ryo's back vanished into the downpour. Danzō's mask fell with it.

He slammed the table. Porcelain shattered across the tatami.

"Ingrate." Veins jumped at his temple.

If lure fails, suppress.

Tsunade was the boy's teacher. Her faction was strong. A rogue nearing the Kage line, and the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki tied to her?

Right now, Tsunade was the biggest stone in Danzō's path to the Hokage's seat.

His mind spun gears. The front was full of knives. Could he not contrive a mission to eat Ryo alive?

(To be continued.)

Chapter 83: Danzō’s Promises Fall Flat

The rain fell without end, soaking Konoha's entire camp until it swelled and stank.

The mud clung like glue. Every step lifted with a heavy squelch. Tsunade's face was set like frost. Her crimson cloak was drenched and dragged at her shoulders, but it could not press down the smoldering anger in her eyes.

Nawaki slogged into a pit of sludge, coming up like he had been dredged from a swamp. His brand-new chūnin vest had turned into a brown rag. He flicked muck from his arms, muttering curses at the weather and the tedium of patrol.

Beside him, Mikoto was as silent as a shadow. Rain slid from the black hair plastered to her cheek. Her empty gaze pierced the downpour, fixed on nothing.

Ryo led the way.

From the direction of the command tent, a Root operative glided in like a clay idol come to life. He cut through the rain and stopped squarely before Ryo.

"Tsunade-sama," the monotone voice carried through the storm, "by order of Danzō-sama, proceed to Defense Zone Two. Immediately."

"Defense Zone Two?" Tsunade's voice rose, sharp as a blade scraping iron. That was where Hanzō's main force pressed hardest, a meat grinder. The toughest bone in the camp, and closest to death. Danzō could not wait to cast her into the hottest furnace. "Are Orochimaru and the others taking losses? You want me to hold the line?"

The Root ninja's face did not change. "Lord Danzō believes your battlefield value should be exerted in a core sector."

Core? To die would be closer to the mark. Tsunade's chest heaved with fury. Hypocritical on the surface, venomous beneath, she read him like glass.

"And my squad?" Her tone turned cold enough to freeze.

"Your team lacks sufficient strength to enter that danger zone," the Root agent droned. "They will remain in camp to rest and await orders. This is Danzō-sama's strategic allocation."

"Strategic allocation? My ass." Tsunade nearly exploded. She knew it. Danzō was not sending her to the spearpoint for the sake of the core sector. He was severing her from Ryo and the others.

The front was too hot. Tsunade had the might to carve her way out of the Ame-nin encirclement, but her squad? Ryo's power was uncanny, but could he stand against Hanzō's salamander and its poison? Nawaki and Mikoto? They would be tender meat tossed into the grinder. Bring them, and one misstep meant no remains to retrieve. It was the cruelest daylight trap, forcing her to go alone.

Without the she-beast guarding her cubs, Ryo, Nawaki, and Mikoto, three little genin, would be declawed pups in a camp where Danzō's word was law. Any jōnin, or even a chūnin, hiding behind a command title could, under camp regulations, wartime orders, or some airy support assignment, legitimately move, exploit, even expend them.

Rules are dead, people are alive, especially in wartime camps, where the lowest rank sits at the bottom of the food chain. Ninja obey orders by law. Refuse, and it is mutiny under wartime codes.

Would any jōnin risk offending a top medical ninja by harassing her disciples? Of course not.

But not offending only meant surface politeness, not protection.

They were still genin. Danzō could hold them in the palm of his hand.

What he wanted was exactly this outward calm.

Ryo was strong, strong enough to clash with a sector commander. But would he dare?

Would he dare cause a scene in camp?

One step over the line, and Danzō had hats ready for his head, undermining morale, disrupting order, mutiny in wartime. Black or white, Danzō would call it.

He hoped Ryo would make noise. The bigger the noise, the harder Danzō's fist could fall, righteous and by the book.

As for penning Ryo in camp to rot? No, too wasteful, too small-minded.

In the gloom of the command tent, Danzō's eyes gleamed with cold calculation.

Kill Ryo now? Too costly, pointless.

The Land of Rain's bog needed a sharp blade like Ryo.

That strange, god-knows-where-he-learned-it skillset, especially that terrifying swordwork tailor-made to shred puppets, was crucial to the balance of engagements. Killing him now would hurt Konoha and help the enemy, contrary to Danzō's sacred rule, all for Konoha, and for me to be Hokage.

Use him. Squeeze him dry.

Let that blade carve glory in the Land of Rain. Let him earn enough merit that Danzō, crowned by talent-spotting and grand strategy, could step over the corpses of Suna and Ame to don the halo of Hokage. Then would be the time for the autumn reckoning.

Before that, some knockdowns and attrition were essential. This proud blade had to learn whose hand moved the pieces.

"…Understood." Tsunade ground out the word, teeth clenched, eyes carving a mark toward the command tent.

Nawaki looked blank, still not grasping the implications. Mikoto stayed silent, the emptiness in her eyes darkening.

Ryo, beneath the hood's shadow, held a gaze like a deep, still pool, utterly calm. Danzō's order was a ripple skimming the surface.

"Here," Tsunade's voice rang iron-hard, each word a nail hammered into command, "protect yourselves. Keep your heads down. Don't give anyone an excuse. Wait for me to come back. Understood?"

She fixed Ryo with a long look, warning layered with something like trust, then said no more. Her crimson figure cut a decisive line through the rain, a blade drawn toward the slaughterhouse of Defense Zone Two. Mudburst flared where her steps fell.

Nawaki gaped, then blurted, late to the dread, "Ah." He glanced from Ryo to the silent Mikoto, confusion and panic fighting on his face.

Without his sister, what now?

The air in camp grew heavier.

Those eyes in the shadows grew bolder.

Ryo tugged at his rain-soaked hood and turned toward their cold, wet tent, as if nothing had happened.

Not long after, another Root messenger blocked the entrance. That same rigid mask of a face.

"Genin Kamiyama Ryo, Genin Senju Nawaki, Genin Uchiha Mikoto," came the flat voice. "Report to Logistics immediately. Assist Supply Squad Three. Execute wartime transport assignment, batch seven. Ensure safe delivery of supplies to the forward observation post at Eagle Howl Cliff. No delay permitted."

"Escort duty?" Nawaki's eyes lit up, like a hound finally catching a scent. "Finally, real work."

After days patrolling that swamp, his bones felt rusty. Escorting supplies? Fine, at least it was proper wartime duty. He cracked his knuckles. The fog of aimlessness blew away.

Mikoto's lashes lifted. She shot the Root ninja a quick glance and lowered her eyes again, fingers rubbing the edge of her tool pouch. Escort mission? Leaving this suffocating camp, these prying eyes? She drew a quiet breath. The pressure seemed to ease, barely.

Ryo leaned against the cold, damp tent pole, brim dipping lower. He could taste the faint malice in the air and its source.

Danzō's pie had failed. The payback was prompt.

Assist Supply Squad Three? They were the real muscle? No. He and Nawaki, Mikoto, the inserted executors Danzō had arranged.

Eagle Howl Cliff. Ryo brought up the crude maps he had studied. A projecting height between the camp and the core battle zone, not the foremost trench, but a perilous perch, routinely harassed by Ame-nin infiltrators. Observation post or not, the workload was heavy, supply burn was high.

Escort supplies? The task itself was fine.

But the executors, three genin without a direct jōnin leader, slotted into a seemingly full squad, two jōnin plus four chūnin plus twelve genin, counting them.

In that formation, what were they? Who gave them orders? What roles would they shoulder? If something went wrong, who took the blame?

Danzō meant them to run a gauntlet, bleed through fatigue and accidents on a dangerous route. The iron pot he handed them could not be dodged. It came with a wartime stamp.

"Got it." Ryo's voice cut through the rain, flat and unreadable. He straightened, rolled his neck. The vertebrae clicked softly. He stepped out first.

The rain thickened. The mud closed on their ankles again.

Nawaki followed in high spirits, murmuring, "Finally something real… Eagle Howl Cliff, right… I hear the view's amazing."

(To be continued.)