"This kid… he's got a mission tomorrow, and he still won't go to sleep tonight," Fangko Kitahara muttered, tidying the room with worry written all over her face.
She still remembered the first time Kaede Kitahara had gotten assigned a task. He'd been so excited he couldn't sleep all night. Later, he'd gradually gotten used to it, and it was rare for him to stay up like this.
She couldn't help worrying that it might affect his mission.
Still, she didn't press him. Ninja matters were a world she didn't understand, and she didn't pry. She just carried that quiet, familiar fear in her chest, praying to whatever gods might be listening that her son would come home safe.
Yawning the whole way, Kaede arrived at Konoha's main gate and finished the registration process. Not long after, his two teammates, Hyuga Keiko and Amakusa Ryuji, showed up with their packs.
"A-Feng, what's going on with you? Didn't sleep well last night?"
Ryuji asked it like he already knew the answer.
"Yeah. Didn't sleep well," Kaede said.
What else was he supposed to say, that it was the Multi-Shadow Clone Technique backlash? There was no way to explain that without sounding insane, so he let it sit there as a simple lack of sleep.
Keiko, on the other hand, gave him a long, curious look. Something about Kaede's presence felt stronger.
With the Byakugan, even when she wasn't actively using it, her senses were sharper than most shinobi. Compared to when they'd separated yesterday, Kaede's aura had clearly grown heavier. Not by a tiny amount either, but enough that she could feel it without trying.
She didn't know it was because Kaede had been maintaining the Gate of Opening as a constant state. After one night of clones grinding themselves into the dirt, he could only count it as a rough, initial grasp. Some of his chakra still refused to fully settle, and that leak was exactly why someone as perceptive as Keiko noticed.
Still, she'd gotten used to it. Lately, Kaede seemed to surge forward every so often in these ridiculous jumps, to the point it barely surprised her anymore.
"You two ready?" Kaede asked, sounding half-dead.
His body had recovered after a night's rest, and his Chakra had returned to its peak, but his mind still felt sluggish.
"Ready."
"No problem. We've been ready."
They answered one after the other.
"Then let's move."
With that, the three of them set off toward Roran's ruins in the Land of Wind.
By the time the sun dipped low, dusk light washed over a small town in the Land of Fire.
Three young shinobi wearing Konoha forehead protectors reached the edge of town.
"It's late. We're not pushing the road in the dark," the boy in front said, calm and clear. He wore a Konoha Chunin vest, his features neat and almost gentle. "We'll stay here for the night."
Of course, the three of them were Kaede and his team.
Their mission wasn't urgent, so there was no need to run themselves ragged through the night.
They'd just entered town and started looking for an inn when chaos erupted up ahead.
"Stop! Don't run!"
"Not paying your debts is disgusting! Pay up!"
Shouts rang out in a mess of scrambling footsteps and overturned things.
Kaede narrowed his eyes and caught a glimpse of a blonde figure in green sprinting out of the town center like a gust of wind.
"Move, move! You three are Konoha ninja too, right? Help me block them for a second!"
Before any of them could react, the figure shot past them.
And in that brief instant, Kaede's improved eyesight caught who it was even without using his Sharingan.
One of Konoha's Legendary Sannin.
The future Hokage.
Tsunade.
He didn't even have time to process it before the debt collectors behind her swarmed in, realized they weren't catching Tsunade, and instead surrounded Kaede's team.
"What do you think you're doing?" Ryuji snapped, yanking a Kunai out of his ninja pouch.
The men stared them down, faces flushed with anger and greed.
"Debts have to be paid," one of them insisted. "She's from Konoha. You Konoha ninja paying for her is only natural."
The one in front was a fat merchant type, loud and full of swagger, like he thought shouting could make up for the situation he'd walked into.
Kaede actually laughed, more from disbelief than humor. The man looked exactly like a casino owner, and the rest were clearly his hired muscle.
It fit. Tsunade's regular haunts were either taverns or gambling houses, and she was the kind of legendary sucker gamblers dreamed of.
"Only natural?" Ryuji's eyes went cold. "I think you've got a death wish."
He rolled the Kunai in his fingers, and the killing intent that came off him was sharp enough to make the crowd break out in cold sweat. Elite Chunin were still shinobi, and shinobi killed people for a living.
Only then did the gamblers remember what they were dealing with.
Even Konoha, with its relatively good reputation, was still a village built out of professional killers.
Sure, in daily life, people could pay ninja to take jobs, and it looked almost normal. But standing in front of someone who could decide whether you lived or died on a whim, there was no such thing as normal.
What were they going to do, march to Konoha and file a complaint?
One skilled Genin could wipe a small town off the map if they wanted to. That imbalance was the real reason the relationship between civilians and shinobi was always tense. One side held power the other could never match, and somehow the world still maintained a strange, uneasy balance.
"Whoever owes you, go find them," Kaede said, eyes narrowing. His voice was calm, but there was no warmth in it. "If you keep running your mouths in front of us, don't blame us for what happens next."
He let the slightest bit of his presence slip.
That was enough.
The entire group went pale, legs turning to water. They collapsed, scrambling over each other as they crawled away, desperate to get as far from him as possible.
Kaede put his Kunai away as if none of it had mattered. He had no patience for trash like that. Back in his old life, Naruto had been a hot-blooded shonen story, and a lot of things had been painted with a soft, almost fairy-tale brush, including how friendly the relationship between ninja and ordinary people seemed.
In reality, how could that ever be true?
If it weren't for people like Tsunade and Jiraiya having decent hearts, if they'd gone down Orochimaru's path and become nothing but pure killers, then those gamblers would have died and that would have been the end of it.
Ask Tsunade for gambling debt?
That was just begging to be buried.
After accidentally clearing one of Tsunade's problems for her, Kaede went back to the business of the evening. The three of them found an inn and checked in.
"Who was that, anyway?" Ryuji asked, curiosity burning in him.
They sat waiting for their food, killing time.
Kaede kept his eyes closed, making use of every spare second to adjust to maintaining the Gate of Opening as a constant state.
In this state, he could draw out one hundred percent of his strength. Normally, the body wouldn't allow that. It had built-in restraints, a self-preservation mechanism that kept you from truly pushing to the limit.
Without the correct method, all you could do was grind your body down through daily training, inching closer and closer to full output.
Most people could only use about seventy percent of what they actually had. Veterans who reached Jonin level, tempered over years, might push that to around ninety percent.
But once you opened the Gate of Opening, you could force the full one hundred percent out.
Kaede was still adapting, aiming for it to become as natural as breathing, something he didn't have to think about at all.
"I caught a glimpse too," Keiko said after taking a sip of water. "That was… Lady Tsunade."
With the Byakugan, even her default movement vision was far better than an ordinary shinobi's. Even though it had only been a single flash, she'd recognized that unmistakable look.
Even though she was from a branch family, the Hyuga Clan still taught general knowledge about powerful figures. Information about Konoha's Legendary Sannin was included, and Tsunade, in particular, was emphasized.
Her background was too prominent to ignore.
Her grandfathers were Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama, the First Hokage and Second Hokage who founded Konoha. Her teacher was Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, the man with the highest authority in the village.
Born into the Senju Clan, with countless hidden supporters inside Konoha, and talented enough to stand among the Legendary Sannin, Tsunade's position was absurd.
Honestly, compared to Namikaze Minato or Orochimaru, she had been the most suitable choice for Fourth Hokage.
"Lady Tsunade, one of the Sannin? But how could she…" Ryuji looked like his brain had shorted out. "How could someone like that get chased around by a bunch of casino thugs?"
He couldn't even imagine it. Someone at Tsunade's level stood at the top of the shinobi world. That kind of person should not be running from ordinary men.
Even a Genin like him wouldn't be helpless against common gamblers.
Of course, plenty of gambling houses had shinobi or shinobi clans behind them, and they weren't simple operations. That was the only way they could grow big.
A small casino couldn't afford it. Having even a single Genin on payroll was already a luxury. If they ran into a true Chunin-level expert, they usually had to swallow the loss unless they were willing to pay a huge price to hire outside help.
"It's just her way of living," Kaede said, eyes still closed.
He knew what was beneath it.
Tsunade was running from her own trauma. Her little brother and her lover had died right in front of her, and the impact had shattered something inside her. She'd even developed Hemophobia, a fear of blood that most people didn't know about. On the surface, she still carried the name of a Legendary Sannin, and her strength was still formidable, but the moment she saw blood, her mind would break. She'd be dragged back to the memories of Dan and Nawaki dying before her, and she would lose her ability to fight.
It wasn't only Tsunade who could end up being chased through the streets.
What about Jiraiya? How many times had he been caught peeping and then hunted down, sprinting for his life, even dropping to his knees to apologize?
"…Okay," Ryuji muttered, giving up. "I really can't understand how these great people think."
He decided not to think too hard about it. If he couldn't make sense of it, then it had to be some strange habit.
Not long after, the inn brought their food. The three of them ate, then each returned to their own room to rest.
After washing up, Kaede opened his diary, ready to start today's entry.