Back then, whether it was Konoha's White Fang, Konoha's Legendary Sannin, or the Yellow Flash Namikaze Minato, people like them had already reached Kage Level at this age. They'd already made their names shake the shinobi world. In other words, Konoha's pipeline of young top-tier powerhouses had snapped clean in the middle.
The Jonin tier was not bad, but in Tsunade's eyes, Jonin could be raised step by step. Find a genius, pour in resources, and training them to Jonin was not difficult.
Kage Level was different.
That needed talent.
Every Kage Level shinobi mattered to a village, and yet Konoha was a mess now. Not to mention the Akatsuki leader Kaede had written about, the one who could destroy all of Konoha with a single move. A monster like that… could her grandfather, the one people called the God of Shinobi, even do something like that?
"That Uchiha brat," Tsunade muttered.
She'd heard Danzo's ranting plenty of times, that garbage about the Uchiha being born evil. On that point, she took after Senju Hashirama. She had never held that kind of prejudice.
Uchiha Sasuke and Uchiha Itachi, brothers, both awakening the Mangekyo Sharingan. It was enough to make her genuinely startled by how good Uchiha Fugaku's bloodline was.
Then she saw it. Uchiha Fugaku had awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan too.
Well, that explained it.
It stopped being surprising.
And then the next part hit her like a slap.
Her eyes went wide.
In the footage of Uchiha Sasuke fighting Shimura Danzo, Danzo revealed what he had hidden.
A whole arm full of Sharingan.
How many Uchiha had to die for that collection?
"Disturbing the dead and turning corpses into lab tools, Danzo?" Tsunade's voice went tight with fury.
And then it got worse.
Shimura Danzo's entire arm had been modified, infused with Hashirama Cells.
No wonder the limb looked wrong, like something that should not exist.
Senju Clan blood. Uchiha Clan eyes. Two great clans serving one man.
That kind of fortune was too disgusting to even call fortune.
"Ah… you disgusting old dog," Tsunade hissed, finally losing it.
The Sharingan grafts alone were already revolting, but what truly made something in her snap was the Hashirama Cells.
She was not completely ignorant. She had left Konoha partly because she could not stand the darkness, and partly because her own wounds never healed.
But seeing it with her own eyes still made her vision blur with rage.
It violated everything the Third Hokage had taught her about the Will of Fire.
"Good. Die, Danzo," she spat.
When Uchiha Sasuke killed him, when Danzo died furious and failed, managing to seal nothing but a bridge, Tsunade felt a rush of satisfaction so sharp it almost made her laugh.
It was like drinking an ice-cold soda in the middle of summer.
Perfect.
And honestly, it even made Sasuke's decision to become a Missing-nin look less offensive. When she thought about it, she was only one wanted poster away from being the same.
That was how the Sannin were. One got a bounty and a wanted notice, the other two just wandered around anyway.
Tsunade slapped the water hard, then laughed despite herself. The ripples made her curves sway and blur beneath the surface.
Then she noticed another name in the diary.
Uzumaki Karin, the unlucky girl Uchiha Sasuke had stabbed clean through.
She did not care much about most of it, but the Uzumaki Clan caught her attention. The Uzumaki and the Senju were practically sibling clans. People even said they shared the same ancestor in the distant past.
The two clans had intermarried often. Tsunade's own grandmother had been an Uzumaki princess, married into the Senju Clan. Later, when Konoha needed a Jinchuriki, that same grandmother became the first.
The second Jinchuriki was also an Uzumaki, Uzumaki Kushina.
And then the third, the one now, Uzumaki Naruto.
It was almost always the Uzumaki.
Uzumaki had huge chakra reserves and strong bodies. They were natural choices for hosting Tailed Beast power.
But Uzushiogakure had fallen too fast. Even Konoha had not made it in time to help. They had only managed to bring Uzumaki Kushina back, and after that, Uzumaki survivors scattered across the shinobi world.
Jiraiya had once mentioned something to her. Back when he was in Amegakure, he took on a few students, and one of them, Uzumaki Nagato, had been an Uzumaki.
It left a bitter taste.
Uchiha Clan. Senju Clan. Uzumaki Clan.
Which of them had not been famous in the Warring States Era?
Which of them had not been powerful?
And now, where were they?
Even swallows that once nested in noble halls eventually flew into ordinary homes.
After she steadied her mood, Tsunade kept reading.
Uzumaki Boruto. Uchiha Sarada.
So those were the two brats' descendants.
Normally, with her status, she would not have cared. But Kaede had written early on that Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke were future saviors, and that made everything different.
Then she watched Orochimaru's part.
How he coveted Uchiha Sasuke's body, how he tried to take it, and how Sasuke killed him instead.
Seeing her old teammate end like that, dying at the hands of a kid, left her with a complicated ache.
But the moment she saw Orochimaru's plan, the one aimed at destroying Konoha, her first reaction was pure rage.
"Orochimaru, you dare?"
Her chest shook with the force of it.
Then she saw how Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, fought Orochimaru in a brutal battle and died.
Even if he did not manage to kill Orochimaru, even if he only took Orochimaru's hands, Tsunade could not find fault in what he did.
"The old man really is old," she sighed.
She still resented Konoha's upper ranks, but seeing Hiruzen throw himself into the fire for the village, comparing that to Danzo's filth, she found herself thinking the old man was… not as unbearable as she'd made him in her head.
At least he was not Danzo.
And watching him look so aged hit her harder than she expected. When she left Konoha, the Third Hokage had only just started to show his years. He had still been a fearsome shinobi, a legend who could make the world hold its breath.
Now he looked like a frail old man who had to limit even the number of Shadow Clone Technique copies he could maintain.
She always called him old man, just like Jiraiya did, but only now did she truly accept it.
He was old.
And the dead deserved respect. No matter how much bitterness she carried, seeing him still protecting Konoha at the end softened something in her.
She continued.
She saw what happened to Uchiha Shisui.
How Danzo stole Kotoamatsukami.
How Shisui, driven into despair, handed his other Mangekyo Sharingan to Uchiha Itachi.
And under the shock of his friend's death, Itachi awakened his eyes.
"No. That's not right," Tsunade said immediately.
This did not match what she'd heard.
She had not been in the village at the time, but she was still one of the Sannin, still the former head of Konoha's medical division. There was no way she had no sources in Konoha. Just like Orochimaru and Jiraiya had people of weight inside the village, so did she.
Back then, reports had been messy, but there had been one rumor that refused to die.
People suspected Itachi had killed Shisui.
The claim had spread everywhere. Not just inside the Uchiha Clan, but outside it too. Plenty of people believed it.
But now the diary was telling her something else.
Itachi's Mangekyo Sharingan was not awakened by killing Shisui.
It was awakened by witnessing Shisui's death.
And the true cause behind Shisui's death was Danzo.
"Danzo. Danzo. How are you everywhere?" Tsunade muttered. "No wonder Kaede said if something big happens in the shinobi world and you cannot find the mastermind, you can just assume it was you."
Danzo really did not get blamed unfairly. If someone tried to claim it was not him, who would believe that?
From what Kaede's diary showed, the conflict between the Uchiha Clan and the village had already been severe. It had reached the point where rebellion was on the table.
In the past, Tsunade would have condemned the Uchiha for even considering betraying the village.
Now, she did not feel that same anger.
The Uchiha had tried to save themselves. They had had a path, a chance.
And Danzo had destroyed it.
Because of Danzo's constant talk about the "evil Uchiha," Tsunade could not help wondering.
When Danzo struck before Shisui could use Kotoamatsukami on Uchiha Fugaku, was it really fear that Shisui would use it on him?
Or was it fear that Shisui would succeed, that Fugaku's will would be changed, and the Uchiha Clan would abandon the rebellion?
Knowing Danzo, it was probably the second.
Which meant the Uchiha Clan could have been saved, and Danzo had personally crushed that possibility.
And Itachi's role in all of this looked suspicious too.
From what she saw in the footage, Uchiha Itachi did not look like the cold, empty monster from the rumors. He did not look like someone who slaughtered his clan just to measure his own capacity.
It felt more like he had acted under orders from Konoha's upper ranks.
And that fit Tsunade's understanding far better. Even with the Mangekyo Sharingan, Itachi could not possibly have killed all of the Uchiha ninja without anyone noticing.
[A/N: Enjoying the story? You can read more chapters early and support me here:patreon.com/Aeroscissors]