At the same time, in the night outside the town, several figures appeared along the outskirts.
They hid in the darkness. Every one of them wore ragged cloth, and the forehead protectors on their heads were scarred with deep slashes.
Missing-nin.
"Is it here, according to the intel?" someone murmured.
"Based on the latest update from the Bounty Station, it should be," another answered.
"They've been updating the intel way too often," a third voice said, dripping with mockery. "Looks like someone's been watching him the whole time. Konoha, huh. Heh. Sounds like someone doesn't want him alive."
"Who cares," someone else said, unimpressed. "We're bounty hunters. That's all."
"They say he's suspected Jonin level. That won't be easy," another muttered, uneasy.
"It's Konoha exaggerating, that's what it is," a middle-aged man scoffed, laughter cold and sharp. "Have you ever even heard of this guy before? No, right? A brat in his teens making Jonin? That's hilarious."
"Let Konoha fight itself," someone said. "We just take the bounty."
Inside the town's hot spring hotel, in a private bath, a pale body soaked in steaming water. A pair of generous curves floated at the surface.
And yet the woman in the water was holding a diary, staring at it like she'd forgotten the world existed.
"Kaede Kitahara?" Tsunade murmured, testing the name under her breath.
The diary recorded the daily life of a certain young Chunin named Kaede Kitahara.
Normally, she wouldn't have given something like this a second glance. She had no interest in reading someone else's private scribbles.
The problem was, this thing had dropped out of the sky.
Not metaphorically.
She had watched it appear out of nothing, then fall directly in front of her.
If some unknown person had used a method she couldn't recognize to toss an object right into her lap, then it stopped being a boring diary. It became a message, or a warning, or a trap.
Either way, it was worth reading.
At first, she meant to skim.
But the more she read, the heavier her expression became.
Right at the beginning, it mentioned Uzumaki Naruto, Konoha's Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
Even inside Konoha, the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki's identity was classified information. Only a tiny number of people at the top knew the truth. Most villagers didn't, and rumors filled the gap, ugly and ignorant, calling him the Demon Fox, insisting he was some kind of incarnation.
And yet this Kaede Kitahara clearly knew Naruto's secret.
That alone was abnormal.
Then she reached the part that truly made her face go still.
Orochimaru.
Her former teammate.
Orochimaru was targeting Konoha?
She hadn't even seen the later entries yet, but the early video segments were already enough to make her connect dots she didn't like. Orochimaru appeared wearing Otogakure Jonin gear, slipping into Konoha, aiming for Uchiha Sasuke.
"What are you trying to do?" Tsunade whispered to herself.
If she'd still been treating it like a normal diary, that illusion died the moment the pages started showing video clips. Whatever technique had delivered the diary to her was already absurd, but the diary itself was even worse.
Then she saw another scene.
Uchiha Itachi returning to the village.
She watched Itachi drop Hatake Kakashi with a single use of Tsukuyomi, that Mangekyo Sharingan-exclusive genjutsu.
Tsunade's brows drew together hard.
"Mangekyo… so the Uchiha Clan has another one."
As a member of the Senju Clan, a clan that had opposed the Uchiha for a thousand years, there was no way she didn't know what the Mangekyo Sharingan meant. The Senju had compiled plenty of notes on fighting the Sharingan, and even more on surviving the Mangekyo.
The Uchiha Clan's inheritance had been severed, but the Senju Clan was different.
They had taken catastrophic losses in the early shinobi world wars, yes, but they hadn't truly vanished by being wiped out. They'd followed the Second Hokage Senju Tobirama's order and merged into Konoha.
One was forced into collapse. The other chose to disappear into the village.
That difference mattered.
Senju knowledge hadn't been cut off. It had just gone quiet. Senju descendants kept their heads down, some even changing their surnames and living as ordinary villagers.
So as one of the last prominent Senju, Tsunade's understanding ran far deeper than Uchiha Sasuke's ever could.
She remembered something written in her second grandfather's notes. To awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan, talent mattered, but it wasn't enough. You needed a violent emotional shock, the kind that tore something open inside you. A loved one, a friend, a partner, dying right in front of you.
It fit what she'd seen in the world.
It fit Itachi slaughtering the Uchiha Clan.
After that came a few more clips, including Team 7 fighting Momochi Zabuza. Tsunade wasn't very interested in those. It was only Jonin-level combat. Hatake Kakashi's strength was, at best, not far from where she'd been before her battle with Hanzo.
What actually caught her attention was what Kaede wrote about the future.
Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto, two mountains that would shape the shinobi world.
So important that, faintly, they could be compared to Senju Hashirama and the Ninja World Asura, Uchiha Madara.
And then there were the names Kaede used for them.
Indra.
Asura.
Tsunade frowned, searching her memory. The words felt familiar. She was sure she'd seen them somewhere when she was younger, in some old record, but she couldn't grasp it. Only the vague sense remained that it mattered.
She made up her mind on the spot. When she returned to the clan grounds, she would dig through the archives until she found what those names meant.
Her instincts were screaming that it was important.
She kept reading.
"Danzo. Danzo again. Disgusting."
Her face twisted with open disgust when she saw Kaede had been targeted by Shimura Danzo.
Technically, Danzo was her grandfather's fellow student and her second grandfather's disciple. By that logic, they should have been allies, practically family.
In reality, their relationship had always been rotten. It was oil and fire.
Back when she'd still been in Konoha, she'd never been the type to swallow her tongue. She'd clashed with Danzo more than once.
And sometimes, in the quiet corners of her mind, she couldn't help wondering if Nawaki's death had something to do with him.
She had no proof. No trail. Nothing she could point to.
But the suspicion never went away.
Nawaki had been gifted. Even as a kid, he'd shown strength around Chunin level. With the Senju Clan's resources, reaching Kage Level in the future wouldn't have been some impossible dream.
And yet he died.
Worse, he died while Orochimaru, one of the Sannin, had been personally protecting him.
How was she supposed to believe there wasn't something buried under that?
Among everyone involved, Shimura Danzo was the one whose shadow felt the darkest.
She'd never acted on it, because she had nothing solid, only a gnawing instinct.
But then the diary jumped forward.
Three years later, Uchiha Sasuke appeared, and Tsunade's expression shifted again, sharper this time.
Sasuke's ocular power was terrifying, far stronger than the Uchiha Jonin she'd faced in the past. The diary even showed him seeing the Nine-Tails Chakra inside Uzumaki Naruto through a seal, and later, using the Mangekyo Sharingan to kill Danzo.
"Even Sasuke betrayed Konoha?" Tsunade muttered, frowning.
Uchiha Sasuke was the Uchiha Clan's last survivor within the village. If he left, then the Uchiha line in Konoha would be cut off completely.
The same Uchiha Clan that had stood beside her grandfathers to found Konoha, brought down to this.
Her thoughts turned, bitter.
Then again, the Senju Clan wasn't exactly in a better position. On the surface, the only Senju still active was her.
Even she had stopped using the Senju name. People still called her Princess Tsunade, but almost no one called her Senju Tsunade anymore.
"No, that's not quite right," she said, then gave a crooked grin. "There's another Uchiha, isn't there. Kaede Kitahara."
She remembered the diary mentioning Kaede awakening the Sharingan.
That meant somewhere in his ancestry, there had been at least one Uchiha. Most likely an Uchiha who never awakened their eyes had married out into the Kitahara family, leaving a thin thread of Uchiha blood behind.
Normally, a distant bloodline like that would never produce a Sharingan.
Normally.
But sometimes brute force created miracles. With enough descendants, you eventually got an exception.
In Tsunade's eyes, Kaede was exactly that kind of miracle.
A diluted bloodline so distant it should have meant nothing, and yet he'd dragged the Uchiha inheritance back into existence and awakened the Sharingan anyway.
And clearly, he was satisfied being Kaede Kitahara. Even after awakening, he didn't publicize it. If anything, he was deliberately keeping it hidden.
He was afraid.
Afraid of something, wary of something.
What could a young Chunin with the Sharingan possibly be afraid of?
Tsunade's answer came easily. She knew exactly what he feared.
She didn't know how Kaede had learned so many secrets, some of which were not only hidden, but felt like fragments ripped from the future itself.
But one thing was obvious. Kaede understood Konoha's darkness. He wasn't some naïve kid who could be talked in circles and patted on the head.
"Old man…" Tsunade's teeth clenched, anger tightening her jaw. "All these years you've let Danzo run wild. How many people has he gotten killed? How many have been driven away? Now even the next generation, the talented ones who could have risen, won't come near you. Is this what you wanted, old man?"
She wanted to demand an answer from Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage.
Why did he allow it?
Why did he tolerate so much evil?
Back then, Konoha had been overflowing with powerhouses.
And now?
The younger generation didn't have a single true Kage Level expert. Even Hatake Kakashi, the one people called Konoha's Number One Technician, was only so-so in the eyes of people who had stood where she stood.