"Uncle Ikki, there's something I don't quite understand," Tsunade said.
They were trekking toward the Land of Wind. Tsunade had watched Ikki's mood shift; the earlier humor had faded into a rare, contemplative silence. She couldn't help but probe for the logic behind his mercy.
"Why let the Third Raikage go?" she asked. "I once heard the Second Hokage say that back in the Sengoku era, more ninjas and samurai died under your 'Iron Fist' than the entire population of the Hidden Sand. Why change your nature now?"
Walking a few paces ahead, Inoichi Yamanaka and Choza Akimichi surreptitiously tilted their heads. In the world of shinobi, a battle was usually a zero-sum game: you killed or you were killed. Leaving a man as powerful as the Raikage alive felt like a tactical sin.
"Little Tsuna," Ikki said, his voice breaking through the silence. "If some brat on the street started screaming at you, what would you do?"
Tsunade blinked, relieved to see the playful glint returning to his eyes. "I'd knock some sense into him, obviously."
"And if the brat still didn't shut his mouth after the first lesson?"
"Then I'd put him in the dirt," she answered firmly. Then, a look of realization dawned on her. She thought of the Iwa shinobi he'd pulverized and the shattered state of the Raikage.
"Exactly," Ikki said, spreading his palms.
"But... the Third Raikage isn't just some brat. He's the strongest leader the Hidden Cloud has ever seen. If you let a tiger back into the mountains, you're just inviting trouble. Aren't you worried he'll come looking for revenge?"
Ikki stopped for a moment, looking at her with a flat, unimpressed expression. "Little Tsuna, do you wake up every morning worrying that a crippled ant might come seeking vengeance?"
Tsunade, Choza, and Inoichi all went silent.
The weight of the statement settled over them like lead. From Konoha's perspective—from the perspective of anyone in this era—the Third Raikage was a catastrophic threat that needed to be neutralized. But to Ikki, the man was an insect. If you let a tiger go, it was a problem. But who cared about an ant? Especially an ant with broken legs.
"What about the Land of Wind, then?" Tsunade asked, shifting gears. "The Sand is fighting the Cloud right now, not us. You aren't seriously going there to save the Cloud, are you?"
"That remains to be seen," Ikki said, a mischievous smirk playing on his lips.
"You think the Sand will actually turn their blades on Konoha? Does Rasa really have that much courage?"
"Hah! I really want to know why these Kages have grown so 'brave' lately," Ikki shook his head, his tone dripping with disdain.
"You're serious? You think the Hidden Sand would dare launch a full-scale war right now?"
"The Sand might not," Ikki mused, "but their Kazekage is a different story."
"Why?" Tsunade pressed.
"I've noticed something about this generation," Ikki said, his voice growing thick with irony. "The current Five Kages are clearly less capable than the First Generation, yet they're all twice as arrogant. Take your own teacher, for instance. What's his title again? The 'Strongest Hokage in History'? Does he actually believe that? And the boy I just hammered—the one calling me a fossil—he's the 'Strongest Raikage ever.' Now I hear the brat in the Sand is being called the 'Strongest Kazekage.'"
Ikki laughed, a booming sound that echoed across the dunes. "I'd give anything to see the look on the First Generation's faces in the Pure Land right now. They'd probably die a second time from the sheer embarrassment."
Tsunade could only offer a strained, awkward smile. She didn't know if Rasa was as brave as Ikki suggested, but she knew Hiruzen—and her teacher certainly possessed a stubborn kind of daring.
Ahead of them, the Ino-Shika-Cho trio suddenly found it very difficult to keep their eyes forward. As Konoha shinobi, it was borderline blasphemous to hear their Hokage mocked so casually, yet they were too terrified of the man speaking to even clear their throats in protest.
Land of Wind
A streak of blue lightning tore across the desert, a jagged blur of speed that defied the naked eye. Every time the lightning flickered, a Sand shinobi's life was snuffed out in a spray of blood and sand. Within seconds, an entire vanguard of twenty men lay dead on the barren dunes.
"My father really overestimates the Sand," the future Fourth Raikage, A, said as the lightning around him dissipated. He glanced at the corpses with a look of utter boredom. "Using the AB Combination to clear out these weaklings was a waste of time. I could have handled this myself."
"I've still got the flow, my rhythm is prime! Eight-Tails' partner, the Sand-Slayer, Killer Bee is sublime! Yeah! Ah! The fight's already over? Too fast for a rhyme!"
On the other side of the clearing, Killer Bee stood surrounded by a dozen fallen enemies. He held seven blades in a bizarre, multi-jointed stance, his movements as erratic as they were lethal.
A walked over, his muscles still humming with residual chakra. "Bi, you feel it too, don't you? Let's stop playing around with the grunts and find the Kazekage. Rasa just took the title, right? It's time for a direct confrontation between Wind and Thunder."
The Lightning Style Chakra roared back to life, coiling around A's body like a hungry beast. "You handle the old-timers, Ebizo and Chiyo. I'm going for the head."
He looked at Bee with a burning intensity. The AB Combination was a legend for a reason—they moved as one, a shadow and its light, and they were ready to show the Sand exactly why the Cloud intended to rule this era.