Tsunade left the room and slid the door shut with a bang.
She stood in the hallway for a moment, remembering the earlier closeness and what had happened in the room.
'I need to take care of Himari and then deal with the politics. His plan is rough and needs a lot of maintenance unless we play everything in our hands.'
'After that, gotta deal with Orochimaru and make sure he doesn't take everything.'
That order sat better with her than the rest of the evening had. By the time she stepped out into the cooler night air of the Capital City of the Land of Fire, her expression had already settled into something flatter and more official.
She left for the Daimyo Mansion, and only then did she release the clone she had kept with Himari.
The memory return was quick and unpleasant as always. It was good that Himari had kept her silence. The countermeasure Tsunade had prepared to keep the Goddess matter from slipping loose under the wrong pressure had held. Akemi, meanwhile, had stayed too close to the room for too long and with too much self-control to be mistaken for ordinary concern.
'There is this problem too.'
The clone was no longer needed, and the rest, Tsunade decided to handle herself.
The administrative quarters were brighter than the streets outside, all polished wood and careful lamplight trying to make power look disciplined. A servant saw her face and chose speed.
The Daimyo was seated at a low desk when she entered. His hand moved to the edge of his sleeve before he spoke, a small straightening gesture that looked practised enough to be useless.
"Tsunade," he said. "You came quickly."
"I was nearby."
She remained standing a second longer than politeness required, letting him watch her. She knew he wanted reassurance, certainty, as he was the kind of person who asked for it when he intended to treat it as fact.
"How is the girl?" he asked. "Himari."
Tsunade sat at last. "Alive. Under care. Recovery is the objective, i.e. not the same thing as recovered."
He absorbed that in silence first.
'Good,'
Tsunade thought. Better to bruise the optimism early than let him build something stupid out of hope.
"What is the situation? What does she require?" he asked.
"Controlled conditions." Tsunade rested one arm on the chair and answered in the same blunt rhythm she used in operating rooms. She didn't mention her situation or their plans because that was an issue that would get her more things in the future.
"I need a quiet, clean space, reliable attendants who follow instructions instead of hovering. Specific supplies, some of which are easy to obtain if nobody starts acting dramatic and very little interference."
His brow pulled in. "Interference from whom?"
"Anyone who mistakes access for concern." She didn't blink.
"If she is visited by any other person, she gets worse care. If her condition becomes gossip ad know to all, every idiot in the city starts attaching meaning to fragments. I don't need that. Also, there are too many implications if something happened to her here."
He shifted, understanding her words into court language, separating the medical instruction from the insult, and he let the insult go.
"So information must be restricted," he said.
"Restricted, consistent, and boring." Tsunade folded her arms. "Boring information is useful. 'She is under care.' 'Her condition is being monitored.' 'No, you may not enter.' Use lines like that and repeat them until people stop asking interesting questions."
A small tension showed in his jaw. He remembered the talk he had with Land of Wind's Daimyo and the bet he made with him.
'I can't interfere much.'
"Some will insist."
"They can insist elsewhere," Tsunade spoke with the same frankness she had shown.
He was about to ask how much authority she expected to exercise in the capital. Tsunade answered before he could.
"If I say someone stays out, they stay out," she said. "If that becomes difficult, then the problem stops being medical and becomes yours. I can keep anyone out, but you would not like how I would."
His hand paused on the chair arm. There, he heard her. The unreasonableness he had always dealt with her. A sigh escaped his lips, and he understood how the burden was transferred to him.
"And the supplies?" he asked.
She listed them in measured terms.
"Extra linen, sterile water, storage containers, better and trustworthy guards near the lodging but not inside the room. A messenger route that did not wander through half the building."
Some of it was strictly medical. Some of it was logistics, wearing a medical coat.
When she finished, he exhaled through his nose. "This is extensive."
"No," Tsunade said. "This is controlled."
The correction irritated him for half a second, but then the bet came to mind again. The supplies were cheaper than his loss.
"And her condition," he said more quietly, "must remain quiet because of who she is. If after all this, something happens to her, it will be bad."
Tsunade looked at the Daimyo, who paid more attention to Himari's condition. She knew it wasn't because she was a princess, as she had seen how they were before.
'Something else is going on that I don't know.'
Though she decided to deal with her later, there was something he had to be corrected about.
"Her condition must remain quiet because she is a patient," Tsunade said first. Then, after a beat, "Who she is only makes bad behaviour more likely."
That was enough for the Daimyo. Himari being the Land of Wind's Daimyo's daughter mattered, but he wanted her to be treated as a patient because he had heard of Tsunade's medical expertise for patients.
"What shall I tell those who ask for updates?" he said.
Tsunade leaned back slightly. "I am already known here, and I am sure you have already mentioned this. You are still asking about it?"
That almost drew a smile out of him, but it died before becoming visible.
"You make it sound like something else."
"I have told you what I want. Any more and you will proceed to write a complaint letter." Tsunade replied with a smirk, and the Daimyo almost laughed at her words. Complaint? Even if he wrote 100s of them, he knew they wouldn't be worth anything.
After a moment, he finally nodded. He understood he now had some work to do, but he knew that the result would be more than what he could imagine.
"I'll have the support arranged," the Daimyo said. "Quietly."
"See that you do."
He looked at her more directly then. "And if others ask for emergency funds?"
There it was. He did not name, but he wasn't subtle about it either.
Tsunade let one brow rise. "The conflict is real, but you ask yourself whether their urgency treats a real wound or only performs one."
His fan stopped moving. He had heard the name she had deliberately not said.
"I see," he said.
"You probably do."
By the time she stood, the lines were in place. Himari's treatment would have support. Information would be narrowed, the access would be managed through hierarchy and irritation, which, in Tsunade's experience, worked better than dignity inside government buildings.
The corridor outside was quieter, the lamps farther apart, and she had taken only a few steps before she saw Orochimaru leaning near an office door.
He smiled before speaking, and one hand disappeared back into his sleeve.
"That looked productive."
Tsunade kept walking until she was close enough to whisper. "That depends on your definition."
"My definitions are usually excellent."
"Your invoices certainly are. How much are you trying to take from the Land of Fire's Daimyo?"
His expression barely shifted. He glanced down the corridor first, then back to her. That alone was answer enough.
"You say that as if I have already succeeded," he said.
"I say it because you are trying." Tsunade tipped her head. "Border danger, emergency readiness, specialised response. Something expensive, vague, and difficult to challenge. That sounds like you."
The corner of his mouth moved, not enough to qualify as a smile. "You have always been uncharitable."
"I have always been accurate."
He didn't deny it.
"So what," he asked, "do you intend to do anything about it?"
Tsunade watched him for a second. He wasn't defensive about her words. Curious, maybe. Moral outrage would have been useless here, and he knew she wasn't foolish enough to try it.
"I am going to scam some money too," she said.
That got a real pause out of him.
"For Himari's recovery," Before he could say anything, Tsunade added. "Actual treatment support and supplies. Guards placed where they help instead of where they look impressive, Logistics and all sorts of things that should already exist and usually don't."
Orochimaru studied her with that narrow stillness of his. He was not offended that she was taking some share, but amused that it was her taking the share.
"I don't think any of it is needed. You needing guards? It's hilarious," he laughed, but Tsunade showed no response to him.
"So, we are both parasites now."
That drew a response, and Tsunade snorted. "Don't flatter yourself. I am correcting your ecosystem."
That pulled another quiet laugh from him, dry and low. She answered it with one of her own before either of them could pretend the line hadn't landed.
The sound died quickly in the corridor. Both of them seemed to notice, at the same moment, how ridiculous it would look if anyone from Konoha caught them laughing over treasury theft dressed as policy.
Orochimaru's shoulders eased by a fraction. "I assume this conversation remains here."
"Very far from the village," Tsunade said. "If anyone in Konoha asks, I am a dedicated medic protecting a patient, and you are a burdened specialist suffering under administrative stupidity."
"A flattering arrangement."
"For you? Not especially."
He tilted his head. "Very well. I will avoid interfering with your requisitions, provided yours do not interfere with mine."
Tsunade gave him a flat look. "That depends on how greedy you are being."
"That depends on how observant you are."
"Unfortunate for you, then."
His gaze flicked toward one of the office doors and back again. "You intend to win the first claim by sounding more necessary."
"No," Tsunade said. "By being more necessary."
That shut him up for a beat. She enjoyed that more than she needed to.
When she moved past him, he didn't try to stop her again. They had what they wanted.
---
Akane stepped out into the streets of the Capital City of the Land of Fire later that same evening and left the administrative problem in Tsunade's hands on purpose.
The city felt different at night. A little quieter but deeper than before.
Shops closed in one lane while food stalls stayed open in the next. Lit windows floated above dark storefronts. Patrol routes looked official from a distance and lazy up close.
The farther he moved from the cleaner government district, the more the city explained itself without bothering to announce what it was doing.
He kept an even pace, hands tucked into his sleeves, eyes moving without appearing to. The streets weren't exactly like a battlefield, but a battle was going on here and there. People were negotiating, and every corner seemed to belong to someone unofficially, the proof in who stood their ground first and who chose to step aside.
A runner passed a folded note to a man outside a moneylender's door and got his wrist struck, lightly, as if ritual mattered more than force. Two men argued over crates in an alley with too much precision for the anger to be real. A shopkeeper swept the front of his store while watching the opposite side of the road instead of seeing the broom.
'Different pressure but similar lives.'
Shinobi life taught people to think in missions, chains of command, and violence with declared purpose, even when the purpose was ugly. The city moved through debt, permission, tolerated theft, and the slow pressure of knowing exactly who could make a day more expensive than it needed to be.
He turned into a tavern that was loud enough to hide a conversation and orderly enough not to be a mistake.
The room smelled of old wood, broth, cheap alcohol, and old smoke. No one paid him much attention after the first glance.
Akane took a table near the wall with a view of the door and most of the room. He ordered without fuss and listened before deciding whether anyone in the room deserved an actual question.
Prices, missing shipments, somebody's cousin dragged into unpaid work, men grumbling about guards who arrived late and collected early. One mention of a bounty that had gone unclaimed because collecting it meant stepping into the wrong district without permission. Another mention of a gang that did not call itself a gang because everyone already knew whose men they were.
He let the words build into shape instead of forcing them too early.
By the time the bowl in front of him had gone lukewarm, Akane had a rough outline.
Bounties existed here, but they were not clean contracts in the way shinobi tended to imagine. Some were official, many were private and deniable, and gangs enforced extortion in districts where formal law had become a drama to be shown. Shopkeepers paid for safety to the same people who made safety necessary. Debt clung to families rather than individuals.
He asked a few questions eventually, each one small enough to look incidental.
Which district turned ugly after midnight, who bought stolen goods without asking enough questions, which gambling house paid on time and which one paid in broken fingers. Every answer arrived wrapped in another complaint, another joke, another insult aimed at someone not present.
People here lived inside a web that did not resemble a village system or a mission chain. Shinobi thought in force, secrecy, and rank. Local people thought in tolerated theft, informal permission, and how much damage could be avoided by paying one man before another realised you existed.
'No wonder shinobi miss it,' he thought, watching a pair of men near the far wall track each new arrival without ever seeming to look at each other.
'This kind of power has no dramatic centre.'
That was probably why it was so easy to dismiss until it interfered directly. Civilian power was diffuse and patient. It accumulated around money, routine, and fear until moving through it became harder than passing a guarded gate.
A woman at the counter counted out change three times before handing it over, not from confusion but because she expected to be cheated and wanted a witness to her certainty. Near the door, someone had cut a mark into the wood and scratched it out later. Territory marker, settled debt, or warning. It was hard to say which yet.
At a nearby table, a low disagreement started to rise. One man shoved another, and voices tightened. Before the exchange could turn into anything worth naming, the tavern owner cracked a heavy piece of wood against the bar, and both men backed down with the dull resentment of people used to stopping exactly short of disaster.
'Order by immediate consequence,' Akane thought.
'Not rank or loyalty, just local cost and how their life would become.'
That was the difference, maybe. In shinobi life, violence was often decisive. Here, violence was only one tool in a longer arrangement. Extortion worked because it stayed alive, and fear worked because it repeated.
He thought of Himari then. Her recovery, Orochimaru's scam and the Land of Fire's Daimyo upstairs in his own system of polished authority. None of it sat apart as neatly as it had in the room earlier.
It was the same city from different floors.
If a local gang saw an opportunity around a guarded inn, that would matter. If a bounty runner heard there was political value in a sick girl under careful watch, that would matter.
Akane sat back slightly.
'The village teaches control through structure,' he thought. 'Local people survive through adaptation.'
Different systems bred different instincts. A Genin learned obedience to command. A shopkeeper learned how to survive between extortionists, officials, and a bad harvest without ever naming any of them enemies aloud.
He asked one last question on his way out, something small about which streets saw the most private notices posted after dark. The man who answered did not look at him directly, only jerked his chin toward two adjoining districts and muttered that anyone sensible stayed there only if they were being paid or hunted.
When Akane stepped back into the night, the capital felt less abstract. The hazed area felt less cloudy before, and Akane felt he now had an understanding of where he had to start.
He took the slower route back, following the streets that looked least important and were probably used most often. Somewhere behind him, a door slammed, and a voice rose, then cut off before it had time to become anyone else's problem.
Himari's recovery, Orochimaru's scam, the Land of Fire's Daimyo, Gangs, bounties, extortion, favours. The city pressed them together until medicine, politics, and ordinary survival shared walls, whether anyone liked it or not.
Akane glanced once toward the brighter district ahead, where official rooms and sealed decisions pretended to sit above the rest of it.
'They don't sit above. They keep everything aside,' he thought, and kept walking.
--
Had to prepare for a Seminar speaking. I am back now.