Chapter 86: Today's Top Donor Has Changed
At Konoha Hospital, the air was thick with the sterile scent of antiseptic and anxiety. Team Sarutobi stood huddled before the closed doors of the operating room, a silent, tense vigil under the harsh fluorescent lights.
Kou's injuries had been far too severe; she had lost consciousness on the frantic journey back to the village. Though Tsunade possessed a budding talent for Medical Ninjutsu, she was still just a girl fresh from the academy, a far cry from the legendary Sannin she was destined to become. Faced with wounds of that magnitude, she had been utterly powerless. The three of them had run themselves ragged, pushing past the point of exhaustion to get Kou to the hospital in time.
From the corner of her eye, Tsunade kept glancing at Jiraiya, a question burning on her lips. Orochimaru, ever the observer, did the same. What in the world had happened?
How could a Jonin as formidable as Kou, a wielder of the Three Tomoe Sharingan, be brought so low by a mission to dispatch one ordinary Jonin and a Chunin? The power of a fully matured Uchiha eye was no empty boast. They wracked their brains, but no matter how they replayed the scenario, the outcome made no sense.
But Jiraiya had been… wrong, ever since Kou was hurt. He was a ghost of himself, completely despondent. On the way back, they had caught him secretly wiping away tears. Now, he just stood there, a mask of deep regret etched onto his face, looking as if he were moments away from drawing a kunai and committing seppuku to atone for his sins.
His condition made it impossible to question him. They could only wait for Sarutobi-sensei to arrive.
Meanwhile, in the Hokage Building, Hiruzen Sarutobi was in the middle of a heated argument. When Orochimaru had burst in to find him, his sensei was locked in a budgetary battle with Danzo. Hiruzen needed more funds to carry out a task assigned by the Fourth Hokage, but Danzo, his old friend, was convinced he was being taken for a ride.
"Asking for this much for such a minor project? You clearly don't know the cost of living when you're not the one managing the household!" Danzo scoffed.
"Danzo, that's enough!" Hiruzen slammed a hand on his desk. "I am completing a task assigned by Lady Stelle! Are you going to obstruct this, too? Don't think I won't go to her and complain!"
"Go on, complain!" Danzo shot back, unfazed. "You're asking for five million ryō for this piddling affair. Do you think Konoha's money grows on trees for you to just sweep up? The only reason I'm even giving you one million is out of respect for our friendship, Hiruzen."
For some reason, ever since Shimura Danzo had decided that controlling Konoha's economic lifeline was his true calling and insisted on becoming the village's de facto Finance Minister, his personality had drifted thousands of miles from the paranoid, power-hungry schemer of his past. He was becoming more and more like a shinobi version of Kakuzu, defined almost entirely by his miserliness.
Even with a treasury overflowing with funds, every allocation felt like a pound of his own flesh was being carved away. It was an agony for him. If he ever had the chance to meet the actual Kakuzu in the future, the two would undoubtedly become the best of friends.
"At least three million," Hiruzen ground out. "You must give me this money."
"Two million. That's my bottom line."
"Danzo, are you intentionally obstructing my work?" Hiruzen said, his voice rising in anger.
"If I were obstructing you, I wouldn't be increasing the amount at all," Danzo snorted coldly, before finally conceding with a pained sigh. "Fine. Two and a half million. Not a single ryō more. Otherwise, you might as well just kill me. If there's no money, there's no money."
Hiruzen found himself truly missing the old friend who had once aimed for the Hokage seat and schemed to defeat Stelle, not this penny-pinching fiend whose eyes were buried in ledgers.
It was into this scene that Orochimaru arrived, his expression grim as he reported the team's mission failure and Uchiha Kou's critical condition.
Hiruzen Sarutobi thought he had misheard.
"Wasn't it just a C-rank bandit extermination mission? The Anbu already investigated; there were only two Chunin, and one was barely above the level of a theory instructor at the Academy." His brow furrowed in confusion. "The other, while an Elite Chunin, should have been no match for Kou. How could she have been so severely injured?"
When Orochimaru and Tsunade had arrived on the scene, Kou was already unconscious, so they were just as clueless about the specifics.
"Sensei, I can't explain the details," Orochimaru said, his voice low. "You should come to the hospital and see for yourself."
A knot of dread tightened in Hiruzen's stomach. He abandoned his argument with Danzo and rushed to Konoha Hospital. By the time he arrived, the emergency treatment was over. The heavily injured Uchiha Kou was being transferred to the intensive care unit.
Hiruzen stepped inside for a look. The sight that greeted him made him gasp. Kou lay pale and still on the bed, but his eyes were drawn to her right shoulder. It was a mass of bandages, beneath which there was… nothing. Her arm was gone.
He spun around to face his three disciples. "Was the Anbu's intelligence wrong? Did you encounter an elite Jonin squad from another village?"
The three of them shook their heads. Tsunade, who had just managed to stop crying, felt fresh tears welling up.
"Then was it a hidden foreign spy? Did they discover you and lead a surprise ambush? Were you caught off guard?"
Again, they shook their heads.
"Then what in the world happened?" Hiruzen's anxiety spiked.
Both Orochimaru and Tsunade turned their gazes to Jiraiya. Their silent accusation was enough; only he knew the truth.
Ah. Hiruzen recognized the look. It was clear at a glance that this particular student had caused some incredible new brand of trouble, just like the time he'd botched a Summoning Jutsu and gotten himself Reverse Summoned to Mount Myōboku.
Hiruzen sighed, his gaze settling on his white-haired student. "Jiraiya. No matter what happened, you must tell your teacher. Only then can I help you."
As for the fact that Kou's right arm was gone, and what kind of devastating blow that would be to the young Uchiha… those were matters to be discussed after the report.
The shinobi world was inherently cruel. From the day they donned their headbands, every ninja accepted the possibility that they might die, or that their comrades might die right before their eyes. On a typical mission, one or two casualties were common. On a true battlefield, the losses were countless. Even in the last Great War, despite Konoha having the healing scrolls provided by Senju Tobirama, many ninja had died instantly, beyond any hope of salvation.
For someone like Uchiha Kou to have only lost an arm instead of her life was, in a grim way, a blessing. Perhaps she could no longer be a ninja, but returning to a normal life might not be such a bad thing. A twelve-year-old girl could go and do the things other girls her age did.
In their hearts, that was the prevailing sentiment. It was a pity, of course; an elite Jonin with a Three Tomoe Sharingan, crippled just like that.
Jiraiya had only just become a ninja. He couldn't accept such a harsh reality yet. But in the future, when he could stand on his own two feet as a true shinobi, he too would learn to calmly accept everything—right up until the moment of his own death.
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