Mystic Eyes

As Pain's Tower appeared in his sight, Naruto's sprint gradually slowed to a walking pace. Although in Konoha he used to not care about his manners and often burst into Sandaime's and Tsunade's office without even knocking, that was due to his familiarity with them. In Ame, he subconsciously restrained himself from acting like that.

"I need to speak to Konan. Can you tell her that I am here?" Naruto said to the two shinobi that could be seen standing guard in front of the doors leading to Konan's office.

"Please wait a moment," one of them replied politely and, after knocking twice on the door, he went inside to let Konan know of his arrival.

Not for the first time since he arrived in Amegakure, Naruto was inwardly taken aback by people's attitude towards him. He was not used to others treating him so politely. Amegakure was completely shut off from the outside world so there was nobody except for Konan who knew his real identity. However, everyone that was aware of the fact that he was in Konan's good graces was treating him with their utmost respect. It made him understand all the more just what kind of position Pain and Konan were holding in their subjects' hearts.

"Tenshi-sama agreed to your request. Please follow me," the guard said when he returned and opened the door wider for Naruto to come in.

Despite how much more modern and technologically advanced Amegakure looked with its tall metallic sky-scrapers and its intricate systems of pipes compared to Konoha, Konan's office didn't look much different from Hokage's office that he was familiar with. To the right of the room, there was a grey desk with rounded corners and a black leather chair while on the opposite side, windows as large and as wide as the office itself offered a great view of the Hidden Village's cityscape.

"Hello, Naruto. Is something the matter? Is there something you need?" Konan momentarily put down the piece of paper she was reading and looked up at him. At the same time, she signalled her shinobi to leave them alone.

"I've been thinking, is there anything I can help you with?" Naruto asked.

Konan adopted a pondering expression as she put her elbows on the desk and interlocked her fingers.

"What brought this on? Has anyone given you a hard time?"

"No, no," he said quickly. "Everyone is so polite that it's weird. I just... ...I just wanted to do something, anything, to be of help."

Seeing Konan keeping silent he added:

"I saw the place where Ero-sennin and Nagato fought. I was thinking, maybe I could try to clean it up? If you had to hire someone, you'd need a few dozen of people and it'd take weeks just to move away the debris. But I can make hundreds of shadow clones, I'd get it done in no time!" he said and grinned.

Konan stood up from her seat and went to the large windows, gazing at the sight of the village below.

"I appreciate your thoughts. But it would be better if you waited until tomorrow morning. It's getting late and from today onwards, there will be a curfew starting from 8 o'clock."

"Curfew? You mean like a rule for people not to come out of their homes after that hour?"

As Konan put her hands behind her back, unintentionally making her chest stand out, Naruto realized that it was the first time he was seeing her without her Akatsuki cloak. However, he quickly tore his eyes away from her and looked at the village below as well.

"I have no reason to hide it from you, Naruto... Ame is not in a great situation currently. Ever since we killed Hanzo almost 6 years ago, Nagato chose to isolate Ame completely from the outside world and it has worked for us due to how lucrative our activities as Akatsuki have been."

Interpreting Naruto's look as a form of reproach, she explained:

"Long before Akatsuki started hunting down jinchuuriki, we've been an elite group of mercenaries taking on all kinds of missions. Many hidden villages frequently hired our services and a large part of that income came to Amegakure."

"Hidden Villages used to hire Akatsuki?!" Naruto said scandalized.

"Yes," Konan said, her tone never changing from the beginning until now. "For example, Tsuchikage was one of our biggest customers. Sunagakure often employed our services as well. We've even made business with Konoha too at some point. But with Nagato dead and Akatsuki effectively disbanded, that significant source of income has disappeared."

Taking Naruto's silence as a sign to continue, Konan said:

"We are more than self-sufficient when it comes to food, clothes, and other products necessary for our daily lives. Before the Shinobi Wars brought Ame to ruin, the Land of Rain used to be one of the biggest exporters of rice, fish, and canned food. Nevertheless, there are also things that we could never make by ourselves, such as electricity. Over the past six years, we have been using the deposits of coal stockpiled before, druing Hanzo's reign, but those deposits are now dwindling. And not only that we don't have the funds to buy new resources, we don't have from to who buy either."

Naruto had never given any thought to such things before. He hadn't known how electricity was created and he had never realized how many troublesome and difficult things the leader of a village had to handle.

"Can't Ame trade something else for that thing instead of money? You said the Land of Rain has plenty of food, no? The Land of Wind is a desert, I think they could buy lots of food because they can't grow anything there," Naruto said, trying to come up with a solution on the spot.

Konan let out a soft sigh.

"We haven't engaged in official diplomacy and commerce with our neighbouring countries in almost 6 years," Konan said. "Furthermore, even if we had the means to trade for coal, now that the world knows that Akatsuki came from the Land of Rain, who would want to do business with us?"

But Naruto suddenly came closer to her and said energetically:

"I think I can help with that! Gaara, the Kazekage, is my friend! But, does the Land of Wind have coal?"

Konan shook her head as she said:

"The Land of Wind doesn't have coal but they have rich reserves of natural gas and oil. But Akatsuki captured Gaara and he died. What makes you think he'd ever want to trade with Amegakure?"

"Gaara is my friend. I'm sure that he-" but his words remained stuck in his throat. He was unable to continue when he thought that it was also his friends that sent him to prison despite that he was innocent.

Nevertheless, he shook his head and tried to smile when he saw Konan looking at him with concern.

⁂ The next day ⁂

"Are you sure about this? You should know that Konoha won't give up on their jinchuuriki that easily," Konan said.

"I have to at least try. I can't just stay hidden in Ame all the time and... ...and I want to help you," he said with a small smile and rubbed the back of his head.

"Thank you, Naruto," she said and smiled softly at him.

For the first time since he came to Amegakure, Naruto saw Konan smile. That gentle smile on her porcelain-doll-like face was like a ray of sun peeking through the clouds. He was momentarily stunned.

"You helped me when nobody would," Naruto said. "I'll do anything in my power to return the favour."

Moving his eyes away from her face with difficulty, he looked at the scroll in her hands.

"Give this to the Kazekage, it's my official letter as the leader of Amegakure. But don't reveal everything about Amegakure's situation to him, even if he's your friend."

"...I understand."

"Losing a jinchuuriki is a heavy blow to a Hidden Village, Konoha won't just let you be. Although you said you trust the Kazekage, Suna and Kohona are allies after all. You never know what he might do. Stay sharp. Stay safe."

Naruto's first intention was to retort that Gaara would never do something like that but he remained silent. If Gaara was forced to choose between Sunagakure's well-being and his friendship with him, Naruto was not confident that Gaara would choose him. He was not an expert in history and politics but he knew that war being started over a jinchuuriki or a tailed beast was not impossible, far from that. Konoha and Kumo almost went to war when Kumo's diplomat was killed by Hinata's father. The ownership of Nine Tails was far more important than that.

⁂

Despite that his robes were covered in blood and the white bandages covering his arm and face were stained with dirt and sweat, Shimura Danzo had an expression of bliss, peace, and happiness on his face. Leaning back as far as he could in the Hokage's comfortable Hokage, he watched over the still-sleeping village through the large windows of the office.

For how many years had he yearned for this seat? For how long had he fought to step out of the shadows and lead the Village Hidden in the Leaf from the light? Today, his dream had finally come true.

Without his knowledge, over an hour passed as he basked in the feeling of having finally accomplished his wish. By now, the darkness started fading away. It was almost like a metaphor for his life: his days of walking through the darkness were over. From now on, he would step proudly into the sun and lead the village to a new era of prosperity. He would be the one to make Konoha great again.

"Beautiful," he found himself letting out a sigh as he admired the sight of the first rays of sun shining from beyond the Hokage Monument and illuminating the village below.

"Beautiful, indeed."

When he heard that voice coming from behind him, Danzo jumped up to his feet as if electrocuted. It was almost comical how he had turned around robotically before uttering out with a stutter:

"I-Impossible!"

"I see you've gotten quite comfortable in my chair."

As the newcomer stepped closer to the desk, Danzo's face became as white as a sheet of paper.

"How are you still alive?! Your heart was obliterated! I saw you getting beheaded!" Danzo shouted as he forcefully ripped the bandages covering his right eye and glared at her with his Sharingan.

"ANBU!" he screamed when he realized that it wasn't a genjutsu that he was seeing.

"Your black ops shinobi are all dead," Tsunade said and showed raised her hand to show him that it was covered with fresh blood. "You will pay with your blood for what you did, Danzo. I swear it on my life."

A smoke bomb suddenly went off and the sound of glass being broken was heard as Danzo jumped through the window before he used a body flicker technique to run away.

"You won't escape!" she screamed enraged. "My name isn't Tsunade if I won't rip apart your limbs one by one today. You and each one of the traitors that attacked me last night, none of you will be spared!"

The floor of the Hokage office suddenly cracked like a spiderweb and collapsed in a heap of rubble as Tsunade jumped away with all her strength, leaving a sonic boom behind.

Danzo just came out from his Body Flicker movement when someone unexpectedly grabbed him by the back of his high-collared robe and he felt the air leave his lungs as he was suddenly lifted up and thrown away like a cannonball, all the way to the outskirts of the village, into the woods.

But his decades of experience as a shinobi allowed him to maintain his composure and he quickly went through a series of handseals. A mass of soft-looking wooden vines came out of his body and encased him completely, like a cocoon.

The wooden cocoon smashed into several dozen trees before it finally came to a stop. When the vines parted, Danzo crawled out of the cocoon seemingly unharmed but he was so dizzy that he suddenly bent over and emptied the contents of his stomach on the ground.

But when he straightened his back and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, Tsunade appeared in front of him like a phantom. By the time he saw that her hand was right in front of his face, it was too late. He had no time to react whatsoever as Tsunade hand moved like a viper and plucked out his right eye, just like Danzo had done a decade ago when he stole that eye from Shisui!

Danzo could only gnash his teeth when he saw Tsunade squash his precious Mangekyo Sharingan into a bloody paste but he did not waste even a split second before he disappeared with another Shunshin.

'I need to get away! I have to buy some time!' he thought as he quickly went through another series of handseals and momentarily stopped to slam his palm on the ground.

The ground quaked and ruptured as tree roots and vines started growing out and loud sounds of wood creaking were heard as a gigantic creature of wood came to life. That technique was a pale imitation of Senju Hashirama's Wood Giant but even then, it was enough to make most shinobi and kunoichi that saw it become weak in the knees.

It drained an enormous amount of chakra to cast that technique but Danzo did not have a choice at that moment. If he did not buy some time to take off the shackle sealing his Sharingan-arm, he wouldn't be able to cast Izanagi. And without Izanagi, he did not have any chance of surviving the enraged Slug Sannin.

Right after he summoned the Wood Giant, Danzo stopped and ripped the bandages covering his right arm, revealing the golden bracers encasing it. He quickly pushed one of the bolts out and he was in the middle of taking out the second too when a huge hole was smashed open into the Wood Giant, obliterating it.

"Damn it!" Danzo cursed in panic as he tried to take out the third (and last) bolt holding the golden bracers shut.

However, he could only watch in disbelief as his right arm fell on the blanket of leaves covering the ground. He had not been able to take out the third bolt before Tsunade chopped his arm from the shoulder.

"I told you I would kill you," Tsunade said in a dark voice and kicked him in the gut with enough strength to only make him fall on the ground coughing in pain, not to kill him. "But I'm a woman of my word so I won't let you have an easy death. I promised I'd rip your limbs one at a time, didn't I?"

Putting her foot on his chest, she suddenly yanked on his left arm, ripping it out from the shoulder too and making him scream out in agony. She was about to go onto the next limb, one of his legs, when she saw black ink starting to pour out from his torso.

"I may have let my guard down once but it won't happen again," she said. The air appeared to distort around her right hand and the aura of yellow chakra enveloping her body became visible to the naked eye as she punched down with her entire strength.

That terrible brute strength reduced Danzo's entire body into a paste of blood and the ground underneath them was turned into a massive crater. The shockwave from her monstrous strength alone flattened all the trees several hundred feet outside of the crater.

With no medium to fuel it anymore, the self-destructing seal that Danzo had cast to take Tsunade to the grave together with him faded into nothingness too.

Uncaring of the gore splattered all over the ground, Tsunade lay down on her back in exhaustion. The black marks covering her entire body sank back into the rhombus-shaped purple dot on her forehead and she closed her eyes as she tried to regain her breath and calm down her racing heart.

She had not gone all out in a fight in years and she had never been as close to death as she was last night.

'If Katsuyu had not reverse-summoned me to Shikkotsu Forest I would've died.'

Unlike a few hours ago, since it was morning, a team of chunins tasked with duty patrol that day appeared a few minutes later to investigate the disturbance. Sensing the chakra signatures of the incoming shinobi, Tsunade forced herself to stand up, reminding herself that it was not over.

'I don't know how many had sided with Danzo last night and I don't know their identities either but I won't rest until I purge Konoha of them all.'

Putting a hand over her chest, her eyes narrowed in anger. She didn't know the identity of all the masked shinobi but she definitely recognized the lightning blade that had pierced her heart. She was going to make Kakashi pay with his life.