On the outskirts of Tanzaku Town.
In a remote, deserted dead-end alley.
Tsunade held Shizune by the scruff of her collar and landed lightly.
She was breathing hard, her ample chest heaving.
“Lady Tsunade.”
“Where do we go now?”
Shizune wore a miserable look, her voice trembling.
In her arms, Tonton had rolled its eyes back and fainted.
“Where else can we go?”
“We move to another town and lie low!”
At Shizune’s words, Tsunade spat in irritation.
Then, all at once, she stopped, her gaze turning razor-sharp.
Under Shizune’s startled stare, Tsunade slowly turned and looked at a shadow at the corner of the alley.
“Are you coming out on your own?”
“Or do you want me to beat you out?”
As her voice faded—tap, tap, tap.
A crisp sound of footsteps rose from the shadows.
Chiba, still disguised as a wandering samurai, stepped out before Tsunade and Shizune.
“You?”
Once she saw who it was, Tsunade’s brows drew into a tight knot.
This was the bastard who had bet against her like a madman at the gambling table and won a full ten million ryo off her!
“Did the casino owner send you to collect the debt?”
“Or are you a hitman some enemy of mine hired?”
Tsunade sneered, her knuckles cracking as she clenched her fists.
Whoever this man was, today she was taking that ten million ryo back!
Chiba stopped a safe ten paces from Tsunade.
He didn’t speak right away.
His senses spread out around him like a spider’s web.
Within a one-kilometer radius, there was no chakra of the ANBU, no cold aura of the Root.
Only once he’d confirmed the area was absolutely safe did Chiba slowly open his eyes and form a one-handed seal.
Poof!
A puff of white smoke scattered.
The rough skin of the wandering samurai melted away, revealing Chiba’s own youthful face.
“A Konoha ninja?”
Looking at the forehead protector on Chiba’s brow, Tsunade froze for a moment, and the wariness in her eyes grew heavier.
“Did that old man finally run out of patience and send the ANBU to haul me back?”
The old man she meant was, of course, the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen.
“No.”
“You’ve misunderstood, Senior.”
“I’m not acting on anyone’s orders.
I fled the Village on my own.”
Chiba’s tone was perfectly calm.
At that, Tsunade was more surprised still.
A Chunin of sixteen or seventeen actually dared to turn rogue ninja?
“Oh?”
“You escaped Konoha?”
“Then you should have run far away.
Why come here to find me?”
“I’ve long since had nothing to do with that rotten Village.”
With that, Tsunade turned outright, ready to leave.
Whether Chiba was a Konoha ninja or a Konoha rogue, she wanted nothing to do with any of it right now.
“I need your protection, Senior.”
Chiba’s voice echoed down the empty alley.
Tsunade’s steps halted.
It was as if she’d heard some outrageous joke.
“Protection?”
“And what exactly makes you worth my trouble?”
“Because you won that ten million ryo off me at the casino?”
Tsunade turned back, her face full of mockery.
Shizune stood to the side, too frightened to even breathe.
She knew all too well how terrifying Lady Tsunade became once her temper flared.
Chiba kept his back straight.
He understood perfectly well that bargaining with a heavyweight tempered by the fires of war could never rest on words alone.
And so Chiba slowly raised his right hand.
His palm lay flat, open to the sky.
The chakra within him began a miraculous transformation.
Water nature and Earth nature fused wildly under the catalysis of Yang Release.
An utterly pure life force surged along his meridians toward his palm.
There were no intricate hand seals.
This power felt like an inborn instinct.
Before long, a faint but pure green light bloomed in Chiba’s palm.
In the dim alley, that green glow looked almost blinding.
At first, Tsunade was still full of scorn.
But the instant she felt that chakra, her whole body went rigid, as if struck by lightning.
“This…
this is…”
The mockery in Tsunade’s eyes vanished without a trace.
In its place came sheer shock.
The next moment, under the eyes of both Tsunade and Shizune, a tender green bud sprouted from Chiba’s palm.
The thumb-thick sapling radiated a vigorous life.
The air in the alley seemed to freeze.
Shizune clapped a hand over her mouth.
Her legs went weak, as though she could barely stand.
And Tsunade—this Sannin who had weathered countless storms—felt her breath stop entirely.
Her pupils shrank sharply, her gaze fixed on Chiba’s palm, on the swaying sapling.
Even from ten paces away, she could feel it clearly.
This was the miraculous power that only her grandfather, revered as the “God of Shinobi,” had ever possessed!
“Wood Release…”
Tsunade murmured under her breath.
Her voice was hoarse, with an unmistakable tremor.
To recreate this power, Konoha’s higher-ups had carried out so many insane human experiments…
And now an ordinary young man had displayed Wood Release, flawlessly!
Most telling of all—this young man had performed no hand seals whatsoever!
That was something no experimental subject could ever manage.
This was a miraculous power only the true Senju bloodline could awaken!
“Who…
exactly are you!”
Tsunade took a step forward.
A terrifying chakra pressure instantly blanketed the whole alley.
The stone slabs on the ground cracked inch by inch beneath it.
Until this was cleared up, Tsunade would never let the young man leave today.
Seeing this, Chiba unhurriedly drew his chakra back.
The sapling in his palm withered at once, crumbling into a small pinch of ash.
“Senior.”
“My name is Senju Chiba.”
Under Tsunade’s gaze, Chiba hid nothing and gave his name.
The instant she heard the word “Senju,” Tsunade’s tense shoulders shuddered.
She bit down hard on her lower lip, the emotions in her eyes impossibly tangled.
Shock, doubt, anger—and an extremely faint trace of hope.
“That’s impossible…”
“The Senju Clan has existed in name only for years now.”
“If you truly carried the Senju bloodline and had awakened Wood Release—”
“how could that old man and Danzo ever let you run off to a place like this!”
Tsunade simply didn’t believe it.
Konoha’s higher-ups craved Wood Release to a pathological degree.
If a ninja in the Village had truly awakened it, they would spend the lives of the entire ANBU and Root if that was the price, and lock the boy away in the deepest heart of the Village to raise him as the ultimate weapon.
“Because they don’t know.”
“I only awakened this power a few days ago.”
“I understand better than you do, Senior—the moment this power sees the light of day—”
“what waits for me can only be a wretched end!”
“Either Danzo brainwashes me into a heartless killing machine for the Root.”
“Or Sarutobi Hiruzen puts me under house arrest as a bargaining chip to shore up his hold on the Hokage’s seat.”
“So I ran.”
“And in all the ninja world, the only one who can keep Konoha’s ANBU from dragging me back is you—the granddaughter of the First Hokage.”
“…”