The scream cut through the heavy gray fog of the border town like a kunai hitting bone.
Tsunade moved before she thought. Her body, conditioned by two wars and a lifetime of loss, reacted faster than her hungover brain. She shattered the wooden door frame of the inn, splintering rot and paint, and sprinted into the mud.
Shizune.
The name hammered in her chest. Dan's niece. The last thing she had left to lose.
She reached the alley behind the inn in three seconds flat, chakra flooding her limbs, ready to crush a skull. Ready to kill whatever missing-nin or bandit had dared to touch the girl.
She skidded to a halt. Mud splashed up her legs.
There were no bandits. There were no enemy shinobi.
There was just a feral dog, scrambling over a wooden fence with blood on its muzzle, fleeing the sudden killing intent flooding the alley.
And there was Shizune, six years old and trembling, kneeling in the muck over a small, pink lump.
"No," Shizune was sobbing, her hands hovering, terrified to touch. "No, no, please..."
Tsunade's shoulders dropped. The adrenaline soured instantly into irritation, then spiraled down into a cold, familiar numbness.
It was the pig. That stupid runt of a piglet Shizune had insisted on keeping three towns back because it was too small to be sold for meat.
Tsunade walked over, her sandals sinking into the wet earth. The smell of rain and old salt hung in the air—the scent of a land that chewed things up and spat them out.
She looked down.
The piglet was a mess. The dog had torn its flank open. It was breathing in ragged, wet hitches. The light was fading from its small, dark eyes.
It's done, Tsunade thought, the assessment clinical and cold. The lung is punctured. Arterial bleed. It's livestock. It happens.
"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune looked up. Her face was streaked with mud and tears. "Help her! Please! You have to fix her!"
Tsunade looked away. She stared at the gray sky. "It's nature, Shizune. Weak things die. That's how the world works."
"But she's hurting!"
"It'll be over in a minute."
Why fight it? Why drag it out? Everything ends. Nawaki ended. Dan ended. The dream ended. This was just a pig in the mud, returning to the soil it came from. It was better to let it go than to pretend you could stop the rot.
"Please!" Shizune wailed. Her voice cracked, high and desperate.
And that sound shattered Tsunade's defenses.
She looked back down. She didn't see Shizune. For a split second, the overlay of memory was so strong it induced vertigo. She saw a twelve-year-old boy in a green scarf, grinning about a necklace. She saw a man with pale hair reaching for her hand as the light left his eyes.
She saw the look on Shizune's face—the absolute, crushing realization that nobody is coming to save what you love.
Tsunade's breath hitched.
If someone had been there, a traitorous voice whispered in her ear. If someone powerful enough... someone who could deny the rules...
If a Sannin had been there for Nawaki. If the Slug Princess had been there for Dan.
They weren't there.
But I am here.
The thought made her angry. It was a furious, irrational rejection of the universe's rules.
"Stop crying," Tsunade snapped.
Shizune choked on a sob, freezing.
"I said move."
Tsunade dropped to her knees in the mud. She ignored the blood—she forced her eyes to unfocus, seeing only the chakra network, the fading spark of life. It was dim, flickering like a candle in a gale.
She didn't use the gentle, green diagnostic glow of a field medic. She didn't have the patience for gentleness.
She slammed her hands onto the piglet's side.
"Live, godammit" she snarled.
She didn't just repair; she forced. She summoned a flood of Yang chakra, the heavy, dense power of physical vitality, and drove it into the animal's small body. It was reckless. It was Sannin-level power meant to regenerate human organs, pouring into a vessel meant for bacon.
The air around them grew heavy. The mud beneath the pig dried and cracked as the energy surged.
Under her palms, she felt the biology shift. The cells didn't just knit; they scrambled to adapt to the massive influx of power. Muscle fibers thickened. Bone density tripled to withstand the pressure. The "Ox" aspect of the creature—that ancient, stubborn capacity for labor and survival—latched onto the chakra and drank it down.
It was a grounding. A tethering. She was nailing this tiny soul to the earth with a hammer made of pure will.
The wound closed in seconds. The ragged breathing smoothed out, becoming deep and strong, almost rhythmic—like the ocean, like the earth itself.
The glow faded.
Tsunade sat back, panting slightly. Her hands were shaking.
The piglet blinked. It sat up. It didn't wobble. It moved with a strange, new solidity, its center of gravity lower, its presence heavier. It looked at its own flank, then up at Tsunade.
"OOOINK!?!" it squealed, a sound that was less of a farm animal noise and more of a confused demand for an explanation.
Tsunade grabbed the pig by the scruff of its neck. It felt solid. Dense. Like holding a brick wrapped in velvet.
"Here," Tsunade said, her voice rough.
She tossed the pig through the air.
Shizune scrambled, arms flailing, and caught the animal against her chest. Tonton let out a grunt of indignity but settled immediately, burying her snout into Shizune's shirt.
Shizune looked at Tsunade. Her eyes were wide, shimmering with a worshipful awe that Tsunade couldn't stand.
"Tsunade-sama..."
"Don't," Tsunade cut her off. She stood up, turning her back on the girl. "It's just a pig, Shizune. Don't make it weird."
She started walking back toward the inn, her stride long and fast. She needed a drink. She needed the noise of a tavern to drown out the memory of Dan's face.
She felt a tear track hot and humiliating down her cheek. She swiped it away angrily before Shizune could see.
Behind her, she heard Shizune crying again, but this time it was soft. And mixed in with the sobs was a low, steady grunting—a stubborn, rhythmic sound of something that had looked death in the face and refused to blink.