Chapter 293: The Legendary Sucker
Due to Maito Dai's overwhelming enthusiasm, Ragnar found himself receiving hospitality that few in Konoha had ever experienced—a home-cooked meal at the Blue Beast's own table. The food was simple but hearty, prepared with the same relentless dedication Dai brought to everything in his life. The vegetables he had so carefully selected at the market had been transformed into a feast.
He met little Maito Gai, the future Emperor of Taijutsu, currently more interested in mashed vegetables than in the Eight Inner Gates. And he met someone the original story had never mentioned: Dai's wife.
She was a woman who wore a perpetual smile. Her clothes were plain. Her face was unremarkable—not beautiful in any conventional sense, but possessed of a warmth that drew the eye and held it. There was something about her presence that made the small house feel larger than it was. When she spoke, her voice was soft but carried an undercurrent of iron.
And Dai—boisterous, bombastic, youth-obsessed Maito Dai—was utterly deferential to her. The man who laughed at pain and embraced death like an old friend became remarkably well-behaved in his wife's presence. He did not shout about youth. He did not suggest impromptu push-up contests. He sat quietly, ate his vegetables, and occasionally cast his wife a look that was equal parts adoration and mild terror.
So even the Blue Beast can be tamed, Ragnar thought. And by a woman who barely comes up to his shoulder.
Little Gai clearly favored his father. The toddler kept reaching for Dai with sticky fingers, babbling incoherent demands that Dai interpreted with the fluency of long practice. When the boy managed to grab a handful of his father's bowl-cut hair, Dai's eyes actually welled with tears of pride.
Dai's wife, whose name Ragnar learned was Hanako, had clearly been briefed on his identity. She treated him with warm courtesy but none of the fawning reverence that others might have displayed. She seemed to know exactly what her husband wanted to say and frequently said it for him, cutting off Dai's stammering attempts at conversation with smooth, practiced ease.
"Please come visit us often," she said, pressing a container of leftovers into Ragnar's hands. "Dai speaks of you constantly. You're the only friend who ever saw his worth before the village did."
"Hana—" Dai's face flushed. "That's—I don't—"
"Hush. You've said it a hundred times. Let the boy eat."
Dai hushed.
Ragnar hid his smile behind a bite of rice.
When the meal was over and the plates cleared, Dai brought out a bottle of sake. He offered some to Ragnar almost on reflex, then caught himself.
"Ah. Right. You're still—Konoha regulations—minors can't—"
He poured himself a generous cup instead. And another. And another.
By the third round, the Blue Beast was thoroughly drunk. His cheeks were flushed. His speech was slurred. The flames of youth had been temporarily doused by the waters of alcohol.
"I don't... I don't have many friends," Dai admitted, staring into his empty cup. "The Hokage's support changed things. The money. The rank. But people... people still remember who I was. The Eternal Genin. The joke. You can't erase that with a promotion."
He looked up, and his eyes—glassy with drink but still sharp beneath the haze—found Ragnar's.
"You were the first. The first person who looked at me and saw something worth respecting. You were just a kid, but you saw it. You saw me." His voice cracked. "That meant something. Still means something."
Ragnar was silent for a moment. Then he reached across the table, took the sake bottle, and poured himself a small cup.
"Ye Chen-kun—"
"One cup won't hurt."
They drank together. The sake was cheap and burned going down, but the warmth that spread through Ragnar's chest had nothing to do with alcohol.
Later, they stood together in the courtyard, looking up at the night sky. The moon hung fat and silver overhead, spilling pale light across the grass where little Gai had been playing hours before. The toddler was asleep now, tucked into bed by his mother, dreaming whatever dreams future taijutsu gods dreamed.
"Time moves fast," Dai murmured. "Your youth... it's still burning bright. But mine... I don't know how much longer my flame will last."
Ragnar understood what he was really saying. The Eight Inner Gates. The final gate. The technique that could only be used once.
"It would be a waste," Dai said quietly, "to possess the Eight Gates and never open them. The Gate of Death... it's called forbidden. Taboo. But it's also the pinnacle. The highest peak of taijutsu. A technique that can make a nobody like me stand among gods."
He turned to Ragnar, and his expression was strange—peaceful, almost. The face of a man who had made peace with his own end.
"If I die, I die. To hear the truth in the morning and die in the evening... that's enough. Even if the bloom lasts only a moment, it will amaze the entire era."
Ragnar held his gaze. "Yes."
He did not say what he was thinking. He did not tell Dai that the Eight Gates, once fully opened, could not be closed. That death was not a possibility but a certainty. Dai already knew. He had always known.
Perhaps Ragnar understood him. Perhaps he didn't. Their paths were similar in some ways—both men who had started from nothing and climbed through sheer force of will. But in the end, they walked different roads. Dai's road led to a single, blinding moment of glory. Ragnar's led somewhere else entirely.
"If there's ever a chance," Dai said, his voice returning to its usual boisterous energy, "you should give little Gai some pointers! Train him! Make him strong!"
"For this meal," Ragnar said, "I will."
The Streets of Konoha — Night
It was late when Ragnar left the Maito household. The streets of Konoha, however, were far from empty. Lanterns blazed along the main thoroughfares. Couples strolled arm in arm. Shinobi returning from late missions nodded to each other in passing. The village never truly slept.
Ragnar walked with a slight buoyancy to his step—the lingering warmth of the sake, deliberately maintained. His Observation Haki remained active, sweeping the surroundings in a constant, passive net. No one would catch him off guard. No one ever did.
Because his return was not yet public knowledge, he moved through the crowds unrecognized. The people who passed him—the shopkeepers closing their stalls, the children running home for dinner, the young shinobi discussing their latest missions—had no idea that the man they worshipped stood among them. Konoha's Rakshasa. The Demon of the Battlefield. The subject of masks and songs and bedtime stories.
The real person stands before them, and they don't even know it.
It was almost funny. The way humans deified their heroes. They built legends so large that reality could never measure up.
His amusement was interrupted by a commotion ahead.
"Stop right there!"
"You think you can lose and just run away?!"
"There's no such thing as a free loss in this establishment!"
A crowd had gathered, blocking the street. Ragnar approached, and as he walked, the people around him found themselves gently but irresistibly pushed aside. An invisible force—gravity, bent ever so slightly to his will—parted the crowd like water around a stone. The bystanders blinked in confusion, glancing around to see what had moved them, but Ragnar was already past.
He reached the front of the crowd just in time to hear a familiar voice.
"I'm not running! I'm going to get the money!"
"Don't you know who I am?! I am Tsunade-hime of the Senju clan! One of the Legendary Sannin! I would never stoop to owing money!"
"Damn this luck! I can't win a single hand!"
Ragnar's expression flickered.
It can't be.
But it was.
Tsunade stood in the center of the crowd, her face flushed with a mixture of alcohol and indignation. She was facing down a group of casino employees—large, burly men who looked like they had been hired specifically for their ability to intimidate deadbeats. They were not intimidated. Tsunade could have flicked them all into the next district with one finger, and they knew it, but they also knew she wouldn't. She was a ninja. They were civilians. The rules were different.
"Lady Tsunade," the casino manager said, his voice carrying the weary patience of a man who had been through this many times before, "the Senju clan has already informed us. They will no longer be covering your gambling debts."
Tsunade's face cycled through several shades of mortification. The old geezers on the clan council had finally cut her off. After years of losing the family fortune one bet at a time, they had frozen her assets. She was officially, comprehensively, catastrophically broke.
So when she had lost yet another round, she had done the only logical thing.
She had run.
Unfortunately, the casino's intelligence network was apparently faster than her feet.
"I'll pay you back!" Tsunade insisted. "Next time I win, I'll settle everything. There's no need to be so stingy about it."
The casino manager sighed deeply. "But Lady Tsunade... you never win."
The words hung in the air like a death sentence.
It was true. Tsunade had lost so consistently, so monumentally, that the casinos had given her a nickname: the Legendary Sucker. The Big Fat Sheep. They didn't even want her to stop gambling. They wanted her to keep playing forever. The problem was that the Senju had finally run out of money to back her.
The manager was actually sympathetic. His establishment had made a fortune off Tsunade alone. If anything, they should be paying her a commission. But business was business, and debts had to be collected.
Tsunade scanned the crowd desperately, searching for a familiar face. Anyone. A friend. A colleague. A random passerby with a loose wallet. Her eyes swept over stranger after stranger, finding no one.
Then Ragnar stepped forward.
"Ye Chen!"
Tsunade's expression transformed from despair to predatory delight. She crossed the distance between them in a blur, grabbed Ragnar by the shoulders, and spoke the words he had known were coming.
"Lend me money."
Ragnar stared at her.
"..."
Could you be any more direct?
The casino manager sidled over, rubbing his hands together with the practiced deference of a man who smelled payment. "Young sir, are you offering to cover Lady Tsunade's debts? A most generous—"
Ragnar looked at Tsunade. Tsunade looked at Ragnar. Her grip on his shoulders tightened.
"I'll pay you back," she said. "With interest. Medical services. Free checkups for life. I'll even teach you medical ninjutsu. Just—please."
The mighty Sannin. The Slug Princess. The woman who could shatter mountains with her fists. Reduced to begging a teenager for gambling money.
Ragnar sighed.
This is going to be expensive.
(End of Chapter)
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