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Chapter 24 — Fractured Pride
The medical tent smelled of disinfectant and crushed herbs. Outside, refugees moved like ghosts through the frozen dusk; inside, Jiraiya sat on the edge of his cot and listened to the medic with a silence so deep it swallowed the medic's words.
"We did everything we could," the medic repeated, voice gentle but firm. "You were in the Dead Silence field too long. Your lower limbs—both legs—suffered irreversible necrosis. Amputation was the only way to save your life."
Jiraiya's face went blank. For a long, stunned moment he said nothing; then his hands, trembling, reached for the sheet and peeled it back.
What met his fingertips were bandaged stumps below the knees. The sight hit him like a physical blow — a loss so absolute it made even breath a labor.
"Impossible," he whispered. "This—this has to be a genjutsu. Some illusion. Raizen—his eyes—he did nothing like this. I can break it. I will break it."
The medic did not answer. He had seen the look before: pride cutting into panic, the same look on too many battlefield faces. He placed a cool hand on Jiraiya's shoulder.
"Jiraiya-sama," he said softly, "you're awake now. We're going to help you. But you must understand — the damage is real."
Words buckled beneath Jiraiya's disbelief. He tried to stand; his knees wobbled and refused him. The pain — when it came — was sharp but secondary. Far worse was the way his identity, the one he had carried for decades, felt suddenly hollow.
He slid back onto the cot and laughed, a sound that scraped. "A trick. This is a trick. They'll wake me, and the legs will be there. I taught tsunade and Hiruzen, I taught them to stand — I am Jiraiya of the Sannin. I cannot be... a cripple."
Tears blurred the edges of his conviction. He had always been brash, irreverent, the loud tide that pushed back the dark. Now the tide receded; he was left with a bare coastline.
The medic hesitated, then cleared his throat. "There's more," he said. "Because the tissue was so badly damaged, and because of the risk of infection, some additional surgery was necessary. We preserved what we could. You're alive because of those decisions."
Jiraiya's laugh broke. He pressed his palms hard against his face until he tasted salt. The tent spun and narrowed to the single point of his shock.
Outside the flap, boots approached. The fabric parted and Nara Shikaku entered, breath knotted with the cold. He stopped when he saw Jiraiya's face.
"Master Jiraiya," he said, voice small, "we thought we were going to lose you. We thought—"
Jiraiya turned to him, eyes rimmed red. The old strategist's face, lined and tired, did nothing to comfort.
"Tell me," Jiraiya said. The words were brittle. "Tell me who… who dragged me out?"
Shikaku's answer was a litany of names that Jiraiya could not attach to faces anymore — brave hands that had tugged him into the open, men and women who had paid with their lives because he had been too stubborn to obey caution.
Guilt, raw and immediate, poured into Jiraiya like ice. He had always believed himself a shield for Konoha — its Will of Fire embodied in a loud, obstinate man. Those who had saved him had done so because he was Jiraiya. And now, he was half of the man he once was.
He tried to focus elsewhere — to stoke the coals of stubbornness that had kept him going through every scrape and eclipse. He reached inward, searching for chakra. Sage Mode had been his anchor; if he could slip into it, perhaps he could test the limits of this darkness that had taken so much.
The effort to gather even the smallest, comforting ember of chakra left him dizzy. The field had bled him, and there were limits to how much the body could give. He felt the absence of strength in ways more intimate than missing limbs: a hollowness under his ribs where confidence used to sit.
It was then a thin, unexpected sound — a small clink against canvas — made both men turn. A small object had fallen near the tent flap and skittered across the dirt. Someone stepped in and picked it up: Orochimaru, pale-faced and composed, holding something small between two long fingers.
He held up what he had found for Jiraiya to see: a tooth, darkened at the root, a reminder of the earlier, chaotic panic — the way Jiraiya's face had banged against the canvas in a seizure, scattering blood and bark like a broken drum.
The room smelled of iron for a second as Jiraiya swallowed. He realized his mouth hurt; the medic's gloved hands moved to check his teeth. One tooth was indeed missing — likely dislodged in the convulsion. It was a small, trivial thing by many measures, but in that quiet, it felt like another tiny servitude to the night: pieces, falling away.
Orochimaru's eyes bored into Jiraiya, inscrutable. "You survived," he said simply. "That was the only useful outcome tonight."
Jiraiya's laugh this time was not wild; it was a raw exhale. "Useful," he echoed. "I'm… alive. At what cost?"
Shikaku stepped forward. "Master Jiraiya, we need you. Konoha needs you. But we also need to be honest — things have changed. The Will of Fire will not vanish because one man is wounded. We must reshape what we can."
The words were meant to bolster. They landed like cold hands on a fevered brow. Jiraiya nodded once, slowly, the motion a small, stubborn defiance.
"Then teach me another way to fight," he said. "Show me how to be more than a pair of legs and a loud mouth. If I cannot stand as before, I will still stand where I am needed."
There was silence for a breath. In that pause, the tent seemed to hold the whole ragged village's breath — loss, grief, a fragile thread of resolve.
Outside, the Dead Silence field still hung over Konoha like an unlit moon. Uchiha Raizen — the name had been whispered like a wound — waited in the sky, drinker of energy, widening his domain with the patient hunger of a thing that had found appetite.
Inside the tent, Jiraiya tasted that hunger and understood its shape. He had failed once, but perhaps failure could be entered and reshaped. He closed his eyes.
"Bring me a map," he murmured. "Bring me paper and ink. If I can't go to the field, I will send my words into it. If I can't walk, I will teach. If I can't shout from the front, I will shout from here. I will not let the Will of Fire die because I am broken."
Shikaku's face, carved by decades of counsel and sorrow, softened. He nodded and barked orders to a young medic, who saluted and left at a run.
Orochimaru watched quietly as the doctor rebandaged the stumps and prepared narcotics. He tucked the tooth into the fold of his robe and turned to go, but not before giving Jiraiya a single, unreadable look.
"Survive," he said. "Not for yourself. For what you still can do."
Jiraiya's mouth curled into something like a smile — small, stubborn, alive. It was not the triumphant grin he'd worn in his youth, but it was honest.
Outside the tent, the world kept unraveling. Inside, a fallen legend began the slow, jagged work of becoming something new.