The afterglow of the setting sun washed the courtyard of the old Senju compound in shades of amber and crimson, stretching the eaves' shadows long across the ground. When Roshi pushed open the wooden gate, he found Grandma Momoka with her back to him, quietly trimming a potted pine. The soft snip-snip of her scissors carried clearly in the hushed air.
"Grandma, I'm back." Roshi's voice broke the stillness.
She didn't turn. Only a faint nod, almost imperceptible, acknowledged his arrival.
"How was the assessment?" Her tone was flat, stripped of warmth or surprise.
"I passed. Special Jōnin qualification."
"Hmm."
The silence stretched. Roshi shifted slightly, lowering his voice.
"The examiners were two ANBU. One… silver-haired, strong in Lightning Release and taijutsu. The other…" His gaze flickered. "…used Wood Release."
At that, Grandma Momoka's hands froze mid-motion. She laid the scissors down, turned, and fixed Roshi with a gaze suddenly sharp as steel. Her voice cut through the stillness:
"You countered with Wood Release?"
"No." Roshi shook his head firmly, meeting her piercing stare. "I relied only on ordinary ninjutsu."
The courtyard fell quiet again, broken only by the rustle of leaves in the evening breeze. After a long pause, a dry scoff escaped her lips.
"Hiruzen… oh, Hiruzen. You've grown so old."
Roshi's eyes narrowed. "Grandma… you already knew of this Wood Release shinobi?"
"Mm." She didn't deny it. Her hand returned to the scissors, but instead of resuming her pruning, her fingers absently stroked the cold metal handle.
"That child's ANBU codename is Tenzo. Long before that, in Danzo's Root, he was called Kinoe." Her voice lowered, heavy with scorn. "A defective creation of Danzo and Orochimaru… built upon a mountain of corpses. He survived, yes, and he can force trees to grow—but he is a pale shadow of Lord Hashirama… and of you." Her gaze flicked to Roshi, weighted with meanings he could not yet parse. "He is something… different."
Roshi's pupils contracted. Orochimaru. Danzo. The Wood Release experiments. Kinoe… Tenzo. Grandma knew these names too well.
"You…" His voice dropped, taut with disbelief. "…you were involved?"
The scissors halted. Slowly, Momoka raised her eyes, her gaze like a honed blade, sinking deep into his. This scrutiny was sharper than before, a silent test of his composure. The air beneath the veranda seemed to harden, the evening wind skirting around the tension rather than dispersing it.
At last, she spoke, her words slow, deliberate, and heavy.
"In the earliest Hashirama cell implantation trials, the volunteers were our own—loyal, capable, trustworthy. Us. But the toll was too great for the village to bear, and so the project was halted. Officially."
Her eyes grew colder.
"But Konoha still craved a weapon to control the Tailed Beasts. If their own couldn't be sacrificed, then outsiders were chosen. Danzo and Orochimaru were given silent permission to continue. And because these were Hashirama's cells… the Senju could never be fully absent."
Each word fell like a hammer blow on Roshi's chest, stripping away the gilded surface of Konoha to expose the rot festering beneath.
Yet to her quiet astonishment, Roshi's expression barely shifted. His brows furrowed, his gaze turned inward with thought, but the storm of emotion she expected never came. Instead, he met her revelations with an almost unnerving calm—cold, and steady.
There was no anger, no wounded disappointment—only a strange serenity, as though Roshi had long anticipated this revelation and was calmly digesting it now.
Momoka's heart stirred. Something about this reaction was wrong. Too composed.
A fourteen-year-old boy, hearing such dark truths for the first time—where was the outrage? The shock? Instead, his profile remained calm in the fading light. The thought that had haunted her since his grave injury—that she wished only for him to live safely—rose once again, blotting out her tangled emotions.
"You…" Her voice carried the faintest trace of probing, but her tone softened without her noticing, tinged with an elder's concern. "Don't you feel angry… at what the Village has done? Don't you feel… betrayed?" Her words pressed harder.
Roshi was quiet for a moment. His gaze drifted past her, settling on the moss-covered stone lantern in the corner of the courtyard. Bathed in twilight, the dark green clinging stubbornly to its surface seemed almost defiant in its quiet endurance.
"An individual's moral code cannot restrain a vast collective that survives on power," Roshi finally said, his voice steady. "Nor can it be used to judge a leader forced to choose in a cruel reality." He paused, his eyes returning to hers, calm yet impossibly deep. "Survival and development are the truest correctness. Whether something is 'dirty' depends on what it's meant to achieve… and whether there was ever a cleaner choice to begin with."
"Private morality can neither bind the beast that is the collective, nor serve as the sole measure for a leader wading through the mire."
The words fell like stones into still water, sending ripples through Momoka's long-settled heart.
The ruthless clarity, the pragmatic wisdom—they struck her harder than she cared to admit. For the first time, she felt with startling certainty that this boy she had raised had… changed.
No, more than changed. Reborn.
That composure, that insight into the world's harsh machinery, far outstripped his years. A flicker of surprise, laced with an emotion she could not name, passed through her chest.
"…The Village does need power to balance the Tailed Beasts," Roshi continued.
"But the Uchiha's Sharingan—doesn't it also have the ability to control them? If it's truly about the greater good, wouldn't they…"
"Uchiha?"
Her sharp laugh cut him off. She looked at him as though he had said something naïve, almost childish.
"In all fifty-four years since Konoha's founding, the Sharingan has controlled a Tailed Beast exactly twice." Her eyes hardened. "The first was Uchiha Madara—when he attacked the Village with the Nine-Tails. The second was just three years ago—the Nine-Tails' rampage."
Her voice rose, edged with scorn.
"The Sharingan once again bound the Nine-Tails, unleashing it upon the Village! That night cost us the Fourth Hokage, dozens of Jōnin, hundreds of Chūnin and Genin—sacrificed just to restrain the beast's fury!"
Her hand clenched faintly over the scissors.
"This so-called 'ability to control Tailed Beasts,' in the Uchiha's hands, is nothing but a blade hanging above the Village's throat, ready to fall at any moment."
Roshi said nothing. There was no counterargument—only the weight of blood and truth.
Even without Madara, the scars of the Nine-Tails' rampage three years ago had yet to fade.
"…Do I need to report back an answer to the Hokage's… probe?" Roshi shifted the conversation, his voice returning to its unsettling calm, as though the heavy words about the Uchiha had left no mark on him.
Momoka studied him in silence. Her sharp gaze searched for cracks in his composure, for the thoughts he would not say aloud. But all she found was stillness.
At last, her sigh escaped, heavy with exhaustion yet tinged with reluctant understanding.
"…So be it." She waved her hand, as though brushing away dust that wasn't there. "This old woman will make the arrangements."