At the Konoha front-line headquarters in the Land of Rain.
Inside a central command tent, Tsunade bolted upright. Her breath came in sharp, ragged gasps, her chest heaving with enough force that her silhouette—even suppressed by a standard shinobi flak jacket—would have drawn any observer's eye.
She'd had a nightmare.
In the dream, her brother Nawaki and his squad had blundered into an enemy paper bomb trap. The carnage was absolute; she had been forced to identify his remains solely by the necklace she had gifted him.
"Hah..."
Finally managing to steady her heart rate, Tsunade glanced toward the tent flap. Outside, the world was a blur of grey mist and drizzle, but the sky was indeed beginning to lighten.
Shaken by the dream and unable to return to sleep, Tsunade rose from her cot. She stepped out of the tent and into the downpour, letting the rain—which felt as though it would never cease—soak into her skin.
She was one of the legendary Sannin, an idol worshipped by countless Konoha shinobi, but at her core, she was still human. She was a woman who worried, who feared, and who suffered through nightmares. She let the cold rain pelt her head and face, a form of self-inflicted shock meant to ground her, yet the chill in her heart refused to thaw.
An irrepressible sense of dread bubbled up in her chest. The gruesome image of Nawaki from her nightmare flickered behind her eyes again and again, a reel of horror she couldn't switch off.
According to the schedule, Nawaki should have arrived yesterday afternoon.
Her kind, sunny, eternally optimistic brother—a boy who dreamed of becoming Hokage and had graduated less than a year ago—was on his very first mission outside the village. Just what had happened to him in this meat grinder of a war?
"Hatani... are you sure this will actually work? Won't the enemy see through it?"
Nawaki looked at the boy standing before him and felt a visceral wave of revulsion. Namikaze Hatani was currently caked from head to toe in yellowish-brown sludge, looking for all the world like a mud-monkey. Nawaki, who had only just managed to wash the filth off his own face, stared in disbelief.
"Heh. Do you really think the enemy would believe that Nawaki Senju—one of the last scions of the glorious Senju Clan—would ever stoop to this? That he'd completely abandon his image and disregard the pride of his clan just to save his skin?"
Hatani had already discarded his flak jacket. He was currently using a shuriken to shred his clothes into rags before taking a deliberate roll in a muddy puddle. As he spoke, he gathered his remaining shuriken, wire, and other ninja tools, casually tossing them into the distant brush.
Nawaki watched in stunned silence for a long time before finally giving a reluctant, helpless shake of his head.
"But... we're throwing away all our tools. If we run into the enemy, we won't even have a chance to go down fighting."
Accepting the disguise was one thing, but Nawaki couldn't wrap his head around Hatani's decision to throw away their shuriken, kunai, wire, and even their precious paper bombs. To him, even if they were going undercover, they should at least keep their weapons. If they were compromised, they could at least make a final stand.
To Nawaki, Hatani's approach was basically self-mutilation. How was this any different from a coward shouting "I surrender" before the battle even began?
His brow furrowed even deeper, anger flashing in his eyes, when he saw Hatani unfasten his forehead protector—the very symbol of his identity as a Konoha shinobi—and toss it into the rain without a second thought.
"To gain something, you must be willing to give something up," Hatani said, fully prepared for the pushback.
Having finished his preparations, Hatani walked over to a puddle of relatively clear water to inspect his handiwork. Satisfied with his transformation into a miserable refugee, he began the next phase of his "indoctrination" plan.
"If we don't get rid of every trace of being a ninja, how are we supposed to convince those sharp-eyed Suna scouts that we're just two orphans from the Land of Rain? Two kids who lost their homes, wandering aimlessly until the war eventually claims them?"
"But that's a Konoha headband!" Nawaki barked, unable to keep his voice down.
He couldn't fathom Hatani's casual disregard for the protector. This was the mark of a shinobi that countless people dreamed of wearing. It was a symbol of their home, something they were supposed to protect with their very lives!
This time, Hatani didn't answer immediately. Instead, he turned and fixed Nawaki with a look—a look one might give a particularly slow-witted child.
"I didn't realize," Hatani said eventually, shaking his head with a heavy sigh, "that you thought so little of Konoha. I didn't realize our lives were so cheap to you."
"What?!"
Nawaki was reaching his breaking point. How dare this guy flip the script? He was the one throwing the headband away like trash, yet he was accusing Nawaki of devaluing the village?
"Let me ask you this: What is Konoha? And what is a ninja?" Hatani asked, cutting him off before he could explode.
As the grandson of Hashirama Senju, Nawaki didn't even have to think. "Konoha is the village my grandfather founded based on his ideals! It was built to shield orphans who lost their families, to protect civilians who can't protect themselves, and to end the chaos of the Warring States period so people could live without the shadow of war!"
He stood tall, his voice ringing with conviction. "And a Konoha ninja is someone who follows their Way of the Ninja to protect that village, its children, and its people. We ensure they never have to suffer the horrors of war again!"
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Hatani gave him a mocking, slow round of applause.
"Beautifully said. Sounds just like a pile of—" Hatani caught himself, clearing his throat to hide his near-slip into profanity. He straightened his face and looked Nawaki in the eye. "Ahem! Right. You're absolutely correct."
"Then why...?" Nawaki trailed off, looking lost. Hatani was playing him like a fiddle, and he couldn't find the rhythm.
"If you understand that so clearly, then answer me this: if we throw away the lives of two young ninja—two people who are supposed to grow up and fight for the village—just to save two pieces of tin and fabric, isn't that the definition of 'cheap'?"
Hatani didn't give him room to breathe. He stepped into Nawaki's space, his gaze piercing.
"Is a headband worth more than the future of the village?"
"I... well..."
Nawaki was a child; he was no match for a man with the soul of a modern adult. He felt like something was fundamentally wrong with Hatani's logic, but for the life of him, he couldn't pinpoint the flaw.
"The protector is just a symbol," Hatani said, his voice dropping to a softer, more persuasive register. "It's important, sure. But the ninja wearing it is what actually matters."
He reached out and unfastened Nawaki's headband for him, placing the metal plate solemnly into the boy's mud-stained hands.
"As long as you and I make it to the base camp, we can put these headbands back on. We will live to fight another day. But if we die because we were too stubborn to hide who we are, then these headbands lose their meaning forever."
Hatani gripped Nawaki's shoulder, his expression intensely serious.
"Remember this: It is the ninja who gives value to the headband, not the headband that gives value to the ninja."
"If you throw your life away because you refuse to let go of a symbol, you're like a man at a market who sees a beautiful box containing a priceless pearl. You're so enamored with the box that you buy it, only to throw the pearl away and keep the wooden case."
"People—ninja—are the most important resource a village has. Do you understand?"
Hatani's "Human-Centric" rhetoric hit Nawaki like a rapid-fire barrage.
"I... I understand!"
The confusion in Nawaki's eyes vanished, replaced by the fervor of someone who had just seen a new light. He looked at Hatani and nodded firmly. Then, with a decisive grunt, he turned and hurled his headband deep into the misty rain.