The world dissolved from the bloody, oppressive light of the barrier into a suffocating, silent darkness. The transition of the Sannin's high-speed travel was not a gentle one; it was a violent lurch through space that left Renjiro's stomach heaving and his senses reeling.
They reappeared with a soft thump of displaced air in a place that was deliberately non-descript: a small, dank cave hidden behind a waterfall, the only light coming from a single kunai stuck in the earth, its handle wrapped in a glowing seal that cast long, dancing shadows on the wet walls. The air was thick with the smell of damp rock and ozone.
The moment they stopped, Renjiro's legs gave out completely. He would have crumpled into a heap on the cold stone if not for the two pairs of hands still holding him upright.
The invigorating fire of battle and the desperate surge of Susanoo-fueled adrenaline vanished, leaving behind a hollow, aching shell. Every muscle screamed in protest, his chakra coils felt like scorched, brittle wires, and the phantom pain of the Raikage's spear through his gut returned with a vengeance.
But the most acute agony was centred in his eyes. It was a deep, throbbing, metaphysical pain, as if someone had driven hot pokers into his optic nerves. Twin trails of crimson blo still streaked his cheeks, fresh droplets welling from the whirling tomoe of his Mangekyo, which he lacked the strength, or perhaps the will, to deactivate.
Orochimaru released his arm, his movement fluid and silent. From within the voluminous sleeve of his robe, a pale, slender hand emerged, holding a small, dark pill between two fingers. It looked like a standard soldier pill, but something about its texture was subtly wrong—slightly too glossy, smelling faintly of something metallic and sweet.
"Here," Orochimaru's voice was a low voice, "It will accelerate your chakra recovery. You are operating on fumes, Renjiro-kun."
Renjiro's head, which had been hanging low, snapped up. "No," he said, "I'm fine."
Orochimaru's thin eyebrows rose a fraction, "The evidence of your eyes suggests otherwise. This is not a time for pride. Your chakra system is in shock. This will help you."
"I said I'm fine," Renjiro repeated, the words sharper, edged with a defiance that seemed to startle even Jiraiya, who was still supporting most of his weight.
Inside, Renjiro's mind was screaming. 'I'd rather willingly ingest a known poison than take anything from that crafty bastard. Who knows what else is in that thing?'
His reincarnated knowledge of Orochimaru's future monstrosities painted every one of the Sannin's actions with a layer of profound suspicion.
Suddenly, a memory, sharp and terrifying, cut through his pain and parley. "Wait," he gasped, "What about—?"
Jiraiya, who had been watching the exchange with a troubled, contemplative frown, cut him off. "Renjiro. Before anything else, report. What happened back there?"
Renjiro's mind, already a chaotic storm of pain, exhaustion, and suspicion, now had to shift into a different gear entirely: deception. He needed to buy time, to craft a story. He let out a shaky breath, leaning more heavily on Jiraiya.
"You'll have to be more specific, Jiraiya-sama," he deflected, buying precious seconds. "I'm not sure if you're asking about the primary mission with the Kiri team, or… the unexpected confrontation with the Raikage."
'How do I spin this?' he thought frantically. 'The truth is impossible. I can't mention Zetsu. That's a card I have to keep hidden, maybe my only one. I need a plausible reason for being separated, for drawing the Raikage's attention.'
Jiraiya's gaze was steady. "Start from the moment you made contact with the Kirigakure team. I want to know everything that led up to that fight. Leave nothing out."
Renjiro took another deep, shuddering breath. "The mission was successful. We were leaving Miyahira and I… I sensed something. A loose end. I thought it was my duty to investigate, to ensure our escape route was completely clean. I told the Kiri team to proceed, that I would catch up."
The lie flowed smoothly, layered with just enough truth to be believable. "I tracked it. And then… he found me. The Raikage. "
He left it there, letting the implication hang—that the Raikage's presence was a calculated ambush, not a consequence of his own actions.
Orochimaru and Jiraiya reacted almost in unison. Their brows furrowed, not in anger, but in sharp, analytical confusion. It was Orochimaru who spoke, his voice laced with a probing, scientific curiosity.
"Let me clarify. You separated from the Kiri group… and mere minutes later, you came across the Third Raikage?"
The phrasing clicked in Renjiro's addled brain. 'Came across.' Not 'were attacked by.' A cold dread, separate from his physical state, washed over him.
"You… you found them?" Renjiro asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Jiraiya's grip on his arm tightened slightly, a gesture of grim solidarity. "We intercepted their retreat path. They were already gone. No signs of a prolonged struggle. It was… efficient."
A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the cave, broken only by the distant, muffled roar of the waterfall outside. The fate of the Kiri team hung in the air, a unspoken testament to the Raikage's power and the brutal reality of their world.
It was Orochimaru who shattered the silence, his golden eyes gleaming with an avaricious curiosity that was far more frightening than any concern.
"An intriguing possibility, but let us return to the more… pressing matter. Your dojutsu. When did you awaken this power?"
The question was a needle, aimed directly at his most vulnerable secret. Renjiro's entire body went rigid. A surge of defensive anger, white-hot and desperate, cut through his fatigue.
"That's not important right now!" he snapped, his voice gaining a strength it didn't have a moment before. He deliberately shifted his gaze to Jiraiya, steering the conversation away.
"Why did you seal him? We had him! With the three of us, we could have ended him!"
Jiraiya sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of the entire war. He exchanged a brief, loaded glance with Orochimaru, a silent communication between two men who understood the ugly mechanics of conflict in a way Renjiro was only beginning to grasp.
"Even if we could have, Renjiro, and that's a very, very big 'if', we shouldn't have," Jiraiya began, his voice taking on a lecturing tone, the tone of a man explaining a harsh truth to a bright but naive student.
"The war hasn't reached that point. The death of a Kage… it's not a battle victory. It's an escalation that shatters the board. It would force every other village to respond in kind. It would unleash a level of total war the world hasn't seen since the First Great War."
Renjiro's face was a mask of frustration. "What point? What is the point we're waiting for?!"
Orochimaru answered this time, his voice cold, logical, and utterly devoid of emotion. "The point, my impatient young friend, is to not force the Raikage's hand in a way that gives all the other Kages a unified reason to move. Our mission was intelligence and disruption, not regicide. Killing him, even if it were within our capabilities—which, against the Third in a rage, is a debatable premise—would be counterproductive to Konoha's broader strategy."
Jiraiya nodded grimly. "Our priority, once we realised the Raikage had moved, was to find you and save you. We expected him to show his hand, not for you to… well… to force him to show his entire arm."
The logic was sound. It was strategic, calculated, and politically astute. And to Renjiro, in that moment, it was the most hollow, enraging thing he had ever heard.
He looked between them, his blood-streaked face a canvas of disbelief that slowly hardened into something colder. A bitter, humourless laugh escaped his lips.
"The Raikage's son," he began, "and the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki, almost killed my aunt. They did kill dozens of Konoha shinobi back in the no-man's-land. And when I had a chance to make them pay, I was ordered to stand down. For the 'bigger picture'." He paused, letting the hypocrisy hang in the air, thick and foul.
"Now, the Raikage himself ambushes me, nearly kills me, and I'm realising… if I hadn't been so spent, if I had tried to finish him myself, you wouldn't have helped me. You would have stopped me."
He looked from Jiraiya's conflicted face to Orochimaru's impassive one. The final piece of his idealism crumbled away. All the grand speeches about protecting the Will of Fire, about the village being a family, seemed to shrivel into meaningless platitudes in the face of this cold, realpolitik.
His expression became utterly unreadable, a flat, emotionless mask that was more unsettling than any outburst of anger could have been. The light from the glowing kunai seal reflected in his blood-red eyes, making them look like distant, dying stars.
"Sometimes," he said, his voice so quiet it was almost swallowed by the waterfall's rumble, "I feel like this war isn't actually a battle of ideas or nations. It's just some weird, choreographed play. And we're all just following a script written with supposed logic that no one ever seems to read."
Without another word, without waiting for a response, he shrugged off Jiraiya's supporting arm. He swayed for a moment, his body protesting the movement, but he did not fall. Turning his back on two of the most powerful shinobi in Konoha, he walked away slowly.