Chapter 217: Second Entry into the Land of Rain
The next morning.
Ritsu finished breakfast at home and arrived at the Hokage building right on schedule, same as always. The walk had been unremarkable. But when he stepped into the Hokage's office, there was a face he hadn't seen in quite a while.
"Jiraiya-senpai. When did you get back?"
"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Jiraiya looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with travel. "I really don't think when I came back is the important question here."
Ritsu almost laughed. In the roughly twenty minutes since Jiraiya had apparently arrived, Akimichi Torikaze, Inuzuka Jaw, Uchiha Fugaku, Nara Shikaku, and Uchiha Shisui had all apparently asked the exact same thing. By the time Ritsu walked through the door, Jiraiya had clearly been worn down to his last nerve on the subject.
"Fair enough, the timing isn't really what matters." Ritsu settled into a seat on the couch beside Hiruko, who had saved him a spot. "But you're a senior figure around here, Jiraiya-senpai. When people haven't seen you in a while and you suddenly show up, greeting you with something is only polite. That just happened to be the thing everyone thought of."
"So you all coordinated to ask the same question and drive me insane?"
"Not coordinated exactly. You've just been gone long enough that it's the natural first thing."
Jiraiya made a sound of deep, theatrical suffering and said nothing more.
"Ahem."
Minato cleared his throat and the room settled.
Ritsu swallowed whatever he'd been about to add and directed his attention forward.
Minato looked around the room. "Now that everyone's here, before we begin, there's one change to the operation I need to address. Jiraiya-sensei will be joining us. He has a prior connection to the Rinnegan's holder, which opens a possibility we hadn't previously considered. Our first approach will be diplomatic. Jiraiya-sensei will attempt to persuade our target to stand down peacefully. Armed force is the contingency, not the opening move."
"If the persuasion succeeds, we'll need to think carefully about how to handle the other four villages, who may not accept a peaceful resolution and could look for any excuse to act on their own. If persuasion fails, we proceed as originally planned."
The faces around the room shifted. People looked at each other. The unspoken version of the question was loud.
They had all been told this target was a complete unknown. So how did Jiraiya have a personal connection to the person holding what was supposedly the most powerful visual technique in existence?
Ritsu adjusted his expression to match Hiruko's, settling into the same politely surprised look his teacher was wearing.
Akimichi Torikaze, who had never developed much of a filter, was the first to say it out loud. "Hokage-sama, when you say Jiraiya knows the Rinnegan holder personally, how exactly does that work? If he's known the location this whole time, why wasn't the Rinnegan recovered sooner?"
Nara Shikaku winced slightly. He had long since accepted that Torikaze said what everyone else was thinking. It saved time, even when it was awkward.
Minato didn't look bothered by it. The question was unavoidable. Anyone with a functioning brain was going to wonder, and pretending otherwise would only make the gap in the story more obvious.
"The details are complicated," he said. "The short version is that the Rinnegan holder is a former student of Jiraiya-sensei's, someone who received his training during the Second Shinobi World War, in the Land of Rain. How exactly things reached this point is a long conversation that doesn't need to happen right now. A lot of time has passed and the circumstances were difficult." He paused and said each word carefully. "So let's not spend energy on things that are already behind us. What we need to focus on is what's ahead."
His tone was not angry, but the boundary it drew was unmistakable. Nobody was going to use this as ammunition against Jiraiya. That door was closed.
Nobody said anything.
Jiraiya's expression stayed neutral.
The silence stretched for a moment. Then Ritsu stepped into it.
"Either way, having Jiraiya-senpai's information means we can say with much greater confidence that the Rinnegan holder is in the Land of Rain. That narrows things down considerably."
"Ritsu's right." Hiruko nodded in agreement, clearly relieved to have the topic shifted. "And if we have that much more certainty about the location, Hokage-sama, should we consider bringing additional personnel? More hands could help."
He didn't say it directly, but his meaning was clear. He didn't think Jiraiya's attempt at peaceful persuasion was going to succeed.
Jiraiya shot him a look that could have curdled milk.
Minato shook his head. "More personnel won't be necessary. With myself, Jiraiya-sensei, the Hyuga Clan Head, Shisui, and the medical specialist the medical corps recommended, Yakushi Nono, we're more than capable."
Yakushi Nono.
The name caught Ritsu off guard for just a second before he placed it. Right. After Sarutobi Hiruzen's removal from power, a lot of lives had quietly shifted onto different tracks. In the original timeline, Nono and her adopted son Kabuto had been manipulated and eventually destroyed by Shimura Danzo and Orochimaru, the two grinding each other down through a series of forced betrayals. But Danzo was dead. Root had been absorbed into Konoha's proper structure under Minato's authority. The gears that had crushed Nono in that other life were no longer turning.
So here she was. A medical specialist by merit rather than by tragedy.
Minato continued. "I received urgent intelligence from Iwagakure this morning. Three nights ago, Missing-nin Anonymous attacked the village. Roughly one-sixth of Iwagakure was destroyed in the fighting."
The room went quiet in a different way.
"Iwagakure now?" Inuzuka Jaw's brow furrowed deeply.
Akimichi Torikaze muttered under his breath. "Sunagakure first, now Iwagakure. This bastard isn't going to stop."
Uchiha Fugaku's jaw tightened. His feelings were complicated in a way that didn't fit neatly into anger. Missing-nin Anonymous was an Uchiha, almost certainly, though the face behind the act remained unconfirmed. That uncertainty didn't make the reality any easier to sit with. The Uchiha clan's position in the village had never been better than it was right now under Minato's leadership, and one rogue clansman operating in the dark could unravel everything.
"We have to find a way to end him," Fugaku said through his teeth.
Minato let the moment land before continuing. "Which is exactly why strong defenses at home are non-negotiable. Sunagakure and Iwagakure both learned that lesson the hard way. I need everyone remaining here to stay sharp and to contact me immediately if anything develops."
"We won't slip." Hiruko's voice carried the weight of someone who understood exactly what the responsibility meant. With Minato gone, he would be the highest authority in the village. He had already started feeling the full mass of that before Minato even left the building.
Minato scanned the room one last time. "Any other questions before we move out?"
Heads shook around the room.
"Then we're going." He turned to Hiruko. "The village is in your hands."
He stood, and Jiraiya and Ritsu rose with him. They made their way out of the office and up to the roof, where Uchiha Shisui and Yakushi Nono were already waiting. Everyone had come along to see them off, crowding the rooftop with quiet attention.
Minato exchanged a few brief words with Shisui and Nono, confirming readiness.
Then the operation began.
He used the Flying Thunder God Technique to transport the group in batches, jumping them through space to a desolate stretch of highland deep inside the Land of Rain, a spot so remote it barely counted as a location. They had passed through this area before, and Minato had left his coordinates there on the previous visit. The kunai marker had been waiting.
"Stay here, Sensei, Clan Head. I'll go back for the others."
Minato's form vanished again.
Ritsu activated his Byakugan.
Twenty kilometers of landscape unfurled inside his vision in every direction, sharp and complete. No human shapes anywhere in the radius. Truthfully, very little of anything. This part of the Land of Rain was as empty as it looked, sparse and grey, with endless rain coming down from a sky so dark it was hard to tell where cloud ended and night began.
Jiraiya looked around the landscape. "Any signs of activity?"
"Nothing." Ritsu let his gaze sweep the full range one more time. "No people, no animals. Barely any vegetation. Even birds avoid this place."
Jiraiya exhaled, long and slow, and stared out at the rain. The look on his face was hard to read. Something between old grief and old familiarity. "Yeah. That's how I remember it. You start wondering how anyone survives out here."
Ritsu stayed quiet. He didn't think Jiraiya was looking for an answer.
The older man spoke anyway, half to himself. "The rain here almost never stops. The people can't farm in conditions like this, so they fish and they mine. In peacetime that's a hard life, but you can manage. During the wars, though, when everything falls apart, when the mines shut down and the fishing routes become battlegrounds..." He trailed off, watching the grey curtain of rain. "This place was a hell. A genuine one."
Shisui and Nono stood in silence. There was nothing useful to say to that. They were ninja. The suffering of a small country caught between larger forces was real, and it was beyond their power to fix.
A short time later, Minato reappeared. With him were Rock ninja, massive and broad-shouldered, built like small fortresses. A few breaths later, four Iwagakure ninja were standing in the wet grey wilderness alongside them.
The joint force had assembled.
The operation into the Land of Rain had begun.
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