Taken from my other story, Tales of the Leaves. Hope you enjoy.


A Twist of Circumstance

Tsunade looked back at her – once hated – beloved village one more time before slipping out the gates. She couldn't, she refused, to let Jiraiya put his life in danger on a reconnaissance mission he knew was suicide. Their conversation on the bench had just proven that.

She didn't think he would have fallen for the same trick twice, but the sake she had given him for a goodbye present had been liberally laced with a drug that would render him unconscious until long after she was gone. The note she had left beside him would make sure he looked after Konoha in her absence.

It wasn't that long a trip to Ame, maybe five days tops. She took it at all possible speed, pushing her body to its utmost limit without collapsing. She refused to let someone destroy her world, and she refused to let one of the three people left in her world that she loved be killed finding out more about the egomaniac running the show.

The moment she passed the border Tsunade noticed the pervasive rain. Ame had always been a wet country, she knew that from fighting in the place decades ago. Jiraiya had hypothesized it was the sky crying for the battlefield the country had become.

But this rain was different. Heavier, denser, and even just the tiniest bit sticky – not like the sky's tears. So when the first piece of white paper blew past her, she wasn't surprised.

"Senju Tsunade, Godaime Hokage of Konoha, what are you doing here?" whispered a voice on the wind, coming from all directions. More pieces of paper began to float in, circling the blonde woman. "Why are you not back in your village, preparing for its demise?"

Tsunade stood in the center of the circle, poised and ready for any attack. "Because I refuse to accept such a fate without changing it."

The papers paused at that, then all converged on the same spot, layering themselves until the form of a woman became visible. She had dark blue hair done up in a bun with a paper flower pinned to it, a lip piercing, and heavy eyes done up with eye shadow that only accentuated their depth. All her nails were tinted black.

"Why have you come here?" she asked again, her voice not echoing from each individual paper now, but from her body, the question curious now.

"To protect the man I love," Tsunade answered cryptically, eyes tracing the woman's face. She knew it from somewhere. Somewhere in this country.

Her opponent's face remained smooth, but understanding was echoed in her eyes. "Then you know why I am here as well. What do you protect him from?"

"Anything that would hurt him." Anything but me. Why was she even talking about this? It got her nowhere. The memory of where she knew the woman from was jiggling just at the edges of her memory…

"Jiraiya-sensei said the same about you." Oh. That was where. The woman was one of the three orphans they had found all those years ago.

Wait. "Jiraiya said what about me?"

Konan's eyes drilled into hers. "I too protect. You understand I cannot let you past this point."

"You understand I can't let you keep me here."

"Then we understand each other perfectly." More papers flapped in the air, melding to Konan's back in the form of huge paper wings. "I am the Angel of Amegakure, and I will protect my god!"

Tsunade swiped her thumb across her mouth, breaking the skin with a quick nip. She slammed her hand down onto the wet ground, calling out "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" With a huge cloud of smoke, a giant blue slug appeared under her. "I am the Hokage of Konohagakure, and I will protect all I hold dear."

She didn't know how long the battle lasted. Neither gained the upper hand for the longest time, fighting there at the border of Ame. Katsuyu had long returned to her home, to nurse wounds and regain her own chakra. Tsunade dodged paper, slashed at it, healed herself, and fought some more. Konan was no longer able to fly around, and instead was engaged in a joint taijutsu ninjutsu battle with Tsunade.

It was a purely lucky strike that decided the battle. Blood poured out of Tsunade's chest where she had been run through by Konan's paper sword, even as her fist punched a hole through where Konan's right lung was.

Instead of the normal flesh, her body seemed to be composed of paper in entirety, leaving the edges of the hole ripped and torn. Konan stumbled where she stood, then looked at Tsunade with eyes that shone with…relief?

"You know how I feel. Do not dishonor my last wish. Please…when you see Nagato…let him know…how I felt…" Her body dissolved into paper, floating away on the wind and becoming soaked through with rain before disintegrating.

Tsunade panted for breath, bracing herself until she was forced to fall forward first onto her knees, then all fours. The battle had taken all she had.

"Maybe…in another life…we could have been friends. In another world, where war doesn't exist…" she whispered to the water soaked rock below her, hoping Konan could still hear her on the wind. "I will honor your wish…"

Sopping tendrils of blonde hair fell about her face as she remained there, fighting for the strength to get up. She would return to Konoha. She had protected the man she loved. Her mission was complete. For now.