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Chapter 45: The Princess's Fury and an Idiot's Wager
🕑 Added 2025-08-15 02:34:05 +0000 UTCThe crash of broken dishware was followed by a silence so absolute it seemed to absorb all sound from Shirogane Castle. The murmuring of gamblers, the clinking of chips, the music of the shamisen… everything died. Hundreds of gazes, previously clouded by greed and sake, fixed on the epicenter of the disaster.
On the floor, in the middle of a puddle of expensive liquor and pieces of raw fish, lay a young man of aristocratic appearance, his silk kimono stained and wearing a perfectly rehearsed expression of panic. Around him, the casino guards were already moving, their hands on the hilts of their swords, their faces tense.
But no one was looking at the clumsy young man. All eyes were on the woman who stood atop the soaked dice table, a piece of eel stuck to her forehead.
Tsunade's fury wasn't an explosion. There was no scream, no building-shaking blow. It was something much worse: an implosion. The manic euphoria that had lit up her face vanished, sucked inward, leaving behind a mask of glacial calm. Her smile didn't disappear; it froze in place, devoid of all joy, becoming a terrifying grimace.
With deliberate slowness, she picked the piece of eel from her forehead, held it between two fingers as if it were a poisonous insect, and dropped it onto the table. The soft splash was the only sound in the hall.
"Shizune," her voice was a low, almost sweet murmur, but it had an edge that cut through the air. "Collect my winnings. All of them. Down to the last coin."
Shizune, who had gone as pale as a ghost, reacted with the speed of a frightened animal. She lunged at the mountain of chips and bills, sweeping them with trembling hands into a cloth bag. Tonton, the piglet, let out a panicked squeal and hid under her robe.
Tsunade's eyes, an amber color that now seemed to burn, landed on Naruto. She didn't move. She didn't blink. She simply watched him, and under that gaze, Naruto felt a chill that had nothing to do with the spilled sake. It was the cold of pure, distilled, and controlled killing intent.
"And you," Tsunade continued, her voice inflectionless, "don't move from that puddle. If a single hair on your head moves before I order it to, I'll use your skull as a new dice cup."
Naruto swallowed. The plan had worked, yes. He had broken her streak. But he had underestimated the nature of the beast he had awakened.
This isn't a tantrum, he thought, feeling cold sweat run down his back under the silk kimono. This is the calm of a predator that has already decided how it's going to dismember its prey.
Shizune, with the bag of winnings secured, ran toward them. She placed herself between Tsunade and Naruto, her arms outstretched in a gesture of desperate pleading.
"Lady Tsunade, please!" she said, her voice a thread of panic. "It was an accident! Look at him, he's just a clumsy rich boy! He didn't know what he was doing!"
She grabbed Naruto's arm, still in his disguise, and lifted him with a strength he hadn't expected.
"Come on, apologize to the lady! Right now!"
"I'm so sorry! A thousand pardons, ma'am!" Naruto exclaimed, bowing repeatedly, maintaining his role. "I'll pay for everything! The sake, the dishes, the cleaning of the kimono, your dignity!"
Tsunade took a step, coming down from the table with a grace that contradicted her figure. She landed on the floor without a sound. The casino guards, seeing the situation was about to explode, began to close in, forming a tense circle around them.
"No," Tsunade said, and the word silenced Shizune. Her gaze never left Naruto. "I don't want his money. I want an explanation. And I want it in private."
She turned to Shizune, her calm more terrifying than any scream.
"Get us out of here. To a place where I can speak with this… accident… without the walls getting stained."
Shizune needed no further instruction. She grabbed Naruto by the collar of his kimono and practically dragged him out of the main hall, pushing through the crowd of onlookers who parted as if they feared Tsunade's fury was contagious. Tonton squealed from inside her robes.
Tsunade followed them, walking with a deliberate slowness, each step a promise of contained violence. The silence in the casino didn't break until long after they had disappeared through the back door.
The alley stank of rotten fish and broken dreams. It was narrow, dark, and the walls of the adjoining buildings seemed to lean inward, as if to crush them. The opulence of the casino felt a world away.
Shizune let go of Naruto, shoving him against the damp brick wall. She turned to her master, her face contorted with fear.
"Lady Tsunade, please, reconsider. He's just a kid. It's not worth—"
"Silence, Shizune."
The command was so sharp that Shizune flinched back, taking refuge in the shadows by the door as if expecting the impact of an explosion.
Tsunade approached Naruto. The height difference was considerable; she loomed over him, her shadow covering him completely. The moonlight barely filtered through, casting a dangerous glint in her eyes.
"Alright, brat," her voice was a deadly whisper. "You have ten seconds to give me an excuse good enough not to smash your face against this wall. Start talking."
Naruto took a deep breath and dispelled the transformation. The swirl of smoke cleared, revealing his face, his whisker marks, his messy blond hair, and above all, the Konoha ninja headband, tied firmly to his forehead.
Tsunade's reaction was almost imperceptible, but Naruto, watching her with the intensity of a hunter, saw it. The contraction of her pupils, a tense muscle in her jaw. The name of her home, visible on that metal plate, was a key that opened wounds she thought were locked away.
"Konoha?" her voice was now a low growl, like that of a wounded beast. "Jiraiya sent you, didn't he? That old pervert doesn't know when to leave things alone."
"No!" Naruto exclaimed, and the sincerity in his voice was the first thing to throw Tsunade off balance. "Master Jiraiya doesn't know I'm here! I came on my own!"
"On your own?" Tsunade let out a laugh, a sound devoid of joy. "A brat like you crosses half the country just to find me? What for? You want an autograph?"
"Because I'm your biggest fan! I'm serious!" Naruto shouted, and the passion in his voice made Tsunade blink, completely thrown.
"What?"
"You're Princess Tsunade!" he continued, gesturing with an energy that was both nervous and genuine. "One of the Legendary Sannin! The strongest kunoichi in the world! Iruka-sensei told me stories about you! That you can knock down a wall with one finger and heal any wound! That your punches could change the landscape!"
He took a step forward, his admiration so pure, so childlike, it was impossible to fake.
"And I saw you in there! About to lose everything to bad luck! To a bad roll of the dice! Seeing someone so great, a legend, about to be beaten by something so stupid… it was an insult to your legend! I couldn't let it happen! It would have been disrespectful!"
The torrent of words, so absurd and so full of blind faith, left Tsunade speechless. Her fury, which had been on the verge of destroying everything, ran up against an unexpected obstacle: the purest, strangest sincerity she had ever encountered. She didn't know how to react. The brat's logic was so twisted it almost made sense.
From the shadows, Shizune stifled a gasp. Princess Tsunade. No one had called her that in years. Not since Dan…
The mention of her old nickname, from a time when she believed in dreams, was a low blow Tsunade hadn't expected. She looked at Naruto, at the boy who saw her not with fear, but with the admiration of a believer before a fallen god. Her fury didn't vanish, but it transformed. The killing intent became an irritated, profound curiosity.
"You are," Tsunade said slowly, "the strangest idiot I have ever met in my life."
She turned, showing him her back.
"Let's go, Shizune. I owe this… admirer… a drink," she headed for the alley's exit. "And you, brat. Your real story had better be as good as this one, or I swear the next time you trip, it'll be over your own teeth."
****
The bar was a dive. The cigar smoke formed a perpetual fog that clung to clothes and lungs. The floor was sticky with spilled beer, and the air vibrated with the murmur of crude conversations and the clashing of mugs. It was the kind of place people went to forget, and Tsunade looked like the queen of that kingdom of self-imposed amnesia.
They sat at the most remote table, in a dark corner that smelled of damp wood. Tsunade ordered a full bottle of the strongest sake. Shizune sat beside her, with Tonton sleeping in her lap, her face a mask of worry. Naruto sat across from them, keeping a safe distance.
Tsunade poured herself a glass to the brim and downed it in one go. The slam of the glass on the table was the starting signal.
"Alright, admirer," she said, pouring another. "You have your audience. What do you really want? Money? Protection? Want me to teach you some secret jutsu to impress girls?" She poured Naruto a glass and pushed it toward him. "Drink. People are more honest when they drink."
Naruto looked at the glass. He knew it was a test. He grinned, his typical foxy smile.
"Thanks, Granny Tsunade!" he exclaimed, taking the glass. He brought it to his lips, but instead of drinking, he discreetly spilled most of it onto his lap under the table, faking a coughing fit. "Whoa, that's strong! This is grown-up stuff!"
I can't get drunk, he thought, feeling the burn of the sake on his pants. Not now. I have to keep a clear head. Sincerity worked once, but now I need a plan.
Tsunade watched him with a raised eyebrow, a mocking smile on her lips.
"Giving up already, brat? I thought you Konoha types were made of tougher stuff."
"I am!" he protested. "I just need to warm up! Like before a good fight!"
He took a small sip, for real this time, and the liquor burned his throat. He held back a wince.
"Okay, down to business," he said, his voice a little hoarser. The moment of truth. His real wager. "I want you to be my master."
Tsunade choked on her own sake, letting out a bitter, joyless laugh that made several heads turn in the bar.
"My student? You? What for? So you can chase that stupid dream of becoming Hokage? Let me give you some advice, brat: everyone who chases that hat ends up in a grave. It's a fool's dream, and I've already buried too many fools."
Her voice, at the end, was laced with a poison meant not for Naruto, but for herself, for her own ghosts. She saw Nawaki's face, so young, so full of that same stupid light. She saw Dan, his smile broken by blood.
Naruto watched her. The fake drunkenness vanished from his eyes, replaced by a seriousness and empathy that threw her off.
"Not just my master," he said, his voice now low and firm. "My teammate's too. Sakura Haruno."
"And why should I care about your teammate?" Tsunade snapped, defensively.
"Because she has monstrous strength," Naruto replied, the conviction in his voice absolute. "A strength that not even she understands. Chakra control so perfect it's almost inhuman. She comes from a civilian family, she has no special bloodline. It's pure will and talent. But she has no one to guide her. Someone who understands what it's like to have a power that can both create and destroy. Someone who can teach her to use it to protect, not just to break things."
He leaned over the table, his blue eyes fixed on hers.
"Only a legend like you could understand her. Only you could turn her brute force into something more."
Sakura needs her, Naruto thought. I can't tell her everything, but I can tell her my truth. The pain… the loneliness… she gets it. Maybe if she sees I'm not just a dreamer, but someone fighting their way out of the darkness… maybe then, she'll listen.
Tsunade looked at him, and for a moment, the cynicism on her face wavered. The description of that girl… it reminded her of herself in her youth. A power that no one else understood. But the pain was too high a barrier. She laughed again, but this time it was a broken sound.
"And you? What about you, brat? You got some 'monstrous strength' too?"
"I have a dream," Naruto answered, his smile fading, his gaze direct and pained. "It might be a fool's dream. But when you have nothing… a dream is all you have left."
He sat up straight, and the entire idiot facade crumbled, revealing the boy who had survived twelve years of being despised.
"Do you know what it's like to grow up with no one looking you in the eye? To be called a monster, to have them whisper behind your back? That stupid dream was the only thing that kept me from hating all of them. It was my way of saying, 'I'm here, and I'm going to make you acknowledge me!' It's not about the hat, Granny Tsunade. It's about not being alone anymore."
This kid… he's impossible, Tsunade thought. Every word he says is an echo of Nawaki, of Dan… the same blind faith, the same stupid will. But there's something else… a pain they didn't have. He's not talking about glory. He's talking about loneliness. And that loneliness… I know it. Damn it, I know it all too well.
Naruto's confession wasn't a strategy. It was a moment of raw honesty that achieved what no tactic could: it reached her. Shizune watched him, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Tonton let out a soft grunt in his sleep.
Tsunade stared into the bottom of her empty sake cup. The conflict on her face was a civil war. Laughter, anger, pain… all fought for control. Finally, a crooked smile, the first one that wasn't mocking, appeared on her lips.
"A dream that's your proof you exist, huh?... Pathetic. And admirable."
She jumped to her feet, the stool screeching against the floor. She dropped a few coins on the table with a metallic clink.
"Alright, you idiot brat. You want me to take you seriously. Prove it."
She walked to the exit, stopping in the doorway to look at Naruto over her shoulder.
"There's a technique my old teammate created. One that not even he could perfect. The Rasengan. I'll give you one week." Her eyes flashed with an icy challenge. "If you can master the first step… making a water balloon explode with your chakra… I'll train you. You and your friend with the monstrous strength. But if you fail… get out of my sight, and I never want to hear about you or your stupid dream ever again. Is it a bet?"
Naruto looked at her, his heart hammering in his chest. The pain, the loneliness, the fear… it all turned to fuel. A smile, a real one this time, full of blind confidence and a strange logic, spread across his face.
"It's a bet."
And in that stinking dive bar, in the middle of a city of vice, the fate of Konoha had just been wagered on a roll of the dice.
Comments
Ari Gómez García
You're welcome My friend
travis btmb
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