Kanae tilted her head slightly. "But, how did you even manage to stay hidden long enough to spy and pull that off in front of two such powerhouses? Saving two people right under their noses, your stealth was good before, but not that good..."
Ryusei smirked, his tone playful. "Trade secret. But since you're asking so nicely, and as curious as always…"
He pressed his palms together, his chakra flaring once, and then his body vanished completely, his presence erased from every sense. Not even a shadow or a trace of chakra remained.
Kanae's Byakugan flickered on instinct, searching, but even she couldn't see him. At least not in the short term.
Her brow furrowed slightly as Ryusei's voice echoed faintly beside her, unseen. "It's called the Dustless Bewildering Cover. The Second Tsuchikage's technique. I just gave it a few… personal upgrades."
He reappeared a second later, grinning.
In truth, Ryusei had always shared a strange similarity with Mū.
Both possessed exceptional sensory and stealth abilities, sharp internal perception, and mastery over multiple elements, including Water Release.
He'd studied the technique closely more than once: first when Danzo "borrowed" it during Konoha's Attack 1.0, and then again later during Mū's own Edo Tensei revival.
And when Orochimaru had "lent" him Mū's sealed remains, Ryusei simply read his memories through his previous unique corpse-reading ability, which could be used on pure souls as well, and pieced the method together, learning it quite easily from there in no time.
After all, just because Hagoromo had prevented him from summoning the dead, to fight for him, like Tobirama's infinite cheat code didn't mean he couldn't read their minds.
The same principle had applied recently when he helped Renjiro to glimpse fragments of Sakumo's soul insights to grow stronger quickly.
So Ryusei had simply used that ability along with his speed and flight, moving almost without leaving a much chakra trace to begin with, thanks to his lightness manipulation technique.
From there, he observed the chaos up close and waited for the right moment to snatch Nagato and Konan's falling bodies, sending them through Katsuyu's fragments to the Shikkotsu Forest for safety.
He stayed out of the direct clash between those two figures, using his heaviness manipulation and vibration armor to endure the residual force, his body as dense as granite now.
Whenever the shockwaves drew too close, he leapt between the tiniest Katsuyu fragments scattered through the ruins, each blending perfectly into the shattered terrain.
They were far tougher than they looked, and much harder to detect than snake or toad summonings.
Meanwhile, ever since she heard the word "Amegakure" from Ryusei, Tsunade seemed a bit distracted, her gaze now lingering on the direction of the room they'd just left. Something about that red-haired older teen kept tugging at the back of her mind again.
She knew she had been there before, sometime during WW2, back when she, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru earned the title of Sannin for the first time.
They'd spent months in those war-torn lands, training, fighting, and trying to bring some order to the chaos.
And then it hit her. That boy, his face, his hair, he looked almost exactly like one of those three orphans Jiraiya had found back then, the ones he took under his wing and trained later.
The purple-haired girl in the next room… she was the same one, too.
Tsunade's eyes narrowed slightly. "So what happened to the third one…" she thought quietly.
But she didn't voice it aloud.
Instead, she turned to Ryusei and asked in a steady tone, "Tell me more about those two patients, Ryusei."
Ryusei nodded, realizing what she had probably pieced together. He already knew their history well enough.
Ryusei knew how Jiraiya had once peeked at Nagato's Rinnegan and, blinded by hope, deemed him the Child of Prophecy.
For a time, he even stayed in Amegakure, teaching the three orphans and giving them something close to warmth, a brief illusion of light in an otherwise brutal life.
"It's simple," he said. "They were Amegakure natives. Along with a third boy, they founded the Akatsuki back when it was still about peace, not power, like I mentioned before. But once they grew too strong, Hanzo and Danzo joined forces and crushed them with the kind of schemes and brute force you'd expect."
"The third founder died, while the redhead and his companion somehow survived, only to be found and used by a hidden Uchiha pulling the strings from the shadows. For all I know, he might've even been the one who saved them in the first place. In the end, the redhead proved he was definitely just another puppet."
That confirmed it for Tsunade; they really were the orphans she had met back then, Jiraiya's former students.
It made sense now.
With his ideals and influence, it was no surprise that they had grown up believing they could change the world and founded that organization on hope and peace.
But they'd burned too brightly in a world that didn't tolerate light for long. Once again, it only reminded her how dark the shinobi world truly was.
However, Tsunade still couldn't quite piece together how those two ended up entangled with such a powerful and mysterious Uchiha. What could have made them so valuable? All she saw earlier was a broken body with barely any vitality left.
So she asked directly, "What made him worth all that trouble?"
Ryusei raised an eyebrow, a faint smile playing at his lips. "You really didn't notice he's an Uzumaki?"
Tsunade blinked, genuinely caught off guard. "What?"
He chuckled. "And here I thought someone with your experience and roots would pick up on that right away."
She frowned, thinking it over.
Now that he mentioned it, his red hair, that kind of chakra flow, albeit only there in traces perhaps, did fit.
"He was practically a corpse, how was I supposed to notice?" she said defensively, crossing her arms.
"Still, even if he's an Uzumaki, that alone doesn't make him special enough for you to care this much. So, what else is there?"
Ryusei leaned back slightly, his tone calm but deliberate. "He's not just any Uzumaki. From what I can tell, his bloodline potential was definitely comparable, and in my true opinion, even above Ashina Uzumaki himself."
Tsunade's eyes widened. "That's impossible," she said instinctively, though a trace of doubt lingered.
"I thought so too," Ryusei continued, "but it makes sense now. He ended up like this because they used him, his body, his original overwhelming vitality, as a vessel for the Rinnegan."
That last word hit her hard. For a moment, Tsunade just stared at him. With her heritage, she knew more than most about such things. The Rinnegan wasn't supposed to be real; it was part of an old myth and legend, a relic of the Sage of Six Paths that no one had ever truly seen.
She shook her head at first, refusing to believe it.
But then her gaze drifted back toward the room where the red-haired boy lay. His eyes were gone, violently removed by someone or something, recently, she had noted during the earlier treatment.
She also then remembered how, even as a child, he had those heavy bags under his eyes, as if they hid something unnatural.
Slowly, her denial gave way to uneasy realization. "…So it's true," she muttered, more to herself than to Ryusei.
Kanae, who had been silent, spoke up again, her brows slightly furrowed.
It was the first time she'd ever heard the term "Rinnegan," but judging by their tone, she could tell it was something important, something that carried real weight.
Her scientific curiosity, especially when it came to powerful dōjutsu, thanks to her unique situation, quickly got the better of her.
"If he's lost those eyes," she said, glancing toward the room where Nagato lay, "and he's basically physically useless as a shinobi now… then what's the point of saving him in the first place, Ryusei?"
Her tone wasn't cruel, just analytical, the same calm curiosity she always showed when faced with something new and powerful.
After all, while they had already closed his newer wounds and repaired much of the surface damage, his overall vitality remained severely depleted, an exhaustion that ran deep and long-term, likely from the strain of wielding those foreign yet abnormally powerful eyes, Kanae now realized.
His legs, too, were beyond saving, crippled long before these latest injuries. Both of them had silently noted it while working to stabilize him.
Ryusei spoke simply, as if stating a fact. "Even a collapsed structure can be rebuilt if the foundation's still there," he said in his usual calm tone.
"Besides, he's useful for more than fighting. Think of him as a pilot project for a few ideas I've recently been meaning to test 'safely'."
Ryusei then glanced at the two women with that familiar, teasing glint in his eyes. "You know," he said casually, "I'm surprised neither of you asked me more about those two who leveled an entire village in seconds."
Tsunade crossed her arms. "I figured you'd start bragging about it on your own sooner or later," she muttered.
Kanae tilted her head slightly. "I assumed it was something ridiculous. You tend to attract that kind of chaos."
Ryusei chuckled. "Fair enough. But since you're both dying to know…" He paused deliberately, just to build tension, then said, "One of them was your cousin from the Moon, Kanae. The other—Madara Uchiha."
Tsunade's jaw tightened. "What?" she snapped.
Kanae's composure cracked for once, her eyes widening. "From the Moon…? My cousin...?"
Ryusei nodded, almost amused by their reactions. "The same man who slaughtered dozens of your clan's main branch members and stole their Byakugan, which you probably celebrated inwardly. He's the one who fought Madara this time. I saw it myself. He's related to your clan, Kanae, his chakra signature told me so, which was obviously why he went after Byakugan in the first place."
Tsunade frowned deeply, the name Madara Uchiha still carrying an echo of history and matters long buried, tied to her own grandfather, now lingering inside of Konoha, whom she also didn't want to meet. "That name shouldn't even exist anymore."
Ryusei smirked faintly. "Apparently, it does. Turns out the Uchiha pulling Nagato's strings all this time was just one of his pawns. Madara was revived, brought back by his followers to survive, because that Moon-dweller intended to kill them all and reclaim what he saw as stolen."
He leaned back, tone almost casual despite the weight of his words. "And that Rinnegan of Nagato's? It was Madara's originally. He awakened it later in life, while plotting for world domination in secret. The same Rinnegan that controls the Gedo Statue, the one that was stolen from the Moon in the first place, which was why that man attacked them today. It's being used, by those followers of Madara, to gather the tailed beasts… to recreate something called the Ten Tails."
Tsunade blinked, speechless for a rare moment.
Kanae looked equally frozen, her usually sharp eyes unfocused.
Ryusei smirked slightly, watching their stunned faces.
"Yeah," he said dryly. "Took me a while to process it, too."