Ti was the easiest thing to lose track of inside the Arena. Ryū had no count of how many enemies he'd killed, no count of how many tis he'd died. The combat had been relentless — fast, varied, punishing — and the environnts had cycled through without warning.
The moon. Mars. The ocean floor. Snowfields.
One after another until, finally, he put down an enemy several hundred tres tall, wiped the blood from his forehead, and exhaled.
His body had nothing left. He dropped from several hundred tres in the air and hit the ground without trying to slow down. Another crater. He lay at the bottom of it, injuries catalogued across essentially every part of him. One foot had been separated from the rest of him at so point and had not been located.
"Restore."
Ten Points. Everything repaired. Ryū stood up from the crater slowly, rolling his neck.
The flesh itself wasn't in pain. He'd just had his neck broken too many tis. Even after winning, even after full restoration, sothing in the mory of it lingered. A ghost of discomfort with no physical source.
Probably psychological.
The final battlefield had been a wasteland. Ten days and ten nights of fighting at full output against a single opponent before the kill was confird. The terrain was unrecognisable. If a city had been here, it would have been a flat plain by now. Several cities. Several provinces, honestly, if he'd been operating in a populated area.
The victory screen appeared.
He exited imdiately. No Points left to stay.
The familiar bedroom resolved around him. He stretched, back cracking, and yawned.
"How long was I in there? The Arena destroys any sense of ti. Feels like at least half a month. Could be a full month."
He pushed the window open and looked out.
The street below was lively. Real foot traffic — people going places, the sound of construction from further into the village. When he'd last checked, Konoha's streets had been mostly empty. This was substantially different.
He found a random pedestrian on his way out and asked the date.
Forty-one days.
He'd been in the Arena for forty-one days.
"One month and eleven days. No wonder the village looks different. Reconstruction must be close to finishing at this point."
He was heading toward Ichiraku Ran when the commotion reached him from the right.
"Unacceptable! You're all cheating! Why else would I never win? Admit it! Admit it or I'll — hic — or I'll smash this entire gambling den to pieces!"
"Tsunade-sama, please calm down, and also you've lost all your money again—"
"Shizune, don't stop ! Unacceptable! I co back to Konoha after all this ti and these bastards are cheating! Hic!"
"Tsunade-sama, we really haven't—"
"Nonsense! I — hic — I, Tsunade, have never falsely accused anyone in my life."
"Tsunade-sama, let's just go back—"
"…"
Ryū looked over.
Two won and several n. The n looked genuinely terrified, expressions suggesting they absolutely believed she would follow through on the threat.
The won — he'd identified them both before anyone finished a sentence.
Tsunade. Shizune.
He'd heard the nas, he'd recognised them, and beyond that the physical descriptors were not ambiguous. He'd watched Naruto. Tsunade's characteristics were highly distinctive. The bearing, the voice, the asurents that were roughly comparable to Yukari's and possibly a touch beyond.
Tsunade is back in Konoha. Hm.
Not surprising, on reflection. The Nine-Tails incident had pulled Jiraiya back over a month ago. Tsunade returning wasn't much of a stretch — whatever psychological wounds the war had left her with, Konoha had raised her. It was still ho. When ho had a crisis, you ca back.
Though compared to Jiraiya, she'd taken her ti. He'd been back over forty days at this point. Was presumably still here, given that he was too useful as construction labour for anyone to let him leave easily.
If that was how it had played out, Ryū poured a brief mont of silent sympathy in Jiraiya's direction.
He didn't move toward Tsunade.
She didn't know him. He had no particular business with her. Approaching soone famous for no reason wasn't his style, and the Chat Group had given him more than enough exposure to attractive won that his equilibrium wasn't threatened by seeing another one.
Besides — Tsunade was nearly forty. Older than him by roughly — well, older than his current body by about twenty-so years. Older than the person he used to be by nearly forty.
She was at the age where she could comfortably be referred to as the neighbourhood auntie.
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