18 The road to a thousand secrets begin with a little girl.

**Tsunade POV**

I was standing in front of the gates of Konoha, beside me was Shizune, carrying Tonton, I'd received a letter from the one last remaining Senju in the village, someone who I had long presumed dead, who wanted to talk to me so I was back.

I hadn't even returned for my Sensei's death, even when the Fourth had called for me through Jiraya. Jiraya seemed a little nervous as if he was hiding something from me but I couldn't care enough to find out, maybe the brat Jiraya trained thought he could just get away with passing the mantle to me for I am his clan head after all.

I had come back to Konoha for her. She was the only other Senju who'd remained by my side to witness the destruction of our clan, until she was gone too, or so I thought.

As I walked through the gates, the guards bowed to me after having recognized me.

'Huh. They've changed from the last time. Did the previous ones die during the attack?'

I made my way through the village taking into account a few areas that were still damaged around the edges of the village, areas where the poor in the village lived, which I guessed were most likely from the Kyuubi that escaped the seal. It's been nearly a year and its still damaged? Interesting, I wonder what that brat is doing that is more important than fixing his own village?

Walking through the village I spotted a lot of people who I knew from when they were kids during the war, who'd grown up to be gennin and chuninn, there weren't any Jounin among them though. But even the Jounin I didn't know were greeting me.

'Bah! I'm sure Shizune'll take care of those people who want to come and beg me to heal someone.'

We soon arrived at my house. Or whatever was left of it after I'd gambled away the deeds to the Senju clan's land after the disbanding of the clan.

"Shizune I'll clean up first. Wanna join in?"

"No!! Tsunade-sama!!! You mustn't do such things!!! I'm no longer a child that needs to be washed!!!"

'Ha! What is this child ashamed of? I practically raised her. I'm her second mother!'

After taking a relaxing dip in hot water, I was dressed and walked out of the house again, Shizune like always would assume I was out for my morning gambling routine but just this time I was not.

After creating a water clone to do the gambling in my stead, I started walking toward the house of the last remaining member of the Senju clan. I walked through the village under the guise of a transformation jutsu, changing my hair colour, nothing really helpful while infiltrating since there are plenty of measures to find out if you are in a transformation or not, but good enough for fooling the general populace while walking out in the streets.

Arriving in front of a door I knocked twice quickly and once slowly but softly.

"Come~ in~." A frail but warm and firm voice spoke with a tinge of anticipation that was over shadowed by my nervousness to open the door.

As soon as I stepped in I found an old lady, sitting on a cushioned wooden chair, facing the door, behind her a painting of Granny Mito and in her hands the book about grandpa's childhood written by her. Her name was Youko Senju. The moment I locked eyes my chocolaty eyes with her green ones I felt a rush of memories hitting me in the face with heavy nostalgia reminding me she had been my attendant in the clan whose princess I was since I was a baby.

If I was Shizune's second mother, then Youko was mine. 

Youko covered my weaknesses and furthered my strengths, she took all the burdens I dropped on her and ran away out to go gambling or learn new medical jutsus so that I could be helpful on the battle field. If I ever had to make a decision regarding the clan, I'd always ask her about it.

And the one time I did not, was the time I regretted it the most.

"Long time no see Tsuna-chan."

The voice and the words brought with them another wave of emotions with it which I couldn't contain. I ran up to her and hugged her like I used to do all those years ago when I was a little brat!

"Youko, I thought- I thought you were-" I spoke between my sobs.

"It's alright Tsuna." she said patting my head and I felt like a little girl once again, but this time a little girl that had the support of a tall tree, a tall tree that'd weather the storm for her.

"Why didn't you contact me if you were still alive!"

"I didn't want to burden you."

"Then why did you call me now! If you were dying you should've just died already!" She knew I didn't mean what I said but I couldn't bring myself to ask her if she'd called me was because she was going to die. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if that happened because that would mean just because I didn't look for her more, it meant she had to suffer through the end of the clan all alone.

"Haha! These old bones have a thousand wishes to still hold on to! How can I just pass on without fulfilling them!" She said as I felt a burst of vitality radiate from her, a trait specific to the Senjus, it could only be recognized by another Senju because of our sensitivity to life or yang chakra nature.

"Then what!? Why did you call me here!? You know I'm busy and I don't like this place." Having been the one place where all my loved ones died I couldn't bring myself to like Konoha anymore. It'd become an abyss that felt like it'd drag anything that was close to me into it.

"Yes, yes, I know, you must've been busy trying to earn money by selling off the Senju land again."

"Haha! You know me best! Of course I earned more than the land was worth. Just wait a few more years and I'll buy them all back! Since I'm intelligent!" I shifted a little as I pretended to believe in what I was saying.

'Someday, Tsuna! Someday you'll win!'

"Right." She smiled, telling me enough to know she wasn't having my bull.

"So what? You want me to stop using the Senju land as collateral while I'm gambling?"

"No, I don't mind if you use it for that purpose anymore. I might have stopped you when the others were around but a home without people is no longer home."

I was saddened by the statement but I couldn't retort. I'd in fact let the clan die out while I was it's princess due to my stupid decisions.

"Tsunade you've always thought that it was your fault that the clan died out right? That it was your fault that Kato your lover and Nawaki died right since you allowed the strategic division to handle where the people of our clan would fight during the war?"

I was startled by Youko using my full name, because she rarely does but when I looked at her I found an infinite longing in her eyes, something that I'd seen many times on the battle field. Eyes that depicted loss and weight at realizing their own had forsaken them, a look that appeared on faces after a betrayal.

"Yes." I answered curtly, not understanding where she was going with this, but I answered seriously looking at her expression.

"Do you remember I'd taken a break for a year when you were ten years old?"

"Yes, but what does tha-"

"I had a child during that time Tsunade." She interrupted as my eyes widened at the revelation but I still held my composure.

"Does your child need help right now?" I wondered if that was why she'd called me.

"No. I raised my child in secret so that she can pretend to remain weak and without the clan name so that she can stay away from eyes that wanted to harm us."

"Why?"

"It was Mito-baasan's idea, she suspected and was worried that something might happen to us in the future so she wanted me to raise a ninja to find out the cause of what ever happens if it ever does."

"Then has she found something?" I asked, intuitively connecting a few dots that had been in floating around until now.

"Yes, when the Kyuubi attack happened, my child slipped into the Hokage office and sent a transformed water clone to Danzo's base to search for information during the chaos when security was at its weakest."

"The Hokage and Danzo?"

"Yes, I'd suspected them, even Mito-baasan suspected they'd do something once she was gone."

"Did you find anything?" I asked with worry in my voice, I didn't want anything to be found because that just meant that the two people my uncle had trusted his life to had betrayed him.

"Yes, in the confiscated wartime journals of various ninjas from the third ninja war, most ninjas who were around the Senju clan members who labeled them the Tengu clan instead of the Senju clan, trying to show how silly they'd become. Like how they named you the weak and cowardly Senju princess until you fought and defeated Chiyo's puppets."

"So what, they can call me what ever they want."

"Yes but they did so because every Senju clan member that went on a mission started to become delirious, at least according to those journals. They'd sometimes no longer respond to captain meeting calls, and wouldn't even stay in formation for long. Then they'd go off and start trying to do their own thing so that they could as said in their own words 'Finally be of service to Konoha, unlike the arrogant Uchiha.'"

"How did no one know about this or find it suspicious? What about their team mates? What about the journals of the Senju clan members?"

Youka just shook her head.

"People did find it suspicious, which is why there were journal entries about it from their own teammates who also went missing shortly after their Senju teammates died. But there were very few teams with Senju and non Senju teammates so most of who died were all Senju clan members. As for the journals from the Senju clan members, well none of them were in the Hokage office."

"Then?"

"The clone did manage to find a single book in the root headquarters. The journal was of a Senju clan member from the end of the war, he recognized that something was off about the other Senju clan member deaths and the orders that the Senju clan was receiving under your name during the war to hang back and not go to the front lines even though you yourself were at the frontlines in spite of being a healer."

"Why was his journal kept?"

"He wrote the journal to keep track of everything in a coded language that only I knew."

"Only you knew?"

"Yes, it was the language I and my husband used to write our letters in." She said with a slight quiver in her voice which she immediately controlled to hold the emotion in her eyes and brought out more rigid neutrally calm looking facial expressions.

I felt sorry and helpless to see Youka in such a condition because of my incompetence but I held back, now was not the time as she herself was keeping calm and composed.

"He started writing the information in the general Konoha coded language, where he described to the reader a new jutsu he'd developed to artificially create the Mokuton jutsus of the First Hokage which everyone wanted."

"He did that to distract them to keep the journal?"

"Yes, then he continued in the other secret language where he explained that by the end of the war most Senju were dead, but those few alive had become emotionless and were more like puppets than humans. They were probably trying to create the seal the root uses right now since they didn't have it for as long as Mito-sama was here."

"Danzo's root seal?"

"Yes, he also wrote about his infiltration into Root headquarters while he pretended to be one of them, where he found Orochimaru trying to use healing jutsus that Hiruzen asked you to create and reveal the workings off to force their body to accept and grow First Hokage's cells as their own instead of their own cells after they were hurt."

"Orochimaru….We were being used as experiment subjects?"

"Yes. And the third knew about it as well."

"How did he know that?"

"In the journal my husband said he found out when he saw a few ninja take the remaining journals that Danzo had not destroyed to the third hokage while Danzo was out of the village on a mission, it was clear that the third hokage only took those journals as a means to keep leverage over Danzo in case anything ever went wrong as he never acted on them after that."

"So both Sense- The third and Danzo worked together to use the Senju as test subjects to do what ever they wanted?" I felt my blood boiling with anger as I fully understood the situation of what happened and how I was used by my own teacher. 

"Yes. Nawaki and Dan also died in the same way, after you moved away from Dan's corpse I had him secretly examined when he was brought to the village, his bodies chakra showed traces of Senjutsu chakra, which would only be possible if he had been experimented on with the First Hokage's cells."

Fury boiled in my chest like never before as I cracked the handle of the chair that Youko was sitting on. I felt as if everything that I'd bottled up had come right back up with full force wanting sweet release.

"Calm down Tsunade." Youko said patting my hair softly.

"Bu-"

"You won't do anything about it."

"But even the Fourth hasn't acted on it yet! That brat was trained by Jiraya! That brat was from the Senju who we hid after we found out that we were being targeted by someone we thought was outside the village! Why isn't he acting on it!? And why won't I do anything about it?! This village was the one my grandfather, uncle, father, mother, you and the entire clan gave their lives to build, is this how they repay it?"

"What can you do about it? How will you fight an entire village? And even if you do, what about those innocent children and families your Grandfather established this village for in the first place, they didn't do anything wrong."

"Then what should I do?" I asked with sharp eyes with fire burning in them.

"Go live your life however you want Tsuna-chan. I only told you all this so that you'd stop blaming yourself for everything." She said warmly once again as she stroked my hair.

"But I want to be there for you, at least now! At least for all you and your closest ones have had to go through because of me."

"Don't worry about me, Tsuna-chan. It isn't-"

"But it is! It is my fault! If only I'd searched harder for you, if only I'd never given up the duties of the clan leader, if only I had seen the true face of my sensei to know that he'd been using me during the war to kill my own clan. It's all my fault."

"It is not your fault Tsuna! It never will be! Now come here and be with me before I go to my husband who's calling me." Youka said, as she pulled me into a warm embrace and laid her head onto mine while I remained kneeling in front of her legs, holding them, the last vestiges of her vitality diminishing.

"Haha! Don't worry, as long as I'm here you're going to have to wait a long time till you go back to your husband again! You've got to take care of me like you used to, comb my hair, stop me from gambling, pull me out from the library while reading books on anatomy to feed me because I missed lunch and much much more."

"Take care Tsuna-chan. I will be watching over you from the other side~" Youko whispered.

I then felt Youka's weight shift onto mine, fully.

"Youka?" I asked gently shaking her.

I pulled myself back and looked at her with tears in my eyes. "Youka, you're here right?"

"Youka…" my voice trailed into a whisper as I realized I'd lost someone I'd just met too.

'It seems like I really am the weak and cowardly Senju who can't do anything but watch as her clan members die as she lives on, she stayed alive for as long as I wasn't with her and then died when I finally was.'

In a blur of emotions and actions I spotted an envelope in Youka's hand which had a letter that invited her to the birthday of her granddaughter. The writer of the letter invited her for today evening during dinner, after all the guests had left since he or she knew how much Youka wanted to keep their identity as a Senju a secret. Looks like the stoppage of war has not stopped my work of being the grim reaper to deliver the news of death in a family. I wonder if I can compensate them with something, I wonder if I have anything left to give in the first place.

I didn't know what to do so I just walked out and found myself at the bar.

After downing a few bottles of strong liquor and arguing with everyone at the bar my legs carried me to the front entrance of The Thousand books library which was built by my clan, donated to this shitty village that took away everything for it.

Walking inside I didn't find the usual chunin receptionist. Perhaps he or she'd gone to lunch.

Stepping into the old, wooden, book smelling library I felt something familiar catch my senses. The familiar flow of Yang chakra nature that steadily flowed through as focus was maintained.

I took slow cautions steps to check out if the person who was sitting in the library was an experimented person who'd been given my grand father's cells.

Much to my surprise what came into view was a small little pink haired girl absorbed reading the book in front of her.

'Looks like Youko was wrong after all, there was another family with pure Senju blood running through their veins hiding in plain sight in the hidden village of the leaf.'

'Such a cute little girl. Umu Umu, since I was old enough to read books when I learnt how to gamble with grandpa, she must be intelligent too and since she reads books she must know a lot of things too.'

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