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Beneath Amegakure, the storm-drained sewer caverns stretched like veins through the earth.
In one silent reservoir, a hypnotized Amegakure shinobi pushed open a rusted door and froze.
A blizzard of paper fragments rose from the floor.
The flutter became a flood. Sheets whipped forward in waves and wrapped the hapless shinobi from head to toe, mummifying him in a heartbeat. Within the circling storm, the paper congealed into a spear its haft grasped by a pale, unfolding arm as Konan's upper body assembled from the torrent.
The spear tensed to strike—
A shadow behind her rippled.
Jiraiya erupted from the darkness, cheeks puffed, hands already signed.
[Fire Style: Flame Bullet]!
A roaring gout of fire engulfed Konan. Paper crackled and burst, embers whirling—
but new sheets layered over the blaze, shingled shields smothering the flames until the jutsu burned itself out.
Through the smoke, Konan's cool eyes fixed on him. "A shadow-puppet feint… using [Toad Flat Shadow Control], isn't it?"
Jiraiya stepped fully from the wall's shade, rolling his shoulders like an old teacher dusting off an old lesson.
"I tossed the bait to draw Pain out," he said with a soft smile, "and look who I fished up instead."
His gaze softened. "Your technique's grown sharper. And you've grown more beautiful, Konan."
For a moment, he sounded less like an intruder and more like a father who hadn't seen his daughter in years.
He sighed. "I thought you were gone. Never imagined you'd turn yourself into paper."
The bound Ame shinobi gasped as Konan loosened the wrappings, murmuring a terse order to flee. They staggered away. The interlude didn't break the thread between master and student.
"Who is Pain?" Jiraiya asked quietly.
Sheets slid home across Konan's back, sealing her expression into a mask.
"Sensei," she said, voice cold, "it isn't your concern."
Wings blossomed from her shoulders vast, immaculate planes of folded white.
"'Angel,' huh?" Jiraiya said wryly. "Is that all it takes to be heaven-sent?"
"This is a god's decree," Konan answered. "I'm here to kill you."
Her wings flashed. Hundreds of paper blades ripped forward like a rainstorm turned to knives.
Jiraiya vaulted back, rolled spat a stream of slick, black pitch.
[Toad Oil Bullet]!
The heavy oil surged against the current of blades and drenched Konan, dragging her paper down in sticky sheets. A white flash whipped from Jiraiya's scalp his mane snapping outward, binding tight.
"Glued up nicely, aren't we?" he quipped, silver hair tightening like cords. "Of all of you, the one who loved origami was always the gentlest…"
Konan said nothing.
"And the other two?" he pressed. "So the reports they died were lies."
The silence itself was an answer.
Jiraiya's eyes dimmed with old regret. "I never thought Akatsuki could have been born from my students."
"Is Pain… that child?" he asked, voice lower now.
Konan's stare flickered—pain, memory, resolve. "After all this time, why come now? What good is your presence to us anymore?"
"I didn't want this," Jiraiya said. "If you had nothing to do with Akatsuki, I—" He stopped. That path no longer existed. "I heard you died. I never expected… this."
Konan's lips curved in a sharp, humorless smile. "If only you'd listened to Orochimaru back then that's what you're thinking, isn't it? You saved us instead. Too late. We chose our path, Sensei. We followed his idea of peace."
High above, a voice cut in male, steady, implacable.
"It was our decision, Jiraiya-sensei."
The *Animal Path* landed upon the arched conduit, looking down with ringed, merciless eyes.
Jiraiya looked up and knew. The face was different, the body a puppet but the eyes…
"Pain," he breathed. "Nagato."
"So you grew," Jiraiya said, sorrow heavy in the words, "but something in that growth went wrong. What happened to you?"
From far away, through the Animal Path's gaze, Nagato regarded the man who had taught him to read, to fight, to hope. That man now stood on the wrong side of God.
"You needn't know," Pain answered. "You're an outsider."
The last warmth fell from Jiraiya's face.
"You've changed, Nagato."
Glyphs flared behind the Animal Path summoning lines crawling across the stone. A hulking crab exploded into being, foam frothing from its maw in a choking tide.
Bubbles swamped the floor in an instant. Jiraiya sprang clear, hair-cords loosening; Konan's paper, sluiced twice over, shed the oil and peeled free.
"Stand back, Konan," Pain said.
—
Elsewhere in Amegakure, Neji sat at a shop's counter, sipping something hot that cut through the damp.
Enough foreplay, he thought, watching the confrontation through the distant clarity of the [Tenseigan]. Trade the intel, finish the dance…
Then I step in.
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