"Tsunade?" Hiruzen exclaimed in surprise, "When did you come back?"

He was the Hokage, dammit! One would think a presence of an S-rank ninja in HIS village, no matter if she belonged to HIS own forces, would be noted and relayed to him...

'Damn Izumo and Kotetsu... new at the job and already slacking? Exactly like their fathers!' Hiruzen glumly thought.

"Just yesterday," Tsunade waved her arm as she slowly walked towards the center of the room, closer to the Hokage, instead of heading to the Senju seat. This was instantly noted by the other clan heads.

Hiruzen, though, had his head spinning because of something else. 'Did she say yesterday? An S-rank ninja was inside of MY village for more than twenty-four hours and NOBODY noticed? No report from the barrier team? The barrier is set up to flare like crazy the second one of my students enters the village. As their sensei, it is my duty to prove myself all-knowing, and being aware of their comings and goings was a big part of that! How could she just sneak in? Worse yet... No patrols spotted anything unusual? No casino showed a marginal improvement in their earnings? No bar complained about drunk violent blondes? No Danzo complaining about CRA for Tsunade? When the hell did the world become such a strange place!?' He pondered his life choices as the leader of a village full of trained killers, now that they proved utterly incompetent.

Naturally, Hiruzen completely disregarded that Tsunade was Senju, and therefore knew many secret entrances to the village not known even to him. For him, she was still the small flat girl who wanted to be the best medic in the world after witnessing her beloved grandfather dying during her childhood. Same as Orochimaru was still that little pale kid with a penchant for snakes who just might have been a bit morally deranged. Yeah... sending him to work with Danzo might not have been the best decision for his already crumbling moral compass.

'Poor Danzo... who knows how Orochimaru corrupted him.' Hiruzen wistfully mused, 'He did become a bit heavy-handed in recent years.'

While Hiruzen was experiencing the effect his old age had on his sentimentality, Tsunade finally arrived in the center of the room, standing tall with her arms crossed below her chest with a very self-satisfied grin on her face.

Her eyes glanced at Danzo in a way the man would notice. Catching his attention, Tsunade very slightly lifted her forearm, making her breasts bounce. Today, she had a generous cleavage and even an old, supposedly emotionless, coot like Danzo was not immune to her charms. Especially not the small temptation genjutsu targeting only his chakra signature. Well, for all Tsunade knew, the man could have been a eunuch or batted for the other team with the amount of time he and her sensei spent bickering! She had to safeguard her plan would go off without a hitch...

Danzo indeed found himself affected and glanced at her cleavage... stiffening the second he noticed the mark on her left breast. He knew that mark well from his research these past few days...

'What the... Yozora!? Wait... wooden spikes made of mokuton? ... She slaughtered my ROOT!' His eyes filled with horror-induced panic as he frantically looked at Hiruzen. He knew the old monkey was a pervert ranking on the upper levels of Jiraiya's scale and indeed, the old man was blushing while also glancing at Tsunade's chest. 'Nothing? He is saying nothing? ... Wait! He... doesn't see the mark, does he?'

Danzo remembered. Tsunade had perfect chakra control and knew a genjutsu that hid the effects of her old age even from Sharingan and Byakugan users.

'Of course, nobody is seeing it! The bitch!' He silently seethed, glaring in rage at the blond woman.

He couldn't simply accuse her of being in an organization full of rogue ninjas, telling the council he needed somebody to study her naked chest to provide the proof. That sounded like something Hiruzen would come up with. Ridiculous...

It was the same situation as his arm or eye. He was seen as a cripple. Telling him to show them his supposedly mutilated arm or missing eye was incredibly rude and if somebody did that, it would have been the equivalent of making enemies on the council. He could have easily wiggled out of that accusation with some simple word-play, abusing his status of cripple alongside his position on the council and his lifelong loyal service to the village. After all, what would be his motivation to betray the village when he gave his body parts to serve it? After spending his entire life safeguarding it? Accusing him of anything without a certain factual and irrefutable proof was political and career suicide.

Tsunade was the last Senju. She was the last member of the founding clan of Konoha. Saying she betrayed the village without providing iron-clad proof was like saying she shat upon all of her dead clan members' graves. And everybody knew how she loved her clan. She even left the village in grief after the second war, supposedly unable to withstand the pressure. Her brother's death was just the last straw. Tsunade was a hardened ninja, after all. One death would not cause her to completely crumble. But receiving every other week an invitation to a funeral of yet another dead family member since she was ten? Even Danzo, the believer in the necessary ruthlessness, had to, at the time, admit that if anyone deserved a long break, it was her.

Moreover, she was the hero of the second ninja war and the most beloved person in Konoha right after the Yellow Flash! Literally nobody died in the hospital in the third war because of her. People noticed. As long as an injured person reached Konoha's hospital, he would survive even if half of his body was missing. Tsunade was just that good. People still loved her despite her long absence from the village.

Accusing a person of such a reputation of an act of treason?

Danzo might have been old but he was not senile. All he could do was silently stem in his rage and quietly watch the meeting. He did not have his ROOT anymore. He had five guys who would get slaughtered if they tried anything against Tsunade. He knew when he was beaten. No, it was time for a tactical retreat and regroup. He could always remake his ROOT. Konoha had enough orphans for that.

'Oh, I will have my revenge, Tsunade. Just you wait. A few years and I will make your life a hell upon earth! Yozora will fall once I become Hokage.' Danzo inwardly swore.

Smirking, Tsunade gave Danzo a winning look, enjoying the emotional torture she heaped upon the old Warhawk with just a single gesture. Yeah... he now knew her allegiance. Big deal. What was he exactly gonna do about it? Call her up on it? How she wished he would be that stupid. Label of a pervert would suit the old cripple nicely, driving his already butt-hurt ego into the ground.

Better yet, it would give her a reasonable excuse to clobber the old coot through the entire village too, crippling him for real. After all, accidents happen all the time, no?

'A girl can dream.' Tsunade wistfully sighed and turned back to Hiruzen, taking out a miniature scroll from her pocket, enlarging it with a single flare of her chakra before throwing it to the old man.

"That is why I came here." She answered his questioning look as he caught the document, "You wouldn't believe all the things I learned about my place in this village in my visit to the Fire Capital. Eh, sensei, when were you going to tell me about it, I wonder?"

Hearing that, Hiruzen didn't need to be a prophet to know what the scroll was about. Needless to say, his heart skipped a beat when he saw the seal of the Fire Daimyo.