Thanks to roadkill2580 for allowing me to steal her ideas, and Hokuto and Sessalisk for beta-reading.

In the sea of rust hung the moon in its infancy, dark and soothing. The demon fox lay, neither asleep nor awake. It stirred when the moon faltered and the sea raged, for the moon was only three blades spinning. The tide rose, and Tsunade with it, as a severed head might have floated to the surface.

She couldn't feel her limbs; the ANBU wouldn't give up their comfortable seats so easily. There was dirt in her nose and mouth, and with the steel grip on her head keeping it down she was literally eating dirt. But dirt and ashes were nothing compared to the stench of putrefying flesh, and for that brief moment when everything was red, Tsunade found herself sympathising with the demon's desire to cleanse everything with fire.

She could feel the demon grumbling behind her throat. Impotent for as long as Hokage-sama trained his fancy wheel eyes on them, it was left to claw on the wounds it'd made on her. Tsunade wished the Sharingan would just tell it to die, or failing that, tell her to. It wasn't that she had wanted to die, exactly, but in a village full of ninja, only Tsunade held the honourable title of human sacrifice. Before that, she was a shinobi of Konoha, the student of every Hokage since its founding. She had expected to fight for as long as she could, but there was never a doubt of her fate in the event the seal broke.

The pain eased somewhat when a familiar chakra came between them and snapped the fox's cage close. A whine escaped her throat; the ANBU's hand in her hair clenched warningly.

Hokage-sama was speaking. "I have to be sure the demon will not break free," he said, but not to her. Tsunade couldn't make out the words, but there was no mistaking Grandma's mumble in reply. It was all Grandma could do after the demon fox had ripped her from inside out. It was a miracle she could speak or walk at all. How dare they drag her into this mess, Tsunade thought.

Tsunade raised her head; the ANBU slammed it back down. Blood filled her mouth as her teeth cut her tongue. She heard Grandma rebuking the ANBU, and jerked her head up again, and got a cuff for her troubles, again.

It took a while for her head to stop spinning, and when she could see again there was an outline of a foot by her head. Tsunade closed her eyes, bracing herself for a kick that never came. The ANBU slowly and reluctantly peeled themselves off her. They remained within stabbing distance, vibrating with chakra and alarm as the Hokage helped her stand.

Tsunade looked away from Kagami's stupid wheel eyes. There was a crater nearby. The broken body inside had been removed, but the blood had not, as if to leave an evidence to charge her with. There was Grandma, leaning on her cane and a lean, silver-haired ANBU, well outside the human cage. Worry was writ large in her frail frame and Tsunade had never felt more wretched. She looked away.

Her stupid teammates were missing, though. Tsunade tried not to think of how striking blood had looked on Orochimaru's deathly pallor. Where was Orochimaru? Jiraiya, she wasn't worried for so much as resigned, because only Jiraiya could be stupid enough to get himself into trouble after escaping another.

Kagami's answer came slowly under the watch of dark, forbidding eyes. "Jiraiya is with Orochimaru at the hospital. And perhaps you should be as well, Tsunade." He was looking at her feet. Confused, Tsunade followed his gaze, and was reminded of the sword that had gone through her heart (and before that, Orochimaru's torso. She really ought to see him). If there had been a wound there, it no longer hurt, though it was understandably hard to see through the blood—hers and the ANBU's and Orochimaru's, quite the party.

"It doesn't hurt, but, Ka–Hokage-sama, what about Kabema?" Kagami's surprise irked her more than being handled like a rabid beast or a renegade shinobi, or some horrid combination of the two. Give her a little credit, eh. "Senju Kabema, that ANBU over there? He's dead, isn't he?"

Of course he was. Even if she hadn't remembered breaking her cousin with bare hands, she was still wearing his blood. A new chuunin vest just for me, she thought sardonically, desperate to ignore her churning stomach.

"Did you kill him?" Kagami sounded just like her little brother. Nawaki had the annoying habit of asking the questions he knew the answer to, as though with persistence his chores would vanish. He had seen the body, had seen Tsunade and immediately subdued her, did he think she would deny it just because he'd asked?

"He tried to kill me, and Orochimaru too, since he got in the way. So… I suppose I did."

The ANBU went very, very still, suddenly abuzz with chakra that pricked at her skin, and filled her nose with an unholy mix of rotten fruit and bleach. She coughed, but Kagami only said, "Is that so."

Tsunade glared up at him. "You should have ordered me, Hokage-sama. Would've got the job done without any of the mess."

Kagami sighed. Slowly his features melted into a resemblance of the man who was as close to a favourite cousin as an Uchiha could be. "Tsunade," he said as to an unruly child, "No one has ordered your death, and no one will as long as I am the Hokage. But I must have all the facts before I am to decide on anything. So please, tell me what happened."