Anko Mitarashi leaned on the tree behind her, gasping for air as her useless injured arm dangled from the shoulder of her beaten and tired body. She was actually quite surprised she still had the arm attached considering she used it to block most of the explosion from the trap she so unwittingly sprang up.

'Fuck. The mission report said it was just a bunch of bandits! What the heck is this!?' Anko mentally cursed, feeling her exhaustion as hopelessness started to creep into her heart. ​​

Around her, three men vigilantly awaited her next action. All three would clearly be able to get to chunin rank if they were ninjas. Anko could only wince because of the bruises forming on her reasonably uninjured hand and legs while she hatefully accepted she lowered her guard at the worst possible moment.

The mission she set out to finish was the basic extermination of a bandit camp. Nothing hard, according to her standards and record of completed and survived suicide missions.

Everything went just fine too... at least until she had fifty corpses under her feet and decided to search through the camp.

Who would have guessed there would be a high-level fuinjutsu explosive trap in a camp full of basically a bit stronger civilians!?

Worse yet... who would have known four chunins would jump at her the second a tree stopped her momentary flight due to the explosion.

Fast-forward a quite shameful beatdown where she was forced to repeatedly retreat, and here she was. Leaning on a tree to keep standing. Her working limbs were bruised as hell. The arm that ate up the explosion was bloody and somewhere even charred. She could feel her body reaching her limit due to exhaustion. Sweat was flowing into her stinging eyes and stuck her hair to her skin. She felt like vomiting and barely suppressed the pain her body was screaming at her in.

What made it all worse was that the three men in front of her were considerably okay which only hurt her pride. She was almost jonin level! Four chunins should be easy to deal with... normally. Alas, she was quite disabled due to the explosion. Anko could only keep pushing her torn muscles in order to not have her head leave her shoulders. Not that the fight was a particularly long one but she was a bit satisfied that she managed to kill one of them.

But by the looks of it, this was a game over for her. There was only one way to get out of this alive and even that had only a small chance of success. Yes... Anko could clearly feel the pulsing pain from her shoulder where the accursed Cursed Seal was.

'Should I use it?' Anko reluctantly thought, knowing the repercussions.

"Let's just kill the bitch, Orochimaru-sama..."

And just like that, Anko's mind froze, not paying attention to whatever was said afterward.

'Oro...chimaru?' The realization hit her like a proverbial truck. This was a test. It could not even be called a trap. No... her bastard of a former teacher most likely sent them to test her willingness to use the Cursed Seal.

Any notion of using the only thing that could save her life was instantly rejected. Anko simply refused to give Orochimaru the satisfaction of activating the seal... not even if it cost her her life.

Gripping her kunai harder, Anko prepared for one last stand. If she was to die at the hands of Orochimaru's subordinates, she decided to take as many of the bastards out with her.

Seeing the change in her attitude, the three chunins tensed for a second, before chuckling at the absurdity of it all. The woman in front of them was barely standing. She will not be able to take a few steps forward, much less run at them. If they decided to make a pincushion out of her, she won't even be able to dodge. Really... her determined stare was actually incredibly hilarious to them. The woman was beaten. Now it was only a matter of how they would finish her off.

They relaxed...

Anko hated the smug glint their eyes were giving her. More than that, she was ashamed that somebody could be so relaxed when facing her in a fight. It reminded her of the times when she was a little girl facing the big badass snake Sannin who decided to train her. And she utterly hated how she missed those times.

Suddenly, red droplets impacted Anko's face, causing her to owlishly blink, her brain trying to comprehend what happened when her eyes finally registered her three attackers, gaping at her with glazed soulless eyes, their bodies riddled with...

'Are those wooden spikes?' Anko's mind, completely shocked, barely managed to come to this conclusion as her eyes saw wooden spikes impaling the three chunins so violently, it caused blood splatter all over her.

Anko... fainted.

...

Tsunade sat behind a wooden table in a basic small wooden house she created with her mokuton and was in the process of trying to write easy-to-understand medical scrolls for the medic-nin academy course. Rei was currently outside, hunting for dinner. While they had enough food stored in the dimension, Tsunade could only wistfully smile. She knew well that Rei wanted to hunt something and then spend time with her, preparing and cooking it. In some sweet misguided way, it was his attempt at cheering her up. She snorted. If he wanted her cheerful, all he had to do was bend her over the table she created.

Tsunade's eyes momentarily flickered towards the bed in the corner of the room, at the nuisance she saved earlier today and the most probable reason why Rei didn't simply do exactly that. Really, Tsunade was honestly starting to regret saving the bothersome unconscious girl.

The second Rei left the house, Tsunade made damn sure to create more rooms and applied silencing seals. She could understand why it would be awkward having sex in the same room the unconscious girl laid in but... she vehemently refused to hold herself back just because there was a stranger in the house! No more.

Tsunade saw the girl's body twitch and knew she was on the verge of waking up. Sighing to herself, Tsunade stored her half-finished medical book, just as Anko's upper body abruptly rose into a sitting position on the bed, her eyes warily looking through the room as if she was a cornered animal on the verge of a panic attack.

It was then Anko's eyes met Tsunade's unamused stare and widened out of proportion.

"Tsu-Tsu-Tsunade-sama!?" Anko stuttered in disbelief, causing Tsunade to roll her eyes at her.

And just like that, Anko... fainted... again.