41 Days Until the Destruction of the Ninja World — Hidden Rain Village

The sky was a heavy shroud of black clouds, as if the heavens themselves had drawn a mourning veil over the land.

A fine, endless rain fell without pause, drenching stone, steel, and soul alike. In Hidden Rain, the sky never truly cleared, but tonight's downpour carried a special weight — one that spoke of things soon to end.

Jiraiya moved quietly through the slick, glistening streets. His geta clacked faintly against wet stone, each step muffled by the rain's constant whisper. There was no laughter here, no sound but the water and the faint creak of distant iron beams swaying in the wind.

The air was thick with something beyond moisture — a tension that clung to the skin.

This was not the Rain Village he remembered from the war, nor the one from his wandering days when he had taken in three starving children. The peace of the past few years had not brought warmth, but rather a still, watchful coldness.

And tonight, his heart was unsettled.

He was here not as a wandering hermit or mentor, but as a spy. His mission: to confirm the growing rumors about a shadowy group known as Akatsuki.

As he walked, Jiraiya's senses sharpened. Every ripple in the downpour, every faint chakra tremor along the rooftops — someone was watching.

Inside a dim tower, Nagato's Rinnegan flared open. The ripple-patterned eyes seemed to pierce through layers of rain and steel."Konan… Jiraiya-sensei has arrived."

Konan's hand froze mid-fold over a sheet of paper.The name hit her like the memory of sunlight on skin long denied warmth.

"…Jiraiya-sensei…" she murmured, her voice carrying a note of ache she quickly suppressed.

Nagato's tone was calm, but a shadow of hesitation lay within it. "Bring him here."

Jiraiya paused mid-step when a familiar chakra signature brushed against him through the curtain of rain.

From above, countless sheets of paper descended in slow spirals, drifting between raindrops without getting wet. The fragments swirled and merged before him, and from them emerged a woman with azure hair, an origami flower tucked above one ear.

"Konan…"

For a brief heartbeat, his old smile almost returned. "You've grown into a beautiful woman."

Her eyes were cool, unreadable. She neither smiled nor frowned."Jiraiya-sensei… Pain wishes to see you."

"Pain?" Jiraiya echoed, narrowing his eyes. But she gave him no answer, only turning as great paper wings unfurled behind her.

"Follow me."

They flew in silence through the rain-soaked sky. Konan's paper wings sliced the downpour, scattering water like shards of glass. Ahead loomed the tallest tower in the village, its peak lost in cloud.

Jiraiya landed on the platform and looked up.

There he stood — the man called Pain — a lone figure framed by endless rain, his Rinnegan glowing faintly.

For a moment, Jiraiya saw Yahiko in the outline… but the aura was wrong.

Too cold. Too heavy.

"Jiraiya-sensei," the voice came at last, distant and flat. "It has been a long time."

"…Nagato?"

"I am Pain," he corrected, calm as still water.

"What exactly do you want to do?"

"The Ninja World," Pain said, "is about to be remade." His Rinnegan glimmered with an unnerving blend of compassion and resolve. "I will guide it onto the only correct path."

Jiraiya's mind immediately returned to Kakashi's earlier report — the one suggesting Akatsuki's real aim was to break the nations through engineered disasters, forcing the survivors to kneel under their control. A dangerous vision that, if true, would make any alliance with them impossible.

"Your 'correct path,'" Jiraiya said slowly, "is to burn the entire world so the survivors will know only pain. Isn't that it?"

At that, Konan's brows furrowed. "Jiraiya-sensei… who told you such a thing?"

"We do not seek destruction," Nagato said, and there was something almost wounded in his tone. "The asteroid is real. The nations are fractured, distracted by petty disputes. Alone, none of them can stop it. Akatsuki will be the chain that binds them together."

Jiraiya searched their faces — Konan's quiet conviction, Nagato's unshaken calm — and felt the first sliver of uncertainty in his own.

If they were telling the truth, then someone had fed him deliberate lies. And if that someone was within Konoha, it meant more than one war was already in motion.

The rain continued to fall between them, blurring the line between truth and deception.

Meanwhile — Outskirts of the Hidden Rain Village

Through the misty spray of a roaring waterfall, shadowy figures emerged — dozens of Root operatives moving in eerie silence. At their head stood Shimura Danzo, unmoving, his single visible eye fixed on the sheets of water cascading down like an unbroken curtain.

"Jiraiya…" he muttered to himself, the name carrying a faint rasp of disdain.

By now, the old fool was surely deep within the Rain Village, face-to-face with that boy — the one with the Rinnegan.

Danzo's eyelid lowered in thought, and — as had been happening more often lately — drowsiness crept over him without warning. In that brief sliver of stillness, a memory surfaced.

The scene was years ago, the moon pale above the Naka River.

Uchiha Shisui stood rigid, eyes blazing with righteous indignation. Across from him, a younger Uchiha Gen, posture deceptively relaxed, watched him with the stillness of deep water.

"You call me greedy?" Shisui snapped, incredulous.

Gen's lips curled faintly — not quite a smile, more an acknowledgement of the absurdity before him. His voice, low and unhurried, cut through the night like a blade sliding from its sheath.

"Giving too much is simply another kind of greed. Greed for kindness. Greed for loyalty."His gaze sharpened. "And repaying too much? That's not virtue, Shisui — that's hunger for trust, obsession with righteousness."

The air between them thickened. Shisui opened his mouth, but Gen's words struck again before he could speak.

"You parade yourself as selfless, but in truth… you hoard the goodwill of both sides. You want to be everyone's savior. Is that not… insatiable greed?"

Gen turned away as if Shisui were already irrelevant, the moonlight casting his features in cold silver.

"You are a demon," Shisui hissed, but there was a tremor in his voice.

The waterfall's roar brought Danzo back to the present. Greedy, huh… The word lingered. Was Sarutobi any different?

A rustle in the rain-soaked foliage.

"Kakashi of the Sharingan," Danzo said as the silver-haired jonin emerged from the mist, his visible eye unreadable.

"Lord Danzo," Kakashi greeted, his voice as flat as the gray sky above them.

Danzo knew this meeting was no accident. Before setting foot in Hidden Rain, Kakashi had already made contact with Obito who was forming a deal with danzo — a risk few would dare take. From that exchange, he had learned something that could upend the balance of power among the great clans: the truth about the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.

If handled correctly… it could become a weapon sharper than any blade.

The rain hissed between them, yet in the brief silence, something passed between their gazes — a flicker of calculation, recognition, perhaps even mutual suspicion.

Neither man voiced it, but both understood: in this coming storm, trust would be scarcer than clear skies over the Rain Village.