The Secret Weapon - part 3
03: Relapse - part 1
For the longest second in his life, Jiraiya felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. Where he was and why stopped mattering, and all the reasons in the world didn't seem enough for him to tear his gaze away from the impossible but exhilarating sight before him. Maybe he was dead - or rather, he had to be, and the slight detail that he hadn't even noticed it happen would not convince him otherwise. His dead student was standing in front of him, moving and looking as alive as the toad summoner was sure he himself had been up until moments ago.
Then his senses caught up to him. There were other people there next to him and, for the sake of his sanity, he had to believe that no matter how badly he'd screwed up throughout his life, the gods wouldn't be so cruel as to make him share the next world with someone like the Tsuchikage. That, and he noticed that, shock or no shock, he really needed to resume breathing.
He was not the only one to reach that conclusion. Next to him, someone took a sharp intake of breath that helped to finally drive the hermit back to reality. It was Naruto.
"Hey, Pervy Sage... is that...?" the blond didn't finish his sentence, probably fearful of speaking his thoughts out loud in case he was wrong.
That was what was currently going through Jiraiya's mind, after all. In fact, the white-haired man was already bracing himself for the devastating disappointment that was sure to follow once he really came down from the temporary high. Regardless, the toad summoner understood what Naruto was trying to ask: was the blond enemy ninja standing by the Tsuchikage's side the Fourth Hokage?
"It can't be him," he answered with as much conviction as he could muster. It couldn't have been much because, somewhere inside him, he could feel the tiny worm of a ludicrous hope struggling to survive.
"But he looks just like him, doesn't he?" Naruto persisted and for the first time since they'd met, Jiraiya wished that the kid would shut up for good. He couldn't bear to keep feeding that squirming something in his heart that made him want to believe in what couldn't be real.
Naruto had a habit of talking too much and it wasn't unusual for the older man to urge him to be quiet. It had always been the "I'm telling you to shut up so I can hear your cute angry retorts" type of shushing, but now, the older man was surprising himself with how viciously that thought had come to him. It was as if his deep longing for the return of his older student was overriding everything he felt for his newer one, to the point where he wouldn't hesitate to cast Naruto aside for the prospect of seeing Minato again.
His chest constricted with guilt as he realised how easily he was discarding Naruto - one more unforgivable failing to add to his already extensive list as a man and as his godfather. The guilt did not come alone, though, and Jiraiya was soon neck-deep in the pond of disappointment in which he had been living for longer than he cared to admit.
"He..." his voice broke, "he's dead. And this guy looks too young." Under his breath, he added, "There don't seem to be any animation or illusion techniques cast on him..."
As his hopes faded, he remembered that Tsunade still had to fight. She was about to risk her life in a desperate attempt to keep the village from going to war. He only hoped that his old teammate was dealing with this surprising turn of events better than him or she wouldn't stand a chance.
Vague ideas were spinning around Jiraiya's mind as he tried to find a reasonable explanation for what he was seeing (surely, the young Iwa ninja who had insultingly taken on Minato's face had undergone some sort of plastic surgery to alter his appearance), when Naruto once again catapulted his thoughts to the present.
"What a weird-looking kunai," he said. Curious about what he meant, the toad summoner looked back to the centre of the action, where the Tsuchikage had apparently just drawn something from the folds of his white robe.
For the second time in under a minute, the white-haired man's mind drew a blank and he was left briefly wondering how many more surprises he could take.
The blade with the three points, the rolled-up scroll with undecipherable symbols on the handle... It looked rusty and worn, but the sight was so crushingly familiar to Jiraiya that there were no doubts in his mind whether or not it was authentic. Hanging from one of the Tsuchikage's fingers by the loop at the end of the handle, was one of the sealed kunai that was the key to the technique that only Minato had ever been able to use - Hiraishin.
What was going on?, Jiraiya asked himself.
* * *
Tsunade was asking pretty much the same questions.
"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded of the Iwa ninjas.
The face of the strange Minato look-alike remained blank as he ignored the outburst and took the special kunai from the Tsuchikage's grasp. He casually started twirling it in his hand, moving away from his fellow countrymen, and once he'd reached the centre of the plateau, at a safe distance from both parties, all he did was turn to regard Tsunade.
The slug summoner did not like to see those eyes on her. They were cold and straight-to-the-point: exactly like her teammate's lively student's had been when on assignment.
"I'll ask again, Tsuchikage! What is going on here!?"
"Why, I thought you had already understood the terms of our agreement," the grey-haired man replied with an innocent tone. The fierce glint in his eyes spoke of a different story, though. "I chose Arashi to represent Iwa. Follow through on your end, Konoha!"
Suddenly, she regreted taking the Tsuchikage's challenge. She had known from the start that he had been hiding something and it had been naïve of her to think that she could keep the unknown under control. There was no guessing how events would turn out now and her village would be severely handicapped in the coming war if she fell. She was more interested in learning more about that young man than fighting him now, but she could see that none of the Iwa ninjas were about to talk.
The blond kept twirling the kunai expectantly in his hand. There was nothing Tsunade could do except join him.
Her knee wobbled a bit the first step she took. It crossed her mind that maybe this kind of apprehension was exactly what the Iwa ninjas had experienced during the Third Shinobi War, knowing that the Yellow Flash was out there. That thought cleared as soon as she took another step, though, and another, and her confidence was quickly restored.
Minato or not, she was going to fight and win. She was the Hokage and had an entire village counting on her.
"I don't know who you are," she told the blond, "but you have a lot of nerve showing up here, looking like that. I'm going to teach you a lesson, boy!"
"You can try," he answered, callous, putting away the kunai. Tsunade's words had as much effect on him as a wave beating against an unmovable stone wall.
The disrespectful little brat was going down!, Tsunade swore. She could beat the answers she wanted out of him afterwards.
Remembering Jiraiya's advice, she immediately started directing chakra into her hands. Invisible to the naked eye, thin chakra blades extended from each of her fingertips - a technique she'd picked up after meeting Kabuto. This fight would most likely be settled in close quarters, so her first priority was to make sure that every ligament in his legs was torn so he couldn't move.
Their eyes met and an unspoken understanding passed between them. The fight was on.
The look-alike immediately disappeared from sight with a fast sprint, and it was only thanks to experience that Tsunade was able to recognise the slight breeze on her left for what it was and dodge the incoming punch. Her hands reached for that extended arm, but it was already too late. He was rolling across her back to try to attack her other side.
The little bastard was testing her reaction time, she realised. With a small smile, she spun around with him and threw a punch at exactly the same time he did. His face wasn't as composed when his frail forearm had to absorb the full impact of the Hokage's monstrous strength combined with the chakra scalpel technique and he quickly put some distance between them to assess the damage.
Tsunade let him go and watched with satisfaction as he tried to clench his fist, only to find that none of his fingers were capable of responding.
"I'm Hokage, kid. You're going to have to do better than that."
No sooner had she said those words that he vanished again. This time, no wind was fast enough to warn her of where he was coming from next. Tsunade's legs were swept from under her. She tried to position her upper body so she could safely roll away as soon as she hit the ground, but before there was an impact, an upward strike came to her stomach and then another fell down on her shoulders.
She was left lying on the ground, feeling a bit like an abused puppet. A burning sensation had spread across her back and down her arms. Her muscles were throbbing like they'd been infused with liquid-hot metal and it felt like her tendons would snap at the least attempt to move. She managed to lift her head, but didn't have time to start a self-diagnostic technique to find out what was wrong before another priority came up: evading the kunai that was flying straight towards her.
She heard something being shouted in the distance and knew at once that it had come from Naruto. Although her blood was pulsing too loudy on her ears for her to make out the words, she was sure it was some cry of encouragement. He was rooting for her, she reminded herself... and so was all of Konoha.
The slug summoner stood up and batted away the incoming kunai like it was no more than a pesky bug. The pain was excruciating, though. Like every muscle in her upper body had just been torn from the bone, although she knew that that was physically impossible. Glaring at the blond who had his good hand deep in his weapons pouch a few meters away, reaching for something else to throw, she decided to take a chance.
"No," Jiraiya muttered when he saw his former teammate rushing her opponent. "Don't take stupid risks. He hasn't even gotten serious yet..."
Next to him, Naruto was just about a moment away from leaping into the fray himself. Jiraiya's arm around him was the only thing keeping him in place. If the old pervert hadn't grabbed him when Tsunade had gone down, he would have already gone to make sure that that stupid Iwa ninja was history!
The emotions of the players on the other side of the field were quite different. Rather than concern about the outcome, the Tsuchikage was mostly feeling impatience. Regardless of how much fun it was to see the Hokage flailing, he thought Arashi should just take her out. He had been ordered to kill, and kill he should - honour code be damned. An enemy like Konoha did not deserve any other kind of treatment.
Tsunade tried to hit the blond Iwa ninja with a series of quick punches and jabs. Her chakra was still focused on her hands, so all it would take to cause damage was a grazing shot. As her hits were once and again evaded or deflected, though, it became increasingly apparent that she simply wasn't fast enough. The blond saw through every one of her moves with ease and reacted accordingly, so there was no way for her to just overwhelm him with taijutsu. She'd have to come up with a different tactic.
She interrupted her assault to throw a punch at the ground in front of her. The land cracked apart under Arashi's feet from her devastating force, nearly causing his legs to be trapped in the gaps. Seizing the opportunity where her opponent was distracted, Tsunade quickly redirected her fists at him. To her dismay, he recovered quickly, leaping over the gaps and using the blocks of earth as stepping stones. He slapped her arms away every time they got too close.
A faint sizzling sound was all the warning she had before a small explosive tag went off on her arm. It was small enough that all it did was cause pain and a burn, but effective enough in that it caught her off guard and left her completely open to a counter-attack. Before she could reform any kind of stance, Arashi had manoeuvred around her and forced her down on her knees in a headlock.
His hold around her neck was tight, no air making it past the compressed larynx. Tsunade didn’t panic. Taking advantage of the fact he was behind her, she covertly formed a quick sequence of seals and grabbed the arm suffocating her.
Her chakra immediately latched on to her opponent's nervous system and she forced it to go all the way up to the brain, where the region that controlled motor skills was located. She had just reached it and was about to zap him with a chakra-generated electrical discharge that would wreck his control over his body movements when he disappeared.
One moment he was there, the next he wasn't. No wind or clouds of smoke to indicate that it had been a clone and no continuity of movement to indicate that he had simply stepped back. Hiraishin, her mind supplied. If he was going to start using that now, she was done for. And to make things worse, she wasn't even sure if her half-executed technique had had any effect.
From the sidelines, Jiraiya was dumbfounded. He recognised the Hiraishin, Minato's prized Flying Thunder God technique, but he was sure that the kid still had the kunai with the special seal on him. His thoughts were confirmed when, right after materialising a couple of meters away from Tsunade with a flash of yellow, distorted light, he clearly saw the young man reach into his weapons pouch and take out the three-pronged kunai from it.
That wasn't the way Hiraishin was supposed to work - the seal had to be planted at the destination before the technique was activated. This Iwa ninja was even more dangerous than they'd guessed if he could teleport at will just by holding the tagged kunai.
Meanwhile, Arashi was starting to get annoyed by the Hokage's tactics. He'd approached the fight with caution, knowing that she would be powerful and resourceful, but after getting zapped twice by techniques that made his body stop responding, he was getting tired of playing. First his hand had stopped working and now she'd forced him to use his secret technique to avoid something similar from affecting his whole body.
He shook off the after-effects of her latest move. His body took a couple of seconds until it responded normally again, but fortunately he'd been on time to escape the real damage. It was long enough for Tsunade to pull herself back to her feet.
He took a moment to study her golden gaze. She was panting lightly, but determined and strong in her own right. Had he been anyone else, he would have already suffered the brunt of more than one of her devastating punches. He was sure that one would have been more than enough to knock him out and potentially break a few bones. Ultimately, though, every fight was unique in that the strongest could come across an enemy with a skill set that rendered them weak. Such was the case with the Hokage. He'd seen enough to know that she had no way to defend against his speed.
Knowing that, Arashi decided that it was time to end the fight and do as his Tsuchikage had ordered. He'd been holding back, as he'd always been taught that the honourable way to fight one on one was to always give the adversary a fighting chance. Now he realised, though, that no matter how much he held back, she would always be too slow.
He'd use his greatest technique and give her a good death.
Focusing on the kunai on the palm of his hand, Arashi teleported right next to the Hokage. His arm was drawn back, ready to come down in an arch across Tsunade's throat. The momentum of the rapid movement would have been enough to make the kill, but when combined with Arashi's own strength and the sharpness of the weapon, it resulted in one deadly strike.
Tsunade tried to lift her arms, tried to defend somehow, but the blond was too close and too fast for her to have time to escape. Her only hope, she knew, was to release the seal on her forehead at the exact time the strike connected.
The slash bled profusely. After a brief contemplation of just how much blood she was covered in - hedious, horrendous, bright red blood - Tsunade felt herself become too light-headed for thought. She closed her eyes and let gravity take over.
The Hokage fell.
A satisfied smile spread across the Tsuchikage's face as Arashi stepped back and the sight of his greatest enemy's defeat became visible to him. On the other side of the plateau, however, the situation was radically different. Jiraiya and Naruto had started sprinting towards Tsunade as soon as they'd realised what was going to happen.
The toad sage knelt next to her, head lowered over her chest. Ironically, since this was the first time in his life he’d gotten so close to that plentiful bosom, perverted thoughts were the last thing on his mind. He was completely focused on discerning if there was still a pulse.
Naruto stared on in shock. Granny Tsunade was dead... and the guy responsible for that was standing right behind him.
Chapter 4...
For the longest second in his life, Jiraiya felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. Where he was and why stopped mattering, and all the reasons in the world didn't seem enough for him to tear his gaze away from the impossible but exhilarating sight before him. Maybe he was dead - or rather, he had to be, and the slight detail that he hadn't even noticed it happen would not convince him otherwise. His dead student was standing in front of him, moving and looking as alive as the toad summoner was sure he himself had been up until moments ago.
Then his senses caught up to him. There were other people there next to him and, for the sake of his sanity, he had to believe that no matter how badly he'd screwed up throughout his life, the gods wouldn't be so cruel as to make him share the next world with someone like the Tsuchikage. That, and he noticed that, shock or no shock, he really needed to resume breathing.
He was not the only one to reach that conclusion. Next to him, someone took a sharp intake of breath that helped to finally drive the hermit back to reality. It was Naruto.
"Hey, Pervy Sage... is that...?" the blond didn't finish his sentence, probably fearful of speaking his thoughts out loud in case he was wrong.
That was what was currently going through Jiraiya's mind, after all. In fact, the white-haired man was already bracing himself for the devastating disappointment that was sure to follow once he really came down from the temporary high. Regardless, the toad summoner understood what Naruto was trying to ask: was the blond enemy ninja standing by the Tsuchikage's side the Fourth Hokage?
"It can't be him," he answered with as much conviction as he could muster. It couldn't have been much because, somewhere inside him, he could feel the tiny worm of a ludicrous hope struggling to survive.
"But he looks just like him, doesn't he?" Naruto persisted and for the first time since they'd met, Jiraiya wished that the kid would shut up for good. He couldn't bear to keep feeding that squirming something in his heart that made him want to believe in what couldn't be real.
Naruto had a habit of talking too much and it wasn't unusual for the older man to urge him to be quiet. It had always been the "I'm telling you to shut up so I can hear your cute angry retorts" type of shushing, but now, the older man was surprising himself with how viciously that thought had come to him. It was as if his deep longing for the return of his older student was overriding everything he felt for his newer one, to the point where he wouldn't hesitate to cast Naruto aside for the prospect of seeing Minato again.
His chest constricted with guilt as he realised how easily he was discarding Naruto - one more unforgivable failing to add to his already extensive list as a man and as his godfather. The guilt did not come alone, though, and Jiraiya was soon neck-deep in the pond of disappointment in which he had been living for longer than he cared to admit.
"He..." his voice broke, "he's dead. And this guy looks too young." Under his breath, he added, "There don't seem to be any animation or illusion techniques cast on him..."
As his hopes faded, he remembered that Tsunade still had to fight. She was about to risk her life in a desperate attempt to keep the village from going to war. He only hoped that his old teammate was dealing with this surprising turn of events better than him or she wouldn't stand a chance.
Vague ideas were spinning around Jiraiya's mind as he tried to find a reasonable explanation for what he was seeing (surely, the young Iwa ninja who had insultingly taken on Minato's face had undergone some sort of plastic surgery to alter his appearance), when Naruto once again catapulted his thoughts to the present.
"What a weird-looking kunai," he said. Curious about what he meant, the toad summoner looked back to the centre of the action, where the Tsuchikage had apparently just drawn something from the folds of his white robe.
For the second time in under a minute, the white-haired man's mind drew a blank and he was left briefly wondering how many more surprises he could take.
The blade with the three points, the rolled-up scroll with undecipherable symbols on the handle... It looked rusty and worn, but the sight was so crushingly familiar to Jiraiya that there were no doubts in his mind whether or not it was authentic. Hanging from one of the Tsuchikage's fingers by the loop at the end of the handle, was one of the sealed kunai that was the key to the technique that only Minato had ever been able to use - Hiraishin.
What was going on?, Jiraiya asked himself.
* * *
Tsunade was asking pretty much the same questions.
"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded of the Iwa ninjas.
The face of the strange Minato look-alike remained blank as he ignored the outburst and took the special kunai from the Tsuchikage's grasp. He casually started twirling it in his hand, moving away from his fellow countrymen, and once he'd reached the centre of the plateau, at a safe distance from both parties, all he did was turn to regard Tsunade.
The slug summoner did not like to see those eyes on her. They were cold and straight-to-the-point: exactly like her teammate's lively student's had been when on assignment.
"I'll ask again, Tsuchikage! What is going on here!?"
"Why, I thought you had already understood the terms of our agreement," the grey-haired man replied with an innocent tone. The fierce glint in his eyes spoke of a different story, though. "I chose Arashi to represent Iwa. Follow through on your end, Konoha!"
Suddenly, she regreted taking the Tsuchikage's challenge. She had known from the start that he had been hiding something and it had been naïve of her to think that she could keep the unknown under control. There was no guessing how events would turn out now and her village would be severely handicapped in the coming war if she fell. She was more interested in learning more about that young man than fighting him now, but she could see that none of the Iwa ninjas were about to talk.
The blond kept twirling the kunai expectantly in his hand. There was nothing Tsunade could do except join him.
Her knee wobbled a bit the first step she took. It crossed her mind that maybe this kind of apprehension was exactly what the Iwa ninjas had experienced during the Third Shinobi War, knowing that the Yellow Flash was out there. That thought cleared as soon as she took another step, though, and another, and her confidence was quickly restored.
Minato or not, she was going to fight and win. She was the Hokage and had an entire village counting on her.
"I don't know who you are," she told the blond, "but you have a lot of nerve showing up here, looking like that. I'm going to teach you a lesson, boy!"
"You can try," he answered, callous, putting away the kunai. Tsunade's words had as much effect on him as a wave beating against an unmovable stone wall.
The disrespectful little brat was going down!, Tsunade swore. She could beat the answers she wanted out of him afterwards.
Remembering Jiraiya's advice, she immediately started directing chakra into her hands. Invisible to the naked eye, thin chakra blades extended from each of her fingertips - a technique she'd picked up after meeting Kabuto. This fight would most likely be settled in close quarters, so her first priority was to make sure that every ligament in his legs was torn so he couldn't move.
Their eyes met and an unspoken understanding passed between them. The fight was on.
The look-alike immediately disappeared from sight with a fast sprint, and it was only thanks to experience that Tsunade was able to recognise the slight breeze on her left for what it was and dodge the incoming punch. Her hands reached for that extended arm, but it was already too late. He was rolling across her back to try to attack her other side.
The little bastard was testing her reaction time, she realised. With a small smile, she spun around with him and threw a punch at exactly the same time he did. His face wasn't as composed when his frail forearm had to absorb the full impact of the Hokage's monstrous strength combined with the chakra scalpel technique and he quickly put some distance between them to assess the damage.
Tsunade let him go and watched with satisfaction as he tried to clench his fist, only to find that none of his fingers were capable of responding.
"I'm Hokage, kid. You're going to have to do better than that."
No sooner had she said those words that he vanished again. This time, no wind was fast enough to warn her of where he was coming from next. Tsunade's legs were swept from under her. She tried to position her upper body so she could safely roll away as soon as she hit the ground, but before there was an impact, an upward strike came to her stomach and then another fell down on her shoulders.
She was left lying on the ground, feeling a bit like an abused puppet. A burning sensation had spread across her back and down her arms. Her muscles were throbbing like they'd been infused with liquid-hot metal and it felt like her tendons would snap at the least attempt to move. She managed to lift her head, but didn't have time to start a self-diagnostic technique to find out what was wrong before another priority came up: evading the kunai that was flying straight towards her.
She heard something being shouted in the distance and knew at once that it had come from Naruto. Although her blood was pulsing too loudy on her ears for her to make out the words, she was sure it was some cry of encouragement. He was rooting for her, she reminded herself... and so was all of Konoha.
The slug summoner stood up and batted away the incoming kunai like it was no more than a pesky bug. The pain was excruciating, though. Like every muscle in her upper body had just been torn from the bone, although she knew that that was physically impossible. Glaring at the blond who had his good hand deep in his weapons pouch a few meters away, reaching for something else to throw, she decided to take a chance.
"No," Jiraiya muttered when he saw his former teammate rushing her opponent. "Don't take stupid risks. He hasn't even gotten serious yet..."
Next to him, Naruto was just about a moment away from leaping into the fray himself. Jiraiya's arm around him was the only thing keeping him in place. If the old pervert hadn't grabbed him when Tsunade had gone down, he would have already gone to make sure that that stupid Iwa ninja was history!
The emotions of the players on the other side of the field were quite different. Rather than concern about the outcome, the Tsuchikage was mostly feeling impatience. Regardless of how much fun it was to see the Hokage flailing, he thought Arashi should just take her out. He had been ordered to kill, and kill he should - honour code be damned. An enemy like Konoha did not deserve any other kind of treatment.
Tsunade tried to hit the blond Iwa ninja with a series of quick punches and jabs. Her chakra was still focused on her hands, so all it would take to cause damage was a grazing shot. As her hits were once and again evaded or deflected, though, it became increasingly apparent that she simply wasn't fast enough. The blond saw through every one of her moves with ease and reacted accordingly, so there was no way for her to just overwhelm him with taijutsu. She'd have to come up with a different tactic.
She interrupted her assault to throw a punch at the ground in front of her. The land cracked apart under Arashi's feet from her devastating force, nearly causing his legs to be trapped in the gaps. Seizing the opportunity where her opponent was distracted, Tsunade quickly redirected her fists at him. To her dismay, he recovered quickly, leaping over the gaps and using the blocks of earth as stepping stones. He slapped her arms away every time they got too close.
A faint sizzling sound was all the warning she had before a small explosive tag went off on her arm. It was small enough that all it did was cause pain and a burn, but effective enough in that it caught her off guard and left her completely open to a counter-attack. Before she could reform any kind of stance, Arashi had manoeuvred around her and forced her down on her knees in a headlock.
His hold around her neck was tight, no air making it past the compressed larynx. Tsunade didn’t panic. Taking advantage of the fact he was behind her, she covertly formed a quick sequence of seals and grabbed the arm suffocating her.
Her chakra immediately latched on to her opponent's nervous system and she forced it to go all the way up to the brain, where the region that controlled motor skills was located. She had just reached it and was about to zap him with a chakra-generated electrical discharge that would wreck his control over his body movements when he disappeared.
One moment he was there, the next he wasn't. No wind or clouds of smoke to indicate that it had been a clone and no continuity of movement to indicate that he had simply stepped back. Hiraishin, her mind supplied. If he was going to start using that now, she was done for. And to make things worse, she wasn't even sure if her half-executed technique had had any effect.
From the sidelines, Jiraiya was dumbfounded. He recognised the Hiraishin, Minato's prized Flying Thunder God technique, but he was sure that the kid still had the kunai with the special seal on him. His thoughts were confirmed when, right after materialising a couple of meters away from Tsunade with a flash of yellow, distorted light, he clearly saw the young man reach into his weapons pouch and take out the three-pronged kunai from it.
That wasn't the way Hiraishin was supposed to work - the seal had to be planted at the destination before the technique was activated. This Iwa ninja was even more dangerous than they'd guessed if he could teleport at will just by holding the tagged kunai.
Meanwhile, Arashi was starting to get annoyed by the Hokage's tactics. He'd approached the fight with caution, knowing that she would be powerful and resourceful, but after getting zapped twice by techniques that made his body stop responding, he was getting tired of playing. First his hand had stopped working and now she'd forced him to use his secret technique to avoid something similar from affecting his whole body.
He shook off the after-effects of her latest move. His body took a couple of seconds until it responded normally again, but fortunately he'd been on time to escape the real damage. It was long enough for Tsunade to pull herself back to her feet.
He took a moment to study her golden gaze. She was panting lightly, but determined and strong in her own right. Had he been anyone else, he would have already suffered the brunt of more than one of her devastating punches. He was sure that one would have been more than enough to knock him out and potentially break a few bones. Ultimately, though, every fight was unique in that the strongest could come across an enemy with a skill set that rendered them weak. Such was the case with the Hokage. He'd seen enough to know that she had no way to defend against his speed.
Knowing that, Arashi decided that it was time to end the fight and do as his Tsuchikage had ordered. He'd been holding back, as he'd always been taught that the honourable way to fight one on one was to always give the adversary a fighting chance. Now he realised, though, that no matter how much he held back, she would always be too slow.
He'd use his greatest technique and give her a good death.
Focusing on the kunai on the palm of his hand, Arashi teleported right next to the Hokage. His arm was drawn back, ready to come down in an arch across Tsunade's throat. The momentum of the rapid movement would have been enough to make the kill, but when combined with Arashi's own strength and the sharpness of the weapon, it resulted in one deadly strike.
Tsunade tried to lift her arms, tried to defend somehow, but the blond was too close and too fast for her to have time to escape. Her only hope, she knew, was to release the seal on her forehead at the exact time the strike connected.
The slash bled profusely. After a brief contemplation of just how much blood she was covered in - hedious, horrendous, bright red blood - Tsunade felt herself become too light-headed for thought. She closed her eyes and let gravity take over.
The Hokage fell.
A satisfied smile spread across the Tsuchikage's face as Arashi stepped back and the sight of his greatest enemy's defeat became visible to him. On the other side of the plateau, however, the situation was radically different. Jiraiya and Naruto had started sprinting towards Tsunade as soon as they'd realised what was going to happen.
The toad sage knelt next to her, head lowered over her chest. Ironically, since this was the first time in his life he’d gotten so close to that plentiful bosom, perverted thoughts were the last thing on his mind. He was completely focused on discerning if there was still a pulse.
Naruto stared on in shock. Granny Tsunade was dead... and the guy responsible for that was standing right behind him.
Chapter 4...