Nocturnal Tanzaku resembled a sick animal covered in the glowing parasites of neon signs. The air was humid and heavy, saturated with the smells of cheap tobacco, overcooked oil, and the sickly-sweet scent of spilled alcohol. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, weaving into the endless hum of slot machines.
They stepped out of the izakaya. The door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the establishment's noise, but the silence of the street was deceptive.
Tsunade stopped in the middle of the empty cobblestone street, illuminated by the blinking red sign of a "Love Hotel." She wasn't swaying, but her movements were slightly more sweeping than necessary. Alcohol dulled the pain but fueled the irritation.
"You want a lesson in respect, brat?" she chuckled, turning to him. The wind ruffled the hem of her green robe. "Think just because you put on a vest, you're equal to a Sannin?"
Naruto stood ten meters away from her. He didn't take a combat stance, but the position of his body changed imperceptibly. His shoulders dropped, his center of gravity shifted. He "rooted," connecting his meridians with the currents of the earth, as Jiraiya had taught.
"I'm not looking for a fight," he answered calmly. "I'm looking for a Legendary Medic. But so far, I only see an uncontrolled drunk."
Tsunade's eyes narrowed.
"I won't even clench a fist. One finger will be enough."
She lazily raised her right hand. Her thumb pulled back her middle finger, aiming at his forehead.
The gesture seemed harmless. Childish. But Naruto's Qi Sensory wailed like a siren.
He saw a monstrous volume of chakra rush to her finger. The muscles of her forearm filled with steel, tendons taut as ship cables. The air around her hand began to tremble, distorting the light.
"Fly," she threw out indifferently.
The finger snapped.
WHOOSH!
It was an invisible cannon shot. The compressed air in front of her finger turned into a solid projectile. The sound barrier burst with a deafening pop. The shockwave ripped open the ground, leaving a deep furrow, and screeched toward the youth. A shop window behind him exploded in a shower of shards before the wave even reached its target.
But the Uzumaki was no longer there.
He didn't use the Substitution Jutsu. There was no smoke, no wooden log.
Qi Sensory "read" the micro-movements of her muscles a split second before the discharge. He saw the vector of attack—a straight line.
Naruto shifted exactly half a meter to the right. One smooth step, no wasted movement.
The crushing stream of air rushed past, ruffling his hair, and slammed into the brick wall of the building behind, leaving a dent the size of a watermelon.
Tsunade blinked. Her body swayed forward from inertia. She expected the crunch of bones, the sound of impact, the flight of a body. But she met only emptiness.
"You're slow," came a calm, almost bored voice from the side.
Tsunade spun around sharply, nearly losing her balance. Naruto stood in the same spot, hands in pockets, watching the settling dust.
"Alcohol has dulled your reflexes," he stated dryly. "The nervous system can't keep up. You're striking from memory, not at the target."
The woman's face began to fill with blood. The intoxication was rapidly evaporating, burning up in the furnace of sudden, blinding rage. Her, Tsunade, being lectured by some brat? He dodged one of her strikes and now dares to preach?
"Why you little..." she growled.
She clenched a real fist.
Chakra flared with blue electric flame around her hand. The ground beneath her feet webbed with cracks just from the pressure of her aura.
"Now I won't hold back!"
BAM!
She stomped her foot into the ground.
The street exploded. Chunks of cobblestone the size of a head flew into the air, turning into deadly shrapnel. It was a demonstration of raw, primal power capable of altering the landscape.
Tsunade lunged forward. She moved frighteningly fast for her condition.
Right hook—the wall of the building to the right shattered into dust, exposing the insides of someone's living room.
Spinning kick—a cast-iron lamppost bent in half and flew whistling into the darkness of an alley.
Naruto didn't block. Blocking her strike meant losing arms, even with Body Tempering. He knew his limits.
He danced on the ruins.
A jump onto a flying piece of wall. A dodge under a whistling fist, the wind gust of which was felt on his skin. Sliding along the ground under her kick.
He used the chaos she created as cover.
The rhythm of the fight was jagged.
The crash of Tsunade's strike—a miss.
"You're just wasting energy," the Jinchūriki's voice sounded from the right, from a cloud of dust.
Elbow strike, crumbling brick.
"Your movements are sweeping. You're open," voice from the left.
Naruto slid along the edge of her perception, simultaneously scanning her.
He switched the perception of Qi Sensory. The world of vibrations faded, giving way to the world of energies.
He saw her chakra system. It was a raging ocean of blue energy. Power capable of erasing a mountain. But...
In the center of her chest, where the heart node lay—the main crossroads of channels—the flow was interrupted.
It was a physical spasm.
Naruto saw a dark, pulsating clot of stagnant energy. A thrombus. An energy tumor, a putrid knot that distorted the flow of chakra throughout the body. She had created it herself. She had fed it for years with her grief, fear, and guilt.
The blonde broke the distance. He pushed off a falling beam and flew onto the flat roof of a surviving noodle stall, looking down at her.
Tsunade stood in the middle of the devastated street. Around her was a destruction zone with a radius of twenty meters. She was breathing heavily. Not from fatigue—her endurance was intact—but from accumulating rage that had no outlet.
"Get down here!" she roared, shaking her fist. "Get down, and I'll smear you into a thin paste!"
"No," the Chunin looked not at her fist, but at the crystal hanging around her neck. "You can't. Your chakra flows powerfully, but around your heart, you have a dead zone. A spasm. You blocked the flow yourself so you wouldn't feel anything."
Tsunade froze. Her hand reflexively jerked to her chest, covering the necklace.
"What are you babbling about?.."
"You hold onto that stone like a drowning man to a straw," Naruto pointed to the First Hokage's necklace. "Wearing that pain like armor... Think that's atonement? No. By doing so, you only betray the memory of those you lost."
"Shut up..." she hissed.
"I see your diagnosis, Tsunade," Naruto's voice became cold and sharp as a scalpel. He cut without hesitation. "Your hemophobia is a symptom, not the disease. You're not afraid of blood. You're afraid of loving the village again and losing it. That's why you ran away."
He leaned forward, blue eyes shining eerily in the darkness.
"You are not the 'Legendary Sucker.' You are a deserter who fears pain more than shame."
Silence.
For a second, all the sounds of the city disappeared. Even the wind stopped blowing.
It was a critical hit.
Tsunade's eyes widened, then narrowed to tiny dots. Rage flared white-hot. The barrier holding back madness collapsed.
"I WILL KILL YOU!"
She jumped.
Tsunade was ready to deliver a blow that would grind the boy into powder along with the stall.
Naruto instantly assessed the situation.
She is in a state of affect. Too late to dodge—the blast radius will destroy the stall and me with it.
Time perception accelerated.
The Jinchūriki didn't lose his composure. His mind remained crystal cold.
Looks like talking is over. Have to defend.
He looked her straight in the eye.
In that moment, at the peak of tension, the blue iris wavered. The pupil elongated into a vertical, predatory slit.
EXPLOSION!
The roof under Naruto's feet sagged and charred.
Dense, viscous, malicious Nine-Tails chakra burst out, not as a chaotic cloud, but as a tight structure held by the Pseudo-Core.
Red energy formed a Cloak. Two tails whipped behind him, cutting the air.
Clawed paws of red chakra rose to intercept.
He was ready to meet the Sannin's strike with the power of a Bijū.
Heat hit Tsunade in the face, singing her eyelashes. The Kyūbi's malice, ancient and heavy, crashed down on her in a suffocating wave.
But through that crimson shroud, she saw his eyes.
There was no madness of the beast that destroyed Konoha twelve years ago.
There was calculation and control.
The boy wasn't possessed. He used the Beast as a weapon. He was ready to fight, putting his life on the line if she didn't stop.
An orphan who had been a tool of the Village since birth.
It sobered her better than any ice-cold shower.
Tsunade's hand froze.
She killed the inertia of her body with a monstrous tension of her abs and leg muscles.
Her fist stopped half a meter from the churning chakra cloak. Red bubbles of energy popped, hissing, next to her skin.
She was shaking. The rage was gone, leaving behind emptiness and the horror of realization.
"You..." she exhaled, looking into the scarlet eyes. Tears glinted in the corners of her eyes—for the first time in many years.
She couldn't strike.
"To hell with it..." she muttered chokedly. "To hell with all of this."
Tsunade turned around, flaring the tails of her green robe, and jumped down.
She didn't walk—she practically fled. Away. Into the darkness of the alleys. Far away from that gaze that saw right through her.
"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune screamed, running out of the izakaya and rushing after her.
Naruto remained standing on the roof of the stall.
The chakra cloak around the Jinchūriki was sucked back into his stomach like water down a drain. The red glow faded, leaving only the smoking roof and the smell of burning.
He slowly exhaled, releasing the tension.
Jiraiya stepped out of the shadows of the alley, watching the fleeing princess. He had stood there the whole time, ready to intervene at any moment.
"Cutting to the quick, kid," the Sannin shook his head. There was no judgment in his voice, only heavy understanding. "That was dangerous. Were you ready to hit her?"
Naruto looked at his hands, on which minor burns from the chakra were already healing.
"I was ready to defend myself," he answered hoarsely. "The abscess had to be lanced. Now she's in pain. And that's good. Pain means she's still alive."
He jumped to the ground, landing next to his teacher.
"I'll take a walk. I need to cool down too."
Jiraiya nodded, taking out a flask.
"Don't go far. Shadows are longer in this city than they seem."
Naruto nodded and dissolved into the nightly neon light, leaving his teacher amidst the ruins they had created in a few minutes of conversation.