"Lord Third?"
Itachi's voice tore through the deep silence, snapping Hiruzen out of his paralysis.
The Uchiha brothers watched in shock as the old man's hands sped through a rapid sequence of seals. With an urgent shout, Hiruzen slammed his palm flat onto the table in front of them, and the ink of a summoning formula spread across the wood, exploding into a massive cloud of white smoke.
"Enma, Staff!" Hiruzen roared the split second the monkey king materialized.
Enma didn't even have time to ask a question. He transformed mid-air, his body shifting instantly into the unbreakable Adamantine Staff, which Hiruzen caught in a white-knuckled grip as a deafening crash shook the entire house.
The living room wall imploded.
Tsunade punched clean through the reinforced barrier, shattering timber and sending chunks of drywall flying like shrapnel while she stepped into the room. Her presence gave off an oppressive, murderous intent. Her right arm was completely enveloped in a storm of condensed energy, the chakra compressed so densely that her arm appeared to be made of pure chakra.
Itachi acted before the debris from the shattered wall could even hit the floor.
In a single, fluid motion, Itachi leaned down and scooped Sasuke out of the wheelchair, cradling his younger brother securely against his chest. Before Sasuke could even utter a protest, Itachi executed a Body Flicker. They escaped from the room in a blur of motion, fleeing just as Tsunade threw her weight forward, leaping at Hiruzen with a roar of unbridled fury.
The Uchiha brothers materialized outside on the grass of the compound, the deafening explosion of Tsunade's fist colliding with Hiruzen's Adamantine Staff ringing from inside the house.
Inside the house, the world became a disaster of noise and pressure.
Tsunade lunged forward, her pure-chakra forearm cutting through the air with a terrifying, low hum. Hiruzen twisted his aging body to the side, his reflexes barely saving his head. The fist missed him by inches, but the sheer vacuum of air created by the movement tore his robes and broke all the window panes in the room instantly. Her knuckles connected with the back wall instead. The impact didn't just break the stone and wood; it pulverized them into fine powder, blowing the entire rear section of the house out into the yard.
"Tsunade, stop!" Hiruzen yelled, his voice strained as he brought the Adamantine Staff up.
She didn't listen. Rebounding instantly, she threw a brutal downward hammer-fist. Hiruzen braced his feet and crossed the staff over his head to block.
When her glowing blue arm slammed into Enma's adamantine form, a brilliant shockwave came from the point of contact. The staff held, but the house could not withstand the physics of the blow. The tremendous kinetic energy traveled straight down through Hiruzen's body and exploded out of his feet. The floorboards below him disintegrated into splinters, and the solid concrete foundation of the estate cracked wide open, sinking a foot into the dirt.
Outside on the grass, Sasuke and Itachi watched as the roof of the Sarutobi estate buckled violently inward.
Another deafening CRACK rang out from within the dust cloud as Hiruzen blocked a third strike. The load-bearing pillars of the house snapped like toothpicks under the pressure trapped inside the walls. With a final, groaning screech of tearing metal and cracking wood, the entire structure collapsed in on itself, imploding into a massive, rising mountain of debris and pulverized drywall.
The dust cloud from the collapsed estate hadn't even settled before dozens of faint blurs cut through the compound. Konoha's ANBU squads materialized along the perimeter walls, appearing in silent flashes of speed. Their porcelain animal masks gleamed through the haze, blades drawn and ready to defend the Third Hokage from what they assumed was a foreign assassination attempt.
From the shadow of a thick oak tree at the edge of the property, Itachi adjusted his grip on Sasuke, pulling his younger brother back into the darkness.
Despite their rapid arrival, the ANBU didn't move. Not a single one stepped forward.
They stood paralyzed on the compound walls, looking down at the smoking crater of the house. Standing in the center of the debris was Tsunade, her right arm still glowing with a terrifying, solid mass of pure blue chakra. Opposite her stood Hiruzen, gripping his Adamantine Staff, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
The ANBU commanders looked from Hiruzen to the slug princess, the weight of the situation freezing them in their tracks. This wasn't an infiltration or an enemy raid. It was the newly appointed Fifth Hokage openly trying to kill her sensei. Stepping in meant either committing treason against their current leader or watching the Third Hokage get cut down. Terrified, the Anbu could only stand by and watch as the two faced off in the ruins.
Tsunade didn't give him time to breathe. She lunged across the debris, her chakra-coated arm cutting through the dust.
Hiruzen met her head-on, using the full reach of his Adamantine Staff to parry her opening strikes. He was faster than her, relying on decades of fluid staff mastery to redirect her heavy punches. But because she couldn't break through his guard with raw punches, Tsunade intentionally pivoted. She slammed her left palm hard into the ground, sending a precise pulse of chakra into the earth beneath them.
The ground under Hiruzen's feet liquefied instantly into a shifting wave of mud, completely destroying his footing.
As Hiruzen slipped backward to regain his balance, the distance between them opened up slightly. Tsunade used that moment to close the gap from above. Launching herself into the air, she flipped forward and brought her heel down in a brutal axe-kick.
"Heavenly Foot of Pain!"
Just as Hiruzen managed to lock his footing, he looked up at the shout and quickly raised the Adamantine Staff horizontally over his head to block.
Tsunade's heel slammed violently into the center of the staff. The weapon buckled in Hiruzen's arms as the staff pinned Hiruzen's hands to his chest.
With her foot pinning his hands down, she twisted her upper body mid-air and swung her left hand in a sharp slap, catching Hiruzen across the jaw, the impact sending him spinning sideways out of the mud, crashing heavily into the dirt, rolling several feet before rolling to his feet with the right side of his face red and jaw feeling like it was disclocted despite that not being the case.
Walking back to her cloak that she had slung off before bursting through the wall, Tsunade put it on before turning and dismissing the Anbu, the Anbu body flickering away with some relief, seeing that Tsunade wasn't going to keep attacking.
Tsunade spared Hiruzen's destroyed house a single, cold glance before turning and walking away from the ruined compound, her mind swirling with a chaotic mix of fury and dread.
From that short, brutal exchange, Tsunade could tell that the old man had been genuinely terrified and completely oblivious to Nawaki's body being stolen. If she had detected even a flicker of deceit or prior knowledge on Hiruzen's face, she wouldn't have stopped.
'Who has his body?'
Tsunade wasn't showing it, but inside she was destroyed; the body of her baby brother was gone, desecrated by who knows who for who knows what. Her mind replayed his death, his body brutally disfigured, no arm or leg on his left side, and his cute little face that she loved to pinch burnt from the heat of the trap he ran into during the war that he, nor anyone his age, should've been in.
Tsunade got to the edge of the compound before she flickered away, going to drink before she lost her mind in the depressing thoughts.
- Chapter End -