Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)– same username as here and link in bio.
The golem struck with more force and speed than Sakumo would ever have expected from a creature this size. The Raikage stared at the approaching attack, and then the number of fingers stretched in his hand went down to on. The tore through the golem's hand, coming flying right out of the next side. Uzume created a firestorm that bore down on the Raikage's position and achieved nothing. The man landed on the golem's head a second later, and Sakumo met him in blistering taijutsu. He dodged out of the way of the man's outstretched finger, and chopped at his neck, allowing a cutting arc of chakra to escape his hand.
It broke against the lightning cloak. He body flickered backwards, but the Raikage kept pace with him easily, about to bisect Sakumo in one swing. He felt a familiar chakra signature pull at his own and allowed it to complete the substitution jutsu. He looked and managed to catch sight of Uzume as she dodged underneath the outstretched finger and stabbed straight up with her rasengan spear. The jutsu flared as it made contact, and it exploded, covering the both of them and most of Sarutobi's golem. Sakumo himself was barely able to body flicker backwards off the golem's head once he saw the explosion begin to spread.
When the smoke cleared, the top half of the golem was gone completely. Both the Raikage and Uzume were stationary, stood unscathed right in front of each other on the ground where they had landed. "How interesting" The Raikage said, and Sakumo did not waste his time wondering how Uzume had managed to survive an explosion like that one unscathed. Instead, he body flickered in the middle of their engagement and lashed out with a knee aimed at the Raikage's head.
To his side, the Hokage formed his seals and the ground erupted, falling beneath the Raikage and ensnaring him. Sakumo's high knee landed to no effect as the Raikage broke out of the earth release attack, grabbed a hold of his leg and then tossed him to the side.
"It's a trap" Uzume finally said, screaming towards he and the Hokage. What?
"So you finally noticed, huh? I wondered how good those eyes could be if you couldn't see something that simple" The Raikage's voice aid as he took a step forward, looking down at Uzume. To his student's credit, she met his stare, not flinching. From the way he jolted and moved his eyes from hers, it was clear she'd managed to ensnare him in a genjutsu. Shame that it hadn't lasted longer. But what did she mean?
Sakumo focused his attention on his surroundings.
"Contact at 11:00 Five clicks away" he heard one of the Hyuga say in a panicked tone, and he felt his blood go cold. Reinforcements. Fresh reinforcements to face their weary and tired force. Where did Cloud even get the numbers for this kind of waste?
"We've been had" Hiruzen said, appearing next to him.
"So what do we do?" He found himself asking as Uzume and the Raikage danced around each other. She couldn't hurt him— his cloak made that impossible, but he couldn't hit her either. The Sharingan was a fearsome weapon. No matter how much speed or force the Raikage out into his attacks, Uzume was always a step ahead. He'd thought he'd come close to ending her twice, but each of those had just turned out to be clones and substitutions. Even Sakumo had difficulties figuring out just when she substituted with the clones she used— she was that smooth with it.
"We go all out and kill the Raikage before his reinforcements arrive. He's done a good job of making his the kind of front we would struggle to retreat from, and while the factors that made it so had worked to our advantage at first, it will work to theirs now." The Professor, and that was surely who he spoke to now deduced.
"Then let's do it", Sakumo said, taking a deep breath and pulling at his chakra, bringing all that they had to bear. He hadn't had cause to go all out in a long time, but this was as good a moment as anything. Next, he felt for those nodes in his brain that he had made himself very familiar with in his younger years. "Gate of Opening: Open" he mumbled first, blasting open the left gate, and then doing the same to the right as he whispered— "Gate of healing: Open"
Sarutobi looked over to him, clearly having understood what he had just done, before the older man nodded. Sakumo returned the nod, and bent at his knees before closing his eyes and saying a silent prayer for the fallen, and those who would surely fall today.
He shot forward like a jutsu from the Professor's own mouth, while the man himself shot with his staff behind him. Sakumo arrived first, and he channeled all the momentum of his run into the roundhouse kick he sent right into the Raikage's face. The man stepped back, allowing the kick to miss him by the barest margins, before Hiruzen's staff announced its arrival in their engagement.
The Hokage lashed out with the staff, and this time forced the Raikage to block. Their shadows met and the Raikage was frozen still. Sakumo could see the shadows that connected them shift to form a single line between both men. The shadow possession jutsu, he thought with narrowed eyes. Hiruzen Sarutobi did not stop there. Forming two seals in quick succession, his arm shifted and expanded, he slapped the Raikage backwards with his hand the size of the man's whole body. Partial expansion jutsu as well?
"They call me the Professor for a reason" The man said, stepping forward to engage the Raikage further.
"Why do you think they call me the Professor, Ay?" He said, speaking to the man who was digging himself out of the surface of a giant boulder he'd been sent into.
"I do not fight alone. I fight with the strength of all of Konoha behind me, and I must remind you what that means." He said, taking off the jounin vest he had previously relied on for protection and letting it fall to the floor. His black bodysuit shone out from behind it.
"Uzume, Sakumo, engage the approaching Kumo forces. I will deal with Ay myself" He said next, taking another step forward before reaching for a scroll in his ninja pouch. When he unrolled it in one smooth movement, instead of weapons, it produced a swarm of insects that began to arrange themselves in organised rows once he dipped his hand into the cloud. Even the Aburame jutsu?
XXXXX- TSUNADE
The smile on Jiraiya's face as he ground against Hanzo's kusarigama with his giant rasengan would remain in her memory forever. That was preferable to the memory of Hanzo shoving said Kusarigama into her teammate's gut before kicking him backwards like he as trash from the streets that had gotten just a bit too close to hum. They'd lost, she'd realised early on. Even with reinforcements from every major clan head in Konoha and several more shinobi, Hanzo had still cut through them like a hot knife through butter.
Her chakra was nearly exhausted, and the run was taking what little she had left away from her. That said nothing about the strain that came from tandem healing both her teammates to keep them alive as she ran. Jiraiya lady slumped against Orochimaru's back as the snake summoner had the unenviable job of making sure he wasn't left behind. The only problem with that was that she could feel him slipping. She'd never worried about not having enough chakra for a technique before, and chakra exhaustion had been something for others to worry about, so she had known of the expertise with managing it that came with experience.
She was flagging, and she was flagging hard. "Is he still coming?" She asked with between gasps for air, still running.
"Just keep fucking running" Orochimaru replied, also gasping for air. She scowled, but did as he instructed. Orochimaru was the better sensor between them— especially now that she was focused on healing the both of them from the wounds that they had sustained in the battle.
"Enough of this. I will not be chased and herded like cattle" The fourth one among their number— the only clan head to have made it so far— Uchiha Satoru spoke with a scowl on his face.
'Don't do it' she wanted to gasp, but something stilled her tongue. He turned and then jumped in the other direction, a purple specter beginning to build around him before he was too far away for her to see.
"Hopefully, he buys us an extra minute or so" Orochimaru said, and while she did not nod, she shared the sentiment much to her shame. Was this the worth of her Grandfather's dream? Sacrifices in a foreign land?
She kept running, moving like her life depended on it because it did.
"Can you call for help?" Orochimaru asked now. She'd told him about her Grandmother's seal before, the insurance the Uzumaki matriarch had given her before allowing her to be sent here to war. It was probably some sort of apology for so obviously favoring Shori over her. If only Mito knew that Tsunade couldn't really care less. She had learned very early on that no one could compete with Shori when their family's affection was the prize to be won.
Even with all his antics, Granduncle had still favoured him. And when she was younger, an angry part of her had concluded that it was because of what lay between his legs, but that had been proven wrong in the most conclusive manner there was. Nawaki, another boy, was born to the family, and it seemed that no one really cared. She wondered what it was about her most annoying cousin that drew so much affection from people who should have disregarded him on account of his terrible personality. Nonetheless, he was still the favoured one and she was left with the scraps.
Thinking about it now made it seem like 'twas something she regretted. It wasn't. She was grateful for Shori. Shori had meant she didn't have to see the disappointment on Granduncle Tobi's face when she took too long to learn an A-rank jutsu from the element that was the opposite to her natural affinity, or even worse the casual way Grandmother Mito would cluck if she failed to understand and deconstruct a seal on the first try. Tryhard, that was what Jiraiya called him.
She would have agreed, but she knew that Shori did very little trying as a matter of fact. It was more or less all natural talent. People couldn't understand what it was like to watch a prodigy grow in real time. Shori had caught up with her own fuinjutsu knowledge before he was even old enough to be let out of the house without a guard and nanny. He had learned the ninjutsu she'd spent months on in a matter of days, become the youngest since Uncle Tobi himself to become an adult by Senju standard. He wasn't even out of his teen years when he. Began to be strong enough to punch in the same weight class as her team. And from what she had heard of his fight with the Second Raikage— he had only gotten stronger since then. But this wasn't about him. She had something he didn't now.
"We need to get closer to the village" She said through gritted teeth, continuing to run.
"Of course we do," He snarked. She could see the way his worry over Jiraiya's state turned him into someone else. How could she tell him that Jiraiya was going to die, and there was nothing they could do about it? Nothing at all. She scowled, feeling tears rear in her eyes.
XXXXX- SHORIRAMA SENJU
I entered the office, but I did not kneel. Danzo might have been left temporarily in charge, but he wasn't my Kage. Hiruzen could barely even claim that position himself after all the shit that he'd gotten up to. I delivered my report with a dispassionate tone, explaining that we'd routed Iwa with little difficulty, I'd killed Han, helped secure Taki, and had then been ambushed by Chiyo on the way to the village. By the gods, was that woman thorough and petty. Everyone who had survived her rampage had been too poisoned for me to be much help to, and so I'd been forced to mercy kill my own comrades— both to prevent them from suffering for much longer, and to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
"And you failed to return with any of the bodies?" He asked. I nodded easily.
"I did not have any corpse scrolls in my possession", I replied, a blatant lie, but one he could not call out easily.
"And you, a seal master, could not make some in your position?" He tested.
"Village policy is to destroy bodies where return is neither expedient nor essential. It was neither in this case." I said, not shrugging, but not hiding my desire to.
Of course, that had nothing to do with the various sharingan that now sat safely in my strange, and even less to do with the fact I knew the Yamanaka could mind walk dead bodies and I wouldn't b turning them over to Danzo for him to use for information about my abilities.
"Village policy is also to complete missions no matter the cost" He said, hand hitting the table. How the hell had I managed to get on his nerves so quickly? At this point, that might have been my actual kekkei genkai instead of mud release.
"And I did. There is no longer an Iwa presence in Takigakure" I said.
"Where is the Village hidden in the Waterfalls?" He asked pointedly.
"I don't know," I shrugged.
"And were you not ordered to find that information?"
"No, I was not" I replied. Because my orders were contained in my official mission statement. The statement read— 'Remove the armies and forces of Iwagakure from the Takigakure no Sato by any means necessary'. Sure, Hiruzen had strongly hinted that he wanted me to find Taki, but he had never phrased it as an order, and so I had not taken it as one.
"Hiruzen himself told me he ordered you."
"Then he must have been mistaken, and I do believe that you should refer to our honorable kage as Lord Hokage" I said with the edges of a smile creeping up.
"Moving on from that, the men assigned to you are dead"
"Acceptable casualties. We struck a blow against Iwa they'd struggle to recover from"
"And yet, they didn't die against Iwa"
"Maybe we should look into how Chiyo knew I'd be there. It was this office that ordered me to make a spectacle of my departure, was it not? Their blood is on your hands."
"You dare?"
"I dare, Danzo. You intended to use me as bait to accomplish your other war ends, and now our men are dead. Those men did not die because I failed them. They died because you did not care enough to stop yourself from playing with their lives" I said, stepping forward.
"Watch yourself, Shorirama Senju"
"I prefer to go by Uzumaki these days" I lied, seeing the fury rise in his eyes. Danzo was an oh so predictable piece of shit, and that made it easy to piss him off. Saying that I would favour a foreign name to that of Konoha's founding clan was guaranteed to piss him off, even if he did not truly care much about the clans themselves.
"Get out," He said.
"Excuse you?"
"I said get out, boy. Have you gone deaf as well as stupid?" I took a step forward, and smiled when I felt the hidden presences in the room drop down around me. Five Anbu members.
"None of you would even last a second against me" I said with a threatening edge to my tone. It turned out that just as I could piss off Danzo at will, his very voice and bearing could do the same to me. He sat there, so smug and grand, in my Grandfather's chair and gave orders as if he spoke with the man's voice. Tobirama would be disgusted at the sight.
"Be that as it may, you will not attack them or me because you know the full might of Konohagakure no Sato will fall upon your head" He practically gloated from his seat and I seethed.
"Enjoy your day in the sun, Danzo. When the Kage returns, you will find yourself shunted to the shadows, where you belong." I said with menace and turned to return to the Clan Building. I was done here.
—
The Uzumaki Clan Household was a work in progress in many ways, but a finished work in some others. The mud houses built with my kekkei genkai and hardened to clay with fire release that Uzume had been all too happy to provide when she'd returned from the Kusa front— I'd done it with a clone before she came back, but was happy for the help. She only needed one jutsu to accomplish what often took three from me.
"Back already, Shori?" Kaito called at me from his position seated on the front porch of his house.
"Yeah, Iwa ended up putting less of a fight than expected" I said.
"Ha ha-" Whatever he would have said died in his throat as we both felt the outflow of chakra. So much chakra. It was easily more chakra than I had, and more than even Granduncle had had. That wasn't the most notable thing about it. It was what the chakra smelled of that caught the eye. Fear. Grief and fear. Kaito rose to his feet, but I was already gone by the time he decided what to do next.
"Grandma" I said appearing next to the chakra source.
"It's Tsu-chan" She said, pointing at a seal on the wall of her bedroom that was pulsing a bright red.
A/N: Ba-dum! Next three up on Patreon-https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga- (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.