Azula let out a sigh weighing all of her exasperation with this world.
"Honestly," she drawled, the words laced with familiar boredom. "You aren't playing fair. I was the one who generously provided the time so he could catch his breath."
She waved a dismissive hand, not even deigning to look at the Mizukage. He was, at best, a vigorous warm-up—a few jumping jacks before the real marathon.
Tsunade, on the other hand, promised a satisfying fight, a clash closer to her own league.
The Mizukage? He was a filler episode. Her ambitions were reserved for legends like Madara, for gods like the Otsutsuki, not for some washed-up puppet dancing on a dead man's strings.
In front of her, Tsunade cracked her knuckles with a series of pops that echoed like miniature detonations. A fierce, hungry grin split her face.
Azula's choice was exactly what she'd hoped for. She knew her fire-breathing friend well: Azula's true appetite for combat required someone who could make her blood boil through sheer intensity, and the Mizukage was definitely not at that level.
"Alright, old man," Tsunade called out, her voice cutting through the misty air like a cleaver. "You're not as clever as you think. We all know you've been there wheezing and plotting. If you'd been a little subtler—or maybe chosen a better conversational topic than Konoha's dusty old skeletons—we might have humored you longer."
Her golden eyes hardened, the playful tone sharpening. "But you had to go and mention things you shouldn't. Bad move."
The Mizukage blinked, the theatrical confidence on his face faltering for a second before settling into weary, grim acceptance.
He took in the scene: Azula, a vision of controlled, lethal grace; the eerie, silent figure of Mito, thrumming with her unknown power; the watchful, predatory eyes of Tajima and the others. Indeed, how could they not know he was wasting time?
He drew himself up, sucking in a breath that seemed to draw the very moisture from the lake around them.
"So be it," he intoned, his voice gaining a gravelly resonance. "If my final act is to be a bout with the legendary Princess, then I shall hold nothing back. Let me show you the true terror of a shinobi who survived the Warring States Era… a man with absolutely nothing left to lose."
Tsunade's grin widened. Now he was interesting.
In their last fight, he'd been all cautious jabs and strategic retreats, afraid of a counterpunch, terrified that another Kage might ambush him afterward. Now, with the bleak clarity of a dead man walking, the fear was gone.
"That's more like it!" she cheered, but notably, the familiar red, corrosive chakra of her Scarlet Beast Seal did not erupt around her.
Growing up alongside a control freak like Azula had its influences. Relying on a borrowed power-up, even one as formidable as the Nine-Tails' chakra mixed with Azula's own, felt… cheap. It was a trump card, not a foundation.
She wanted to reach the pinnacle on her own steam, and this desperate, unhinged Mizukage was the perfect benchmark.
Her mind, sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, began her pre-fight analysis with a thrill.
Advantages: Mine. Senju and Uzumaki vitality mean my chakra reserves drown his. My raw physical strength, even in base form, will make him regret any attempt to trade blows. He'll be dodging, not blocking.
Disadvantages: The battlefield. All this water is his perfect territory. My Water Release is top-tier, but his is probably second only to that salamander-hermit Hanzō in this era. Then there's experience; he's been ending lives since before I was born.
But… she thought, her blood singing, I've spent years trying to punch a hole through a walking, talking fortress of pride and lightning who predicts my every move. This old man's battlefield tricks won't faze me.
The real variable is his mortality—or lack thereof. A man who knows he's already dead is capable of any suicidal, spectacularly messy jutsu.
Before Tsunade could finish her analysis or weave a strategy, the Mizukage was already on the move.
A battle-hardened shinobi to his core, he knew the golden rule: never let your enemy breathe, or think. Disrupt the rhythm. Shatter the focus.
"Water Release: Water Bullet!" he barked, and a torrent of pressurized water erupted from his mouth like a tsunami from a teacup, screaming toward Tsunade.
Her instincts flared. Tank it? She could. Punch it? Probably. But both options came with a splashy, vision-blurring price.
Even with her exquisite chakra sensing—a technique that painted his movements in her mind—losing direct sight was a risk. A kunai she couldn't see, only deduce from the flow of his chakra, was a kunai that could find a gap.
Mizura had banked on exactly that reaction. His true goal wasn't to damage her here, but to move her—lure the legendary brawler away from solid ground and her gallery of monstrously powerful friends.
A private dance over the open sea suited him just fine—no last-second rescues, and the endless water below was his best ally.
As she evaded, his hands flashed. Two kunai, crowned with fluttering explosive tags, sliced through the air toward her.
He knew she had a dozen ways to handle them, but the fastest, most efficient counter for a ninja of her caliber? The same one he'd just used.
Right on cue, Tsunade's hands flew through seals.
"Water Release: Water Bullet!" Her own surge of liquid power met the projectiles head-on. The resulting explosion was a spectacular geyser of steam and spray, but her jutsu didn't stop there—it morphed into a retaliatory wave, forcing Mizura into a defensive leap backward.
Perfect. The moment his feet left the ground, Tsunade landed. And for Tsunade, landing meant launching.
Using the downward inertia, she became a blonde bullet, fist pulled back, the air crackling with the promise of continent-shattering impact. She closed the distance with terrifying speed.
All according to plan. Mid-air, Mizura formed a single hand seal. A Water Clone erupted from the mist beside him, throwing itself directly into Tsunade's path.
Its purpose wasn't to win, just to interpose—to buy the original a precious second or two to retreat further over the waves.
By now, the spectators on the shore were catching on.
"He's herding her," Mito observed, her arms crossed, the golden flicker of her Nine-Tails Chakra Mode (KCM) dormant but ready.
Azula simply smirked, thinking about the Flying Thunder God kunai on Tsunade. Between Mito's speed, her markers, and their collective medical expertise, his chance of landing a killing blow rounded to zero. Tsunade knew it too. That's why she was playing along.
And play along she did. Whether she fully grasped his spatial strategy or was just too irritated to care, in a matter of seconds the duel had become a distant spectacle—two figures dancing across the waves far from the island's shores.
On the beach, Tajima Uchiha let out a low, appreciative hum.
"Indeed. It seems Konoha's continued dominance is less an ambition and more… a fact." He watched Tsunade trade blow for blow with one of the world's most feared Kage. "He's operating at, what, seventy percent due to his injury? And she's not even using her Forbidden Jutsu. This is just her base form."
Murasake, standing beside him, found himself nodding slowly, his earlier anxieties about the clan's standing evaporating like mist.
"I see now. I understand the source of Azula-sama's unwavering confidence." His gaze swept over the impossible assembly on the shore. "Mito with that mode that edges her into the realm of the Shodai himself. Azula-sama, a prodigy who hasn't even awakened her Mangekyō yet but commands every field. And in reserve, Konoha even has the White Fang, who can stalemate the strongest Kage. Then there's Tajima, Tsunade, Hiruzen, Danzō, Hiruzen's two other disciples, the elders…"
He shook his head in sheer disbelief. "Lord Tajima, I dare say if Konoha wished to unify the shinobi world tomorrow, they possess the raw strength to do so—even if every other village combined their forces against us."
Tajima's Sharingan glinted with dark, amused satisfaction.
"A frightening thought, isn't it? And the scariest part," he said, turning back to watch Tsunade finally land a blow that sent a Mizukage Water Clone exploding into a momentary rainstorm, "is that they're all still technically young. They're only going to get more horrifying."
In the shinobi world, seeing two jōnin throw down was a rare treat. A full-blown Kage-level brawl? That was the stuff of legends, the kind of thing genin would gossip about for years.
The clash between Tsunade and the enigmatic Mizura firmly belonged to the latter category—a spectacle of shattered water and ocean.
The longer they fought, the clearer Tsunade's edge became. It wasn't just her monstrous chakra reserves or her terrifying ability to adapt mid-swing.
No, the real problem for Mizura was the gift left by Mito Uzumaki: a Tailed Beast Ball that had cracked his ribs and simmered his insides.
Every movement was a gamble, every jutsu a tax on a failing body. He'd known this from the start, of course. His plan was a stopwatch ticking down—lure the woman away from the shore, away from Azula and her allies, and finish her fast.
"You know," Mizura began, his voice cutting through the spray of a colliding wave, deciding that a good monologue was as essential as a well-placed kunai, "in the shinobi world, our village stands second only to Konoha. In clans, in bloodlines, in secret arts… you are the only ones who outnumber us."
Tsunade didn't grace him with a reply, merely smashing a fist into the ocean's surface and sending a geyser back at him. He danced aside, the motion tighter, more pained than before.
"And this technique," he continued, a sharp, confident grin on his face, "well, technically, I haven't even 'learned' it. It's a one-shot scroll—a legacy. I don't even know if it'll work."
He was betting everything on her personality now. A ninja fight was a clearer window into a soul than any conversation.
And from this bruising, breakneck dance, he saw her clearly: bold, prideful, and absolutely unwilling to look weaker than that Uchiha upstart, Azula. She wouldn't run. She wouldn't call for help.
Sure enough, though her expression hardened into something lethal, her feet remained planted on the water. Not a single thought of flight flickered in her fierce eyes.
"Suiton: Sekai Dekkon!" (Water Release: Funeral of the Drowned World).
His hands moved in a slow, deliberate sequence, each seal a deliberate punctuation. Then, defying the standard logic of Water Release jutsu, he acted as though he were using Earth Release—normally requiring contact with solid ground—and slammed his palms not onto dirt, but directly onto the ocean's surface.
The effect was instantaneous and eerie. The raging sea, their tumultuous battlefield, went utterly, profoundly calm. Then, the bottom dropped out.
Tsunade was stunned. The water supporting her vanished. She was falling.
A glance down showed Mizura falling right beside her, a grimace of pain on his face.
Good, she thought with a spark of vindication. Whatever this is, he's stuck in it too.
That spark lasted about three seconds. That's how long it took to realize the horrifying scale of the technique.
They weren't just falling into a hole in the water. They were inside a massive, spherical prison of water, fifty meters in radius, suspended deep within the ocean itself.
The barrier walls shimmered with oppressive chakra, holding back thousands of tons of pressure. They were now in a drowning cell.
For a shinobi of Tsunade's caliber, holding her breath for an hour during low activity was a trivial exercise. But this was different. The moment the water enveloped her, she felt a toxic, burning chill seep into her lungs.
It wasn't just water—it was chakra-saturated, poisoned by the jutsu's nature. Her medical expertise screamed an internal warning: two minutes. Maybe less.
But the Mizukage wasn't done. Through the distorting, blue-tinted water, she saw him forming another set of seals, his movements labored, bubbles streaming from his nose. He was drowning too, and worse than she was. The madness of what he was about to do dawned on her.
"Raiton: Dekiden!" (Lightning Release: Drowning Thunder).
The thought was sheer, unadulterated insanity. Lightning. In water. Inside a closed sphere. With both of them in it.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)