Back in the stadium... Hiruzen was losing. He no longer had any illusions about that.
Enma had taken too many hits by now. The old monkey's form was fraying at the edges, chakra running thin from absorbing blow after blow that should have landed on Hiruzen instead. His own reserves weren't much better. Every parry cost him more than it should have, and Rasa hadn't slowed down at all.
The most critical part was that Rasa was young, in his prime, in fact. Hiruzen was not. If the fight continued like this, Hiruzen would lose through stamina alone. He was already feeling the effects.
He was slowing down and panting.
"You're finished," Rasa said. Gold Dust coiled tight around one fist, ready for whatever came next. "Just admit it."
"I have," Hiruzen answered. His voice didn't shake. "I admitted it a while ago."
Rasa's stance shifted, a flicker of confusion breaking through his focus. "So, is this the last stubbornness of a man who once stood at the top? Is it pride keeping you going, Hiruzen Sarutobi?"
"Huh... hardly." Hiruzen snorted. "It doesn't even matter what I think. As the Hokage of this village, it's my duty to keep fighting until the very end. Nothing else is acceptable." Hiruzen's hands had already begun moving. Seals formed with the ease of decades of muscle memory, each one deliberate, none of them wasted.
"And don't be so quick to underestimate me, young man. This old monkey isn't out of tricks just yet."
Rasa's eyes narrowed at the shift in Hiruzen's chakra. Something about it felt wrong in a way Gold Dust couldn't defend against.
"What are you—"
He didn't get to finish the question.
"Eternal Darkness Jutsu."
Darkness spread throughout Rasa's vision until he couldn't even see his own hands. However, for a kage, this was nothing.
"A genjutsu."
Rasa figured it out almost immediately. He was already building up his chakra to dispel the genjutsu when suddenly he felt a chill run down his spine.
'No... he's up to something else.'
Rasa quickly moved his Gold Dust to protect himself.
The technique took hold before Rasa's Gold Dust could even attempt to intervene, not that a physical defense would have mattered against what Hiruzen was planning.
Rasa couldn't see it... the technique wasn't meant to be noticed by the opponent, but a pale, spectral shape rose behind Hiruzen, translucent and immense, one arm already reaching forward. Rasa's own Gold Dust surged to block it on pure instinct, even though he didn't know what was going on, and it made no difference at all.
"No—" Rasa managed, and then the arm closed around him. He couldn't understand what was happening. It couldn't be a genjutsu; he had already used the chakra disruption method to break out if that had been the case.
No... this was something else entirely. He could feel it, like an invisible hand had caught him out of nowhere.
"W-what... what did you do?" Rasa somehow asked.
There was no blood. No wound of any kind. Just Rasa's body going rigid, eyes wide, as something far more essential than his life was being pulled out.
"As the Third Hokage of the Hidden Leaf, it's my duty to protect it, even if it costs me my life. And if trading away my life can buy that protection, then that's what I must do..." Hiruzen smiled.
The old Hokage's knees buckled a moment later. He hit the ground still smiling, faintly, the way a man smiles when a debt has finally been settled in full.
A moment later, the light in Rasa's eyes dimmed as well, and he too dropped beside him a heartbeat later. Neither of them would be getting back up.
"NO... HOKAGE-SAMA!" The few people who had the luxury of watching the fight shouted, doing their best to rush to the old man's side, breaking away from the opponents they were facing.
Not that they needed much effort in that regard; the Suna-nin were doing the same after seeing their own Kazekage fall alongside his opponent.
The technique used by Hiruzen was none other than Shiki Fūjin. The Dead Demon Consuming Seal.
The very same technique Minato had once used to seal half of the Nine-Tails' chakra inside Naruto at the cost of his own life.
And just like that, in a matter of minutes, two kage had fallen to their deaths.
Not far away, Izumi's fight had reached the same kind of ending. Just from the opposite direction.
She'd landed only two sure hits against Mei over the course of the fight. Every one of them should have ended it. None of them had.
She had to admit the woman was a lot more slippery and a lot sturdier than she had looked at first.
The first attack, which Terumi Mei had deliberately allowed to land in order to test Izumi's physical strength, barely did any damage because the sultry woman had exposed only her arm to take minimal damage. Even then, it had almost cracked her bones.
From then on, it had become almost impossible to catch her off guard. She was faster and had more tricks than modern-day politicians could come up with.
However, Izumi did manage to land one strong hit on her. Intentionally tanking one of Mei's Lava Release techniques—it burned like a bitch—gave Izumi a direct line to attack her.
But again, the woman was way too slippery. She bent her body unnaturally, almost managing to dodge away at the last moment.
Almost.
Her punch still connected with Mei's hand, and it was completely out of commission. Her entire hand had twisted in the wrong direction, the bones inside completely crushed. She was practically fighting one-handed now.
Izumi, on the other hand, was panting. The exertion itself wasn't the problem; the real problem was Curse Energy. She had been using Reverse Cursed Technique far too much to heal.
Not only had that dropped her output significantly—otherwise that second punch should have completely torn through that arm and then landed on Mei's body, putting her out of commission or at least in a very bad position—
There was also the fact that healing had significantly drained her reserves.
RCT was expensive in that regard. It consumed roughly twice as much Curse Energy as using normal techniques.
Surprisingly enough, even one hand down, Terumi Mei hadn't stopped her ninjutsu onslaught; she had merely slowed down.
Surprising everyone, Terumi Mei once again showed why, out of all the shinobi in the Hidden Mist Village, she had been appointed Mizukage by performing one-handed seals to cast her jutsu, a very rare ability for any shinobi.
Female kage were rare; Tsunade had the impressive backing of both her lineage and personal achievements.
Terumi had none of that, and she had still been chosen over everyone else.
All because of her own merit.
That merit was on full display now.
Boil Release, water clones, Mei simply not being where the strike thought she was—it didn't matter how much force sat behind Star Rage if there was nothing solid on the other end of it to hit.
"Okay... you hit hard, I'll admit it." Mei said, breathing hard despite everything, mist curling protectively around her. "Too hard. But strength alone is never going to be enough against a Mist kunoichi like me."
Izumi didn't answer right away. She was busy running the math in her head, and the math wasn't in her favor.
Pure close combat wasn't working. It had never really been working—Mei's body simply refused to stay in one place long enough for it to matter. Even her Sharingan couldn't fix that.
All those attacks, even the one where she had intentionally taken damage just to reach her, and only the first one had worked. After that, Mei never fell for it again.
More than half of her reserves were gone from healing herself rather than actually fighting. This wasn't looking good. If this fight turned into a war of attrition, she would be the first one to fall.
Reading an attack half a second early meant nothing if the target dissolved into mist the instant the fist arrived.
And she didn't have Garuda anymore. Not in this body. Whatever advantages had once come with being Yuki Tsukumo, that particular one hadn't carried over.
"You done overthinking?" Mei asked, almost gently.
"Overthinking, huh...?" Izumi's Sharingan spun faster, the three tomoe bleeding together into something new. "Perhaps..."
Mei's expression shifted at that. She had fought enough battles to know when an enemy was being pushed far enough to make a decisive move.
This was that moment. Whatever the girl was planning was most likely her strongest—and perhaps her last—attack.
"Perhaps I should have used it from the start... I just got too carried away at the prospect of actually getting to fight a Kage-level shinobi. A kunoichi at that." Izumi sighed, her shoulders relaxing as she spoke, which only made Mei adopt an even more guarded stance.
"So, you've finally decided to give up..." Mei taunted.
Izumi just rolled her eyes. "On the contrary, I'm ending this match with my next move."
Izumi brought both hands into an unfamiliar seal that Mei had never seen before.
She had never seen that hand seal before.
"Domain Expansion."
xXx
A/N : Ah, once again another domain being used. I wonder when we get to see MC's Domain. I'll so looking forward to that.
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