Meanwhile, in another corner of the battlefield, Ashina Uzumaki's clash with Hiruzen and Mito had turned into a deadlock.
Their chakra storms collided again and again, tearing through the terrain, each side evenly matched, Ashina's sealing mastery countering Mito's, and Hiruzen's vast ninjutsu arsenal keeping him in the fight.
Before the battle began, though, Mito had looked at Hiruzen with quiet suspicion.
She had already sensed Tsunade's chakra long before the fighting started.
It was impossible to miss, strong, vibrant, unmistakably Uzumaki-Senju.
But what unsettled her was where that chakra came from.
Tsunade was fighting on the opposite side.
And not just that, her chakra signature clashed repeatedly with that of Uchiha Izuna's revived form, the magenta Susanoo lighting up the distance like a storm.
So, before she and Hiruzen moved out, she had asked him directly.
"Hiruzen… tell me truthfully. Why is Tsunade fighting against Konoha?"
He had paused for just a second, just long enough for her to sense hesitation.
Then he gave his prepared answer, voice measured and heavy with false regret.
"That boy, Ryusei Senju—the one I told you about—is the cause. He's the village's greatest internal threat: A manipulator. He used their shared Senju bloodline to twist her mind, to turn her against us and everything she once stood for. She isn't our Tsunade anymore."
Mito's expression remained calm, but her eyes narrowed slightly.
"If that's truly the case," she said, "then once this battle ends, I'll speak to her myself. She'll listen to me. You remember your promise, Hiruzen—no harm will come to her. She's my and First's granddaughter, the only family we have left in this world."
That was her condition when Danzo and Hiruzen summoned her back with Edo Tensei—she had agreed to fight only under the assurance that Tsunade would not be killed.
After all, Mito had already lost everything once.
Her and Hashirama's daughter, a gentle medical-nin, died young, not long after the First Great War.
Nawaki followed years later, killed during the Second. Mito had learned of it only after being revived now.
Tsunade was all she had left—her last bloodline link to both Senju and Uzumaki.
So she had warned them, calmly but firmly: "You may call her misguided, but she can be brought back. If she's under some delusion, I will set her straight myself. Just make sure she lives. She's your pupil after all."
Hiruzen had nodded then, feigning understanding, even sympathy.
But now, as he fought beside her, his thoughts were far colder.
He had already given Danzo the signal earlier. A silent gesture, a small shift of his eyes that said everything.
Once the opportunity arose, kill her. No prison, no capture. Kill her.
He had already realized that Tsunade would never return to their side.
She was too far gone, too convinced that they had killed Nawaki.
Which, of course, they had.
Hiruzen's lips tightened slightly in irritation at the memory.
He hid it well, his expression neutral as he parried another sealing chain from Ashina.
Beside him, Mito fought fiercely, unaware that her "ally" was quietly planning the death of her granddaughter.
Internally, Hiruzen almost scoffed at her faith.
To him, it was almost tragic; she was fighting for Konoha, thinking it still resembled the dream she and Hashirama once built.
"She doesn't understand," he thought coldly. "We can't let Tsunade speak. If she ever confronted me or Danzo in front of Mito—or worse, in front of a revived Tobirama, if we do have to revive him later, it could unravel everything, or create suspicions. Better she dies here, quickly. Then we'll call it an accident. A tragedy of battle, when we tried to contain her and the Edo Tensei summon accidentally killed her. Even if Tobirama blames us heavily, it's better than leaving that kind of variable around for the future. Student or not. Both Ryusei and she have to go. She's becoming more and more hateful like him."
He blocked another of Ashina's sealing waves and glanced once toward the horizon, where Tsunade's chakra still flared brightly against Izuna's Susanoo. His eyes narrowed.
"Soon," he thought, "they'll both be gone. The last of the Senju line and its sympathizers— finally erased for good."
The clash between Ashina, Mito, and Hiruzen had long turned the battlefield into a wasteland.
Every strike, every surge of chakra, distorted the air itself.
Lava hissed where Ashina's sealing chains tore through the ground, melting stone into rivers of molten red.
His control over the Four-Tails' power fused perfectly with his Uzumaki heritage.
Each link radiated heat, binding the terrain itself like molten iron bars.
Across from him, Mito's chains flared in contrast, golden-red and threaded with both fire and lightning chakra.
When they struck, the impact also created radiant blue barriers that shimmered and repelled every wave of lava, reinforced by the enemy's own chakra flow, which prevented them from collapsing even under heavy assault, in the short term.
Barrier ninjutsu was her highest speciality during her life after all.
For a brief moment, the battle looked like a dance of opposing elements, molten destruction against divine restraint.
But Ashina had already laid traps beneath it all. S-rank, the most advanced kind of fuinjutsu and jutsu shiki in existence.
Throughout the fight, he'd been marking the ground with sealing formulae written in chakra threads invisible to the naked eye.
The battlefield itself had become his domain.
A pulse of his chakra later, and the air thickened.
Void Zone Technique.
The world fell silent for an instant.
In every selected area, every visible jutsu, flames, lightning arcs, and even sealing barriers, flickered and died as the space around them went dull and colorless.
The field stretched like an invisible bubble, swallowing every chakra emission.
Mito's eyes widened. "He's suppressing chakra itself…"
Even Hiruzen was forced to stop his next sequence of hand signs.
The pressure was suffocating.
For anyone else, it would have been crippling.
But Ashina's mastery of sealing arts allowed him to move freely within it, his chakra flow untouched.
He advanced, molten chains slamming down like hammers.
Hiruzen exhaled slowly, then slammed his staff into the ground.
The moment the Void Zone weakened at its edges, he seized the opening.
Terraquake Cannon.
Earth split open, wind and lightning chakra fusing into the fissures.
The result was a seismic cannon of pure force, an earthquake wave bursting forward with blinding speed.
The molten surface shattered, and the entire plain heaved like a stormy sea.
Ashina barely anchored himself with his chains, but Mito reacted faster.
She summoned a dozen sealing arrays midair, forming barriers in concentric circles, absorbing part of the quake before it could tear through her and Hiruzen both.
The shockwave still sent molten debris raining down like comets.
Ashina used that chaos to vanish, his chakra trail gone.
Mito tensed, eyes searching the distortions in the heat haze.
Then, suddenly, his presence reappeared behind her.
Memory Step Technique.
His young and powerful body had literally stepped back through time to the position he occupied seconds before, bypassing her seals entirely.
The move was disorienting to watch; even Hiruzen's trained eyes almost missed it.
Mito countered by unleashing her own sequence, two chains shot into the ground and erupted behind her, dragging up the fire and lightning barrier she'd woven earlier.
The resulting explosion forced Ashina back.
But he didn't stay still.
With one hand extended, he formed a complex Uzumaki pattern of seals in the air.
The very space around him began to shimmer and distort.
Spatial Decay Technique.
A black orb, no larger than a fist, blinked into existence in front of him.
The space around it rippled violently, its almost sealing pull disintegrating and decaying the falling chunks of molten stone.
Hiruzen's eyes narrowed—he knew exactly what that meant.
He immediately combined signs, his own chakra exploding outward.
"Fire and Lightning Release—Thermal Shock Cannon!"
A blazing fireball burst forward, lightning threading through it a heartbeat later.
The compressed air detonated with a thunderous boom, sending a concussive blast that shattered Ashina's void sphere before it could expand.
The blast carried both of them backward, hurling Ashina across the scorched battlefield and forcing Hiruzen to block with his staff.
The ground trembled again.
Not wasting the momentum, Mito followed up.
Her chains carved through the air, weaving together Water and Fire in a seamless sequence—Steam Burst!
The explosion of superheated mist engulfed Ashina's landing point, hissing violently as it met his lava chakra.
He countered by slamming his palms to the ground—Water and Earth: Mire Coffin!
The battlefield liquefied, a sinking pit forming beneath Mito's position.
But before it could trap her, Hiruzen moved, slicing through the mud with a Wind-imbued swing of his staff.
Earth and Wind: Dust Shredder!
The attack blasted the liquefied ground into a storm of fine, razor-edged dust.
It shredded through Ashina's defense, but his molten chains emerged again, sweeping the storm away like glowing serpents.
The three forces collided in the center: lava, lightning, and sealing energy, creating an explosion that flattened the entire surrounding terrain.
When the dust cleared, all three stood at a distance, panting lightly but unbroken.
Ashina's eyes burned with calm intensity.
Mito's seals hovered protectively around her, faint cracks showing on the edges of her barriers, which served even as some kind of close-range spectral armors, and at least prevented Ashina's fuinjutsu from sealing her in some kind of sneaky and swift way.
Hiruzen's staff was scorched, his armor torn, yet his expression remained steady.
Neither side had gained ground.
A stalemate.
For all their overwhelming power and mastery of elements, none of them could overpower the others in the short term without risking the complete collapse of the battlefield itself.
Ashina smirked faintly. "Still clinging to that dream of a village that devours its own founders?"
Hiruzen's reply came sharp, emotionless. "And you still cling to the past. You should have stayed buried, Ashina."
Mito remained silent, her eyes distant—half fixed on the battle, half searching for Tsunade's chakra somewhere in the chaos beyond.
She didn't notice the brief glance Hiruzen gave her from the corner of his eye.
The saying, the moment this fight was done, she would never see her granddaughter again.