Meanwhile, in another part of the battlefield, Pakura faced the legendary Sasuke Sarutobi, the ancestor of the current clan head Hiruzen and once hailed as the greatest Fire Release user in history.
The air around them shimmered with unbearable heat.
Sasuke's flames burned an unnatural blue, the pinnacle of Fire Release mastery, hotter, denser, and sharper than any ordinary blaze.
But Pakura's Scorch Release was not ordinary fire either.
Her flames burned brighter and deeper, the core white like a miniature sun, the edges glowing crimson and gold.
Wind and Fire intertwined perfectly in her chakra, amplifying one another until every motion radiated blinding light and suffocating heat.
This was not a duel of elements anymore.
It was a duel of temperature itself.
Blue fire met white sunfire in constant collision, their heat waves bending the air and warping reality around them.
At first, it was a stalemate.
Sasuke Sarutobi's Edo Tensei body moved with precision, each hand sign flowing into the next without pause.
His mastery, honed through decades of combat, made him a monster. He could even mix Wind Release into his flames at will, amplifying their intensity.
But that was still different from Pakura's Scorch Release; hers was a true fusion of fire and wind at the elemental level, not just layered control.
Even so, his technique was powerful enough to meet her heat head-on.
Every time Pakura scorched him into ash, his Edo Tensei reformed, stitching his body back together.
But Pakura didn't falter. If anything, she grew sharper, faster, deadlier.
The longer she fought, the more her movements refined themselves, her control over heat reaching unnatural precision.
Her Blazing Mirage Cloak surrounded her, distorting every strike.
Solar Flares burst intermittently, blinding him mid-jutsu, while Heatwave Barrages sliced through his fire dragons like streams of molten glass.
She moved with the same rhythm as sunlight itself—fluid, merciless, absolute.
But she knew it wasn't enough to destroy him permanently.
Edo Tensei didn't end through damage—it ended through sealing.
And until Ryusei arrived, she had to keep him in that fragile in-between state: broken, scattered, but not fully restored.
The battlefield slowly transformed around them.
With a sweep of her hand, she unleashed Scorch Release: Crimson Drought.
The moisture in the air vanished instantly.
The ground cracked, steam turned to vapor, and the whole area became a shimmering desert.
Sasuke's blue fire roared louder but burned less fiercely—the dry air robbed it of fuel.
He retaliated, hurling massive waves of blue flame that scoured the battlefield, forcing her back with sheer scale. She spun through the heat, then countered.
Scorch Release: Corona Lance.
A brilliant white beam shot forward, narrow and focused like a spear of light.
It pierced through his fire and impaled his chest, punching through him.
His body split in half, reassembling seconds later, blue flames knitting the cracks in his body back together.
But Pakura didn't give him time.
She blurred forward, palm igniting, and closed her hand—Solar Prison.
A burning sphere of air collapsed around him, trapping him inside a dome of blinding light.
Within it, the air itself became plasma, shimmering red-white.
Sasuke's body boiled away inside, his flesh turning to vapor, his bones blackening before dissolving.
But even that wasn't enough.
His chakra still lingered, slowly reconstituting the ash particles.
Pakura raised her hand again. "Then disappear completely."
Scorch Release: Desert Sunflower.
A circle of orbs formed around her, each glowing like a petal of sunlight.
They spun, humming, their energy building in the center until the light reached a blinding crescendo.
She released it all at once.
The explosion resembled a solar bloom, blinding, silent, and absolute.
The shockwave vaporized the ground, reduced the surrounding palace walls to flowing slag, and disintegrated every trace of Sasuke's physical form.
The light faded, leaving only glassed terrain and drifting motes of heat.
For a few moments, there was silence.
Then, slowly, weird ash and paper slowly began to flicker again within the molten dust—Edo regeneration starting anew.
That was when Ryusei's shadow clone finally appeared.
He materialized beside her, his arrival marked by a faint shimmer as he emerged from a tiny Katsuyu fragment that had crawled nearby.
Without hesitation, he unfurled a sealing scroll.
"Perfect timing," Pakura said quietly, not even looking at him.
"Yeah," Ryusei replied, kneeling. "Any earlier, and he'd have slipped free. But now…"
He pressed his palm to the molten earth, his chakra flaring in precise patterns.
Dozens of sealing marks spiraled outward from the scroll, latching onto the smallest particles of ash and chakra residue still carrying Sasuke's essence.
The air vibrated with resistance as the Edo Tensei's regenerative core tried to pull itself together, but the seals clamped down faster.
Pakura watched silently as the marks burned brighter and the last flickers of blue flame vanished.
Within seconds, the scroll rolled itself shut with a faint snap.
Ryusei exhaled slowly. "And that's one less ghost to deal with."
Pakura smirked, brushing soot from her arm. "I told you, I handle my end."
"You always do," Ryusei said simply, as if his tone was calm but edged with quiet pride.
Pakura crossed her arms. "You could've shown up sooner."
Ryusei gave a half-smile. "If I had, he'd have slipped out of the seal before it took. Edo Tensei bodies can recover from anything. You had to grind him down to dust first, so I had enough perfect enough space to finish the seal before he regenerated."
She rolled her eyes. "So you let me do the hard part."
"I call it teamwork," he said.
Pakura scoffed but said nothing more.
Her cloak dimmed gradually, the waves of heat around her fading until only faint ripples lingered.
The air began to cool, though the ground still glowed faintly beneath their feet.
Ryusei formed a quick sequence of hand seals, and with a soft pop of chakra, another torso-sized slug fragment materialized beside them, glistening faintly from the heat still radiating off the glassed ground.
The creature blinked once before Ryusei lifted it and placed it against Pakura's shoulder.
The slug adhered instantly, pulsing faintly with stored chakra.
Pakura's brow twitched. "You're sticking one of these things on me again?"
"It's my battery," Ryusei said matter-of-factly. "And my communication link. You'll need it."
She huffed, arms crossing. "You mean you want me to work even more for you, for free?"
Ryusei smirked. "Don't think of it as work. Think of it as shared glory in the future."
"Glory?" she repeated dryly. "You're hoarding all the new tricks and abilities, getting stronger by the day, while I'm still the one doing most of the burning. At this point, I should start charging you per battle with something."
"Go ahead," Ryusei said easily. "You can send the invoice once the world stops trying to kill us. Besides," he added with a faint grin, "your massive upgrade's coming soon; I shoved you the progress; don't pretend you forgot."
Pakura sighed through her nose but didn't argue.
The slug shimmered once, syncing to her chakra signature, and Ryusei stepped back.
Ryusei told Pakura that once she recovered, her next move was to head straight for Kiyomi's position and reinforce her.
The towering black Susanoo visible in the distance made it obvious where she was.
Danzo, the caster of Edo Tensei, was their main priority. Taking him down came first, no matter what.
Pakura wiped the sweat and ash from her face, the faint shimmer of heat still radiating off her body.
"So she's the one with that dark colossus," she muttered. "Good. I'll make sure he regrets summoning anything ever again."
Ryusei gave her a brief nod, then glanced toward the far ridge.
Renjiro's fight with the Nara was also nearing its end at that time.
Once it was over, he'd send another chakra fragment to help him recover and push him toward Kiyomi's side as well.
If the enemy had no more surprises waiting, the Hokage's Faction, or at least their objective, would fall here with Danzo first.