Orochimaru stood with an unreadable expression, his usual mocking smile replaced by cold, analytical stillness. He watched his old teammate charge, her eyes burning with a decade of buried fury and her fists gleaming with the lethal teal shimmer of medical chakra.
Before she could reach him, Orochimaru's jaw unhinged. His tongue surged outward, shifting mid-air into a pale, writhing serpent that coiled between them, keeping a calculated distance from her devastating reach.
Tsunade did not falter. She tracked the serpent's movement, one arm drawn back for a strike that would shatter bone.
But Orochimaru was already ahead of her.
From his open mouth, a second serpent lunged, its jaws parting to reveal the cold glint of the Kusanagi sword.
Tsunade twisted mid-dash. The blade whistled past her ear. Her injured leg protested as she shifted her weight, but she forced it to obey, preparing to lunge again—when the first serpent's tail snapped around her ankles.
Her instincts screamed. Tsunade drove her heels into the dirt and threw herself aside. She skidded across the sparse grass, then rose in a low stance, her gaze sharp enough to draw blood.
"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune cried, her voice thin with desperation.
"Damn it, she's as stubborn as ever," Jiraiya wheezed. He dragged in a ragged breath and tried to force his chakra to flow, but the sedative made his energy sputter and collapse before it could take shape.
"We can't just watch!" Naruto shouted. For an instant, something sickly yellow flickered beneath his skin, answering the force of his anger before vanishing again. "Why are you just standing there, Shorai? We have to help her!"
Shorai did not answer immediately. His eyes remained cold as they mapped the battlefield.
'One obvious miracle here would save them all. It would also tell Orochimaru—and anyone watching—that I was something beyond a shinobi.'
Kabuto had forced his body back into motion, but every adjustment was too deliberate, each step calculated rather than instinctive. Orochimaru, meanwhile, was fully engaged.
'How should I proceed…?' Shorai mused. 'Orochimaru and Kabuto are essential pieces. I cannot allow them to fall here—but I will not allow them to kill Tsunade, either.'
'If they disappear now, the consequences will fracture too many paths at once. Time. Space. Power. Their locations are still unknown. The chain has to continue long enough for those answers to surface.'
His eyes shifted toward the boy beside him.
'If the Mind Stone chose Naruto… then what does that mean for the Soul Stone? Could it end up with Orochimaru—or…'
Boom!
A shockwave snapped him back to the present. Orochimaru had evaded another strike, a thin smile returning to his lips. Then Shorai saw it: Kabuto, kunai in hand, blurring toward Tsunade's blind spot.
'When all this is said and done, I will need one hell of a convincing story,' Shorai thought.
Even as the thought passed, he began drawing Lightning and Wind together inside his pathways.
The moment the two natures met, a jagged resistance ran through him. The fluid, still habit he had cultivated through recent Water Release training collided with the high-frequency motion demanded by Swift Release. It felt like trying to stir a pond with prosthetic hands—the movements could be forced, but they were not his. Not yet.
'Swift Release… no. Not here.'
'Shunshin is enough.'
He released the fusion before it could deepen, narrowing his chakra instead into a familiar burst of movement. Wind gathered lightly around his legs, reducing the drag of his motion without becoming the technique itself.
Woosh!
Tsunade had just torn through a serpent and lunged at Orochimaru, only for the Kusanagi blade to force her to halt. In that single heartbeat of vulnerability, Kabuto moved.
Shorai closed in.
But Kabuto reacted. Whether it was seasoned instinct, the shift of air at his back, or Tsunade's sudden look of alarm, the medic-nin threw himself into the dirt just as Shorai's heel cut through the space above his head.
'He saw it coming?'
Kabuto smirked from the ground, his chakra-coated palm already rising to catch Shorai's follow-up.
Shorai did not hesitate. Rather than retracting his leg, he folded it beneath him in mid-air and used the remaining momentum to drive himself forward. His knee struck Kabuto squarely in the sternum, chakra packed behind the blow.
Before the medic-nin could recover, Shorai snapped his leg outward in a second kick.
Kabuto shot backward, tearing through the grass before slamming into a moss-covered boulder with a sickening crack.
Tsunade's eyes flicked toward the white-haired boy, surprise breaking through her fury for a single instant. Faint remnants of Lightning chakra danced across Shorai's skin before fading into the heavy air.
"Lady Tsunade," Shorai said, his voice eerily calm, "I appreciate the sentiment, but you cannot win this alone—especially not against these two opponents."
His expression changed.
"Dodge!"
It was too late.
The Kusanagi blade extended at an impossible length and pierced Tsunade's chest.
Tap. Tap.
In the sudden silence, the sound of blood striking the dry earth was deafening.
"Ha!" Tsunade gasped.
Ignoring the Kusanagi blade buried in her chest, she surged forward and seized Orochimaru by the neck. Her fist came down with chakra-enhanced force.
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
"O-Orochimaru-sama!" Kabuto groaned, struggling to force himself upright amid the broken stone and grass.
"Stay right there," Shorai said, his lazy gaze settling on the medic-nin.
Tsunade continued the assault until Orochimaru's face had become a swollen, distorted mask of bruised flesh.
Then the sword moved.
The Kusanagi shifted within her wound. Pain flashed across Tsunade's face, and her body locked for a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
The blade slid free. Orochimaru's battered body collapsed into a writhing mass of pale snakes, which scattered across the plateau in every direction.
"A substitution?" Shorai muttered, watching the serpents disperse.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto's roar echoed from behind. A dozen blond blurs burst forward.
But Shorai saw the trap.
The scattered snakes were already converging, their pale bodies twisting together as they closed on the exhausted Tsunade. Naruto's clones would only give Orochimaru more targets—and leave Tsunade caught in the middle.
Shorai moved first. He lunged through the grass, caught Tsunade around the waist, and pulled her clear.
"Naruto, go!"
Then he forced Lightning and Wind together.
'Swift Release: Shadowless Flight.'
Tsszz—WOOSH!
Static scraped along his nervous system. A violent pulse of unbalanced, pressurized wind burst outward, scorching a thin path through the grass as Shorai vanished. For an instant, his and Tsunade's figures distorted—then he reappeared beside Jiraiya and Shizune, lowering her carefully to the ground.
Behind them, Naruto's shadow clones charged into the mass of snakes. White smoke burst across the plateau as the regrouping serpents tore through the clones one after another.
Shorai's brow tightened. The fusion still felt wrong. His own words about balance, restraint, and relearning kept returning to him.
He drew on the Yang Healing Layer—not because Shadowless Flight had visibly injured him, but to repair the accumulating stress in his muscles and keep his body from failing under the forced fusion.
"Agh…" Tsunade grimaced, one hand clamping over the wound in her chest.
"Tsunade-sama! Let me help!" Shizune rushed forward, her hands already glowing with green medical chakra.
"Tsunade! Do not be reckless!" Jiraiya growled.
His eyes remained fixed on the snakes gathering near Kabuto. Pale bodies coiled over one another, forming a rising mound of scales before merging into the familiar shape of the pale Sannin.
Orochimaru raised one of his ruined hands, its flesh decayed and its soul severed by the Shinigami's seal, and dragged it across the blood at the corner of his mouth. Yet his slit-pupiled eyes gleamed with fascination.
"Little one… what was that you used just now? It was no ordinary jutsu." His thin smile returned. "Care to show me again?"
"Orochimaru-sama, your body—" Kabuto began.
"To hell with this body," Orochimaru hissed. "It was only a small warm-up before the real prize."
Killing intent rolled off him in a wave so dense it seemed to gain physical weight.
"Kabuto," Orochimaru said. "Your blood."
Kabuto sliced his finger and smeared blood across the intricate sealing pattern on Orochimaru's arm.
He then pressed his hand over the markings, using the blood as the medium for what appeared to be a summoning ritual.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
PUFF!
Smoke exploded across the plateau. As it cleared, two enormous brown serpents rose from the haze—powerful summons, but nothing like the serpentine monarch Orochimaru reserved for a true battle. Each serpent carried one of them.
"Damn that snake…" Tsunade muttered, dropping to one knee. At the sight of blood soaking her hand, her body began to tremble.
"Jiraiya-san," Shorai said, looking up at the towering summons, "this would be an excellent time to assist."
"Hmph! Kids these days…" Jiraiya bit his thumb and slammed his bloodied palm against the ground.
PUFF!
A small orange-red frog appeared in the smoke. He blinked up at Jiraiya.
"Got any snacks?"
"Not now, Gamatatsu!" Jiraiya barked.
Naruto quickly copied his master's motions, biting his own thumb before forming the summoning seals.
PUFF!
A small yellow frog appeared, immediately staring at Naruto.
"Hey! Want to play?"
"Damn you frogs!" Naruto yelled.
From high above, Orochimaru's cold laughter drifted across the plateau.
"How embarrassing. Kabuto, Jiraiya is mine. Take care of the others."
'I have no choice,' Shorai thought. The friction in his chakra was worsening. The tilt in his elemental balance made even his own power feel alien.
As the snakes began their assault, he brought his palms together.
'This should work—and conserve chakra…'
A blue, swirling sphere formed between his hands: the Rasengan.
But Shorai did not fully contain it. He fed Wind Release into its core, sharpening the rotation from within and compressing the sphere into something more violent.
'Wind Release: Compressed Rasengan.'
The name barely formed in his mind before Shorai vanished in a Shunshin. He blurred toward the base of Kabuto's serpent, extended both palms, and drove the glowing vortex into the creature's underbelly.
BOOM!
The compressed spiral detonated on impact. Chakra tore through scales and muscle, blasting a ragged wound through the enormous serpent's body. The summon convulsed, crashed into the plateau, and dissolved into smoke.
Shorai skidded backward across the grass, his arms stinging from the recoil.
"Shorai! What was that?" Naruto yelled, eyes wide as the giant serpent collapsed into smoke.
Kabuto's expression tightened. His gaze shifted from the fading smoke to Shorai, calculating.
Above them, Orochimaru's thin smile widened.
"A Rasengan altered with Wind…" he murmured. "How very interesting."
"Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld!" Jiraiya shouted.
The ground beneath Orochimaru's giant serpent softened and collapsed into a vast mire. The enormous snake hissed as its body began to sink, its coils churning violently through the thick mud.
Shorai did not wait.
"I'll help Jiraiya-san. Naruto, take care of Kabuto!"
"Right!" Naruto shouted. The awe on his face hardened into resolve as he turned toward the medic-nin.
Shorai raced toward the sinking giant. Atop the serpent's sinking body, Jiraiya was already struggling against Orochimaru's elongated neck, which had wrapped around him as its fangs snapped dangerously close to his throat.
"Wide open," Shorai whispered.
He unleashed everything, forcing Lightning and Wind to unite while ignoring the scream rising through his pathways.
'Swift Release: Shadowless Flight.'
Tsszin!
He appeared before Orochimaru in a metallic chirp of displaced air. His fingers blurred through the opening sequence of Pressure Point Destruction—but, in the same instant, Shorai halted the unstable chakra fusion before it could flow into his hands.
Only chakra-infused, scalpel-like strikes remained.
Pat! Pat! Pat!
He struck ten points, then twenty, his fingers moving with surgical coldness.
But on the twentieth strike, his hand passed through Orochimaru's chest as though it had entered liquid.
"Substitution?"
Shorai pulsed his chakra, forcing his perception higher until it snapped toward the three-tomoe level.
"Nicely done, Shorai…" Jiraiya breathed.
But the moment was short-lived. A ripple appeared beneath Shorai's feet. A sword erupted from the serpent's flesh.
Tsszin!
Shorai flickered two meters away.
Another ripple. Another sword.
Orochimaru was turning the entire serpent's body into a field of blades.
"Get off this snake!" Shorai roared at Jiraiya.
"Too late…" Orochimaru hissed.
A ripple opened directly beneath the weakened Jiraiya.
Shorai felt the friction in his system reach its breaking point. Static ground against his nervous system.
He brute-forced it.
'Swift Release, Stage Two: Phantom Step.'
'Yang Release: Perfect Body Revival.'
A faint white vacuum layer burst around him—but it was erratic and unstable.
BOOM!
A sonic boom shattered the air as he vanished, leaving behind a flickering phantom that dissolved a heartbeat later. He reappeared beside Jiraiya, the pressure of his arrival knocking Orochimaru's sword off its trajectory.
Shorai grabbed Jiraiya. But as he prepared to leap away, two small snakes burst from the serpent's flesh and sank their fangs into his shins.
"Damn it!"
He unleashed a localized gale of Wind Release blades, shredding the snakes, then forced Stage Two to activate once more.
BOOM!
They reappeared safely at the edge of the swamp, watching the giant serpent sink into the mire. Shorai released Jiraiya, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
'Reality Stone. Interface. Analyze body state.'
Data flooded his mind. The poison was already moving through his legs.
'Warp body state. Poison containment.'
He drew an invisible boundary around the toxin. There was no strain, no effort—only a command, and reality obeyed. The poison halted at once.
Shorai assessed himself again, deliberately discharging the residual elemental chakra and shutting down the abnormal flow through his pathways.
'Three-tomoe level… two-tomoe level… regular state…'
His senses slowed with each step down, the battlefield becoming duller after the violent clarity of Phantom Step.
'I can't use Swift Release—or force my chakra into abnormal circulation—with poison inside me. How do I proceed while keeping the legend intact…?'
As he weighed the possibilities, Shorai felt a sudden pressure.
Across the battlefield, a massive burst of blue chakra marked Naruto's Rasengan connecting with Kabuto.
"So, you chose to save this fool…" Orochimaru's voice carried across the field in an ominous whisper.
Orochimaru slipped free from a peeling layer of the giant serpent's shed skin, completely uninjured. He left the sinking beast to its fate in the swamp, his slit eyes fixed on Shorai with careful study.
"I admit, I am disappointed. But you have given me a great deal of entertainment, little one."
His tongue slid slowly across his lips.
"If you survive… perhaps the Second Coming of the Fourth will become reality through you."
His smile thinned.
"How unfortunate that my perfection does not lie within you."
"High praise, Orochimaru-san," Shorai replied, carefully managing his breath.
"Tell me, little one," Orochimaru murmured. Curiosity sharpened his voice. "You contained my poison. No expulsion. No antidote. It simply stopped."
Shorai remained outwardly calm, though he fought to keep his expression still.
'He sensed the Aether's energy? How? Is his poison laced with his own chakra… or something else?'
"OROCHIMARU!"
Tsunade's voice shook the clearing. The diamond on her forehead shattered into a web of dark, pulsating seal markings, spreading like roots beneath her skin as torn flesh closed anew.
"Ninja Art: Creation Rebirth!"
She rose, her eyes blazing with fury.
"Round two begins!"
She wiped the remaining blood from her face and formed the hand seals for the Summoning Jutsu.
"Kabuto!" Orochimaru called, his eyes shifting toward his struggling assistant, still badly injured by Naruto's Rasengan.
Orochimaru dashed to Kabuto's side and ordered him to form the summoning seals.
"Jiraiya-san, now is the time. Can you form your seals already?" Shorai asked, turning to the scowling Sannin beside him.
"Hmph." Jiraiya glanced at his thumb before beginning a similar sequence of hand seals.
PUFF!
Smoke spread across the plateau, then slowly cleared to reveal the Three-Way Deadlock.
Tsunade and Shizune stood atop the towering slug, Katsuyu. Naruto lay exhausted nearby, his body still recovering from his exchange with Kabuto. Orochimaru and Kabuto stood upon the violet titan, Manda. Jiraiya stood atop the gargantuan toad, Gamabunta.
Shorai remained at the base of the three giants—a small, solitary figure at the center of a clash between legends.
The battle of the Sannin had reached its zenith.