XXXXXX-Tsunade's POV
To end Danzo, two things had to be done. First, the man himself had to die. Second, those loyal to him had to either fall alongside him or surrender. But given what she had learned about how he trained his Root operatives, the latter wasn't much of an option.
And then there were the Elders—Sarutobi-sensei's former teammates, those old fucks who had paved the way for Danzo's rise. She had no doubt they were fundamentally backing his rule even now. That was why Orochimaru had been dispatched to deal with them. Despite their age, they had been students of the Second Hokage, and she could only hope he exercised an acceptable level of caution.
But for now, her focus was elsewhere.
A blade slashed through the air, aiming to separate her head from her shoulders. She stepped aside, narrowly dodging, before driving her fist into the attacker's chest. Bones shattered beneath her knuckles, and the man was sent flying, dead before he hit the ground.
Jiraiya, Naruto, and herself against a force of Danzo's finest, trained killers?
Not even close to a fair fight.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Jiraiya wielding his White Mane Technique, his hair stretching out like a whip, bludgeoning Root operatives left and right. Nearby, Naruto formed a massive Rasengan, obliterating a cluster of masked shinobi.
She had never trusted Orochimaru further than she could throw him, but she had to admit—he was a damn good teacher. With his help, Jiraiya had turned the brat into a powerhouse pretty quickly.
A sudden presence dropped in front of her, fists raised in a Gentle Fist stance. A Hyūga.
"I am Hyūga Neji. I will be your opponent."
She almost scoffed. It pained her to see someone so young tangled up in Danzo's mess.
"You're already dead. Nothing more, nothing less."
She didn't wait for him to move. In the blink of an eye, she closed the gap, her hand clamping onto his skull. The next Root operative to charge at her was forced backward as she swung Neji like a human flail, using his own body as a weapon.
Then, with a sharp twist, she snapped his neck. His lifeless form hit the ground.
Another enemy came at her, surrounded by a cloud of insects. Aburame. She immediately held her breath to avoid inhaling any insects, then pulled chakra through her body, reinforcing her form like armor.
The Root shinobi dodged her first punch but never saw the follow-up. They never did.
A sharp chirping sound filled the air. Her instincts screamed, and she ducked just in time to avoid a Chidori, the lightning grazing past her neck. She turned to meet the gaze of her attacker—Sharingan spinning behind a ROOT mask.
Uchiha Sasuke.
She moved to finish him, but before she could strike—
Someone stepped between them.
Someone infinitely more dangerous.
A black cloak with red clouds, an aristocratic face, and those same piercing red eyes.
Itachi Uchiha.
Their gazes locked, and in an instant, she felt the pull of genjutsu. She shattered it in less than a second.
Dangerous.
She charged. Unlike every other man here, he did not run. He stood his ground, waiting for her.
Foolish.
She aimed a punch at his head, but he weaved aside, dodging with unnatural grace. His counter-kick came fast, forcing her to block with both hands.
She gritted her teeth.
He was far stronger than he looked.
He pulled his leg back, throwing off his balance, and she moved to capitalize—two punches at razor speed. Both dodged. He flipped back, and mid-air, he unleashed a volley of shuriken.
She stomped the ground, forcing a wedge of stone to rise before her, absorbing the attack.
A moment later, she heard a great fireball roaring towards her.
Fast.
She flashed through a single seal. "Water Release: Water Bullet!"
Her technique was weaker, the water barely piercing the fireball, but it was enough. She charged through the flames, unscathed.
They clashed again, taijutsu against taijutsu. A kunai in his right hand stabbed toward her shoulder. She dodged—barely—but as the blade arced toward her neck, she was forced to punch him back, forcing him to abandon the attack.
He jumped back.
She followed instantly.
Leaping into the air, she brought her leg down, aiming to crush him—
And he did the unthinkable.
He crossed his arms.
She smirked. Idiot.
Her foot slammed into his forearms—but something was wrong.
There was no reaction.
Then she felt it—her chakra being redirected.
The ground beneath them fractured, cracks spreading outward.
Pretty skilled.
A massive chakra surge to her side made her snap her head toward Jiraiya.
He was running toward her, Naruto right with in tow with him.
"Probably a good idea to run, Hime!"
She turned just in time to see a massive tidal wave surging toward them—
And riding the wave, a monstrous, blue-skinned man wielding a familiarly grotesque blade.
Hoshigaki Kisame.
Of course, they moved in pairs.
She spun on her heel, matching Jiraiya's speed as they raced through the underground ROOT tunnels.
Left. Right. The water pursued them, relentless and growing—
She scowled. The further they ran, the faster it gained on them.
Then—
A familiar bit of stonework caught her eye. Three old kunai marks she had carved as a child.
There.
Without hesitation, she leapt upward, fist cocked.
Her chakra surged.
With a single strike, the ceiling exploded outward, and sunlight flooded in.
A second later, she felt Jiraiya's hair wrap around her, pulling her clear as he jumped after her.
The water rushed past, flooding the tunnels beneath them.
Now back on the streets of Konoha, Tsunade turned to the left, expecting to see the familiar tower where she had spent much of her childhood—but instead, she was met with a massive sand pyramid.
That Kazekage bastard.
Her irritation was cut short by the sound of an explosion deeper in the village.
Konoha was in complete chaos. The entire village was unraveling, and it didn't take long for her to pinpoint the cause. Two men.
Two men with the same wild red hair and an equally reckless disregard for keeping Konoha standing.
One of them had arrived with them as an ally. Technically. But Tsunade knew the Kazekage would take advantage of the situation to secure his village's position. Allies in name, enemies in truth. She hated politics. But she respected his strength.
Which made it all the more surreal to see him engaged in direct combat—and struggling.
The man Gaara was fighting wasn't just keeping up; he even had a slight advantage. And what stood out even more were the bizarre, ringed purple eyes he possessed.
"Nagato?"
Jiraiya's voice was barely above a whisper, but the shock in his tone made her turn. He was staring at the battle with wide eyes.
She wracked her brain. Nagato... The name sounded familiar. But Jiraiya was still talking, almost to himself.
"I knew Konan was here, but if even Nagato himself is involved… that means—"
He trailed off, but Tsunade didn't need him to finish.
Gaara and Nagato slammed through a nearby building as their fight intensified, sending debris flying in all directions. The Kazekage was technically superior—his movements sharper, his control finer. But it didn't seem to matter. Nagato was just a fraction faster, a shade stronger. And worse, his body shifted.
Where his arm had been, there was now a cannon.
Gaara didn't flinch. He barely acknowledged the transformation as the weapon fired—tilting his head just enough for the blast to pass, tearing through multiple buildings behind him.
They went back to clashing, this time with weapons. Gaara wielded a blade that Tsunade didn't recognize—though she had to admit, it was finely crafted. A shame she wouldn't be able to claim it.
Nagato conjured a black metal rod from thin air, and the fight continued.
Tsunade might have watched longer if not for the shift in the air behind her.
She turned sharply.
Two figures, both clad in black cloaks with red clouds.
Akatsuki.
"Where is Uchiha Itachi?" she demanded, noticing the missing clan-killer.
"He has business to take care of. But don't worry—" The blue-skinned one smirked. "We're more than enough to take the Nine-Tails brat."
Kisame Hoshigaki. The Tailless Tailed Beast.
Tsunade's eyes flicked to Jiraiya, finding him glaring at the purple-haired woman beside Kisame. Konan. That's the one he recognized.
She let out a breath.
Jiraiya could handle his personal business. She had her own fight to deal with. Hopefully, he wouldn't do anything stupid. Then again, with Naruto there, at least they had a designated idiot to cover that role.
And as for her own opponent…
Tsunade leaned forward just an inch.
That was all the warning Kisame got.
He barely had time to raise his sword before she was on him.
She launched forward, chakra flooding her limbs, and slammed her fist into Samehada.
"Chaaa~!"
The impact was thunderous.
Her raw strength sent both Kisame and his weapon hurtling backward, crashing through multiple structures.
She didn't even glance at Jiraiya.
"I'll handle this one."
Then she was off, leaping through the air in pursuit.
Kisame was half-buried in the remains of a building when she found him. Aside from that? Barely a scratch.
He chuckled, rolling his shoulders as he stood. "That was a good one, Old Woman."
Tsunade tilted her head, unimpressed.
Of all the insults he could have chosen—really?
Old woman?
At least try to be creative.
The body in front of her dissolved into water, and before she could react, a blade slashed toward her—only for her own form to tear apart into splinters. Substitution.
Her opponent wasn't as clever as he thought. Now that she knew his position, she closed the distance in an instant, aiming another devastating punch. This time, he dodged, countering with a swipe of his blade—Samehada. One of the Seven Legendary Swords of the Mist. She had never faced this particular sword before, but she knew how it worked.
She ducked under the strike aimed at her head, but mid-motion, the weapon suddenly halted in place, shifting its trajectory downward. It's alive. She realized it a split second before it crashed toward her. Reacting on instinct, she planted her hand on the ground, propelling herself sideways just as the sword slammed down, gouging the spot where she had just been.
She barely had a moment to recover before a high-speed water bullet carved a deep trench into the stone road. Two more followed, forcing her to weave between them. Then came a razor-thin stream of pressurized water, slicing through the building behind her like paper. Too damn destructive. She clenched her fists, hoping Shizune was handling the evacuation. If civilians got caught in this, she'd never forgive herself.
Her patience snapped. With a roar, she reared back and slammed her fist into the ground. The earth exploded, sending shockwaves rippling outward, knocking her opponent off balance. That was all the opening she needed. In a blur, she closed the gap and drove her fist straight into his gut. Bones cracked beneath her knuckles as he rocketed backward, sent flying through the village.
But she knew better than to assume it was over when facing shinobi of this caliber.
Sure enough, when she arrived at the crash site, he was already standing, Samehada shifting ominously in his grip. She noticed something—the handle had retracted and reshaped back into a standard hilt. So that's how he withstood my first hit.
"You hit hard," he admitted, rolling his shoulders. "Let's see how hard you hit in the water."
Oh, hell no. She lunged forward.
He abandoned his hand seals to block, lifting Samehada defensively. Her fist met the blade—and suddenly, a wave of dizziness hit her. Her chakra... it was draining.
Her eyes widened as she felt her reserves plummet, the energy being ripped from her.
Kisame smirked. He'd been waiting for this.
Before she could retreat, his sword lashed out, too fast to avoid. Pain seared across her body as deep gashes opened on her arms and torso. She barely managed to stay standing. How?!
"For a moment, I thought you might resist Samehada's drain," Kisame mused, watching her stagger. "Guess you just needed a second for it to hit you."
Tsunade clenched her jaw, forcing herself upright despite the lightheadedness. There's no way it drained that much chakra that quickly.
Reading her expression, Kisame chuckled. "You're wondering how I can suck you dry so fast? I'll tell you, since you're already dead anyway. They call me the Tailless Tailed Beast for a reason. Even without Samehada, my chakra rivals that of a Bijuu. This sword? It's been feeding off me since the day I got it."
His grip on the blade tightened. "Samehada's always hungry—but when I want? I can starve her. Make her desperate. So when she finally gets a meal…" He grinned. "She eats fast."
He strode forward, raising his sword.
Tsunade swallowed, her mind racing. She was out of time. She forced chakra into her limbs, willing her body to move. With a burst of strength, she pushed off the ground, flipping backward. She landed on unsteady feet, searching for an opening—any opening.
But Kisame didn't give her one.
He lunged, blade swinging. She barely sidestepped, narrowly dodging the first strike. Then the second. The third came from a different angle—she retreated. The fourth was a downward slash, and he overextended.
There.
Tsunade surged forward, stepping inside his guard before he could recover. She twisted her hips, lashing out with a punch, her chakra timed to detonate the second her fist landed.
"Thwack!"
The hit connected cleanly—but Kisame barely budged. What?!
Samehada twisted in his hands, its fleshy tendrils reaching for her, trying to ensnare her. She leaped into the air, dodging just before the sword's jagged teeth could clamp around her.
Tsunade's mind raced. There was no way to avoid the creature's chakra drain—if even his main body could absorb chakra through its connection to the sword, then direct combat was a losing game.
"Who says you need to avoid it?"
The voice in her head sounded suspiciously like Uncle Tobirama. The same voice that always helped her devise her best plans.
Samehada could absorb chakra. Absorb—not nullify. That distinction was critical. Kisame Hoshigaki boasted that the blade had no limits, but she knew better. Everything had a maximum. The question was, could she find it?
Kisame claimed the strength of a Tailed Beast, but she could sense his chakra. It wasn't nearly as much as Naruto's when he had the full Nine Tails. From her estimation, Kisame held roughly twice the amount of chakra Naruto had when using four tails of the fox's power—around the level of a Six-Tails.
Did she have that much? Not right now. But in her seal? Absolutely.
For nearly three decades, she'd stored chakra within the Strength of a Hundred Seal without pause. She hadn't released it since the Second Shinobi War. The sheer volume of chakra within that seal was staggering. More than she had ever sensed before.
Would it be enough?
Maybe. It would have to be.
As Kisame closed the distance, she exhaled sharply and formed the Ram seal.
"Strength of a Hundred Seal: Release."
The world changed.
Jiraiya once asked her what it felt like. She couldn't explain it to him then, and she still couldn't now. It was like being a god. But also... not.
Power flooded her body—more than an entire Tailed Beast's worth of chakra. Yet, with all that strength came the agony. The sheer pain of it burned through her limbs, a sensation so overwhelming it nearly took her breath away.
She remembered asking Mito about it once. Why did it hurt her, but not the older woman?
The answer had enraged her. She wasn't an Uzumaki. Not fully, at least. She had too much Senju blood, too little Uzumaki. Her body simply wasn't built to withstand this much chakra. Anyone else would have taken that as a warning. But Tsunade was too stubborn for that.
That stubbornness led to the creation of her ultimate technique: Mitotic Regeneration.
A workaround, really. A way to force her body to withstand the overwhelming chakra by constantly repairing itself.
Kisame scoffed. "Is having more chakra supposed to scare me?"
Tsunade ignored him, focusing instead on the raw power surging through her limbs. Strength beyond anything she'd ever wielded.
Enough to kill him.
Kisame lunged forward, Samehada aimed for her head. Before, they had been evenly matched in speed. She had been faster, but only by a fraction.
Now?
Now, he was unbearably slow.
She closed the distance in an instant. The look of shock on his face was agonizingly slow to form. She didn't wait for it. Her fist buried itself in his chest, the force enough to cave in a mountain.
Yet he barely moved.
As they landed, she gritted her teeth. Fine.
She moved first this time. His body was too slow to react. Before he could even form a defense, she slammed another punch into his chest.
Then another.
And another.
Samehada pulled at her chakra, trying to drain her. She did not resist as she opted to barrage Kisame instead.
Punch.
After punch.
After punch.
She lost count after the first hundred.
She felt the blade struggle. It was too much. She was overloading it.
She felt like a genin again. Executing punch after punch on a wooden post under Sarutobi-sensei's watchful gaze. If he could see her now, she was sure he would be wearing that thin-lipped smile of his. The same one he wore when he saw them solve a problem in a way that worked, but still wasn't exactly what he would have done. He could probably think up a dozen ways to have defeated this particular enemy without resorting to such 'brutishness'. But she wasn't him. Her arsenal was much more limited than his. This was her only resort.
Chakra absorption meant that no part of her admittedly shallow ninjutsu repertoire would be any use against him. It also meant that her strength would fail against him, no matter how it was applied. Perhaps a decade or two ago, she might have risked facing him in pure taijutsu without chakra enhancement, but she was being realistic here, and those days were far behind her. And that did not even take the healing factor the blade enabled into account. Her first plan of just tossing rocks at him until she managed to kill him with a shot would have failed. Both because of the healing factor, and the fact that this man was also a skilled shinobi in and of himself. He was not a mediocre with only a single trick to his name. He was S-ranked in every meaning of the word.
After six hundred punches, she noticed it. A delay. A small hesitation in the sword's absorption.
It wasn't much. But to a medical-nin trained to detect the slightest change in chakra flow, it was enough.
It was working.
Her determination hardened.
She kept going.
By the time a thousand more punches had landed, her chakra reserves had fallen to a quarter.
And Kisame?
Where once he had stood still, smirking, now he struggled. His body twitched with every blow, instinctively trying to escape.
A crack in his confidence. A mistake.
"What the hell are you doing, woman?!"
Panic.
He started to form a seal.
Tsunade didn't let him.
Her hand lashed out and caught his wrist. She squeezed. Hard.
CRACK.
The bones crumbled to dust in her grip.
Samehada struggled to heal him.
Could it do both? Absorb chakra and heal at the same time?
It tried.
She pulled him closer and punched.
This time, not all of her chakra was absorbed.
She punched again. More landed.
And again.
And again.
Bone cracked. Flesh tore. Samehada groaned.
Then, suddenly—
The sword screamed.
It separated itself from Kisame, flopping onto the ground like a dying animal.
She looked down at Kisame.
His body twitched. He was barely conscious.
One last punch.
Her fist obliterated his entire chest.
And just like that, Kisame Hoshigaki was no more.
(End of Chapter)