"Ready to dance again?" I asked, settling into my stance. With a few seconds to stockpile more senjutsu chakra and finalize my plan, I was more than prepared.
He raised his hand.
An invisible force slammed into me, hurling my body and the terrain behind me backwards. My form burst into smoke—a clone. I erupted from the earth just in front of him, blade aimed to remove a head from its shoulders. He ducked low, escaping with only a few severed strands of hair.
His hair morphed into serrated blades in an instant. I twisted midair and dove backwards, narrowly evading the volley.
His mechanical arm clicked. The missile pod opened. I had a second—less. I hardened my sand into a dense dome, multiplying its layers by several orders. The explosion came and went, but not a grain of sand yielded.
I dropped the shield, sand parting as I surged forward, Dark Sister raised high. He fired off another Almighty Push, sending the clone flying. But it bought me time. I appeared at the opposite end of the battlefield and hurled my completed jutsu toward him.
"Wind Release: Rasenshuriken!"
He turned and raised his arms—Preta Path. Absorption flared to life.
It worked.
I flickered behind him, sword poised to end it. But a limb sprouted from his shoulder—its hand gripping a black rod that met my blade in a clash of sparks.
"There's no way you're getting any leverage from that position," I growled. He was cheating. There was no other word for it.
But we were close. Too close for him to ignore me. I released my right hand from Dark Sister and reached for him—one tag. Just one seal, and it would all be over.
He sensed it, and another hand burst from his back, seizing my wrist. I pushed forward, senjutsu-enhanced muscles straining.
So close—
"Almighty Push."
The world turned sideways. I was flung like a cannonball across the battlefield, wind howling past my ears. I hit a building with a thunderous crash. Dust clouded the impact, but my vision stayed locked on him. If I could see him—I could hurt him.
I crossed my fingers. Two clones formed in a puff of smoke, and the three of us charged as one.
His missile arm cocked again—click-click—too slow.
My sand surged up, encasing every single projectile mid-launch. Not a single one broke free.
Lefty moved first, weaving five quick seals: "Earth Release: Rising Earth Dragon!"
The ground cracked and split as a massive stone dragon tore itself from the earth and lunged toward him.
Righty followed with seven seals: "Earth Release: Sludge of the Underworld!"
My own earth jutsu—a nod to Jiraiya's toad oil. The sludge was thick, clinging, and highly flammable. The stone dragon was drenched mid-flight.
Then me. Three seals. That's all I needed now.
"Fire Release: Fire Dragon Bullet!"
The flames screamed through the air, a dragon made of inferno. I followed with no seals—just breath."Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
My Sharingan eye tracked the convergence perfectly, adjusting chakra ratios down to tenths of a percent. The wind hit the flames, amplifying without dispersing them. The fire swelled, consuming the sludge-drenched stone beast.
A dragon of molten fury roared through the battlefield—aimed directly at him.
Absorb this, you bastard.
He raised both hands—gravitational power surged again.
But this time, I didn't let go.
The dragon still answered to me.
I commanded it forward, its flame resisting the crushing pressure. Seconds passed like hours. Then it shattered—stones crumbling, flames scattering. But that had been the point.
I was already moving.
I flickered into his guard, sword raised.
He masked his inexperience with this unified body well. But I saw it. The hesitation. The cracks.
He should've used the Deva Path immediately. Or the Human Path to threaten a soul rip when i got too close to him. He didn't. Not fast enough. Not like someone used to fighting as one being.
And after using Almighty Push, he always slowed. I'd seen it. But this was the first time I could exploit it.
Dark Sister carved through.
His arm fell, severed clean.
He didn't scream when the arm came off—didn't even flinch.
Instead, he turned his head, eyes locking with mine. Cold. Calculating.
Before I could carve him up any further, chakra surged violently from his remaining hand. The ground beneath us buckled as gravity twisted inward—pulling at my body like it wanted to crush me as I floated up in the air.
Another Push? No—something cruder.
"Planetary devastation" He intoned, creating a black superdense mass that flew upwards, attracting everything in the vicinity.
Pieces of debris shot toward it alongside me like a magnet.
I broke free of gravity's grasp as I flew straight at the core and sliced it in half as it suddenly ruptured and blew up, my boots tearing up chunks of scorched earth as I skidded back, sand reflexively wrapping around my frame to soften the impact. Dust billowed between us. By the time I caught myself, he was already moving.
One arm—just one—but his presence didn't falter. He leapt back, feet gliding over broken stone, widening the gap from me.
Still breathing. Still fighting.
And now, farther away than I liked.
Nagato rocketed backward, smoke trailing from his legs as the mechanical roar of the Asura Path's jets kicked in. He blasted into the air, gaining altitude fast. I launched after him, only for a barrage of petty missiles and fragmented chakra blasts to explode around me—not meant to hurt, just to buy time.
My sand blocked them without effort, but I couldn't push forward. I saw it—felt it—his presence rising above me.
He was there. Hanging in the sky like some judgmental god. The sun framed him from behind, light bleeding out around his silhouette. The shadows from his robes danced along the wind. I squinted, and my breath caught.
This… This felt familiar.
The nostalgia hit like a wave.
That feeling in my gut. Of power above. Of being beneath someone's wrath.
I snapped back to the present, my body already moving. Sand surged toward me like instinct, layering in thick defensive coils. Nagato raised one arm slowly. The air turned still. The pressure shifted.
I could feel it—chakra so dense it made the very sky seem heavier.
Almighty Push was ready.
I braced for impact.
Pain thrust his single remaining arm downward in a sweeping, divine motion—like a god delivering judgment.
"Shinra Tensei."
The words didn't just echo—they shook the world. The very air seemed to recoil. I felt it in my chest, in my spine, in the marrow of my bones. It was coming.
He wasn't just aiming at me.
He was aiming at everything behind me.
The injured villagers. The medics. The genin who were evacuating anyone still around. Shikamaru. Ino, trying desperately to heal a crushed ANBU. Lee, teeth gritted, his body already strained from earlier skirmishes, still trying to help someone walk to a safety zone.
In that instant, I saw everything.
I knew what was coming. I had seen it once before—in another life, in another world—in the anime, when I was just a child staring at a screen.
This was that moment.
The one where the village died and was later resurrected thanks to Naruto's Talk no jutsu.
'Is that still gonna happen...likely not'
If I expanded the shield too wide, I risked thinning it—risked breaking. If I kept it dense, it wouldn't be enough to protect anyone except. I quickly calculated the most optimal decision.
Alright.
Let's fucking do this.
I grounded myself, planting my feet like the roots of an ancient tree. My chakra surged through the ground and I let my Sage Mode flood my senses even further.
Everything slowed down even further.
I saw chakra signatures bloom like fireworks behind me—frightened, fading. Shikamaru's steady but injured pulse. Ino's trembling hands. Rock Lee's bloodied silhouette leaning against a wall but still defiant.
I wouldn't let them die.
With a roar, I extended both arms, and my sand obeyed. Tendrils of quicksand erupted from the ground, moving like lightning. They whipped through the streets and alleyways, wrapping around civilians, shinobi—anyone too weak to move(about 23 nearby people in total)—and yanked them into the cocoon I was in through some small openings that I instantly closed and reinforced JUST in time.
The force struck.
The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Konoha would come to know Pain the same way it had before.
An overwhelming tide of gravity bore down on my sand, pressure mounting like the sky itself wanted to crush me. The irresistible force vs. the immovable object. I wondered, just for a second, what might happen when the two finally met.
Then the world exploded into pure sound.
It pushed.And kept pushing.And kept pushing.
I gritted my teeth, focusing everything on holding the shield. I couldn't see Nagato. I didn't need to. My senses extended far—far enough to grasp the horror unfolding behind me.
There was no village anymore.
No buildings. No streets. No walls. Just... dirt. Grass. Flat and lifeless.
Where once stood Konoha, there was now a void.
The shockwave hadn't stopped at the village border as it extend beyond. The great forest surrounding it had been uprooted, entire trees thrown like twigs across miles. Those that weren't torn from the ground had been stripped bare, reduced to skeletal husks. The destruction was so absolute, I could no longer tell where the village ended and the wilderness began.
There was no line anymore.
I dipped into Sage Mode, my senses stretching across the scarred earth. What I felt chilled me.
It wasn't a question of how many had died.It was a question of how many had survived.
Roughly ten percent of the village's population had a living pulse right now… and most of them were Jōnin-level or higher. The rest had been wiped out in an instant.
Yes, I had done damage to Konoha earlier in my fight with Nagato. But that was different. Tactical. Targeted.This?
This was slaughter.
Senseless. Pointless. Monstrous.
What was the point of this, Nagato?
I felt the rage rise within me—slow, deliberate, cold.
And then, the pressure vanished.
The technique was spent.
I bent the sand around me, forcing an opening in the shield to get a glimpse of him. He was still in the sky, but slumped—barely upright, hovering like a puppet with its strings cut short.
Pathetic.
This… was the god he fancied himself to be?
Ridiculous.
"You arrogant fool."
My sand caught him.
There was no escape. What chance did he have of outrunning it now? He reached down, desperate to drain the chakra from the tendril coiled around his leg.
Pathetic.
With a thought, I twisted the sand. He spun like a ragdoll across the sky—helpless, weightless.
Then I brought him down.
Hard.
Right into the heart of the wasteland that used to be a village.
"This is senseless. This destruction... meaningless. Wasteful. You achieve nothing. Just like everything else you've ever done."
He groaned, dragging himself to his feet, slow and broken. I approached. He swung a punch—sloppy. I leaned aside, unimpressed, and drove a kick into his stomach. He folded.
"Some liberator you are. Some chosen one," I spat, as he dropped to his knees. "You are nothing."
He raised his head, defiant. Still trying.
Still crawling.
I ran forward and kicked him again, sending him skidding across the dirt like trash caught in the wind. He twisted mid-fall, arm transforming with the hiss of metal and chakra—a plasma cannon. It charged with an ominous hum.
I didn't flinch.
My sand lashed forward, wrapping around the weaponized limb and crushing it with a sickening grind. He screamed.
"Tell me, Nagato—what have you done with your life? What was your grand mission?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
"You sought the Tailed Beasts. You thought to turn them into a weapon. One blast, you said—one use, and the world would know peace through fear."
I stepped closer.
"Fool."
I grabbed him by the front of his Akatsuki cloak, yanking him off the ground. A hand shot from his chest, hoping to catch me off guard. But the sand was already there, interposing itself like instinct.
He never even touched me.
I hurled him to the side. He crashed, groaning, broken and battered.
"You think you understand the Gedo Mazo? That you were chosen by those eyes of yours?"
He looked up—confused. Denial written across his face.
"Newsflash, Nagato."
"Those eyes were never yours."
He froze.
"Madara Uchiha. He gave you those eyes. Implanted them in you when you were still a child. You weren't chosen. You were bred. A pawn. A vessel. A means to an end."
I let the silence hang, watched it sink in.
"And I'll be taking them from you."
He started to crawl. Pathetic. Trying to flee. Trying to survive.
"Running? From me?" I scoffed. "Where's the 'Pain' of the Akatsuki now?"
I wrapped him in sand—tight. Layered. Dense. Mummified.
He could drain the first few layers. Maybe even the second. But eventually, the tide would swallow him. And I had more than enough chakra—and more than enough time.
"Actually, Nagato—what have you really done with your life that wasn't manipulated? What was this grand unique solution of yours that would bring "Peace" to the World?"
He didn't respond. Couldn't. Maybe from pain. Maybe from shame. But I didn't care.
I wasn't even sure why I was still talking. This wasn't some Naruto-style Talk-no-Jutsu where I tried to reach the heart of the enemy with warmth and hope.
No—this was Angry-Rant-no-Jutsu. I needed to say this. To get it off my chest. For the people he buried.
"You sought the Tailed Beasts. You wanted to forge them into a weapon so devastating that one single use would traumatize the world into peace." I shook my head, disgusted. "Peace through fear. That was your answer that you realized."
But no. That wasn't peace. That was submission.
Nagato didn't want to heal the world—he wanted to terrify it. He wanted every nation, every child, to live under the shadow of a hammer they could never outrun. A hammer they couldn't even see, but always feel hovering above their heads.
He wanted the world to know there would be retribution if it ever dared to hurt again. If it dared to make more children like him. To cause War.
And then, once he was gone...
'Eventually, even those who have witnessed this weapon will fall back into old ways of thinking. Ancient hatred will be rekindled, and humanity will go to war once more. But this time, I will not be there: I will not need to be. The shinobi of the world will use the weapon themselves, and with that they will inflict such a lasting pain that peace will reign, however temporary, for many years after. Justice, for the crimes of all, will have been done in mere moments. And whoever would be left... would be clean of past sin.'
He truly believed it. That cycles of destruction could maintain peace. That scattering bones across the continent could purify it. That a legacy of blood would reduce future suffering instead of multiplying it tenfold and making the Cycle of Hatred just spin even faster.
I almost laughed.
"The core of your entire delusion," I said coldly, "is that you think people will change for the better after you inflict pain upon them."
That they'll learn. That they'll reflectin a way that is healthy and beneficial to the world...
Nagato believed in people changing their ways like Naruto did but in a twisted way. He believed that if you inflicted enough pain, people would finally understand one another despite their differences. That empathy could be forged through shared suffering. That if you destroyed enough lives, those who remained would build bridges from the rubble.
He believed that Naruto would have understood him if he suffered enough. That Naruto would agree with him. That pain could truly shape someone into something better.
I almost pitied him.
I clenched my jaw. "You really thought the world wouldn't let itself die. That if ten thousand corpses became twenty, then thirty, then fifty, then a hundred thousand—someone would pull the trigger one final time, and then the world would just… stop."
That they'd all learn. That they'd stop and say, 'No more and Never again.'
But the truth?
There's always someone else.Someone who believes their dream is more righteous than the last.Someone who thinks their way will save the world.And their dream ends up crushing the dream that came before it.
"You're one of those people, Nagato," I said, voice low and bitter. "You destroyed a lot of dreams today."
I raised my hand.
"And now, I'm going to destroy yours."
XXXXXXX – TSUNADE POV
Mitotic Regeneration was the only reason she was still breathing. Her legs had been broken in more places than she could count. A jagged piece of debris had torn through her stomach, and a building had crushed her right arm completely. But none of that compared to the pain in her heart.
One second, the Kazekage and the red-haired Akatsuki leader were clashing above, and the next—her village was gone. Konoha. Reduced to not even a crater. Her home, her memories, her Grandfather's dream… erased in an instant. She didn't cry. She didn't have the tears left in her. But the ache in her chest was worse than anything even a thousand Dans could have inflicted.
And that's when she understood. The same disease she'd seen in Sarutobi-sensei, in Dan, in Jiraiya… even in Orochimaru, twisted though he was. A deep, consuming love for Konoha. She'd mocked them for it. Distanced herself from it. But it took losing everything to realize she'd had it too.
The Hokage Monument still somewhat stood—but it was just a faceless fractured stone now. A ghost. The heart of the village was gone.
She didn't have time to mourn. Her teammates—if they were still alive—would be the ones to go to first. They'd know what to do. How to fight back.
Jiraiya's chakra was easy enough to sense. He was slumped against a boulder, a piece of rebar skewering his midsection, one arm bent unnaturally. But he was alive. That was enough.
Naruto was with him. Of all the people caught in Pain's jutsu, none had been hit harder than him. But he hadn't tried to shield himself. No—he and Jiraiya had moved to protect others. Villagers weaker than them, people who would've died without someone to stand in the way. That was what made it worse.
Naruto had been in Sage Mode, rough and barely-refined as he barely grasped it before they decided to start this whole mess, but it had still saved his life.
Barely.
His spine had shattered. Every rib crushed. Legs, arms—broken. Even the front of his skull had cracked against the earth. Millions of pounds of force had pressed him into the dirt like a nail through paper, and he had screamed.
But not in pain.
It was rage. A raw, primal sound. And then she saw it—he was still conscious.
The Kyuubi stirred.
Crimson chakra exploded from within him. His spine straightened with a sickening crack, bones knitting together. Limbs healed. Wounds closed. The boy who should have died a hundred times over stood again—burned, bloodied, but alive and back in action.
Then, to her amazement, he forced the Kyuubi's chakra back. He took control with sheer willpower as he somehow maintained a cool head.
That was the moment she knew—Naruto would become Hokage.
That is... if there was a Konoha left to lead.
By then, he had already knelt beside Jiraiya, shaking him gently, worried out of his mind. She flickered to them in two quick bursts of movement.
"Ba-chan!" he cried, relief washing over his face.
She ruffled his hair, then dropped to her knees. The only body she knew better than her own was Jiraiya's. Fixing him up was straightforward. The rebar had missed anything vital. The worst injury was a severe concussion.
Naruto hovered nervously as she worked, eyes flicking between her hands and Jiraiya's face.
"He'll be fine," she reassured him. "Don't be a worry wart."
"Also, what happened the purple haired Akatsuki woman you were fighting?" she asked without looking up.
"Oh, her? When red-hair guy flew off with Gaara, she just turned into paper and left."
Of course she did. Tsunade didn't even blink at the absurdity. She'd seen enough in the wars to know there was no limit to jutsu anymore.
"And Orochimaru?"
"Pervy Sage said we should go find him. We were heading there when… well. Boom."
She nodded grimly and finished healing the concussion.
Jiraiya sat up suddenly, more alert than she'd seen him in years. She almost didn't recognize him—this wasn't the lazy, lecherous old man she knew. This was the shinobi of legend.
"Let's find Orochimaru," he said, as if nothing had happened.
They moved together through the annihilated remains of the village. Every splatter of blood and twisted remains they passed by made Jiraiya take a sharp breath. Naruto cried in silence. Tsunade… she just kept walking. She couldn't afford to feel anything.
Jiraiya veered eastward, his brow furrowed. She realized he was following the signal of the cursed seal he placed on Orochimaru. Of course he was. She bit back the urge to scold him again for ever creating the damn thing.
When they finally found Orochimaru, she almost laughed out loud.
The explosion had caught him mid-shed. Half of his new body was still fused with the crushed remains of the old one beneath a collapsed building.
"That's disgusting," Naruto muttered.
"Yeah, people have been saying that about Orochimaru for years," Jiraiya quipped.
Tsunade burst out laughing. So did they all.
The laughter didn't last long. She got to work immediately. With her chakra still surging from her seal release, the procedure was quick. Orochimaru stirred halfway through and stood once she gave the all-clear.
"Thank you, Tsunade. But I had it under control."
"We could see that," she replied dryly.
Laughter again. Brief, but welcome.
"We've got a Rinnegan user to put down," she said.
"Indeed. Such a fascinating dōjutsu. I've been struck by that repulsive technique before, but to see it cause such devastation... Fascinating."
"Keep it in your pants, Orochimaru," Jiraiya said coldly.
Even Orochimaru didn't argue.
"Naruto, go find Shizune. If we're lucky, she evacuated some survivors to the safe zone. Protect them. Help her heal who she can and protect her."
"But I want to come with you, Baa-chan! Konoha was my village too!"
"Is your village," she corrected.
"What?"
"Is. My Grandfather's dream wasn't just buildings. It was people. The Will of Fire. And right now, I'm entrusting that dream to you—just like I did with his necklace. Protect them, Naruto. Be their Hokage, even if just for today. Can you do that?"
His eyes burned.
"Yes, Granny Tsunade! I'll keep everyone safe—dattebayo!" And with that, he shot off toward the mountain.
"Still so gullible," Orochimaru chuckled.
She ignored him—and the guilt.
"Game faces on. This is an S-Class battle… maybe beyond that."
Jiraiya formed seals. Ma and Pa toads appeared in a massive puff of smoke, larger than normal. They climbed onto his shoulders as he clapped his hands.
In the span of a breath, he transformed. Where there had been a river of chakra before, there was now an ocean as he activated Sage mode.
Tsunade blinked. Even she could barely fathom the pressure.
"Kukuku," Orochimaru hissed in appreciation.
"Keep it in your pants Orochimaru," she said again, but this time there was no laughter in her voice.
She crouched, pressed her hand to the shattered ground—and leapt.
Toward the storm. Toward Gaara. Toward Nagato. Toward vengeance.
Toward the reckoning.
(End of Chapter)