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Tsunade didn’t need any help on her end.
Six enemies.
She picked the three charging hardest at the front.
The first one lunged, raising his blade to cleave her collarbone.
Tsunade dropped her weight, shifted sideways, and spun out from beneath the blade’s arc.
Her right fist drove upward.
Chakra concentrated at the knuckles — not much.
Just enough.
Her fist caught him under the jaw.
The crack of bone dislocating was clean and crisp.
The first time she’d heard that sound last night, her hands had trembled.
Now they didn’t.
Not because she’d gotten used to it.
She had no time to be afraid.
The second enemy was built a full size larger than her.
He swept his long blade in a wide horizontal arc, trying to bury her under sheer power.
Tsunade didn’t retreat.
She stepped in, straight into the blade’s dead zone.
Once she closed the distance, he couldn’t swing.
Her right foot stamped into the side of his knee, her full body weight driving precisely through the lateral ligament.
The scream was piercing.
Tsunade gritted her teeth.
She was already turning when the third one lunged at her from behind.
She didn’t look back.
She read him by footsteps alone — rear right, a meter and a half.
Her elbow hammered backward.
Direct hit on the temple.
Tsunade stood among the three bodies on the ground, blood on her knuckles.
She turned her head.
Her gaze cut through the smoke and dust and moving shapes and found Kitahara Kaede’s position without hesitation — his back flickering through the blade-light of the gray-robed man, his left arm seeping blood.
Her fist clenched a fraction tighter.
Finish fast.
Then get to him.
…
Jiraiya’s side wasn’t nearly as clean.
When three enemies surrounded him, he backed up two steps on instinct.
Not fear.
His mind was already running the math, right shoulder wounded, kunai switched to his left hand, power cut in half.
In a straight brawl, he wasn’t sure he could handle even one of them.
He had to use ninjutsu.
His hands rose and began forming seals.
Not fast.
But every seal landed perfectly.
He’d spent three months grinding this jutsu into his bones.
When Sarutobi Hiruzen demonstrated it at the Training Ground, Kitahara Kaede had gotten it on the first watch.
Once.
Jiraiya had needed a full week just to get a shaky handle on it, then another two weeks before he could reliably split it into five shuriken clones.
After that, he’d drilled it alone for two more months.
Now.
The three enemies were closing in.
The one at the front was less than five meters out.
Jiraiya pulled in a breath.
The shuriken left his hand.
“Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu!”
The single shuriken exploded apart in midair, one became two, two became four, four became sixteen.
A skyful of steel rained down and blanketed all three men before they could move.
They hit the ground hard, bristling with shuriken lodged in varying numbers across their limbs and torsos.
No fatal wounds, not because Jiraiya had held back, but because precision control was still beyond him.
It didn’t matter.
All three were done.
Jiraiya stayed locked in his throwing stance, chest heaving, sucking in air.
His hands were shaking.
He’d torched too much chakra in one burst.
But his eyes were blazing.
He’d confirmed one thing, three months of grinding something into the dirt, and when the moment came, it didn’t fall apart on him.
It had been worth it.
…
The outer perimeter was wrapping up fast.
The two shadow clones swept through the flanks.
The left-side clone put three enemies down within twenty seconds.
The right-side clone took out two more who’d been trying to circle around on Tsunade.
Add in the two Kitahara Kaede’s real body had handled at the start, the three Tsunade had dropped, the three Jiraiya had pinned, and the five the clones had cleared, sixteen men, nearly all of them dealt with.
The ones left standing had no commander and nowhere to look that wasn’t another fallen comrade.
Whatever fight had been in them was gone.
They bolted in scattered groups of two and three, leaving their weapons where they’d dropped.
Kaede’s clones ran them down anyway, finishing the job right before their chakra gave out entirely.
…
Main battlefield.
The gray-robed man and Kitahara Kaede had been trading blows for nearly two minutes.
Then Kaede found the opening he’d been waiting for.
The gray-robed man’s left shoulder.
The Great Fireball had grazed it earlier, scorching a patch of skin and flesh, and the burn had been eating at him ever since.
Every slash pulled on those shoulder muscles.
Every pull tore the wound a little wider.
Six strikes in, his blade speed had fallen by at least 20 percent from the first.
This was exactly what Kaede had been waiting for.
Not for the man to make a mistake.
For his body to give out before his will did.
The seventh slash came sweeping in, weaker than the rest.
Halfway through the arc, the blade hitched.
A tiny stutter.
That was it.
Kaede dropped and slipped beneath the blade’s edge.
The gray-robed man’s pupils snapped tight.
His experience told him exactly what was coming.
His body was a fraction of a second too slow.
The kunai, gripped in reverse, looped around from the outside and drove precisely into the tendons of his sword arm.
The blade fell from his hand.
He let out a muffled grunt and reached for the kunai at his waist with his other hand.
Kaede was already there.
His knee drove into the man’s ribs.
A heavy thud.
Something in the ribcage cracked, quiet and final.
The gray-robed man folded over, mouth open, nothing coming out.
Kaede flowed straight into an elbow strike, bringing it down hard on the back of the man’s neck.
The gray-robed man’s eyes rolled white.
His knees gave.
He pitched forward face-down into the dirt, twitched twice, and went still.
Kaede stood where he was, breathing hard.
His chakra had bottomed out.
Between the Shadow Clone Jutsu, the Great Fireball, and everything he’d poured into that final knee strike, there was almost nothing left.
Two gashes on his left arm were still seeping.
The shuriken graze along his flank throbbed with a dull, insistent ache.
He raised his head.
The first place he looked wasn’t the man at his feet.
It was Tsunade.
She stood among three fallen enemies, chest rising and falling, blood on her knuckles.
She was already looking at him.
Her eyes had locked onto the wound on his left arm, her brow pulled tight.
She was already moving toward him.
“You’re hurt.”
She walked straight up and yanked his sleeve aside without preamble, more forceful about it than she’d been in the entire fight.
“Flesh wound.”
“Shut up.
Let me see.”
Her fingers pressed around the edges of the wound.
A faint green glow rose from her fingertips, basic medical ninjutsu, used for stopping blood.
Nothing advanced; at best it could temporarily constrict the blood vessels and slow the bleeding.
Kaede didn’t pull away.
He glanced down at her.
Her forearm had a 3-centimeter graze across it.
The shoulder of her shirt was torn open.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
Tsunade shot him a look.
The corner of her mouth moved but didn’t make it to a smile.
She dropped her gaze and went back to working on the wound.
Jiraiya came walking over from behind.
He looked at the bodies scattered across the ground.
He looked at Tsunade bandaging Kaede’s arm.
Three seconds of silence.
“Could you two maybe save the touching reunion for later?
I’ve still got a hole in my shoulder.”
Tsunade didn’t look up.
“Didn’t you already pull it out?”
“Yeah, I pulled it out.
It still hurts.”
“Good.
Means you’re alive.”
“…Could you manage even a little human decency?”
“Save it for Konoha.
I’m busy.”
Jiraiya opened his mouth.
Then, wisely, closed it.
The corner of Kaede’s mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
Close enough.
Tsunade finished treating the wound and straightened up.
All three of them turned to look toward the village at the same time.
Metal on metal, faint and intermittent, the sounds bounced back and forth across the valley walls.
Murakami Takuya was still fighting.
…
➤ Next: Chidori — Clash