Chapter 28

JIRAIYA-The Toad Sage

Jiraiya huffed as he landed back on the ground, and he was showered by a dense rain from the collapsed water dragons. He could feel his senjutsu taking a toll on him as his reserves lowered, disrupting the maintained balance of his own chakra with the natural chakra he had imbibed.

"I should have expected nothing less of a sage," his opponent remarked, seemingly unaffected, by the whole ordeal. The sole visible Sharingan focused on him, making him tense up.

Jiraiya looked at two sage masters sitting on his shoulders and gave them a subtle nod, as he molded his chakra, using trying to land a strike on the bastard using the secretive frog arts.

And yet just as he used the secretive frog kumite, the bastard simply moved away from the strike, dodging the proverbial unforgeable move much to his surprise, and now this just confirmed his suspicion. The bastard could, somehow, sense his attacks, even the sage chakra attacks.

"The Frog Kata, I thought you would have realized that they don't work on me," taunted the man as he continued to dodge the barrage he had unleashed, seemingly unfazed by the invisible attacks. Attacks which he had, once again, somehow perfectly recognized.

"Your sage jutsu is impressive, yet pity that you need those summons of yours to even use it," and Jiraiya stilled at that, his anger and senses screaming at him once again.

How the hell did he know that? How the freaking hell!

"Such a shame," the bastard uttered again, and Jiraiya perked up, getting into his stance as he expanded his senses,.

"Though it makes my job much easier," and with those words, the bastard vanished again, and appeared right infront of him once more as he swung his gunbai at him.

Jiraiya was quick to dodge as he ducked, but the barrage continued as he aimed a kick at his face, which he blocked with his hand, and aimed a kick of his own at his legs. However, the grey-haired monster simply jumped and swung that gunbai at him from above, Jiraiya pushed chakra into his hair, elongating them.

"NInpo: Needle cacoon," he shouted as his hair expanded and blocked the gunbai, and then suddenly, the bastard ducked, avoiding another invisible nature chakra technique, before he saw him weave a hand sign using only a single hand.

"Suiton: Water Prison," and then, just as Jiraiya jumped back,

"Jiriaay boy!" he heard Pa shout, and he realized that the bastard hadn't aimed the attack at him. And looked up to find both Ma and Pa trapped inside water prisons as two extra pairs of arms extended out of the bastard's side.

Jiraiya immediately dropped to his knees as he cut off the supply of nature chakra to prevent himself from turning into a toad.

"Told you. Easy!" the bastard japed as he huffed for breath as the two prisons closed onto his two senjutsu masters, but Jiraiya acted before him and used his chakra and unsummoned both of them.

POOF!

The water prisons collapsed in an instant, as Jiraiya stood up again.

"Why are you doing this? What do you want?" Jiraiya shouted at him, and the bastard didn't reply initially, before he replied in a small voice.

"I wish to bring to fruition the dream which has escaped our grasp for so long. The dream that eluded mankind for too long," at this he looked up at him.

"I shall crush the duality of mankind itself. I shall do what no man has ever done before," and Jiraiya stilled as he realized the meaning behind those words. And most importantly, this man was serious, for his words weren't just words but a declaration of something greater. Something much, much greater.

"I wish to sever the fate of this world!" the man roared, and Jiraiya found himself still at the intensity behind those words.

"I shall do what no man has ever done. I shall completely do what even Hashirama Senju couldn't accomplish! I shall bring peace and order to the world, the very peace that you believe one of your students shall bring to the world!"

And Jiriaya was taken aback by those words as he shakily stared into that Sharingan. His mind was numb from what he had just heard.

"How…. How the freaking hell do you know that!" he roared, and the man didn't move and simply smirked as he simply raised his hand and began to cycle through a series of handseals, as he held his hand forward as water from all around them began to gather into the bastard's hand.

Forming a blue orb, the sheer volume of water that was being gathered in the palm of his hand was astronomical and required absolute chakra control. This was the technique he had used earlier, but the intensity of this was now many times that of his earlier jutsu.

The amount of chakra being gathered was ominous and was making the very ground around the bastard crack as the blue orb appeared in his hand.

Jiraiya knew that he would have to counter it.

And right now, in his arsenal, there was only one move that could perhaps rival this jutsu. However, the technique wasn't complete, the idea had been given to him by Ohashi, yet Jiraiya hadn't been able to give it enough time to fully master it.

Yet there was no other way, so Jiraiya gulped as he pulled back his hand and pushed all his remaining chakra into his hand as he gripped the wrist firmly in his other hand. The skin of his hand burned from the intensity of the chakra he gathered in his hand as he felt the Sharingan narrow onto him.

Sweat dripped from his face as he saw the blue orb in his hand take a red hue, as it grew to a size nearly double the size of a regular Rasengan. And then he moved, the bastard was quick to move and Jiraiya reacted just as quickly as the very ground shook from the force of the elemental constructs they held in their hands.

Their eyes met, and Jiraiya stilled his heart as he pushed forward the blazing red orb in his hand as he shouted the name of the technique.

"Ninpo: Bleeding Sun Rasengan!"

"Ninpo: Blood Flood!" (Chi no Kozuki)

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

SHAAAAAAAAAAAA!

And as the massive torrent of stem enveloped the whole area, a single person stepped out of the overheated steam cloud. This cloak burnt on one side as a cacoon of water wrapped around him, protecting him from the overheated stem spread over the entire area, as his sole visible red eye focused on the burnt husk of an arm lying on the ground.

"Tsk! It seems I must hasten my plan!"

0000

TSUNADE SENJU

Tsunade Senju was concerned as she stood inside a hospital room. A hospital room she had been seen visiting often for a couple of days. And why wouldn't she, for the person lying on the bed was no one other than perhaps her only ever friend? She had seen him at his worst, watched him fight for his life, had feared the worst, especially when she had seen his condition at first.

Yet he had made it. That bastard had defied the odds. Despite his expansive injuries, the bastards sat there on the bed, smiling as she lecherously looked at her.

"HeeHee, the staff here told me that you visited me for the whole time I was unconscious," he said with a lecherous grin, making her give the nurse standing inside the room an insidious glare, which prompted her to flee the room.

"Maybe I should make a habit of getting injured now," the joker laughed, though she didn't miss the fake laugh, nor the way his eyes didn't light up the way they did whenever he made such jokes before.

Jiraiya of the Sanin, the roaming sage master, despite his various faults, the man was perhaps one of the strongest shinobi alive. The man roamed the five nations freely with bravado, without any fear of ambush or retaliation, for all nations knew that taking on such a man was a task that was nearly impossible.

And yet, as he had arrived in the Hospital, through reverse summoning by his special summons, his condition had been striking. His body had burns on it, his chakra was depleted, and most of all, one of his whole arms was gone. She had seen him and had for a moment thought that he wouldn't make it, yet in the end, he had pulled through.

The number of people who could overpower him like that could be counted on one hand, and as far as she knew, only one of them remained in Ame.

She ignored his earlier joke, and looked towards him, and spoke up.

"So, Hanzo," she questioned and saw his smile disappear in an instant, and she stilled as she saw him shake his head.

"No, this wasn't Hanzo. I believe that Hanzo's reign over Ame is over," Jiraiya uttered, making her frown.

"What do you mean?" she questioned, asking him to elaborate on his cryptic words. He looked towards her and uttered the words she had thought she would never hear.

"Because Hanzo the Salamander is dead," and she stilled as soon as she heard those words, her mind refused to believe them, and she would have thought them another one of his jokes, but the seriousness in his gaze spoke of a different story.

He wasn't joking. Hanzo, the Salamander, the unspoken Kage, a man said to rival the god of Shinobi, the Demon of Ame, was dead. The man who had given them their very title of Sanin was gone.

"Impossible, he wasn't old enough to die," she challenged, but her teammate simply shook his head.

"He didn't die of age, Princess. No, he was killed. By a single shinobi!" and she couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.

"One shinobi!" she questioned, and Jiraiya nodded.

"Yes, and it was the same shinobi who put me in this condition," he replied, and she grit her teeth as she waits for him to elaborate on what had exactly happened in Ame.

"Some days ago, I was contacted by Hanzo's second-in-command, Hattori. He was Danzo's second in command, and so, I decided to meet him. I went to Ame, and the village had changed a lot," Jiraiya explained.

"The border was well guarded, and the atmosphere in the village was tense. It was somewhat unnerving, and so I met Hattori, the man was injured, and he proposed an alliance between Ame and Konoha," and she frowned as she heard those words. Jiraiya probably saw her surprise and replied quickly.

"Yes, I was surprised as well. And so I decided to fish out the reason for this drastic change, and that was when I heard what had happened. That Hanzo the Salamander had been killed by a single shinobi," and she saw him grit his teeth at that.

"I wanted to know more, but that was when he appeared, like a freaking blur, killing Hattori, in the blink of an eye," he then looked towards her.

"His mastery over suiton was at the level of Nidaime-sama himself. Yet I could sense that he had mastered the other five elements as well," and her eyes widened as she heard that.

"Are you sure about this?" and he nodded.

"Yes. He used suiton jutsu with a simple wave of his hand. His chakra felt ominous and ancient, and most of all, he possessed a doujutsu, a doujutsu he shouldn't have at all. The Sharingan,"

"Impossible, she gasped," but Jiraiya simply shook his head.

"No, I saw it myself. And it wasn't just a normal Sharingan, it was the Mangekyo Sharingan, the Magekyo Sharingan of Madara Uchiha himself," and she paled at that, dread pooling in his heart as she heard him utter that name, the name of the monster that could rival her own grandfather, Hashirama Senju.

They talked for hours as Jiraiya disclosed to her each detail of their battle, his theory about the probably special prowess held by that Sharingan, and everything else. And as she visualized this individual through his words, she couldn't help but see how the image of this person overlapped with the image of a certain missing grey-haired shinobi.

She didn't miss how Jiraiya had made the same comparison, as well. In the end, she couldn't hold herself back and answered the question that plagued both their minds.

"Could it be him?" she questioned, and she saw him chew his lips as he looked away from her. And after a minute of silence, she heard him utter an answer that had grave implications.

"Yes! I believe there is a chance that the shinobi I faced was indeed Ohashi Hatake!" and she closed her eyes as she reeled from the shock and implications of that answer.

"Though listen to me, Tsunade, I cannot be certain about this. It's just a theory, and at this moment, we don't know too much about this. Like how he got that eye, or of it was someone else, a descendant of Madara, there so many questions that we have no answer for yet," He tried to reassure her, and she nodded despite the various theories about how this had happened running through her head.

And she nodded as she stilled her heart and asked the other question that had plagued her mind over the course of this discussion.

"And what does he want? What is his purpose?" and she saw Jiraiya still at her words, as a complicated expression appeared on his face as he uttered the following words.

"Peace!"

0000

KAKASHI HATAKE

Kakashi Hatake watched as their sensei talked with Team Ohashi's sensei as they reached the midpoint of their mission. From this point on, the Uchiha matriarch, Lady Mikoto, was the commander of their unit. A unit that included both Team Minato and Team Ohashi.

He reached into his shirt and touched the special kunai his sensei had given him. It was a hiraishin tag, and if he pushed chakra into it, he could call his sensei for help. He looked towards the other team joining them on a mission and could barely recognize the three genin from months ago.

Team Ohashi had changed quite a bit after his brother's death. His brother's sensei, Lady Mikoto, had come out of her retirement to tutor his students as a homage to him. His brother's death had also changed the three of them, who had become much more serious and focused after learning of his heroics.

"Ok, then. Now, you are under Mikoto-san's command. Kakashi is his second in command. You are to dismantle Kanabi bridge and retreat immediately," their sensei said as he addressed him and his other two teammates.

"Yes, sensei," they shouted in unison, and their sensei nodded and gave them an encouraging smile.

"Good luck, to you all," and with that, the man vanished into a blur, rushing towards the battlefield where he was set to dismantle the onslaught from Iwa's forces.

"Alright, everyone, we have no time to waste. Get into formation," and with that, they were on their way as well. Kakashi led from the front, using his enhanced sense of smell to locate their enemies, with Mikoto-sama and his two teammates behind him as team Ohashi brought up the rear with Kurenai Yuhi using her sensing to guard their back.

They didn't talk much as they raced past the forests, moving towards the Kanabi bridge. It was one of the major supply routes being used by Iwa forces, and it was up to them to bring it down. The destruction of this bridge would be a major to Iwa, and would force them to halt their offense, forcing them into a very difficult situation.

They moved silently for about a day, resting for merely four hours and relying on solider pills for nutrition until near the noon of the second day he suddenly raised his hand and had their whole unit halt instantly.

"What happened, Kakashi?" questioned Lady Mikoto, using sign language, as the seven of them came to a quick halt. Kakashi closed his eyes and sniffed a number of times using his enhanced senses.

"We have company! A lot of company!" he answered as he raised his hand and signed, and saw the Uchiha matriarch's eyes narrow as he further signed the number the number of Iwa shinobi he had just sensed.

A frown appeared on her face, and he saw the Uchiha matriarch reach inside the sleeves of her kimono and take out two kyoyu fans her eyes turned blazing red from their usual black color in an instant, and the three tomoe span insidiously as she slowly mouthed to them.

"Leave them to me!"

0000

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