"Is this the end..." Jiraiya's consciousness began to blur. He felt rainwater mixed with thick blood constantly streaming from his temple into his eyes. His vision turned into a hazy wash of red, while the sticky pool of blood beneath his chest gave off a pungent stench. In that instant, Minato's gleaming golden hair, Naruto's soft little smiling face as a child, and Tsunade's fierce look as she drunkenly slammed the table at an izakaya all flashed through his muddled mind like a lantern carousel. His lips twitched into a dry, helpless bitter smile. Old hag, looks like I'm really leaving before you this time.
Deva Path Pain stood at the edge of a towering iron beam, his eyes as empty as two bottomless pools. The pitch-black chakra receiver in his hand dripped rust-colored water with the rain, its cold tip aimed squarely at Jiraiya's heart. The air reeked of the acrid gunpowder and burnt flesh left behind by Asura Path's explosion, making it hard to breathe. Sage Fukasaku clung to Jiraiya's broad shoulder, tears pouring down like a waterfall as he let out a nearly hysterical shriek. "Jiraiya! Dodge! You fool, move!"
"Pain allows mortals to recognize their own insignificance, Jiraiya-sensei." Pain's voice rasped like a blade scraping across frozen iron, grating on the ears. "Your struggle ends here. Go pray for our new world in the underworld." Before his words had faded, the arm gripping the black receiver drove down. With a shriek that tore through the air, the receiver stabbed mercilessly toward Jiraiya's chest with unstoppable force! Jiraiya closed his eyes. His chakra was completely depleted, and he did not even have the strength to twitch his neck one last time.
Clang! A tiny, crystalline metallic ring suddenly exploded through the downpour. It was so sharp that