It's Not Over Yet

Tsunade didn't need anyone's help.

Out of the six, she picked the three who had charged at the front.

The first one lunged forward, raising his blade to hack at her collarbone.

Tsunade dropped her center of gravity, shifted her feet, and spun out from beneath the blade's edge.

Her right fist swung from bottom to top.

She channeled chakra into her knuckles—not much, just enough to get the job done.

Her fist collided with his chin, the sound of bone dislocating crisp and clear.

When she first heard that sound last night, her hands had trembled.

Not anymore.

It wasn't that she was used to it.

It was that she didn't have time to be afraid.

The second man was a size larger than her, and he swung his long blade horizontally, hoping to crush her with sheer force.

Tsunade didn't retreat; she stepped forward—stepping into the blind spot of the long blade's arc.

Once she was in close, he couldn't swing the weapon.

She stomped her right foot onto the side of his knee, her entire body weight landing precisely on his lateral ligament.

A shrill scream pierced the air, and Tsunade gritted her teeth.

As she turned, the third man lunged from behind.

She didn't look back, judging his position by the sound of his footsteps—rear right, one and a half meters away.

She drove her elbow backward.

It landed square on his temple.

Tsunade stood amidst the three fallen bodies, her knuckles stained with blood.

She tilted her head, her gaze cutting through the dust and shadows, and locked onto Kitahara Kaede's position—his back flickered within the blade light of the man in the gray tunic, his left arm seeping blood.

Her fist tightened a fraction more.

Finish this quickly, then go help him.

Jiraiya didn't have it quite so easy.

When the three men surrounded him, he instinctively took two steps back.

It wasn't cowardice; his brain was calculating at high speed—his right shoulder was injured, he'd switched his kunai to his left hand, and his strength was compromised.

If he fought them head-on, he might not even be able to beat one.

He had to use ninjutsu.

His hands formed seals in front of him.

The speed wasn't fast, but every seal was flawless.

He had practiced this technique for three months.

When Sarutobi Hiruzen demonstrated it on the training ground, Kitahara Kaede had learned it after watching it once.

Once.

Jiraiya had spent a week just barely grasping it, and another two weeks to manage five shuriken clones.

Then he had practiced alone for two months.

Now.

The three men were charging, the leader less than five meters away.

Jiraiya took a breath and released the shuriken.

"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"

The shuriken exploded in mid-air—one became two, two became four, four became sixteen, and a rain of steel covered the three enemies in front of him.

The three men didn't have time to react before they were pinned to the ground.

They were pierced by varying numbers of shuriken, mostly in their limbs and torsos, with no fatal wounds—it wasn't that Jiraiya had intentionally held back, but he lacked the precision to control it better.

But it was enough.

All three had lost their ability to fight.

Jiraiya remained in his throwing stance, gasping for air.

His hands were shaking.

He had dumped too much chakra at once.

But his eyes were terrifyingly bright.

He had confirmed one thing—the thing he had obsessed over for three months hadn't failed him when he truly needed it.

His hard work hadn't been in vain.

The fighting on the perimeter was wrapping up quickly.

Two shadow clones swept through the outskirts; the left clone took down three men in twenty seconds, and the right clone finished off two others who had tried to pincer Tsunade.

Adding the two Kitahara Kaede had taken out at the start, the three Tsunade fought, the three Jiraiya pinned, and the five cleared by the clones—the sixteen men were all but wiped out.

The remaining enemies, lacking a commander and watching their comrades fall one by one, had no heart left to continue the fight.

They turned and fled in twos and threes, not even bothering to pick up their dropped blades.

But they were all intercepted and finished off by Kitahara Kaede's clones before their chakra ran dry.

The main battlefield.

The man in the gray tunic and Kitahara Kaede had been trading blows for nearly two minutes.

Finally, Kitahara Kaede waited for that opening.

The man's left shoulder—where the Great Fireball had grazed him earlier, the scorched flesh was still throbbing with pain.

Every time he swung his blade, the muscles in his left shoulder had to engage, and every exertion deepened the tearing of the wound.

After six strikes, his speed had dropped by at least twenty percent compared to the first.

This was what Kitahara Kaede had been waiting for.

Not for him to make a mistake, but for his body to surrender before his will did.

The seventh strike came in a horizontal sweep—the force was weak, and there was a tiny hesitation halfway through the arc.

That was the hesitation.

Kitahara Kaede dropped his body low, sliding beneath the blade's edge.

The man's pupils contracted—his experience told him what the boy would do, but his body was a fraction of a second too slow to react.

Kitahara Kaede gripped his kunai in reverse, circled around the outside, and drove it precisely into the tendon of the man's sword-wielding forearm.

The blade slid from his hand.

The man in the gray tunic grunted, his other hand reaching for the kunai at his waist.

Kitahara Kaede was faster.

He drove his knee into the man's ribs.

A dull thud.

A faint crack echoed from the ribcage.

The man doubled over, his mouth hanging open, unable to make a sound.

Kitahara Kaede followed through with an elbow to the back of his neck.

The man's eyes rolled back, his knees hit the ground, and he collapsed face-first, twitching twice before going still.

Kitahara Kaede stood where he was, gasping for air.

His chakra was bottoming out.

Between the shadow clones, the Great Fireball, and the final knee strike, he had very little left.

The two wounds on his left arm were seeping blood, and the gash on his side from a shuriken was throbbing with a dull ache.

He looked up, but his first glance wasn't at the man on the ground.

It was at Tsunade.

She stood amidst the three fallen enemies, her chest heaving, blood on her knuckles.

Tsunade was looking at him, too.

Her gaze locked onto the bleeding wound on his left arm, her brows knit tightly together, and she was already stepping toward him.

"You're hurt."

She reached him and immediately started pulling at his sleeve, her movements even more aggressive than they had been in the fight.

"Just a scratch."

"Shut up, let me see."

Her fingers pressed against the edge of the wound, a faint green light glowing from her fingertips—basic medical ninjutsu, used for stopping blood.

It wasn't a high-level technique, but it was enough to temporarily constrict the vessels and slow the bleeding.

Kitahara Kaede didn't pull away, looking down at her.

There was a three or four-centimeter scrape on her forearm, and the shoulder of her clothes was torn.

"What about you?"

"I'm fine."

"Liar."

Tsunade glared at him, the corners of her mouth twitching, but she didn't smile; she just looked back down to finish treating his wound.

Jiraiya walked over from behind.

He looked at the scattered enemies covering the ground, then at Tsunade, who was bandaging Kitahara Kaede.

He was silent for three seconds.

"Can you two stop being lovey-dovey for a second? I've got a hole in my shoulder."

Tsunade didn't even look up. "Didn't you pull it out?"

"I did, but it hurts."

"It's supposed to hurt. That means you're still alive."

"...Can you show a little human decency?"

"Save the decency for when we get back to Konoha. I don't have time for you right now."

Jiraiya opened his mouth, then decisively shut it.

The corner of Kitahara Kaede's mouth twitched.

It wasn't a real smile, but it was close enough.

Tsunade finished the dressing and stood up, and all three of them looked toward the village.

From that direction, the faint sound of metal clashing drifted over—intermittent, echoing through the valley.

Murakami Takuya was still fighting.