You're Bound to Lose

"Heh heh heh."

That morning, the moment Hoshi entered the classroom, he noticed that something was off. Ever since he had walked in, he kept hearing some strange sound around him.

"Heh heh heh."

What was that sound? Laughter? Thinking that, Hoshi instinctively looked around himself. After carefully scanning the room, he finally found where it was coming from.

It turned out Tsunade had been standing behind him, constantly letting out silly little "heh heh heh" laughs. For some reason, the little girl had gone crazy today, staring at him with a smug little grin while chuckling nonstop.

Seeing that Hoshi had finally noticed her, Tsunade struck a pose: one hand on her hip, the other spread open to cover most of her face. (Think Caesar Zeppeli's pose when he and Joseph Joestar first faced Wamuu.)

"Foolish Hoshi, do you know what day it is?"

Looking at Tsunade, whose chuunibyou levels had gone completely off the charts, Hoshi's first instinct was to find a camera.

His second thought was: Had Tsunade taken the wrong medicine today and turned into some kind of super genius?

When Hoshi kept staring at her like she was a patient and refused to play along, Tsunade finally couldn't keep it up. Perhaps vaguely realizing that her pose was far too chuunibyou, she stomped her foot indignantly. "Ugh, idiot! You big idiot! Our bet! Today is the day we settle this once and for all!"

Only then did Hoshi understand what she meant. He was a little surprised; he had assumed Tsunade had only been doing it for fun and would toss it aside after playing with it for a while.

From the look of things, she had really put in the work. That piqued Hoshi's interest too. He sized Tsunade up and said, "Then go ahead. Let me see how much you've improved."

Tsunade snorted coldly at that. With a solemn expression, she took an extravagant pencil out of her schoolbag and began spinning it in front of Hoshi.

The moment Hoshi saw her first move, he thought, That thing is definitely going to fly away. But to his surprise, the pencil somehow defied the laws of physics and spun right back into Tsunade's hand.

That finally caught Hoshi's attention. He observed more closely and found the problem: Chakra. Tsunade had incorporated Chakra into her pencil spinning.

Under her Chakra Control, whenever the pencil went beyond her grasp, Tsunade's powerful control could pull it back into her hand. It might not have been as pleasing to the eye as Hoshi's pencil spinning, but its series of perilous movements gave it a thrilling, heart-stopping quality of its own.

After about two minutes, Tsunade caught the pencil and looked at Hoshi smugly. "Well? You can't do that, can you?"

Umm... honestly, Hoshi really couldn't do that. His Chakra Control was so poor that he could barely figure out how to use Transparency Release, much less control Chakra as finely as Tsunade and pull off such exaggerated limit-breaking moves.

Damn, what was he supposed to do now? He had crashed and burned. Hoshi had never expected that this world wasn't under Newton's jurisdiction.

Did that mean he not only wouldn't get the Shadow Clone Jutsu, but would instead owe Tsunade a favor? This was rough, Ma Fei.

"Uh, well... look, yours obviously wasn't as smooth as mine, right? So you can't really say I lost in the truest sense. How about we call it a draw?"

Hoshi immediately began arguing his case, but what he hadn't expected was that Tsunade was even more ruthless. Wrinkling her little nose in displeasure, she said:

"Hmph, don't even think about arguing your way out of this. I already told Grandma Mito all about our bet. Grandma Mito was very interested. She said she'd be the witness for our bet and told you to come to my house with me after school so we can compete in front of her.

"If you dare deny it then, I'll have Grandma Mito spank you."

Ah, this...

Lady Mito, was your life in your old age really this plain and boring? Wouldn't it be nicer to chat with that big fox inside you about history and life? Why were you paying attention to a bet between children?

Hoshi was completely out of options now. She had brought her grandmother into it—what else could he do? It wasn't like he could stubbornly refuse and get hung up by Uzumaki Mito before she spanked him with Adamantine Chains.

Wait, come to think of it, taking Uzumaki Mito's Adamantine Chains head-on sounded way more impressive than Kakuzu's shuriken thrown from eight hundred miles away.

What the hell was he even thinking?

After forcing those messy thoughts out of his mind, Hoshi gave up resisting. Fine, losing a favor was losing a favor. Tsunade's family was rich and powerful anyway; it wasn't like she could want anything from him.

At worst, he could treat it as humoring a child.

With that thought, Hoshi returned to his seat in low spirits and began another grueling day.

The instant the dismissal bell rang, Hoshi grabbed Jiraiya and rushed toward the school gate. No matter how bored Mito was, she couldn't possibly have ninja waiting at the gate to ambush him, could she?

However...

"Hold it. Lady Mito requests your presence."

You really did it, Uzumaki Mito!

Looking at the ninja wearing a cat-faced mask before him, Hoshi chose to surrender. He told Jiraiya and Sakumo to leave first, while he himself headed toward the Senju Clan Compound like a criminal being led to the execution ground—a stark contrast to Tsunade, who hummed cheerfully beside him.

Hoshi knew where the Senju Clan Compound was, but this was his first time actually entering it. Looking at the lush greenery around him, his first thought was that there had to be a lot of mosquitoes here in summer.

After winding through countless turns for quite a while, they finally stopped in front of a spacious little courtyard.

Inside, a graceful woman was carefully tending the flowers around her. Hoshi knew nothing about botany; he only knew that flowers blooming that beautifully probably weren't cheap.

As he looked around at the surroundings, Tsunade flung off her little schoolbag and rushed over. She threw her arms around the woman and called out brightly, "Grandma, I'm back!"

Only upon hearing Tsunade's form of address did Hoshi realize who she was. This gorgeous woman, who looked only twenty or thirty years old, was actually the legendary Uzumaki Mito.

Mito turned around and picked Tsunade up, allowing Hoshi to see her face clearly.

Though she was already over fifty, with the Yin Seal's enhancement, Mito looked not even thirty. She resembled Kushina by five or six parts, but her temperament was more intellectual and aloof.

Perhaps sensing Hoshi's gaze, Mito raised her eyes and examined him as well. His appearance was no different from the photos—a very cute little boy.

She used a trace of Nine-Tails Chakra to sense Hoshi.

As the first Jinchuriki, influenced by Nine-Tails Chakra, she only needed to mobilize the slightest amount of it to easily sense whether another person's current thoughts were good or evil.

After examining him carefully, Mito could confirm that this little fellow bore no ill intent, which reassured her considerably. This child probably had no malicious purpose.

Having passed the good-and-evil test, Mito gave Hoshi a kind smile and said:

"Since you're both here, your bet can begin now."