At the other end of the training ground.
Drawn by the sounds of battle, two figures watched the distant squad disappear into tiny black specks, their furrowed brows gradually relaxing.
With one hand on his hip, Jiraiya smiled and said, "So it was Oto Uchiha and the others conducting an exercise. I thought Akatsuki had attacked. Come to think of it, they've already grown strong enough to stand on their own."
"Yes..." With her arms folded across her chest, Tsunade voiced a similar sentiment.
Even setting everything else aside, there were those two pairs of Mangekyo Sharingan among the Uchiha. If she faced either wielder alone, her chances of victory would be vanishingly small, even now that she had overcome her hemophobia.
As for Oto Uchiha's strength, Tsunade could not gauge it at all. She could only privately wonder whether Oto had already surpassed the old man to become the strongest ninja in the village.
If the Uchiha had not been so powerful, why would she have agreed to make Oto Uchiha captain of the Fire Squad and grant her the right to attend high-level meetings?
After all, if even a Mangekyo Sharingan wielder could not attend those meetings, they would hardly produce any meaningful results.
Just then, Jiraiya seemed to sense something as he gazed into the distance. Shaking his head, he said, "Tsunade, they've noticed we're here. And there's something else..."
"What else?" Tsunade was deeply annoyed by his habit of stopping halfway through a sentence.
"I sensed traces of senjutsu..."
"Senjutsu?" Tsunade frowned, then continued, "That would be Kakashi, wouldn't it? Didn't you send him to Mount Myōboku to train a while ago?"
Kakashi's training at Mount Myōboku was no secret within the Hokage Faction.
As the Fourth Hokage's student and Jiraiya's grandstudent, Kakashi had long been