Chapter 299: Master and Student, Fallen
Edo Tensei!!!
The instant the staff vanished from her hand, Sakura understood exactly what was happening.
Only two people had ever held a contract with Enma — herself, and Hiruzen. But Hiruzen had passed months ago, leaving her the sole remaining contractor.
And there was no version of Enma abandoning her mid-battle, not under these circumstances.
Which left only one answer.
A past contractor had returned to this world.
Bringing back the dead. Hiruzen had been gone long enough now that Nagato's Chibaku Tensei, Chiyo's Life-Transfer Technique, and Konoha's own Dragon Life Reincarnation had all been ruled out already, one way or another, as means of restoring him.
Which left exactly one possibility.
Edo Tensei.
Damn Orochimaru.
Sakura's expression darkened completely.
During my time as Hokage — when exactly was his grave disturbed?
Or had Orochimaru already secured his remains long before any of this even started?
And it wasn't just that.
If Edo Tensei was in play, there was no chance Hiruzen was the only one revived.
Which meant the Land of Frost front—
A wave of genuine worry surged through Sakura at the thought. She resolved to finish this fight as fast as humanly possible, then use the Flying Thunder God Formation to rush straight to the Frost front.
If the coalition there was reinforced by a full contingent of Edo Tensei revivals, that front wouldn't hold for long.
Fortunately, Naruto had already mastered Nine-Tails Chakra Mode — he should be able to hold the line, at least for a while.
And if word reached Tobirama in time, he'd undoubtedly lead reinforcements there himself.
But—
There was no guarantee Madara Uchiha hadn't been revived as well.
"...Hah."
Beneath the dark, heavy sky, the Hokage hovered high above, her gaze cold, fixed on Konan ahead of her.
Behind her, Ōnoki and Deidara — master and student — closed in.
"Hey, hey, hey. Is this thing actually about to get serious now?"
Deidara eyed the Hokage, weapon suddenly gone, standing motionless in midair, a flicker of unease crossing his face.
"Shut up. Finish her off, now."
Ōnoki barked, already forming seals.
A pale, radiant light of pure annihilation began gathering between his hands.
Dust Release — Divine Boundary Dissolution!
A blinding white beam, shaped into a massive, lethal blade of light, cut straight toward the Hokage.
"I'd meant to hold some chakra in reserve, as insurance. But given this—"
"I suppose I'll just have to ask the three of you to die a little faster."
The Hokage turned to look at the massive blade of light bearing down on her, and—
Sage Mode!
The angular, sun-marked pattern spread outward from the diamond seal on her forehead — and beyond that, the dignified sage markings crept across her cheeks as well.
In an instant, her presence exploded, multiplying several times over.
That terrifying, gathering chakra concentrated into a body that, by any measure, looked slight — even delicate.
And in the instant that beam of light reached her—
She vanished.
To Ōnoki's naked eye, all he could make out was a streak of pink light, moving at a speed beyond comprehension, curving around his Dust Release entirely and closing in on him.
"WHAT?!"
Ōnoki's face went pale with shock, an overwhelming sense of danger surging through him.
Decades of battlefield instinct screamed at him at once.
Without conscious thought, his body reacted, swinging a fist to his right.
Earth Release — Super Heavy Rock Technique!
Countless stones converged along his arm — instinct telling him she'd appear exactly there in the next instant.
Ōnoki was right.
And also wrong.
He'd correctly guessed where the Hokage would appear. What he'd gotten catastrophically wrong was the true gap between their power.
Even without her staff in hand, the Hokage was still exactly who she'd always been.
Two fists collided in a violent explosion of force.
In that single instant—
The outcome was already decided.
Stone shattered. Blood sprayed across the sky.
Under the Hokage's unmatched raw power, Ōnoki's entire arm exploded outright.
Flesh, blood, and shattered bone scattered across the dark sky.
A single punch, and the Tsuchikage of the Two Scales fell in an instant.
Ōnoki let out a strangled groan, clutching the ruined stump of his arm. Flame kindled in his remaining hand, cauterizing the wound shut instantly, stemming the bleeding — and at the same time, he tried desperately to put distance between himself and the Hokage.
But there was no chance of that. She was already on him, and just as Ōnoki seemed moments from death, Deidara finished his own technique.
A clay dragon nearly thirty meters long shot toward her.
At the same moment, Ōnoki forced out a one-handed seal.
Earth Release — Golden Rigid Technique!
Hundreds of meters up in the sky, a colossal stone statue, over thirty meters tall, materialized out of nowhere and crashed down directly at the Hokage.
She let out a cold laugh at the sight, catching the massive statue with one hand alone. It raised a massive fist against her, trying to crush the tiny insect before it.
But before the statue could complete its swing, she abruptly hurled it in the opposite direction — straight into the clay dragon bearing down on her.
The clay dragon had no time to dodge, and the stone statue crashed straight into it, sending both crashing to the earth below with a massive explosion.
Flame lit up the sky, smoke billowing everywhere — even the driving rain couldn't smother it entirely.
Ōnoki used the opening to put dozens of meters between himself and the Hokage, and raised his remaining hand toward her, furious.
"Dust Release — Original Boundary Dissolution!"
There's still a chance.
There has to be a chance.
If Dust Release could just land, even this Hokage would die.
Dust Release — a fusion of Wind, Fire, and Earth chakra, the pinnacle of destructive kekkei tōta. Even someone as strong as her couldn't possibly survive it.
Watching the pale, radiant cube shoot toward her, the Hokage let out a cold laugh.
"Dust Release really is terrifying."
"For an ordinary shinobi, that is."
"Against me, though — it's simply too slow."
"Are you underestimating me, Ōnoki?"
Before the technique even touched the hem of her robe, the Hokage vanished from where she stood.
The next instant—
She was already behind him.
That speed—
Ōnoki's mind reeled with genuine shock, even having already overestimated her as much as he reasonably could.
But her actual strength, right now, still left him drowning in despair.
A body that shrugged off jutsu head-on. Speed beyond comprehension. Raw power without equal.
As a single combat unit, Ōnoki had never once, in his entire life, encountered anyone like her.
But there was no time left to dodge now, regardless.
A single hand, fast as lightning, closed around his throat.
Under that crushing grip, Ōnoki coughed up a mouthful of blood.
The red-and-white of the Hokage's robe was instantly stained with a sharp, glaring splash of red.
"You... why..."
Ōnoki struggled weakly against the hand clenched around his neck, staring up at the young Hokage before him.
"You're impressive. I genuinely didn't want to kill you."
"But you're too stubborn to bend. You chose to stand against me."
"So — step aside now. Rest in the Pure Land, and watch the age I'm about to build from there."
"You'll come to regret the choice you made."
Cold words, quiet, fell from the Hokage's lips.
A single, sharp crack, and the old man — feared across the shinobi world for decades, ruler of Iwagakure into his seventies—
Died.
As her grip released, Ōnoki's small body plummeted, lifeless, and struck the ground far below, without another sound.
Looking down at the Tsuchikage's body, the Hokage unfastened her own robe and let it fall.
The robe, its flame pattern embroidered across the fabric, stood out sharply against the dark sky — and, before Deidara's disbelieving eyes, settled over Ōnoki's corpse.
And with that, a man who'd ruled for decades, feared across the shinobi world, the most respected figure in the entire coalition — the Third Tsuchikage.
Fell.
"OLD MAN!"
"I'LL KILL YOU!!!"
High in the sky, having watched his own teacher die right in front of him, Deidara let out a howl of pure grief and rage.
The Hokage turned her gaze toward Konan, retreating in the distance, already preparing her own technique, brow furrowing slightly.
Paper-manipulation art...
At that same moment, Deidara pulled a piece of C4 Karura from within his robe.
His trump card, prepared long before, from the moment he'd learned he'd be facing the Hokage as an enemy.
He'd never gotten the chance to use it before now. And his teacher was already dead.
"C4!"
"KARURA!"
Consumed by fury, Deidara didn't even spare a thought for the many coalition soldiers still below and activated the nanoscale attack without hesitation.
The clay figure he flung from his hand transformed instantly into a massive, towering giant, shaped in Deidara's own image.
The giant's feet struck the earth, and the ground beneath it shattered instantly on contact.
"Art is an explosion!"
Deidara roared, and the giant burst apart like an over-inflated balloon.
No flame. No shockwave. No heat.
Only silent, total annihilation.
Everything within its range — heaven and earth alike — dissolved into nothingness without a sound.
A nanoscale attack. Nothing could withstand it.
Grass, trees, buildings on the ground below vanished before the naked eye, one after another.
As if consumed by countless unseen mouths, chewing everything away.
Facing this attack, the Hokage's expression didn't change at all. She simply clenched her fist.
Chakra surged through her body's pathways.
The Hokage spoke a single quiet phrase and threw a punch.
Deidara heard the words clearly.
"Daytime Tiger."
The instant the punch landed, a violent gust of air erupted from the force of the blow.
This technique was purely physical, a pure taijutsu strike — at the Hokage's own current strength, executing it presented no real difficulty.
She simply hadn't needed it against her earlier opponents. There'd always been better options available.
"ROOOAR!!"
A massive white tiger burst into being from the tip of her fist.
The tiger roared, as if ready to tear apart everything in its path.
Wind and rain across the entire sky churned violently in the wake of that single punch.
Daytime Tiger had originally been Might Guy's own technique — a move born from opening the Eighth Gate up through the Seventh, using the Eight Gates' massive surge of chakra to enhance the body, then releasing it all in a single devastating burst of compressed air.
The Hokage, right now, could execute it without needing the Eight Gates at all.
If not for the fact that the Eight Gates conflicted directly with her own Superhuman Strength, she wouldn't have minded learning the technique properly either way.
Superhuman Strength arose from an extraordinarily precise mastery of chakra control. The Eight Gates, by contrast, forcibly tore open the body's own internal gates to seize far greater power, at the cost of monstrous physical strain.
Different roads, arriving at the same destination, in the end.
The violent gust unleashed by Daytime Tiger swept across everything in its path, and countless invisible nanoscale bombs, caught up in that single blast of compressed air, were hurled high into the sky.
The dark clouds overhead simply dissolved, silently, under the weight of those countless nanobombs.
Bright, warm sunlight broke through once more, tearing apart the endless gloom that had hung over the battlefield until now.
The Hokage stood bathed in that sunlight, expression blank, hovering in the sky, watching Deidara — frozen stiff atop his bird — in the distance.
A monster like this...
Can we really win this?
Deidara's chest churned with dread. But thinking of Ōnoki, dead just moments ago, grief and fury overtook him in equal measure.
He reached to strip off his own clothing, ready to take the Hokage down with him in a final self-detonation — but she had no intention of giving him the chance.
Not out of fear of his self-destruct technique.
Simply because she had no interest in giving him that opportunity at all.
Her hand, blade-sharp, backed by absolute physical power and chakra control unmatched anywhere in the shinobi world, cut through the air like the deadliest weapon imaginable.
The hand-blade fell, and blood erupted from Deidara's body.
"I'll give you one chance. Surrender."
The Hokage looked at the blond young man before her, calm.
Deidara wasn't like Ōnoki. Where Ōnoki had been an old man, rigid and unbending, Deidara was different — impulsive, free-spirited, someone who'd once left Iwagakure entirely over a broken promise, joined Akatsuki, and then, after being captured, returned to Iwa all the same.
A massive gash had been torn open across his chest by the blow. Without immediate treatment, death wasn't far off.
But the Hokage standing before him was the single strongest medical shinobi in the entire world.
She could save him, if she chose to.
"No. Not a chance."
Deidara gasped for breath, glaring at her with pure hatred.
"A shame, then."
A kunai appeared in the Hokage's hand from nowhere.
A flash of dark light, gone in an instant, and the kunai punched straight through Deidara's heart.
His eyes went wide, feeling the life draining out of him, and unbidden, his whole life flashed before his eyes.
Everything he'd ever lived through, flickering past in an instant, like some old carousel of memory.
In the end...
...I still died, huh.
As if sensing it somehow, Sasori — locked in combat against Inner Sakura alongside Hiruko and Kisame — suddenly turned to look at the distant black speck falling from the sky.
Deidara.
That idiot.
Always going on about how a single instant of explosion was the truest form of art.
And now here he was, gone — just like his own art. An explosion. Erased.
"Losing focus while fighting me?!"
"Take this seriously, you bastard!"
Inner Sakura drove a kick into Kisame's Samehada hard enough to make him spit up foam, then charged straight at Sasori.
Not good!
Sasori's expression shifted at once, caught off guard, distracted by Deidara's death — he tried to pull his puppet back to defend himself, but the distance was already too short.
A puppeteer caught at close range was essentially helpless.
But Sasori was no ordinary puppeteer. A steel cable tore free from his own abdomen, ripping through the black cloak with red clouds, and shot straight toward Inner Sakura...
(End of chapter.)
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