"Who are you?" Sasuke demanded, "and why are you impersonating an Uchiha?!"
The icy pressure around Sasuke's spine intensified, crystallizing into a killing intent so refined it felt less like a threat and more like a promise of a meticulously planned dissection.
Azula's head tilted, staring at him the way a veteran librarian might stare at a toddler who just tried to eat a book.
"Impersonating an Uchiha?" she repeated, her voice a silken, dangerous drawl. The Eternal Mangekyō in her eyes spun lazily, drinking in the boy's chakra-flaring panic.
She repeated it as if tasting a word so stupid it hurt her tongue. "Boy, I was the Uchiha Matriarch when your father was still playing with mud. Frankly, you're an embarrassment to the name. Fugaku would be weeping in the Pure Lands. If he had the emotional capacity, which he notably did not."
Sasuke's brain, already struggling with the concept of his ultimate attack being compared to pasta, short-circuited completely at the casual mention of his father's name. "You… you knew my father?"
Before Azula could deliver what was sure to be a scathing review of his entire inefficient life, a flash of yellow and orange inserted itself between them—who else but Sasuke's boyf— ahem, friend.
"Hey! Believe it!" Naruto Uzumaki yelled, pointing a finger at Azula with all the subtlety of a rampaging bijū. "You can't talk to Sasuke like that! And who are you guys anyway? Are you with that Madara?!"
Azula's gaze slid from Sasuke to Naruto, feeling strange looking at the character she had seen grow up on screen.
Her expression shifted from "amused contempt" to "scientific curiosity," thinking if she should add the chakra of this Kurama. Anyway, her seal had like seventy times the chakra of Kurama; one more wouldn't hurt, right?
"A jinchūriki," she mused, ignoring his question entirely.
"And the Kurama, no less. But you are far below a certain Kurama jinchūriki that I know. And you," her eyes flicked back to Sasuke, "you have the chakra of Indra. How quaint, yet you are so weak."
Tsunade, having finished her lecture-by-fist with a sputtering Tobirama, stomped back over, cracking her neck.
"Can we skip the commentary and figure out how to get home? The air here smells like despair and poor life choices." Her eyes then landed on Naruto, and a flicker of recognition crossed her face. "Wait a minute… you're… Minato's kid? And you're all grown up? And a jinchūriki? Shouldn't jinchūriki be forbidden?"
From the crowd of stunned Kage, the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, finally found his voice.
"Tsunade-sama, Naruto is indeed my son." He looked from Tsunade to the blonde hair and blue eyes Naruto had undoubtedly inherited from him and put his hand behind the back of his head.
A complicated wave of pride, confusion, shyness, and paternal concern washed over his reanimated features.
Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose. "Oh, for the love of—yes, I know you. You are Azula's disciple she selected when she became the Hokage, said you were very talented, may even succeed her, but I didn't expect you even became the Hokage of this world, in front of Fugaku and Nawaki."
She jerked a thumb at Azula.
All eyes swiveled to Azula. The air grew thick with a new kind of tension. The Fourth Hokage—a disciple of an Uchiha. An Uchiha who was a Hokage at that?
Hashirama, who had been watching the proceedings with the glee of a man at the world's most entertaining puppet show, suddenly burst into fresh peals of laughter.
"AN UCHIHA HOKAGE! YOU HEAR THAT, TOBIRAMA? AN UCHIHA! IN MY SEAT! I TOLD YOU IT WAS POSSIBLE!" He was practically crying, pounding his knee. "My dream! It came true in another world! I knew it! I knew our descendants would—OW!"
His jubilation was cut short as Tsunade, without looking, drove an elbow into his Edo Tensei ribs with a sound like cracking pottery. "Shut up, Grandfather. You're part of the problem."
Tobirama, who had finally reformed his head, was staring at Azula with a look of pure, unadulterated heresy. "An Uchiha… as Hokage?! What kind of unstable, emotion-driven madness led to that decision?"
Azula offered him a smile so sharp it could have cut diamond. "The same kind of madness that led a man with the emotional range of a teaspoon to invent a kinjutsu that defiles the dead, I imagine."
"My reign is one of glorious, unprecedented peace and prosperity. Achieved, I might add, through the judicious application of overwhelming firepower and a zero-tolerance policy for stupidity. Something this battlefield is sorely lacking."
It was at this precise moment that the other main orchestrator of this particular "world-scale conflict" decided he had been ignored for long enough.
"Interesting," a deep, modulated voice echoed across the plains. Madara Uchiha, perched atop a rock formation like a brooding, purple-haired gargoyle, finally deigned to acknowledge the new variables.
His gaze was fixed on Azula, a spark of genuine interest in his Rinnegan-enhanced eyes. "A timeline where an Uchiha sits in Hashirama's chair. And one who has achieved the Eternal Mangekyō without succumbing to its curse. Tell me, girl, what is your name? What is your… dream?"
Azula looked up at him, utterly unimpressed. She took in the dramatic armor, the flowing mane, the general air of "I am the main character of history."
"My name is Azula," she stated, her voice carrying effortlessly without needing to rise in volume. "As for my dream… it's currently to get my wife home so she can fulfill her part of a lost bet, which, I must stress, is of far greater immediate importance than whatever tedious, moon-related tantrum you're currently throwing."
The entire Allied Shinobi Force collectively held its breath. No one talked to Madara like that. No one. But someone only heard one word—"my wife."
Before he could even ask his confusion, the goal-oriented Madara, whose eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly, spoke. "A tantrum? You dismiss the Infinite Tsukuyomi, the salvation of this wretched world, as a tantrum?"
"Salvation through mass hallucination?" Azula scoffed. "It's the philosophical equivalent of giving a crying child a dango instead of teaching it discipline. It's lazy, it's weak, and it reeks of a man who lost an argument to a tree-enthusiast a century ago and has been sulking about it ever since."
Hashirama, who had been rubbing his side, suddenly perked up. "She's got you there, Madara! You always were a sore loser!"
Madara's composure finally cracked. A vein throbbed on his forehead. "You dare—"
"And you," Azula continued, turning her merciless analysis onto Obito, who was standing there looking like a discount, not caring if he would ask where she got that information. "The 'Masked Man' behind the Akatsuki, I presume? Your entire aesthetic is derivative."
"The single Kamui eye is a clever trick, I'll grant you, but basing your entire villainous persona on the ramblings of your clearly unhinged, dead senior citizen is just pathetic. It's probably because you are having a mid-life crisis, only with more murder and less buying a flashy chariot."
Obito, who had been preparing another edgy line about the hell of the real world, was struck utterly speechless. No one, not even Kakashi, had ever cut to the core of his entire being with such surgical, dismissive precision.
Kakashi Hatake, who had been silently observing this entire spectacle with his one visible eye wide open, finally muttered to himself, "Well… I've read a lot of Icha Icha, but the dialogue in this reality is… something else."
The tension on the battlefield had now completely morphed. The fate of the world was temporarily on hold, replaced by the overwhelming force of Azula's personality and Tsunade's supportive, ground-shaking glares.
"Alright, drama hour is over," Tsunade announced, clapping her hands together. "We need to get home. Azula, can you reverse-engineer whatever my jutsu did?"
Azula closed her eyes for a moment, her senses expanding. "The chakra signature is… unique. It's woven with your specific chakra and a truly staggering amount of catastrophic luck. Replicating it precisely will be… difficult. We may need to trigger a similar spatial backlash."
Her eyes snapped open, a truly terrifying spark of inspiration within them. She looked from Madara to the Gedō Statue, to the Jūbi, and then to the stunned Allied Forces.
"I have an idea," she said, a slow, wicked smile spreading across her lips.
"Why does that smile fill me with a deep, primordial dread?" Tsunade asked, her own lips twitching despite herself.
"Because, my love," Azula purred, "we're going to help them win their little war. Rapidly. And violently."
She turned to the assembled Shinobi Alliance, who were looking more and more like spectators at a tennis match played with live grenades.
"Listen carefully, all of you," Azula's voice rang out, crisp and commanding, effortlessly usurping the authority of the Five Kage. "Your current strategy is a mess. You're fighting a battle of attrition against an enemy with infinite chakra and a pet abomination. It's tactically unsound."
She pointed a finger at Madara. "He's the puppet master. Him and the discount version."
She gestured to Obito. "The beast is a distraction. Your primary goal should be the complete and utter annihilation of the caster. So, here is what we are going to do."
She looked at Naruto and Sasuke. "You two. You have power, but you wield it like a blind man swinging a club. Coordinate. Naruto, you're the brute force. Sasuke, you're the precision scalpel. Stop trying to have an emotional reunion in the middle of a battlefield and act like the demigods you supposedly are."
She then turned to the four reanimated Hokage. "And you. The legendary founders. Stop gawking and form a perimeter. First Hokage, your Wood Style is the only thing containing that beast. Do your job."
"Second, stop glaring at me and set up your water-style barriers. We're about to create a lot of steam. Third, Fourth, support flanks."
The sheer audacity of a stranger—an Uchiha, no less—ordering around the four Hokage was so stunning that they, for a moment, simply obeyed. Hashirama started forming hand signs, Tobirama grumpily conjured a massive water dragon, and Hiruzen and Minato flashed to their positions.
"What about us?" A, the Fourth Raikage, boomed, his pride stung.
Azula gave him a once-over.
"You're fast. Good. You and the Yellow Flash are on distraction duty. Keep the one-eyed wonder busy. The rest of you," she addressed the Alliance at large, "focus all your long-range jutsu on the Ten-Tails. Don't try to kill it. Just annoy it. Make it thrash. Create openings."
Finally, she looked at Tsunade. "And you, my dear… you're with me. We're going to punch a hole straight through their leader's defenses."
Tsunade's grin was feral. "Now you're speaking my language."
Madara, who had been listening to this with a mix of fury and amusement, let out a condescending chuckle. "You think a simple change in tactics can defeat me? I am Madara Uchiha! I have the Rinnegan! I have the power of a god!"
"Gods are notoriously overrated," Azula said calmly, thinking about the more than twenty ways she had to end this fight but chose not to because she wanted to stretch after a bad day of bureaucracy instead of her clone.
Then she moved.
It wasn't a shunshin. It was teleportation. A golden flash of lightning, and she was suddenly in the air above Madara, her hand wreathed in black-and-blue chakra flames that distorted the very air around them—Amaterasu shaped into the form of a spear.
Madara's Susanoo flared to life around him, a skeletal blue structure. Azula's Amaterasu spear slammed into it, not piercing it, but adhering and burning with ferocious intensity, causing the chakra construct to sizzle and strain.
"Impossible! What kind of flames are these?!" Madara grunted, reinforcing his Susanoo.
"You lack imagination," Azula retorted, landing lightly as Tsunade arrived on the ground below with an earth-shattering crash.
"Hey, old man," Tsunade yelled. "Catch!"
She didn't throw a punch. She punched the ground. The earth for a hundred meters in front of her erupted like a tidal wave of rock and dirt, hurling directly at Madara's position. It was less a jutsu and more a localized, directed earthquake.
Madara was forced to fully manifest his Perfect Susanoo, the colossal armored warrior, to block the geological assault.
"Now, Azula!" Tsunade shouted.
Azula's Eternal Mangekyō spun wildly. "Observe."
She didn't use a grand, legendary jutsu. She used a principle. She focused her chakra, her will, and her utterly broken power into a single, pinpoint application of the Flying Raijin formula she had perfected. But instead of moving herself, she applied it to the space around Madara's Susanoo.
A complex, golden seal bloomed in the air around the giant chakra warrior. And then, it began to compress.
The Allied Forces watched in stupefied horror and awe as the space around the Perfect Susanoo visibly twisted and folded, like a piece of paper being crumpled in a giant's fist.
The Susanoo, a symbol of invincible power, groaned and cracked under pressure it was never designed to withstand—the pressure of spatial reality itself collapsing in on it.
"WHAT IS THIS?!" Madara roared from within, his voice strained.
"It's a lesson in applied physics," Azula called out, her voice steady despite the immense chakra drain. "Your defense is mighty, but it exists within space. I am simply… rearranging the furniture."
With a final, deafening CRACK, the Perfect Susanoo shattered, exploding outwards in a storm of blue chakra shards. Madara was sent flying from the epicenter, his armor scuffed, his hair decidedly less perfect.
He landed hard, skidding to a halt, his Rinnegan eyes wide with a shock that hadn't been seen in a century. He had been beaten by Hashirama. But he had never been… dismantled like this.
At the same time, following Azula's orders, the combined might of the Alliance was hammering the Ten-Tails, while Naruto and Sasuke, for once setting aside their issues, launched a devastating coordinated assault on a flabbergasted Obito.
The battle, which had been a stalemate for hours, was turning in less than three minutes.
Hashirama, from his position, stared at the scene, his jaw slack. "Tobirama… she… she folded his Susanoo."
Tobirama was silent for a long moment, his analytical mind working overtime. Finally, he grumbled, "...Efficient."
Azula landed beside Tsunade, a slight sheen of sweat on her brow. "That should have created a significant enough chakra backlash. Can you feel the fracture point?"
Tsunade focused, her Byakugō seal glowing brightly on her forehead. "There! By the statue's head! The dimensional boundary is thin as rice paper!"
"Perfect," Azula said. She turned to the stunned faces of the shinobi world. "Our work here is done. The rest is up to you. Try not to destroy the continent before we're out of earshot."
And with that, she grabbed Tsunade's hand. Together, they flashed to the top of the Gedō Statue. Azula focused, her golden chakra flaring. She didn't need a complicated seal. She just needed to replicate the force of their arrival.
She slammed her palm against the thin point in reality. "Flying Raijin 3: Homeward Seal."
A pillar of golden fire and lightning, identical to the one that had brought them, erupted around them, tearing another hole in the sky.
As the light consumed them, the last thing the Shinobi Alliance heard was Tsunade's triumphant shout: "THE BET STILL STANDS, AZULA! I PUNCHED A SENJU, THAT HAS TO COUNT FOR SOMETHING!"
And they were gone.
The battlefield was left in a silence more profound than any that had preceded it. The Jūbi was stunned. Obito was on the back foot. Madara was picking himself up off the ground, a look of pure, unadulterated fury on his face.
Naruto broke the silence first. "...So… were they the good guys?"
Kakashi slowly closed his copy of Icha Icha, which he hadn't actually been reading. "I'm not sure the concepts of 'good' and 'evil' apply to whatever that was, Naruto."
Hashirama was beaming. "An Uchiha Hokage! And she was amazing! And our granddaughter! Did you see her punch, Tobirama? She's perfect!"
Tobirama massaged his still-reforming jaw. "Her technique was… alarmingly effective. I will like… studying the implications."
It was the closest he would ever come to a compliment.
Back in their own timeline, the golden pillar deposited Azula and Tsunade, slightly singed but otherwise unharmed, back in the middle of their Konoha living room, right on top of the expensive rug Tsunade had won in a poker game.
There was a moment of disoriented silence.
Tsunade looked around at the familiar, undestroyed room. "Well. That was… entertaining."
Azula straightened her robes, a single, thoughtful finger on her chin.
"You know," she said, "despite the unmitigated disaster of your spatial navigation, you were correct about one thing."
"I was?" Tsunade asked, hope blooming in her chest. "About my power? Did I reach Grandfather's level?"
"Oh, I have no idea. I wasn't paying attention to that," Azula said dismissively. "No, I was referring to your initial proposition. Before this entire fiasco."
Tsunade blinked. "My… proposition?"
Azula stepped forward, that predatory, wicked smile returning as she backed Tsunade toward their (thankfully) reinforced bed. "The one about testing the structural integrity of our furniture."
She leaned in, her voice dropping to that conspiratorial purr. "You may have lost the wager, my love. But in light of your… enthusiastic performance today, I'm feeling… mercifully inclined."
Tsunade's blush returned in full force, but a matching, eager smirk played on her lips. "Oh yeah? And what does that mercy look like?"
Azula's answer was to sweep Tsunade off her feet and onto the bed, which groaned valiantly under the sudden impact.
"Let's just say," Azula murmured, her black eyes gleaming with promise and barely contained lightning, "the 'designated top' can be mercifully… diligent in her duties."
Outside, a lone ANBU guard assigned to paperwork duty flinched as a faint but distinct tremor ran through the building, followed by the sound of Tsunade's joyous laughter.
He sighed, marked "structural integrity: questionable" on his report, and went back to his scroll. Just another gloriously chaotic day in the reign of Fire Shadow Azula.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
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