A didn't let a little thing like a hole in his gut ruin his day. With his Lightning Release Chakra Armor crackling around him, he simply zipped a bolt of lightning across the wound, which instantly cauterized it, stopping the bleeding. Problem solved.
But these cool moves were only to fool others. On the inside, A was sweating.
His eyes were locked on Azula, specifically on that stupidly dangerous spear in her hand. You could say his focus was at 200%. He was mentally reviewing choices and trying to figure out how many push-ups he'd have to do to make up for this mess.
Now, A is confident. In his head, the only reason she'd even scratched him was that one, single, measly second where he'd gotten distracted.
That's it, he told himself. Just one second of not paying attention. Now that I'm locked in, I can dodge that possibly newly developed Kekkei Genkai. Now... how do I punch her out of the sky?
But then, reality sucker-punched him right in the brain, and his internal monologue hit the brakes.
Behind him were the Kumo-nin.
I can dodge. But that chakra in her hand, glowing like a Tailed Beast ball made into a spear is dangerous. If she most likely hurls that our way... or if it just decides to explode, it could instantly kill fifty ninjas or more.
Azula, meanwhile, was also mentally scrolling through her options for the perfect hit.
And then she saw that tiny flicker and split-second hesitation in A's eyes, the one he was trying so hard to hide behind his 'I'm the Raikage, hear me roar' face.
Her gaze flicked to the Kumo-nin behind him. And then she realized something.
She literally stopped mid-thought and just... stared at herself for a second.
Wait a minute. I should've spotted this from a mile away, at least the old me. I would've already had a plan to use those guys as hostages, as bait, as a distraction... heck, I would've offered them snacks if it meant getting the upper hand. That's just smart business. But me now, I've been so busy trying to punch things that I forgot how to play chess?
For a split second, she felt like an idiot. A very powerful, very dangerous idiot.
But then she grinned.
This just means I'm evolving. I'm not just a tactical genius anymore; I'm a tactical genius who also really, really likes to fight.
Sure, part of the reason she'd picked a fight with A was to maybe, hopefully, squeeze a Mangekyō out of him. But even if that didn't happen, she knew she'd figure it out eventually because she, Azula, always did.
No, right now, the mission was simple: Make a loud, explosive, reputation-boosting statement. Make Kumo run home crying, and walk back into the village as the undisputed queen of the battlefield, then naturally monopo— taking the Hokage throne.
She looked down at A, her grin softening into something almost... reasonable.
She shrugged internally. Oh well. Sorry, big guy. Guess you just drew the short straw and met me on my 'reasonable' day.
•••
•••
•••
It had been thirty minutes since A and Azula started duking it out, and roughly forty-five minutes since she and Tsunade first kicked the hornet's nest by attacking those Kumo-nin. In that time, the geopolitical landscape of the Ninja World had decided to shift again.
Why not?
The moment Ōnoki sensed the Raikage's chakra spinning up and then rocketing off at full speed, his internal alarm bells started blaring. Something was wrong.
And sure enough, after a quick, no-nonsense briefing from one of A's clones, Ōnoki's worst nightmare walked through the door and slapped him in the face.
If Kumo was desperate enough to drag him out here for an urgent chat, it could only mean one thing: Konoha had finally grown a spine and launched a full-scale assault.
But why? Why now, of all times? Did they know A was gone? Did we have a traitor? The questions rattled around Ōnoki's skull.
He quickly dismissed the traitor idea. Konoha wasn't stupid. If the Raikage had been absent for over two days and Kumo was acting all quiet and suspicious, even a blind monk could figure out something was up.
The real head-scratcher was the timing. From everything Ōnoki knew, Konoha under Hiruzen was about as aggressive as a sleeping kitten. They were the least likely of the five great villages to start something.
So what changed?
"Tsuchikage," the clone grunted, snapping Ōnoki out of his spiral. "This isn't the time for thinking. My main body will be on the battlefield in a few minutes. He could hold off Konoha himself for a while. But you're smart enough to know what happens if they actually succeed here."
The clone wasn't bothering with diplomacy anymore, although the main body hadn't bothered with it in the first place. He directly pressured Ōnoki.
(For the record, the clone genuinely believed the real A, even after burning chakra to rush back, could solo Konoha for two whole days.)
"Lost in thought?" Ōnoki shot back, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, I'm sorry, would you prefer I just charge in blindly? Maybe dance through a few obvious traps? Wave hello to an ambush? Or better yet, completely ignore the possibility of betrayal?"
As he said the last word, his eyes slid meaningfully toward Ebizō, who had just arrived.
Sage of Six Paths, just strike me down now, Ebizō prayed internally, already exhausted by Ōnoki's paranoia. He said nothing.
He didn't even bother defending himself. As Suna's representative, he had to maintain some dignity... even if that dignity occasionally meant swallowing his pride and letting the old miser glare at him.
Then, without any warning, A's clone popped out of existence, gone just like that, leaving Ōnoki and Ebizō in awkward, heavy silence.
"Either the main body is in so much trouble he couldn't maintain the clone..." Ebizō murmured, breaking the quiet.
"Or he's in so much trouble he deliberately dropped it," Ōnoki finished, his mind already racing with possibilities. He added a private thought: Or he's just trying to mess with my head.
Knowing the Raikage wasn't quite as dumb as he looked, Ōnoki couldn't rule out mind games.
•••
Perhaps Ōnoki's migraine was setting new records, but the true champion of headaches in the shinobi world was the man currently staring at a report that made his heart try to escape through his ribs, Hiruzen Sarutobi himself.
The report was simple: Azula and Tsunade had vanished from the camp with the concept of 'informing the Hokage' being like some forgotten ancient custom.
"Did I become a ghost and nobody told me?" he muttered to the empty office, because apparently that's where he existed now, in the realm of the irrelevant, noticed only when someone needed a signature or wanted to borrow the good tea.
Azula had done it again. Left the village without permission, without consultation, without even the common courtesy of a vaguely threatening note pinned to his door.
The only reason he became aware of it at all was because she later stepped out of Tsunade's tent openly and headed toward Tajima's, something his intelligence network, the finest in the world, could actually detect.
Against a fourteen-year-old girl with the Flying Raijin, even the best intelligence network had its blind spots.
If not for that report, he'd probably discover her absence next week when he tried to find her for a meeting and found a very convincing shadow clone made of sticks and optimism.
He rubbed his temples, the memory of their last conversation playing on loop. Mito's words after it. "Am I really wrong for wanting peace over chaos?"
For the first time since Tobirama had slapped the hat on his head and said "Starting tomorrow..." Hiruzen genuinely doubted himself.
But here's the thing. He didn't feel wrong. He couldn't because Azula was fourteen. The kind of fourteen that still thought 'impulsive decisions' were a personality trait and 'consequences' were something that happened to other people.
Being Hokage wasn't about having brilliant ideas. Ideas were cheap, every drunk in the village had an opinion on how to run things, and they usually shared it at maximum volume while waving chopsticks.
Being Hokage meant sitting through Daimyō meetings with a pleasant smile while some bureaucrat with the personality of wet paper explained why you should cut the military budget again.
It meant watching someone you loved get taken from you and still choosing diplomacy over fire and fury, because fire and fury meant thousands of orphans and widows.
And Azula happened to be the kind that looks at diplomacy like it was a particularly uninteresting thing she hadn't decided whether to squash yet.
But that wasn't what kept him up at night. What kept him up was the creeping realization that he might not have other options. That the chaotic fourteen-year-old with the impulse control of an excited Uchiha might be his only play.
He exhaled slowly, the weight of the hat feeling heavier than usual.
Finally, he reached into his desk drawer. His fingers found a small, unremarkable scroll, he unrolled it, revealing a precise grid of seals, and pressed his thumb to four specific corners.
A new private and secure method for summoning the people he trusted most, the ones who shared his vision, his burden, his sleepless nights.
Danzō, Homura and Koharu. The only people in the world who understood that sometimes peace required hard choices.
He waited for them to arrive, completely unaware that he'd just invited the ninja equivalent of a 'harmless' mole into his garden.
But hey. Ignorance is bliss, and Hiruzen was about to be very, very blissful.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
I'm back stronger than I ever was, don't forget to vote, thanks