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Ilea watched the old man more than the woman in front of her.
Tsunade was a problem. The way her fists glowed, the way the air tightened when she moved. Yes, absolutely a problem. But Hiruzen Sarutobi was the axis everything spun around. The ANBU's and ROOT's weight. The Sannin's position. Even the air in the room seemed to lean toward him.
Punching the medic would be fun.
Killing the Hokage would be a war.
Ash gathered around her boots, a slow, eager swirl that tickled against her skin. The Azarinth Core inside here beats. It wanted out. Wanted to burn, to erase, to show these chakra people what real power looked like when you stopped pretending.
She held it close.
She'd leveled past the point where most things in her world counted as 'threat.' She'd danced with city-leveling creatures and gods and walked out laughing. If she went all out here, this little delegation from Konoha wouldn't survive long enough to regret their decisions.
She wasn't here to make a point with corpses.
She was here to make sure no one walked away with a Checkpoint employee in chains.
But, who said doing that couldn't be while she was having fun?
Tsunade came at her. The first punch hit like a battering ram. Ilea's ash-wrapped forearms took the brunt, bone and magic sharing the load. The impact still shoved her back, feet grinding grooves into the boards. The burn of overstressed bone flickered, then dimmed as regeneration caught up.
Her lips pulled into a grin.
Strong. Good.
Even as she blocked, she let part of her awareness stretch to the old man. The subtle shifts of his sandals, the way his weight leaned, never quite toward the door, never quite into an attack. Always centered. Always in control.
He hadn't given the kind of order she was watching for.
Yet.
Tsunade didn't bother with banter. Another hook snapped in toward Ilea's ribs. Ilea let her ash coated herself just right, took the hit on that conjured buffer instead of full flesh. Something cracked. Heat and pain slipped through anyway.
She'd had worse.
She'd had her spine snapped by void things older than continents. This was… cozy.
"Nice punch." She said with a tint of mischief, because talking annoyed people. "You a healer or a siege weapon?"
"Both." Tsunade bit out.
The medic's eyes never fully left Ilea, but Ilea could see the flickers. Tiny glances past her—taking in Jiraiya's shifting position, Orochimaru's lazy slither, ANBU creeping. Her attention widened and narrowed, pulled between the fight in front of her and the man behind her.
Ilea's didn't waver. Hiruzen was the one who mattered. Hiruzen's line was the one she was waiting for him to cross.
The ash around her calves thickened as the fight stretched. She let it crawl higher, wrapping her thighs, hugging her shins. A faint shimmer of heat rose from her skin.
The next time Tsunade lunged, Ilea met her halfway.
She stepped in. Not teleport, not blink, just raw speed, the kind that came from stats pushed to ridiculous numbers and a body that had been rebuilt too many times to care. Her fist drove into Tsunade's side.
She held back.
No full release of the Azarinth Force. No intent to pulp organs, just a concentrated burst of ash and force enough to leave a very bad bruise and survival fracture.
Tsunade grunted, the blow forcing her onto one leg for a breath. Chakra flared along her side in answer, knitting micro-damage before it could stack.
Ilea's satisfaction flared with it.
Able to hurt. But not shattering. She could work with that.
If she wanted to destroy them, the Sannin would already be in pieces.
She didn't.
Yet.
"Feel that?" Ilea asked, ash peeling away from her knuckles in a faint grey bleed. "That's me being polite."
Tsunade's gaze hardened. "That's you holding back. I can tell."
"Good." Ilea said. "You're not stupid."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an ANBU slip along the wall, angle perfect for the bar. Hiruzen's staff hadn't moved. No 'stop,' no 'stand down.'
Not yet.
The ANBU's trajectory intersected the cluster of demon staff and one particular redheaded noble who did his best to look like a bystander even when he wasn't.
The noble sighed before his brain probably finished the thought. His hand flattened against the table.
A translucent curve of force flickers into being between the bar and the advancing ninja. To most eyes it was just warped air; to Ilea's sense it was a solid, ancient thing, humming with stubbornness. The ANBU hit it shoulder-first and bounced like he'd run into tempered glass.
He staggered back a step, hand snapping out on reflex with a kunai.
The blade met the same invisible surface and skated off with a shriek, leaving the shield unblemished.
Cale's jaw clenched. Ilea could feel the strain through the way his mana twisted—nothing like their systems, but heavy. Old.
"Stay behind the shield." He said without looking, voice pitched low to the goblins and a couple of Tempest kitchen hands huddled near him.
One of the cats at his feet flicked its tail, as if in agreement. The other disappeared under the table with a little dragon shadow sliding after it. Raon, gone from sight but not from Ilea's awareness. The child-dragon's mana signature crackled like a banked thunderstorm.
Good. They'd need that if someone got creative.
Ash boiled around Ilea's shins as Tsunade came in again. This time, the medic aimed low, fist targeting the knee. Ilea shifted, letting the blow smack into hardened ash instead of bare bone. The impact still jarred the joint. It would've crippled a normal fighter.
She'd been broken worse by bored gods.
She'd also learned to be careful about where she broke around them.
"I don't know if you noticed." Ilea said, sidestepping and driving a sharp hook into Tsunade's bicep, ash flaring just enough to numb without pulping the muscle, "But your Hokage didn't tell you everything. He kept things hidden from you."
"That's not your business. Once Kushina is back with us, I'll confront him." Tsunade snapped, grabbing for Ilea's wrist with chakra-backed fingers.
Ilea let the joint go. Bones flowed, her forearm breaking under its own tension to slip free of the grip. She reformed it before Tsunade could twist.
It hurt. She laughed anyway.
"Cute trick." Tsunade said, jaw tight now. Sweat beaded at her temple.
"You should see the other ones." Ilea said. "Unfortunately you won't. I like this building."
Another flare of chakra from behind Tsunade tugged at her senses. Hiruzen was signaling again. ANBU shifted just out of direct lines of fire from Kashi's bow. Jiraiya adjusted to keep a path clear to the Hokage. Orochimaru eased nearer to Lee Han, curiosity like a knife.
Ilea's focus brushed that cluster, memorizing paths.
Her line was simple.
They go for the restaurant's staff again, she would stopped pretending.
Beside the bar, a masked ninja decided a shield was an obstacle, not a boundary. He formed seals one-handed, chakra gathering in his palm.
"Don't you—" Cale began.
But before he could do anything, Raon moved first.
Lightning snapped under the table, fast and mean. A compact bolt arced out from beneath the white cloth, striking the ANBU's arm just as the chakra peaked. The jutsu fizzled, pain overriding control. The man's muscles seized, his hand jerking open.
The half-born technique sputtered harmlessly into the shield, leaving nothing but a spiderweb of harmless light instead of a hole.
The masked ninja hissed, dropping to one knee.
Cale dragged in a breath, shifting more of the shield's curve to cover the bar fully. "No flashy jutsu inside." He muttered.
Raon poked his head out, cheeks puffed a little, tiny sparks dancing between his horns. His eyes were slitted, more dragon than child.
"Bad humans try to hurt Aunties?" he asked, voice small but laced with the offended outrage of a child whose safe spot was threatened.
"Bad humans try to take Aunties." Cale corrected. "We stop them."
Raon's little chest puffed. "I'll fry them if they try again."
"Don't fry them too hard." Cale said. "We can't get anything from them if they die, can we?"
The little dragon nodded, then settled on the table in front of the redheaded noble.
Ilea caught all of the conversation between man and dragon.
Tsunade didn't. Her world narrowed to fists, bones, ash.
That difference mattered.
Another punch came in. Ilea tilted her head, letting it pass close enough to feel the wind on her cheek. She answered with a straight blow to Tsunade's sternum—again, pulling it, aiming for hurting and not removing the entire front of torso.
Even held back, the medic's breath whooshed out. Chakra bloomed to reinforce ribs.
"You're still holding back." Tsunade ground out.
"Obviously." Ilea said. "You're still holding back too. Nobody's gone for the kill. Yet."
"But if you stopped?" Tsunade asked.
Ilea's grin thinned. "You really want the answer?"
Tsunade's silence was an enough answer.
Across the room, one of the ANBU found a gap in the shield coverage and went for it, leaping to land just outside Cale's dome and slide around it toward a demon server.
Kashi's arrow met him midair.
The shot didn't aim for flesh. It punched through the cloth of his sleeve and buried itself in the wooden beam behind him, pinning his arm in place like a butterfly on a board. He twisted, blade in the other hand—but his angle was ruin.
"Don't." Kashi said, voice level, eyes already on his next target.
The wolf at his side growled, low and constant.
Ilea let ash creep higher, up to her hips and chest. The world's heat bled into her, mana humming. Every part of her wanted to show these people exactly how wide the gap was.
She chose not to.
She'd done full out. Full out sweeping an organization. Full out cracked fortresses built with centuries of magic. Full out wasn't for lectures.
Here, pulling back was harder than going wild.
At that moment, she could feel another subtle movement of Hiruzen's staff. Another internal debate written in the tension of his wrists.
He'd walked into a room full of killers and tried to treat them like civilians.
Now he knew better.
Tsunade swung again, this time a straight line for Ilea's jaw. Ilea met it with a palm, ash cushioning the blow, then twisted her wrist and shoved, redirecting the force past her head. She stepped in, close enough that their foreheads nearly touched.
"You better start telling your Hokage to stop." She said quietly, eyes flicking once to Hiruzen behind the medic.
Tsunade's jaw clenched. But she offered no answer.
"You care about Kushina." Ilea continued. "Good. Ask yourself if threatening her friends is actually the way to keep her safe."
Tsunade's answering growl was pure frustration. "You don't understand our world."
"I don't need to." Ilea chuckled. "I know enough about power corrupting people, skewing their views."
Her gaze went over Tsunade's shoulder and landed on Hiruzen's again.
If he told his ninjas to grab someone again, she thought, he would find out the reason why so many people looked at her with wariness in their eyes every time she walked past.
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