The air above Tanzaku Quarters didn't smell like ozone anymore. It smelled like a slaughterhouse.
Jiraiya stood on Gamabunta's head, his white hair whipping in the gale force winds generated by Manda's thrashing. The giant purple snake was moving with a terrifying, liquid speed, slithering through the castle structure rather than over it. He used the towers as cover, bursting through walls to snap at Gamabunta's flanks before vanishing back into the dust.
"He's fast!" Gamabunta roared, parrying a strike with his massive dosu blade. Sparks showered down like fireworks. "And slippery!"
"He's playing with us," Jiraiya grit out. He forced his hands into a seal, ignoring the trembling in his fingers. "Oil Bullet!"
A torrent of oil erupted from Jiraiya's mouth, but Manda twisted effortlessly, coiling around the main keep. The oil splashed harmlessly against the stone, staining the white walls black.
Orochimaru stood on Manda's snout, laughing. He looked ecstatic. He looked free.
"Is this it, Jiraiya?" Orochimaru called out, his voice amplified by wind chakra. "The Sannin, reunited! And look at you—you're so busy trying to save the ants you can't even fight the boot!"
Jiraiya looked down.
He saw the problem. Gamabunta wanted to jump. He wanted to crush the snake. But every time the toad gathered strength in his legs, he hesitated. A jump would crush the refugee wing. A water bullet would drown the courtyard.
Gamabunta spat his pipe out, growling. He grabbed a chunk of a fallen tower—a piece of masonry the size of a house—and slammed it into Manda's side like a club. It was dirty fighting. It was desperate fighting.
"We can't win a clean fight here, Boss," Jiraiya muttered.
"Then we fight dirty," Gamabunta grunted.
Jiraiya looked across the battlefield at Tsunade. She was a blur of green and gray, riding a wave of Katsuyu's smaller divisions. She wasn't looking at Orochimaru. She was looking at the cracks in the world.
"This is it," Jiraiya whispered to the smoke. "This is the last time the three of us meet like this."
Tsunade didn't care about the philosophy of the snake. She cared about structural integrity.
"Division Four, stabilize the east stairwell!" she barked.
"Understood, Tsunade-sama."
Fifty feet away, a section of the spiral staircase leading to the upper keep had sheared away, leaving a gaping hole over a hundred-foot drop. Civilians were trapped above it, screaming.
Tsunade watched as a stream of mini-Katsuyus poured over the edge. They didn't just cushion the fall. They tumbled down the shaft, sticky and malleable, and wedged themselves into the missing sections of brick and stone.
They popped into place, expanding their bodies to become living mortar.
Within seconds, the gap was bridged by white, rubbery flesh. The refugees ran across the backs of the slugs, their boots sinking slightly into the slime, but holding.
"You're pathetic, Tsunade!" Orochimaru's voice drifted down, dripping with scorn. "Look at you. You're not a warrior anymore. You're just a glorified carpenter patching a sinking ship!"
Tsunade looked up. Manda was coiling for a strike, his massive body crushing the very tower she was trying to save.
"And you," Tsunade shouted back, her voice cold and hard, "are a child breaking toys because you don't know how to build anything."
Orochimaru snarled. "Manda! Eat them!"
The great snake lunged. He ignored Jiraiya. He ignored the toad. He dove straight for the courtyard where the bulk of the refugees were huddled.
Gamabunta roared, diving to intercept, but he was too far away. Manda's maw opened wide, fangs dripping with venom that could dissolve stone.
Tsunade moved.
She didn't use a shunshin. She used pure, explosive muscle tension. She cracked the pavement beneath her feet and launched herself into the air, intercepting Gamabunta's path.
She didn't aim for Manda. She aimed for Gamabunta's hand.
"GIVE ME THAT!" she roared.
She snatched the giant dosu blade—a sword meant for a creature twenty times her size—out of the toad's grip. The weight should have crushed her.
It didn't.
She spun in mid-air, the centrifugal force turning her into a green hurricane.
"SIT DOWN!"
Tsunade slammed the blade downward. She drove the steel through Manda's open mouth, piercing the lower jaw and pinning the giant snake's head to the cobblestones.
The impact created a shockwave that shattered every window in a three-mile radius. Manda shrieked, a sound like tearing metal, thrashing wildly.
Orochimaru was thrown forward by the impact. But he recovered instantly. His neck elongated, stretching unnaturally like rubber.
His head shot toward Tsunade. His long, purple tongue lashed out, wrapping around her throat in a wet, choking vice.
"Die!" Orochimaru hissed, his face inches from hers, eyes burning with madness. "Die with your ghosts, Tsunade!"
Tsunade gagged. Her airflow was cut off. The tongue tightened, crushing her windpipe.
She didn't claw at her throat. She didn't panic.
She reached up and grabbed the tongue with both hands.
Orochimaru's eyes widened. "What—?"
"You talk too much," Tsunade wheezed.
She yanked. She didn't pull the tongue off; she used it as a rope. She hauled Orochimaru toward her, reeling him in.
He flew forward, right into her range.
Tsunade pulled back a fist charged with enough chakra to level a mountain.
"Stay down!"
She punched him directly in the face.
The sound of Orochimaru's face breaking was sickeningly loud. He flew backward, crashing into the rubble.
But Manda wasn't finished.
Pinned by the mouth, the giant snake thrashed his tail in a blind, agonized rage. The massive appendage whipped around the back of the castle, coiling around a high spiral parapet—the only tower still standing upright.
"He's going to bring the whole thing down!" Jiraiya yelled.
Gamabunta didn't wait for an order. He snatched a smaller knife from his belt.
"Not on my watch!"
The toad lunged. With a single, clean motion, Gamabunta sliced the tip of Manda's tail off.
The severed chunk of giant snake—easily the size of a bus—flopped onto the roof of the spiral tower. It smashed through the slate tiles.
A geyser of purple snake blood erupted from the wound.
It didn't spray outward; it sprayed down.
Gallons of toxic, hot blood flooded into the open roof of the spiral tower, cascading down the central stairwell like a crimson waterfall.
Jiraiya watched it happen, a sudden pit forming in his stomach.
"Boss," he muttered. "Who was in that tower?"
Gamabunta sheathed his knife, looking grim. "I don't know. But whoever they are, they better know how to swim."