"You six, come at me together!"
Aside from Naruto Uzumaki, the others singled out by Tsunade were—the members of Minato's team: Kakashi, Obito, and Rin, as well as Sasuke and Sakura from Kakashi and Madara's team.
Exactly six people stood facing Tsunade.
Judging purely by their lineup, it could be called top-tier.
Sasuke Uchiha and Obito Uchiha had the Sharingan. Kakashi had his Hatake blade techniques. Sakura and Rin possessed monstrous strength. By comparison, Naruto, who still couldn't properly control the Nine-Tails' chakra and hadn't fully mastered the Rasengan, seemed like the weakest one there.
"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune tried to stop the fight.
Jiraiya glanced at Obito among the group. "You'd better keep your guard up. These kids aren't as harmless as they look."
Tsunade responded with a disdainful smile. "Go on, then. I'll finish you all within a minute and head back for another drink."
"Aren't you going to stop them, Minato-sensei?" Adult Kakashi looked toward Minato Namikaze. "Rin and Sakura still want to apprentice under Tsunade-sama."
Minato shook his head. "If this knot isn't untied, there's no way that apprenticeship can go smoothly."
This knot…
On one hand, it referred to the knot in Tsunade's heart.
On the other, it meant that if nothing changed their impression of her now, Rin and Sakura would likely give up the idea of becoming her students altogether.
This was the first time the six of them fought together as a team.
Driven by pure anger, Naruto didn't hesitate at all. He charged straight at Tsunade, his posture exactly as he'd said earlier—he was going to punch her.
Sasuke threw several shuriken to cover him.
Obito and Kakashi moved in from the left and right, while Rin and Sakura quickly rushed behind Tsunade to cut off her retreat.
Tsunade stayed calm. She seized the moment, grabbed Naruto's incoming fist, and swung him around like a weapon. Everyone except Sasuke, who was farther away, was nearly hit and had to retreat at full speed.
If Tsunade had been swinging an actual weapon, they could have endured the blow and counterattacked together. But with Naruto being used as the weapon, no one dared strike back.
After being spun around several times, Naruto was flung straight toward Sasuke the instant Tsunade released her grip.
The exchange was over in an instant.
It wasn't that they were weak. It was that Tsunade, who had survived countless life-and-death battles, had far too much experience. Her timing was flawless, and the six kids hadn't even fully entered combat mode before it ended.
Naruto scrambled back to his feet, this time a bit smarter. He realized the woman in front of him was extremely dangerous.
He exchanged a glance with Sasuke. Both of them understood immediately.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
In an instant, more than a hundred shadow clones appeared, shielding the others behind them.
By normal standards, this already qualified as a Multiple Shadow Clone Technique. In fact, most people couldn't produce this many clones even with that jutsu.
Tsunade commented coolly, "That's quite a number."
Watching the swarm of Naruto clones rush toward her, she shook her head. "His brain really doesn't compare to Minato Namikaze's."
She shifted her heel slightly.
The ground cracked open in an instant.
The charging shadow clones fell into the fissures one after another, bursting into puffs of white smoke. The smoke flooded her vision, obscuring everything in front of her.
Six shadow clones burst through the smoke and rushed straight at Tsunade.
"How naive!"
As the ground continued to split, small stones bounced around Tsunade's feet. She kicked the stones toward the clones, but they dodged with ease.
Two of the shadow clones suddenly raised their heads.
Sharingan.
Among these clones, one had to be the real Naruto Uzumaki. The other five were the others, disguised as Naruto using the Transformation Technique.
"Even so, it's still too crude," Tsunade said.
She made a casual flicking motion with her finger.
Several "Naruto Uzumaki" raised kunai to block, but without exception, their weapons were knocked away. Each of them was flicked squarely on the forehead and sent flying more than ten meters before reverting to their original forms.
Sasuke, Sakura, Rin, Kakashi, Obito… and Naruto Uzumaki.
"Is that all?" Tsunade felt a trace of disappointment. How would such naïve kids survive on a real battlefield? At least this wasn't a time of war.
Her thoughts drifted to Nawaki. He had been about their age too, yet had gone to the battlefield early and died there.
Just as her guard dropped—
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
The roar of flames shattered the image of Nawaki in her mind.
Tsunade kicked off the ground and stepped back, narrowly avoiding the massive, searing fireball. She turned to look at the kids she had just sent flying—
They were all gone, dissipating into smoke.
She realized it instantly.
The ones she had flicked away earlier were all shadow clones.
To mislead her, two of them had even used the Transformation Technique from the start to give themselves Sharingan. That was why they'd kept their heads lowered, only lifting them so she would see the Sharingan, rather than watching the eyes transform in front of her.
As for the real ones…
They were the kunai she had just knocked flying into the air.
"And here too!" Sakura's voice suddenly rang out from behind her.
Tsunade reacted on instinct, leaping to the left. A deafening boom exploded at her side. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the pink-haired girl slam her fist into the ground, the cracked earth erupting in a cloud of dust.
That kind of brute force, created through precise chakra control…
Just like her own?
A flicker of admiration flashed through Tsunade's eyes. For a split second, she felt as if she were looking at her younger self in that long pink-haired girl.
But it wasn't over yet.
"Shiden!"
From within the dust, purple lightning surged like chains. Bolts leapt between shattered stones, amplifying as they traveled, arcs of electricity snapping through the air as the voltage climbed higher and higher.
Annoyed at being toyed with by kids, Tsunade slammed her fist into the ground. Massive chunks of stone burst upward, forming a wall no less solid than an Earth Release defense.
But she never expected this—
Among these brats was Obito Uchiha, someone who could turn intangible and pass through any substance.
Like a ghost, Obito emerged straight through the stone wall. He genuinely startled Tsunade for an instant.
Only an instant.
She recovered immediately and swung her leg to kick him.
Then she realized her foot wouldn't move.
She glanced down.
Black branches had wrapped around her leg.
No… there shouldn't be trees here at all. Unless this was—
Wood Release?!
Veins stood out on Tsunade's forehead. In her mind, the only person worthy of using Wood Release was her grandfather, Hashirama Senju.
"You little brat!!"
She poured chakra into her leg. The Wood Release bindings shattered like rotten wood, breaking apart effortlessly.
But that wasn't all.
When Tsunade looked back at Young Obito, she saw him with one hand pressed to the ground, activating Wood Release, while the other—
He had grabbed Kakashi, the one who had just used Shiden, and pulled him along as they phased straight through the stone wall together.
"Shiden!!"
This time, there was almost no room to evade.
Tsunade chose to sacrifice an arm, grabbing Young Kakashi by the arm and slamming him hard into the ground.
Obito reacted instantly. He lunged forward without thinking, using his own body as a cushion to absorb even more of the impact for Kakashi.
Lightning-attribute chakra surged through Tsunade's arm. Severe numbness spread instantly, and she temporarily lost all sensation in that limb.
At the same time, her overconfidence had broken her rhythm, forcing her to become far more cautious.
"I'm sorry, Tsunade-sama."
That voice was—
A slug?
She hadn't summoned anything. So why was Katsuyu here?
As she watched Katsuyu crawl over to treat her injured arm, Tsunade froze once again.
Then—
A torrent of water came crashing toward her like a waterfall.
What?!
This time, even the observing Adult Kakashi and Minato Namikaze were stunned.
An illusion?
Impossible. Obito wasn't skilled with genjutsu, and Sasuke's two-tomoe Sharingan couldn't fool them both.
Then who else could unleash Water Release on this level?
The ones retreating from their successful strike—Obito and Kakashi—as well as Sakura and Sasuke, were just as shocked.
Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique.
Sasuke's first reaction was to look at Adult Kakashi. He had seen Kakashi use this jutsu against Zabuza before.
But when he saw the shock on Adult Kakashi's face, he knew that wasn't it.
Then… who was it?
Until Obito and Kakashi suddenly shouted in unison:
"Rin?!!"
Everyone else followed their line of sight.
The one who had unleashed that large-scale Water Release technique was actually Rin Nohara, only thirteen years old?!
"That's a jutsu even Kakashi has to carefully calculate his chakra just to use!"
Sasuke remembered Kakashi saying after the fight with Zabuza that if he hadn't borrowed Obito's chakra back then, he would have ended up bedridden for a full week from chakra exhaustion after using that technique.
["Hmph. That bastard Three-Tails actually went out of its way to help humans."]
Naruto heard Kurama's voice right next to his ear.
That's right. A dead-stubborn tsundere.
Even worse than Sasuke. A completely unhonest, ridiculously stubborn tsundere.
Thanks to the old man of the Six Paths' instructions, even though Kurama was still sealed, he'd finally started letting Naruto understand what it meant to "be true to himself."
But seriously, did he not feel awkward saying everything backwards all the time?!
And did he realize that little habits like ear twitching made his real intentions painfully obvious?!
Like right now. When Kurama said, "That bastard Three-Tails actually helped humans," Naruto automatically translated it as:
Brat, why aren't you begging me for power?
Naruto was honestly speechless.
By the way…
Even though Naruto had seen Kurama's claws pierce through his parents, they had already been beyond saving at that point, hanging on by a thread. After being imprisoned and exploited by humans for so long, Kurama wanting to kill his own Jinchūriki was understandable.
So the hatred Naruto felt toward Kurama was nowhere near as strong as what he felt toward Obito, Black Zetsu, and Danzō in this world.
"Thanks, Kurama," Naruto Uzumaki said. "But this time, I don't want to rely on your power. I want to punch that old hag myself!"
["Who said I was lending you any power?! Didn't you hear me cursing the Three-Tails?! That tailed-beast disgrace has already been kicked out of the tailed-beast gathering by me!"]
Well… the tailed-beast gathering didn't even exist yet.
To everyone else, Rin Nohara's Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique was nothing short of spectacular. From the high ground outside Tanzaku Quarters, the water pouring down looked so real that people in the distance genuinely thought a waterfall had suddenly appeared.
With Katsuyu still clinging to her arm, Tsunade leapt several times to an even higher position, staring at the brown-haired girl with undisguised shock in her eyes.
To use a Water Release of this level at such a young age… she couldn't even say for sure whether the Second Hokage himself could have done the same back then.
After all, at that age, the chakra within the body hadn't fully matured yet.
At this moment, Tsunade had completely forgotten that there was still one person who hadn't moved at all.
A shadow clone had been standing beside Sasuke the entire time, maintaining a ready stance and subtly diverting her attention.
That person was—
Naruto Uzumaki…!!
"Boom!!"