Chapter 151: Bring the Third Raikage
Tens of thousands of eyes landed on Sakura.
Not just strangers — even Sasuke, Kushina, and Ino looked at her with momentary shock.
Sakura was about to respond to the Raikage's declaration when a large hand descended on her head and began ruffling her hair with complete freedom.
Her eye twitched.
I'm tolerating this. We have an audience. I'm being the bigger person.
"HA HA HA HA!"
"Raikage! Eight feet of man, and you point your finger at Konoha's next generation?!"
"Is Kumogakure so dried up, so bereft of talent, that seeing Konoha's genius fills you with envy?!"
"It must be! Because only rats would fling mud at a child!"
"Konoha's Haruno Sakura!"
"The finest of her generation in the entire ninja world!"
"Unmatched among her peers!"
"Whoever isn't afraid of dying — come up here and find out!"
Jiraiya's voice rolled across the field. The Konoha side straightened visibly. The effect was immediate.
Of course. Our genius is this exceptional. Kumogakure is just jealous — exactly like Jiraiya-sama said. They're throwing anything they can at her.
"KUMOGAKURE RATS!"
"COME UP AND TRY IT!"
"KUMOGAKURE RATS!"
"COME UP AND TRY IT!"
The chant built from hundreds of throats to thousands, chakra-reinforced and aimed skyward, completely burying whatever the Raikage might have wanted to say next.
The entire battlefield for a moment held only four words.
The Raikage stood in the wind and snow with an expression that had gone considerably less pleasant. He glanced back at "Dodai."
Zetsu, internally, was somewhat annoyed.
This man really writes novels for a living. Watch him go.
"Dodai" said nothing. The Raikage didn't read much into the silence — the morale damage was done, and he had a battle to fight.
Sakura gave Jiraiya a sideways look.
Thank you for not calling me the best in the ninja world outright. The last thing I need is a paralyzed man and his paper puppet showing up.
"Stop wasting time," she said. "Morale's high. Strike now before something stupid happens."
Jiraiya rubbed his chin and signaled the signal corps.
The flags went up.
The entire Konoha formation moved.
Kakashi's thousand-strong vanguard broke forward first. Behind them, Asuma's left wing and Shirakumo's right wing advanced in step.
The Raikage's hand came down. His army moved like a single mechanism.
The distance closed. When both forces entered each other's jutsu range before the vanguards even touched, the air between them erupted — fireballs, water jets, stone missiles arcing overhead, falling into formations on both sides.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Detonations across the field. Dozens at once. Fire and thunder and water and debris.
Three hundred meters.
Two hundred.
One hundred.
Fifty.
Ten.
Kakashi's Sharingan flickered red and was gone. A man dropped in front of him before either of them had consciously registered the exchange. The kunai in his hand moved from target to target with the focused efficiency of someone who had done this before — who had, in fact, spent most of his childhood doing exactly this.
He wasn't Team 7's instructor right now.
He was the sharpest blade Konoha had.
He found himself using the sword style he'd barely touched in years — kunai moving the way his father's White Light Chakra Sabre once had, reaping methodically.
His father had influenced him. That would always be true.
But Kakashi Hatake was not Sakumo Hatake.
A blade intercepted his.
"Not bad at all. I can see the White Fang's shadow in you."
Darui held his large blade — four cat-face impressions still visible in the metal — against Kakashi's kunai.
No response. Kakashi's wrist turned. A second kunai appeared. He drove it at Darui without sentiment.
"Honestly — I really don't like fighting. What do you say we find somewhere to have tea?"
Every strike Kakashi threw was absorbed. Darui was absorbing everything.
"Interesting."
Kakashi finally spoke. Their weapons locked.
"But you made a fatal mistake."
Darui started to ask—
And made eye contact.
Oh no—
Against Sasuke last time, Darui had used Substitution and gotten away with it. Against Kakashi that was a death sentence. Using it in open battle was worse.
His body locked.
Kakashi's kunai was driving for the heart.
A kunai from somewhere scraped Darui's cheek — breaking the genjutsu — and continued toward Kakashi's throat.
Kakashi stepped clear.
Good opportunity, wasted.
"Darui-senpai, are you alright?!"
A young Kumogakure ninja — the one who'd thrown the rescue kunai — called out.
Darui blinked the genjutsu residue away and managed a reflex smile.
"Thanks, kid."
Then he couldn't smile anymore.
A fireball came from nowhere and hit the young ninja directly.
Red. Expanding. Gone.
Darui said nothing. He turned back toward Kakashi and moved again.
One more debt.
Jiraiya watched the field without expression. He gave a quiet order.
Six Akimichi clan members received it. Three used Partial Expansion and enlarged their palms. The other three climbed onto those hands, faces set with the resolution of people who had decided not to come back.
"Launch!"
Three figures arced across the sky over the front line and dropped into the Kumogakure rear.
Three giants rose.
Iron bars in their hands. They moved through the Kumogakure rear like something agricultural applied to enemy soldiers.
The chaos in the back triggered the signal. Every Konoha unit — vanguard, both wings — erupted forward simultaneously.
The battle went white-hot.
Kunai falling like rain. Explosive tags detonating without pause. Jutsu used like artillery at close range.
"Do you see this?"
Jiraiya's voice was steady.
"This is why I chase peace. This world."
Sakura didn't look at him.
"This fight happens today or it happens later. The timing changes. The dead don't."
She glanced at him.
"I'm going in."
Jiraiya opened his mouth.
A massive shadow tore across the battlefield and obliterated the three Akimichi giants, carving a straight trench through everything in its path before embedding itself into the command platform at their feet.
Everyone saw what it was at the same moment.
A severed head. Enormous. Eyes still open.
It expanded.
BOOM.
Red and white in every direction. Blood across Jiraiya's front.
He wiped his face expressionlessly.
At the end of the trench — a tall, dark-skinned man.
The Raikage had entered personally. In moments he'd eliminated all three Akimichi.
Beside him lay an enormous headless body, the stump still fountaining red across ground that had been white.
Sakura stepped out from behind Jiraiya, completely unbloodied.
"I'll go first."
She looked at the mess on Jiraiya.
"Figure it out."
She vanished.
Each footfall split the earth. She moved like something prehistoric that had decided to run. The trench was her path. Her target was clear.
The Fourth Raikage.
She crossed the distance in seconds.
The chakra built in her hand — pink and blue woven together, shaping into the form of a tiger's head, roaring before it even landed.
"DIE!"
The strike hit the Raikage's Lightning Armor head-on.
He hadn't come unprepared. He'd felt what this girl could do and he'd activated everything he had.
"Lightning Plough Hot Knife!"
Tiger-head met lightning.
The shockwave from the collision threw three nearby ninja off their feet.
The Raikage stumbled back seven steps.
He looked at Sakura, who hadn't moved.
"What—"
One month. One month since their last fight and she was already stronger.
How.
He knew the theory — twelve to twenty, the period of fastest growth. But to force him back like this, in one month—
She has to die here.
If I let her walk away—
He looked at her and saw it — the long shadow behind her, names stacked like a monument.
Hashirama. Tobirama. Hiruzen. Sakumo. Minato. The Three Sannin.
At this age, every one of them would have been standing behind her.
"If you want to beat me in a straight taijutsu fight—"
Sakura's eyes were cold as she closed the distance.
"Bring the Third Raikage."
The words hit the Konoha side like a signal flare.
"BRING THE THIRD RAIKAGE!"
"BRING THE THIRD RAIKAGE!"
"BRING THE THIRD RAIKAGE!"
One punch. One forced retreat. The entire Konoha army felt it.
Unmatched among her peers was an understatement.
She'd written the word invincible on her face.
Jiraiya watched and allowed himself a brief smile, then turned to issue the order to press the advantage—
And saw something that killed the smile entirely.
A figure strolling onto the battlefield. Unhurried. Hands forming seals as if he had all the time in the world.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
White smoke swallowed half the battlefield.
Giant snakes materialized across the field.
"Eat."
Orochimaru watched his summons with gold slit-pupil eyes that registered nothing.
The snakes moved.
A dozen Konoha ninja were swallowed in seconds, their screams cutting off abruptly.
Jiraiya went cold.
He'd known. He'd known Orochimaru had helped Suna attack Konoha. He'd known and still maintained, somewhere in the back of his mind, some fraction of hope—
That was gone now.
How could you.
How could you turn that on us.
These were our people, Orochimaru.
The man who had fought beside him — who had bled beside him — was feeding Konoha ninja to his snakes.
Jiraiya felt something finalize in him.
That person had died the day he left the village.
What was standing on this battlefield was the S-rank missing-nin Orochimaru. The greatest traitor since Madara Uchiha himself.
Jiraiya moved without hesitation.
And from somewhere in the melee, a voice rang out — full of fury and resolution:
"OROCHIMARU!"
"TODAY IS THE DAY YOU DIE!"
"Summoning Jutsu!"
"Toad Crushing Thousand-Armed Slam!"
A colossal shadow descended from above — arms folded across a broad chest, two blades on the back — and hit the snakes flat.
The Konoha ninja they'd been about to devour survived.
The snakes did not.
(Chapter End)
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