"Lady Tsunade, we can't keep this up. The Stone has spotted us and they're converging on our position. We have to break out before the encirclement tightens and more Iwa Jonin arrive."
Minato spoke with a grim expression, his eyes full of urgency as Tsunade finished treating his wounds. They had just barely managed to take down another Iwa squad led by a Jonin. Although his current strength far exceeded that of a typical Chunin—enough to even go toe-to-toe with a Jonin—he had not yet attained that rank, nor had he mastered the Flying Raijin. Facing at least five hundred remaining enemy shinobi, his first instinct was a tactical retreat.
Akimichi Choza didn't speak up to second the motion, but the way he pulled out his box of secret clan pills and began pointedly counting them in front of Tsunade was a silent, unmistakable endorsement of Minato's suggestion.
"Desperation breeds madness," Tsunade replied. Despite their pleas, she refused to budge. Instead, she tried to convince them to hold the line.
"The more frantic the Stone becomes, the more it proves they are on the verge of collapse. Hatani has been gone for nearly two hours. I believe he's already on his way back with a massive force of reinforcements. If we can just hold out for one more hour—two at most—we can wipe out these last few hundred Iwa ninjas. To secure a total annihilation victory before the main battle even begins... no matter how small the scale, it will skyrocket our morale and give us a psychological edge."
Minato fell silent. He knew Tsunade was right.
Choza silently snapped his pill box shut and tucked it back into his shinobi pouch.
"Let's just hope Hatani is fast," Minato muttered, looking up at the sky with a flicker of hope.
The sun was already dipping toward the horizon. Time was running out.
Kyu, the Jonin who had been the only one to survive the previous encounter along with Fumikawa, naturally hadn't escaped punishment. Both had been assigned to this high-risk delaying mission as penance.
With Fumikawa acting as the commander of the operation, it was only natural for Kyu, his "old subordinate," to serve as his second-in-command.
As a deputy, he was highly efficient. Once Fumikawa issued the retreat order, Kyu immediately began acting as a liaison, notifying the other Iwa squads to abandon their surveillance and harassment duties and fall back at once.
However, once he had finished his rounds and returned to the rally point with a large group of Iwa squads, he discovered a situation that was both baffling and alarming.
Fumikawa was missing.
As Fumikawa's long-time teammate, Kyu refused to believe that a man who embodied the unwavering "Will of Stone" would abandon his men and flee alone. If Fumikawa were the type to run, he would have urged Kyu to desert with him back when they failed the mission to assassinate Nawaki—a failure they knew would result in them becoming scapegoats for the village's fury.
Since he was certain Fumikawa hadn't deserted, there was only one logical conclusion.
Fumikawa had encountered the enemy, and he was likely dead.
But they were far behind the main Konoha army, surrounded by hundreds of Iwa shinobi. Did someone from Konoha truly have the guts to infiltrate this deep?
Just as Kyu was struggling to believe a Konoha ninja could be that "brave," he received intelligence from a scout who had just barely escaped Tsunade's team at the cost of his teammates' lives.
"Tsunade?!"
Kyu certainly hadn't expected that the one making such a reckless, one-against-hundreds stand would be one of the Legendary Sannin.
"Notify everyone! Converge on that position at maximum speed!"
His initial shock quickly warped into a mix of resentment and predatory glee. He assumed that Tsunade's team had stumbled upon and killed the lone Fumikawa.
But then there was her status. If they could kill Tsunade, it would be worth sacrificing every remaining ninja in this border force.
Thus, under the rallying cry of "Vengeance for our fallen!", the first wave of five squads—twenty-one ninjas including Kyu—surged toward Team Tsunade.
Though there were only two Jonin among the twenty-one, and Chunin only made up half the rank, Kyu was convinced that this force was more than enough to kill Tsunade and her two Chunin subordinates.
"It's you!"
When they finally came face-to-face with Team Tsunato, the fire in Kyu's heart roared. He recognized Minato and Choza instantly—the two brats who had caused him so much grief during the Nawaki incident.
"You?!"
Minato and Choza's hearts sank. Their situation was already heavy enough with the sudden encirclement, but seeing a familiar, high-level enemy made it worse. They knew exactly how strong this man was.
Furthermore, they began to worry that Fumikawa, who had escaped with Kyu last time, would appear at any moment.
Seeing their reaction, Tsunade quickly deduced Kyu's identity, and her response was far more explosive than theirs.
"He's one of the ones who ambushed Nawaki?!"
She ignored the other Iwa ninjas, her gaze locking onto Kyu with unshielded, murderous rage.
"Yes, but besides him..."
Minato nodded, wanting to warn her to watch out for the still-unaccounted-for Fumikawa, but Tsunade didn't wait. With a guttural roar, she lunged.
Speed wasn't her primary attribute, but by concentrating her entire chakra reserves into specific points, she achieved explosive results. She flooded her feet with chakra, kicking off with such force that the ground shattered beneath her. Leaving two terrifying craters in the earth, she launched herself into the air like a human meteor, hurtling straight for Kyu.
Only someone with the monstrous physical constitution of the Senju clan could ignore the recoil of such a move. A normal ninja attempting that would have snapped their own legs from the sheer pressure.
Caught off guard and with no time for complex seals, Kyu managed a single Ram sign, triggering a Body Flicker to retreat desperately.
By now, Tsunade's reputation for sheer, unadulterated violence had spread throughout the entire shinobi world.
BOOM!
The instant Kyu's afterimage vanished, Tsunade's fist slammed into the earth.
The impact was deafening. Within a several-meter radius of her fist, the ground simply collapsed, sinking a full foot deep.
The shockwave buffeted the nearby Iwa ninjas. A few Genin, paralyzed by terror and the trembling earth, collapsed where they stood. They stared at the woman in the crater with the wide-eyed horror of someone looking at a prehistoric apex predator.
Even the Chunin struggled to steady themselves, swallowing hard as a single, demoralizing thought took root:
Can we really defeat a monster like this?
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