AN: Fight scenes are hard to write! A greater appreciation for all those fanfiction writers out there with epic fight scenes, I rewrote this 2 times and eventually had to resign that it's difficult to do a fight justice with only words!

His sandaled foot kicking into my arm, Jiriaya almost seemed surprised when I blocked instead of dodged, his tactic quickly adjusting as he kicked off my block and in a surprising feat of agility of an overweight old man, turned midair rasengan forming in his hand as he jabbed the technique towards me with incredible speed.

As one who'd been struck by a rasengan a few times in my past (future life?), I knew the technique would hardly endanger my life, but it'd be far more efficient and pleasant to dodge.

I skirted backwards and Jiriaya pressed the advantage, constantly moving towards me with fast jabs of his rasengan filled arm. He was trying to herd me out of town, and although I certainly wouldn't have in my past life, I obliged, cheekingly smiling as I my arms at my sides, making no effort to engage beyond the constant backwards shuffle away from his Rasaengan. Jiriaya the gallant, trying to protect the civilians.

We played the ninja-fast game of tag for nearly 30 seconds before we were well clear of any buildings, Jiriaya dropping his rasengan technique and stopping and staring at me. He brought his hands together subtly and took a ready stance, jumping back to a range he felt comfortable to dodge from if I counter-attacked.

He spoke up, his voice holding a serious authority that reminded me of sensei than my foolish teammate

"I was pretty sure only one of my old teammates had titties. Did you get them recently?"

Fishing for knowledge?

No. He was stalling, I could see his hands were still clasped together, he was likely gathering sage chakra. Although I had never fought his sage mode myself, I had acquired a basic understanding of his technique over time. Unable to gather sage chakra effectively while fighting, he'd wore sage toads like nature-chakra batteries. It was an ingenious technique, one I'd tried to replicate with my snakes, but it was a failed endeavor because there were no small snakes capable of sage mode.

I only knew two snakes who were capable of sage chakra, one who would refuse to work with me and the other far too large to carry.

It was probably one of the only things I was jealous of Jiriaya in, the ease at which he had mastered sage mode, and been able to use it in combat. It'd taken me till I was 60 before my chakra had been potent enough to use sage mode, and I still only had the inefficient technique of my cursed seals to draw upon sage chakra for in-combat use.

I'd redesigned the cursed seal in the future and was wearing my own future handiwork. My original cursed seal extended Juugo's power into the user, an explosion that was half-rapid senjutsu intake and half-monstrous mutation.

The technique was the closest thing I had known of to provide my minions with the promise of senjtusu power without requiring that they actually have any mastery of sage mode. As much as Juugo was terrified of his own technique, terrified of the monster that he and his cursed subjects become, he didn't understand how amazingly safe the technique was: any other method of simply infusing sage chakra into a random person would turn them into stone.

Juugo had tried to have children in my future after I had designed him his control-seal. Unfortunately one of them had been born still, a child of stone. Upon inspection I realized what had happened: The baby had inherited only half of juugo's bloodline, the ability to absorb sage chakra.

The other half, the half which mitigated the dangers of sage-chakra by forcing the excess sage chakra into physical manifestations, the "monstrous" transformations as Juugo liked to call it, was what allowed him to live, and what allowed me to grant even the most basic power of sage-chakra to those who had no knowledge of how to properly use it.

Probably the most significant innovation of Kabuto was his evolving utilization of Juugo's technique to create an endless sage mode. From what I understood, he had maintained sage mode endlessly during the fourth shinobi war, and I had adapted the technique from him for my own use once I had finally been strong enough to enter sage mode myself. Senjutsu users didn't need to have uncontrolled manifestations, to have excess sage chakra pushed into monstrous forms. With the right level of mental discipline, sage mode could be maintained permanently with Juugo's abilities.

I for one didn't personally enjoy spending much time in Sage mode except during battle. The ability to read Auras, the enhanced strength, chakra potency and capacity were all amazing, but the mental concentration of constantly balancing one's chakra did not align with the idea of relaxation.

I had been enjoying my time in the baths before I was interrupted.

I quickly activated the modified cursed seal I had on my shoulder, the one that allowed the rapid absorption of sage chakra. Jiriaya's technique had its benefits and was an ingenious solution to the lack of a similar shortcut. Furthermore, when he fought in his sage mode, he fought with 3 minds, 3 sets of eyes. If you slipped past Jiriaya's defenses, chances are you would still be caught and stopped by one of the deformed toads.

Knowing I needed to stop Jiriaya from summoning his toads and wanting to impress him with my newfound power, I allow my chakra to explode out of me and sink into the Hashirama tree all around us, infusing the trees with my chakra. Jiriaya seemed confused as to what I was doing, pouring large amounts of chakra into the trees, confusion which quickly turned into shock as the tree he was standing on immediately sprouted dozens of thick limbs of wood that wrapped around him, pried his hands apart and immobilized him against him against the tree.

The only thing more amazing than being a wood-jutsu user was being a wood-jutsu user in Konoha's Hashirama-tree forest.

The man had clearly placed the trees with the intention that his progeny would be able to use them to extend the efficacy of wood-release techniques. Unfortunate none of his progeny manifested the release, and even more unfortunate Konoha had suppressed my research into restoring it.

Jiriaya struggled against the wood release, but the jutsu was already absorbing the chakra he was using to try and augment his strength. Did he really think he'd be able to escape a technique designed to restrain jinchuuriki with brute strength?

I let a large Cheshire grin grace my face as I strolled up to him, lazily inspecting my nails. I allowed a wooden pillar to slowly rise me above Jiriaya's prison, his eyes level with my chest, as I stared down at him inspecting my nails. I was suddenly filled with a desire to be regal, to be thought of as a Queen, judging prisoners for their execution.

My joy was only enhanced by the terror I could see in Jiriaya's face, feel in his aura from the lingering sage-mode I was still in. There was determination, confusion, resignation and sorrow, but still terror. There was no high like taking a powerful man and making him utterly terrified, thinking he was going to die at your whim.

I laughed, leaned down to stare Jiriaya directly in the eyes. He could see the faint sage mode in my eyes, the weird coloration effect that prolonged my already snake-like slits.

"I did get them recently. Do you like them?" My voice was a velvety purr, and I cupped my breast as I brought it back to his eye level. I gauged his reaction through his aura, and there was a burst of disgust as he watched me fondle my own breasts. Not even a hint of arousal.

What a shame.

I tried to assuage my only slightly offended feelings (My new body was smoking hot, for sake) with the thought that he probably didn't like women who were more powerful than him, and I immediately ignored the counter-argument I supplied of his fascination with Tsunade.

I was not into Jiriaya, but a bit of validation would've been nice.

At that point, I poured a bit more chakra into the wood-release technique, making sure it would hold him for hopefully a few hours.

I leaned down, patted him on his forehead, and strolled away.

I had two goals in mind when I infiltrated Konoha the day before the Chuunin exams. First, I contacted my spies and informed them that the invasion was off, and they were to resume normal operations. Most of my spies in Konoha were quite irrelevant, especially given my knowledge of the future and my declining interest in Konoha affairs. Nonetheless, a Konoha which I had never invaded, a Sarutobi-sensei which I didn't kill would make different choices, and it was hardly worth it to simply abandon the spy network.

Kabuto was the only spy I actually cared about, his skill and cunning proving themselves when he later in life became an S-rank ninja capable of impacting world events.

I had become pen-pals with the Kabuto that emerged from Itachi's Izanami, where he kept care over Konoha's orphanage. The man I had known had been fundamentally changed by the technique. He had become soft and obsessed with fulfilling his mother's legacy. How the only student I had ever taken who had truly understood my nindo, who had truly appreciated the beauty of science and genetics, would abandon it all to idle around with children for decades was ridiculous.

This Kabuto I would never let near Itachi, this Kabuto I would give the world and watch as he plays with it. He had taken my techniques and pushed them to new extremes, and this time my knowledge of the future would be the shortcut to accelerating his development even faster. Although I had enjoyed Karin as a student after the fourth shinobi war, she didn't have the same zeal. She was a scientist, but as a fiction book had once explained to me, she wasn't a mad one.

I found Kabuto, explained to him that the invasion was over, and instructed him to head back to Oto. He had been a bit amiss at the sudden change of plans, but he nonetheless accepted without argument. I trusted him to get out.

The second thing I did in the village was visit the Naka Shrine. Luckily secluded away in the Uchiha's district, it was easy enough to get into the shrine room. There were priceless Uchiha records in the room, records which I gladly collected and sealed away in a scroll. Although most of it was irrelevant information, I knew that in 20 years there had been poor public accounting of large quantities of clan information. My real reason for visiting was the Uchiha tablet however, the great stone which informed of the Mangekyo Sharingan and told a false tale of Kaguya's signature technique. I knew what the tablet said, translated for me by Sasuke Uchiha in the future, and I knew that it in itself was an issue.

I had a goal per se, to prevent the resurrection of Kaguya. The fourth Shinobi War had been a disastrous affair where thousands of Shinobi had died, and multiple villages were literally destroyed. I knew that there were 4 primary concerns regarding the fourth shinobi war: Obito, Madara, Nagato and Zetsu.

Madara had been such a big issue because his partial resurrection by Kabuto, an event which I would surely be able to prevent this time around. Nagato and Obito were only barely attached to the plan anyways, and with a bit of undermining would ideally fail in their goals.

There were two keys to reviving Kaguya, a rinnengan and the Juubi. Zetsu had spent a thousand years manipulating the Shinobi world to create a rinnengan, and once he had done so, within a few decades he had managed to revive the Juubi.

I had been forming plans to ideally destroy Madara's rinnengan (which had been placed in Nagato), but I was deeply concerned over the ability of more Rinnengan to form. Part of me simply wanted to proceed with kidnapping Sasuke, lock him up in a chamber underground, wait for Itachi to croak of old age, and then kill Sasuke and burn both their corpses so the Sharingan would hopefully never be allowed to exist.

But I knew if I were Zetsu I wouldn't let that stop me. I'd already have a stockpile of Sharingan, already have genetic material stockpiled from the Uchiha so they could possibly be revived if they went extinct. If anything, it was possible that Zetsu could force or manipulate Obito into having hundreds of new children, who were all kept underground and forced into a bloody training system designed to provoke the Sharingan, and then eventually result in the trauma of the Mangekyo. And a fortunate side effect of them all being Obito's children would be that they'd be all brothers, so any pair with a mangekyo sharingan was already an eternal ready to be coaxed into the rinnengan.

I may or may not have planned to do something similar at one point.

Regardless, killing Sasuke in the hopes of mitigating Zetsu's backup plans would only fail to wipe out the Uchiha. Ultimately Sasuke's strength, although not enough to save the world in the end, would be invaluable in that fight.

I didn't actually care for the shrine, but rather what I knew I'd be able to find around the shrine. In my sage mode I could sense them, a few white zetsu spores scattered around the shrine, likely waiting to report back on any progress Sasuke makes with his Sharingan.

With lightning speed, I launch tendrils of wood that spear into the white zetsu spores, surrounding them and pumping them with natural chakra, forcing the white zetsu's inside to materialize. They tried escaping, but the wood release held them still, and I slowly sealed the zetsu clones away into a second storage seal I had brought.

One of the most valuable aspects of zetsu clones was that they weren't actually clones. They were people who had been modified into slaves of Kaguya via her infinite moon technique long ago, and thus they still had humun souls, trapped inside the white zetsu bodies. Human souls which could be used for sacrifice, just as Kabuto did when he mass slaughtered them to raise his army of the undead. I intended to build a collection of Zetsu clones, sealed away and usable as sacrifices on-demand, if I ever needed to perform impure world resurrection in a hurry.

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