"Let's go, Orochimaru, Jiraiya!" Tsunade encouraged her teammates to stand behind her and support her in her clash with Madara. The memories of their last clash still lived actively in the memory of the young woman so she wanted something more substantial out of this assault than to just hit a wall and get sent down again.
"Fine…" Orochimaru raised his hand, letting a small serpent slither out of it and hiss at Madara from far away.
"Now you're getting involved?" Jiraiya smirked, poking his rival with a little tease.
"You're the one to speak. Usually, you're the one itching to fight upon the first provocation. Frankly, I'm baffled by your restraint at the moment, unless, of course, you haven't been fighting because you're afraid…" Orochimaru teased right back, making Jiraiya grind his teeth but then swallow a heavy gulp in admittance.
"Shut up and follow me, you two!" Tsunade ordered them and darted off right at Madara. Even the massive, ethereal ribcage surrounding the legendary Uchiha did not frighten her whatsoever. Chakra burst from her entire body, both her fists and her feet glowed with the most intensity, flaring up like little stars on opposite sides.
"Running right at me? You're no better than that Kirigakure ninja I've smashed." Madara mocked Tsunade with a cocky grin as his right Susanoo arm opened its hand to allow the channeling chakra to form a sword which it then used to slash right at Tsunade.
The slug princess grunted in pain, making Madara's eyes gleam in joy as his smile arced to match them in brightness but then Tsunade tilted her head and looked right at the Ghost of Uchiha with a disgruntled expression while her body stood stout and frozen in place. A streak of red extended down from her lip to her chin but, otherwise, she didn't seem all too injured having just stopped the Susanoo's sword with her body. The edge of the ethereal sword laid halted by Tsunade's chest while the blade remained entrapped by Tsunade's grip, bolstered by her Chakra Enhanced Strength.
"Amusing…" Madara admitted but then his expression twisted further as two more arms separated off of the Susanoo ribcage he had formed, ready to slash at Tsunade with a cross-shaped slash from up above with an attack that would either crush her to a bloody stain or chop her to pieces.
"You'll find this hilarious then…" Jiraiya bumbled to himself when the ethereal swords stopped in mid-air after meeting the resistance of a sakazuki shield while the other became trapped in between two crossed swords. Each weapon wielded by a toad that Jiraiya had summoned, meanwhile, the white-haired genin himself charged onward, riding atop of a large, orange toad in blue markings and bandages around its limbs.
Jiraiya jumped off of his toad and delivered a weighty kick at the center of Madara's ribcage, his sandals stopping just inches from Madara's face. The Susanoo cracked and screeched in pain but held the protective shell firmly. The entirety of the armored layer blinked away while Madara emerged to work on young Jiraiya himself. The man that would once become a Legendary Sannin dashed and raced for more range, managing to avoid a significant beating while Madara armored himself up again with Susanoo, the cracks that Jiraiya's kick left still present.
Blinking in and out of vision, Tsunade raced in to deliver an uppercut with her Chakra Enhanced Strength. Madara turned aside only to run into Jiraiya and his orange toad that wrapped the Susanoo ribcage with its elongated tongue and spun over its head. The toad had attempted to shatter the Susanoo in mid-air, within the grip of its tongue but Susanoo reformed its arms and busted out, only slightly deepening the cracks. A rampant shockwave of overwhelming azure glow sent Tsunade and Jiraiya both sliding back, crouching and digging their hands into the dirt just to stay on their feet in the face of overwhelming power.
"Shit… No way to dodge now!" Tsunade grunted as she could vaguely pick up Madara's hands working through hand seals but she was too invested in fighting the tyranny of his chakra outburst alone to attempt and make some sort of defensive plan.
"Gama-san… You'll have to work as a shield for Tsunade-chan!" Jiraiya yelled at his orange toad that just turned at him with a blank stare, it was tough to say for certain if it didn't understand a word that Jiraiya told it or if it was just denying his request. "You don't understand, Gama-san, her chest's too flat, she can't take a hit that well!"
"Jiraiya, you!" Tsunade was about to curse at her goofball of a teammate before Madara's voice took back all authority over the battlefield.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Madara chanted out, taking aim at Jiraiya and Tsunade and weaving in just enough of a wallop into his jutsu to blow both of the genin to Kingdom Come. The jutsu was not overly complicated, a technique all Uchiha knew as it was their rite of passage, meaning he didn't need to work too hard on pulling it off, not any more than he would have done to twitch his little toe.
Tsunade wanted to prepare a substitution technique. It wouldn't be an ideal plan. Her mind was too struggling just to keep hold of her stance to find any objects to replace herself with and her hands were too busy to execute either the hand seals or the replacement. Not to mention the dreadful conditions of working against Madara's rampant chakra aura. The fires of his Great Fireball could almost lick Tsunade's cheeks, the fireball appeared to move in slow motion when the kunoichi of the Senju felt at threat when her young heart raced and the adrenaline was pumping but in a way it was a curse as much as a gift – she'd be experiencing the hurt that much longer too…
"Summoning: Rashomon!" Orochimaru hissed, erecting a wall in front of his teammates. A frightening visage of a demon's face decorated with steel edges that looked like its fur or hair. The demonic protective gate stared with a crazy look that would have frightened even the most ambitious invaders from trying their luck against the gate but this time it was not testing its mettle against man, it was contending with fire.
"Orochimaru…" Tsunade looked back at her teammate, looking a bit surprised that he chose to stand back and protect them instead of showing them up as he usually enjoyed to do.
"You messed up, you dweeb! Look, the gate's melting, the fireball's gonna bust right through!" Jiraiya pointed at the brightening mark of hell emerging from the other side while the devastating flares of rampant flames rushed in from around.
"No, the wall serves as cover from the aura too, let's move!" Tsunade hurried her teammate while the two leaped onto the Rashomon and dashed for the roof of the demonic barrier with the slowly melting center. The two slipped into the opposite crevices on the roof and used the chain mechanisms to unleash a rain of kunai blades at Madara, just so that the legendary Uchiha didn't feel too comfortable.
"Are you done planning yet, Rari?" Saol Akimichi of Team Westerlund wondered with a pleading look aimed at his teammate.
"I'm not the one with pills that take time to start working…" Rarrifa Nara replied, displeased that her attempt at meditation was interrupted. Had it not been for the fact that the Hoshigakure native was quite used to meditating on an active battlefield, she'd have lost all concentration and would have had to start from scratch as it happened so often in her early career.
"That's why I'm saying I should start taking some of them…" Saol made his case. "You know it will take time for them to set in."
"Yeah, but they'll also poison you, so maybe let the resident genius here do the planning before you empty your bowels right in front of the enemy again?" Faeino crossed her arms over the chest, giving her large and round teammate a mean glare for making the already tedious process of Rarrifa's meditation even longer.
"It was just one time, Faeino! For how long will you hold that against me!?" Saol pulled on his hair while Madara's Great Fireball detonated in the distance, reducing the Rashomon gate it competed with to rubble. Tsunade and Jiraiya stared at the devastation from further aside, having rolled out through the same holes they've entered the Rashomon's ramparts earlier just before the gate blew up.
"You cost us the Chuunin Exams that time so probably until you make up for that and singlehandedly promote all three of us!" Faeino placed her hands on her hips and shot straight out hellfire at her teammate.
"I've got it…" Rarrifa opened her eyes and stood up from her crossed legs position, staring at Madara swinging his swords at Itachi's rushing clones that either detonated after being impaled on the Susanoo's swords or dispersed into crows to reform elsewhere as neither of the two Uchiha could place a solid set of eyes on the other, preventing from either of them to make a significant stride with their eyes.
"For real this time?" Faeino wondered.
"For the last time, that time the problem wasn't with my plan, I just wasn't sure if I secured the trap or not and it threw my timing off…" Rarrifa explained with a lifeless tone and she stared on at the hectic fighting scene ahead of Team Westerlund. "I've got it, the best way to show our combo on this guy. That armor needs to be down for it to work, however…"
"On it!" Saol pounded his free arm with his fist before Faeino pulled on his shoulder with a bemused look on her face.
"Hold your horses, that's why we've got a team. You just focus on your role, Rarrifa, patch it through on the mental link…" Faeino secured her teammate in place while establishing the mental link between the trio to share Rarrifa's plan.
"You're not half-bad, but you're still just warm-up trying to make himself out as something more by bringing more trash with him. Your Mangekyou Sharingan is an antique even by my standards and I am considered a relic in your time." Madara mocked Itachi while the two stopped trying to stab each other for a moment and disengaged from one another. Itachi took the temporary moment to look back at the boy he freed from Tsukuyomi earlier, his team chose to wisely surround and protect him while his body recovered from having experienced his worst nightmares brought to life and inspired vivid detail on top.
"If my eyes do not frighten you, Madara, why are you so afraid to look right at them?" Itachi replied and turned his Mangekyou Sharingan straight at Madara's own eyes. The fact that Madara's Susanoo continued to shield and cover Madara's line of sight from Itachi did not escape the notice of the younger Uchiha prodigy.
"If it is a battle of eyes that you wish, hatchling…" Madara smirked and channeled a great amount of chakra right to his eyes to match Itachi's challenge for an ocular battle.
Red plates of ethereal armor coated Itachi as the Uchiha of the scarlet Susanoo cupped his arms together and fired off an arc of pitch-black flames at the enemy. The vortex of Amaterasu flames turned to a shower of mud before Madara's Susanoo ribcage and washed off of the surface of his armor. Itachi looked around, his mouth lightly gapping in surprise, as he noticed to be all alone, together with Madara on a plain reminiscent of a desert of silver sand with a black void, full of blinking stars surrounding the two from all around them. A deafening roar drowned out Itachi's questions as the Uchiha looked up to meet the incoming planetoid of scorching heat whizzing right past him and reducing the silver desert he and Madara stood on to lifeless space dust as it covered up the sky and the horizons beyond.
Itachi could feel the draw of the ground beneath him. He could feel the cold, gentle blades of grass caressing his hand but also the stream of hot sweat and fever that he was experiencing as he struggled for breath on his knees before Madara. He wasn't on the moon and no supermassive planet didn't crash into them… He had merely lost the battle of the eyes.
"Come on, what the hell's the matter with you!? You two just stared at each other and now you're done? Don't even plan on slacking off and put in some work!" Nanaba, the hostess of the Seven Tails, capable of partial transformation, waved her fist in the air as she continued to huddle with her teammate around Kouta.
"I… I think I'm a bit better now, thank you…" Kouta nodded as he stood on his feet and placed his hand on Nanaba's shoulder to move her aside.
"Then how about we see what can be done about that shell of his, armor is kind of my shtick anyway," Deiji turned to Kouta only to receive an encouraging nod from him in return. A tail appeared from Nanaba's back and pushed her off the ground with a violent shove, arrowing toward the sky. "Scale Powder!" she chanted out as rings of silver powder poured out of her. A pair of wings burst forth from Nanaba's back, fluttering a pair of times to direct the trajectory and movement of the powder so that it didn't hinder her allies while focusing on descending all upon Madara.
The individual grains of powder all cracked and popped, emitting blinding flashes of light, heat that made Madara wince while within his Susanoo ribcage but also a nasty smell that, sadly, Nanaba could do little to protect her allies from as they were pretty much forced to cover their noses until they could have gotten used to the reeking effects of the Seven-Tails' powder.
The assist of Team Hawthorn allowed Itachi to slip away with a handful of misleading blinks and flickers that would have confused Madara as to the location of Itachi's true body, even if the bioluminescence of the Seven-Tails' powder didn't force the Ghost of Uchiha to close his eyes for a moment and then reel back in irritation that the blinding light and chemical irritants in the air around him hindered him with.
A faint howling sound picked up high above. Madara turned his Eternal Sharingan up above to track what it might have been but the powder and its blinding after-effects hindered his sight, the howling intensified and Madara felt like he could almost make out a puny, black shape as it crossed into the white patch of the sky that the moon occupied over the head of the ninja. Streaks of white extended in a cross-shape from the black dot and the closer it appeared, the more prominent the red eyes of the goggles that the diving enemy wore became.
"Let's go!" Kouta encouraged his teammate that used the propulsion of the steam from his armor to deliver the Juugo powerhouse right to the enemy from above while Nanaba provided an effective diversion with the abilities of her Tailed Beast.
"Cross Bomber!" Deiji proclaimed while releasing Kouta upon reaching optimal altitude and then correcting his own course in an arched trajectory and then emitting steam from his armor in powerful but occasional bursts to soften his landing somewhat while Kouta continued to propel downward in a mad crash at the enemy.
"You fool!" Madara raised the arm of his Susanoo, ready to block the crashing punch of his opponent even if he enhanced his strength with chakra. With the enemy in the fingers of his Susanoo, Madara could have clutched him until all his bones were dust and then use his limp body as leverage against the enemy while his eyesight fully recovered.
"The only fool, for underestimating the Juugo clan, is you!" Kouta yelled out as black markings emerged from under his clothes, glowing like heated metal at first, like little blazes that then settled down to appearing like tattoos stretching all over the young man's body. The blue aura emanating from the fist of the young medical ninja and stretching out like a tail of the comet pulsed a couple of times and then turned wicked violet in color, changing its texture to appear leakier and vile, instead of flaring like azure fire, the aura extended like tendrils of corruption reaching out for its next prey.
A thumping crash, followed by the chain resonance of shattering noises as Kouta punched his way through the Susanoo hand and then deeper all the way through the arm before slamming right into Madara's ribcage and pummeling the legendary Uchiha to the ground telegraphed of the failure of Madara's invincible armor but also of the first blood being drawn from the seemingly invincible foe. A pillar of compressed air beamed out and punched its way out of the orbit, releasing its pent up pressure into the atmosphere while a shockwave tossed dust and rubble all over the place, carrying it for miles in an ever-expanding ring.
Madara looked around and placed his hand onto the cracks on his red armor, feeling the rough patches where the armor had very nearly failed to protect him and feeling the rougher patches where it could have been straight peeled off now. The Ghost of Uchiha rose on his feet and looked around, wondering where he ended up as he thought he had just now begun to fight. Each maneuver like that may have seemed breath-taking and neck-breaking to these youngsters but, to him, they all just served to inspire him to return more and more to his glory days, all it did was rile him up and get him more excited.
"So… This is the place that your kin in this universe have tried to protect in this girly garden of theirs…" Madara remarked to himself, imagining as if he spoke to his mighty rival who could hear his every word, wherever he was, "Pity all that your once mighty clans folk could muster up to hide here is some pathetic stick…" he finished the thought while lifting an ancient-looking branch that may have been just an actual branch someone had broken off a tree long, long ago.
"Hmph… You'd think something the age of this toothpick would turn to dust in one's hands but the fact that it doesn't suggests that it harbors a great deal of chakra. Very well, Hashirama's alternate counterparts, color me very much intrigued by your miserable stick!" Madara laughed out and placed the stick behind his back, beside his war fan before taking a leap up through the same hole he had left in the ground to confront the band of genin that Itachi had assembled to take him on with.
Their snotty-nosed bravado, this mysterious, ancient weapon of the Senju… This fight might have just been worth his while, after all.