Swallowing nervously, Tsunade eyed Hanzo with utmost caution as she scanned her peripherals for any sign of reinforcements or further adversaries.
None were in sight.
Shivering, she collected herself as survival instincts kicked in. Immediately, she gauged how much Chakra she had left, and what options she had at her disposal.
She designated herself a medical shinobi, or an Iryo-nin, but unlike other Iryo-Nin, she didn't have to adhere to her own rules of keeping healers out of the front line.
Chakra laced the inside of her fists, focused to an extreme degree.
One good hit, and victory was assured along with the obliteration of anything on the other side of her knuckles as the condolences chakra discharged.
"Strength without speed against a Shinobi is like trying to spear a fish in water without a proper tool. Futile."
Tsunade hardened her expression as Hanzo gingerly landed in front of her.
Hanzo was exactly as Tsunade remembered in her prior encounter with him in the abrupt Uzumaki Barrier that had formed in Hidden Rain's land.
"I don't need a lecture you old bat," Tsunade spit on the ground, choosing rebellious action to conceal her growing nervousness.
Hanzo was the most dangerous not just because he was strong, but because he was well versed in all main Shinobi arts of subterfuge, Jutsu, and tactics. This man was the monster that single-handedly elevated Hidden Rain's neutral Shinobi force to rival that of the other Great Hidden Villages in the Shinobi World War.
"Shall I take this situation as Hidden Leaf wishing Rain to side with Hidden Sand or Rock?" Hanzo warned, noting Tsunade's scrunched features. "You wouldn't want that now, would you?"
"Your people die because they choose to intervene in matters that should not concern them," Tsunade said diplomatically, buying time with words. "Leave, and neither you nor your forces would end up caught in this war. Choose not to heed my advice, and I guarantee you Hidden Leaf will not let this matter drop. Do not covet what you have no blood right to claim!"
"Funny," Hanzo said, voice unamused. "Should I say the same if this war was fought in Hidden Leaf? The people who live and take refuge in this land of Rain or mine to protect and manage. If you get in the way of that, the only answer is chakra and steel."
Hanzo raised his kusarigama. One hand held the sickle end, while the other twirled the end with a balled chain attached to a weight.
"..." Tsunade clenched her teeth, choosing not to answer.
Hanzo would not let her buy more time to think.
Raising her leg, Tsunade dodged Hanzo's kusarigama aimed at her ankle and made a grab for the chains to potentially disarm the old shinobi, but a smokescreen of blasted dirt obscured her vision and she missed.
Shielding her eyes, she backpedaled and hissed as a kunai came careening towards her neck.
Where?
Tsunade pursed her lips but couldn't find who threw the weapon before she had to avoid it. Coating her hand in chakra, she batted the kunai aside before throwing a handful of shuriken in the kunai's direction.
A small yelp echoed, but Tsunade had no time to draw any satisfaction from hitting her target as Hanzo was back in front of her.
"Dammit." Tsunade crossed her arms and gagged as she fell for a faint, and Hanzo had kicked her squarely in the stomach.
The impact sent her tumbling until she recovered her stance by digging her heels into the dirt and enduring the nausea.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Tsunade's pupils dilated as she glanced up at the visage of a massive salamander charging with its maw open towards her.
"Heavenly Spear Foot!"
Tsunade backflipped, kicking out with a chakra-enhanced leg at the salamander's chin and sending it flying into a cloud of smoke it kicked up as it tumbled.
Gnashing her teeth, Tsunade's eyes darted, searching for Hanzo through the haze of dust, but the bastard was just standing there after attacking and giving her time to breathe.
Something was all too strange.
Tsunade felt an ill premonition as logic worked tirelessly to warn her of certain inconsistencies.
Hanzo was known to be ruthless.
Therefore, why wasn't he ending it?
It took her, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru together just to stand a chance against Hanzo, and now Tsunade was by herself.
The old codger should have easily been able to subdue or kill her?
Tsunade knit her brows, but the threat of death still compelled her to action.
Channeling a large quantity of chakra into her right fist, she punched the ground and cratered it, a shockwave echoing as all dust and obscurity was blown away. At the epicenter, rippling walls of earth crumbled up and over Tsunade before she quickly made a break for it.
This wasn't a winning battle to begin with.
Taking her eyes off of Hanzo, Tsunade bolted in the direction of Hidden Leaf's forward camp, but her actions were seen through immediately.
Hanzo almost instantly appeared in front of her.
"Katsuya!" Tsunade yelled, thinking fast and stretching out an arm towards Hanzo's face.
"Yes!"
A hand-sized slug rolled out from under Tsunade's sleeve and spewed out a line of mucus towards Hanzo's eyes.
It was ineffective.
Hanzo blocked the blinding strike with one hand, and then used the other to throw Tsunade back by the hair.
Screaming, Tsunade tumbled over the ground, her vision swimming as instinct and Katsuya saved her life once again.
"Tsunade!"
A kunai flew from a blindspot at the back of Tsunade's head.
With Katsuya's warning, Tsunade hastily tilted her neck to the side and barely avoided the penetration of the back of her head.
This meddling-!
Tsunade rounded behind her, eyes narrowing through the chaos to finally spot the hidden attacker.
In the wreckage of one of the supply carriages Tsunade had destroyed, a young Rain ANBU wearing a Tuna Fish mask was trying to keep herself together. A few shuriken Tsunade had tossed earlier had stabbed into her left arm and severed a tendon by the elbow. Her forearm was slumping, and her breaths were ragged from behind the mask.
The Rain ANBU was immobile, her legs caught in the wreckage of the supply carriage, denoting that she'd been one of the shinobi squads sent to guard the provisions.
Unfortunate that Tsunade, the sole heiress of the Senju Clan, had been the one to raid them.
The Rain ANBU panicked from the moment she and Tsunade made eye contact.
"Should have used that one good arm to get out of here," Tsunade murmured as she meticulously aimed and threw a kunai from her combat pouch at the Rain ANBU's head.
This was war, Tsunade couldn't afford to leave any variables against someone of Hanzo's caliber.
However, Tsunade would never have predicted the result of her callous action to take another's life. Especially a shinobi of Hidden Rain whose affiliation to the War was neutral.
A pair of glowing chains manifested around the Rain ANBU before they tightened and pulled her to safety.
Attached to the chain, a certain red-headed wood clone panted as it carefully used a portion of the chakra that comprised its existence.
"Careful," the Wood clone advised the Rain ANBU, breaking off a finger and creating a make-shift splint for Tuna's limp arm.
"Fuck, I saw my life flash before my eyes." The Rain ANBU shook her head to clear her vision to no avail as the wood clone helped her. "I think I'm still concussed when that gorilla of a woman obliterated the supply carriage my team and I were guarding. Thanks."
"Yeah." The wood clone muttered, making eye contact with an incredulous Tsunade.
"You!" Tsunade momentarily lost her composure.
In contrast, Hanzo's demeanor could not have appeared any more delighted at the turn of events.
For Tsunade, it was like the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit as she slowly came to the realization that Hanzo had been playing and baiting her all along. But why?
"Do you see their emotionless savagery?" Hanzo belatedly spoke, not giving Tsunade the chance to intervene.
Tsunade noted that Hanzo was directly addressing the wood clone.
"This war was one where Rain had had no part in starting. All of it was for the personal gain of the other Great Hidden Villages, including Hidden Leaf who no doubt covet your capabilities. Look at the way she looks at you? Is that a normal look one would give a stranger, or is it not the greed of possessing something unique that's tinged heavily in her gaze?"
Mouth drying from sheer indignation at the blatant gaslighting, Tsunade shifted her gaze from Hanzo to the wood clone, then back to Hanzo and cursed.
Was that his game?! His angle?!
"For too long, Rain could only endure under the onslaught of those with forces, economy, and means far above Rain's own. You too are a resident of Rain no matter how you have come to take refuge here or to start a new life. What you've experienced in this land, what you've seen, remember them well when I ask you where you stand on the side of the righteous or the treacherous. What are you? An Ally of Justice, or an Ally of Heartless Invaders far from seeking the novelty of peace?!"
Tsunade could see the Wood Clone's brain turning from Hanzo's words and a spike of unease disrupted her calm.
"Y-You shut up!" Tsunade resorted to shouting at Hanzo, trying to get a word in before her cousin could be misled. She hurriedly turned to the Wood Clone. "Don't listen to that sly bastard! He planned this! It's a set up!"
"Did I make you attack?" Hanzo asked.
Tsunade ignored Hanzo and let her emotions break through when she spotted hesitation on the Wood Clone.
"Just listen to me! You're making a mistake! He's not on your side, we're on your side! Hidden leaf! This whole thing is really just a contrived ploy by that old fox! Think back to when we all first met, he was trying to kill you!"
The Wood Clone shifted his weight from foot to foot, Tuna looking like the third wheel in the entire conversation as all physical fighting stopped.
Instead, psychological warfare commenced.
All too quickly, Hanzo's voice provided a counter weight to Tsunade's genuine insistence.
"Deception is a shinobi's foremost tool of espionage and psychological attacks." Hanzo warned gravely, putting away his kusarigama as a show of his 'generosity.'
'Bullshit!'
Tsunade had no doubts that Hanzo was confident in victory even without his weapon. He would have no qualms with putting it aside, while Tsunade could not afford to lower her vigilant stance. Hanzo could kill her in the blink-of-an-eye if she didn't.
Noting Hanzo's peaceful stance, fully at ease.
Then Tsunade, tense and ready to react to anything, the contrast was clear.
"The integrity of a person is found in their actions." Hanzo stated his case.
A vein popped over Tsunade's temples as a sense of panic grew. "What does that even have to do with-"
"Look around." Hanzo said further, gesturing to the area.
Bodies, wreckage, craters, and flowing blood that came from bodies crushed into bits of pulp from the sheer strength of impact. Everything was crushed, making it a miracle that Tuna had even survived.
The picture was not pretty, and almost instantly, the Wood Clone's expression grew stonier and stonier as his gaze traveled across the carnage.
Tsunade grew appalled. "There was no choice! We're in the middle of a war-"
"With Rain?"
"No, with Rock and Sand. There was no choice but to retaliate when Rain's forces attack our own and-"
"Does Rain not have a right to defend its own land?"
"Yes, but this was life and death between shinobi-"
"Do you think the death of Rain shinobi will have no impact on civilian lives? Ridiculous. Public safety, enforcement, and order are all gone. People starve, die, or fall into despair. Is the value of a civilian life any different from that of a shinobi's? How many Leaf shinobi have died compared to Rain civilians? Need I say more?"
"YOU FUCKING OLD MAN STOP DOING THAT!" Tsunade saw red as Hanzo would just not let up or give even an inch of ground.
Tsunade wasn't stupid.
She could see what Hanzo was doing, but there was something Tsunade was confident Hanzo would never be able to change.
"We are blood! I'm your cousin!" Tsunade revealed, Hanzo's expression darkening.
For the first time, the wood clone's hardening expression twisted in sheer bewilderment, and for a second, Tsunade was relieved she appeared to have gotten through.
What she said was the truth.
Hanzo could not deny it. It was well known that Uzumaki Mito married into the Senju clan, meaning Tsunade was also part Uzumaki.
The Wood Clone's red hair, chakra potency, and even Kushina Uzuamki's own recollections were solid evidence in Tsunade's mind, but there was something she hadn't accounted for.
"Does being family acquit one of blame?" Hanzo said sharply. "Think it over."
Saying his piece, Hanzo did not give the Wood Clone the chance to respond to Tsunade. Family could be irrational at times, and he didn't want to risk it.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Hanzo summoned his famed Salamander, grabbing the Wood Clone and Tuna at the same time as he rode on the Salamander's back.
"I am not your enemy," Hanzo said to the Wood Clone. "And I am also a man of magnanimity. I will let her go, but can she say the same for those she's already killed?"
The Wood Clone opened and closed his mouth, naivety bleeding from his expression to the point where Tsunade had flashbacks of her Academy days.
He was doomed to get used at this rate.
"Katsuya, we have to stop them!" Tsunade was urgent.
Her slug summon nodded before Tsunade moved to summon a larger slug, but failed to do so as Hanzo directly left, leaving her the fool in the entire debacle.
She shielded her face from the buffeting wind of Hanzo's retreat with a bleak complexion.
What Hanzo showed the Wood Clone was a painted canvas of this war's most horrid outcomes.
In contrast, Hanzo also showed mercy and let Tsunade live in this encounter, yet Tsunade would rather it have been a life or death battle.
"Shit!" Tsuande swore, lacking the courage to storm Hanzo's fortified camp on her own.
She should have listened to the Nara.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I initially wanted to get this out a few days later, but I won't have more time to work on this due to Holiday plans and stubborn family insisting on family time so I decided to get this out rather than just wait.
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