Sukumo's face was a mask of solemnity so profound it could have been carved from Mount Myoboku itself. He stood between two of the most brilliant—and, frankly, terrifying—kunoichi Konoha had ever produced.
To his left was Azula, the Uchiha prodigy who had shredded the record books to become a Jonin at the tender age of eleven. To his right was Tsunade Senju, a living tsunami of chakra and raw power who had earned her own Jonin vest at twelve.
Together with Sukumo, who had been the shining star of his own generation, they formed what was arguably one of the most ludicrously luxurious, overpowered teams in the entire Ninja World.
Now, at fourteen, Azula and Tsunade were even more formidable, and Sukumo, the grizzled veteran at the ancient age of twenty, was their nominal leader. This was a trio capable of strolling into any village and giving its Kage a very, very long and stressful afternoon.
So why did Sukumo look like a man who had just been told his favorite dog was dead? Because he was facing the most brain-meltingly difficult S-Rank mission of his career.
They were trying to unravel a conspiracy so audacious it sounded like a bad fantasy story: the Four Great Hidden Villages were apparently getting together and planning something big, something that definitely did not include Konoha on the guest list.
"Azula," Sukumo spoke, his voice low—very, very low. "Any progress? Found a solution that would allow us to eavesdrop on their conversation?"
Azula, who had been scrutinizing the distant, heavily fortified compound, swished her ponytail with an air of elegant frustration. "It's a no-go. That's the four Kage in there, each with their personal guard dogs. Trying to sneak close enough to hear what they're discussing is simply impossible."
Internally, however, a cold, logical part of her brain had already connected the dots. It has to be the prelude to their alliance and the elimination of Ushiogakure, she reasoned.
Tsunade, who had been vibrating with impatient energy, finally exploded—verbally, for now. "I'm sure they're up to no good! Something slimy enough to make these four backstabbing villages unite and hide it from us!"
Her voice, fueled by righteous indignation, carried a little further than intended.
As soon as the words left her lips, Azula couldn't help but let out a sharp, pained "Tch!" Sukumo's hand met his forehead with a resounding smack that probably registered on a nearby seismograph. Why?
Because in the ninja world, chakra is a tattletale. Strong emotions leak malice, and Tsunade's annoyance was like setting off a chakra flare in a library.
And this place? This place was a convention hall for sensors. Azula's intricate sealing techniques had been the equivalent of a high-tech stealth cloak, and Tsunade had just yanked it off and started doing jumping jacks.
As if on cue, a voice sliced through the night. "INTRUDERS!"
And, just to make absolutely sure that the sun wasn't going to rise in the east tomorrow, the ninja decided to flash his chakra aura like a disco ball and fire a bright signal flare into the sky, painting "WE'RE OVER HERE, PLEASE ATTACK" in brilliant orange against the darkness.
Azula felt a vein throb in her temple. She cracked her knuckles, the sound like tiny pebbles grinding together. "Tsunade. Tsunade. Is your cranial cavity actually filled with coconut husk, just like that idiot Jiraiya? For the love of all that is holy, must your mouth write checks your teammates have to dodge?"
This was, regrettably, not the first—nor even the fifth—time a mission had taken a sudden turn toward chaos thanks to Tsunade's… expressive nature.
She was either the most reliable anchor in a storm or a human-shaped wrecking ball with no off switch. To her credit, Tsunade did have the decency to look mildly abashed, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.
Being compared to Jiraiya was a low blow, a special kind of shame, but she had to admit this was a pretty spectacular blunder.
Before she could muster an apology, Sukumo cut in, his voice now all business. "Save the lecture for the debrief. Battle stations, now. Azula, keep a finger on the Flying Thunder God. The moment you feel your chakra dropping below what we need to leave cleanly, you take us out of here. Before that, we should try to obtain as much information as possible."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than his eyes widened a fraction. He didn't shout a warning; he simply moved. It was a testament to their insane synergy that Azula and Tsunade launched themselves from their perch in the same microsecond.
CRRRACK-BOOM!
The ground where they had just been standing erupted into a spiderweb of fissures, pulverized by a blur of yellow and black wreathed in crackling lightning.
As the dust settled, a mountain of a man stood there, lightning chakra arcing across his torso like an angry personal storm cloud.
Azula blinked, a completely inappropriate thought popping into her head. Why does the Third Raikage, 'A' the Absolute Unit, look like he runs a very successful protection racket for a living?
"A," a new, grating voice chimed in from above. "It seems you are still as explosively impatient as ever."
Floating serenely in the air was a man so short he made the Sandaime Hokage look like a giant—the Tsuchikage, Onoki.
Sukumo allowed himself a single, internal wry smile. Just perfect. The worst-case scenario bingo card was now complete.
Because following these two were no fewer than fifteen other elite shinobi, including the Third Mizukage and the man with iron sand in his veins, the Third Kazekage. They were surrounded by the combined leadership of the entire shinobi world, minus their own.
Yet, Azula's face broke into a wild, manic grin.
"What an honor!" she declared, her voice ringing with genuine excitement rather than fear. "To be cornered by all four sitting Kage! I, Azula Uchiha, might be the only one in history worthy of such a… targeted gathering!"
She wasn't the only one feeling the buzz. Tsunade was now cracking her own neck, the previous mistake forgotten in the face of a truly epic brawl. Sukumo, long accustomed to the battle-hungry madness of his teammates, simply sighed.
He, however, was the diplomat.
"Great Kage-sama," he began, projecting his voice with calm authority. "My apologies for our uninvited presence. But the current situation does raise questions. Why would the leaders of the four greatest villages assemble in secret, without inviting our Hokage? One might conclude you are preparing a unified assault on Konoha."
The Raikage, A, snorted, the sound like a bull preparing to charge. "Hmph! Do the four Kage need to send your Hokage a formal invitation every time we wish to have tea?"
Azula shook her head, her grin turning into a razor-sharp smirk.
"Not at all. It's just… I held Kumo in such high regard. I admire your direct, 'punch-first, ask-questions-later' philosophy. I never thought even you would fear Konoha so much that you'd need to scheme in the shadows with…"
She paused, her Sharingan-activated eyes—a two-tomoe pattern she'd awakened four years prior due to a special event—swept over Onoki and the Mizukage. "…these two. Onoki-sama, Mizukage-sama, I'm especially surprised to see you cooperating, given your predecessors had such a… terminal disagreement. But oh well, I suppose Konoha's shadow is just too long for any one of you to stand alone."
Azula was in her element, verbally poking the bear, the rock, the water, and the sand with a very sharp stick. And it was working. The air grew thick with palpable irritation.
Unfortunately, the Raikage was a man of action, not debate.
"Shut your mouth, Uchiha brat!" he roared, becoming a lightning-fast blur once more. Azula effortlessly pivoted, his fist whistling past her face. Her ability to fly made his linear assaults mostly useless.
"Tch. Good at nothing but cheap shots," she taunted, her voice dripping with contempt. "It's exactly how you ambushed the Second Hokage."
That struck a nerve. Behind her, Tsunade's fists clenched, her knuckles turning white.
It had only been a decade since her granduncle Tobirama's death; the wound was still not healed. But she held her ground. This was the plan now: let Azula's world-class taunting get under their skin. An angry enemy is a careless enemy, and a careless enemy might just spill the beans.
The Raikage's speed was unreal—the fastest shinobi Azula had ever faced.
But Azula had awakened her Sharingan.
Back on good ol' Earth, the basic Sharingan was the overlooked middle child of the Uchiha clan's visual prowess.
Everyone was always drooling over the Mangekyou and its reality-warping, Susanoo-summoning, tear-jerking drama.
The regular tomoe version? Often dismissed as a fancy party trick. But Azula, now the proud owner of a pair of these crimson peepers, finally understood why even the base model was enough to make seasoned shinobi soil their tactical pants.
Its most fundamental, and frankly rude, ability was the vision enhancement. Think of your dynamic vision—your ability to track moving objects—as a stat in a video game.
For your average ninja, let's be generous and call it a 30. An Uchiha, even without the 'gan, is probably rocking a natural 50 because, well, genetics are a cheat code.
Now, plug in a single Sharingan. That number doesn't just get a polite little bump; it gets multiplied by ten. Your 50 suddenly becomes a 500. If you're a prodigy starting at 100? Congratulations, you're now perceiving the world at a cool, utterly exaggerated 1000.
Naturally, this meant that for the average Uchiha, trying to track the Raikage's top gear was like trying to follow a hyper-caffeinated hummingbird on a sugar rush—possible, but a great way to get a migraine and a fist to the face.
But then you have guys like Madara. It's no exaggeration to say that if Madara decided to throw hands with the Third Raikage, he could probably track the man's movements without even activating the Sharingan, just by squinting really, really hard and using the power of sheer, unadulterated ego.
Now, Azula wasn't about to claim she had Madara-level eyeballs. But everyone has their own niche, their own special brand of crazy.
Hers was a sensory ability she had been sanding and polishing since the tender age of five, every single day, for what felt like an eternity (or as adults called it, "almost a decade").
This, combined with her special Yin chakra, had gifted her a kind of pre-cognitive edge. It wasn't the flawless, angelic-choir-singing Ultra Instinct; it was more like the bargain-bin, discount-rack version—"Adequate Impulse."
It allowed her to react not to the punch itself, but to the intent to punch that flickered in her opponent's mind a split second earlier.
So, when the Raikage—a man built like a brick outhouse and moving like a lightning bolt—finally lunged at her, the result was less "climactic showdown" and more "frustrating game of whack-a-mole."
Almost the very instant he decided to turn her face into a crater, Azula simply tilted her head a few elegant inches to the side. Whoosh. His fist, carrying enough force to rearrange a small mountain, harmlessly compressed the air beside her ear.
The look on his face was pure, unadulterated disbelief. He didn't believe in evil, but he was starting to believe in this infuriating girl who moved like she'd read the script. Deciding that close quarters was still his domain, he became a whirlwind of fists, a thunderstorm of concussive force.
But Azula was ready. Crackling arcs of lightning enveloped her own body, supercharging her God-level sensory abilities, reflexes, and reaction speed to a truly ludicrous degree because it was her version of Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
She weaved, ducked, and swayed through his flurry of attacks like a leaf in a hurricane, every dodge so precise it was probably personally insulting. It was a flawless, albeit utterly defensive, performance.
Unfortunately, that was the catch. She could dodge all day, but actually hurting him was a different story. Throwing a punch at this man was like throwing a pebble at a bank vault.
This was the guy who used Tailed Beasts as sparring partners and treated the Rasenshuriken like an annoying bee sting.
Unless she could materialize an S-Rank jutsu out of thin air—and not just any S-Rank, but a sealing one, because those things were just that broken—she was stuck in this eternal dance of "you can't hit me, but I can't hurt you."
The logic was simple: if she could just slap a seal on him and cork his chakra, what was he going to do? Flex his way out of it? Probably, but it was worth a shot!
The problem, of course, was that performing intricate sealing techniques against a man who could break the sound barrier was like trying to do a complicated origami project while riding a rollercoaster. For the current Azula, it was a logistical nightmare.
From her perspective, she was still too weak to engage in the kind of blood-boiling, "I take your punch, you take mine" brawl against the Raikage that she wanted to. But from the viewpoint of the stunned Kage and their guards, this was worldview-shattering.
A young kunoichi, not only holding her own but outright toying with the legendary Raikage? If Azula managed to walk out of this room alive, her reputation wouldn't just spread; it would explode, shocking thousands and reaching levels of exaggeration usually reserved for fish tales and drunk uncles at a bar.
Just as she was mentally running through her limited, and frankly depressing, list of options to at least put some distance between herself and this very persistent, very angry Kage, her Adequate Impulse tingled.
She sensed an opportunity and didn't hesitate, even though turning her back on 'A' was basically inviting him to strike.
This wasn't a reckless move; it was a calculated one, born from absolute confidence in her partner, Sukumo.
If you were to rank the top three Lightning Release powerhouses in the world—and Azula certainly did in her head—the podium would indisputably be her, Sukumo, and the Raikage, in some order. And Sukumo, with his frankly absurd mastery over lightning that made him practically immune to it, had been preparing his move.
Two seconds before Azula made her jump, he had concentrated a terrifying amount of lightning chakra onto the tip of his blade.
The moment she moved, he vanished, not with a shunshin, but as a literal white flash of light. He reappeared directly in front of the Raikage, intercepting him before the man could even take a step in pursuit.
Seeing the attack coming, the Raikage smirked, his confidence in his legendary Lightning Armor unshaken. He decided to take the hit head-on, a classic display of machismo.
And take it he did. The good news: the blade did precisely zero damage to his impeccable physique. The bad news: the sheer, concentrated force of the impact didn't care about his armor. It was like being hit by a train made of pure energy. With an undignified grunt, he was thrown backward, his boots skidding across the floor for over three meters.
And with that earth-shattering, yet completely non-lethal, clash, what was supposed to be a formal Kage meeting officially concluded.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Come on guys, we clearly agreed for powers stones thing starting next week but well, it start now and here's an advanced chapter today, and thank.
Anyway, It was time to spicy things after the solid foundation, right? What do you think about Azula's current level, is it understandable or is it too exaggerated?