A sympathetic hiss escaped Azula's lips. Even through the distant haze of her sensory perception, the feedback was vivid. "Yowch. That's got to sting worse than a sunburn in a salt mine."
Beside her, Mito's serene composure finally cracked, a faint frown etching itself onto her timeless face.
She didn't just see the conflict; thanks to her sensory ability, she felt the jarring tremors of Tsunade's chakra, each spike of pain a needle in her own heart.
The grandmother in her screamed to step in, to shatter that watery prison with a flick of her wrist. But the former Jinchūriki, the woman who had helped anchor a village, knew better. You couldn't swat away every storm for those you loved.
Some squalls had to be weathered alone.
At least, she consoled herself, her knuckles white where they gripped her robes, the situation was still within the realm of containment. If things spiraled to the absolute worst, she could intervene.
Yet, with that cold assurance came a simmering, glacial fury. Her disgust toward Kirigakure crystallized into something personal, surpassing even her deep-seated resentment for Kumo and the Cloud that had taken Tobirama.
This was no act of war; it was a back-alley ambush, poison in the well, and it was targeting her blood.
Unaware of the seismic shift in opinion he was causing outside his watery domain, Mizura had only one thought cycling through his drowning mind: Take her down. Whatever it takes. The outside world was just static.
As long as those terrifying observers stayed behind their invisible line, he'd consider it a blessing.
His primary goal—a mutual, permanent retirement—was perhaps a dream.
But the backup plan? The acceptable consolation prize? That was already within grasp. Severe, career-ending injury. The kind that would make the legendary Slug Princess a historical footnote.
And his masterpiece, the jutsu, Suiton: Sekai Dekkon, was perfectly engineered for the task.
The technique was deceptively simple in theory, brutally complex in execution.
The user became a nucleus, a desperate black hole for every molecule of moisture within a radius defined by their life force.
It wasn't summoning water; it was claiming it, declaring sovereignty over the very atmosphere. Unless, of course, a shinobi with a godlier grip on environmental chakra happened to be lounging about—a possibility Mizura desperately ignored.
The result was a crushing, ever-expanding sphere. The more chakra he burned, the denser it became.
Inside, it wasn't just an absence of air; it was a positive presence of pressure, a thick, syrupy inertia that made lifting a finger feel like hauling a boulder.
And the final, elegant cruelty? The water itself was saturated with his own corrosive chakra, a venomous brew that turned each passing second into a fresh circle of liquid hell.
Within this personal aquarium of agony, Tsunade Senju was having a very bad day—and an even more irritating internal debate after the lightning shock.
She almost couldn't resist releasing the Scarlet Beast beckoned, a tide of raw power that could blast this entire bubble into a fine mist.
But a stubborn, prideful voice—one that sounded suspiciously like her own, but with her granduncle's infuriating tone—whispered in her mind's ear.
If you bail now, the gap widens. Permanently.
Her thoughts, sharp with pain and envy, flickered to Azula. Of course. If the Princess of Fire were in here, she'd have a menu of options.
Option One: Flashy Exit. A smirk and a Flying Raijin kunai's flicker, and she'd be outside, brushing imaginary dust off her shoulder.
Option Two: Brutal Efficiency. That insane, surgical chakra control would lance a Lightning Release technique straight through the sphere, frying Mizura like a shrimp without even getting her hair wet.
Option Three: Elemental Dominance. Fire Release Chakra Mode to turn the sphere into a sauna, or Lightning Release Chakra Mode to become a living insulator, sitting pretty until Mizura coughed out his last chakra-filled bubble.
Tsunade couldn't help but let out a grumble that was lost in the churning water. It was so unfair.
She herself had four of the five chakra natures! Azula had patiently, if smugly, walked her through the theories behind both her iconic Chakra Modes. Yet the paths remained closed to her.
Deep down, she knew the truth. It wasn't a lack of talent, but a surplus of stubbornness. She hadn't wanted to replicate Azula's work.
She'd wanted to one-up it. If she can master Fire and Lightning, she'd thought, then I'll pioneer Earth and Water! A healing, unbreakable fortress of a mode!
Reality, that bluntest of teachers, had humbled her swiftly. She was chasing a dream that had eluded even her granduncle Tobirama, the prolific genius of jutsu creation.
As her body screamed in protest—every muscle fiber begging for mercy, lungs burning like she'd swallowed smoldering coals—her mind stopped wondering about how the world isn't fair.
But in the midst of this psychic detour, a spark of an idea flickered to life. Not a big one. More like the last sputter of a candle before it went out—but hey, she'd take it.
Her advantages were clear, if depressingly short at the moment: monstrous chakra reserves, strength that could make a boulder powder, and control so fine she could thread a needle during an earthquake.
Too bad the crushing, watery prison she was in didn't care. Moving was like wading through cement. Attacking? Might as well try to punch the ocean.
Okay, scratch taijutsu. That's a big, fat nope.
So chakra it was. Either the ludicrous amount she possessed or the surgeon's precision of her control. Lightning Release could maybe short-circuit this whole watery nightmare… if she felt like frying herself into tempura first. Pass.
Earth? She'd need, well, earth. Fire? A brilliant idea, if her goal was to boil herself alive. Wind was the only one of the basic five she couldn't use, leaving her to wonder, not for the first time, if the universe had a truly wicked sense of humor.
Then there was the nuclear option: just unleash all her chakra in one earth-shattering kaboom. Her grandmother could probably do it—blink and turn the sphere into a light mist. But her? She'd just end up exhausted and still very, very wet.
Fine, she grumbled internally. If one advantage isn't enough… why not smash the two together and see what explodes?
Chakra Amount + Chakra Control = … what, exactly?
In this soggy deathtrap, only two possibilities floated to the surface of her mind: Sealing Techniques, or somehow taking control of the water itself.
A wave of hot, prickling regret washed over her. Grandma Mito's disappointed face is going to haunt me in the Pure Land. "Practice your fūinjutsu," she said. "It'll save your life," she said. And what did I do? Probably went to punch a few trees.
But regret was a luxury for people who weren't currently being used as a human stress ball by a giant water orb. She shoved the feeling aside.
Okay, deep breath. Or whatever passed for one when water was trying to become her new lungs.
She forced her mind back to a lesson from Azula, her voice calm and certain in her memory: "Chakra is physical and spiritual energy, woven together. Think of a simple Fireball. Your will—your spirit—shapes the idea: Fire. Your body's energy fuels it, makes it real, makes it burn. In theory, with enough chakra and the skill to guide it… you are limited only by your imagination."
It had sounded like philosophical fluff back then. Now, it was her lifeline.
Chakra felt… omnipotent. Like a net that could stitch reality together in new ways if you had enough of it and the guts to try. What she wanted wasn't even that crazy. She didn't need to create a new sun or fold space.
She just needed a suit of armor. A Water Release Chakra Mode.
A personal bubble where she made the rules. Where she could command the very water crushing her to obey, to part, to shove.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
I swear I will end this fucking fight in the next chapter, and despite being late and all, I swear I'm doing my best, I even swore I wouldn't sleep until publishing a chapter, and it's 4 in the morning right now, although it's not a long chapter where I could have ended the fight, I'm truly sleeping, fortunately no school tomorrow, guess Christmas is just a free day to sleep