She started thinking about the basics. The average human body comes with 108 chakra points, or tenketsu.
One can think of them as tiny, spiritual holes. In theory, you could blast chakra out of any of them and perform a jutsu from your left elbow if you were feeling particularly inclined.
In practice? Not so much.
Outside of a few, like the Hyūga clan—who cheat by using something like sixty-four at once for their fancy Eight Trigrams—most shinobi stick to the classics: hands and feet.
Why? Because those are the faucets that get used daily. They're the polished, well-oiled, reliable tools.
Trying to use the one on your lower back is like trying to write with your non-dominant toe: possible, but deeply impractical.
Now, to achieve the coveted, sparkly, and overwhelmingly cool "Chakra Mode," you have two paths, both paved with agony and hubris.
Path One: The Control Freak.
You must hone your chakra control to such a ridiculous degree that you can not only release chakra from all 108 faucets simultaneously but also transform it into an element and not, you know, set your own spleen on fire.
This is the path walked by Azula and Sakumo Hatake.
Path Two: The Tank.
You say "control" is for poets and librarians. You instead cultivate a body so inhumanly durable that you simply ignore the damage of your own violently escaping chakra.
Who needs finesse when you can treat your chakra network like a demolition derby? This is the proud tradition of Kumo's monsters, exemplified by the Third Raikage, a man who probably used lightning release to toast his morning bread because striking a match was for the weak.
And then there she is: Tsunade.
The hilarious part is that through a combination of Senju and Uzumaki bloodlines and her chakra control, she accidentally qualified for both paths.
Was her control as sublime as Azula's? No, but it was easily in Konoha's top five—a list featuring people who could probably thread a needle with a chakra thread during an earthquake.
Was her body as tough as the Third Raikage's? Not quite, but drop her in Kumo and she'd crack the top five strength rankings just by frowning at a boulder.
She was a statistical anomaly wrapped in a lab coat and thrown through a brick wall.
She could have probably brute-forced her way into a Lightning Chakra Mode if she'd wanted. But that was Azula and Sakumo's signature flavor of crazy.
Tsunade, currently suspended in the crushing, dark embrace of the ocean, had a different idea. Water was all around her. It made a terrible, watery sense.
'Alright, my chakra points, don't disappoint me,' she mused, the thought as calm as the ocean was not. 'Let's start with a gentle drip from all taps.'
Releasing the raw chakra was easy. She'd practiced this part, lying in fields, imagining her chakra as a gentle mist.
The next part was the killer: transforming the nature of that chakra at every single point, all at once, while several tons of ocean pressure tried to turn her into a bloody mist.
For Azula, this was nothing. She could release a fireball from her navel before breakfast just to prove a point.
For Tsunade, it was like trying to sing 108 different songs in harmony while trying not to destroy a tree with a single punch.
Her chakra seeped out, meeting the dense water. She gritted her teeth and began the agonizing, meticulous work of convincing her inner energy to become the ocean.
On the surface, Azula raised an eyebrow. A faint, aquatic glow was emanating from the depths. "Oh, she's still trying to brute-force a Water Chakra Mode down there? Worthy of her, I suppose."
She wasn't surprised. The Tsunade from the anime hadn't bothered with such flashy techniques, preferring to solve problems with her fists and a bank loan.
But this Tsunade, the one who'd been nudged by their friendship and by witnessing both her and Sakumo cloak themselves in Thunder Release Chakra Mode? This Tsunade had a spark of "oh yeah? watch me" that refused to die.
To Azula, with control so perfect it made butterflies land in symmetrical patterns, Tsunade's struggle was admirable.
Beside her, Mito had been watching the waters with a deep frown. Suddenly, the lines on her face smoothed, replaced by a knowing, serene smile. "I believe she is about to exceed our expectations, Azula."
Mito's senses, honed by a lifetime of understanding the heart's tides and the Kurama Chakra Mode, were stretched to their peak.
And what she felt from the depths wasn't just struggle. It was a strange, crystalline focus. A thrilling, terrifying clarity.
She recognized that state intimately. It wasn't found in the safety of a training ground.
It was born in the white-hot crucible of a life-or-death battle, the moment when you roll the dice on an unfinished technique because the most likely other option is a grave. In that moment, there is no room for error, no space for doubt. Every motion, every spark of chakra, aligns with a perfect, desperate will to survive.
It was the Zen of Near-Death Experience. And Tsunade, crushed by the ocean's weight, had just found it.
If one were to describe Tsunade at this moment, she wasn't just using chakra—she had become the water.
Every ounce of her, from her famously blonde hair to her currently furrowed eyebrows, had seamlessly dissolved into the ocean itself.
It was like the Hōzuki clan's Hydrification Technique, if the Hōzuki clan had accidentally left their jutsu manual in the rain and Tsunade decided to one-up them out of sheer pettiness.
The suffocating pressure that had weighed on her mere seconds ago vanished as if it had never been. Instead, she felt… comfortable. Alarming, really, how at home she felt as a sentient puddle.
Her senses surged outward, stretching through the tides for over twenty kilometers in every direction.
She could feel every drifting plank of the shattered fleet, every bubble of escaping air, every startled fish wondering why the ocean suddenly smelled like sake and bad decisions. It was beyond Byakugan range, beyond conventional sensing—it was as if the sea had grown a consciousness, and that consciousness was currently very annoyed and in need of a drink.
Of course, such cosmic oceanic awareness came with a downside: her chakra was draining faster than her patience during a gambling intervention. No time to marvel, then.
Her focus snapped back to Mizura, the Third Mizukage, who was floating there with the dignified expression of a man who'd just seen a mountain turn into a mackerel.
He'd expected the Forbidden Art: Scarlet Beast Seal. He'd braced for Grandmother Mito's inevitable, terrifying intervention, not a spontaneous, dazzling Chakra Mode made entirely of water armor. It was so audaciously off-script that his brain apparently needed a buffer period to process—a luxury Tsunade had no intention of granting.
Perhaps it was a blessing they were underwater; it saved her from having to deliver a one-liner. Instead, she simply lifted a hand—or the watery essence that currently passed for one—and clenched.
Mizura did not so much explode as he… redecorated. In an instant, the waters around him blossomed into a vibrant crimson fresco, an abstract masterpiece wholly unsuitable for young audiences or stable stomachs.
'Well,' Tsunade mused with an internal smirk that felt unnervingly fluid, 'that's one way to close a power gap. Now that I have reached this level, I hope your secret is really worth it, Azula.'
With the last of her strength, she propelled herself toward the surface, a human-shaped geyser shooting upward before gravity remembered its job. She didn't worry about the landing. Someone showy would catch her.
On the shore, Mito allowed her own terrifying aura to fade, the glow around her winking out like a retired lighthouse.
The immediate crisis was over, the Uzumaki were saved, and yet she could already feel the political headache brewing. A Kage, artistically repurposed into marine pointillism? Yes, a new shinobi war was now inevitable.
Right on cue, a flash of black light intercepted Tsunade's descent. Azula, using the Flying Thunder God Technique with the effortless grace of someone who'd clearly practiced this 'dramatic rescue' pose in a mirror, caught her neatly. The scene was strikingly reminiscent of a certain future Hokage and his red-haired wife, albeit with significantly less blushing and significantly more "I-told-you-so" energy.
"Well," Azula muttered, adjusting her hold on the dripping, unconscious Tsunade, "I suppose it was worth letting her have her fun. Even if her 'fun' involves redecorating the waters."
A flicker of envy passed through her. Tsunade had found a worthy opponent, someone she could fight with her whole, joyfully violent heart. It made Azula's own fingers itch for a duel—specifically, a visit to a certain old monster in his damp basement for a spirited dance.
But no. Not yet.
She had plans layered within plans, timelines to manage, and an impulse to fight the Legendary Sucker himself would undo years of delicate scheming. Patience was a sharper blade than recklessness.
Gently, she activated her Fire Release Chakra Mode, a warm, radiant healing energy that steamed the seawater from Tsunade's clothes and returned color to her cheeks. It was the Yang to Tsunade's momentary aquatic Yin—the perfect counterbalance.
From a respectful distance, Murasake, a veteran who'd weathered the Warring States Period, could only stare. His beard seemed to have gained extra grey hairs in the last five minutes.
"I have seen many wars," he announced to no one in particular. "I have imagined countless scenarios for this one. None involved… this."
He replayed everything that had happened. First, Lady Mito fires a single 'bullet' and deletes a fleet of ten thousand. Then, Tajima gets excited and mops up the survivors like they're crumbs on a tablecloth. And now, the God of Shinobi's granddaughter turns into the ocean and uses a Mizukage as paint.
He shook his head slowly, a philosopher contemplating utter nonsense. "I thought this era had gone soft. I longed for the good old days of straightforward carnage. But now… now I just feel profound pity for anyone born in the same generation as these two."
He gazed out at the calming waves, where the last hints of Mizura's 'artwork' were diffusing into the deep. "Madara and Hashirama used to dominate people with terror. These two? They dominate us with bewildering spectacle. I'm not sure which is more frightening."
END OF THE CHAPTER
Finally done with this