"...Tch."
Senju Hashirama let out a long breath, the kind that sounded like it came from somewhere deep and miserable. He didn't want this fight. Not against Raizen, not against Konoha. But he was the head of the Senju clan. His choice stopped being his own a long time ago.
Across from him, Uchiha Madara caught that look. Their eyes met just for a second. No hostility. Just exhaustion. The kind only two childhood friends-turned-enemies could understand.
Neither of them had the freedom to choose anything anymore.
Meanwhile, far to the south, Amamiya Raizen finished reading the latest intelligence report. The handwriting was rushed, the ink smudged with sweat.
Senju and Uchiha forces were moving toward Konoha's outer ridge.
So this was happening.
Raizen closed the scroll and exhaled through his teeth.
He didn't want to fight Hashirama or Madara either. They were the only two people in this era who had ever treated him like more than some stray clan kid with too much chakra and too little sense.
But Konoha…
Konoha was his gamble.
His ideal.
His proof he could bend this bloodstained world into something better.
Friends or not, he couldn't allow anyone to burn that dream down.
The three of them had already chosen their paths.
Their dreams, their families, their futures.
The battlefield would decide the rest.
By dawn, Raizen was marching at the head of Konoha's strike force into the Ridge Mountains.
Of course the Senju and Uchiha noticed. Subtlety was not one of Konoha's budget features.
A scout sprinted across the trail, slid to his knees in front of Raizen and bowed low.
"Raizen-sama! Senju and Uchiha forces—over a thousand shinobi—heading straight for us!"
Raizen's gut tightened. "Who's leading?"
"Senju Sōma, the great elder!"
"...Sōma?"
Raizen blinked. Not Hashirama, not Madara. The old warhound himself.
The previous Senju generation had three monsters. Butsuma dead. Another killed in the endless clan feud. Only Senju Sōma survived long enough to raise the current brothers.
A man carved from war.
Not great news.
Raizen rolled his shoulders. "If they want to block us, they better be ready to die trying."
Orders flew. Konoha surged forward.
They collided on a broad, windswept plain. Raizen spotted motion on the horizon—a thin black thread swelling into a tide of red-and-white and brown-and-green.
The Senju–Uchiha coalition.
"Coming," Raizen muttered.
Behind him, weapons were drawn, nerves stretched taut.
The enemy crossed the final hundred meters like thunder.
"Kill!"
Raizen didn't shout. He simply breathed the word.
Konoha roared in answer.
Kunai and shuriken filled the air, detonating tags screaming as they ignited mid-flight. The sky flashed with explosions.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
Uchiha shinobi inhaled deep, then unleashed walls of flame that swallowed the kunai storm whole, melting steel, bending heat into a rising inferno. Sparks ignited the dry grassland, and the wind turned it into a sea of fire.
Raizen clenched his jaw hard enough to ache.
"Water-nin! Extinguish it!"
Konoha's Water Style users surged forward.
"Suiton: Water Flow!"
Sweeping arcs of water crashed over the burning plain, steam rising in furious hisses.
On the enemy's side, Sōma's voice cut through the chaos:
"Senju! Earth Style! Uchiha! Burn them out!"
Earth walls erupted. Uchiha flames rained from above.
Water crashed upward to stop them.
A deadlock. And Konoha was already tired from the last battle.
Raizen felt the numbers tightening around his throat.
Keep this up, and Konoha would be steamrolled.
"Pass the order! Hyūga Tennin takes a squad to flank both sides! I'll hold the center!"
Konoha's formation shifted instantly. Flanking units sprinted wide, forcing the coalition to split their strength.
Sōma saw it. His glare sharpened.
"Concentrate everything on their center! Crush Amamiya Raizen first!"
Just fantastic, Raizen thought. Priorities.
The coalition surged toward him like a living wall.
"A bunch of idiots begging to die," Raizen hissed, stepping forward.
Then he was gone.
A blur ripping through ranks. Bodies flew. Steel flashed. Every shinobi who touched him hit the ground before they even understood how.
"Amamiya Raizen!!"
Sōma spotted him and dove into the fray himself, teeth bared, chakra flaring like a wildfire.
Ordinary soldiers couldn't stop Raizen.
So the elder would try.
And the plain trembled as the two closed in.