Chapter 314: If Standing Against the Hokage Isn't Being a Missing-Nin, What Is?
Madara could feel it — a potent blend of Yang Release chakra and sage chakra had wrapped itself entirely around his body, and that same layer of chakra not only shielded him from the Tailed Beast Ball's blast, but made breaking free of the Hokage's grip nearly impossible.
He tried to use the Preta Path's absorption ability to drain that surrounding chakra, hoping to let the Tailed Beast Ball annihilate him outright so he could regenerate through Edo Tensei's own properties — only to find the barrier wasn't actually touching his skin at all. It hovered roughly a centimeter above his body, an invisible cushion of protection.
Damn it.
Even from a detail this small, Madara could tell her chakra control was every bit a match for his own — possibly even beyond it.
Once the Tailed Beast Ball's shockwave finally dissipated, the Hokage and Madara reappeared before everyone present, both untouched.
Protected by Sage Technique — Yang Release — Ward, neither the Hokage nor Madara had suffered any real harm at all.
"I win."
The Hokage regarded Madara, still restrained in her grip, calm.
At that moment, several figures were already closing in.
Sasuke, Naruto, Karin.
The three of them had already succeeded together in sealing the Second Tsuchikage and the Second Mizukage.
"You..."
Madara could sense it — if he didn't act now, he'd end up sealed by this Fifth Hokage in short order.
The worst part was that he hadn't set up an Izanagi failsafe beforehand, having genuinely underestimated her strength at first — and now, with things at this point, there was no time left to arrange one.
Could it be...
Does my path end here?
Madara couldn't accept it.
He hadn't gathered the tailed beasts yet. He hadn't revived the Ten-Tails yet. He hadn't become its jinchūriki yet. He hadn't cast Infinite Tsukuyomi yet.
This world shouldn't end this way...
I can't die here.
I can still fight!
I still have unfinished business!
In that moment, gripping desperately at the arm locked around his throat, Madara wanted nothing more than to scream.
Facing what felt like the end of everything, his mind drifted, unbidden, to the one rival who'd ever truly earned that title in his life.
Hashirama Senju.
Hashirama... why?
Why is this happening?
Why, after a thousand years without anyone like this, does someone like her have to appear in these exact twenty years?
Sixteen years old, and already possessing power that matched him, even surpassed him.
How could he possibly accept that?!
"HASHIRAMA!!!"
Consumed with frustration, Madara let out a furious roar.
"MADARA!!!"
???
Maybe it was his imagination, but Madara thought he heard a distant, familiar voice answer him.
The Hokage looked up, and spotted a black dot in the sky, riding a wooden dragon, streaking toward them at tremendous speed.
That was—
The First Hokage. Hashirama Senju!
"Sakura!"
At that moment, Tobirama — having successfully sealed Gaara — arrived at the scene as well. But the instant he saw his own elder brother, an unmistakable sense of foreboding settled over him.
"Bind him."
Sakura landed on the ocean's surface and glanced at Karin, who understood immediately — dozens of golden chains extended from her palms, wrapping Madara completely, leaving only his head exposed.
Obito, meanwhile, had landed atop the Eight-Tails' head, his expression grim, watching Madara from a distance.
He had to find some way to save him.
But right now, no one was paying Obito any attention at all.
Every eye had turned toward Hashirama, now arriving on the battlefield.
At that moment, Sakura glanced down at her own wrist, where a black mark had surfaced against her pale skin.
The Blade of Shinobi Love.
This was the mark left behind from her earlier encounter with Minato — back when she'd traveled through the Dragon Vein twenty years into the past and crossed blades with him.
She hadn't expected it to light up now.
Which meant it wasn't just Hashirama who'd been revived through Edo Tensei — Minato's soul, too, had been dragged out of the Death God's stomach by Orochimaru.
With a flash of golden light, three figures appeared abruptly beside Sakura.
Hiruzen. Minato. Itachi.
"Dad?!"
Naruto stared, stunned, at the sight of Minato.
Minato quickly took stock of the scene, and let out a breath of relief on realizing Hashirama and Sakura hadn't yet come to blows.
"It's been a while, Naruto."
"Though from your perspective, we only just parted a few months ago, didn't we?"
Minato smiled at Naruto, then found his gaze drawn, unbidden, to the red-haired girl standing behind him.
"Uh — is this your girlfriend, Naruto?"
Naruto blinked, startled, then nodded with total confidence.
"Yep! Yep!"
"That's her!"
Naruto's answer sent Karin's face flushing bright red, and without a moment's hesitation, she drove a fist straight into the top of Naruto's head.
"You idiot! What are you even saying?!"
"You never even confessed properly!"
Minato felt an invisible bead of cold sweat forming, laughing awkwardly.
"Ah, well — if it's not too much trouble, please be a little gentle with my son..."
Even as he said it, his mind drifted, unbidden, to his own wife.
Kushina Uzumaki.
This kid really does take after Kushina, doesn't he.
"Sakura."
"Watch yourself with the First Hokage."
Hiruzen spoke first, his gaze fixed warily on Hashirama, still approaching across the vast ocean.
Why hadn't he stopped Hashirama earlier?
The reason was simple, and Hiruzen understood it with total clarity.
He couldn't win.
Even with himself, Minato, and Itachi combined, they still wouldn't be a match for Hashirama.
That was the true weight behind the title "God of Shinobi."
Even two Hokage together, plus a Mangekyō user, still couldn't match him.
"What?"
Sakura's brow furrowed slightly.
Watch out for Hashirama?
"The First Hokage means to stop us. Stop unification."
Hiruzen's words made something click for Sakura.
Of course. Back when Konoha was first founded, it had been extraordinarily powerful. The older generation had Hashirama, Madara, Tobirama. The middle generation had Hiruzen, Danzō, Homura, Mirai Uchiha. The younger generation had Sakumo Hatake, Tsunade, Jiraiya, Orochimaru.
Konoha's roster had stood, quite literally, at the top of the shinobi world — three full generations, each stacked with talent unmatched anywhere else. And with Hashirama having already captured all nine tailed beasts, Konoha's overall strength, before Sakura's own tenure as Hokage, had genuinely never been surpassed.
Unifying the shinobi world would have been trivially easy.
If Hashirama had simply unified everything back then, backed by later talents like Minato and the rest — there was no reasonable version of history where the shinobi world would have suffered nearly this much war.
And even setting Sakura's own existence aside, later generations still produced Shisui, Itachi, Sasuke, Naruto...
But Hashirama hadn't just declined to do it — he'd actually distributed the tailed beasts to the other four Great Villages, freely. If Tobirama hadn't stopped him, he would've simply given them away outright, without asking anything in return.
Thinking this through, Sakura let out a quiet breath, and her green eyes settled back into their usual calm.
She'd already prepared herself to face Hashirama directly.
"HASHIRAMA!"
The moment Madara spotted Hashirama, his whole demeanor lit up with excitement.
"Gag him."
Sakura said, flat.
Karin obliged without hesitation, using the Adamantine Sealing Chains to seal Madara's mouth shut.
"MMPH! MMMPH!"
Madara's eyes practically burned with fury.
Hashirama glanced at Madara once and walked straight toward Sakura, not stopping until he stood barely five meters away.
His dark eyes settled on the young woman before him.
Sea wind stirred, ruffling Sakura's pink ponytail — as if the violent battle just moments ago had never happened at all.
"Sakura."
"May I call you that?"
Hashirama chose his words carefully, looking at the young woman before him.
"Of course."
"You're one of my teacher's own teachers. Call me however you like."
Sakura regarded the man before her.
"Huh?"
"Something feels off here."
Even Naruto — famously oblivious — could sense the strange tension in the air.
"Quiet. Watch that man."
Sasuke kept his eyes fixed on the figure across from Sakura. Hiruzen's earlier warning had already put him on edge, ready to move at a moment's notice.
What did "watch out for the First Hokage" even mean?
Meaning: in the eyes of the Third Hokage himself, Hashirama had already become something like an enemy?
"Would you tell me — how you arrived at your current thinking?"
Hashirama sat himself down on the ocean's surface, a faint smile on his face.
Sakura sat down across from him.
"This world runs on the same currency. Speaks the same languages. Uses the same units of measurement."
"And yet it's splintered into dozens of separate nations. Isn't that, in itself, a mistake?"
Sakura's tone stayed calm, and Hashirama's brow furrowed slightly at the question.
"Does this relate to the current war?"
The First Hokage asked.
"Of course it does."
"Every rule, every convention, is shared across the entire world. And yet, in barely a few decades, we've already fought four Great Ninja Wars."
"How many people have been displaced because of it? Doesn't that prove something?"
"Do you think that's reasonable?"
At the Hokage's question, sorrow crossed Hashirama's face.
"Which is exactly why I've come."
"I intend to put an end to war, once and for all."
Hashirama's voice carried a note of genuine grief.
"Good. That's exactly what I'm doing right now."
The Fifth Hokage nodded slightly.
"But everywhere I look, all I see is war."
"So many people dying."
"So many wounded."
"Sakura, you've taken the wrong path."
Hashirama's gaze settled on her, heavy.
"First Hokage. This is the only road that leads to peace."
"Time erases every wound eventually."
"Someday, looking back on all this, everyone will be grateful — grateful that one person was willing to fight every war at once, and buy the world enough time for lasting peace."
Sakura regarded the man before her, calm.
"No. What you're building rests entirely on violence and bloody suppression. Countless innocent people will die because of it."
"That's not what true peace should look like."
Hashirama shook his head, rejecting her argument.
"Fine. If I don't unify the shinobi world, then who's going to take responsibility for these countless small nations that have been at war, on and off, for nearly a thousand years?"
Sakura shot back.
"No one needs to take responsibility for them. Each nation should govern itself."
"And if disputes break out between these nations — who's supposed to mediate that? You, First Hokage?"
At Sakura's words, Hashirama's expression stayed calm, and he answered, almost without thinking:
"No one needs to mediate anything. Their disputes can be resolved among themselves."
Something almost like genuine amusement crossed Sakura's face at that, a mocking curl touching her lips as she looked at the man before her with something close to pity.
"If they're left to resolve it themselves, the outcome is always going to be the strong crushing the weak."
"And what you're doing right now is simply making room for a different strong power to rise up instead."
"So why shouldn't that strong power be me?"
"And besides — you already know what happened after your death. Endless war. Is that really your idea of 'letting them resolve their own disputes'?"
Beside them, Madara's expression shifted subtly at that.
This Hokage's thinking sounded uncomfortably similar to his own, once.
Hashirama fell silent, and after a long pause, spoke slowly.
"Which is exactly why I have to stop this."
Watching him say that, Sakura let the pity drain from her expression, her face cooling.
"First Hokage. Aren't you being a little arrogant?"
Hashirama looked at her, confused.
"Who exactly do you think you are?"
"A savior?"
"Right — because once, you had the chance to save the world, to end all its wars, right in front of you. And you let it slip through your fingers."
"Now I'm the one finishing that work. Why would you stand against me for it?"
Hashirama shook his head, rejecting the framing.
"I've never once thought of myself as a savior. I just wanted every child in Konoha to never have to set foot on a battlefield."
"And what you're doing isn't ending war at all — you're using war to crush everyone into submission. Sooner or later, all that accumulated resentment will come back on you."
"I've come to save you."
"Before you go further down this wrong path."
"And besides... you assassinated a Daimyō. The nobility has always placed their trust in Konoha."
"How can you face that trust, after what you've done?"
Hashirama's words drew a sigh from Sakura.
She rose calmly to her feet, looking down at Hashirama from above.
"Save me?"
"The wrong path?"
"The nobility trusts Konoha?"
"How can I face their trust?"
Four questions in a row, and Hashirama's brow furrowed deeper with each one.
"Hashirama Senju."
"Let me ask you something. In what capacity are you sitting in front of me right now?"
"As Konoha's Hokage?"
"Or as the former Daimyō's own father-in-law?"
"Fitting, I suppose — you're a member of the nobility yourself, after all."
A trace of genuine regret crossed the pink-haired Hokage's face. Perhaps it was the sea wind, tousling her hair a little further out of place.
"I'm here as..."
"As the Hokage, naturally."
Hashirama's expression showed a flicker of hesitation.
"Good."
"Then let me ask you this — who is Konoha's current Hokage?"
"And what, exactly, is your own standing right now?"
The pink-haired Hokage looked off into the distance, her voice calm but with a cold edge underneath.
"You're the Hokage."
"I am... a shinobi of Konoha."
Hashirama's brow drew tight, but he pressed on regardless.
"Even so, I'm not the Hokage right now — but as an elder, I still have every right to correct your mistakes."
The pink-haired Hokage nodded slightly, seeming to accept his point — but then continued.
"An elder correcting a junior's mistake is, of course, entirely reasonable."
"This decision was passed unanimously by Konoha's own leadership. What right do you have to override the collective will of all of Konoha, single-handedly?"
"Hashirama Senju. I am the Hokage right now."
"..."
"Sakura. You'll come to regret this."
Hashirama's brow furrowed as he looked at the young woman before him.
Dangerous. Far too dangerous.
Konoha should never have fallen into the hands of a Hokage like this — or the village would eventually face utter ruin.
Everyone else present tensed, watching the exchange unfold. One wrong move here, and they'd be facing off against the legendary God of Shinobi himself.
Only Obito and Madara wore markedly different expressions from everyone else.
"So this is your reason for assassinating the Daimyō, destroying his residence, and installing a puppet in his place?"
Obito felt it necessary to speak up. If he could provoke this legendary God of Shinobi into an actual confrontation with the Fifth Hokage, he could use Kamui to quietly finish off the Uzumaki nearby, freeing Madara to fight alongside Hashirama—
There was a real chance, then, of bringing down this Fifth Hokage once and for all.
"Worthless trash. Do you have any right to speak here?"
"Sasuke. Kill him."
The pink-haired Hokage shot Obito a cold glance and barked the order.
Sasuke needed no further prompting, launching himself straight at Obito.
I still haven't settled the score from that beating he took earlier!
"Tch."
Obito let out a cold snort and had no choice but to meet Sasuke's attack head-on.
Hashirama paid no attention to that skirmish, keeping his focus entirely on the Hokage before him.
"So — all of this really was your doing?"
"Sakura?"
The pink-haired Hokage let out a scornful laugh at that, looking at the man before her.
"Correct. It was me."
"This so-called nobility makes up barely three percent of the world's population, and yet controls sixty percent of its resources."
"The water they use maintaining their pastureland in a single day would supply an ordinary family of three for an entire year."
"So tell me, Lord Hashirama Senju."
"Does that sound reasonable to you?"
Before Hashirama could answer, the pink-haired Hokage continued.
"I used to wonder why all of you bowed to people like that in the first place."
"Sure, some of them are genuinely upright. But far more of them abuse their power, embezzle, use their position for personal gain."
"More than enough of them to be genuinely shocking. Genuinely disturbing."
"It wasn't until I watched that Daimyō's residence burn to the ground with my own eyes that I finally understood."
"So-called nobility isn't some untouchable, three-headed, six-armed thing after all."
"When they stand against shinobi — they die, just like anyone else!"
"Heh heh..."
"How laughable, really. Trash like that ruling the shinobi world for a thousand years?"
Hashirama rose slowly to his feet, watching the young woman before him, calm.
"Sakura, you're far too dangerous. You cannot be Hokage."
"You don't have the qualifications for that title."
Hashirama's words sent a chill through everyone present.
"Big brother!"
Tobirama spoke up, urgent.
"Quiet. We'll settle this between us later."
Clearly, Hashirama's displeasure wasn't reserved for Sakura alone — his own younger brother had earned it just as thoroughly.
In the past, with Hashirama himself watching over things, Tobirama would never have dared act so freely. But look at this now—
Who exactly stood behind this Fifth Hokage?
Not just Tobirama, the Second Hokage. Hiruzen, the Third. Even Minato, the Fourth, standing right there behind her.
None of them carrying the slightest deference toward the nobility at all.
Tobirama must have done something after his death. There was no other way this generation of Konoha's leadership could have ended up this thoroughly, unmistakably insurgent.
Which meant — his own younger brother was the true culprit behind all of this.
"So — if you strip me of my Hokage title, what will you do next?"
The pink-haired Hokage regarded this legendary God of Shinobi with not a trace of deference left in her expression.
"I'll end this war. Send everyone back to their own nations."
"Restore the new Daimyō to the capital. Put everything back the way it was."
"Konoha will remain the peace-loving village it's always been. The Land of Fire will remain the Land of Fire."
Listening to Hashirama's words, the Hokage let out a quiet sigh.
"So — turning back the clock on history. That won't work."
Hashirama's approach reminded Sakura of someone.
Xiang Yu.
A man with every capability to unify the realm, who'd chosen instead to reverse history's course — carving the unified empire of Qin back into feudal states, content to sit quietly on his own modest patch of land — only to be defeated, in the end, by the man the people's hearts had turned to instead: Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty.
Though, to be fair, Hashirama was better than Xiang Yu in one respect — he wasn't cruel, and he'd never once razed a city.
"Hashirama Senju. Are you choosing to become Konoha's missing-nin?"
The Hokage regarded the man before her, calm.
A missing-nin?
Hashirama felt something close to disorientation at the word.
Himself. The God of Shinobi. Konoha's founder. Its First Hokage. Konoha's own missing-nin?
Everyone else present stared, equally stunned, at the pink-haired Hokage — none of them had expected her to say something so audacious.
"A missing-nin?"
"You mean me, Sakura?"
Hashirama fixed his gaze on the young woman before him.
"Heh. If standing against the Hokage isn't being a missing-nin, then what is?"
Sakura's words drew something close to genuine amusement from Hashirama.
Clearly, he had no intention of accepting the girl's framing.
Which meant his answer came in a different form entirely.
"Wood Release — Birth of Dense Woodland!"
Hashirama clapped his hands together, and countless shadows surged up from beneath the ocean's surface, engulfing the entire battlefield in an instant!
Even out over open water — conditions that should have made growing trees impossible entirely — Hashirama remained exactly who he'd always been.
Countless massive trees swept across the entire field, rising up out of the sea like some terrifying, monstrous beast!
Hashirama's Wood Release was the genuine article.
Even with Madara's transplanted Hashirama cells granting him a version of the same power, his was still nothing more than borrowed cells.
Hashirama's entire body, by contrast, was made of those cells.
"Yare yare. Genuinely terrifying, this."
The Hokage launched herself into the air, dodging the countless trees surging toward her.
Everyone else scrambled to dodge the massive trunks as well.
Hashirama's technique wasn't aimed solely at the Fifth Hokage — Tobirama, Hiruzen, Minato, Itachi, Naruto, Karin, all of them fell within its range as well.
The trees seemed to move with a will of their own, converging automatically on every one of Hashirama's enemies present on the field!
"MMPH MMMPH! MMMPH MMMPH!"
(Take me with you! Take me with you!)
"MMMPH MMMPH!"
(Hashirama!)
(End of chapter.)
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