Chapter 185 - 183: Love At First Sight

"No," Hiruzen said, but his voice weaker as his hand came up like a man trying to stop a flood with a single sandbag. "You can't decide the fate of someone who has been an elder this way."

Tsunade rolled her eyes at her sensei, then ignoring him, walking towards Danzō, which was her answer.

Danzō was scanning the room, eyes jumping from face to face, finding nothing. No one would meet his gaze, let alone save him.

Sakumo's hand found the White Fang purely on reflex. He'd killed men worse than Danzō and given them cleaner deaths than they deserved, but Azula raised her hand. He stopped since she apparently had other plans.

Kazuto, the civilian delegate, pressed himself against the wall with the expression of a man who'd just realized he was sharing a room with an avalanche.

A handful of clan heads who'd barely scraped Jōnin did the same. They'd have crawled behind Azula if the room's geometry allowed it. It didn't. They settled for staying very, very still.

Tsunade launched herself forward. Danzō, in the split second before the impact did the math.

Dodging may work, surviving the follow-up would not. But this punch could carry him through the wall, though the wall was outside, and outside meant a higher chance for survival.

He gritted his teeth, bracing for the impact. The moment he took it, the wall behind him ceased to exit

Tsunade wanted too punch someone. Danzō wanted to exist. It was love at first sight.

"It looks like the Hokage tower will need renovation," Azula mused, examining the new hole in her architecture. "Should I take it out of the hospital budget? She did cause the damage."

Then she shook her head at the bad precedent it'll cause. Shinobi who pulled their punches to avoid repairs bills were Shinobi who died. She'll have to send the invoice to the Hyūga instead, they could afford it.

'But I should limit the battlefield or they may cause real disaster.' She made the horse seal. Four seals around the mansion ignited yellow shooting around the sky.

Danzō staggering up from the bubble recognized them. A little bit past a decade, he and Hiruzen, Koharu, plus Hōmura had channeled their chakra into four points exactly like these, sealing a battlefield so that the enemy couldn't flee, known as the Four Violet Flames Formation.

'No,' He shoved the memory aside. 'If this barrier closes, I'm sealed in here.'

Without planning or even thinking, he ran. He threw himself towards the closing barrier with everything still working in his legs, Tsunade forgotten, consequences irrelevant.

She didn't chase him, knowing something he didn't: Azula could seal a battlefield faster than a terrified man could run.

The barrier sealed. Danzō's fist struck the yellow light and stopped dead. He stared at the barrier where his escape had been, and the barrier stared back, indifferent.

"Not going to even try, old man?" Tsunade's voice carried through the sealed barrier mockingly.

Danzō turned back. The faces beyond the barrier blurred together: Azula, Hiruzen, Hōmura, Tajima, Sakumo, ANBU, every significant power in the village watching him.

He knew the math. Even if Tsunade fell—and she wouldn't—Azula was behind her. Then Sakumo, Tajima, and a dozen of others who'd watched him scheme his way into this grave.

There was no past in this barrier for the next sunrise. There was only how long he lasted before the light went out.

But he hadn't accepted it nor could he.

"All my life," he said, and his voice held steady. "I gave everything to this village. I stayed awake so others could sleep and made the choice no one else would."

He looked at Tsunade, at the fist already curling. "Is this what I deserve?"

"For the village?" Tsunade repeated. She said it like the words tasted bad. "That's what I hate the most. The excuses and nobles justification. Who asked you? Who appointed you? You wanted power. That's all it ever was. The rest was window dressing for its own guilt."

"Come on, we don't have all day." She touched her forehead and the seal bloomed.

Black lines across her skin like ink dropped in clear water. The Strength of a Hundred Seal.

She'd burn her life to make sure Danzō lost years of what was left of his.

She'd given him the option: Surrender, then let her beat him to her heart's content, or fight, getting a chance to survive.

Danzō pulled a Kunai as an answer.

Tsunade came at him again but this time, she wasn't playing with the Strength of a Hundred Seal active, even if less violent than the Scarlet Beast Seal.

Azula watched the black lines across Tsunade's face and felt annoyed. The technique was effective, but it was a slow suicide due to the forced cells division.

Danzō didn't know what was the effect of Tsunade's seal, he didn't need to. A jutsu Tsunade saved for the killing blow is a jutsu you don't let touch you.

Tsunade was a brawler, he was a tactician. If he let her close the distance, the fight was over, he knows. And she knew that. The question was how long he could keep her away.

Tsunade was the first to attack, going airborne. That was Danzo's opening. A body in motion couldn't change direction easily, and Tsunade had committed fully to the charge. He got a shot.

"Wind Release: Vacuum Blade." He channeled wind into the kunai and let it fly. It was a good, precise and lethal technique. Against anyone else, it might have been enough.

The kunai caught her in the forearm and stopped there, the way a thumbtack stops a boot. The wound was already closing, flesh knitting together before the blood had time to drip.

He didn't have time to understand what he'd just seen.

His own attack had cost him the half-second he needed. Her fist came at him, and he twisted, and the punch passed close enough to move his hair.

He felt the wind of it in his throat. His body understood, before his brain did, that if it had landed he would not be standing anymore.

Then he faced a real crisis: she was standing inside his guard. She was close enough to hit him, and if she hit him, he died. It was that simple.

'Knee at my belly? A side left punch? Kick sweeping?' There were so many ways she could attack him next and he couldn't afford for any of them to land on him.

His body moved before his brain could stop it. Three steps back following his instinct, and It saved him.

Her fist hit the floor where he'd stood, and she used the planted hand as a pivot, her leg rising like a blade and descending like an execution. The axe kick missed him by the width of a breath. The floor where it landed shattered in a radius of several feet

Hisashi watched the floor crater and felt his heart beating faster. He'd been as strong as this in his prime using his full power punch, but not anymore. Not even close to the girl who was about to turn fifteen.

He'd been thinking about escape. About slipping out while Danzō held everyone's attention. He glanced toward Azula. She was already looking at him, smiling kind and patient.

He wasn't the only one shaken. Across the room, clan heads who'd lived through war were reevaluating their life choices.

'In the future,' one of the clan heads decided, 'I will never lose my temper at the hospital. Even if I'm ripped off. Even if the nurse disrespects me. Tsunade Senju will never have a reason to remember my name.'

They were sweating as they watched Danzō continue to dodge barely, but his luck would run out before the minute did. Everyone watching knew it.

"Wind Release: Spring Feet!" He disengaged, barely, and launched himself backward, desperate for distance. Tsunade should have followed. Closing the gap was her pattern, but she didn't follow.

"Water Release: Water Severing Wave!" She, who should follow him, still be physical, suddenly switched to Ninjutsu catching Danzō off guard.

The words hit him before the water did. She was forming a blade of compressed water, the same blade he'd watched Tobirama use to cut through armor and stone and men, and she was aiming it at his chest while he hung helpless in the air.

He didn't know if her version was as lethal as Tobirama's.

He was midair, two seconds from landing, and the water was already forming, already compressing, already becoming the blade that had ended so many lives before his. Two seconds was an eternity in combat. Two seconds was not enough time to do anything but watch.

His mind raced through every technique he knew. Wind Barrier? Too slow. Vacuum Sphere? The water would cut through it.

He had nothing that could neutralize it or block it. The penetrating effect would pierce his defenses. The slicing effect would finish what the penetration started.

When all else fails, drastic measures become necessary.

Years ago, when he'd first learned to control Wind Release, there had been accidents. The chakra would turn inward, the pressure building in his own chakra pathway until it threw his body like a ragdoll. He'd injured himself badly, more than once.

Now, with the Water Severing Wave bearing down on him and no technique left to block it, he did it on purpose.

The good news: he survived. The Water Severing Wave passed through the space where he'd been a half-second before.

The bad news: his right arm was no longer attached to his body. It floated in the air where the explosion had thrown it, a piece of him turning slowly, like something that had already stopped mattering.

He was still processing the image of his arm turning in the air when Tsunade closed the distance. There was no time to grieve, only her fist, already drawn back on its way.

The veins stood out along her arm, visible even through the black lines of the Strength of a Hundred Seal, muscles coiling like cables under tension.

For a moment, the audience understood, with perfect clarity, that they were about to watch a man die.

Danzō understood it too. His eyes found the fist. His mouth opened, but whatever he meant to say, the punch arrived first.

The punch took him in the chest. The upper right quadrant of his body, already missing an arm, simply ceased to exist.