Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
A seal-master was like a physicist, doctor, and chemist all in one. We had to deal with forces that stretched across all realms of reality to get results. A single storage seal was probably so complex that it would make the average physics phD in my head pull out their hair in frustration. It was not just that chakra magic that broke physics and made it possible for us to do the impossible. No, it was that people here were smarter. The things Uzume could do with Shuriken were only possible because her brain could understand angles in a way that no one could compete with. In my case, it was seals. Seals that spanned all the things that made reality reality. That was what it meant to be a seal master.
So when two seal masters worked together, there were few things awe could not accomplish. Now multiply that number by five. Ten seal masters. The full force of the Uzumaki Clan's elder fuinjutsu division stood and attempted the impossible. Hiriashin without a marker. Or rather hiriashin to a seal that was not a hiriashin marker.
"Kaito-san, flip the matrix here, I want to try something" Grandmother Mito said, stood at the centre of the chaos managing the nine of us like she was a conductor conducting an orchestra beyond all others. We were trying to do the impossible. No, not the impossible. I banished the word from my vocabulary. We weren't doing the impossible, just the very difficult. Hiriashin needed two markers. The first marker was me, or my chakra. The second marker was my designated seal. It also needed a third to balance things out, but that was irrelevant here. I was the first marker, and I could make the jump just fine. On the other hand, the second needed to be Tsunade. She didn't have a marker on her, but she had Mito's seal on her. That had to be enough. We would make it enough.
I tore apart the paper I was writing on and drew a different one. The math had to be perfect— immaculate. Nothing could go wrong, we couldn't afford it. And it didn't just need to be perfect. It needed to be fast. Tsunade's distress beacon had come in five minutes ago— going on six. Thirteen seconds until that, and it was not looking promising.
It had only taken Mito a minute to turn her seal into a status report that showed us her chakra levels, and some health stats. None of them looked encouraging. This was all my fault. How the fuck hadn't I thought about it. The Sannin survived Hanzo in canon, so why wouldn't they survive him here? I'd fucked it up. Somehow, someway, one of my actions had fucked things up for them.
I growled as the seal in front of me finally came together. "Locator matrix complete. Patching it now" I said, walking towards Mito's giant seal with my brush and inkwell. Training since before I could even walk meant writing the matrix in place only took a few seconds. The matrix was made up of about twenty-seven seals, and I was done before we'd gotten to the sixth minute since my arrival.
"Fuin" I said, pumping my chakra into the seal. The reading that showed Tsunade's health now had another line— her precise longitude and latitude.
"Next, we have to figure out how to get you there without a marker" Renjiro said, placing a toothpick in his mouth and staring at the seal matrixes before him.
"No. We've been thinking about it wrong. We don't need to get him there without a marker, all we need to focus on is how to get a marker there" Mito said suddenly.
"And how exactly would we do that?" I asked, leaning backwards to stare at my Grandmother. She had a car idea in mind, so I just needed to see what she had.
"Could we perhaps amend the seal on Tsunade's back from here? I've seen remote seal alteration work before. It was how we updated the defenses Uzu had at the bottom of the ocean" Souta said, the middle-aged man seated on the floor in the lotus position as he arranged seals all around his form. Ayane sat to his side, bringing the seal tags into existence. A wound from a Kumo shinobi had injured some of the nerves in his body so badly that he could no longer hold a brush so precisely as to make a seal. Instead, his twin sister, a seal mistress in her own right, had elected to become his hands. To bring forth the works he created in that brilliant mind of his.
"We'd need all the chakra in Konoha and then some to edit a seal at such a distance" I said, familiar with the procedure. A few of my tools had seas etched into their internals, and so I needed ways to change those seals without disassembling everything and starting all over again with my building.
"Why?" Renjiro asked.
"The distance, then add to that that the seal is on a living and conscious being who would most definitely fight the endeavor with all that she has. We have no way of telling her not to fight it" I explained, before turning to Mito. She had gone silent and was now etching something on a scroll in front of her.
"You told me about Kumo's heavenly transmission jutsu, Shori" She said. It was one of the things that had come up as we tried to come together to figure out the flying raijin. One thing I liked about Mito was that she never doubted my knowledge, and seemed to care even less how I had it. Where others would question and doubt, she accepted my words wholesale. It was a form of trust I hesitated to consider myself worthy of.
"And I told you it only works on non-living beings. Besides, this isn't the time to be figuring out a new jutsu" I pointed out.
"We send a Kunai with the marker, not you. And as for that, I have something I've been working on" She said with a brittle smile that I knew would have shone like the sun if not for the present situation.
"Show me" I found myself demanding instantly. It said something about the situation that her cane was not headed straight at my head for the tone I'd taken. I'd even cringed, expecting the hit from her, but she reacted like nothing had happened and fished out the seal she was working on. It was complex in the middling sort of way.
Like it was more complicated than a sealing tag or something, but less so than the hiriashin. It didn't involve dimensional travel. Not truly at least. Just travel at extreme speed. The only thing was that if something travelled at the speed she required here— close to light but not quite, then it would rip through everything between it and its target. That was the part she was yet to figure out, and it was just our luck that I had the perfect thing in mind.
"You see why it doesn't work?" She asked.
"I do"
"And you see how you can fix it?" She asked, but this was not really a question. No one knew me as well as Mito did, and she could probably tell from a single look at my face that I had an answer already.
"Frequency. Get the object vibrating at a different enough frequency, and it should just slip through everything on the way between here and Tsunade" I said.
"And you can do that?" Kaito looked doubtful.
"With her help, yes" I said, pointing straight at Himari. The seal mistress nodded in my direction. Being by far the best of us when it came to working with physical forces and concepts, she was practically born for this.
Between the both of us, it took about three minutes to ship a working fix to Mito's seal. It was not efficient, and it would guzzle chakra like nothing else, but those were secondary concerns.
"So we send the marker and I head off" I said, standing up from my position on the floor and grabbing what parts of my gear I could.
"Not alone" Mito said. "I'll come with you"
"Fat chance" I scoffed. If she thought I'd be taking her anywhere near an active war zone, then she must have lost more than a few screws since I'd last been home.
"She's injured. The readings show she's probably poisoned. Need I remind you of your track record for dealing with poisons?"
"Low blow" I said, my voice turning into a growl at the reminder of Choni's death.
"I'll go with him" Renjiro cut into our argument just as it began to boil.
"You said you'd never use that jutsu again" Himari cut in.
"Well. It's Tsu-chan in trouble, innit? I'll do what is necessary for family. Now can we get a move on it." He said, turning his head to the side, silently asking us to drop the subject. We did.
We weaved seals in unison, forcing the seal to activate— and through that seal, forcing space and time to bend to our will. The kunai, marked with my flying raijin seal, glowed a bright gold before disappearing at multiple times the speed of light, moving so quickly that we could not even begin to bother to trace it. It landed right where Tsunade's coordinates had been a second ago as she was moving at great speeds herself. I reached out to Renjiro, simultaneously marking him with my flying raijin and teleporting the both of us to the battlefield.
XXXXX- TSUNADE
Help is on the way, she told herself. Sure, they were all the way in the land of rain, but she believed in her family. Grandma Mito would find a way to do something, she thought. She'd gained a second wind of strength after the distress seal managed to click in place and begin working again. She felt the comforting weight between her shoulder blades, the seal pulsing as it transmitted her need for help back home.
Not just her need, she thought. Jiraiya had completely lost consciousness, slumped against Orochimaru's back, and the best she could do now was a consistent diagnosis on the both of them. The fact that they still lived brought no small amount of peace to her, even if with every second that passed, they got closer to changing that.
"I have to hold him off" She said the thought she'd been considering for a while now.
"You wouldn't last a second in your present state, Tsunade. Now shut up and keep running" Orochimaru snarled back in her direction.
"I'm a taijutsu specialist, Maru. Let me go hold him off so at least one of us can make it back with Jiraiya and tell Sensei about this monster".
"In that case, you should carry Jiraiya so I can go hold him off. We both know I'm more suited to fighting a losing battle than you are."
"Oh you sound so cute" neither of them flinched at the voice in their ears. One trick that Hanzo had used for a while now, throwing his voice with wind release to make himself seem closer than he was.
Except there was a disturbance in the air behind her. She chanced a glance backward, and nearly fell to the floor at seeing the man right behind her. She jumped forward, increasing her speed even further to make sure that she kept a good distance between them. It was no use though, he was just too quick. Orochimaru couldn't do anything to intervene. She felt him raise his kusarigama to strike.
Then there was a flash of golden light and there was something somewhere behind them. She never dared to look at it— she'd closed her eyes expecting the blow that would bring an end to her life, but all she felt was a shift in the air as something happened behind her.
She turned and came face to back with her cousin. Shori. He was still frozen in the motion of catching Hanzo's weapon mid-swing with a kunai.
"Who are you?"
"Your worst nightmare" she could hear the laughter in his voice, and that was her confirmation that it was truly him as he pushed against the older man's weapon, somehow managing to briefly overpower him before slamming a kick into his midsection and sending him flying backwards. The kicked body dissolved into water and the water reformed into Hanzo the Salamander standing a few metres away. She felt herself nearly fall to her knees with relief. Help. Finally. Shori could hold off Hanzo for long enough for them to go and get more reinforcements. He was at her level, she thought, so it was possible.
With her attention on her cousin, she did not notice the person who had appeared at the same time as Shorirama. Uncle Renjiro was at her side before she even noticed his presence.
"Uncle--" She started.
"Quiet Tsu-chan. Just bite" He said, forcing his wrist into her face. She was so tired that she slumped forward, her mouth closing around his wrist. She bit down, and felt chakra flow into her, defying her control. She wanted to take control of it, use it, shape it, but it rejected every attempt she made, instead following a will of its own. She would have panicked if it were anything apart from the man who had made multiple journeys to visit the village when she was a child and carried her on his back for many a time.
The chakra went into her body, soothing her bruises, her sprained and torn muscles, the minor cuts and abrasions she had sustained, and most importantly, the poison she had been forced to spend the vast amount of her reserves mitigating.
"How?" She asked, as she stood back up, feeling almost completely refreshed. In contrast, uncle Renjiro looked like he had aged a decade.
"Healing you Senjus is always more draining than should be" He grunted in lieu of a proper answer, and she took the silent request not to mention it to heart.
"Can you—" She said, wordlessly gesturing to her teammates where they had fallen over. Orochimaru had tried to turn in her defence when Hanzo arrived, but the turn had been too sudden for his tired form, and both he and Jiraiya had gone sprawling across the ground.
"No. Only you" He said in that tone of his that brokered no argument.
"Fine then" She said. It didn't matter, either way. They were both still alive, and she knew those bodies just as well as she knew hers. If there was breath in them, then she could heal anything. She brought her thumb to her mouth to draw blood before she began to weave seals. She pledged a good half of her reserves to summon Katsuyu in an echo of her full glory, large enough to shade most of their immediate surroundings— if there had been any sun to shade them from, at least.
Lady Katsuyu acknowledged her summoning with a grunt, moving over, so the bulk of her form covered both Jiraiya and orochimaru's bodies. In many ways, Lady Katsuyu was the perfect summon for someone like Tsunade. Contrary to what her teammates might have thought, Katsuyu was not a natural healer. What she was, was a being perfect for channeling and amplifying chakra channelled through her. That was why she only needed to place a hand against the Slug's bulk to use a diagnostic jutsu to check both their states. They were both alive— Jiraiya was facing, and he was fading fast. While Orochimaru was a victim of Chaka exhaustion as well as a mild vase of poisoning. Poisoning was something the three of them shared, but Jiraiya's case was worse. Much worse. His internal organs had begun to quit on him— scratch that— his heart was the only one still functioning, and even that was a close thing.
He had been only minutes away from fading. The only thing that had even let him last so long was that, unlike Tsunade and Orochimaru, his reserves had been relatively full. Full when compared to the chakra exhaustion the both of them had been fighting at least. And then there was Tsunade's earlier efforts, which had slowed down the deterioration of his condition. A thousand things had come together to allow Jiraiya to survive this day, and it was all she could do not to weep in joy as she felt his body begin to respond to the healing chakra she pumped into Katsuyu's body.
XXXXXX- UZUME UCHIHA
Fresh reinforcements or not, this new set of Kumo shinobi were doing little to challenge her as she cut through their ranks like a hot knife through butter. A bold fellow stepped in her direction and died a second later, her fingers reaching out to crush his windpipe with chakra enhanced strength, while her other hand buried a kunai to the hilt through his left eye socket and into his brain. She channelled lightning natured chakra into the hand holding the kunai and used it to catch the lightning jutsu sent in her direction before flexing her chakra and sending it back with double the power.
On the opposite end, she could see Sensei doing much the same. The only problem was that they were still losing the fight. She and Sensei were powerful shinobi, but there were still only two of them, and the Kumo numbers were in the hundreds. Their comrades were dying in droves, caught with their pants down by the sudden arrival of this new battle group.
The Raikage had taken their plan and turned it on its head. A new battlegroup straight from Kumo hadn't been in anyone's projections for what would happen next. There was a clap of thunder, and she turned her head to see the outcome she had known was inevitable the second the Hokage had asked her and Sakumo to leave. It was the right decision, she knew. The only thing that had a chance of keeping their force alive. The bloody swathes both she and Sakumo had cut into the Kumo offensive had kept them from crushing the Konoha detachment with the force of their numbers. Still, it had not been without a price.
The Raikage remained stationary, standing with his arm outstretched and the Hokage could be seen nearly two dozen feet away. There was a scar along the earth itself dug into the distance that separated them. Half the right side of the Hokage's chest was just gone. A fatal wound if she'd ever seen one.
"Uzume" She heard her name shouted above the chaos, and her head snapped to Sensei's.
He body flickered between the Kage.
"Sound the retreat. Get the Hokage out of here. Run. Don't stop until you're in Konoha" He said, and she watched with her sharingan as two more of the gates that controlled the body's flow of chakra snapped open. That made four. Where did Sensei even learn to do that? She stared at the battle, frozen as she tried to make a choice.
A/N: And that's the chapter. How's things going for Konoha? Not good. Not good at all. A loss in Frost, and. devastation in Ame. Next three up on patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.