Old Man Murasake's jaw hadn't dropped this low since, well… ever. He stared, dumbfounded, as the tailed beast ball's apocalyptic afterglow painted the sky.
A dry, wheezing whisper escaped him. "In all my years… I've only seen one thing more unbelievable: Madara and Hashirama going all out."
He blinked, the reality snapping into place with almost audible clarity. This war they'd all been sweating about? Over. Done. Finito.
He couldn't conjure a single scenario where someone—anyone—took down Mito in her current state. Her chakra… it wasn't just vast, like the First Hokage's boundless forest.
No, hers was sharp and only spoke destruction. He'd bet his last ryo that if the four other Kage showed up for a group scolding, they'd leave as four very distinguished stains on the landscape.
Speaking of fighting multiple Kage… his eyes slid to Azula. The girl wore an expression of serene, 'I-told-you-so' vindication. Understanding where the arrogance came from. Can't blame her.
He wasn't alone. Tajima, for instance, was currently re-evaluating every life choice that had led him here.
First, Mito's Kyubi had donned what looked suspiciously like a Susanoo's dress. Now this? The initial shockwave alone felt like the planet itself had sneezed.
He was one more surprise away from retiring to a nice, quiet farm upstate where the only chakra was in the fertilizer.
Azula, for her part, felt a twinge of professional regret.
She really should have challenged the thousands of ninjas before Mito started her show. With that level of firepower, the real question wasn't 'how to finish the survivors' but 'is there even going to be enough left of the opposition to bury?'
This wasn't like those sanitized anime battles where everyone walks away sooty but smiling. This was the real deal—tailed beast balls were less 'attack' and more 'targeted geographical regret.'
The resulting tsunami, a mountain of furious water set to swallow Uzushiogakure whole, was casually dismissed with a few bored flicks of Kurama's tails. Mito might as well have been shooing a fly.
"I…" Tsunade breathed, stars practically visible in her wide eyes. "I never knew Grandma could be this… awesome."
Azula's smile was all feline satisfaction.
"She is my master. I don't settle for tutors who can't casually redefine 'overkill.'" Her tone dipped into nostalgic narcissism.
It reminded her of when she was five. The Third Hokage himself had tried to recruit her. She couldn't help but imagine: she, plus Tsunade, plus Orochimaru and Jiraiya?
His legacy would have been airtight. 'Strongest Hokage?' People would just point at his students and say, 'Case closed.'"
Their conversation was usually a private bubble of arrogance and awe, but today, Tajima decided to pop it. His voice was as dry as sun-bleached parchment.
"She is objectively the most powerful being in Konoha at this moment." Internally, he was sending a fervent thank-you note to the universe.
The fact that Azula had snagged Mito as a mentor purely because the woman showed up to a store opening was the political miracle of the century. Otherwise, with Mito backing Tsunade, Azula's Hokage ambitions would be deader than last week's leftovers.
Not that he doubted his daughter. Oh, no. He was certain she'd one day eclipse even Madara—she just needed time, and maybe, with his eyes, the moment she awakened the Mangekyou, she'd be set for the Eternal one, which was exactly what Madara had.
But for now? For now, it was perfection. Azula had Mito's support. Any "competition" with Tsunade would be a friendly, non-lethal spar between cousins, not a clan-shattering civil war.
He allowed himself a minute, almost imperceptible sigh of relief.
Tajima breathed a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, somewhere beneath the surface of the ocean, a certain Mizukage was doing the exact opposite.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen. He'd arrived buzzing with the glorious anticipation of vengeance, a hero in his own mind. Now?
Now he was a waterlogged, bruised, and breathless wreck, thinking only of survival.
Sure, he'd technically survived a tailed beast bomb. In the same way a napkin survives a hurricane—tattered, soggy, and utterly useless.
The shockwave alone had rattled his ninjutsu-specialist bones like dice in a cup. He was one deep breath (which he couldn't take) away from seeing stars.
And the worst part? Even buried under a small mountain of seawater, he could feel them. Five distinct, terrifyingly sharp presences locked onto him.
Did he think he could sneak past Azula, Mito, Tsunade, and two Uzumakis? This was like trying to hide a sneeze in a library from the world's top ten sensory ninjas.
In a panic, he'd slapped up an all-around chakra water shield before plunging deep. The bijuudama had promptly shattered it like cheap glass.
He'd managed a second one, but now he was running on empty—and, more critically, out of air. Normally, holding his breath for a few hours was a party trick.
But now? Maintaining a high-level ninjutsu while cycling chakra and bleeding internally? He was less a Kage and more a leaky, sinking submarine.
"Mizukage" A sing-song, utterly frivolous voice echoed directly in his skull. "Come out, come out, wherever you are! My, you do love to play in the bath, don't you?"
Mizura's heart, already working overtime, tried to escape his ribcage.
It was Azula, of course, messing with his mind—a cruel application of her Yin chakra that made the Yamanaka clan's techniques look like two cans and a string.
She'd lost interest in the annihilated fleet the moment her father had charged in early, too excited to wait for Mito's second bijuudama.
Boring. Now, her full, amused attention was on the Mizukage playing turtle at the bottom of the sea.
"Oh no you don't, Azula! No cutting in line!" Tsunade's voice cut through, brimming with competitive glee. "I need to finish my earliest fight with him. My peace wouldn't feel like peace without punching him a few times."
Deep below, Mizura felt a white-hot flash of undiluted outrage that momentarily overpowered his dizziness.
Him? A Kage of a dignified Kiri? A pinnacle of the shinobi world? Reduced to a prize two teenagers were bickering over like the last slice of cake?! When had he become a casual sparring match nobody took seriously?!
The answer, it seemed, was approximately five minutes ago.
Mizura let out a sigh that bubbled uselessly into the water around him. Well, this is a profoundly damp and inconvenient place to die.
The logical part of his brain, the part not currently screaming about oxygen, presented the facts: every second underwater burned chakra.
And it wasn't as if his welcoming party upstairs couldn't join him for a swim.
Tsunade was notoriously good with Water Release, and Mito… Mito would probably have made the water itself spite him.
So, death was inevitable.
But here was the twist: as the Mizukage, he couldn't just lurk in the shallows like a gloomy koi fish, waiting for the end. The title wasn't a participation trophy.
It was a thing you carved from the flesh of your rivals in Kirigakure, a village where "employee of the month" meant "last one standing."
He'd seen the village founded. For a clanless nobody like him, it was just a slightly safer place to be paranoid.
Loyalty? Please. He'd have traded the whole misty island for a good cup of sake and a longer lifespan.
Yet now, facing odds he generously estimated at "less than winning a coin toss against a mind-reader," his life chose this moment to flash before his eyes. It was mostly a blur of dampness and betrayal.
Aha, he thought, a bizarre chuckle echoing in his mind. So this is the feeling.
No wonder the Second Mizukage, who was usually a violent, arrogant bastard, was such a dramatic bastard before he croaked. The clarity of imminent doom is annoyingly profound.
With the grace of a man who had decided to stop napping in his own watery coffin, Mizura surfaced.
Surprisingly, he was not immediately vaporized. A small mercy.
He took in the scene.
His mighty armada of 175 warships—each a floating fortress for over fifty ninjas—was no longer mighty. It was a picturesque field of splinters, kindling, and very expensive scrap metal.
Of his ten thousand shinobi, maybe fifty clung to wreckage, their eyes wide with the vacant horror of those who'd seen a goddess of war descend from the heavens.
And then Tajima Uchiha, moving with the brisk efficiency of a gardener pulling weeds, was methodically culling the "sober" ones. Within a minute, the survivors joined the deceased. Neat.
"How do you like the view, Great Mizukage?" a voice, slick with mocking syrup, cut through the silence.
Azula had noted his emergence, and the shift in his demeanor reminded her of her own less-shiny past. Not that she'd ever been this short-sighted.
Mizura ignored the jab, but his eyes were drawn to her. Then to Tsunade, who looked like she was deciding which of his bones to break first. Then to Mito, still glowing with the serene, terrifying power of a contained sun. And finally to the Uzumaki Patriarch, who seemed mildly disappointed the fight was already over.
A wry, utterly resigned smile touched his lips.
"Regret?" Mizura echoed, his voice rough. "It would be a lie to say I don't. My village will be paying for this... strategic oversight for years. But what's done is done."
He straightened his soggy Kage robes, a pathetic attempt at dignity. "Death is a commonplace thing. I never feared it. Anyone who claws their way to this level knows it's just a matter of timing. A final appointment we all keep."
Azula's eyebrow twitched. Philosophical claptrap. Nonsense, she thought.
Why die when you can ascend to godhood and snack on chakra fruit for eternity? But she held her tongue.
In her experience, Kage on death's doorstep loved a grand, pretentious soliloquy. It was, she thought, probably in the job description right after "village-destroying decisions" and "dramatic cloak fluttering."
(END OF THE CHAPTER
Sigh, I promised two chapters yesterday but not even one, I feel ashamed to face you