A second of total disbelief seized everyone as a gigantic, smoking hole appeared in the stadium wall. Dust and debris rained down on the lower seats.
The panic took a moment to ignite, but when it did, it spread uncontrollably fast. A single scream was followed by thousands, a roar of fear that replaced the cheers.
"What the hell was that?!" Kiba shouted, setting Akamaru on the ground as the dog growled toward the hole.
"An attack!" Ino shrieked.
"This wasn't on the schedule," Shikamaru said, now wide awake and on his feet, his expression serious for the first time all day. "This is bad. Very bad."
In the center of the destruction, a figure stood with a calm that didn't fit the scene. Naruto's group did not share the rest of the crowd's surprise.
"It's started," Sakura said, her voice firm.
"Lady Tsunade isn't wasting any time," Hinata confirmed, her eyes fixed on the silhouette outlined against the smoke.
In the Kage box, the chaos was of a different kind. The Kazekage's polite smile shattered. The mask of Rasa, the serene leader, disintegrated, revealing the pure, ice cold fury of Orochimaru. An aura of malice so palpable that the feudal lords seated nearby gasped, clutching their chests as if the air had turned to poison.
"Lord Kazekage," a dignitary stammered, his face completely pale as he shrank back in his seat. "What... what is happening? Is this an assassination attempt?"
Orochimaru didn't spare him a glance. His mind was racing, processing the catastrophe. The mass genjutsu, the signal to begin, was never activated. Kabuto, his key piece, had been neutralized before he could make a single move. His elite forces outside, meant to secure the exits and sow panic, were being contained. And Tsunade, the woman he had written off as a relic he thought was drowning in sake, had just demolished the first phase of his plan with a single blow.
I underestimated her, he thought, a tremor of rage running through his being. She knew. Somehow, she knew everything.
His attention was split between the woman who had shattered his plans and his former master, who remained seated beside him, impassive, watching him with a deeply wounding disappointment.
Stealth was dead. Subtlety was a memory. Only brute force remained.
His hand, hidden in the sleeve of the Kage's robe, moved. A quick, almost imperceptible gesture, a series of hand signs that only four people in the entire stadium were trained to recognize. Forget the plan! Forget stealth! Raise the barrier NOW!
On the roof of the main pavilion, four figures in ANBU masks tensed. The order had arrived. There was no hesitation. Their bodies dissolved into a blur, leaping toward the four corners of the roof to initiate the Four Violet Flames Battle Formation.
But they weren't the only ones who moved.
From the smoking hole in the stands, Tsunade saw them. Her eyes caught the coordinated movement. The first domino had fallen, but the game wasn't over.
"NOT SO FAST!" she roared.
Her voice, amplified with chakra, boomed through the stadium, a thunderclap that silenced the growing panic. Every eye, from the genin in the arena to the dignitaries in the boxes, turned to her.
She focused an insane amount of chakra into the soles of her feet. The concrete beneath her shattered, forming a crater. And then, she jumped.
Her body became a green and beige projectile that shot through the air, soaring over the heads of thousands of spectators who watched with open mouths.
"Grandma Tsunade is awesome!" Naruto yelled, unable to contain himself.
"Don't call her that, you idiot," Sakura whispered to him, though a smile of admiration touched her face. "But yeah, she is."
Tsunade landed in the center of the roof with a thunderous BOOM! that shook the entire structure. Tiles exploded around her. She planted herself right in the middle, an insurmountable obstacle in the path of the four Sound ninja.
They stopped short, their tense bodies betraying their absolute shock.
"Impossible!" Jirobo, the bulkiest of the group, squawked. "Where the hell did this woman come from?"
"It doesn't matter where she came from," hissed Tayuya, the only woman in the quartet, her flute already in her hand. "She's an obstacle. And obstacles get eliminated. Lord Orochimaru's orders."
Tsunade stood up slowly, dusting off her shoulders with insulting indifference. A dangerous smile, that of a predator that has just cornered its prey, formed on her lips.
"Sorry, kids. Recess is over," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "And this roof is closed for a private party. You're not invited."
The Sound Four, Orochimaru's elite personal guard, exchanged a look. The order to raise the barrier was absolute, but the threat before them was immediate and, judging by her entrance, incredibly powerful.
"We don't have time for this," spat Sakon, the two headed one. "Let's finish her quickly!"
"Who do you think you are, old woman?" Tayuya shouted, bringing the demonic flute to her lips. "We'll teach you not to stick your nose where it doesn't belong!"
A discordant, unnatural melody filled the air. A sound based genjutsu designed to trap the victim's mind in a nightmare, an illusion where limbs would melt and bones would turn to dust. Most shinobi would have collapsed instantly, screaming from a pain that wasn't real.
Tsunade didn't even blink. In fact, she looked bored. She let a pulse of her own dense, overwhelming chakra surge from within her. The illusory energy trying to invade her mind slammed against that invisible wall and disintegrated.
"Seriously?" she scoffed, tilting her head. "A flute? How original. Are you going to play a sad song at my funeral?"
Tayuya's face twisted in fury. "Damn it! No one's ever resisted my Demonic Melody like that!"
"Maybe you're just not very good," Tsunade replied.
Before Tayuya could hurl another insult, Kidomaru, the six armed member, acted from the other side. He took a deep breath and then spat out a volley of sticky, golden webs. The nets expanded in the air, hardening on contact with oxygen until they became extremely resistant and sharp.
"Try getting out of this!" he yelled, confident in his technique. "My Golden Spider Web can stop an entire army! Don't even bother struggling!"
The webs closed in on Tsunade, ready to immobilize and slice her to pieces. She didn't even try to dodge. She watched them approach with a nerve wracking calm. Just as they were about to envelop her, she raised her hands.
Her fingers closed around the threads of steel and chakra. For an instant, it looked like they had her.
"Got you," Kidomaru smirked.
"You think so?" Tsunade replied, her voice showing no hint of effort.
And then, she pulled.
The threads, tougher than steel, tensed to their limit. A high pitched metallic groan was heard, and then, with a series of sharp SNAPS!, they broke. She tore them with shocking ease, and the golden tatters fell harmlessly at her feet.
"Steel, you said," she commented, examining her fingers with fake interest. "Felt more like cheap thread."
Kidomaru's confidence evaporated. His six eyes widened. "It can't be! No one... no one has ever broken my webs!"
"There's a first time for everything," Tsunade said with a cruel smile.
Seeing that long range tactics were useless, Sakon and Ukon lunged forward. They moved with unnatural speed and coordination, a whirlwind of kicks and punches coming from two angles at once.
"Game's over, old woman!" Sakon shouted.
"Let's see if you can keep up with two at once!" Ukon added, partially emerging from his brother's back to throw an extra punch.
But they were facing a legend. Tsunade's combat experience was vastly superior to theirs. She didn't need to predict their moves; she read them in the tension of their muscles, in the angle of their feet. She ducked under a high kick from Sakon and, without even fully straightening up, pivoted, channeling a precise and lethal amount of chakra into her elbow. She drove it straight into Sakon's knee.
A sickening, wet crunch echoed across the roof, audible over the wind.
Sakon howled, a sharp cry of pure pain as his leg bent at an impossible angle. He collapsed to the ground, clutching his shattered knee, his face a mask of agony.
"Sakon!" Ukon screamed, emerging completely from his brother's back with a kunai in hand, driven by rage. He tried to stab her from behind.
Tsunade's free hand shot out with blinding speed and clamped down on his wrist. She simply twisted it. A quick, sharp, and biomechanically impossible movement.
Another crunch, this one sharper, followed by another scream that joined his brother's.
"One at a time, or two," Tsunade said in an icy voice, letting go of Ukon's broken wrist. He fell to the ground next to his twin, groaning. "It really makes no difference to me."
"DAMN YOU!" Jirobo roared, watching his comrades fall one after another. Desperation took hold of him. He was no longer thinking about the barrier, only about survival. "You and your stupid brute force! I'll bury you!"
He slammed both hands on the roof, channeling all the chakra he could muster into one last, desperate attempt.
"Earth Style: Earth Dome Prison!"
The tiles around him shattered. The rock and concrete of the roof rose up, forming a massive, thick, chakra reinforced dome that surged up and closed over Tsunade, trapping her inside in total darkness.
"I've got her!" Jirobo shouted, sweating and panting from the effort. He leaned on his knees, looking at his creation with a mix of triumph and relief. "No one can escape my prison! It's reinforced to withstand anything! I'll crush her!"
Tayuya, having recovered from the initial humiliation, limped over, flute in hand. "Are you sure, you fat idiot? This woman isn't normal."
"Of course I'm sure!" Jirobo shot back. "I can feel her inside! Now, I just have to squeeze and..."
A calm voice with no hint of panic resonated from inside the rock dome, muffled but perfectly clear. "Nice try. It really is. I'll give it a six out of ten for effort."
A tense silence fell over the roof. Jirobo and Tayuya looked at each other, fear beginning to replace their relief. A faint glow of brilliant green chakra began to seep through the microfractures in the rock.
"But," Tsunade's voice continued, with a tone that promised imminent destruction, "you're lacking power."
With a single punch from the inside, the earth dome exploded.
The shockwave was so brutal that the air itself seemed to bend. A storm of rock and debris shot out in all directions. The blast launched Jirobo and Tayuya through the air, sending them spinning uncontrollably before they crashed violently against the edges of the roof with the sound of breaking bones.
Tsunade landed softly amid the dome's rubble, without a single scratch, not a drop of sweat on her brow. Her opponents lay unconscious and broken in the corners of the roof. In less than three minutes, Orochimaru's elite guard had been neutralized.
"Elite guard," she muttered to herself with a note of contempt. "Orochimaru, you're getting soft."
From the box, Orochimaru and Hiruzen had watched the one sided slaughter in silence. Orochimaru's body, still disguised as the Kazekage, trembled uncontrollably. It wasn't fear. It was a fury so deep, so absolute, it threatened to consume him. Every piece of his plan. Every strategy. All swept from the board by her.
In that moment, he dropped all pretense. The show was over.
Slowly, he turned to his former master. Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at him with a deep, bitter disappointment that Orochimaru found more insulting than any threat.
"So it was you, Orochimaru," the Third Hokage said, his voice a tired but firm whisper, heavy with the weight of betrayal. "I always knew this day would come."
The Kazekage's face seemed to melt. Rasa's features contorted and shifted, transforming into the pale, serpentine face of Orochimaru. His voice, when he spoke, was no longer that of the Sand's leader, but his own venomous, sibilant hiss.
"You'll pay for this, sensei," he hissed, his eyes glowing with a naked hatred that had been brewing for decades. "You'll pay for underestimating me. You and your whole pathetic, sentimental village will burn to the ground!"
With a wave of his hand, Orochimaru gave the final signal. At that moment, Sound and Sand ninja began leaping from the stands, starting the open invasion.
Orochimaru's goal was simple: create as much chaos as possible to cover his own arrival on the roof, where the real battle, the one he had craved for years, was about to begin.
Hiruzen Sarutobi did not flinch. His face, lined with the wrinkles of a long life, remained completely serene in the face of the coming storm.
"ANBU!" he ordered, his voice unwavering. "Protect the Feudal Lord! Evacuate the dignitaries! Initiate the village defense protocol!"
"Lord Hokage, you must retreat to a safe location!" one of his personal guards shouted, stepping between him and the edge of the box.
"That is my battle," Hiruzen replied calmly, his eyes never leaving Orochimaru, who was already moving nimbly through the chaos he had created, heading for the rooftop. "It is my responsibility."
As his personal guards sprang into action to control the situation, Hiruzen took a step toward the edge of the shattered box. His eyes met Orochimaru's one last time across the distance. Nothing more was said. It wasn't necessary. Everything left to say would be said with fire and steel.
Without hesitation, the Third Hokage leaped toward the roof, his Kage robes billowing behind him, ready to face the student he once loved.