"Anko, tactical report! Now! Weak points!"
Ibiki Morino's voice echoed, a command of pure authority trying to impose order amidst the chaos. The abomination's roar nearly swallowed his words. The creature was still forcing its way into this world as the clearing's ground trembled nonstop. The oldest, sturdiest trees split and fell as if they were nothing more than dry branches.
Finally, the thing revealed itself completely. It wasn't a snake, but a twisted, grotesque version of one. It had a central torso, a mass of muscle and deformed scales the size of a small hill, anchored to the ground by tentacles that dug into the earth. From the top of that mass sprouted a dozen snake heads, each a different size, connected to the body by long, winding necks. They writhed, hissed, and roared at once, their milky, pupil-less eyes showing a primitive hunger.
Anko Mitarashi dodged one of the smaller heads just in time. It slammed into the ground where she had been a second before, leaving a smoking crater. She landed nimbly on a thick branch, her face pale.
"It doesn't have one, Ibiki!" she yelled, her voice tense with effort and a panic she fought to contain. "It's not a living being, it's just a mass of chaotic chakra! That idiot forced the summoning without a proper sacrifice! The flesh regenerates almost instantly! Normal attacks do nothing to it!"
"Instant regeneration? Dammit," Ibiki muttered to himself, analyzing the situation. If they couldn't destroy it, there was only one option left. "Then we'll immobilize it! We can't let this thing reach the village!"
"And how do you plan to do that?" Anko asked, jumping to another branch to avoid a sweeping tentacle. "We'd need the strength of an army to stop this thing!"
"We don't have an army, we only have each other! Trust me!" Ibiki retorted.
It was the only option. They couldn't kill it, but maybe, just maybe, they could contain it until reinforcements arrived.
Their coordination was immediate. Ibiki moved along the edge of the clearing with dizzying speed, launching kunai with spools of ninja steel wire attached. The wires tangled around the most solid remaining trees, weaving a web of traps in seconds.
"Anko, now! I need you to get its attention!" Ibiki shouted over the din. "Lure it to the west!"
Anko didn't need to be told twice. She leaped from her branch, landing with a heavy thud directly in the central head's field of vision, the largest of them all.
"Hey, you ugly pile of sushi!" she provoked, a wild grin on her face that didn't reflect the fear in her eyes. "Over here, you bastard!"
All twelve heads turned toward her in unison. The combined sound of their hissing was enough to make bones vibrate. The main head lunged forward with overwhelming speed. Anko ran, dodging and jumping through the debris, guiding the beast straight into Ibiki's trap. At the last second, she dove to the ground and rolled to safety, just as the serpent's head crashed into the net of wires.
The steel cables, reinforced with Ibiki's chakra, strained to their breaking point, vibrating with incredible tension. For a moment, they held. The beast's head was trapped, roaring in frustration.
"Perfect! My turn!" Anko shouted, getting to her feet and seizing the opening.
She wove a quick sequence of hand seals. "Summoning Jutsu: Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!"
Dozens of dark purple snakes erupted from her sleeves. But this time they weren't the small, paralyzing vipers. They were large, as thick as her arm, and a black venom that smoked on contact with the air dripped from their fangs. They launched themselves at the trapped neck of the abomination, sinking their teeth into the pulsating flesh.
The monster let out a roar of pain that made Ibiki's ears bleed. Anko's venom, one of the most potent in Konoha, began to take effect. The flesh around the bites blackened and started to dissolve, releasing a terribly smelling smoke.
"It's working!" Anko shouted, a spark of hope in her voice.
But the hope died as quickly as it had appeared.
With a guttural, wet sound, the blackened flesh began to bubble. New, pink, healthy flesh grew from underneath, pushing the rotten matter out. In a matter of seconds, the wounds had closed completely. But something worse happened: the beast's flesh seemed to absorb Anko's snakes. They sank into its body, their forms writhing beneath the surface before disappearing completely. The creature had eaten her jutsu.
"Impossible! It swallowed it!" Anko gasped, taking an instinctive step back.
Enraged, the beast pulled at its trapped head with renewed strength. The steel wires, which had withstood the initial impact, could not handle the sustained, regenerated force. With a sharp, metallic sound, the cables snapped one after another.
The abomination was free. And now, it was furious.
It launched an all out attack on everything around it. The twelve heads moved in unison, sweeping across the clearing in an arc of absolute destruction. The few trees that had survived the summoning were uprooted and thrown through the air. The ground was plowed, and car sized boulders were pulverized.
"Get down!" Ibiki yelled, but it was too late.
Anko and Ibiki had nowhere to run. The shockwave of pure brute force hit them. They were thrown into the air, their bodies battered by debris and dirt. They slammed with brutal violence against the rock wall at the edge of the clearing. The dull sound of breaking bones was drowned out by the beast's roar.
They fell to the ground in a heap of broken limbs. Ibiki coughed, and a spray of blood stained the ground in front of him. One of his legs was bent at an unnatural angle. Beside him, Anko tried to get up, but a sharp pain in her side made her cry out and fall back down. She had several broken ribs, and the way she was breathing told her a lung was probably punctured.
They were injured, nearly out of chakra, and completely exhausted.
Slowly, the abomination turned its massive body toward them. It loomed over the two elite ninja, its multiple heads blocking the daylight, covering them in its shadow. The main head, its mouth open and dripping a fluid that sizzled as it hit the ground, descended slowly, as if savoring the moment.
With a final effort, Ibiki dragged himself next to Anko. They said nothing. They just looked at each other. There was no fear in their eyes, only the grim, quiet acceptance of two veterans who had reached the end. They had fought. They had done everything they could. And they had lost.
"Well," Ibiki rasped, a bloody half smile on his face. "At least it wasn't boring."
Anko let out a choked laugh that turned into a painful cough. "Speak for yourself. I was having a terrible time."
Just as the creature's main head lunged at them for the final blow, a colossal shadow eclipsed everything.
A sudden darkness covered the clearing. The air filled with the sound of wind, as if a gigantic object was falling at high speed. Anko and Ibiki, in their daze, could only look up.
A massive object was falling from the sky with the force of a meteor, crashing directly onto the beast.
KRA-KOOM!!
The impact shook the area. The earth rose in a shockwave that tore out the last remaining trees. The snake abomination let out a high pitched shriek of surprise and pain as an immense weight fell on its back, crushing several of its smaller heads and pinning it to the ground.
The object that had fallen was Gamabunta, Chief Toad of Mount Myōboku. He was immense, his red, gnarled skin was incredibly tough, and his fierce yellow eyes were the size of boulders. On his back, he carried a gigantic tanto he had already drawn. The blade, of a colossal size, was stabbed deep into the nape of the monster's main head, immobilizing it.
And on top of Gamabunta's head, silhouetted against the light, a figure struck a dramatic kabuki pose, one arm outstretched and the other on his hip. He had a long mane of white hair and two red lines of paint running from his eyes to his chin.
"Evil thrives when good men do nothing! But fear not, evildoers, for your time has come!" he declaimed, his voice booming in the suddenly silent clearing. "The gallant sage of Mount Myōboku, the peerless free spirit, protector of beautiful ladies, the great Jiraiya has arrived to deliver justice and punish ugly monsters!"
The silence that followed his grand entrance was broken by a deep, gravelly voice that sounded perpetually irritated.
"Jiraiya," Gamabunta growled without moving his head. "Can you stop fooling around and focus? This thing is sticky and it's trying to bite my ass."
Jiraiya laughed, breaking the pose. With an agile leap, he landed on the ground next to a completely stunned Ibiki and an Anko who was smiling through a mixture of relief and pain.
"Well, well. Looks like you two got into quite a mess," Jiraiya said, his tone turning a bit more serious as he assessed their injuries. "Don't move. I've seen worse. A couple of broken bones are nothing." He knelt beside Anko. "Can you talk?"
Anko coughed, a spasm of pain shooting through her body. "Yeah… I think so. Thanks for the help, Lord Jiraiya."
"Don't mention it," he said, standing up and looking at the creature writhing under Gamabunta. "Where's Tsunade? Don't tell me she's missing all the fun!"
"She's… busy," Anko gasped. "On the stadium roof. With my former… and disgusting master."
Jiraiya's smile vanished completely. "Orochimaru."
So it was true. He had been following Orochimaru's trail for weeks. When he saw the smoke rising from the stadium during the exams, his worst fears were confirmed. The chaos had drawn him in, but the mention of Orochimaru fighting personally on the roof, probably against the Sensei… and now Tsunade too… The situation was far more serious than he had imagined.
Several miles away, that same Tsunade was moving at incredible speed.
She was in the air, leaping from rooftop to rooftop at a speed that turned the village landscape into a blur. The wind whipped her hair and her green jacket. To her, the world was a succession of chaotic images seen with urgency. The distant screams of civilians. A burst of lightning chakra to her left, near the academy. And the battle on the roof she had left behind. Hiruzen.
"Dammit, Hiruzen!" she thought, pushing herself harder. "You'd better still be alive when I get back, you stubborn old man! Don't you dare make me come back just to die in front of me! I have to end this fast! Very fast!"
Her frustration and fear became fuel. Each leap was longer, each landing harder. Finally, she reached the edge of the village. With one last massive jump, she crossed the outer wall and landed at the border of the forest.
The impact was devastating. The earth cracked in a spiderweb pattern beneath her feet. She looked up and took in the scene in an instant.
She saw the beast, struggling and writhing under Gamabunta's weight. She saw the giant toad, straining to keep the creature pinned. And she saw Jiraiya, standing next to Anko and Ibiki, a look of grim concentration on his face.
She didn't waste a second. There was no shout of greeting, no pause to assess. Only action.
She bit her right thumb, hard. Blood welled up, dark and thick. With a blinding speed that even Jiraiya could barely follow, her hands flew through the summoning hand seals: Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram.
And then, she slammed her bloody palm on the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
A massive, complex seal spread out from her hand, covering a vast area of the clearing. A cloud of thick, white smoke exploded upward. It enveloped the entire battlefield, hiding friend and foe alike.
When the smoke began to clear, it wasn't with a gust, but with a gentle calm. And in the center, where Tsunade had struck the ground, a new presence dominated the landscape. Colossal, white, and shining in the light, was Katsuyu, the Slug Queen of Shikkotsu Forest. Her body had no definite shape but was a soft, undulating mass, and her two antennae moved with a delicate grace. Her presence wasn't intimidating like Gamabunta's; it was strangely calming, a stark contrast to the chaos surrounding her.
"Lady Tsunade, you have summoned me," Katsuyu said, her voice not a roar, but a soft, formal whisper that was nevertheless heard with perfect clarity throughout the clearing. "The situation appears… problematic."
Jiraiya turned at the familiar voice. A genuine, immense smile filled with almost overwhelming relief spread across his face. The tension in his shoulders, the one he'd been carrying since he saw the smoke, seemed to vanish.
"TSUNADE!" he yelled, his voice ringing with a joy and familiarity that broke the tension of the moment. "You finally decided to show up! It's about time! I thought you'd run off to the nearest tavern as soon as the trouble started!"
Tsunade walked toward him, passing Anko and Ibiki. She gave them a quick look and a nod. "Hang on a little longer," she told them. Then, she faced Jiraiya and cracked her knuckles, releasing her own tension in the form of familiar irritation.
"Shut up, Jiraiya! Unlike you, who was probably peeping at the hot springs, I've been busy cleaning up the mess your old teammate left in my village!" she retorted, her voice sharp. "What do we have here?"
"A failed summoning. It regenerates faster than I can cut it," Jiraiya explained, instantly turning serious. "I tried a Rasengan on its torso before you got here. It went right through, but the hole closed up in two seconds. Bunta has it pinned, but I don't think he can do any lasting damage."
"And hurry up!" Gamabunta growled from above. "This thing weighs a ton and its stinking slime is ruining my skin!"
Despite the jokes, their coordination was instantaneous.
"We can't keep cutting off heads if they just grow back," Tsunade said, her tactical mind already at work. "We have to attack the core. I feel a massive concentration of chakra in the central torso, where all the necks connect. That's where we need to hit."
"That's the thickest part," Jiraiya pointed out. "Its armor of scales is almost impenetrable."
"Almost," Tsunade corrected with a fierce smile. "Katsuyu, divide! One part to heal Anko and Ibiki right now! The rest, prepare to use Bone Melting Acid on my signal!"
"Acid?" Jiraiya asked, raising an eyebrow. "It'll dissolve the beast and it will just reform!"
"We're not going to dissolve it, you idiot," Tsunade snapped. "We're just going to soften that armor. Like we're marinating it a little. I need you to create an opening for me!"
"Understood, Lady Tsunade," Katsuyu replied calmly. A small part of her body broke off and flowed toward the two injured ninja, covering them with her healing essence. Anko and Ibiki felt immediate relief as the sharp pain of their broken bones was replaced by a cool, soothing numbness.
Tsunade turned back to Jiraiya, her eyes burning with determination.
"Jiraiya, prepare for a combination attack! Tell Gamabunta to aim his sword at the junction of the necks and the main torso as soon as the acid takes effect! I need him to hold it steady at one point! You, prepare your strongest jutsu! We're going to end this with a single blow!"
Jiraiya grinned. "Now you're talking. I like your style, Tsunade!"
The scene displayed legendary power. In the center of the devastated clearing, the snake abomination roared, trapped but not defeated. To its left, the colossal warrior toad, Gamabunta, with his sword pinning the beast, and on his head, the Toad Sage, Jiraiya, beginning to weave seals as nature chakra swirled around him, creating a small sphere of blue energy in his palm that grew rapidly. To its right, the immense and serene healing slug, Katsuyu, glowing softly, and in front of her, the Healer Princess, Tsunade, with the Creation Rebirth Seal on her forehead beginning to glow with an intense light as she gathered a monstrous amount of chakra in her right fist.
Anko and Ibiki, feeling Katsuyu's healing energy flowing through them, could only watch with reverent awe.
The legend of Konoha. The Sannin. Or at least, two thirds of them. They were reunited on the battlefield again. And the world was about to be reminded why they had earned that name