Chapter Seventeen

Pre-Chapter AN: Hey, thanks for reading this. It's literally my favourite thing to write these days. Enjoy the chapter, and let me know how it sticks if you enjoy it. 

After reading this, you can either wait until next week for the next chapter or read the next three on Pa Treon right now and keep reading as I write. Have fun with this. Also, if you haven't checked out my other story (Gamer of the Desert) yet, please do so. It's also set in the Naruto universe. It's an SI into Gaara with some gamer elements. I can guarantee you'll love it. It's also much farther along than this one, so gives you something to really sink your teeth into. Also, I have a prologue to a new story up here now. It's a crossover where a variant of Dr Doom from the MCU gets inserted into the Harry Potter Universe into Harry's body on the day he gets chosen by the Goblet of Fire.

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XXXXXX- THE SLUG PRINCESS

She crossed her arms in front of her, unable to dodge the attack in time and grunted as the transformed Monkey King slammed into her guard and pushed her backwards until she found her back slamming into the mountainside. Thankfully, her sensei was forced to abandon the attack as Orochimaru fired off a series of wind bullets that he had to swing his staff around to block. 

"Tsunade" Jiraiya cried out, and she was moving before he even called her name. He ran forwards, weaving seals as he did so. The ground around sensei transformed into the black sludge that marked out Jiraiya's swamp of the underworld technique. Their sensei had sensed the chakra buildup and pushed himself upwards on his staff, having the transformed monkey kind elongate himself to a ridiculous degree while standing atop the staff like some sort of raised platform. Bullshit. 

She jumped just as planned and reared back a fist. They had him. They finally did. A million training sessions since the Yonbi rampaged within Konoha's walls, and they finally had him. Of course, she ended up being proven wrong as instead of standing still so she could punch the smug off his face, Sarutobi-sensei dove downwards instead. He flew towards Jiraiya's swamp for a second or two, and then a pair of hands shot out of the staff's frame and grabbed a hold of him by the collar and then tossed him at Orochimaru's form. 

Orochimaru was always the most skilled of them, but he could not survive their sensei's attention for long. Sarutobi-sensei kicked things off by flipping in mid-air to land a spartan kick against Oro's crossed arms. He fell on his hands and then kicked away Orochimaru's attempt to take advantage of his positioning before flipping onto his feet and engaging him one on one. She ran towards their position, being forced to body flicker around Jiraiya's swamp, only to find Enma in her way. She dodged underneath the first swipe aimed at her head, but the knee that hit her in the jaw came from nowhere. Oh, she so hated Enma. 

Trying to gain her bearings was useless. Another punch to the head, and one to her stomach, had her rolling on the ground to avoid the followup. He was forced to disengage by a hail of shurinken but by the time Jiraiya had landed in front of her, Orochimaru was already out of the running, slumped over their Sensei's shoulder like a rag doll. 

"Fuck" She said. 

"We can still take him" Jiraiya said by her side. 

He lied. He knew he was lying. She knew was lying. Sensei's smug smile said he also knew Jiraiya was lying, and Enma said the words none of them bothered to, "In your dreams, boy". 

Jiraiya, not appreciating the sentiment, charged at the summon. 

She set her jaw and ran right at her sensei. He formed a single seal, and the ground beneath her turned into mud that began to push her backwards. She forced her chakra to surround her in an armour that allowed her take the full force of the mud river attack. Of course, the mud river was never the main part of the attack. 

With an inaudible roar, the dragon dove down at her. She held out her right hand, concentrating the chakra in the way her cousin taught her and allowed the mud dragon to destroy itself against the grinder that was the Rasengan. 

"Your cousin's jutsu really is something. What a prodigy" Sensei said on seeing her tear the dragon to shreds. She grunted at the words, agreeing with them in essence. Her cousin was a real prodigy. Certainly more of a prodigy than Orochimaru had ever been, but he was also an idiot. Because he hadn't needed to offer the jutsu in exchange for her teaching him the mystical palm all those months ago. He was family. She'd have taught the fool for free.

"Enough about him, I'm the Senju you're facing here" 

"And what a scary thought it is" Her Sensei's sarcasm was not appreciated, and she gathered her chakra beneath her body before jumping through the mud river and right at him. 

Before she'd even got close, he'd dodged out of the way, but that did not matter. She slammed her punch into the ground and brought her chakra to bear at precisely the perfect instant like she'd practiced for years, and the ground around her shattered. 

Sensei lost his footing for a second, and began to scramble to keep his legs under him. She rushed at him, overjoyed at her luck and prepared to end the fight with one good punch. She would be careful to pull her strength a little to prevent actually killing sensei, but surely, there was nothing to be lost if she did make it hurt a little bit. 

Two feet away from him, and that was when she recognised it. There was something off about Sensei's movements. His slip. The kick that slapped into her face and sent her flying right back into the mud river was not as unexpected as it could have been, but that didn't prevent it from hurting like a motherfucker as his boot formed an imprint on her skin. That one was going to be annoying to heal, but healing proved to be the least of her worries as her sensei formed another seal while she crashed into the mud. She felt the heat before she managed to break through the mud to look and see what was going on. 

And when she did, she scowled. That bloody motherfucker. He'd set the entire river of mud on fire, and she felt it beginning to scald her skin. This would also be a problem to heal. She brought her hands together in a powerful clap that dispelled most of the flames around her with the shockwave from the motion, and lifted herself up to stand on the mud. Of course, things could never be that easy, as the mud began to grow tendrils that wrapped around her arms and began to pull her back in. Another rasengan tore through the constructs holding her, as well as the mud clone that sensei had spawned behind her with an outstretched kunai, before she jumped away from the mud for the second time. 

When she landed on the bare earth, she scanned her surroundings with wary eyes. The fact that Sensei hadn't attacked her in mid-air while she was vulnerable sounded alarm bells in her head. A fact that proved to be true when the very ground beneath her feet began to rumble. She scowled as she failed to recognise what jutsu he was working from the feeling alone, and that was another thought that made the alarm bells within her head ring even louder. After doing these spars for so long, she'd felt that she had more than a passing familiarity with all of Sensei's jutsu. At least the earth release ones. 

She chanced a glance to the side and chuckled as she watched Jiraiya stumble back from a slap to the face that Enma had sent into his face like a canon ball from a canon. He didn't get a chance to get his bearings, as the Monkey King followed through with a kick that sent him sailing backwards like he was the canon ball. 

She didn't get much of a chance to watch the fight as she was forced to focus on her own problems. The earth had begun to rise. Parts of it. Sensei was hiding, and since she knew that she had no chance of finding him when he didn't want to be found and an even lower chance of stopping what was going on, she decided to do the next best thing, and body flickered over the mud river to the part of the training ground that held Orochimaru's limp form. 

She reached down with a diagnostic jutsu and breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that Sensei had seen it fit to only knock him out with blunt force trauma to the temple. Nothing was broken. Broken bones took longer to heal than most other injuries, and time was a luxury she doubted her sensei would allow them to have for long. The jutsu already felt like it was reaching its final stages as she watched sections of the ground begin to lift up and take form into something that she felt like she should have recognised. That alone was enough to scare her a bit. 

She pumped her chakra into Orochimaru's body, letting out an involuntary gasp at the way his body accepted hr chakra with no hesitation or resistance. She had long outgrown her schoolgirl crush on her teammate, but the level of access she was getting here still did bring some happiness to her soul. No other person would have Orochimaru's unconscious body respond to them in quite this way, accepting their ministrations with full trust. Regardless of how standoffish her might have been in their interactions, this was enough to show her the light in which she was being held. The mouth could lie, but the chakra could not. Chakra told all in the end.

 She worked on him with the mystic palm jutsu, using it to soothe the internal swelling that Sensei's fists had caused and stoking his mind into wakefulness. Like she'd told Shori, there was no other jutsu in the world as versatile as the mystic palm jutsu. It existed on one simple principle. The body wanted to heal itself. The body knew what it was like before, and so with the right application of chakra, she could stoke and guide it to accelerate the healing that it already wanted to do. That was why the jutsu could reattach a limb kept in the right conditions but would fail woefully at trying to generate a whole new one. 

He began to stir beneath her as the final bits of Sensei's jutsu ran their course. When it did, she tried her hardest to swallow the instinctive urge to sigh in frustration. 

"How do you like this one, Tsu-chan?" He asked, revealing himself to be standing right on top the head of a massive stone golem. Now that it was complete, she could recognise the same jutsu that the Tsuchikage had used in the fight to subdue the Four Tails. A fact that did nothing to lessen the headache she could feel building. 

"How did you even learn that?" She asked. 

"I saw Onoki use it, and I've been trying to figure it out since then. Took me over a year, but I think this should be more than a passable attempt" He said to her. She ignored him, and turned to her teammate who had finally regained consciousness. 

"Are you thinking what I am thinking?" She asked him as he also swallowed upon seeing the stone giant. 

"Yes" He said to her, and they both scrambled over themselves to return to heir feet and begin to run. 

The golem's hand slammed right into the ground they'd just been standing on, and she did her beat to ignore the way the ground shook behind her as they continued to run. 

"Jiraiya" She shouted, to get her third teammate's attention. He leaned underneath a swipe from the Monkey King and retaliated with a roundhouse kick to his opponent's head that forced Enma to take a step back. Jiraiya used the space to disengage and jump towards them. 

"What the hell is that?" He asked, pointing towards Sensei's jutsu. 

"Sarutobi-sensei's latest toy" Orochimaru said with audible frustration. 

XXXXX

"So, what did you do wrong?" 

"Choose to have you as a sensei" She said immediately without even a second's thought. Enma, from his position sat atop Jiraiya's struggling form, burst into laughter. All three of them were tired beyond belief. Sensei's golem had basically brought the fight to an end. Whatever ninjutsu they tried failed to do more than essentially scratch the giant stone creature. It became comical when even Orochimaru's powerful lightning release could manage little more than slowing it down for a second or two. 

"A non-snarky response, please?" He asked next. 

Jiraiya was busy being tormented by the monkey king, so it fell to her and Orochimaru to answer, but they really could not come up with anything between them. Sure, they weren't perfect. They'd lost in the end. But she could not think of anything within their abilities that they could have done that would have had any chance of meaningfully affecting the outcome. 

"We fought a superior opponent" Orochimaru finally said. 

"Precisely. To be completely honest, each of you were excellent today. You used your unique skills and abilities to take things in hand. You adapted well top the changing circumstances. You moved to cover up for each other and handle each other's weaknesses well. The only issue was that I was the one you faced and not any other" He said, making Jiraiya grin from ear to ear. What a sweet sweet boy. He really thought Sensei as complimenting them, didn't he? 

"But then again, that is a flaw in and of itself, is it not, Enma?" He turned to the Monkey King, and the summon was grinning. She felt her heart drop into her stomach at that. This was not going to go well, she could already tell. 

"Hmph. Three of them and they couldn't even make you sweat, Saru. What a disgraceful bunch you've trained here" The Monkey King said, and the feeling of dread got even worse. She wanted to speak up and point out that it was more like three against two, but she knew that would not get her anywhere. The last time Jiraiya had complained about that particular fact, Sensei had chosen to face them without Enma the next day, and they'd been left with no shortage of broken bones, burnt skin and bruises. Whether she liked it or not, using the Monkey King in the way he did, was actually their Sensei's attempt at giving them a handicap. 

With the Monkey King fighting within their midst, it meant that he could not bring to bear his wide range of ninjutsu against them. Of course, it wasn't solely for their benefit. It was more likely training for her sensei as well, to get him used to fighting with allies on the field, so he was sure he could adapt his tactics and methods for that. 

"I know. I feel so disappointed in myself as a teacher and mentor" He replied his summon, continuing the farce. 

"So how could I rectify this?" He asked, turning towards the sky. 

"Remedial training" The glare she tossed at Enma was proof that the damn monkey was immortal because that gaze should have killed any other creature. 

"Remedial training it is, then" He said with a savage smile. 

When she walked into the bar, she was surprised at how busy it was. There were people quite literally everywhere. And then when she started recognising the faces, she realised that this was not the coincidence that it seemed to be. There was something going on. Because what were the odds that Hatake Sakumo, Dan of all people, Sarutobi Benzaiten, and almost a dozen other jounin that were either in her generation or so close to it that the difference barely mattered, would choose to come to the same bar on the exact same night. The Hidden Wood also wasn't that much of a popular bar. It was why Orochimaru had agreed with Jiraiya's choice to come here, after all. 

Speaking of her pale teammate, she could practically feel the weight of his glare as it passed her by to land on Jiraiya's sheepish frame. She should never have agreed to this, she knew. But they'd already been noticed, and Dan was waving them over from the bar-table where he was leaning against. She spotted Sakumo Hatake's recognisable frame next to him, and realised that she had no real choice of refusing. This might be the only chance she'd get to have a very difficult conversation with a very difficult person that had clearly been ducking her. 

All three of them walked in with wide smiles—she'd hesitate to call Orochimaru's smirk a smile, but it did achieve the same effect in the end, so she could not complain- and quickly found themselves being pulled into myriad conversations. Benzaiten wasted no time in pouncing on his clanhead's favourite student as he and Orochimaru quickly engaged in a discussion she would rather not follow. Jiraiya, ever the social one, had already reached a table of seven and was quickly making himself the centre of conversation. She ignored all the attempts people made to draw her into their small circles and made a beeline for Dan's position. 

"Dan" She said as she arrived and took his outstretched hand in a handshake before leaning against the table herself. 

"Tsunade. Welcome. I wouldn't have expected to see you and Orochimaru at this kind of thing. Aren't you guys usually too busy to interact with us mere mortals?" 

"Nothing like that, Dan. We just usually find ourselves with clashing schedules most of the time. You know, with training with sensei and all?" 

"Your team is the only one I've seen that still trains with their jounin-sensei after becoming jounin themselves" Sakumo commented, adding himself into the conversation. She knew what the rumour mills had said about the fact that they still trained with their sensei. It was the kind of thing that most jounin would be unable to contextualise. 

"Well, Sarutobi-sensei is scary strong, and even as strong as we all are together, he still manages to beat all three of us at the same time" She said, watching him nod his head at her words. 

Dan was making to speak, trying to insert himself back into the conversation, and she silently apologised to him as she realised that this was an opportunity she could not pass up to bring up the conversation, "Speaking of Jounin-sensei, what is this nonsense I hear about you and my cousin?" She asked, turning to give him all of her attention. She felt the way the mood between the three of them shifted. 

"What do you mean? Hokage-sama promoted Shorirama-san. He is no longer my student". 

"Bullshit. I've had an eye out. Even post-promotion, you've still been engaging in regular training sessions with two out of the three members of your team. It's clear that one of them is being excluded either at their own instance or yours, and considering Shori doesn't even know about these sessions in the first place, the latter is certain" She said, feeling her rage come to the forefront. 

Whispers were already beginning to spread, and considering Shori was not the most popular with the Jounin community already, it was the kind of thing that could have wide range effects. Granduncle Tobirama had done him a world of good when he'd made the announcement that the mess with the Yonbi was because of Iwa's inferior fuinjutsu technique and that their vessel had failed without prompting, but even at that time, she'd known that the Jounin circles would not buy it. Enough people had seen Shori apply the seal on Roshi of Iwa, and jounin did tend to know enough about fuinjutsu to put two and two together. No one went around trying to spread that the Hokage had lied to them, but whispers did tend to echo. 

"I am a jounin of Konohagakure, I can train any chunin I deem fit. Besides, Shorirama-san is well taken care of with the resources both of his clans pump into his traning" 

"I couldn't care less about you training him, Sakumo. The point is that people are beginning to wonder what could possibly be wrong with my cousin considering his own sensei doesn't want anything to do with him and while I'd leave the opinion of sheep to sheep, this is the wrong time to have that kind of division in our ranks" She said, doing her best to make her point clear. Having his fellow shinobi distrust him was not the end of the world, but that kind of distrust could mean the difference between life and death in the war that they all knew was coming. 

"Your cousin is fundamentally broken, Tsunade-san. I was his sensei for over a year, and there were just some things that were too worrying to ignore. He tortured-" 

"I will hear no more of this Sakumo. My point is clear. Either train all of them, or none of them. I will not have your actions risk the life of the Senju Clan heir. Trust me when I say that if something happened to him that could even be remotely traced to you and your negligence, then I doubt you'd live long enough to regret it" She made her threat clear and explicit. 

"Heard" He replied. And that was that. She turned back to Dan, intending to continue their conversation. 

A/N; How does this feel? It's kind of difficult to write the Sannin as teenagers because it's really difficult to decide what they have and haven't learned yet. Like, should they have summons? Their signature techniques? It's a delicate midpoint I'm trying to strike here. Make them believably weaker to the point that all three of them were unable to beat someone on Chiyo's level, but still strong enough that it's clear what they one day become. As I said earlier, the next chapter comes up next week or skip the wait and read the next three along with daily uploads on pa-treon. For the pa-treon, you can remove the hyphen between pa and treon and google it then search for my username- Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting in your address bar.