Chapter 88 - Mission Rank S 13.

[Chapter Size: 1900 Words.]

Third Person POV

Fire Country, Year 36.

...

...

As Minato and the others approached, Jiraiya was facing several ninjas at once, creating clones to protect the citizens. Jiraiya rushed to protect a mother and son as the ground exploded with a jutsu from the enemies targeting the original body.

"You must leave." The clone spoke as the citizens began running out of the area, and the clone went to search for more victims.

Meanwhile, the original Jiraiya landed on top of a house at that moment with a kunai in hand, looking down at the ninjas amid all the destruction, having at least taken down 4 ninjas.

"Damn... this guy... he's too strong!" One of the Sand ninjas complained.

"Who is this?" Another asked. "How did he get here?" he continued to curse, after all, this was supposed to be a simple mission.

"This is Jiraiya," one of them recognized, due to the fame Jiraiya had beyond the borders of the Fire Country.

"Jiraiya?" Another was surprised by this.

"Yes, one of the three students of the Hokage of Konoha..." He said with a furrowed brow.

"I see I'm famous..." Jiraiya couldn't help commenting with a small smile despite the chaos.

"This is bad, it seems that Konoha managed to send more reinforcements than we thought, do they know about our plans?!" The ninja murmured to the side.

Meanwhile, another looked towards the south side of the city, where the sound of explosions had stopped. "Something happened there, those flames... It seems we lost all our ninjas on this side," he spoke, as everything went silent after several explosions with flames rising through the air. Knowing none of their ninjas could create fire, it meant that Konoha had also attacked that team and it hadn't ended well for them.

"We should retreat," the leader of the group spoke, knowing they couldn't deal with the ninja in front of them, even with the numbers they had, it would be risky for any of them to be captured and have information extracted from them.

He spoke and a group of ninjas began making hand seals. Jiraiya, seeing this, also started making hand seals for a jutsu.

"Fire Style: Flame Bomb!" He shouted and launched a torrent of fire using a large amount of chakra to match the enemy, while the ninjas tried to create a mud wave with 4 of them performing jutsu at the same time.

The fire and mud advanced against each other, catching several houses and buildings of the city in their path until they collided; however, Jiraiya couldn't fight for long against a jutsu made by 4 people and soon lost the impact of his jutsu, with the mud advancing towards him.

The ninjas saw the mud advancing, exploding at the spot where Jiraiya was, and the next moment, noticed something strange on the ground quickly. With two jumping away and the other two getting caught by a mud field, sinking their feet into it before they could react, Jiraiya appeared, having used substitution to escape from the enemy's jutsu and quickly executed his "Earth Style: Black Swamp." With the ninjas trapped in the ground, he took his kunai and advanced on them, slashing their throats with a kunai, eliminating 2 more, totaling 6 of them altogether, with most being jonin.

"Retreat!" the leader spoke. He wanted to first create a distraction, but seeing that this was not working, they began to try to retreat, escaping the site. "Use the distraction jutsu." He ordered while having 7 more of their ninjas, they began making hand seals while jumping across the roof with Jiraiya in pursuit.

"Earth Style: Dust Cloud Jutsu!" They completed the jutsu with their hands and began blowing towards Jiraiya, creating a dust cloud being made from their mouths and engulfing the entire city with it, completely blocking the view, despite Jiraiya being a sensor and still continuing to pursue, still having a bit more difficulty.

"Jiraiya-sensei," in the midst of all that dust, Minato finally appeared, exhausted without chakra after the fight, along with his companions who were not much different from him at that moment.

"Kid, you finally came," Jiraiya smiled as Minato approached. "We have to catch them..." He commented.

"Jiraiya-sensei, I have a plan," Minato suddenly spoke. Jiraiya looked at him, attentive, as Minato began to explain what he had in mind. Watching, Jiraiya in the end agreed.

"That's not bad, in fact, it will give us an advantage. Alright, kid, let's do it that way." He said, impressed.

Minato tossed a kunai to him, and Jiraiya kicked off the roof, advancing even faster as he approached the ninja who seemed to be the leader, since he had more chakra. It wasn't difficult to reach him without conserving his last reserves.

He began to approach the group of enemies passing the wall and performed a jutsu in the air, unleashing a blast of wind forward, catching the ninjas who were fleeing the city by surprise. While they stabilized after losing some balance from the wind, Jiraiya wasn't doing this to stop them, but to distract them.

While Minato observed everything in his field of Haki, the enemy leader quickly recovered. "Let's go," he said, but felt a presence behind him with Jiraiya approaching, making him scared. But suddenly, Jiraiya changed as he disappeared and in his place, a small Minato using one of his last reserves of chakra, switching places with Jiraiya — the enemy ninja couldn't react with this child so close and took a punch to the rib, breaking a few. "Where did this ninja come from?" he growled as he fell backwards before trying to stabilize with the broken rib. "This bastard," he said, but didn't stay long, quickly advancing out of the city, trying to escape.

Jiraiya and Minato didn't pursue them further, just watched them flee while the girls landed near them now that they had caught up.

"Well, it looks like you did it," Jiraiya asked.

"Yes, I managed to place the seal on him," Minato spoke while keeping an eye on the ninja, without him realizing, being able to appear beside him and kill him at any moment, but he didn't do it now, he was waiting for him to lower his guard while heading to their hideout.

"Great, let's wait a while. Meanwhile, let's help the city," Jiraiya ordered while they nodded. Minato was exhausted, out of chakra, so he needed to rest a bit, but could still help pull people from the rubble with his physical strength.

They spent the next 2 hours removing people from the debris, while Hanabi used her remaining chakra to free people trapped under the rubble, still alive or in destroyed grounds and demolished houses with earth jutsu.

The mood was somber as they tried to help, but it was understandable to see something like this in a destroyed city; people were crying for their relatives, some even snarling at the ninjas from Konoha, saying they brought the war to them. However, Minato and Jiraiya maintained a calm look, while Hanabi and Mito were a bit saddened by the sight they were seeing, even feeling a bit guilty.

"This is war, unfortunately, this is how the world works," Jiraiya commented, wanting to teach his students. "This is the cycle of hatred that forms, people kill each other and new people seek revenge for those killed, this is the vicious cycle that this world faces." he concluded.

Minato nodded, understanding what that meant while Hanabi and Mikoto had confused eyes. Jiraiya turned to him. "How are you?" he asked.

"I'm better..." Minato spoke, feeling that he could teleport someone with him if the distance wasn't too far.

"Alright, no rush, but we can... and if you want," he spoke.

"Okay, Mito and Hanabi, you'll stay here. Wait for us and use the chakra in the seal if you need me," Minato spoke, knowing they could be in a bad situation if a group of powerful ninjas returned to that city, which was unlikely, but you never know.

After they nodded, Minato approached Jiraiya, while they were getting ready, grabbing a kunai and preparing for the attack. Minato placed his hand on Jiraiya's shoulder and disappeared with him.

Elsewhere a few dozen kilometers away. The Sand and Stone ninjas regrouped at a distant location.

They were gathered only with the 7 who remained, quite discouraged after losing much more than half of their squad. Of the 20, 13 had died, which was frustrating.

"Damn, that was a big failure. This will be harder than we thought," the leader commented, still feeling his broken rib.

"But don't you find it strange... they let us go so easily..." A jonin from the group commented.

"I also found it strange..." the leader said, but saw no plausible reason for them to let them go without pursuit.

"Speaking of which... did you see how that boy switched places with the Konoha ninja, what was that jutsu?" another asked.

"It was quite strange, but I don't know of anything that can do that, we should just report back to the others and our village," the leader said, unaware of the mark on his rib as he fought against the pain, since there was no living medical ninja among them.

"I hope the others are doing better, we're reaching the final phase of the mission," one of them commented.

"Let's wait until we meet the others later," the leader said, but something happened at that moment, before anyone in the group could react, two people appeared out of nowhere, and the leader could only see that foot coming towards him before Minato hit his throat, knocking him unconscious to the ground.

"WHAT!?" The Stone ninjas barely had time to react as Jiraiya was already advancing and Minato right behind; they tried to prepare for this surprise attack while a small battle began in that underground hideout created by a jutsu of the Stone ninjas, but they didn't even have time to perform a jutsu to fight against this master and sensei, with them taking down all of them easily.

It didn't take long for the whole place to fall silent, as Minato and Jiraiya stood over six fallen enemies. They hadn't killed any, wanting to extract all their secrets. Jiraiya turned with a smile to Minato, while Minato was kneeling on the ground, finally able to rest as he breathed with some difficulty due to his lack of chakra.

"Well, kid, looks like we did it," he said with satisfaction, while Minato just nodded his head.

"I guess so..." he murmured.

"Don't worry, you can rest. I'll handle the rest," Jiraiya said, as he began to perform the final jutsu that Minato was learning to use on their prisoners.

Finally, they began to exit the place, with Jiraiya making a series of Earth seals to create a path out of that location. They were finally out, with Jiraiya and Minato returning to the city with the prisoners inside scrolls, jumping between trees. Since Minato hadn't recovered any of his chakra to use the Raijin on two people, he had fought using only taijutsu relying on his physical strength.

However, they won easily, due to the surprise attack they had launched. Team 7, at least, managed to eliminate a group of ninjas infiltrated in the Fire Country, but the mission was not yet over.

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