"It sounds like the end of the War is in sight," a pale-skinned ninja dressed in the standard Konoha uniform with a cloak draped over him said as he sat, pouring a cup of tea.
His male companion, a tall, white haired man wearing the same outfit sans-cloak nodded. "The Fence Sitter killed Black Sand Sogane's favorite student. Now both of them are willing to sit down and negotiate.
"After the Eight Tails had to be put down in the middle of Steam, it sounds like the Raikage wants to negotiate too," the female member of the team said, taking a hard drink of sake. She was stunningly beautiful, with long blonde hair and doe brown eyes, and a figure that most women would kill for. "It's just down to the Mizukage now."
"Fat chance," the white-haired man guffawed. "Not without the whole world against him at least."
"That's what it's shaping up to be," the other man said, his yellow eyes flashing with ironic mirth.
"Sensei must be as tired of this war as anyone," the taller man said, standing and stretching. "Speaking of tired, maybe we can get some sleep before we have to march out, this should be the last time we see of Suna for a while."
"I'm going to drop by the field hospital," the woman said, going to leave the tent, "we'll meet up in the morning."
"Get some sleep Princess!" The white-haired man called out as she opened the flap of his tent.
Two things happened in quick succession.
First, there was a loud yet muffled 'thump' which resonated through the camp, and a cloud of dust began to rise in a ring around the hospital. Then, a long and tense instant later, the hospital and area immediately surrounding it erupted into a fireball so intense that the dreary, rainy night was lit up brighter than a desert noon.
"No!" The woman cried, running out into the night, her teammates body flickering after her.
Where there was once an organized field hospital in the form of a long tent full of beds and cordoned-off sections, there was now a smoking crater. A smoking crater scattered with scorched body parts and the scraps of explosive tags.
Cries of "ambush!" and "enemy raid!" echoed through the camp, along with the sound of explosions and the ground collapsing carrying over the rain.
The three teammates looked back and forth between one another twice, then nodded. They knew what they had to do.
"Summoning Jutsu!" The white-haired man cried out as he slammed a hand into the ground, thumb bleeding.
When the smoke produced by the jutsu cleared, there were five rather large toads sitting there.
"Spread word around camp, evacuate towards the previous encampment, go as fast as you can!" The white-haired ninja ordered, and the toads were off.
"Summoning: Springtime Puddles Thousand Slug Genesis!" The busty blonde internally cringed at the name of the technique, still convinced it was a joke told to her by the boss summon of the slugs. In an instant, a myriad of green slugs appeared in clouds of smoke, called to the battlefield by a network of summoning circles that had been created around the battlefield by the kunoichi's jutsu. Katsu-ao, the slug which had been summoned, got the message without being told, and began attaching themself and their clones to those who had already been wounded, giving them the chakra they needed to escape.
A pair of three meter long salamanders, one red and one black, burst through nearby tents, which had been intact, only to be caught by masses of snakes which had burst from the ground.
The pale, black-haired shinobi had been the one to intercept them, and the only one who saw them and the snakes disappear in a cloud of white summoning smoke. In that moment, Orochimaru felt a dread come over him, stronger than any he had felt before. This was no ordinary raid.
Hanzo the Salamander was here.
"Tsunade!" The pale shinobi called out, and his teammate spun, ran through the same hand seals as him, and slammed her hands on the ground at the same time he did.
A five-layer Earth Style Wall ripped itself out of the ground, intercepting the trio of condensed fireballs just in time to stop them from slamming into the team.
Hopping atop the undamaged layers of the wall, the white-haired shinobi, Jiraiya, ran through a series of hand seals. "Water Style: Wave Cannon!" He intoned as the rain condensed itself in front of him in the shape of a disk, growing in size as his chakra enhanced it. When it had grown big enough, he shaped it into a ball and let it fly.
The Wave Cannon impacted a condensed fireball, a larger version of the three which had been launched at Team Hiruzen earlier. When the jutsu collided, they exploded in a wave of steam that covered the battlefield in front of the three Konoha-nin.
Through the steam sailed the sickle portion of a kusarigama, followed by a chain of extraordinary length. Jiraiya quickly raised his arms, deflecting the sickle off of the metal plating of his arm guards. Even with his reflexes and the sturdy construction of the armor piece, just the tip grazing the arm guard dug a considerable nick into it. Jiraiya allowed the momentum to carry him over the walls, landing horizontally, before he dropped behind the wall to join his teammates.
At the same time, the legendary Ame-nin made himself visible.
Orochimaru, standing next to Tsunade at the completion of their jutsu, was knocked off his feet by the force of the fundo end of the same kusarigama which had struck Jiraiya. Despite blocking it with his quickly-drawn sword.
When the length of chain passed Tsunade, who had ducked out of the way, she wrapped it around her hand, and pulled.
Immediately, the length of the chain went slack, and out from the dust and rain and steam he flew. Hanzo the Salamander.
Once he was close enough to the kunoichi, the living legend planted his feet on the ground, pulled on the chain in his hand, and engaged in a contest of strength with Tsunade. A contest which he won. For an instant, the med-nin was pulled off balance, and Hanzo took the opportunity to smash her in the jaw with a fist.
Tsunade, letting go of the chain, was thrown head-over-heels for a few meters before she regained her footing. When she landed, the preeminent med-nin slapped a hand to her jaw right away, resetting the joint and quickly applying medical ninjutsu to stop swelling and repair the already-forming bruises.
Hanzo's follow-up was interrupted by Orochimaru pressing him with a flurry of attacks with the Sword of Kusanagi. The Ame-nin recalled his scythe to his hand, deflecting all of the pale ninja's attacks with seeming ease. The Leader of Amegakure quickly drove the point of Orochimaru's blade into the ground, but the Konoha-nin managed to catch it in the bind.
'I know I can cut through this, I just have to-' Orochimaru's line of thought, to use Wind Style to enhance the already excessively-sharp Sword of Kusanagi and cut through Hanzo's scythe, was cut off by the sight of the older ninja performing hand seals with one hand. Hand seals which, to Orochimaru's experienced mind, were certainly a Fire Style technique. But he was caught in the bind, and Hanzo wasn't about to let that go.
It was a good thing that that's when Jiraiya struck. "Summoning Jutsu: Flycatcher Toad!"
The living legend body flickered to avoid the massive jaws of the subterranean toad snapping shut and engulfing him. Jiraiya grimaced in dismay, right before Hanzo appeared in front of him, kicking him in the chest and driving him back against the Earth Style walls. "Fire Style: Black Breath!" Superheated soot blasted out of the slits in Hanzo's rebreather, flecked with embers of yellow and white. All that saved Jiraiya was the timely intervention of Tsunade flinging a boulder between him and the salamander summoner.
Orochimaru and Tsunade dove into the fray at the same time, him slashing low and her punching high. Once again, the Ame-nin body flickered out of the way, and once again, he maintained his jutsu. In an even more extreme display of chakra control, he wove the hand seals for his follow-up jutsu while maintaining the Black Breath, the caustic ash from that jutsu mixing with the rain around him and forming dangerous puddles on the ground. "Fire Style:" his hands came together in the dragon seal, and the stream of ash condensed into a white-hot lance of fire, "Dragon's Breath!" Hanzo whipped his head in the direction of the three Konoha-nin, the beam of fire burning through all five layers of the Earth Style wall, and igniting tents on the other side. Jiraiya rolled out of the way, Tsunade body flickered to gain distance, and Orochimaru sidestepped, letting the Sword of Kusanagi deflect the attack from its intended path.
This proved to be a poor choice. While Orochimaru remained unburned from Hanzo's Dragon's Breath, the sheer force of the technique wrenched his blade from his hands. Despite backpedaling afterwards, the Leader of Amegakure's body flicker outstripped his own, and only his quick reflexes saved him from being gutted by Hanzo's kama. Still, the scythe bit through the Konoha-nin's steel armguard, and the force behind it drove the tip through his flak jacket, piercing his abdomen.
The struggle was broken up by Tsunade, who charged the legendary ninja with an overhead strike with the Sword of Kusanagi. Despite her lack of trained swordsmanship skills, and the fact that Hanzo peppered her back with strikes from his fundo, the older ninja was forced to block most of her frenetic strikes, earning him pits and nicks on the blade of his kama. Naturally, the skill gap meant that he won out in the end, when the Ame-nin twisted his kama and wrenched the blade from Tsunade's grasp.
With polished timing, Jiraiya's hair extended to bind Hanzo, though he only managed to strike the veteran ninja with it, that was enough to allow Tsunade to disengage.
Theoretically.
The next two words uttered by Hanzo are the last thing hundreds, if not thousands, of ninja heard.
"Come, Ibuse."
From the ground beneath Tsunade burst the titanic salamander. Purple and covered in nodules, with barely visible eyes, even only halfway emerged from the ground he towered over the battlefield. His gaping maw was open, primed to swallow the Konoha-nin whole and let her succumb to the intense poisons within him, but the same Raging Lion's Mane that had disrupted Hanzo snatched her from midair at the last moment, returning her to Jiraiya's side.
"You good Princess?" He asked, failing to keep the strain out of his voice.
"Yeah, thanks for the save," she replied without snark. Seeing possibly the strongest and (from his reputation on the battlefield and confrontational nature) certainly the most dangerous opponent possible, along with his boss summon, right in front of you, tended to take the wind out of one's sails.
Hanzo disappeared, as did Ibuse, only for the former to reappear an instant later.
"To take a summon that large and powerful with him just with body flicker," Orochimaru observed, having made his way next to his teammates. "If it weren't for Sarutobi-sensei I wouldn't think it was possible."
"Sensei's not as much of a showoff as this old monster," Jiraiya grumbled, as the three settled on their plan.
Hanzo sent his fundo at Jiraiya, standing in the center of the formation, who blocked it with both forearms crossed over his chest.
Tsunade and Orochimaru both wove hand seals at this, and the living legend facing them chuckled. He responded to their frantic signing by raising the middle two fingers on one hand.
"Fire Style-" the kunoichi began.
"Wind Style-" began the shinobi.
"Fire Dragon Bullet!"
"Great Breakthrough!"
Tsunade's jet of fire became a wider gout of flames as Orochimaru's wall of wind slammed into it, fanning it.
The flames were disrupted by a huge, circular explosion which had sprung from the myriad of explosive tags Hanzo had summoned from the chain of his kusarigama.
The two's combo attack was meant to fail however, as Jiraiya sprang from the mud to the Ame-nin's right. With his right arm tied up deflecting the combination jutsu, Hanzo was forced to fend off the Konoha-nin with a kick. Just what the three Konoha-nin were planning.
With his first strike being a feint, Jiraiya proceeded to go low, knocking Hanzo off his feet for the first time in the fight.
Not that that meant much. The Leader of Amegakure quickly righted himself, kicking free of his opponent's grip and out of the path of his other adversaries' greatly weakened combination ninjutsu. The Ame-nin slashed his kusarigama at his most recent assailant's location, but it was too late, as he had appeared back at Tsunade's side by the time the summoned explosive tags went off.
Even as Hanzo recalled his scythe to his hand, Orochimaru was upon him. The pale Konoha-nin fell on the elder ninja with his Sword of Kusanagi, performing deft one-handed attacks that served to tie up the Ame-nin. And tie him up it did, especially when he was forced to use the weighted end of the kusarigama to defend against a tangle of snakes which Orochimaru unleashed from his own offhand's sleeve.
Again, this attack was a diversion within a diversion, as it forced Hanzo's hand in once again unleashing the explosive tags sealed along the chain of his weapon. Tsunade and Jiraiya both body flickered in simultaneously, her flinging a truly massive amount of slime onto the Leader of Amegakure's weapon, and him hardening said slime with a simple Fire technique.
Recognizing one of his primary modes of attack was sealed off, the Living Legend simply disappeared.
Reappearing atop a nearby shattered boulder, Hanzo the Salamander let out a low, sinister laugh. One that echoed across the battlefield thanks to his rebreather. "Most impressive," he began. "To think ninja as young as yourselves would be capable of such feats of teamwork and quick strategy, not to mention your skill in the ninja arts." He chuckled again, a shorter, more choked sound, and a darker one. "Yes," he quickly wrapped up the chain of his kusarigama, still encrusted, and slung it onto the back of his flak jacket. "Let's test the limits of those skills."
With that, Hanzo the Salamander's hands blurred into a series of seals, and Team Hiruzen scrambled, moving to employ a strategy they had devised while the Leader of Amegakure had been talking.
A strategy which immediately crumbled in the face of the jutsu they were confronted by.
"Fire Style: Hanzaki!" The Leader of Amegakure first spewed ash from the slats of his rebreather, then flames. These flames and ash took the form of a twelve-foot salamander, a black core wreathed in golden fire.
"What the hell is that thing?!" Jiraiya exclaimed, before the creation honed in on him, rocketing towards him with the speed of a Fireball.
"Does it matter? We have to deal with it before we get at him!" Tsunade snapped back, even as Orochimaru raised a wall of Earth to block the Fire construct's advance.
All this seemed to do, however, was cause the construct to focus its attention on Orochimaru.
"Water Style: Water Fang Bullet!" Tsunade cast a rain of Water Style projectiles down on the chakra construct. Strangely, the fire-salamander seemed to sense the Water aimed at it, showing in it dodging and weaving. Only a single projectile made contact with the construct, knocking off a leg in a gout of steam. This didn't slow the Hanzaki down, however, as the ash and flame simply extended back into the leg.
"Hah! Nice job Princess! You just let me figure out how it worked!" Jiraiya hooted, and he too weaved the hand seals for Water Fang Bullet.
Tsunade took his cue and together, they let loose a rain of oversized Water droplets to pen in the Fire construct. Orochimaru followed up on their lead, slipping through the minute opening in the Water barrage and slicing the scrambling Hanzaki in half.
All three Konoha-nin breathed a sigh of relief.
Which they quickly sucked back in when Hanzo began chuckling once more. And clapping. "Very good, I expected no less from you three. But did you really think, at this level, you would be confronted by a jutsu so easy to dispel?"
As if brought back to life by his words, a pair of Hanzaki, each half the size of the original, leapt towards the Konoha-nin.
Orochimaru, being the closest, was forced to substitute with a mass of summoned snakes. Jiraiya and Tsunade, with more room to maneuver, were able to smack the construct targeting them aside with a particularly large piece of rubble.
The pale Konoha-nin watched wide-eyed, as his summons, faster than they could de-summon themselves, burned away into ash. And the Hanzaki which devoured them grew to the size of the original construct.
"I have an idea," Orochimaru said, once Team Hiruzen had momentarily retreated to a safe distance. Neither of his teammates needed to interject, instead both nodded, and listened intently. "Those things are targeting me-" the Konoha-nin all body flickered to another location, as the Hanzaki honed in on them. "-because both of you have used Water Style against them. I don't have Water Style, so I'll lure them in by infusing Wind chakra, you both use Water, and we'll combine them into an eddy which wipes those things out."
"Sounds good to me," Jiraiya said with a grin, while Tsunade simply nodded again.
With that, their plan sprung into motion. Orochimaru prepared Wind Style: Great Breakthrough, while Tsunade and Jiraiya prepared Water Style: Water Formation Wall.
The combination worked, Water slamming into the pair of Hanzaki pursuing the infusion of Wind Style. Steam kicked up, and the flames of Fire Style: Hanzaki died under an eddying wall of Water and Wind, unable to consume anything but flesh and flame.
"Wind Style: Absolute Exclusion Zone!" Intoned Hanzo the Salamander, as he crashed down in the center of Team Hiruzen.
A wall of tearing Wind slammed into each of the Konoha-nin, flinging them each a considerable distance away.
For his follow-up, Hanzo cast Fire Style: Hungry Salamander, sending a stream of Fire along the ground in the direction of each of his opponents.
Tsunade was hit center-mass, but quickly submerged herself with an Earth Style technique, putting out the fire even as her flak jacket saved her from any major damage.
Jiraiya, by virtue of staying on his feet, was actually the least fortunate. The Hungry Salamander crept along the ground, and exploded under his foot, breaking some of the bones in it and inflicting painful burns up his leg.
Orochimaru rolled out of the fire, meaning that it only caught him with a glancing blow. A painful burn formed on his bicep, but most of the damage was relegated to his sleeve.
"He likes playing with fire so much-" Jiraiya grumbled under his breath, biting his thumb, "-well let's see how much he likes this. Come on, Gamabura." A large, fat toad appeared from a cloud of summoning smoke, not as large as some of the largest of Myoboku's toads, but over twice Jiraiya's considerable height. "Get some distance, we're doing Plant Sprinkler, got it?"
The toad nodded in agreement, hopping away from the battlefield.
While this was happening, Orochimaru and Tsunade attempted to batter away at Hanzo with Wind and Water. In a display of ninjutsu even more impressive than the Konoha-nin's combination, the Ame-nin countered with pure Wind Style. Hammering waves backed by howling gales were severed by lashes of pressurized and propelled dust, and ripping eddies sped up with twisters were torn apart by thrusting tailwinds.
For a few minutes, the Konoha-nin fell into a pattern of back-and-forth ninjutsu clashes with Hanzo, neither side bringing their strongest or most unique techniques to bear, instead using what was most apt for the situation.
Until Jiraiya's preparations were ready.
"Back off!" The large Konoha-nin shouted, and his teammates complied. "How about you play with this fire, old man?" He then said with a grin, simply forming the Tiger seal before he, too, had to retreat.
The Toad Oil Gamabura had been mixing in with the rain was ignited, lighting a conflagration around Hanzo the Salamander.
"Do you think that did any real damage?" Orochimaru questioned cautiously.
"It must have," Tsunade said, with less of a tired tone.
"Yeah, maybe now he-" Jiraiya was cut off by a spike of chakra and pure killing intent.
"Fire Style: Homusubi!" Came from the center of the conflagration, and it began to take shape.
The indistinct blob of flames shifted into an orb of pure Fire, controlled by the man at the center of it. And centered on him.
"Katsuyu!" Tsunade summoned a large enough Katsuyu clone to cover her and both of her teammates, which then split to cover them each individually.
Just in time too, as at that moment Hanzo body flickered to his opponents, and Ibuse appeared again to strike the Konoha-nin into the fireball.
Some time later, once Homusubi had drained enough of the Katsuyu clones' chakra to start once again feeding on his own, and once Team Hiruzen had managed to sufficiently shield themselves under their own power, Hanzo let the jutsu disperse.
At this point, the Living Legend body flickered in front of his flagging opponents once more.
With Jiraiya, he swept upward with a simple Earth jutsu, the Konoha-nin's Needle Jizo leaving him relatively immobile, and Ibuse caught the spiky projectile in his mouth. Naturally, the giant salamander didn't like having a spike-ball in his mouth, so Jiraiya was rather quickly propelled halfway across the ruined camp.
For Tsunade, he continued the Earth jutsu, trapping her leg with a slightly more-advanced application, before taking on the flagging kunoichi with taijutsu. The elder ninja's technical skill outpaced Tsunade's raw power, especially as he threw her footing off. At the end of the quick exchange, he trapped her in a four-sided Earth coffin, which quickly detonated.
Finally, against Orochimaru, he retrieved a discarded kusari-fundo, dancing around the wielder of the Sword of Kusanagi, and trapping that same sword in a bind of steel and Lighting Style. With his sword trapped, the pale Konoha-nin was an even easier prospect than Tsunade, and Hanzo put him into the ground with a devastating, if simple, axe kick.
Tsunade and Orochimaru were then thrown unceremoniously in the same direction Jiraiya had been by Ibuse, who quickly followed by virtue of a body flicker administered by Hanzo.
"Very good, young ninja of Konohagakure." Hanzo the Salamander inclined his head, acknowledging the prowess of his opponents. "This is a war which Konoha will win, in recognition of that, and your abilities, I'll spare your lives."
"Save your mercy, Hanzo!" Jiraiya shouted back, his injured leg requiring him to be supported by Tsunade.
"Jiraiya, stop!" Tsunade pleaded with her teammate, hoping he would see reason. Truthfully, she didn't believe someone like Hanzo the Salamander would extend mercy to a defeated foe.
The Living Legend chuckled again, though Team Hiruzen couldn't hear that. All they could see were the eyes of a serious countenance.
"You three are strong, you've survived a decade of this strife we call War, and remain standing even after a battle with the likes of me," he fixed Team Hiruzen with a glare, the meaning in his eyes being something the Konoha-nin would wonder about even long after the War was over, and spoke words which would change the course of their lives. "I, Hanzo, bestow on you the title of the 'Sannin of Konoha'. In exchange for your lives, you will bear this title with pride."
Shortly after, the Second Shinobi World War ended, and an uneasy peace fell on the ninja world.
However, before the curtain fell on the violent stage of war, something occured in the outskirts of Kirigakure. A pair of young Kaguya, their forbidden relationship consummated despite the objections from both of their overbearing parents, would see the birth of their child.
A white-haired, teal-eyed girl.
A piece of Apocrypha I've been working on for an embarassingly long time.
