At the same time, in another section of the shattered palace complex, a different battle raged.
Shinsuke Sarutobi stood tall amid swirling heat and smoke, his movements calm, deliberate, and ruthless.
The air around him shimmered from the combined force of wind and fire chakra, whipping his dark cloak like a flag in a storm.
He exhaled sharply, hands forming seals with machine-like precision.
"Fire Release: Ash Pile Burning!"
From his mouth poured a thick stream of ash, dense, heavy, chakra-laced gunpowder that spread across the marble corridor like a creeping fog.
The ash cloud clung to the air, swirling in faint orange spirals.
The faint sound of crackling could be heard as a spark flashed between his teeth.
He bit down.
Flames detonated across the corridor, a violent roar echoing through the palace as the ash ignited.
The blast wave tore through pillars and walls alike, consuming everything in blinding fire.
And yet, through the inferno, Shinsuke's chakra spiked again.
"Wind Release: Dust Cloud Technique!"
He overlapped his hands before his mouth, unleashing a torrent of high-velocity wind mixed with sharp dust particles.
The stream ripped through the flames, scattering the burning debris and intensifying the explosion's reach, while searing any open skin.
The technique was merciless, perfectly layered for pressure and timing, a killing pattern designed to suffocate, disorient, and burn simultaneously.
"Ashen Coffin!"
Then, additionally, the superheated leftover ash engulfed Shinsuke before hardening into a shell before detonating.
Dangerous even if dodged because of lingering burns and suffocation.
But his opponent refused to fall, using some water release stream armor to tank the damage before moving away on time.
However, just as Shinsuke felt certain he, using those baseline and relatively cheap techniques of his arsenal, had worn his opponent down enough to end it with his stronger techniques, the flames suddenly erupted outward.
From within the inferno, Senju Kazuo burst forth, his chakra flaring violently, steaming through the blaze like a beast forcing its way out of hell itself.
His armor was half-melted, his skin scorched and bleeding, yet his stance was unbroken.
His eyes blazed, not just with fury, but with renewed resolve.
He had just heard Ryusei's voice echo through their telepathic link, promising to just arrive.
"Don't underestimate the Senju bloodline!"
Kazuo roared, slamming his hands into the ground as the earth beneath them began to tremble.
Two shadow clones erupted from his sides, slamming their palms against the floor.
The ground beneath them groaned, then collapsed.
"Shadowed Abyss Maw!"
The marble cracked open into a massive pit that spread rapidly beneath Shinsuke's feet.
Earth release tore deep into the foundation, while water chakra flooded in, transforming it into a churning mire of black mud.
The sludge glistened unnaturally as Yin and Yang chakras fused into it, giving it a sinister life of its own.
The mud pulsed like a living creature, tendrils rising and lashing out, trying to drag everything nearby into its depths.
Shinsuke leapt back immediately, flaring wind chakra through his soles to stay airborne.
The mud reached after him, sentient and relentless, the tendrils snapping like serpents.
Kazuo's hands blurred again.
"Poisoned Tundra Expanse!"
The ground beyond the pit transformed in an instant.
Earth and water fused once more, this time spreading outward as a swamp, its surface bubbling with toxic gases.
Wind chakra mixed into the mist, carrying the poison across the battlefield.
The Yin component in the technique gave Kazuo direct control over the fog's flow; he guided it like a conductor shaping a deadly symphony.
The entire wing of the palace was now a hellscape of shifting sludge and shimmering toxins, a suffocating battlefield that could devour any ordinary shinobi.
Both jutsu merged together, the Shadowed Abyss Maw and Poisoned Tundra Expanse, forming a monstrous hybrid of Senju-style nature control, Kazuo's own affinities and talents for water and earth releases, and Yin-Yang manipulation, which Ryusei's clone carefully taught him from time to time.
It wasn't something that could be found in scrolls or passed down through clan lore.
It was born from Ryusei's genius.
During the months of preparation, Ryusei's clone had spent many nights teaching Kazuo refinements in chakra control, the theory behind spiritual animation through Yin, and how to fuse organic terrain with chakra circuits.
It was a miracle of improvisation, a battlefield trap alive enough to kill and smart enough to obey.
Shinsuke landed on a toppled beam, his boots hissing against the rising steam. He narrowed his eyes.
He hadn't expected such refined, high-level techniques from Kazuo Senju8, but he could already sense the strain behind them.
The Senju's chakra was burning fast, his control slipping at the edges.
This was a final gamble, a desperate all-in before exhaustion claimed him.
Tendrils of mud lashed up again, pulling at Shinsuke's legs.
He reacted instantly, slamming his palms together.
He got another interesting idea.
"Fire Release: Ash Pile Burning—Ignition!"
The ash he had expelled earlier—still lingering in the fog—suddenly flared to life.
The toxic gases ignited, causing a chain explosion across the swamp.
For a split second, the world turned white with fire.
Kazuo shielded himself with an earthen wall, but the shockwave still hurled him backward through the corridor.
He coughed, blood splattering across his arm.
But he was alive.
"Uncle!" Ryusei's telepathic voice hit him like a pulse, then again.
Kazuo's head turned sharply—Ryusei was closing in fast.
Kazuo's clones reappeared beside him, pulling him upright.
"Move toward my signal!" Ryusei's voice pressed again through the mental link.
Kazuo nodded, releasing another wave of swamp to buy time.
His opponent—still midair—was recovering balance.
"Damn it," Shinsuke muttered, flicking a blade of wind to clear the toxic haze.
But it was already too late. Ryusei's chakra signature was gradually flashing behind him.
Ryusei was closing in fast, his movements blurring through the smoke-filled corridors.
Behind him, Hiruzen gave chase with relentless precision, his adamantine staff extending and whipping through the air like a living serpent.
Each strike came with lethal intent, cracking through pillars and splitting stone as bursts of molten mud and flame followed in its wake, tearing apart walls and scorching deep scars into the marble floors.
The old Hokage's attacks were sharp and precise, but Ryusei could sense something in the rhythm of his chakra, restrained, uneven.
Also, like he wasn't fighting at his full capacity and giving it his all.
He then remembered that probably a large portion of his chakra was already channeled beforehand into the four shadow clones sustaining the containment barrier outside, sealing off the inner palace, and preventing collateral destruction outward and across the capital.
Even now, the Hokage was prioritizing control over chaos.
The intriguing Nara was trailing behind, unable to keep up his earlier pace.
It was clear that his unique fusion of Nara shadow and spatial jutsu came at a steep chakra cost, and that he couldn't maintain it continuously.
Now, he lagged behind Hiruzen, moving more cautiously, because he was also forced to balance pursuit with protecting the Daimyo as well.
He couldn't risk leaving him exposed just to rush ahead. It was better left to Hiruzen.
"Always the same cautious old man…" Ryusei muttered coldly under his breath.
He twisted midair, weaving seals at blinding speed. "Water Release: Torrent Wall!"
A massive surge of water erupted before him, clashing against Hiruzen's mud and fire mixture, turning the flames into billowing steam.
Sparks danced through the haze as Ryusei followed up instantly.
"Lightning Release: Flowing Current!"
Blue arcs shot through the steam, crackling violently, turning it into a conductive storm.
Hiruzen was forced to leap back, spinning his staff and molding it in various ways, to disperse the current before it reached him.
That was all Ryusei needed.
His body vanished in a blur of his fastest speed, which this clone body would allow safely, as he darted past the old man and reached the courtyard where Kazuo and Shinsuke clashed.
Ryusei shot forward again, his body next wreathed in a faint wind aura, almost a chakra mode, currently useful for the situation, because it let him glide effortlessly over the churning swamp below, of his uncle.
Shinsuke's senses flared, head snapping up the instant he caught the spike of foreign chakra—but it was already too late.
Ryusei's hands tightened, his stance shifting fluidly into one of his deadliest forms. "Coiling Serpent Fist…"
His palm twisted in a spiral, chakra compressing around it until the air shimmered—and then he added something new.
A deep, boiling pulse surged through his veins as he drew upon that fragment of the Five-Tails' essence he'd refined months ago.
Steam burst around him, glowing faintly blue-white from pressure and heat.
"…Boiling Pulse Form."
He struck from a distance, no contact, only raw force.
The air detonated.
A roaring shockwave of spiraling steam and pressure burst forth, slamming into Shinsuke before he could fully guard.
The blow hit like a cannon.
Shinsuke's armored vest cracked, blood spraying as the force sent him skidding across the shattered tiles, crashing through a marble pillar.
It wasn't fatal, but it left a deep, searing wound across his torso, the kind that burned with both heat and chakra distortion.
Ryusei's slit-eyed gaze didn't waver. "Couldn't reach the old man," he muttered under his breath, "but I'll take the next best thing."
Then, without breaking stride, he landed beside his uncle, grabbed his shoulder, and their chakra synchronized instantly, deep blue energy spiraling outward in a pulsing flash that drowned out the flames.
He didn't know the masked man's name, but from the familiar chakra signature, refined, disciplined, yet carrying that same Sarutobi undertone, it wasn't hard to guess.
Hiruzen's eldest son. Asuma's older brother.
Before the man could react further, Ryusei's teleportation seal already flared beneath his feet. The air twisted, light folding in on itself—
And in the next instant, both he and Kazuo vanished, pulled toward the waiting slug fragment at Pakura's position, leaving only the echo of his strike and a bleeding Sarutobi kneeling in the dust.
The hit left Shinsuke stunned.
His body slammed against the cracked marble, pain shooting through his chest as he struggled to breathe.
He hadn't expected a clone—just a clone—to move that fast or strike that hard.
It nearly killed him in an instant.
And that chakra—it wasn't normal.
It felt wild, boiling, foreign.
A year and a half ago, he and Hisamichi had laughed at the boy, treating him as nothing more than an ant they could crush on command.
He still remembered his first B-rank mission and the quiet Senju brat who looked so harmless.
Since then, he'd helped arrange countless silent attempts to erase him.
Yet, every time, Ryusei had come back—stronger, sharper, harder to kill.
And now, even his clone could wound the esteemed Konoha's ANBU Commander, of highest shinobi birth, despite being around a decade younger.
Shinsuke clenched his fists, blood dripping through his gloves as he watched the fading afterimage.
"That damned brat," he muttered. "He's become a monster."
Meanwhile, in a burst of blue light and rushing wind, Ryusei and Kazuo materialized beside Pakura amid the blazing ruins of the courtyard.
The air shimmered with heat, the marble underfoot nearly entirely gone from the scorch, revealing the open ground even.
Pakura turned her head sharply, but when she saw him in person, her expression shifted, half relief, half irritation.
"Took you long enough," she said flatly, though her tone carried a faint edge of warmth beneath the exhaustion.
Ryusei's gaze swept across the scorched courtyard, lingering on the two piles of smoldering ash that had once been their enemies, or more precisely, his enemies.
The same pair, among the ones who had nearly ended him back on the Kumo front, the Aburame in particular, the one who'd personally led that entire failed Root ambush meant to erase him for good.
A faint, cold smile touched his lips. It was almost disappointing not to have finished them himself.
But then his eyes shifted to the enchanting Pakura, still standing amidst the heat and ruin, and the thought faded.
'She's mine,' he mused inwardly. 'So it counts.'
"Looks like you didn't need me anyway," he said next, voice low but laced with a wry edge. "Remind me never to piss you off."
She rolled her eyes, brushing a stray lock of hair from her cheek. "You already do that every time you open your mouth."
A brief silence followed, broken only by the crackle of distant fire.
Then Ryusei knelt, pressing his hand against the molten, glowing ground.
The small slug fragment he had sent earlier crawled up his arm, its surface glimmering with faint light and traces of steam rising from its body.
He gave a short nod. "Good work."
The slug pulsed once in quiet acknowledgment before dissolving into a thin stream of chakra and slipping away, returning to the Shikkotsu Forest.
Pakura watched it vanish, understanding immediately, it would trigger the reverse summoning the moment it arrived, pulling all three of them out of this ruined battlefield.
"Hold on to me," Ryusei said.
He clasped Kazuo's forearm first, steady and sure, then offered his other hand to Pakura, palm open, purposeful, and for a reason only he understood in that moment.
She paused, her eyes searching his for just an instant, before placing her hand in his.
There was a flicker of something unreadable in her expression, her grip strong but touched by a quiet tension that neither addressed.
Their hands met, and in that small pause between heartbeats, Ryusei's eyes flickered upward. "Time to go."
Kazuo looked at his nephew and the powerful, mysterious kunoichi in surprise, as the air around them bent and twisted, the world folding inward into a swirling void of blue light.
"I will explain her identity later."
Kazuo just nodded casually as he didn't think much beyond the immediate relief of being alive.
He was simply grateful to have survived, and to see how powerful his nephew had become, even as so many of his comrades from decades past had fallen.
The thought brought a dull ache of sorrow, but beneath it, a burning resolve for vengeance began to take root even more.
Then the scorched courtyard dissolved around them as they sank into the dimensional ripple, vanishing completely.
Regarding this exchange, it was clear to Ryusei's clone that their objective had never been him.
Their goal was to secure the Daimyo and as much of his family as possible, and judging by what he sensed from the outside, they had succeeded.
They wouldn't care about this shadow clone; they likely just wanted to erase it, remove the danger once and for all, and eliminate the last Senju, Kazuo, along with Pakura, his new and mysterious ally in their eyes.
So, in a sense, Ryusei admitted they were the real winners here, even if they had paid a steep price, the loss of the Root Vice Commander, Tatsuma Aburame, and of that younger taltended Inuzuka, surely the most promising Root operative of his generation, or ever, in Ryusei's current opinion.
Ryusei realized it when he had sensed Gakuya's chakra faintly during his brief clash with Pakura just moments ago.
The slightly older teen had already climbed to Quasi-Kage level in such an absurdly short time for most shinobi of this world.
For example, back when the war first began and they ambushed him, Gakuya hadn't even been on an Elite Jonin level yet.
Still, Ryusei thought of it more as Danzo's loss than Hiruzen's.
Shinsuke was injured by him, but not fatally; it was only a small payback, perhaps.
Also, in the end, he knew that the true battle, and the real victory, would be decided elsewhere, where his main body was now fighting for survival.
And that was why, as they sank into the twisting void between spaces, Ryusei's clone couldn't shake the unease clawing at his mind.
He was deeply worried about how the real body was faring now, what schemes the enemy had finally set in motion, which legendary Edo Tensei creation they might have found and unleashed against him, and whether the original could endure it all once more after such a long stretch of uneasy peace.
Had he grown strong enough in that time? That question, above all else, gnawed at him.