A.N: I should probably explain that this is somewhat of an AU. Mainly due to Orochimaru-related things…and the fact that this never happened in the actual Naruto universe. Eh. Details.
Anyway…this takes place after the time skip. Everything before the time skip is the same. The characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto. But the majority of the plot I must take blame for.
Prologue
The only was to describe how he felt was…tickled. Quite literally.
The feeling was a familiar one, yet somehow new all at once. He wanted to laugh, but nothing would come out of his throat but a strangled cough.
He realized that he couldn't breathe.
The tips of his fingers itched at his side. In seemingly slow motion, he brought them up to his neck. The tickling eased into a suffocating numbness. His fingers gripped tightly at the sides of his neck in a panic. It registered faintly in the back of his mind that his eyes were closed as light began to burn through his eyelids. Eyelids that were suddenly too heavy to open. One trembling hand stretched out into the unknown space around him, hoping to grasp on to something. Anything.
But as soon as everything had come, it all disappeared.
She had been trained to fight since the age of eleven.
She had trained herself for this particular moment since she was thirteen, and old enough to realize that his lust for power would not simply stop at the books he had read about different types of power in the library. That would explain her frustration as she kicked out and hit nothing but air.
She was Tsunade. Legendary Sannin and admirable kunoichi. And currently, her chest was heaving with every breath she took.
Her opponent was a pale, snake-like man by the name of Orochimaru. Like her, he was a legendary Sannin. Unlike her, he was virtually scratch-free, and finishing off hand signals to a jutsu she didn't quite catch in her shaking vision.
Suddenly, she recognized that the shaking was not only her vision, but the ground in front of Orochimaru actually was. Thoroughly exhausted, Tsunade took a couple of heavy steps back. She was wary not to step on the head full of silver spikes she knew was laying around here somewhere. The third legendary Sannin, a loud man by the name of Jiraiya, had fallen earlier. Tsunade was not quite sure yet if he was ever going to get up again.
The ground began to shake harder, and it took all she had just to keep standing. Orochimaru licked his lips in anticipation with his elongated tongue as four items rose out of the ground. He took delight in the slow sign of recognition that grew in Tsunade's hazy brown eyes.
Tsunade blinked several times to clear the fog that had started to surround her line of vision. She could feel every bruise, scrape, tear and cut across her body. The dirt moving underneath her was doing much for her bleeding head, either. Still, through her foggy eyesight, and the stinging pain that seemed to be shooting through every part of her, she faintly recognized the items slithering out of the ground.
Coffins.
She shook her head from side to side, which only served to make her extremely dizzy. She suddenly understood what Orochimaru was doing. And it was so like him, to get other people to do the dirty work for him, while he sat back and watched, unscathed.
She also understood that in her current state, she could do nothing about it. She felt like crying, or fainting, or dying, even. Anything that would stop this nightmare was alright with her now. It was just her luck that nothing happened.
Orochimaru's eyes became nothing more than thin slits as a sudden explosion kicked gravel and dirt up everywhere. He quickly looked up to see and giant blue and white slug towering over him, a last-ditch attempt by the Godaime. An uninviting grin crept from one side of Orochimaru's face to the other. He had called upon the dead, previous Hokages to finish his former teammate off, and even though he could not call them back, he found himself suddenly wishing to fight the Godaime himself.
A light breeze ruffled Tsunade's now dirty blonde hair. She fell to her knees, landing upon the soft skin of her slug's head. Her arms fell heavily to her sides, and she swayed dangerously. She fell forward, and her already bruised chin made contact with her blue and white head as well. Though sheer willpower, she opened her eyelids to witness Orochimaru's completed jutsu. Tsunade knew, even though she had managed to call her slug out, that it was over.
A flash of yellow caught her hazel eyes, and it registered faintly in her mind that it was the Fourth Hokage who was the first to attack. The corners of her mouth turned slightly upward as she remembered what an eager person he had been when he was alive, too.
She was no longer aware of anything, except darkness.