(???'s POV)
So this is what Kirigakure faced? The thought drifts through my mind like smoke as I watch them, two teenagers doing exactly two things: killing, and killing.
My body feels wrong. Cold in a way that has nothing to do with the Land of Frost's temperature.
I've felt cold before, fought Konoha in the First War when they were at their peak. This isn't that cold. This is the kind that seeps into your bones and whispers lie down, give up, it's easier.
Twenty-eight years in this world, and I'm watching two girls erase grown men like they're chalk drawings in rain.
Despair is a funny thing. It's neither loud nor quiet. It's looking at the enemy and realizing your brain has already clocked out and your legs just haven't gotten the memo yet.
How many minutes? I wonder. Seven? Less? More?
Doesn't matter. What matters is the math is simple: them plus us equals zero.
Not how I pictured going out. When you're a kid, you think you'll die meaningful.
Maybe save someone. Maybe take one with you. Maybe do something that makes your name worth remembering around a campfire.
Reality's funnier. I'm going to die as a number, a statistic and one of the many casualties, maybe the 147 or 183 or 227, just part of the body count.
Only Aiko cries for me, right? The twins? They'll forget my face by the time they're ten. Some guy in a photograph mom points at sometimes. That's your father. He was a ninja.
Fuck.
I should've quit when I wanted to, three years ago. But what would people say? Toru couldn't handle it. Toru tucked tail and ran. Reputation's a hell of a drug. Worth dying for, apparently. Worth making your kids orphans for.
Good one, genius. Real smooth.
I look around. Sweat on faces while in the Land of Frost. If that's not ironic, I don't know what is.
"Hey, Toru." The voice cuts through. "You cowardin' in the face of death like always?"
Kai. Of course. Twenty years of knowing this idiot, and he's choosing now to run his mouth.
"Huh?" I shoot back. "Then why's your voice shaking?"
He laughs. It comes out wrong—too high, too fast. "It's the wind. My voice is perfect. You're the one trembling. Honestly, Toru, biggest coward I know. Always have been."
I open my mouth to clap back. Nothing comes out. Because here's the thing—he's saying all this, and his voice is wobbling like a toddler learning to walk, and it's so ridiculous, so perfectly Kai, that all I can do is—
Laugh.
"Hahahahaha!"
It starts in my chest and explodes out. And then—someone else joins, then another and then everyone.
"Hahahahahaha!"
"Hehehehehe!"
The sound bounces off the frost. Grown men, seasoned ninjas, veterans of wars—laughing like drunk uncles at a wedding.
Some are laughing at Kai's voice, same as me. Most probably don't even know why they're laughing. They just are. Because it's either this or scream, and laughing feels better, even if it's stupid.
Even if it's the last thing we do.
Guess dying like this isn't so bad, I think, the laughter still shaking my shoulders. At least we're funny.
Azula and Tsunade paused and finally looked our way.
I smiled. Future strongest ninja? Yeah. Honor's all yours.
...
...
...
Azula's head swiveled toward them like a hawk spotting a particularly obnoxious field mouse.
To be clear, Azula was not scared. She had never been scared. Azula once stared down the Avatar, her crazy brother, and an angry waterbender all at once while literally on fire, and the only thing that got singed was their pride.
So no, not scared.
But when you are surrounded on all sides, absolutely dominating the battlefield like it's your personal playground, and suddenly you hear a hundred people laughing at you? You look, It's called situational awareness.
So she looked.
And what did she see? A bunch of desperate faces twisted into smiles, eyes wide with that special kind of crazy you only see in people who have completely accepted their own death.
Hysterical, amusing, and... pathetic.
Honestly, it just pissed her off.
This, she thought, lightning crackling between her fingers like impatient snakes, is exactly why this stupid Ninja World is completely backwards.
Because here's the thing about villains that most people never get, and Azula, being a former villain herself, understood this on a molecular level—the biggest, baddest, world-ending monsters?
They were just people who looked at the world's broken system and said, "You know what? Screw this. I'm gonna burn it all down and build something better."
Sure, their methods were usually "twisted" and "genocidal" and "generally frowned upon," but the intention was there. Sort of.
In the Avatar World, she had killed people. Nickelodeon might have conveniently cut away from those scenes because cartoon characters have plot armor and sponsors to worry about, but Azula remembered.
She remembered every single one. It wasn't like a hobby or anything, but it happened. More than twice.
Then there was her life on Earth, with its regular people and regular problems and regular not trying to kill her every Tuesday. The her from that life naturally had a little squeamishness about murder. Like a weird aftertaste you can't quite get rid of.
But here? In this blood-soaked, backstabbing, "I'll kill you for the last rice ball" of a world?
That squeamishness went out the window faster than a Konoha ninja running from a paperwork deadline.
She had killed, then killed again, and kept killing because apparently that was just what you did here—like paying taxes, except the tax collector was trying to stab you in the face. And she had made peace with it.
Because in the Ninja World, the laws were simple: Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. Survive or become a very sad memorial stone that everyone walks past on their way to lunch and be known as the "what if" woman.
Soon, she told herself, lightning armor around her body like a billion angry bees, soon, Azula. There isn't a single system in the entire multiverse that's going to make you bow to its rules. You're almost there, just one more push.
And then—
She smiled.
This was the kind of smile that made the laughing ninjas stop laughing.
This was the kind of smile that made grown men question every life choice that had led them to this exact moment.
This was the kind of smile that had probably inspired several horror movies in alternate dimensions.
To them, she looked like the devil himself had put on a very attractive face and decided to clock in for overtime. She was harvesting lives like it was harvest season and she had a quota to meet. And the terrifying part was the fact that she seemed to be enjoying it.
Even the most hardened shinobi, guys who had seen things that would make regular people cry themselves to sleep for a decade, felt something twist in their chests watching her work.
Lightning Release Chakra Mode crackled around her like a second skin. Her eyes, red with three tomoe spinning, locked onto target after target. Life after life, she danced through the battlefield like death with really good hair.
She was in the middle of a particularly satisfying stab toward some poor twenty-something ninja who had definitely chosen the wrong career path, when—
Something.
She felt it before she saw it.
The poor guy she was about to turn into a human shish kebab suddenly found himself very much alive, mostly because Azula had completely forgotten he existed. He also discovered that he had, in fact, peed his pants just a little bit.
Or a lot.
In that moment, the distinction felt academic.
A flash of white-blue light streaked across the battlefield like a comet with anger management issues.
Azula's attention snapped toward it like a magnet finding its soulmate.
She didn't hesitate. Didn't even bother finishing her sentence in her own head before moving.
One second she was there. The next second she was there, lightning crashing into that light like two freight trains that really, really hated each other.
And then she felt herself being pushed back.
Azula's eyes widened. Then she was excited. "Hahaha, Raikage, it seems among the current Kage, only you are worthy of your title in the current Ninja World."
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Sob! My baby is finally about to have a fight worthy of her. And wow, you guys, we even made it to the top two this morning before stepping down to now five after the new publishing round, and btw, I'm doing a public free poll on my Patreon concerning Azula and her Mangekyō, hope you can participate, just look for Melonlord on Patreon.