By evening that day, Senju Mori and his companion finally crossed the entire Land of Frost and reached the Land of Lightning, territory of Kumogakure.
Compared to the strain of their headlong rush, finding Senju Tobirama after slipping into Lightning's borders proved easy.
There was hardly any need to search.
On one side fought Senju Tobirama, unleashing large-scale Water Release one after another and reshaping the terrain. On the other side stood the Gold and Silver Brothers, wielding the Nine-Tails' chakra.
Under Uzumaki Chizawa's sensing, that battlefield near the Lightning border blazed like a fallen sun.
"Such dense tailed-beast chakra! That should be Kinkaku… I can't sense Ginkaku anymore! And… yes! Lord Tobirama's chakra too!"
"Lord Tobirama is fighting Kinkaku!"
Chizawa closed his eyes, hands forming the incomplete seal as he kept Kagura's Mind Eye trained on the distant clash.
"Good."
Mori couldn't help but smile and vaulted toward the direction Chizawa indicated.
…
After Kinkaku and Ginkaku entered partial tailed-beast form and vastly boosted their speed, Tobirama could no longer keep opening distance with short-range Flying Thunder God alone.
He knew it well. His chakra reserves could not compare to those of two inhuman monsters with special bloodlines who had devoured a tailed beast's flesh.
If they kept trading attrition, he would be the first to run dry.
Dozens of li from the border, the brothers finally ran him down, and Tobirama chose to stand and fight.
By now the battle had gone white-hot.
Rrrrumble—
As Mori neared the battlefield, a raging roar of water reached them, threaded with deafening explosions.
He did not need to get any closer. From a high branch he could already see an abrupt expanse of water carved into the forest ahead.
A peak battle of the ninja world unfolded before his eyes.
He dropped from the canopy and landed light as a leaf.
"Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage…"
With flawless ease he sank into the ground.
…
When Mori surfaced again, the fierce fight raged right before him.
Tobirama flickered like streaks of white light among the trees.
He often needed only two or three signs for a perfectly honed Water Release.
Sometimes a circular water curtain formed a seamless defense. Sometimes a massive waterspout lunged and bit down.
Kinkaku's style, by contrast, was brutish.
Swathed in tailed-beast chakra, he dodged most techniques with agility and took the rest head-on.
Beyond shocking speed and power, he swung the Banana Fan now and then, and his simple attacks came almost as frequently as Tobirama's jutsu.
"Water Release: Riptide!"
Before Kinkaku noticed him, Mori burst from underground and sped through signs.
A hyper-compressed blade of water traced a horizontal stroke in the air like a slashing ninjatō and tore toward Kinkaku's unguarded back.
Despite the plain name, this was a high-level Water Release requiring both nature and shape transformation.
The sudden ambush left Kinkaku no time to evade. The compressed water, sharper than a blade, sliced open part of his tailed-beast cloak.
On contact it detonated, the thin sheet exploding into a surging mass of water that hurled Kinkaku bodily away.
Mori's eyes narrowed.
Ideally the attack would have held its compressed form, only detonating if it could no longer cut—becoming the torrent now raging.
"Mori? Why are you here!"
Tobirama spotted the technique at once, and when he saw the caster, even his usually impassive face showed clear surprise.
By any logic, this brat from the Senju had no reason to cross half the shinobi world from Konoha to appear before him at such a delicate moment.
Mori did not answer. He looked utterly focused on weaving signs,
as if facing a powerhouse like Kinkaku left him too tense to spare a word.
But behind the veil of mist kicked up by the water, a shadow flickered across his eyes.
He might… be early.
After assassinating Uchiha Kagami, Mori had pushed hard with Chizawa to avoid arriving too late—fearing Tobirama would already be killed by the brothers and that Kumo's follow-up would have reclaimed the body and the treasured tools.
Yet when he arrived, there was no sign of pursuit squads, and Tobirama seemed… fine?
Was this white-haired old ghost really that fierce?
He had soloed the brothers all day and even killed Ginkaku unscathed?
In the next instant the shadow in Mori's eyes vanished as if it had never been.
At Tobirama's flank and slightly behind, a gash yawned, blood-slick, faint traces of red tailed-beast chakra still clinging to it.
By Mori's knowledge of anatomy, that was the position of a kidney, with possible involvement of the abdominal aorta.
A destroyed single kidney would not kill outright, but kidneys bleed profusely; massive blood loss was likely—and with corrosive tailed-beast chakra added…
As the mist thinned, Mori's expression cycled in seconds from shock to anger to concern.
"Clan Head Tobirama! You—"
"Don't get distracted. Help me finish him first."
Tobirama was every inch a veteran of the Warring States. Even with such a wound, his face barely changed. Anyone else would be prone on the ground.
Looking closer, Mori saw only a pallor about him, and even that was disguised by white hair and a white-metal forehead protector.
"Understood, Clan Head Tobirama."
Certain of Tobirama's condition, Mori shifted most of his focus back to Kinkaku.
The tailed-beast cloak and a likely descendant-of-the-Sage physique gave Kinkaku absurd durability.
After tanking Mori's water technique, he bore no obvious injuries.
He was already back on his feet, vulpine vertical pupils blazing, the chakra cloak distorting his face into a snarl.
Perhaps not defense alone—more likely rapid regeneration under tailed-beast chakra.
Given his feral state, Mori even wondered whether Kinkaku still had clear will and reason.
"A Senju brat, is it…? I'll butcher you together!!!"
The words oozed malice, squeezed out between his teeth.
Ugly as it sounded, it proved Kinkaku still retained consciousness.
"Faster. Sharper," Mori thought.
His hands never stopped forming signs.
No need for Tobirama to lay out tactics. Riptide was Mori's strongest single-target Water Release. If it could not cut Kinkaku, his role was to bind him.
Leave the killing blow to the true master of Water Release, the Second Hokage.
Against Tobirama's monstrous waters, even the Divine Tree's branches would be sliced clean through if struck solidly—let alone a tailed-beast cloak and sturdy flesh.