Inheritance

The Torch Passes

Hana stared at him, expression unreadable and then glanced towards the fight.

"No."

"What? It's the only way!"

"If you don't get treatment, you'll die Uchiha! You might not care but I'd never forgive myself if I left you here to bleed out in the forest. He'd never forgive me either." She scowled. "Ino, I know you have some medical training - I'm going to need your help to stabilise Sasuke before we can even think about moving him."

"But Naruto-" the Yamanaka started, uncertain, but Hana shut down the protest.

"Naruto will hold out against that thing for as long as we damn well need him to!" She snapped, green chakra bubbling to life around her hands before she pressed them to her chest and she forced a grin. "Put some damn trust in him. He knows we're here and that's all the information he needs. Naruto won't go down and even if he does, he'll take that red-haired bastard with him."

Ino nodded, and Sasuke felt the world begin to dim as warm chakra began to seep through him. It was oddly comforting. He wanted to protest, to force them to go and find help. Naruto shouldn't have to put his life on the line for him and his idiotic pride. He wanted... to- He wanted- fight, he wanted to...

Darkness took him.

* * *

Sarutobi gasped for breath and hauled himself to his feet once more. Blood seeped from wounds on his head and chest, battle-dress tattered and scorched. He chanced a glance to the side, where Jiraiya was fighting a three on one battle against the other three Hokage. That boy really had been his greatest feat as a shinobi. How he wished he had invested more in Jiraiya and Tsunade and far less in the half-man before him that he had once loved like a son.

When Orochimaru had first activated the Edo Tensei successfully, cold fear had gripped him. He and Jiraiya were old, and their resurrected opponents looked and felt in their prime. However, it had quickly become clear that their power whilst being controlled by Orochimaru, while fearsome, was nothing like the power each man had wielded in life.

Furthermore, when Orochimaru was unable to concentrate on the control of the former Hokage, they weakened even further. A plan was formed in which Jiraiya would keep the attention of the Kage whilst he dealt with his former student. When Orochimaru fell, his summons would as well.

He had misjudged his own abilities. Orochimaru outclassed him significantly and the fight had moved ever closer to the realms of being toyed with and humiliated in opposition to actual combat. Jiraiya on the other hand had fought magnificently, using his sage jutsu to meet the three kage in front of him as an equal. That was a fight that would go down in legend without a doubt. The mighty Jiraiya of the Sannin who fought the three greatest Hokage ever to live all at once and the old man, past his prime who failed to defeat their summoner.

"So Sarutobi-sensei, how long do you think we should keep this charade going for? Do I wait until Jiraiya-kun is utterly exhausted and unable to resist when I cut his throat? Or do I wait for just long enough that he still has some belief that he can defeat me so that I can watch it vanish from his eyes?" The man's face twisted into an even more gruesome smirk. "Perhaps instead I keep you alive for long enough to watch his precious student squeeze the life from him before I do the same to you." He laughed. "Poetic, is it not?"

Sarutobi steeled himself and a familiar feeling surged through him at Orochimaru's words. Will. Conviction. The surety that no matter how the odds were stacked, he would not allow his village or its people to come to harm. Just the thought summoned strength almost not his own. It was not much at his age, but it was enough for this.

It was not Jiraiya's time yet. It was not his village's time.

It was his.

"You seem to be labouring under the assumption that I am out of this fight," his eyes glinted, cold iron erasing all trace of the sympathy and guilt that he felt for his former student. They narrowed. "A dangerous mistake."