Hoorah

As yet another root Madara robbed from my grandfather spears through my midsection, I cannot stop to feel the searing pain as it quakes through my waning body. Moving with it is laborious and it throws me off balance, so my fists are strewn off center and maximum damage is whittled down to mere slaps. It's frustrating beyond measure, and it is through this piling frustration that I am speared once again and this time I can't get up.
I can feel the warmth of my blood soak my clothes and leave my body. My seal kicks in just as quickly as it should and the clotting starts again, but much slower. Something animalistic leaves my mouth, a growl of pain and – as much as I hate to admit it – defeat burns my mouth. My vision is blurred by the dust and debris of the battlefield, and it does not clear as quickly as when I was in my youth. I can taste the dirt in my mouth, drying it out and making me ache for water. But all I can feel is the blood filing my mouth. It feels as if I am, finally, conquered.
By a man nonetheless.
It's pathetic; my bones creak with the dissatisfaction that the mighty Tsunade lies there in the dirt like slovenly gennin. It's a kind of fire that boils in my gut, that stubborn streak that keeps my heart beating; I can feel it pulsing through my war-torn body.
I have to get up.
My village flashes in my eyes: the rubble, the dead, the mourning. I feel once again the drowning sense of helplessness that overcame me then now swallow me whole. My arms are weak, and I cannot hold myself up. My vision begins to darken and I can no longer hear the battle cries of my fellow Kage.
I am humiliated at this loss, utterly destroyed that once again Uchiha Madara has conquered a Senju once again.
Dammit.
Suddenly a violent torrent shakes the earth beneath me and a wave of sand soars through the sky. That boy from the Sand.
"Hokage!" the Mizukage, her hair mussed from its intricate braiding, hurdles over a mountainous boulder and skids to my side. "Get to your feet! You'll be dead if he finds you slumped on the ground."
My temper soars again and a rush of blood passes through my head. How long had I been on the ground? Me, on the ground like a defeated pile of shit.
No.
"Help me with something, Mizukage?"
"Of course."
I can feel my heart beating in my chest, hammering away like a massive drum under a stick made of lead.
"Whom did we promise this fight to?" I wipe the blood from my mouth and manage to clamber to my feet despite the tree trunks in my sides.
"Naruto, we had promised him we would take care of this for him."
It looked as if she wanted to say more, but we had to scatter from one of Madara's chakra puppets as it brought down a massive hand on the ground we had just occupied. I had been tossed over into a bramble of broken earth and previous branches that had dared to skewer me but failed.
I leaned heavily on one of the upturned boulders as images of the bright boy who had grown so much since I had first met him. He was headstrong, a very admirable quality if you ask me, but sometimes it made him bite off more than he could chew. I don't know how he did it, but no matter what that boy stuck to his word. He had a strength I never knew a person could have, even after everything the world had put him through, day in and day out he hoisted them on his shoulders and carried their weight.
Everything he had been through, all the pain and triumph, was far greater than what these roots were doing to me now.
Bullheads tend to bump, and so I couldn't let him triumph all on his own.
As yet another blast of an explosion swept past me, I closed my eyes and smiled triumphantly as I felt the fire in my gut erupt into a torrent of fantastic plumes of confidence and victory. I could feel it creep up me like fingertips searching for cracks on a prison wall.
And just like that, with a snap of something so akin to pride for the boy, I could feel myself embodying his spirit to the point I felt a dattebayo coming on.
The smoke around me cleared and my enemy became clear, and the fire rose into my heart, erupting into something so powerful that I could feel the chill of death leave my overworked body and a golden rush of strength return. I leapt into the air as a chakra phantom came closer. Power surged through me as the ideal of peace and love that Naruto would return to this world surged through me. As gravity took its inevitable role, I came down hard on the beast and smashed it to the ground and landed on my feet, my breath moist in conquest.
"You're getting sloppy, Hokage!"
The man from the thundering Cloud roared across the battlefield, his concern misplaced as he tackled one of our foes.
"You hulking beast! You have no business critiquing my finesse!" I dodged another root and finally secured a safe place where I could free myself from the husky branches still skewering me. With a very rough grunt they were gone and a startling lightness returned to my body. A rapid wave of intense nausea washed over me and toppled me lightly as blood spilled from my mouth once again.
"No, no, no."
The seal was fading, was what first came to my mind. In panic and haste I returned to my hovelled state on my knees.
My legendary strength was beginning to wane again. How, as it had come so quickly, could it seep away like the blood from my wounds? It was age, I finally thought as sweat fell from my face. The young were meant to be fighting this fight, not us old and out of touch. I thought again of Naruto, then Sakura as her hands glowed green with the techniques I had passed down to her. The two could change the world; both were fighting their hearts out right now.
There was a horribly real possibility that I wouldn't see their faces again. Not being able to see Naruto's hopeful face or the determination that line the soft edges of Sakura's. I wasn't able to kneel in the dirt and take it and I was reduced to a remission of decrepit skin and bones.
"Stand up my fellow Kages!"
The voice of the Tsuchikage rang clear in my ears, his older, more worn voice screeched through the echoes of the battlefield. I looked up; honestly surprised he had not been reduced to his knees, and felt my breath settle.
"We cannot complain when we are in a life or death situation!"
I watched the others look up at him, all gathering what was left of their strength for the next volley of spitfire.
"Even if the five Kage are defeated, our last words must not bear shame upon our titles! Naruto is fighting a battle we entrusted to him! An we must do the same," for a man of just under five feet, he had never seemed broader, more built than what he seemed now. Before me stood not a man of his years, but a champion that had ventured countless battles and horrors, a man we as shinobi could relate to. It was odd how we could all come together in the face of ultimate death and submission.
"And we swore to win this battle."
I was flooded with an unconscious spirit that lifted me to my dying feet and threw my shoulders back as my defiant flare shot out of my light a start streaking through the inky night sky. We gathered in a line, just like we had when we first arrived, pompous from the air in our heads. Now we stood almost broken but inflated once again, with the strength and the power of the people who had entrusted this battle to us.  I was ready, more than ever, to die for this cause.
We all shared a silent thought and instantly we were one and the same. I had my hands on the Tsuchikage's back, feeling every poorly hidden tremor the man had going up his back, and poured all the chakra I could into him.
This was it, our last hoorah.