Chapter 84.2- One Thousand Hands

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Orochimaru had a bad habit. He was more a scholar than he was a shinobi. Of the three of them, much to Sensei’s disappointment, Jiraiya was the only one built to be a shinobi. Orochimaru was a scholar, just as she was a healer. She would always be better and more suited for putting people back together than taking them apart, and Orochimaru’s boundless curiosity would be the death of him. Case in point, the fact that he was still exchanging sword swings with the most famous kenjutsu master in the world. They would all approach fights differently.

She’d have allowed Hayate of the Six Swords to stab her through once and then turned his body to paste once she drew him close enough. Jiraiya would have kept his distance, not even letting the kenjutsu master bring his sword skills to bear as he battered him with ninjutsu. Orochimaru? Well, like a scholar he wanted to learn everything there was to learn. And so he decided to start a kenjutsu fight with the foremost kenjutsu master in the world.

She watched as he stepped backwards, not quite able to get out of the way of the blade as it left another cut along his arm. She counted over half a dozen of them already. Each of them were light and narrow slashes, but they wept blood regardless. Hayate would take his win by a thousand cuts if he needed to, while Orochimaru tried to get better and study his technique so he could improve his own kenjutsu while they did so. Tsunade reached out with her chakra, forming a half ram seal.

It was a simple genjutsu, one designed to mess up his balance just slightly. It didn’t work, his chakra smashing through the genjutsu almost instantly. Jiraiya had, at the same time, spat a mud bullet between Orochi and Hayate, forcing their teammate to withdraw from kenjutsu range lest he be knocked out of the fight. In all of Konoha, the only people with better earth release than Jiraiya were Sensei and Shori.

Orochi backflipped, jumping in their direction and landing between them.

“What are you doing?” His sibilant hiss wormed its way down her ears.

“Preventing you from getting killed” She said, stabbing her fingers into his chest. His chakra didn’t even try to fight her— so used it was to her ministration— as she took charge of its processes and forced it to heal his wounds in a matter of seconds.

“I had him”

“Yeah, it sure looked that way” Jiraiya cut in before weaving more seals and smashing his hands into the ground.

“Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld” He said, and then the ground between them and their opponent turned to deep black mud. From experience, she knew that swamp was deep enough to sink a boss-sized summon if Jiraiya used it at full power. Hayate pushed off against the ground the second before it transformed, hand flying to the blade at his side. Orochimaru moved in front of them, blade in hand, and blocked the swing from the swordsman. Fast, was her first thought. But she’d fought fast before.