Chapter 82.6- One Thousand Hands

XXXXX- TOSHIRO

He sensed the build up of Shori’s chakra before the jutsu was fired, and that might have been the only thing that save his life. From being teammates with the Senju scion from a young age, he knew there was one language Shorirama Senju spoke better than any other.. it was violence and escalation. So when he felt the build up and calculated that they would be in the path of whatever he was going to unleash, Toshiro pushed back against Hayate of the Six Swords, forcing him backwards— a temporary reprieve at best, but enough for him to jump away, pausing to wrench Inoken from where he was hiding from the bombardment of fire release that the Desert Blaze was peppering their position with.

Only the fact that they clearly wanted Inoken alive had kept them in this for so long. “What are you doing?” He heard inoken say to him as he kept moving, pushing his legs to the maximum and just running. The Suna shinobi chased them, and for the first time in a long time, Toshiro dared to pray. ‘Please get caught in it, please’, he muttered to himself over and over again.

And then his mind went elsewhere— he heard it before he saw it, and it was coming quickly. He turned to the side, and watched a full on skyscraper be torn off its foundation in a matter of seconds. Shorirama Senju, he thought to himself as he dove behind an upturned piece of rubble and braced himself. He felt the wind lick against his form, fully aware that these were just the fringes of the attack, not the main thing. He stretched out his chakra, trying to get a feel for the Suna shinobi, but there was no chance of it. All he could feel was Shori’s suffocating chakra in the jutsu. It was everywhere.

Finally the jutsu had run its course. Inoken was out of his arms once he felt it was safe to move and had turned to look behind them— at the jutsu’s aftermath. “What is it?” He asked, but Inoken didn’t even seem to have heard him.

Toshiro knew they should have continued running but he turned to look as well, and he understood Inoken’s silence. It was a large valley carved into the middle of a village. They had been considering it throughout this invasion, but this was the end of Iwa. There was no chance they could come back from it. Everything in the path of Shori’s jutsu was just gone. Toshiro would have believed it was the Tsuchikage’s famed dust release if he hadn’t felt it himself. That was wind. Just wind release. No kekkei genkai, nothing. Just wind release. Fuck.

There was a sound of rubble moving, and he turned to find Hayate pushing a stone slab off of himself. “Run” He told Inoken, turning and taking off a second later. If Shori’s jutsu had injured them then they had a chance of escape here.