Chapter 55.1- One THousand Hands

“Tell me what happened” I asked her as we stood side by side outside the operating room. Tsunade was huddled ver the Hokage’s body, pumping it with chakra and trying her best to put his organs back together. It said something about the situation he was in that even a healer ofTsunade’s skill was struggling to just keep him alive. Half his chest was gone, his heart had lost a good chunk of its mass and then there was hi lung— singular. The other one was just completely gone. So no, Hiruzen was not in a good state, and it was doubtful that he was going to make it out of that room alive.

“The Raikage. Some sort of lightning release jutsu that took out half his chest. We had to retreat with the Hokage— or what was leftof him at least. Sensei— Sensei stayed to hold off the Raikage. The Kumo shinobi, they routed us, chased us all the way to the edge of Frost before turning about. We lost so many just holding them off and preventing them from overwhelming our position.” She said.

“Seven thousand two hundred and fifty six Konoha Shinobi went into the Land of Frost. Barely eight hundred of you made it back” I said, turning my head in her direction and watching her grit her teeth at my words.

“Frost was a mistake. The Raikage. Shori, he’s not human.” She said, and if I wasn’t mistaken then that sounded like fear in Uzume’s voice. I had to be mistaken.

“What do you mean?”

“With my sharingan, I can see chakra levels— not with the same detail you can but with enough. And do you want to know what I saw in the Raikage? He fought Sensei, the Hokage, and I at the same time and his chakra didn’t even budge. Not a scratch on him, not a drop of chakra lost, that’s unreal. He’s unreal” She said.

“Well, we’re going to have to figure out some way to kill him eventually. Because you know what happens after Frost? After Frost, he’s in the Land of Fire proper and retreat is not an option in that scenario” I said.

“How’s the rest of the war going?”

“Terribly. The Ame battalion was wiped down to just three men left. Of three thousand, only three returned. Konoha’s battle strength of ten thousand has been torn to pieces” I said.

“Fuck.”

“Indeed.”

“Good thing that’s someone else’s problem” She said with a sigh. And she was right, at least she usually would be. We were powerful Jounin, but just Jounin in the end. Stuff like this wasn’t our problem. The only issue with thinking like this was the fact that I was the head of one of the few clans to not lose most of their shinobi in the war effort. I could already tell that there would be a lot of calls for the Uzumaki to pay our fair share to the blood toll. I’d have to do something about that one way or the other.