Chapter 54.5- One Thousand Hands

Even with Kurama’s chakra shielding me, the top layer of skin covering both my arms had been burned right off. Fuck. Its just nature chakra— since kurama’s own chakra stacked in on top of that, I would have lost both arms and probably much off what lay behind them— my head. The injuries were already beginning to scab and heal over— such was he vitality of Kurama’s chakra, but still they did a lot to drive home the threat this man posed.

“Jinchuriki” Hanzo drawled with audibly disdain as he tossed the shaft of his scythe off to the side. I shoved Kurama’s chakra inwards, back into the seal and the world stopped being tinged with red. I was’t good enough with Kurama’s chakra to rely on it for a fight like this one. The threat that he had something waiting in the winds that could kill me in one fell swoop was too acute for me to fight in a state I was not fully familiar with. Hanzo wasn’t the kind of opponent to be overwhelmed with sheer brute force— especially now that he was in the prime of his life.

I reached behind me into my kunai pouch and grabbed set of six in each hand, sending them flying about the place, giving me spots to teleport to if the situation became dire.

“A recent addition. Now are we going to stand around all day, or are we going to dance?” I said, smile wide and leaning heavily on my naturally annoying personality— at least that was how others described it to me.

“Are you stalling to allow your cousin heal those teammates of hers? I assure you numbers matter little against one such as I” If he was expecting anything to his words, then it definitely wasn’t what I gave him. Laughter.

“As if I’d need help to kill someone like you. What are you again? Some upjumped fisherman from a minor county too unimportant to be remembered in history as a place where your betters do battle.” That one got under his skin, I could tell. Rebreather or not, I could see it in his body language, in the way his eyes tightened. Was I talking advantage of meta knowledge to be an even more effective arsehole? Yes. Yes I was.

“With the others, I killed them because they were in my country. It wasn’t personal. I was just doing my duty. With you, Shorirama Senju, however. What I will do to you, I will enjoy”

“Did you have to make it sound like a weird sex thing?” I asked. His face tightened further behind the rebreather, but he said no words. He was going to let his ninjutsu speak for him. He began to weave seals faster than I’d ever seen anyone— not even Hiruzen could weave seals so quickly.

“Suiton: Bakusui Shōha” (Water Release: Exploding Water Colliding Wave)