Chapter 47.2- One Thousand Hands

Off in the distance, she could see Sensei and the Hokage fighting the Raikage. Well, fighting was an overstatement. They were retreating and leading him on a running chase. The man wasn’t very bright, she thought to himself. That was often the case for those with more power than sense— a sort of shortsightedness that they were blind to. Even Shori, for all his smarts was a victim to it more often than not. He couldn’t see why their victories in Kawa no Kuni were never celebrated. They hadn’t been sent there to win, but to delay. The threat of Suna possibly annexing the Land of Rivers and setting their sights on Iwa, who they still had a grudge against from the first war had kept Iwa from committing their full forces to the war. The other villages were fighting them, but that didn’t make them allies among themselves and they were wary of what would happen after defeating Konoha.

In pushing Suna back, he had beaten them but they were not the threat the Hokage worried about. Iwa was. And Shori had unshackled Iwa. When her father explained it to her on the night she had returned, she’d wanted to go to the man and have a long conversation— with her gunbai. But she had seen better. Shori would never see it though. It wasn’t in his nature to think like that. The same way it wasn’t in the Raikage’s nature to realise that for all the Hokage swung his staff, and Sensei arced out with his blade, they were not seeking to hurt him. Merely keep him from hurting them as they led him by the nose and their army slaughtered his. Because this was a slaughter by every metric. Another man approached— no two men. The second crept through the shadows trying to take advantage of the first’s distraction to deal with her.

She allowed the approach. He slashed out at her eyes, expecting a flinch. She disappointed him, smoothly stepping back from the attack before slamming a foot into the ground. She wasn’t as skilled as Shori, but she had a trick or two. Her left hand curled in half of a snake seal and the earth beneath his right foot loosened, trapping it. When he tripped up from the sudden loss of balance, she was there, red eyes flashing. Her kunai slashed through his eyes. Just as intended, his scream caused the man approaching her from behind to falter for a second. A second too long. She spun around, red eyes meeting his. He fell to the ground unconscious, and she flicked a shuriken into his neck before continuing her journey towards Uraume’s position. The second man she left screaming in place. Someone would put an end to him sooner or later.

She considered jumping over a fight between two chunin who seemed to be in a contest to see who could get themself killed first, before changing her mind. What would Shori do? Incompetent or not, the fool with the brown hair was still a Konoha shinobi. Her fingers flicked and two shuriken sliced through Blondie’s achilles tendons. At least, Brunette had the smarts to stab his enemy through the chest while he was shocked and in pain.

He lifted his head to her— “Thank you”, he sounded so excited and had a bright smile on his face. A bright smile that remained on his face as the burly man appeared behind him. She moved to call out a warning but it was too late. Body bubbling with red noxious chakra, the man grabbed a hold of her countryman and roasted him alive. A gleaming tail formed behind him.

“So you’re the one killing all the men” He growled at her. Enji, the Jinchuriki of the Two Tails, she recognised.