Chapter 36.2- One Thousand Hands

We ran along the floor for a few miles before we reached the first trees that had not been devastated by my large scale ninjutsu and began hopping along. All the while I kept my byakugan active to make sure that no one was following or tracking us as we travelled. Even with that, Izuku still doubled back every few miles too eliminate whatever traces we left behind. Things like footprintsa, broken twigs or weakened branches as well as scent. Konoha had the best trackers and sensors in the world with our unique combination of Hyuga, Aburame, Inuzuka, and Yamanaka, but we weren’t the only ones with trackers. In a regular mission, the chances of running across someone like that from. Foreign village was slim, as they didn’t boast our numbers, but here, it was almost guaranteed.

We were here to wage guerrilla warfare with the Suna advance. A head on confrontation would be suicide. I was powerful, but even two extra jounin on Piandao’s side would be enough to ensure I never managed to make it out of the fight alive. The same would be the case for any of the others- one jounin in a confrontation was possible, but dozens of them falling upon us at the same time was one way to die. When we had covered what felt like half the land of rivers, Izuku made a sign to signal us to follow and then dropped out of the foliage.

I did the same, and then we began to walk on foot until we came across a tree. It was just a tree, oak like the rest of this small forest, and unmarred. There was nothing to mark it as special, and with my byakugan- I could not see anything special about it. Still, Izuku shoved his hand straight into the tree and hit a lever of some sort that made the ground around us disappear. As neither Uzume nor Izuku were alarmed, I did not panic as I fell down into a room. It was a large underground cavern with sleeping bags arrayed around a light source, some form of luminescent crystal that I could recognise from the Hyuga compound.

Shika and the others were standing around a stone table, upon which someone had spread a large map of the Land of Rivers.

“We’ve come bearing gifts” Izuku said with a flourish, waving towards me. Shika looked up and spared me a smile before looking back to the map. Everyone else left the table to come say hi- even Shiba, to my great supply.

-

“Byakugan blocking seals?” I asked Uraume as we finally ran through the pleasantries and returned to the planning circle.

“You have no idea what you’d run into here” She said, but said little else. I narrowed my eyes at her, but said nothing else. If she wanted to keep secrets, then that was her right. The same way it was mine to find out what those secrets were.

“Uraume says you plugged up the source of the water for the land of rivers” Shika began. I nodded. That was the story we were going with, after I swore both Uraume and Shiba to secrecy on what exactly we had found. I trusted all my comrades, but Suna nin had interrogation techniques that boggled the mind. It was better to reduce the risk of it getting out that I had in my possession a source of infinite water. It wasn’t a stretch to say that the very face of this war could change if that revelation made it out.