Chapter 35.6- One Thousand Hands

“Piandao the Weasel, I wish I could say the same, but we both know that you will be remembered for a month at the most before your village moves on. Killing you will just be another notch on my belt.” I said with a shrug, purposely attempting to irritate him as I rose from the ground with a smirk.

“We’ll see about that” he said, and then he was off. His blade sliced a few bangs off my hair as I bent at the waist to avoid the attack. His attempt to shift his footing and send the blade through my chest failed as I switched places with another mud clone.

“If I have to kill a million of these to get to you, I will. But I would be pleased if you decided to fight like a warrior and abandoned such petty tricks.” He said, while flicking his blade to remove what little mud had managed to stick to him.

I formed the snake seal from behind him, and the ground rumbled as it shifted to form spikes beneath his feet. He shifted his stance, and even as a spike erupted from right beneath his left leg, he somehow managed to remain balanced atop it.

“That’s just bullshit” I muttered as I took a deep breath and covered him in flames. This time, he jumped from one spike to the next and allowed the fire to miss him by some margin.   

“Too slow, Senju-san” He said as he dodged all my attempts to set him on fire even as he jumped through the field of spikes to make his way to me. When he was right in front of me, I allowed him to cleave me in twain, and as my clone fell apart before him, I took aim from a few dozen feet away and sent a beam of pure chakra through his heart. At least, I tried to.

Just as about the moment my chakra arrow was about to hit, he turned on his heel and sliced through it with his blade.

“Hiding now?” He asked with a chuckle before jetting off. Guessing that my position had been made, I shoved my hands into the ground and lifted them with rock gauntlets around each fist. My left fist was up in time to catch his blade and stop it short. At least, it was stopped short for a second or two, I amended as I was forced to release the gauntlet as his blade began to eat into it.

“What even is that thing made of?” I asked as I swung my right fist straight at his exposed midsection. He bent his body out of the way of the blow, and I stomped my foot on the ground, turning the area around us into mud in an instant, and forcing him to jump backwards as the mud began to take hold of his feet.

“That kekkei genkai of yours is annoying” He said with a scoff.

“Kekkei genkai? This is earth release” I replied with a matching scoff.

He actually burst into laughter at that. “And you are supposed to be the brightest gem of this failed generation of yours? What has this world come to?”

Ignoring his attempt to distract me, I formed another hand seal and sent the mud around me reaching out for him. He jumped backwards, avoiding the attack as someone came into my range of vision.

Not just someone, I noted. It was two people, Izuku and Uzume. I tried to avoid giving it away, but my opponent slashed through some of the mud tendrils and took a single look at my face before jumping backwards.

“You have reinforcements on the way. We will meet again, Senju-san” He said, and before I could even contemplate following, my eyes caught onto a glowing explosion tag floating in the mud right next to me. Looking around, I noticed that there were at least a dozen more. Fuck.

“Eight trigrams: Rotation” I began.

A/N: How was the fight? Don’t expect decisive outcomes all the time. Would be a pretty short war if every fight ended with someone important dying, wouldn’t it?