Chapter 34.5- One Thousand Hands

With my byakugan, I could see the minute beads of sweat as they began to form on his temple. He lifted a hand to wipe and then looked at me. Just like against the Raikage, I’d put in the extra concentration to keep the armour invisible to the naked eye, using fire natured chakra and not fire itself to achieve that goal of heat without warning.

“What are you doing?” The man asked, but I just smirked and sent a roundhouse kick screaming for his head. He blocked it with his cane again but this time I noticed that the force pushing against me was not as sure. I kept the kick going, channelling even more energy into trying to break his guard. With a heave of strain, he pushed back against me and sent my leg flying back to the ground. I moved with it, replacing one leg with another like a windmill and forcing him into a dog for the first time in this fight. My fingers blurred as I sent four shurinken flying for his position. Poor aim meant only there of them were in any danger of hitting him but his movements still lagged as he had to bat them away with his cane.

I flared my chakra even more, upping the heat. The barrier meant that none of the heat I was releasing was being funneled away by the wind or whatever. It was being trapped at the edges of the invisible barrier and bounced right back at us. Basically, I had turned this place into a furnace. With the amount of chakra I had at my disposal these days, there was some possibility that I didn’t even need the chakra barrier at all and could have done the same with the cave’s walls as a natural barrier but that ran the risk of incapacitating both Shiba and Uraume as well as our opponents. On the flip side, it would have meant I would have not had to bother with shit like this, I thought as I stomped my foot on the ground and lifted a wall of earth to block the path that the old man had been intending to use to retreat.

“Nuh-uh not so fast” I said as I came at him again. He took the first punch with the cane, but when my left leg came to slide his out from under him, he only barely managed to lift his in time to prevent loosing his balance but that did not matter as my other hand came up in a push that sent him to the floor. He was still faster than me in this field of his, but it did not matter. My heat sapped at his energy to prevent him levying the full force of that speed against me while I just fought him with pure taijutsu where I was most assuredly superior. The switch from the Gentle Fist to the academy style also did its job in sending him reeling. It was difficult to fight someone who constantly changed the way they fought, I’d noticed. Uncle Hiroshi considered the entire thing to be pointless, but even he had been forced on the backfoot when I switched styles. Now all I had to do was wait for Might Duy to finish developing the strong fist. I’d seen the genin around the village a few times, but I could tell he was still far off from becoming the man who would kill so many of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen that the organisation as a whole would need two generations to recover from him.

I stared at him on the floor and waited for him to stand.

“You have given me a good fight. That is more than I can say for most others. For that, I will honour you with a quick death” I said, picking up the Raijin no ken from my belt and activating the plasma blade.

He could sense himself beginning to tire, I could tell. When he stood, he stood with the air of a man that knew he was beat. That also meant he was desperate. Desperate men would do stupid things to win. If he was going to make a suicide play, this would be the point. He rushed at me with a war cry on his lips, and he was oh so slow. This time, when I moved, it felt like he was moving through jelly. I dodged underneath the swing of his cane and stabbed the thunder sword right into his chest.

He looked down at the plasma blade with shock in his eyes, an expression that I shared. What had just happened.

“I see it now, you’re one of them” He said. What?

“What are you talking about?” I asked, but he was already dead and gone.

I turned my attention to the other fight, and was not surprised to find the woman moaning on the floor in pain. Shiba and Uraume were a deadly combination. Even one touch from either o them could end the fight. The purple insects making their way across her body told me exactly what had been done to her. I walked towards the waterskin instead.

“If we take it, the rivers across the country will run dry” Shiba said, not expressing any emotion in favour of taking it or not but just stating it like it was a fact.

“They will.” I agreed.

“Millions of people depend on those rivers for their livelihood. I wouldn’t be surprised if this place became a desert just like Suna if we took it” Uraume put in her two cents. While Shiba didn’t seem to care, it was clear that Uraume was just the sort of person who did care.

“Well, if we weren’t going to take it, then we shouldn’t have killed the guardians, don’t you think? We found this place, so what’s stopping anyone else from doing the same. Besides, we had been about to poison these very waters- what’s the difference in just taking it.”

“We were planning on using chakra poison that wouldn’t have affected civilians, Shorirama-san. It is highly illogical to equate the both of them. But I do agree that killing the guardians does put us in a difficult situation” Shiba said next.

“We have no choice then” I said, walking forwards and closing the water skin.