Chapter 21.3- One Thousand Hands

All three of them were forced to abandon position as the water crashed through Orochimaru’s dam and bore down on them. Tsunade and Jiraiya retreated in good order wile Orochimaru was forced too lag behind the others. Unable to risk coming in contact with Shori’s jutsu in case it was something she’d have to spend a lot of time healing- for she had no doubts that she would bee able to defeat whatever he’d made- she could not turn to take advantage of Orochimaru’s state. They ran until they hit the boundary of the training ground , and thus the entire exercise.

With broken arms, Orochimaru had little going for him to let him slow down the quickly encroaching poisonous liquid. Jiriaya, on the other hand, was a storm of ninjutsu, using earth release and wind release with impunity to slow down the water, but whatever he did was met and countered by Shori simply summoning even more water. Eventually, all three of them were hemmed in at the very edge of the battlefield. Tsunade could see that Jiriaya was considering using the subterranean voyage technique so she decided to strike before her teammates could do anything. She turned to Jiriaya, whose attention was captured by the wave rushing at them and punched right at him. He dodged, of course, but the weaker Orochimaru was her true target.

He tried to wiggle his body out of her approach but faced with her fist on one side, and the water that turned all to dust on the other side, he did the logical thing and stepped over the boundary with a scowl on his face. Jiriaya tried to attack her from behind, but it was child’s play for her to bend underneath the rasengan he tried to nail her with from behind and retaliate with a new jutsu she’d been working on. She reached out to tap him, but he jumped back to avoid making contact. It didn’t matter in the end, as her jutsu had gone quite a bit ahead of her physical form. He collapsed to his knees, unable to move as her lightning release took over the natural movement of electric signals in his body and scrambled them.

There was no chance of him standing up again. So she walked the last few feet towards him and grabbed a hold of his shirt and tossed him over the line, all the while wondering what Jiriaya had offered her cousin to learn the rasengan of all things. Sure, he was much closer with her perverted teammate than the cool calm and collected one- a fact that had caused her and Mito no small amount of worry that the impressionable teenager would turn into a clone of the pervert- but she knew that Shori guarded all his secrets like a Mother Hen over her chicks.

“Winners: Tsunade and Shorirama” She heard her sensei declare and then he called for the next stage of the exercise. She looked at her cousin, preparing to take the fight to him as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, there’s no chance I’m taking that beating. I’m basically out of chakra. I surrender” His voice rang out next as he stood from his previous position with both hands raised in the universal gesture.