Chapter 20.4- One Thousand Hands

Of course, that had not been able to continue for long. Mito herself had called him to task and told him to get over his bullshit, and Kushina was just too much of a ball of sunshine for him to remain distant for any period of time. So now he was ‘Shori-nii’, her big brother who carried her to the academy while ignoring the small army of anbu guards that their collective presence warranted. She was to be the next jinchuriki of the Kyubi, and he was the Hokage’s grandnephew with a massive bounty on his head. The Anbu as an organisation probably had more hours dedicated to guarding the both of them than they did to spying on the other village and doing actual anbu things.

He resisted the urge to yelp as he felt Kushina drag at his hair. “Too hard” he whimpered at the pain.

“You’re not paying attention, Shori-nii” She said, doing her best impression of Mito’s dissapointed tone.

“I’m sorry, what were you talking about again?” He asked.

“Minato-baka. I was talking about how he keeps showing off at the academy and saying he’s going to be Hokage”

“Ahhh I see. And can we remind me as to why this is a bad thing”

“Because I’m going to be Hokage, Shori-nii. Are you sure you aren’t sick?” Now she was leaning forward from her position and trying to place her hand on his forehead to check his temperature.

He chuckled before saying, “I’m not sick. I just needed some time to make things make sense”

“Oh okay” She didn’t sound like she believed him.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Being honesty with himself, things had developed quite a bit beyond his control since the Chunin exams. According to his own plans and calculations, he should have been a Jounin now, or even on the way to being recruited into Anbu. Neither of those things were happening. Instead, he sat in seiza with his Grandmother and her latest protege as she made them practice seals under her supervision. Of course, they were working on different things. Kushina was a prodigy beyond equal, manifesting the clan’s unique adamantium sealing chains before ever even becoming a shinobi, but he had the advantage of being eight whole years older than her. That advantage meant he was working on his own seals while his Grandmother had Kushina working on something a bit more mainstream.

“And what is this supposed to do?” Grandma Mito asked, pointing at the leftmost part of his sealing matrix.

“It’s supposed to convert neutral chakra into lightning release natured chakra.” I replied absently as I worked on the other parts of this matrix. Training nonstop had seen me outgrow my present bow by quite a bit so I was now working on a different one. The kind of bow that would strike terror into the hearts of Konoha’s enemies and maybe even convince Granduncle that I could take care of myself enough to end this bothersome house arrest.

“And what part of the rest of this mess is going to stop continuous feedback?” She asked, I looked up at her pursed lips.

“Erase everything. Start again. I didn’t spend over 10,000 hours of my time teaching you so you could go and get yourself killed by electrocution the second you tried making something actually useful.” I frowned and looked over the seal again before incinerating the scroll with a flex of fire natured chakra. At least my training had been useful for something.

“I’ll try again tomorrow. Please excuse me” I said, barely waiting for her nod before I body flickered out of the house and towards the library. Or at least I tried to. The second I took a step out of the house, I felt my momentum come to an abrupt stop.

I looked behind me, and saw my smirking cousin with a hand on my shirt’s collar.

“What’s up Tsunade?” I asked, resisting the urge to shiver at the look I was being subjected to.

“I’ve had enough of your mopping around. Come on, you’ll train with me today.”

I swallowed.

XXXXXXXXXX

I entered into a backwards barrel roll and only managed to stop myself at the last second before planting my hands on the ground to form a sealless mud wall. I laid down behind the wall, taking deep breaths. If I’d known what was coming when Tsunade made that offer last week, I would have said no and run for the hills. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t, I forced myself to admit as I heard the sound of an explosion somewhere to the left. Training with the Sannin was fun. Okay, to be honest, I was more being trained by them than training with them. I knew I was jounin level in most of my skills but that didn’t matter when it came to fighting. As an example, in the chunin exam arc, Rock Lee had Jounin level taijutsu. But that didn’t matter and most chunin in the village could have killed him in an all out fight.

Having one, or even all of one’s skills at a certain level didn’t mean you fought at that level. It was something I’d logically known, but it took my first session with the trio for the lesson to begin to truly sink in. Everything they did was so polished. On the other hand, with me things were choppy. It was almost like I had lag while they ran on the very best hardware.

I saw something heading towards me from behind my wall and cursed before beginning to roll to the sides. The fireball hit the mud wall with an explosion that cloaked my body flicker as I followed a straight path that took me and my kunai wielding arm right into Orochimaru’s space. Of course, that proved to be a foolish course of action. Our eyes met while I was mid-flight and I never even got the chance to curse as I saw his smirk.

I felt the kick that sent me into Training Ground Seven’s pond, but only for a few seconds as I lost consciousness almost immediately I hit the water. Fuck.

A/N; Chappy?? Chappy Chappy Chappy. Yes, I was always going to have Shori training with the Sannin, but even I didn’t think it would happen so early.