Chapter 17.2- One thousand Hands

“Enough about him, I’m the Senju you’re facing here”

“And what a scary thought it is” Her Sensei’s sarcasm was not appreciated, and she gathered her chakra beneath her body before jumping through the mud river and right at him.

Before she’d even gotten close, he’d dodged out of the way, but that did not matter. She slammed her punch into the ground and brought her chakra to bear at precisely the perfect instant like she’d practiced for years, and the ground around her shattered.

Sensei lost his footing for a second, and began to scramble to keep his legs under him. She rushed at him, overjoyed at her luck and prepared to end the fight with one good punch. She would be careful to pull her strength a little to prevent actually killing sensei, but surely there was nothing to be lost if she did make it hurt a little bit.

Two feet away from him, and that was when she recognised it. There was something off about Sensei’s movements. His slip. The kick that slapped into her face and sent her flying right back into the mud river was not as unexpected as it could have been but that didn’t prevent it from hurting like a motherfucker as his boot formed an imprint on her skin. That one was going to be annoying to heal, but healing proved to be the least of her worries as her sensei formed another seal while she crashed into the mud. She felt the heat before she managed to break through the mud to look and see what was going on.

And when she did, she scowled. That bloody motherfucker. He’d set the entire river of mud on fire, and she felt it beginning to scald her skin. This would also be a problem to heal. She brought her hands together in a powerful clap that dispelled most of the flames around her with the shockwave from the motion and lifted herself up to stand on the mud. Of course, things could never be that easy as the mud began to grow tendrils that wrapped around her arms and began to pull her back in. Another rasengan tore through the constructs holding her, as well as the mud clone that sensei had spawned behind her with an outstretched kunai before she jumped away from the mud for the second time.

When she landed on the bare earth, she scanned her surroundings with wary eyes. The fact that Sensei hadn’t attacked her in mid air while she was vulnerable sounded alarm bells in her head. A fact that proved to be true when the very ground beneath her feet began to rumble. She scowled as she failed to recognise what jutsu he was working from the feeling alone, and that was another thought that made the alarm bells within her head ring even louder. After doing these spars for so long, she’d felt that she had more than a passing familiarity with all of Sensei’s jutsu. At least the earth release ones.

She chanced a glance to the side and chuckled as she watched Jiraiya stumble back from a slap to the face that Enma had sent into his face like a canon ball from a canon. He didn’t get a chance to get his bearings as the Monkey kind followed through with a kick that sent him sailing backwards like was the canon ball.

She didn’t get much of a chance to watch the fight as she was forced to focus on her own problems. The earth had begun to rise. Parts of it. Sensei was hiding, and since she knew that she had no chance of finding him when he didn’t want to be found and an even lower chance of stopping what was going on, she decided to do the next best thing, and body flickered over the mud river to the part of the training ground that held Orochimaru’s limp form.

A/N; How does this feel? It’s kind of difficult to write the Sannin as teenagers because it’s really hard to decide what they have and haven’t learned yet. Like should they have summons? Their signature techniques? It’s a delicate midpoint I’m trying to strike here. Make them believably weaker to the point that all three of them were unable to beat someone on Chiyo’s level but still strong enough that it’s clear what they one day become.