Chapter 11.4- One Thousand Hands

XXXXX- CHUNIN- HIDEO UMINO

He stared at the devastation around him with wide eyes. There was so much death. More death than he’d ever seen in one place before. He’d been too young to fight in the last war, and part of him was beginning to wonder if this is what war really like. His elders always said that war was nothing like what the stories made it out to be, but he shuddered at thinking that it could have been this terrible. Surely if it was this bad, then wars would never happen. After the first one, everyone would have seen the damage and decided not to do it again. Wars couldn’t be as bad as this, he concluded, and then moved on to perform his duties.

He and a team of dozens of chunin had been placed in charge of three things; counting the dead, gathering the bodies, and taking them to the hospital for families to claim them at the morgue. It was an efficient system, he thought. And then hated himself for the thought. These weren’t just cargo to be sealed up and moved. They were people too. He turned and saw Ukitake on the floor. He was vomiting again. He’d vomited twice already. Thrice now. Surely if he didn’t have the stomach for this, he would have applied to be sent elsewhere. There was no shortage of work to be done in the village.

He was one of the few who had been at the stadium and watching the entire thing happen with wide eyes. After the Iwa monster had defeated Shorirama Senju, it had decided to transform into a massive beast. A tailed beast. The four tailed Sage Monkey, he’d heard it called by the older jounin. Such a creature in the centre of Konoha had caused damage beyond anyone’s imagination. If he hadn’t been lucky enough to stand next to powerful Jounin like Hatake Sakumo and Senju Tsunade, then he doubted that he’d have made it out alive.

But he also recognised that the fact that the beast hadn’t managed to leave the arena was a testament to the power of Hokage-sama. He had used water release like Hideo had never seen in his life to put down the beast. Not fast enough, however. The beast had created multiple volcanoes in the middle of the field, sending lava everywhere.

He still remembered one massive glob of the corrosive liquid dropping at him right from the sky. And then Hatake was there. A single handseal and the lava was gone. Hideo still had no idea how he’d done it or even what it was that he had done exactly. In all fairness, busy worrying about his life, he had more important things on his mind. At the end of the day, that was the part of the stadium that sustained the least damage. Some other Jounin protected some other areas, but not all of them. They couldn’t reach everywhere. Not even close.

But work was already beginning. In the areas his squad had cleared, another squad used Earth Ninjutsu in concert to rebuild the stadium. Whispers in the wind said Hokage-sama would be continuing the tournament since all the foreigners had been eliminated, but he doubted it.This was just too much damage. You couldn’t move on from that.

“How many have you got, Umino-san?” He turned to his Jounin captain and smiled. She was so beautiful. A Hyuga. Everything about her was perfect. From the long hair that went down to her wide hips to the eyes. Those pupil less eyes that seemed to stare through him. It felt like she was the only one who saw him as he was. Not as how she hoped he would be.

“Ehem” He heard her cough. He also heard the others laughing. Bastards. A glare towards Nara and Sarutobi did nothing to stop their horsing around.

“Fifty-seven, Hyuga-san” He told her. Himiko-chan, he really wanted to call her.

“That means the total number comes in at One thousand, three hundred and ninety” She said. Everyone stopped laughing at that. Almost a thousand people dead.

A/N; Final bit of the chapter. Guess what real world natural disaster killed 1390 people?