Chapter 10.4- One Thousand Hands

When I woke up, it was to an entirely different medical wing than the one I’d fallen asleep in. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn’t completely different. Just a lot more crowded. Omoikane, the Iwa girl, and I had been the only ones here when I’d gone to sleep, and now there were two more occupied beds now. Toshiro, and Uraume. They’d fought each other, my brain supplied as I noted the marks on Toshiro’s skin that oft appeared when one had their chakra networks forcibly closed. The fact that the marks were so visible to me even from this distance told me that the fight had been a very tense one for both parties. Uraume needed to have been fighting at her full power and putting everything into each thrust to get chakra scars like that.

“Ooh- Shori. You’re awake?” Toshiro asked from his position on the bed. I noted that he was being treated by one of the nurses that had been tending to me before Tsunade appeared and basically told everyone else to fuck up.

“No” I replied sarcastically, lifting my eyebrow at im. I always wondered what purpose questions like that were intended to achieve. If I wasn’t awake, then I wouldn’t answer. If I was awake, then should it not have already been obvious.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, allowing my sarcasm roll off his back with no reaction.

“Perfect.” I said, pushing myself off the bed.

“I’m guessing my fight hasn’t started yet” Surely someone would have woken me up if that were the case.

“It hasn’t. Uzume should still be facing off against that Kitsuchi guy from Iwa. Their fight was immediately after mine, and I strongly doubt that that fight would have ended without one of them being sent this way” I nodded at his answer. His logic made perfect sense. I knew Uzume well, and she was one hell of a fighter. Also resilient as fuck. She wouldn’t go down without being brought to serious harm. I also doubted that the Tsuchikage’s son would be anything but equally as stubborn as she was. Toshiro was right. A fight between them wouldn’t be ending without serious blood.

“So what happened to the both of you” I asked them, noting that Uraume had not once looked in my direction since I’d woken up.

“I took some hits, but I won” He said to me. I nodded. Uraume was still silent.

“Uraume?” I called out to her.

“Leave me alone, Cousin” She said, and I nodded. If that was how she wanted to handle things then so be it.

I stood from my bed and began to walk out of the medical bay. I wanted to see as much of Kitsuchi and Uzume’s fight as possible. The man would be a powerful jounin in time, and uzume was the closest thing I had to a rival in my generation so I knew very clearly where my strength lay when compared to her. Now I just needed o find out where Kitsuchiu fell in that ranking.

It took me a few minutes to walk from the Bay to the Competitor’s box and its front row view of the fight unfolding beneath us. Within it, there were only two people. Kizuru, who looked very glad for my presence, and the silently brooding red head of Iwagakure’s team. I guess that meant he was the one who won that fight. So where was the Kumo contingent? None of them had been at the med bay. Strange for the loser of a battle between Jinchuriki to be well enough to not need medical treatment.

I smiled at Kizuru. making sure to return his enthusiastic greeting before walking straight to my seat to begin watching the fight. As I’d seen coming, the battlefield was a mess. The kind of mess that would make you compare a place to an active war zone.

Uzume, standing on one of the few trees that remained standing in the forested section, weaved two seals and took a deep breath. I saw the jutsu coming. Her opponent, standing in front of her slammed his palms on the ground, forming a dome of tough stone around him. The flame dragon bullet hit the earth dome and failed to break it. I looked at Uzume. Really looked at her. She was exhausted. She was breathing heavily. It was clear that this fight had been going on for a while and it hadn’t been easy on her.

She leaned down to pick up her Uchiwa and she held it in a tight grip as she waited for her opponent to show himself. It explained her position on the trees. The fact that she wasn’t attacking the dome showed that she didn’t believe he was still inside. And looking around, I could spot a myriad of openings in the ground. Kitsuchi was a practitioner of the subterranean voyage technique, it seemed. A skilled one if he’d forced Uzume into a tactic like this.

There was a heartbeat of silence. And then the dome exploded outwards, a volley of loose stones flying in every which direction. Unlike we’d expected, Kitsuchi was within the dome itself, and now he was out. Uzume jumped from her position, angling her body to ensure every single rock missed her by some margin. She even managed to look graceful as she did it. Fucking Sharingan cheats. Her red eyes gleamed.

Kitsuchi was careful not to meet them as he geared to square up with her in close combat. His fists wreathed in stone were lifted to either side of his head as he took a stance not unlike what a boxer from my old world would have. Uzume had no such stance. She came with pure fury. Her first swing was blocked by said stone gauntlet and he tried to use the opportunity to land a powerful punch on her but her body collapsed into a swarm of sakura flowers. She appeared a few metres away on his other side and prepared to land the attack on his unguarded side. Displaying agility that belied his frame, he leaned out of the way of the Uchiwa and punched right at the fan. It was too durable for him to break like that, but his force was enough to tear it out of her grip. Without her weapon, the Iwa Genin seemed to have decided she was less of a threat and quickly moved in to press his perceived advantage.

What a fool. The Uchiwa was a relatively new addition to her arsenal. She’d used it less than a year, after all. She was more dangerous without it in her hands than she was with it. I saw it then. She snapped her fingers. Kitsuchi, for some reason, punched out in precisely the opposite direction from her. Genjutsu. Sound based. Interesting. So she’d found some way to either copy Kizuru’s technique or create her own facsimile of the technique. Either way, she’d done it. She slammed her fist against the ground and lifted it up with a very familiar stone gauntlet on it. Kitsuchi continued to chase his illusionary opponent and she limped towards his position, struggling with the earthen addition to her form, and then when she was close enough and Kitsuchi’s ‘battle’ placed him in a convenient position for her, she swung.

The sound echoed across the quiet stadium. A thud. Kitsuchi presented no resistance, falling to the floor unconscious almost instantly. And then it came. The crowd was electrified. Louder than I’d ever heard them.

“Winner: Uzume Uchiha” Orochimaru’s voice was drowned out. Medical staff flooded the battlefield, seeking out both of the participants. Uzume had fallen on her arse the moment she’d knocked her opponent out. She was sitting upright now, and thanks to the big screen I could see her face clearly. She looked pissed. Very pissed.

“Would Shorirama Senju and Roshi of Iwa please make their way down to the field.” Jiraiya’s voice on the megaphone managed to cut through the crowd’s voices.

A/N; What do you think?