Chapter 10.2- One Thousand Hands

XXXXXXX- SAKUMO HATAKE

He watched his student fight with pride blooming in his chest. With this fight, he’d be the only one of the genin sensei to have all three of their students survive to the next round of the tournament. T isn’t like he frequented the Jounin bars enough to brag about it, but the satisfaction was still immense. Especially when he looked towards people like Sarutobi Benzaiten who had been very patronising in their countless attempts to offer him advice from their ‘wealth of expertise in training genin’. Wealth of expertise that had gotten his team knocked out in the second round, not even making it to the tournament at the end of the day, he scoffed.

It. Might have been counting his chickens before they hatched, but he was confident. Shorirama was injured. His legs were probably basically useless at this point. The mere act of standing still as h was must have brought untold amounts of pain. Sakumo knew just how much burns could hurt. But the injury didn’t matter. Because his student was finally taking this seriously. It showed in his transition from tijutsu to ninjutsu. Shorirama was a skilled taijutsu practitioner. His Hyuga blood would not allow him to be anything less, but the truth was that it was in ninjutsu where he really shone.

And so even though he’d just watched his student get ensnared in genjutsu because of his arrogance and watched him take an unnecessary injury, Sakumo was calm and expectant. The Uchiha boy could also read the writing on the wall, as he stayed still assessing Shorirama’s position for a long while. Sakumo would not give many people good odds against Shorirama in this situation. He knew he’d be able to just rush him and overpower him with his experience and strength, but he could think of many a Jounin who would struggle to bridge this deficit.

Tons of space separating him and you, and a large platform from which he could see your every move and because of which you would not be able to easily approach him. An impasse.

Not one that lasted for long. Much like his cousin, Izuku Uchiha did not seem to have ample stores of patience. He formed a few seals that Sakumo recognised and slapped his hands against the ground. He formed two copies of himself and all three of them ran as one. They covered the ground at impressive speeds, but clearly not fast enough.

The bird seal on Shorirama’s hands made his next move obvious. All three forms separated as multiple air bullets smashed into their previous position. They tried to flank their opponent, one on the left, one on the right, and then one straight down the middle. Shorirama went after the one on the left first, weaving a series of seals before stretching out the first two fingers on his right hand. “Lightning Release: Lock on” A quick moving bolt of static negatively charged electricity hit the form on the right and did nothing. For a second at least.

With a focused look on his face, Shorirama slashed his hand to the side. Two separate sparks proceeded from the first form to the other two. He was slow with the technique but beyond that his execution was perfect. After that, I waited for the second half of the combination jutsu he’d wrangled out of me. He weaved the seals with steady hands, and then spread out both hands once he finished. I’d told him that he didn’t need to make it look like he was grasping at thin air when he used it but he’d laugh out something about the ‘dark side of the force’ and ignored me. “Lightning Release Electromagnetic Murder” He intoned, and the normally difficult to aim jutsu spread out from his fingers and sought out the three targets.

Whatever dodging was attempted failed from the beginning and in no time, Lightning release chakra had stabbed through all three forms, dissolving all the rock clones. Sakumo turned his attention to the base of Shorirama’s section where his opponent had popped out of the ground from, and then began running up the wall.

“Why didn’t he just continue through the platform and pop out behind him?” A chunin behind him asked another.

“Because of how the Earth Rampart Jutsu works. All that earth beneath Shorirama-kun was created by his own chakra. Digging through that could be a death sentence” I explained to them even though I hadn’t been the one asked. Both the chunin behind me nodded at my words, and I noticed that even more people had been paying attention to my brief explanation. It was all for the best in the end. The Earth Rampart Jutsu was one that Iwa had favoured during the First War, and if they ever found themselves in conflict with them again, then it was probably for the best that they knew how to avoid being killed by the technique.

Shorirama weaved a series of seals and then the earthen platform he’d made shifted. Spikes formed all along the body. With his sharingan, his student’s opponent was able to see the attack coming and push off the platform right as the spikes formed and avoid the damage. His retreat was hasty and clumsy however. He landed right on top of a puddle that formed from one of Shorirama’s destroyed clone. A puddle whose existence meant that it was still being maintained by Shorirama’s chakra.

A quick ram seal later, and Sakumo was not surprised to see hands rise from the puddle and grab at the genin that had wandered into the Lion’s den. His student transitioned from the Ram seal to the Tiger seal and then intoned; “Water Release: Starch Syrup Capturing Field”, expelling a torrent of sticky syrup from his mouth that landed right on to his opponent has he finally managed to escape the grip of the half formed water clone.

The syrup did its duty, completely immobilising its target and the crowd burst into applause as Orochimaru-san declared Sakumo’s most troublesome student as the winner after verifying that the other boy had no means of escape.