Chapter 10.15- One Thousand Hands

He rushed out of the forest , keen to avoid being drawn into a battle of attrition and surrounded by my clones. In much the same vein, they rushed at him, but they were water clones at the end of the day. Each one of them only about 30% as powerful as I was. That meant they were all 70% slower, weaker, and dummer. They ran at him headlong, and the Uchiha showoff jumped into the air. I struggled to dsescribe what exactly he did, but I did know for sure that anyone who tried to do that without a sharingan would end up tossing a shurinken in their own arsenal somehow.

Either way, he spun in the air and tossed shurinken in every which direction, but every single one of them hit their mark, and my small army turned to naught but puddles of water. Finished with his manoevre, he landed on the floor with a smirk on his face. I tapped the seal on my thigh guard, unsealing a single kunai and ran right at him. He also reached down to his own thigh and ran at me.

Our kunai clashed in the middle of the arena and I met his eyes.

He slashed at me again when we separated and I ducked underneath it and tried to get him by surprise from underneath but he blocked the attack with an easy smile on his face. He kicked at me. I leaned out of the way but did not allow him gain distance and pushed further into his guard. Ninjutsu was an unknown. I was probably much better than he was, but I didn’t know it for sure. I did know that when it came to Taijutsu, I was the better. He attempted another punch out at me nd this time I allowed him to overextend before slamming my elbow down on his arm. He tried to snatch it back but was too slow as I forced him to the ground with a creative bit of footwork and then I pointed my kunai right down at his throat to force him to surrender.

He smiled at me and then leaned forward to allow the blade stab through his neck. “Release” I screamed, feeling panic run through my body. I did it just tin time to see the fireball heading right for me. Fuck.

“Doton: Domu” I didn’t have the time for a handset and could barely brace myself in time, hoping my chakra made it in time to execute the jutsu. And it did. Only barely. My skin shifted consistency to turn into a darkened stone like metal as the fire ball hit me and exploded into a massive conflagration. At least my skin managed to shift for most of it. Not everywhere, I noticed. My arms were definitely burnt and I felt the same feeling across parts of my body. My legs were the most affected in the end. The tenketsu there were some of the slowest to activate. Everywhere above the soles of my feet but below my knees stung to the high heavens. My armour had saved me from truly grievous injuries, but this was still bad. How? How did it happen?

“I knew you’d be confident about being able to detect my genjutsu. It’s your one flaw, you know? For all you and my cousin piss each other off, you are both basically the same person. Your pride is eveything to you. And your pride in your Hyuga blood and genjutsu resistance was something I needed to take advantage of. The Uchiha clan has existed for centuries. Do you think we had no way to place those with unnatural resistance to genjutsu under our influence all this while?” He asked me with a chuckle.

I scowled in reply. I knew one thing for sure. I was pissed. And also in a lot of pain. I’d stayed still since the fireball hit me. Not just because I was shocked may being caught in genjutsu, but because I knew that any movement ran the risk of triggering my burns. Even worse, this wasn’t something like a cut or bruise that I could fix with my limited amount of medical ninjutsu knowledge. Burns were some of the hardest injuries to heal with chakra. And that was stacked on top of the fact that medical ninjutsu was hard enough to get right on its own. I’d fucked up.

“Good on you to take that with so little damage, though.” He said with a significant glance down at my legs. I followed his gaze. My trousers were burnt through in that area, revealing red, weeping skin.

He ran right at me, perhaps sensing that I was not going to be moving much and risking aggravating my wounds for the next few rounds. But it wouldn’t matter.

I brought my hands together in the snake seal and stretched my neck forward after taking a deep breath to clear my airways for what was coming. “Water Release: Water Severing Wave” I kneaded the chakra in my stomach before converting it to water, and then spewed out the high pressure steam that I knew would have been powerful enough to cut through the roots of the God tree in a future that would never be. Izuku jumped to avoid the stream but I simply angled my head to track him. Dissuaded from his approach, he was forced to retreat in a zig zag pattern to avoid the extremely quick moving stream.

He jumped into the tree line again, and I smiled before clapping both my hands together. The earth around us began to shake and vibrate. I formed a seres of seals before ending in the tiger seal. “Earth Release: Earth-Style Rampart” I proclaimed and forced my earth into the ground beneath me to form more earth beneath my feet that lifted my half of the field a dozen feet above the base level. I could spot Izuku’s irritated face at the edge of the tree line and smirked in reply. He’d have a much harder time reaching me now. I’d changed the landscape of this battle, both literally and figuratively.

A/N; This aligns more with my original vision, I think.