Chapter 8.1- One Thousand Hands

Our intrusion in the battle between the Kumo and Iwa teams started with a bang. A great fireball jutsu powered up with a Great breakthrough crashed into the middle of the battlefield and both teams operated long before the jutsu landed. The shockwave did send one of the Kumo nin flying into the air, but he was caught in time by one of his fellows. The rest watched with suspicious eyes as the both of us landed between them. Uzume was to my back. I felt her glee at her position, faced by a group of Iwa shinobi. I stared at the Kumo team with a smile on my face.

I clapped my hands and the earth vibrated for a second. They were wise enough to move out of the way from the spikes that rose out of the ground where they had been standing, but that had been part of my plan. It forced them to split up. No longer a single unimpeachable front, I went for the willowy boy- he seemed the weakest of the bunch. He reacted to my approach in time, and put a hand on the blade at his waist and unsheated it in a swift motion- had laido.

It was the wrong reaction, however. Sakumo wielded a blade as well, and did it with a variety of styles. I’d been in this situation a hundred times before and I knew just how to react. I ducked under the blade with a burst of speed and stepped into his space, removing the reach advantage the blade gave, and not giving him the time or space to bring his blade back around. My first attack was a shot on his lungs. Two fingers with chakra shaped like a dagger stabbed into his body in eight simple movements. By the time I was done, he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

I turned and flipped through two seals before breathing out a veritable wind storm. The wind chakra tore apart the lightning jutsu sent at me before I flipped through another set of seals. My two remaining adversaries were forced to dodge out of the way of my air bullets.

I heard Uzume’s laughter and found myself smiling against my will. A wide smile that refused to go down no matter how much I tried to be serious in the face of the moment. Her joy was infectious. I weaved another set of seals, spitting out two mud balls to slow down my opponent’s as they ran at me.

This time, I went after the one with the bicoloured hair. Familiar or not, he’d be going down. He weilded his blade better than his teammate. His movements were sharper, and he was much smarter about it. Every step I took into his guard was matched by a similar step backwards. It was almost like a dance, until I was forced to duck to prevent his teammate from beheading me from behind. She’d finally dodged around the part of the battlefield marred with mud. Both of their blades suddenly flashed with lightning release, momentarily blinding me. In an instant, they executed the second part of the deadly combination- both blades sinking into my skin.

Skin that browned before forming a hard mud that maintained a hold on their blades. I rose from the ground a fair bit away and smiled as I slammed my hands on the ground. “Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld” I screamed. Mr. Bi-colour hair has jumped out of the way from the moment he realised he wasn’t able to remove his blade from the clone. His teammate wasted precious seconds trying to free her blade. It made all the difference as she was submerged all the way up to her neck in the dark mud.

And then there was one.