Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)– same username as here and link in bio.
My eyes swept from left to right and took note of the number of puppets and their positions. Chiyo's so-called Senju Extinction Brigade was made up of ten puppets at the very least, but I could not disregard the possibility that there were even more in stuck, and each one seemed to have a unique ability. One could produce a sound that disoriented me worse than even the strongest Genjutsu I'd ever encountered. There was no chakra in the ability either. It was doing it with pure frequency manipulation. The one with blades for hands was the taijutsu specialist of the lot, and the one that produced exploding canisters seemed aimed at area control and denial. Beyond those three, there was another pair that could spit a massive amount of senbon, but that was the whole of the information I had on their powers.
I would have to learn more for sure. I jumped forward, heading right for Chiyo, even as multiple puppets converged around me. Just as the one shaped and designed after a spider moved to jump right onto me, I teleport to a kunai off to the side. They landed where I'd just been standing as I took a breath and strategized. I formed two handseals to prepare and stoke my chakra before I breathed out a sea of flames. Chiyo's fingers were moving rapidly before I even finished my jutsu. In a mater of seconds, the flames had blocked my view of the older woman.
When the explosion and smoke cleared, it revealed the woman and her puppet covered by a giant— by comparison at least— puppet. It had spread some sort of shield from its back that was dotted and lined with seals written in Suna's bastardized perversion of the Uzumaki sealing script.
I decided to test the shield and brought my chakra to bear, forming a wind release: rasenshuriken in the time that it used to take me to form a rasengan. I took a breath before I threw the powerful attack straight at her shield. She didn't even move, trusting the shield, the jutsu hit and expanded just like it was supposed to, into millions of microscopic needles that tore apart targets at a microscopic level. Usually, the explosion died down to reveal targets that had been close to atomised. In this case, that was far from the truth.
The shield, to my immense shock, remained right there. A veneer of paint had been scraped off it to reveal wood that looked older than the rest of the puppet, but beyond that, no damage had been done.
"How?" I found myself asking, but this wasn't Dragon Ball and instead of explaining how the shield worked to me, her puppets shot into motion. The spider covered the ground quicker than the others, spitting senbon in my direction. I blocked them with kunai while I backpedaled. The explosive one was waiting to the left, canisters at the ready, so I bolted right. From the ground came a giant puppet. I formed a rasengan half the size of my torso and met the puppet in midair, grinding it into the ground and into smithereens. I enjoyed the shocked look on Chiyo's face. She had been hoping to catch me by surprise with the puppet she held in reserve, and as long as I expected to be surprised, I couldn't be surprised.
At least that was what I thought until her features arranged themselves into a victorious smirk. I looked down and was confronted with a set of seals on the puppet's insides. I felt my body seize up, unable to abandon the motion of the rasengan as two more puppets rose from the ground, aimed at skewering me from the left and the side. I blinked and teleported to a marker a few feet away.
Out of the seal's range, I felt control of my boy return to me.
"I have studied every mention of your fighting style. Everything you can do has been accounted for. I am the foe that shall bring an end to you, Shorirama Senju."
"Really?" I found myself asking with a smirk.
"I bet you spent your time questioning the cowards who managed to survive my assault on your son's camp. They must have told you about my mud release and my taijutsu. You probably watched me fight the Iwa shinobi, so you know about flying raijin and the nine tails chakra from there. Am I right?" She just pursed her lips, fingers moving rapidly. I jumped backwards to avoid the puppet that tried to swallow me whole. The explosive one came in my direction again, and I teleported to a marker behind it before I unsealed my bow from a storage seal on my sleeve.
"But what you don't realise is that none of those are my preferred fighting style. Let me show you how I like to fight, Chiyo" I said with a smirk, feeling blood rush through me at the thought of a good fight. The explosive one came my way again, but it was a distraction for the snakes to get me from behind. I smirked and jumped backwards before pulling the string of the bow, captivating seals that my grandmother had painstakingly etched along its form. It took my pure chakra and converted it to lightning nature Chaka, creating a lance of plasma that tore straight through one of the snakes that had been moving to ensnare me.
Sure I could have done something like that with my rasenshuriken or even God's arrow, but both of those not only took longer to form and thus release, but they were loud and flashy. This bow could channel about three quarters as much destructive force, except that it coalesced it all into a single arrow that moved as fast as lightning. That might not have been impressive to someone who could move as fast as me, but most shinobi here would struggle to avoid or even react to something like that.
Tellingly, Chiyo pursed her lip and detached the chakra string connected to the serpent, sending it spearing underground instead, where it disappeared after a few seconds. She began sending the rest of the puppets at me, movements even quicker and more dexterous than before. I realised the paradox now. The more puppets I eliminated, the more options she lost, but the more useful the puppets that remained became. It was impressive that she could split her focus between up to 10 puppets at the same time, but you couldn't cheat biology for long, and the truth was that the human brain wasn't meant to focus on so many things at the same time and removing them would help her direct more attention to what remained.
How interesting. I spun into a backflip to avoid the spider that jumped at my position and jumped forward to engage the one with blades for its hands in blistering taijutsu— was it bojutsu in this case since I used my bow as a staff to block arcs of his blade? It moved faster now, blades coming from the most unorthodox of angles, as it took advantage of its unusual constitution to fight in a way that would have stumped most others. Except that I'd been being drilled to become the most dangerous taijutsu user in the world since I was in nappies. I weaved to the left to prevent the left blade from arcing at me and stepping into its space. The right came, but I used the chance to duck and weave until I was right behind it. And then it stabbed one of its blades straight through its own chest to get at me. I blocked the attack with my bow, Hashirama-made wood not even straining to block the metal weapon. I teleported to the marker I'd left in front of it while it was in that position and fired two quick arrows into each limb. Before I could loose the killing blow, the explosive one had canisters in my surroundings.
I tracked each one in the air, noting that I was surrounded from all angles, before I spun on my heel into the kaiten. The defensive hyuga jutsu shielded me from the simultaneous explosions, and the second I ended the jutsu, I found the one with bladed arms upon me again. I twisted backwards and gathered my chakra into the bow before pulling the string to the end. The bolt of lightning natured chakra tore through the puppet with an explosion, making it next to useless.
The ringing sound came again, but this time I was more than ready. I pulled at my internal chakra before shoving myself beneath the mud that formed around me. Once I was too deep for the sound to penetrate, I turned my chakra against my own body. There was a jutsu used in Surgery that could essentially disconnect body parts from the brain and stop them from sending signals back there. More useful than most anesthetics since there were fewer risks involved. When I swam back to the surface, my sense of hearing was gone.
I emerged on the other side of the clearing and the puppets came at me immediately. I formed a half Snake seal and the mud rose from the ground to block their approach for a second before the mud itself exploded in all direction. I drew my bow and fired it straight through one of the snakes, causing it to explode. The one with the explosives sent even more canisters in my direction, but this time, I took a deep breath in and blew them back whence they came. They exploded, but before they did, Chiyo managed to bring her puppets back behind her shield. I fired an arrow into it, and the arrow of lightning natured chakra didn't even manage to scuff it.
I channeled more chakra, creating an even bigger arrow that hit the shield, exploded and did nothing more than the first did. How did it work, I wondered? Was it just made of a material too durable for me to harm? Some kind of chakra negation field? Or was it something else? The seals behind the painted over puppet wall were near impossible for me to figure out. If I didn't know better, I would have taken them for drawings or hieroglyphs or something else.
"Going to hide behind that thing forever?" I projected my voice-over to her.
"If you want me, come get me, pretty boy" She replied in a sing-song voice. I unsealed a single arrow from my sleeve, and deactivated the lightning seals on my bow. I drew the arrow, aimed over the shield and fired. It flew through the air, and I noted that a senbon flew from behind the shield to hit the arrow head and send it flying about. It mattered little. I teleported over to the arrow, appearing in the air behind them. Chiyo turned, looking at me with a scowl on her face, while I drew a set of kunai and sent them straight at her and her puppets.
She chose to attack me rather than defend against the attack, and so sent a storm of senbon that tore through the clone, turning the body into mud. From my actual position where I had been standing still and trying to do something for the first time, I disappeared and appeared next to one of her puppets— right where one of my kunai had landed. The serpent-shaped puppet tried to wrap itself around my body, but I felt the nature chakra I'd been drawing in click in place. It was a paltry amount. When combined with my own chakra at the 2:1 ratio that the hero's water did by default, it was scarcely enough to last me more than a few seconds.
Still, I felt my body swell with power. I dodged the snake's darting strike and grabbed a hold of its head with one hand. The other hand took a hold of its tail and I dragged both ends away from each other, ripping it in two with one motion. The puppet's guts were scattered every which way. The canisters that contained explosive force that surrounded me as Chiyo attempted a retreat exploded with their target far away. I had gone straight for the one producing the explosions.
Chiyo attempted to protect it with the spider shaped one, but I continued my motion like it hadn't even appeared in front of me. Senbon hit my skin and bounced off as I tore through it with an outstretched punch. The puppet that had been producing the explosions tried to fly backwards, but I reached out, forming my own chakra strings that held it in place for the rasengan that crushed it to pieces. I felt the senjutsu chakra coursing through me begin to flicker as I ran through it like a man in the desert guzzling down water. The next thing I did was track down the puppet that had forced me to disconnect my hearing and nailed him with an arrow from my bow. This arrow, just like the first, was etched with my hiriashin seal, so I appeared right in front of it and tore it top pieces with strength the sort of which would have made my cousin jealous.
Sage mode fell away immediately after, and I breathed out. Chiyo was basically done with. Her threads into the ground still remained connected, and she had her shield still, but beyond that, I had destroyed most of her puppets. That was why I wasn't too surprised when the surrounding area exploded in purple gas. I held my breath instantly and tapped the neck of my flak vest to unseal a gas mask I stored there. I placed it over my face before I used a sealless wind technique to blow the poison gas away.
When it cleared, Chiyo was nowhere to be seen. Even my byakugan had no luck spotting her where she'd run to.
"I guess we'll call that one my win" I said to myself.
"You didn't kill her. It's a tie" Kurama growled from my mind, clearly still irritated that I'd shoved his chakra back instead of letting loose.
"I didn't have to kill her because she came here trying to kill me and since she failed, then that means I won," I corrected.
"She gets to try again later, and now she has more information about you and how you fight. It's her win" He argued.
XXXXX- UZUME UCHIHA
The fight against the Raikage had developed to the point that the very landscape that surrounded them had begun to shift. It was a factor of the Hokage's prodigious earth release when combined with Sensei's world cutting slashes with his chakra saber. They rewrote land across the land of Frost, while the Raikage, cloaked in his black lightning as always, tore through every obstacle. Now, the three of them stood opposite the man, she felt her chest constrict, as passing air through her lungs got harder and harder.
She had about a fourth of her full capacity left, and she could tell that neither of the men by her sides were in a better state. In contrast, the Raikage looked hale and hearty, vigorous as ever, he stood before them.
"Already on your last legs?" The man asked with a barked laugh before shooting towards them again. She weaved seals at the same time as the Hokage, and wasn't surprised when, even though her technique had fewer seals, he finished first. The ground transformed into mud that shoved the Raikage backwards. Or at least it tried to. Her fireball jutsu the size of a large house crashed into him— it was more like he crashed into her jutsu if she was being honest. The fireball exploded and from the flames came the Raikage like a specter cloaked in black. Sensei's blade was there to meet him, and this time the Raikage, rather than letting the jutsu break against him, met Sensei's chakra saber with his outstretched hand, two fingers in front of him. The fingers hit the sword and in exactly the opposite of what one would have expected to happen, the sword lost.
Sensei's famed chakra saber that he'd inherited from his father shattered, and the Raikage continued towards him, crashing through his body. She breathed a sigh of relief that Sensei had managed to substitute with a clone at the very last second, but that was not the end of her worries. The Raikage was still coming. She breathed out, formed two seals and called forth a storm of hurricane force winds.
By her side, the hokage didn't even need seals to breathe out flames hot enough to make her skin sting. It hit her winds and exploded in a massive conflagration so powerful she had to use the tree walking technique to keep herself grounded.
XXXXX- SAKUMO HATAKE
It is the fate of every good teacher to be surpassed by their students, was what the Hokage had told him when he'd marveled at his students' growth all those years ago. This was probably that day, he thought to himself as he watched Uzume stand shoulder to shoulder with her Kage in combat against another. Hiruzen weaved seals and the earth heaved, forming the golem that he had become infamous for tearing apart training grounds with.
By his side, Uzume stretched out a hand to her side. The Rasengan, Shorirama's invention, formed almost instantly. And then it began to morph and shift. Lengthening before beginning to glow, a red that deepened into a blue so dark it was almost black. She wielded the shifted jutsu like a spear in her hands, as she stood atop the Hokage's golem, hair blowing in the wind. She looked like a spirit of vengeance. With a sigh, he dug himself from the ground and body flickered to her side. If his student were still fighting, then so would he. Sword or no sword.
A/N: Shori v Chiyo, and Uzume (with Hiruzen and Sakumo, ofc) v Ay, huh? How's it hanging? Next three up on Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.