Kapitel 21: Chapter Twenty-One
He leaned backwards, allowing the straight blade to pass through the space that his head had once occupied before body flickering straight backwards. His opponent made to chase but had to divert to avoid the series of arrows that speared themselves into the ground between them. The boy took in a deep breath and formed the horse seal before breathing an actual firestorm in the same direction as the sword wielding opponent. The fire travelled through the training ground but failed to have any meaningful effect as it was swallowed by a tsunami wave of water. Boy and clone stared at the wave of water headed towards them and formed the same seal at the same time, manipulating the water to fall to either side of them.
The clone found its existence ended in a short second as it made the mistake of attempting to block the punch that came out of its blindspot. The future Toad Sage cackled as the clone exploded around his fist and his own clone dissolved in mud after taking the brunt of the Bunshin daibakuha no jutsu.
"We're on the same side, Jiraiya" The boy called out in a whining tone.
"Didn't you hear the bell, you're with Orochimaru now," the white haired teenager said as he jumped down from above right down on his new opponent. The younger shinobi scowled and retreated backwards in a backflip as the ground he had just stood on cratered from the older man's hammer blow.
Hands planted on the ground, the boy took a deep breath and the area around him shifted as dozens of earth spikes rose around them. He could see the fight between Orochimaru and his cousin developing in the other corner of the training centre. Training with the Sannin for months meant that he had gotten used to their antics and fighting styles in the period. That meant he knew that Jiraiya would take the chance to retreat from this fight and join Tsunade in the fight against Orochimaru. He was much weaker than the three of them and had no chance of taking any of them out in a one-on-one so he had trained his arsenal to be able to elongate a fight for as long as possible and make himself last as long as possible. His teams had never won one of these before, but when he and Tsunade teamed up together, they were virtually impossible to put down.
That was why Jiraiya began to curse as the bell rang again. Shori turned his focus to where the future Third Hokage sat with the bell and found the man smirking at his student's complaints. He'd purposefully done it, so the teams changed just as Jiraiya arrived at the new fight. Shori reached out to his cousin's chakra network as he saw both of her teammates prepare to attack her from opposite sides at the same time.
Just as both of them jumped at her, Tsunade found herself at the opposite end of the training field. In her place, her cousin stood with his hands clapped together.
Even if Jiraiya had not felt it, Orochimaru definitely had felt the chakra buildup for the substitution. He had also felt enough chakra being pulled up that he knew that the substitution was just the beginning. That was why he brought his momentum to a dead stop with an application of the tree walking technique on his feet, and then jumped straight backwards. Years of working together meant Jiraiya did not even hesitate for a second to mirror his teammate's movements. That retreat had saved them a painful end as water shot out from the ground around the young Senju and rose to the sky before arcing downwards and crashing down.
Both of them retreated atop trees, allowing the water to pass beneath them harmlessly. No one was foolish enough to interact with Shorirama's water needlessly when he had started showing a proclivity for including all sorts of tricks with his water release. He bent down to his knees and weaved two more seals before thrusting his hand into the water. It was like ink, the black liquid that spread through the water. The grass nearest his feet was the first sign, as the little bits that poked above the water level blackened and crumbled to dust in seconds. It spread quickly, reaching the trees next, and to the shock of all three onlookers, the trees that had stood for years browned and blackened in seconds before crumbling to dust. Seeing it happen to trees in front of them, Jiraiya and Orochimaru needed no warning to get the hell out of dodge.
They both covered an immense distance in seconds before running through seals at the same time. Their fire release was so hot, that even as far away as he was, Shori felt his skin itch at the heat. They evaporated a good portion of the water near them, and with a single seal, Orochimaru lifted a wall of dirt to act as a sort of dam for the poisoned water that still worked to destroy everything in its path.
"What the hell is that, Shori?" Jiraiya asked, not even hiding the worry in his tone.
"Just something I've been working to reverse engineer for a bit." He said, and then smiled as he saw the water begin to eat into the dirt dam Orochimaru had formed. He focused for a second, and added even more water to the amount milling beneath his feet, directing all of it towards Orochimaru's wall.
In the meantime, the duo were forced to focus their attentions on their resident Taijutsu specialist. Tsunade landed between them with a falling heel kick that formed a massive crater and forced the both of them to jump apart. Orochimaru had been sloppier with his retreat, and so he was the one forced to put his arms up to block a knee to the head. Of course, his guard was nothing before Tsunade's strength, and he was sent rolling along the floor with two broken arms and a bleeding nose. She moved to press her advantage but had to bank to the left to avoid a series of fire bullets from her white haired teammate.
All three of them were forced to abandon position as the water crashed through Orochimaru's dam and bore down on them. Tsunade and Jiraiya retreated in good order wile Orochimaru was forced too lag behind the others. Unable to risk coming in contact with Shori's jutsu in case it was something she'd have to spend a lot of time healing-for she had no doubts that she would be able to defeat whatever he'd made-she could not turn to take advantage of Orochimaru's state. They ran until they hit the boundary of the training ground, and thus the entire exercise.
With broken arms, Orochimaru had little going for him to let him slow down the quickly encroaching poisonous liquid. Jiraiya, on the other hand, was a storm of ninjutsu, using earth release and wind release with impunity to slow down the water, but whatever he did was met and countered by Shori simply summoning even more water. Eventually, all three of them were hemmed in at the very edge of the battlefield. Tsunade could see that Jiraiya was considering using the subterranean voyage technique so she decided to strike before her teammates could do anything. She turned to Jiraiya, whose attention was captured by the wave rushing at them and punched right at him. He dodged, of course, but the weaker Orochimaru was her true target.
He tried to wiggle his body out of her approach but faced with her fist on one side, and the water that turned all to dust on the other side, he did the logical thing and stepped over the boundary with a scowl on his face. Jiraiya tried to attack her from behind, but it was child's play for her to bend underneath the rasengan he tried to nail her with from behind and retaliate with a new jutsu she'd been working on. She reached out to tap him, but he jumped back to avoid making contact. It didn't matter in the end, as her jutsu had gone quite a bit ahead of her physical form. He collapsed to his knees, unable to move as her lightning release took over the natural movement of electric signals in his body and scrambled them.
There was no chance of him standing up again. So she walked the last few feet towards him and grabbed a hold of his shirt and tossed him over the line, all the while wondering what Jiraiya had offered her cousin to learn the rasengan of all things. Sure, he was much closer with her perverted teammate than the cool calm and collected one- a fact that had caused her and Mito no small amount of worry that the impressionable teenager would turn into a clone of the pervert- but she knew that Shori guarded all his secrets like a Mother Hen over her chicks.
"Winners: Tsunade and Shorirama" She heard her sensei declare, and then he called for the next stage of the exercise. She looked at her cousin, preparing to take the fight to him as quickly as possible.
"Yeah, there's no chance I'm taking that beating. I'm basically out of chakra. I surrender" His voice rang out next as he stood from his previous position with both hands raised in the universal gesture.
XXXXXX- Shorirama Senju
"So what did we all learn?" Hiruzen asked after I let the water evaporate into the air and the others used earth release to get the training ground back into some semblance of a good position.
"That Training Ground 7 definitely can't take more of this" Tsunade said from her position sitting on one of the boulders at the centre of the ground. I nodded in agreement with her words. She was right. We had torn down a good portion of the foliage that made up the space, and even earth release was not enough to hide the damage we'd caused to the rest of it. I'd drained about half of the adjacent pond, using it to power water release techniques almost nonstop.
"I notice as well. I will speak to Tobirama-sensei and see about getting young Shorirama here clearance so we can move this to more resilient grounds" He said, tossing a smile my way. A conspiratorial one.
"Wait what?" I asked, confused as to what he meant by different training grounds.
"Where do you think the Hokage goes to work on his own techniques? Sensei knows a few techniques that would tear this training ground to shreds just as a collateral consequence of their use. Your Grandfather knew quite a bit more that could change the landscape of whole cities. I don't quite compare to them, but I am told that a few of my techniques can have far reaching effects. It would be ridiculous to expect none of us to be able to train such techniques, so Sensei created a secret training ground exclusively for the Hokage and those he permits. Of course, my team has such clearance and after what I've seen today, you're going to need it to" He said, and I bowed my head in thanks even while running his words over in my mind and seeing how they made sense. I'd never seen Tobirama doing any training but the few times I'd felt his chakra, it felt sharp as ever. No sign of atrophy or wear from old age. He had to be training somewhere.
And techniques like what those two could pull off in the anime didn't get trained out in public. I could just imagine the entire village freaking out at the sight of a wood golem big enough to hang with tailed beasts, or a giant statue of Buddha with a gazillion hands or whatever.
"Speaking of seeing things today, what the hell was that poison, and please tell me you haven't been experimenting with poisons like that back in Grandma Mito's place?" Tsunade smoothly cut into the conversation before Hiruzen could start grilling us on what we'd each done wrong in the fight.
"Oh, it's not a poison" I said with a smile building on my face. I actually felt kind of proud about it.
"Then what is it?"
"A virus, kind of. It's not really fully organic but as close as you can get with fuinjutsu" I said, never even noticing how all three of the others froze in space to turn to me with wide eyes.
"You made a fuinjutsu super-virus?" Orochimaru was the one to hiss the words as his wide eyes narrowed at my form.
"Well, not really"
"Explain yourself, Shorirama. No more prevaricating" Hiruzen's words were delivered cooly and calmly, but I could see the way his grip had tightened around his staff. It wasn't the Monkey King, just a general training staff, but I had no doubts that he could kill me a billion times with it before I could even blink.
"Well, we would be done already if all of you didn't keep interrupting" I quipped, but there was not a single smile. Just narrowed eyes and evaluating gazes. Tsunade looked like she was about to pull her hair out in frustration, and even more worryingly she somehow looked like she was contemplating picking me up and making a dash for it. The way her eyes flickered across her teammates and Sensei and then towards the direction I knew the Clan Compound was at, and then back at me was quite telling. Of course, I could see her from behind my head so maybe she would have been less obvious if she was within traditional line of sight.
"Okay then. I'll explain. So my Grandfather left these notes behind. Lost of stuff about the Wood release that doesn't really work for me, but some of the ramblings about nature energy and the energy that runs through nature stuck. So I managed too so some thinking and I created an artificial compound that eats the stuff."
"What kind of artificial compound? Details please" Orochimaru pressed, and I resisted the urge to push back at the snake whose own later actions in the anime had actually inspired the creation of these things.
"Well, it's two parts my blood, and five parts tree sap from the trees my Grandfather made. Putting them together seems to create a substance that hungers for natural energy more than any other thing I've ever seen. If I supercharge the hunger with my own chakra then the compound gets even hungrier so it basically eats through most things that have natural energy. So trees, walls made of earth release, the like." I finally explained to the still narrowed looks of all those around me.
"So you decided that a training session was the best place to demo this and not in a safe, controlled environment, why exactly?" Tsunade's tone was acerbic. It seems she'd decided that I was no longer in danger of being executed for crimes against humanity so she was joining in on the 'let's rip into Shori festival'.
"There wasn't any real danger"
"Any one of us could have fallen in, boy. I know we make a good simulation of it, but none of us come at you with intent to kill so it would behoove you to do the same" Orochimaru now piped up. Traitorous snake that he was destined to become, I could not let his words stand, so I did the first thing that popped in my mind. I reached down to the water that still remained beneath me in a quickly disappearing puddle and commanded it to shoot forwards.
Not seeing the attack, it washed right over Orochimaru, soaking him to the bone. His hands were lifted instinctively, and before I could blink, there was a staff hovering between my eyes.
"Wh-what?" He stumbled and said, still struggling to get over the feeling.
"For some reason or the other, the compound becomes inert once it clashes with a shinobi's chakra. Like I said, there wasn't any real danger" I said as smugly as I could while having to speak around my heart that had risen to my throat.
XXXXXXXX
"So what do you say?" I asked her as we watched the mud dragon fly through the training ground before slamming into the ground in an explosion of rock and mud.
"I say no deal. I can't copy that" Uzume replied, making me double take as I turned to her in shock.
"What the fuck do you mean you can't copy it?"
"I mean I can't copy it. Something about the chakra mixture just doesn't work for me. I can see you do the jutsu, weave the seals and whatever else, but I can't copy it. No idea what you've done to achieve this particular effect, but I guarantee you it works. So congratulations, I guess."
"No, no, no. I didn't do anything. You should be able to copy the jutsu just like everything else."
"Well, I can't"
"Okay, I'll do it again. Pay attention with those fancy eyes this time" I told her as I weaved the chain of handseals I'd come to associate with this particular jutsu and kneaded my chakra just as I'd always done and slammed my palms on the ground. Like before, the ground around us began to vibrate before the dragon's head rose from the ground and then the rest of the mud dragon rose up before swooping into the air and then landing in the ground with an explosion.
"Yup. Still can't copy it." She said.
"You're fucking with me"
"I'm not."
"Okay, that's enough of that. Your turn".
"No way. I couldn't copy your shit so why should I let you see mine" She instantly objected.
"All I have to go off on is your word that you can't copy the jutsu which you should be able to copy because I haven't done anything to mess with it." I countered.
"Well, if I'm not getting a technique, then neither are you."
"That's just unfair."
"It's more than fair. Stop messing around and let me copy the technique, and I'll fulfil my end of the bargain."
"That's bullshit. I haven't done anything."
"Well, I don't believe you" She was obstinate. She met my glare unflinchingly and showed no intention to back down.
"Fuck this" I said, and body flickered away. Sarutobi was sure to know whatever techniques I needed to learn, and he didn't even need me to trade anything with him to get his techniques.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein