Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter. Here on time! Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
"A shame. I would have expected a better fight from your student considering the previous one" the Daimyo said from his position at my side.
"I think you should keep watching. Kushina still has more to show us" I said, and as if my words were a signal, chains exploded from her back, trying to wrap around Toshiro and bring the fight to an end. He shot out of their range with an application of that same technique. The chakra use from it was truly minimal, but he could not spam it forever. His reserves just did not make it an option in the slightest.
Kushina turned around to face him, her hand falling towards her stomach.
"Yield. You'll bleed out before you manage to get me" Toshiro said from the edge of the arena, far out of the seeming range of the chains.
Kushina chuckled before leaning up to stand straight. The wound kept bleeding but it did not matter as a red chakra began to seep out of her skin. I had authorised up to six tails of power for this exhibition. The world ought to see that Konoha had a jinchuriki it could deploy outside her borders if the need came.
Me being both the known jinchuriki and Hokage tended to give people across the world a false sense of security regarding just what Konoha could knock on their doorsteps with. Toshiro straightened, realising that the fight was just getting started. He took his stance with his katana held in a ready position before him.
Said katana flashed, and then he was gone. The genjutsu failed to even take hold on Kushina and this time she reacted better to his speed than earlier. She shifted, moving to catch the katana in one hand while the other came out with a punch that would have caved in Toshiro's chest.
To his credit, he sensed the danger and abandoned the attack, stopping a few paces short of his opponent. Kushina pushed herself forwards then. He blocked her first punch with the bladed edge of his katana. But it failed to penetrate the thick red chakra cloak.
Toshiro was a skilled swordsman, and that was the only thing that allowed him to shift his weight in time for him to block the tail that sought to smack him across the midsection. And then from beneath his feet came the chains he had avoided earlier. There were too many things to keep track of, and it was no surprise that between dodging the chains, and the four tails that reached out for him, he took a punch straight to the chest.
He managed to substitute himself with a water clone at the last second.
His upper body rose from the ground, seals already weaved.
"Lightning release: electromagnetic murder" he near screamed. The world flashed to my eyes as his powerful lightning release jutsu smashed head on into my cousin. His own scream, one of victory, was swallowed a second later by Kushina's. He had put most of his chakra into that, and with the water already on her and the element of surprise, there was no chance for her to put up a defence.
She fell to one knee, still screaming all the while. Even with the tailed beast chakra around her, I could see her skin beginning to char and smoke from the burns the electricity caused as it ran through her body. Seconds later, the jutsu fully ran its course. Toshiro was bent over, hands on his knees as he took long breaths. That had taken more out of him than I had expected.
Overpowering the tailed beast aura to get the jutsu to land and then increasing the voltage to make sure it hurt was probably really taxing. To my eyes, he had a bit less than a third of the chakra he had started this fight with. But his victory was still not assured. The aura around Kushina began to darken and she rose to her feet again. Now she was really going for it. Six tails floated behind her in a ready position.
She slapped her fingers together, and spat out a tsunami. Toshiro began to sink into the ground, but his subterranean voyage was not quick enough. He only managed to make it into the first layer of the ground before the water hit. And that layer was dug out under Kushina's careful attention. The water carried him until he slammed into the wall of the arena. She switched seals and all the gathered water came together to form a water prison.
Toshiro swept out with his blade, and created an arc of chakra that cut through the exterior of the water prison. He pushed off after that arc, jumping out of the prison by the barest of margins. He was in the air now, and Kushina weaved another set of seals. The water prison lost cohesion, falling apart, only to come together again as a water dragon that shot right at him.
His katana arced out again. He cut through it right as it was about to swallow him. He split it in twain, body falling through the space between two halves as he landed on the ground and twisted around again. The water dragon had turned into two dragons now, Kushina's fingers slapped together as she maintained her concentration.
"I yield" he said, lifting a hand.
"Why did he yield? He does not seem to have sustained any wound" the Daimyo asked from his position by my side. I wondered if that was suspicion I could detect in his voice or something else.
"He is nearly out of chakra already. Nothing he has done so far has managed to cause enough damage to even slow down his opponent. His best weapon, genjutsu, has proven to be less than effective, and his kenjutsu advantage has been nullified by his opponent's ninjutsu prowess. He could have kept the fight going for another ten minutes or even more perhaps, but it would only be delaying the inevitable" I explained. The Daimyo was not the only one dissatisfied with the conclusion as there were some moans of protest from the crowd before applause drowned them out. Kushina had still won, after all, and she was the village darling.
The water dragons collapsed into water on the ground, and both parties bowed to each other before walking down the tunnels they had come in through.
Shika directed attention to the wheels once more, but the instruction was unnecessary. Everyone was already waiting for the next match with a buzzing air. People wanted to see what happened next.
The wheel stopped next to my cousin's name: Uraume Hyuga. Her opponent? Isagi Akimichi. A bad matchup. A very bad matchup for the man who had delivered a shockingly impressive showing during the preliminary rounds. I hadn't paid much attention to the Akimichi clan beyond their food and supplement related endeavours, and it was clearly an oversight. The man who stepped onto the field was only a year older than Minato and was already one of the strongest shinobi in Konoha.
He supplemented the Akimichi clan technique with a thorough mastery of taijutsu and could use earth release to devastating effect if forced to attack from a distance. The only problem was that his taijutsu was good. Uraume's was perfect. She had pushed the gentle fist farther than any of her forebears, and that had been when she had a single hand. Now that she had two and had ample practice with the prosthetic, she was the pinnacle of what a Hyuga could be. And if it came down to taijutsu, a Hyuga would always win.
It was a bad matchup for him, but Konoha would be given a good show, and that was the objective here.
Shika began the match, and instead of rushing to close the distance like he had in every preliminary round, he began weaving seals. Ninjutsu now? How pragmatic. He couldn't know for sure the way I did that Uraume would be better than him in taijutsu, but he was going to avoid the risk entirely and force her to engage with him in a ninjutsu battle where he would have the larger reserves, and the hope that she was less prepared for it.
He ended on the snake seal and the ground began to shake.
Several giant obelisks began to rise from the ground. Each one reaching as high as the middle of the stands. They dwarfed him and Uraume with ease, but did not much discourage her from continuing to close the distance between them. At least, that was until his own body began to grow.
"Multi-size technique" he intoned, growing to the point where Uraume only reached up to his knees. She stopped in her tracks as he stepped next to one of the obelisks. With a heave, he ripped it from the ground, holding it in both hands, before turning with his waist and levelling it in her direction.
He took half a step, and then it was gone. Tossed with so much force that even an object that size blurred in the air as it covered the distance between them. Uraume jumped to the side, having made the right decision to stop closing the distance. If she had been a bit closer, there would have been little chance for her to dodge that.
He moved on to the next one, picking it up and hurling it with the same smooth motion that spoke of hours spent practicing this unconventional manoeuvre. Uraume dodged once more, but this time as she did so, she began moving in his direction.
He slammed his right foot on the ground, making it quake in an attempt to disturb her footing. He had clearly never danced with a Hyuga before. Uraume adjusted perfectly and continued closing the distance. He managed to hurl one more of the giant rock missiles at her before she was too close for him to attempt it. I wondered what he would do now. His size made him even more vulnerable to a gentle fist user. His chakra points were the size of footballs now.
He bent at the knees, and then jumped once Uraume was almost in striking distance.
His jump carried him straight to the other edge of the arena.
"Haaaa" he screamed, forming a tiger seal. The stone obelisks he had left behind exploded from within, sending shrapnel flying in every direction. Of course, Uraume right in the middle of them was just in range to be torn apart.
"Kaiten" she breathed, beginning to spin and activating the ultimate defence of the Hyuga.
When the dust settled, she was unscathed, but that part of the battlefield had been torn apart. And her opponent now stood in the middle of another formation of obelisks. He walked to one, ripped it out of the ground and hurled it at her. She dodged to the side once more. At the present distance, there was no way he was going to hit her. It didn't matter how quickly he threw them. But then she didn't have many options to hurt him from this distance either. She had to close the distance to win, and while she did so, she would get close enough for his missiles to stand more of a chance of hitting their mark.
And even if they didn't, he would just jump to the other end of the field and do it all over again.
"So they are at an impasse" the Daimyo said by my side. So he had seen it as well then.
"Indeed" I agreed with a nod.
"She must do something to change the tide of the battle. He would not have chosen to play this game if he did not feel like he could win it" he added.
"Yes, Daimyo-dono. He has the chakra to keep this going for a while. The physical exertion and the mental stress from the inevitable near misses will add up with time and she will inevitably make a mistake. At least that is what I would say if this were any other kunoichi. Rest assured that Uraume will find a way around this. I would not have put her in line for the promotion if she could not beat something this easy" I said.
Then we turned our attention back to the battlefield where Uraume was dodging away from another one of the missiles. She seemed to sigh and then her energy shifted. The amount of chakra she was sending into her body near quadrupled. She began running straight for him.
"He'll just jump away again" the Daimyo said from my side.
He tossed another of the obelisks at her, and instead of jumping to the side, she jumped and began running on it, not breaking her stride much in her haste to reach him. She moved faster than he had been able to anticipate and he dropped the obelisk he had been about to throw, realising he wouldn't manage it in time and jumped into the air.
"I said it" the Daimyo crowed.
"It doesn't matter how fast she gets, the distance is just—" he never finished that sentence as Uraume turned to her midair opponent and pointed her left arm at him. The prosthetic. It began to whirl and shift as it transformed from a hand into the barrel of a cannon. A chakra cannon. Thanks for the idea, Nagato.
His back was turned to her, and he was in the middle of the air. There was nothing he could do as chakra gathered at the nozzle and shot right at his back. He must have noticed something was off at the last second, but his attempt to turn failed with no surface to gain purchase against. That's why Shinobi weren't supposed to spend a lot of time in the air.
The blast hit him right in the back, sending him slamming straight against the stadium's wall. The barrier right in front of the wall, rather. It hadn't been able to charge to full power so it was no surprise that the blast hadn't been enough to end the battle. But before he could recover and regain his feet, Uraume was already on him, and from there, it was no contest.
Shika declared the win as Isagi Akimichi flopped to the ground near boneless and unable to move.
"That was....." the Daimyo began, not seeming to be able to find the words to describe it.
"Incredible?" I offered.
"Feels like an understatement. It was special, that is to say. She baited him into the jump by first acting like she didn't have any choice but to play his game and then seeming to shift to a speed based approach. Forcing him to jump on short notice forced him to be less careful about it than he was the first time around and since he felt that her gambit was the speed based approach, he felt safe with the jump. But in reality, he was playing right into her hands" he said.
I clapped slowly.
"Well reasoned" I said. He was sharp. I mean I always knew he was sharp. He was the fucking Daimyo. He wasn't allowed to be an idiot. It just wasn't an option for him. But still to be able to figure that out with little exposure to shinobi combat was something else. It showed an understanding of battle at the very least.
"Thank you" he said.
The next name to be called, the second to last, was Uzume's. Her opponent? Kageru Fumikage.
She was a woman who walked down the tunnel with blades strapped all over her body. They were bespoke things, each one a bit longer than a standard kunai but lacking the trowel-esque shape. They were more varied. Some were straight blades, some were thin and focused on stabbing straight through things, and some were neither of those and something else entirely. She was special.
Why? Because somehow the fact that Konoha had a shinobi with the magnet release had escaped my notice. It was a tragic oversight. The kind of thing that heads rolled for. The problem was that there was no one to blame but myself, and even then there was little I could have done. Her promotion to the rank of Jounin had happened during Hiruzen's reign. I hadn't even been in the village when it happened. She took regular A-rank missions and I had even read a few of her reports but no mention of the magnet release. Why should there have been? Mission reports were summaries, not play by plays.
So I had missed it. We had her DNA on file, and could add it to our data bank for study, but Kagame wouldn't countenance breeding a Konoha shinobi without her consent and I didn't mind it much. We could use it to learn how kekkei genkai worked after all.
Shika started the match when Uzume made her way out as well. She wore that red armour. The one that was modelled after her most famous clan member. In one hand was the gunbai she wielded to devastating effect, and the other was just placed at her side.
Her eyes were the black of burning coals. No sharingan yet. Her opponent met those black eyes with no visible fear or hesitation in them. I'd gone through her mission record. Fumikage was a shinobi who had proven her worth time and time again. One hundred and twenty-seven A-rank missions, and seven S-rank missions. She had numbers that put basically everyone in the village to shame. Yes, that included Uzume herself. She felt she deserved the promotion, and this was her chance to prove it. She was the one I felt had the best argument in her favour, and I had gone ahead and seen to it that she ended up paired against my strongest choice.
Even if I gave her the promotion, to have one of my choices lose here was not an option. It would reflect badly on me. Make it seem like I hadn't properly assessed my force—which I hadn't, but shhhhh. No telling.
"Are you both ready?" Shika asked.
"Yes, Nara-san" Fumikage said.
"Get on with it" Uzume scoffed.
Shika ignored the rudeness, jumping up to her platform and bringing one arm down.
"Begin."
A/N: Here we go with the last bit. This bit ends next chappy and we move on to the next arc.. The main purpose of this side quest was to introduce some other members of Konoha's military force for the coming escalations. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.