[ Interlude part 2 ]
My eye returned to the fight, they hadn't even bothered in keeping hidden the jinchuriki from Kumo. The signs were obvious for anyone who knew where to look.
I blinked. Is this why Daiki fussed over the girl?
The following question was as obvious as it was intriguing: How did he know?
...
He was a strange shinobi indeed.
When the jinchuriki killed Tsume's daughter, I almost visibly flinched. How it happened fell a little too close to home. My forearm twinged.
I sighed in sympathy, distractedly looking Tsume's four-legged companion herd away the other three desperate ninkens and Guy place a strong arm around the grieving mother's shoulders.
Not a spark of emotion was on display on any of our faces, but Tsume's chakra had surged forward like a wolf stalking a prey. Her entire demeanor had changed. There was no time for grief, no privacy to grieve, no room for revenge.
I watched as Tsume's eyes locked themselves on the last Konoha genin in the competition. In that moment, she placed the revenge duty on him.
I looked for Jiraya, but he had disappeared from my senses. Sensei's sensei did it often.
I even closed my Icha Icha Paradise and slid it into my flak jacket, the only thing I could do for Tsume's pain was being watchful for future weaknesses to exploit.
Another question was: Did Sandaime-sama know about the jinchuriki when he assigned the mission?
I tossed a look at the honor balcony trying to glean some message from the way the Kage was sitting, but to no avail.
Opening with a Kage bunshin was an amateur's mistake. It was reassuring not being the only one fighting, but it was a fake shield.
When the clone grabbed the scroll and ran to one side of the arena, disguising himself among the rocks, I was intrigued much more.
The following taijutsu exchange lasted 15 seconds. 15 seconds during which the Kumo kunoichi hadn't been able to do anything.
It had been unrelenting and exceptionally violent.
My eye found out what the clone had been doing and I tilted my head questioningly. Opening a scroll and unseal whatever it held within hardly required all that time. Even if it was... water?
The boy was a suiton user, so he came prepared with his own source of water. Good on him.
I couldn't find the clone, but there still had to be the telling poof of the Kage bunshin dispelling. That meant it was still around, perhaps setting traps. The modified henge he had shown himself capable of was easily adaptable to keep one hidden from sight.
I watched as Guy's student faltered for a split second before keeping up his offensive. Is he using himself as a distraction? Bold.
But there was no denying that the genin was fast, stupidly so.
And he was keeping his head, not panicking, as he weathered the jinchuriki assault.
I blinked once more in surprise when a faint green glow enveloped the wound on his eyebrow. How did he do that?
Several of his hits had reached vital points of his opponent, and yet he didn't relent his assault.
He took notice that the previous wounds he inflicted are already healed.
I nodded thoughtfully, once more tuning out the youthful encouragements Guy was shouting.
He went in for the kill with his chakra scalpel shredding the left side of the Kumo kunoichi's face.
He paid the price with the tail hitting his guard. He didn't lose his focus, that thing must have burned like hell, but he had kept his eyes on the opponent, a green glow once more covering his wounds and leaving only unmarred skin behind.
"Genjutsu, Katon, Healing, the Gates... what have you taught him Guy?" I murmured to myself.
Sadly, my eternal rival heard me with his highly trained ears and answered something about the endless power of youth.
I picked my ear and turned in his direction suddenly as he had just found his seat. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
By then everyone had noticed the water, and I was curious myself. He had bargained the Kage Bunshin no jutsu with the promise of a suitably flashy suiton jutsu.
His use of kawarimi was flawless, and he had managed to temporarily incapacitate his opponent. The jinchuriki's chakra was still going strong, kunai in the neck or not, so it was understandable that the referee chose to stay safely tucked behind the barrier.
When he sprouted two extra heads and I saw the telltale poof of a Kage bunshin dispelling, I knew we were about to see it.
There wasn't a build-up of chakra, no sudden flare, like almost everything the boy did, it was controlled and with as little wasted chakra as possible.
Whatever anyone else said, it was flashy.
Sure he had needed the whole battle to set it up, and had needed to immobilize his opponent for thirty seconds or more but the end effect was...
When the other two sides of him placed their hands into horse hand seals, I couldn't resist.
I used my thumb and lifted my headband enough to take a peek.
He was holding the water equivalent of the sun in his hands. It was too dense for me to make out any distinguishing feature of the chakra that made the technique.
His refusal to use hand signs forbid me from simply copying the technique, it was a pity too, it was so promising, but I didn't lower my headband, the Hokage would probably pick my brain later.
Still, I admit that I was hunched forward like the rest of the audience when he shouted the name of the technique.
"Suiton: Saku Kōzui!"
And he let go the equivalent of a small sea from his hands.
Obito's eye picked up the dust and pebbles being shot away from the boy in an ample circle, and when I saw the Kumo Jinchuriki being pushed on the floor for a split second I discretely placed my fingers in my ears.
Just in time, because the exploding mass of water had compressed the air, which ran ahead of the blooming flood with an earth-shattering 'boom'
The mass of water grew as a twirling semisphere and slammed against the walls of the arena, making the more cautious of us to stand in case the arena was suddenly destroyed.
But the water didn't finish her work against the wall, it kept raising, digging and crushing everything in between.
It all happened in less than a quarter of a second.
And my first thought, I admit it freely, was that the kid had killed himself.
Then first the Sharingan, then my normal eye, picked up a consistent twirl in the middle of the arena. I could tell that the water had lost whatever semblance of order since waves were moving in different directions, and I could feel with my feet the trembling of the ground.
Half a minute later, the twirl in the middle of the arena became a small, almost delicate whirlpool. And from the murky waters, Daiki climbed on the surface with unsteady legs. He was panting and looked like he was about to keel over.
But hell, surviving your own technique was half of the job.
...
( ONOKI )
I was intrigued. The child was the same one that was reported sparing his niece twice. And also trying to cheerfully teach her something during the preliminaries.
Oh, there was no doubt he did so to fish for information, but nevertheless he had been somewhat kind in doing so.
I tuned out with practiced ease the endless ramblings of the Raikage's representative. I don't have the patience to deal with children.
And looking at the pained twitch of Hiruzen eyebrows, I knew that I wasn't the only one.
I wondered if poking fun at the extermination of the Uchiha clan, but then I left that train of thought. Hiruzen would have pointed out how not one of the Iwa genins had made it to the finals, no doubt.
And from the satisfying puff of his pipe, I knew that he knew it too.
Thinking about it, I didn't have the patience to deal with 'not Iwa people' in general.
At least the pillows on my seat kept my aching back quiet. I let my eyes take notice of the various Daimyō' delegations sitting in strategic positions among the crowd.
The final began, and I kept my eyes on the youngster from Konoha. I was naturally suspicious of any blond coming from that cursed place.
Kake bunshin? That is Tobirama's technique.
I watched with a raised eyebrow the utter incompetence of the Kumo jinchuriki.
But the boy was not a genin, that was for sure. I tsked, not that I didn't the same, but Iwa's ringer didn't manage to pass the second stage.
I once again bit down a sarcastic comment towards Hiruzen. It would have started a discussion in which the Raikage aggravating representative would have rapped his way into. I didn't have the patience to deal with it.
Healing himself without the use of his hands?
I spied a look at Hiruzen's face. He hid it well, but I knew him too well to not notice his surprise.
So he too doesn't know what he's capable of. Is he that Jiraya's apprentice? Is that why he suddenly went into the genins' balcony?
His kawarimis only exacerbated the memory of that... monster who the yondaime Hokage had been.
I gritted my teeth, Hiruzen knew it as well.
Then he called the suiton technique. I blinked.
"I noticed he doesn't have a surname." I pointed out when I saw the semisphere of water exploding outwards in a twisting motion, it looked almost like a cursed Rasengan.
Hiruzen's eyes met mine, barely containing a gleam of triumph.
...
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