12 Chapter 12: Blooming Flood

Some part of me recognized Jiraya letting me go, and I detachedly watched my own body as it belonged to someone else moving into the arena and reaching Hana.

I was a competent field med nin, but even Tsunade could do nothing to a hole in the chest of a normal person.

I stared at her, she was already no longer breathing. I looked into her eyes but they were already staring unblinkingly at the sky.

I felt... hollow, somewhat. She was gone, I spoke to her less than twenty minutes before, and managed to fuck up even that interaction. She went into the fight distracted by my behavior and...

No. I stopped myself. She was dead because Yugito had killed her. In a more wide sense, everything that was happening that did not perfectly match Kishimoto's storyline was my fault. Butterfly effect and whatnot.

I knew that in the story she grew up to be somewhat human, mentality wise. But how many would she butcher in the meantime?

In that moment I choose. Fuck the storyline.

My rage wasn't burning, it didn't throw me into a mindless frenzy. Even when the med nins brought away Hana's body I didn't acknowledge my wrath as anything but a slight roughness that permeated my chakra. I smoothed it down, breathing deeply and slowly.

I wanted to lash out at something. At Jiraya, who had prevented me from interfering. At the Hokage, who had likely ordered him to do so. At Hana's mother, who didn't intervene. At Guy, who most certainly lost the privilege of being called sensei.

I wanted to lash out at everything, because everyone was bred and raised to accept the utter bullshit that the shinobi system was.

I wanted to lash out at the bijus for letting themselves get captured, making sure that no matter what, the practice of children raised as soldiers would stay a must in every hidden village worth its name.

I realized, no, I already knew, that people raised to be zealots could hardly be blamed for their actions, but they still needed to be stopped. I even pitied them.

I was disgusted by the whole situation. I even understood Jiraya's actions. The chunin exams, while rigged, must uphold the pretense of being fair. Jumping into the fray would have been a useful excuse. For Kumo to get offended by Konoha stopping them from showing off their jinchuriki, and for Iwa to confirm under the eyes of the world that Konoha was an oath breaker of some kind.

Neither would be true, but ninjas existed for war, and every occasion was good to start one.

I didn't know about Iwa, but Kumo had been pumping their own numbers for some time and even attempted to steal a Byakugan knowing that they could go to war in case of failure. Konoha had been too weak so soon after the Kyubi attack and as such the village had to sacrifice Hizashi to prevent the fourth ninja war.

I had never shared mankind's common belief that one evil rectifies another. Or in that case, in murdering the murderer. So I wouldn't be killing Yugito because of Hana's death.

I would kill her because she was smiling while killing Hana. And that world didn't need a sadist with the power of a biju.

I knew that in the manga Sasuke had managed to fend off two tails of the Kyubi thanks to the sharingan and the cursed seal. But Naruto had been around 13 years old at the time, so his body was not really that powerful.

And he only held half of the kyubi, so I really had no idea of what kind of strength the Kumo's jinchuriki possessed.

Pointless. It was pointless reasoning. I wanted her dead. So I didn't have any further consideration to do. I would go all out. Period.

I walked to the center of the arena, taking in the several craters and splatters of blood on the ground. Jiraya didn't let me see the match, but it went on for a while, and the tracks painted something far from reassuring. And from the way my opponent was licking her lips, it was clear that she had toyed with Hana.

I unlatched the strap that held the big scroll on my back and started calling forth my chakra.

The referee gave the start and jumped back.

I brought my hands forward in a cross-shaped seal: "Kage bunshin no jutsu." I said, and without waiting and threw myself forward with all my considerable speed, a kunai held in each hand.

I knew that my face was blank and my breath even. I knew because I could see my reflection in the Jinchuriki widening pupils while my first slash embedded a kunai in her left shoulder.

Without stopping, I stomped on her left foot with my right one, latching on it with my chakra like I was going to walk on walls.

My left knee rose sharply, raising her right arm and breaking down her defenses.

My second kunai was embedded up to the hilt in her stomach a split second later, my raised left leg now fully extended turning into an axe kick that slammed on her right clavicle gifted us a sharp crack that signaled a broken bone.

With my arms, I started hitting in a flurry that couldn't be stopped now that the only libs she had in working condition were her legs, and I was keeping her left leg pinned.

She wisely dropped her head protecting her vulnerable throat, and my uppercut broke her nose, I followed with an elbow to her temple.

I raised the leg which had been pinning her down and kicked her with a wide movement when she was swaying.

I wasn't using any technique, so I had no necessity to call out the names of my moves. Manipulating chakra had a lot to do with emotions and what one could feel of himself. Calling the name of the technique helped greatly keeping the mind focused on the intended result. While one day I would be able to do a lot of things with suiton without needing to call out the techniques, the same couldn't be said for the elements I wasn't naturally suited for. A brief flare of Katon to lit a cigarette? Sure, a fireball? No chance in hell.

Even the Konoha Senpuu was something I would need to call out loud because it made my chakra flow into a pattern that favored my movements. But I wasn't there yet with Yugito. Every punch and elbow I threw at her hadn't been part of a whole technique, simply taking advantage of weaknesses.

I reduced her a mess with a mesh of hits that had nothing to do one with another.

I watched her impassively as she straightened up after being flung away. Her chakra was already changing.

The relatively normal presence of the kunoichi was swallowed by a heavier, older, more feral one.

The miasmatic red chakra pulsed out of her skin carrying a bloodlust that wasn't human and that gave me pause for a moment. But the cheering of the crowd made me focus like nothing before. It was a show for them. It didn't matter that I was fifteen, that I had dreams and hopes, that I had just lost a teammate. They were having fun after all.

I didn't let her settle and charged again a flurry of senbon and a kunai tagged with a paper bomb gave me an opening.

Or they should have, the senbons fell at my opponent's feet, and she spat towards me a fireball that set off the paper bomb wrapped around the handle of my kunai, engulfed the explosion and came in my direction with a vengeance.

I threw myself on the side, my hand laced with chakra digging on the ground redirecting my momentum and changing my trajectory.

I reached her on the side, her clawed hand slashing at my eyes ground against the chakra scalpel I had formed from my fingertips. She was starting to sprout her first tail, and we were locked into a melee, my chakra scalpels wobbling and occasionally failing since her miasmatic chakra disrupted the necessary delicate control I had to exercise to keep them up.

My kunais were getting broken very fast, and in less than a minute, I was left with only a handful of them.

"Konoha Senpuu." And I was everywhere she wasn't, hitting with kicks, and punches, every single one heavy as a warhammer. I had to dodge or redirect every single one of her attacks, but I was managing it.

Then her first tail fully manifested and swiped at me, dragging with it rocks it had somehow dug out of the ground. I ran away and kept my distance for a couple of seconds, taking in her changed form.

She was hunched forward, her reddish chakra tail moving erratically from the base of her back, her claws digging into the rocky ground. Where I had plunged my kunais, there were only holes in her clothes.

I watched around and noticed that the before the negligible trickle of water had become a respectable stream and that there was a quickly growing pond on the side of the arena. My Kage bunshin had successfully unsealed the tons of liters of water I had sealed in the scroll. The only downside was that it took a while for them to leave the pocket dimension they were into.

But I could keep distracting the jinchuriki for a while. Even if she was no longer taking damage, she could barely keep up with my offensive.

I distractedly noticed seals glowing on the walls of the arena and a barrier developing to protect the crowd. Wise move.

I didn't let the nibi jinchuriki out of my sight, so I was prepared when she flung herself at me. She had become faster, and if a tad bit less predictable, there wasn't a sense behind her blows, she slashed at everything in range.

She managed to slash my left eyebrow open, but it wasn't serious, and I managed to direct medical chakra at it through the tenketsu in the middle of my forehead.

From time to time she remembered to jab her arm forward, but otherwise it was a neverending twister of swipes. Her kicks were telegraphed, her arms hid no following movement. She wasn't building up openings, just hitting whatever came into the sight of her mismatched eyes.

I flowed around her blows, touching them the bare minimum only when I had to redirect them, I was wary of her after her first successful hit.

But I kept hitting every time I was safe in doing so. A jab at her throat, a senbon plunged into her bicep reached her brachial artery, with a push I managed to keep a chakra scalpel long enough to open a deep cut on her tight and reached the femoral artery.

After three minutes during which she grew more and more flustered with her failed attempts to shred me, she plunged her left arm straight towards my face, amply overreaching.

I simply reacted. I turned my torso sideways, my left hand plunging my last kunai with an upwards swing into her wrist, twisting it while pulling so that I could hyperextend her arm. My right open palm slammed into her elbow and bending it into the wrong direction earning me a yowl. I gave a swipe on my own, my right hand turning straight and forming a chakra scalpel on its fingertips.

I felt my chakra tearing into her face, more exactly, cutting open the bridge of her nose and neatly bisecting her left eye.

Then I only had time to bring up both my arms in a cross guard to defend myself from the tail that slammed into me with the strength of a landslide.

There was an earth-shattering roar and her chakra rumbled, turning once more heavier, and her bloodlust skyrocketed.

The referee hopped behind the barrier, and I couldn't blame him. My armguards were shattered and my forearms lost their layer of skin. Letting the world see the deep red of my muscles beneath it.

Without tearing my eyes away from my opponent, I directed medical chakra to the tenketsus on the upper side of my forearms, which soon were enveloped in a faint green glow. My skin regrowing without issues, even if I wanted to scratch myself like a dog with fleas.

I ignored the awed sounds from the crowd and focused on keeping the flow steady.

I flickered around the arena, picking up my still whole kunais and appreciating the fact that I finally had to walk on water, even if it was less than a half meter deep. Still, it covered the whole arena, even if it was evaporating when it reached a meter from the jinchuriki. And we had been fighting on a small plateau of the arena, so it made sense that it was still not very noticeable.

Her second tail was starting to sprout, so I tested her reactivity throwing a blunted kunai. Her first tail twitched and parried it.

She's already getting faster.

Sure as hell I wasn't letting her complete her transformation into the second version of her chakra cloak. It was unlikely that she could already turn into Matatabi, but I wasn't eager to find out.

I took a deep breath and crouched like I was about to sprint. Spinning my chakra through my coils, I felt the vague slowing down of it in my brain. From there, I focused on the second gate, in the same way, one could focus on his own heart. I took a deep breath.

"Kyūmon, kai."

The chakra surged forward like boiling water, messily churning through my coils. I gritted my teeth, forcibly tweaking the energy that made it turbulent into making it flow faster through my stretched coils.

It took me three very long seconds to accomplish it, and I couldn't have done so if Yugito wasn't otherwise busy.

My clone hadn't been idle and let two Mizu-bushins pelt the Kumo kunoichi with kunais and senbons. While they mostly evaporated because of the sheer heat surrounding the malevolent chakra, they had managed to distract her and stall her transformation.

And I could always use the vapor to my advantage as a cover. I eyeballed a real kunai on the ground in front of my opponent and gestured ~DispelMy water bushins followed the order.

Since they had been made by my Kage bunshin, he was the one to control them, but he had his task to deal with, even if I appreciated his... mine?... Whatever, even if I appreciated his well-timed intervention.

I ran sideways before charging at Yugito from behind, already molding my chakra and throwing a kunai in a high arc ahead of me.

She turned in my direction with a snarl and blew a blue fireball without needing hand signs.

I kawarimed with the kunai at her feet and swiped her legs from beneath her, making her airborne, parallel to the ground.

Her tail immediately came crashing down on me but I kawarimed again, this time with the kunai I had thrown before, which was less than half a meter from her side.

I was holding my breath while I grabbed the kunai I had kawarimed with the first time and plunged it in the side of her neck as deep as I could, feeling it slam into her spine.

I stepped back and brought my hands together in a cross-shaped seal, only, it was sideways, more like an X than a Christian cross.

"Ninpō: Ashura." I chanted. And I shaped my chakra like I was going to create two Kage bunshins, only twisting its shape on my side of the chakra wall beyond which one normally shaped a kage bunshin.

My first one dispelled, giving back the little chakra he hadn't poured into the water overflowing from the scroll.

My torso became a mess, I was a shinobi with two legs, six arms, and three heads. Zoro from one piece had been the inspiration for that adaptation of the Kage Bunshin no jutsu.

The other two me raised their hands, channeling suiton chakra to summon the water from around us. It was already, even if in a very diluted form, laced with my chakra, so it made their work easier.

My actual hands left the X shaped seal and disposed of themselves for the next step. Each fingertip pressed against its counterpart, the fingers arched and forming a rough spherical cage in which the water started swirling.

In theory, water cannot be compressed. That's the whole principle behind every kind of pump. Yet, with chakra, masses of water could multiply themselves. I had proven so turning a mouthful of blood into a modified teppodama during the first stage. There were several liters of liquid in that technique, most certainly more than what my mouth had been able to contain.

So, the water between my hands swirled into a pinpoint large sphere, twin rivers directed by the other two me forming a whirlpool around me.

It sounded like being under a waterfall. The water was crashing and thundering around me, hating to be constricted into any form.

The Suiton: Rasengan grew heavier in my hands, every liter of water multiplying itself through the chakra poured by the other two me and being impossibly compressed between my hands.

All the water in the arena answered to my Ashura's form's call.

The other two me were focused on calling forth, augmenting the mass of water, and pouring their chakra into it.

I simply had to keep it spinning, coalescing the two twin rivers into a ball that soon became of the same blue of the deepest ocean, It was eating chakra like mad, but I noticed that I was having an easier time than in training.

When all the water was contained between my hands, the other two me placed their hands into a horse handseal.

I was ready.

The technique had reached the point in which I no longer had to force it.

So I stood over the prone body of the jinchuriki, the malevolent chakra working in overdrive to repair the damage I had inflicted on Yugito's spine.

"Matatabi, a man stole your father's eyes and wants to give your siblings back to the one Hagoromo and Hamura battled," I whispered.

I had no idea if the biju could hear me or not, but a piece of convoluted advice was something I could give. I was mostly sure that nobody else could hear me, but the message was cryptic enough to throw anyone for a loop.

I thundered: "Suiton: Saku Kōzui!"

(Blooming Flood) and I let the unrelenting, unstoppable force between my hands go, trusting the other two sides of me to keep the waters from crushing me.

As soon as I opened the 'cage' the water exploded into a wave that rose into a maelstrom. In the time it took my heart to complete a single beat, the mass of water went from being held between my hands to pushing against the walls of the arena, crushing everything in between.

The churning water was locked in a clockwise motion around me, it rose two, three, four, six meters high and it kept moving. Half a meter beyond the eye of the whirlpool, at the base of which I was standing, having joined the other two me in a horse handseal intent in making sure the water didn't kill me, it was chaos.

The waves crossed the arena in a split second, slamming against the fuinjutsu barriers with the force of an avalanche, breaking apart the ground, tearing the now dead body of Yugito to shreds. Compressing rocks until they were sand, bending and snapping the kunais that littered the ground like they were toothpicks in the hands of an angry giant. I controlled only the comparatively small whirlpool around me, which was my only defense against the contrasting currents beyond it, against the sheer weight of the tons and tons of water that I unleashed.

If it wasn't for my chakra saturating it, I wouldn't have had a single chance of surviving my technique.

Way higher than my head, the waves moved erratically, crashing one against the other and battering the barrier that protected the spectators.

Three seconds after I had unleashed the technique, of Yugito's body there was no longer anything recognizable.