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EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON KONOHA- AMEGAKURE
I watched as they ran at each other before they struck. From my position in the skies, few could see me as I watched the fight that I knew was likely to reshape much of the countryside they presently raced across. Uzume could see me with her Sharingan, and I had little doubt that Hanzo could sense me with his grasp of the Water Release. Hopefully, he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about me and those with me. I'd never hear the end of this if it didn't turn out to be the fight Uzume was looking for.
The Salamander summoner's scythe clashed with Uzume's gunbai. Both weapons were unconventional, to say the least, but both of them were skilled enough that they were able to easily adapt to using their unusual weapons against their opponent's unusual weapons. And so they danced around the ground as the rain fell all around them.
Uzume's red eyes flashed this way and that as she teased and searched for an opening with her gunbai, the weapon sparking with Lightning Release as she kept the pressure mounting on her opponent. Hanzo was using chakra reinforcement on his scythe as well, but not with the goal of enhancing its offensive attributes. Instead, he used his chakra to take the edge off of Uzume's Lightning Release and allow him to keep clashing weapons with her without fearing for his own weapon being broken apart or cut through.
Uzume was the one leading the dance, and so it must have shocked her when she twisted her gunbai in his direction and he blocked with his scythe, and then without a single handseal or warning sign, he spat a drilling lance of water straight at her head. She bent at the waist, the water barely missing her by a hair's breadth.
"Woah, that was so close," Kushina whispered. I turned to my team, watching them watch the fight with rapt attention just like I'd instructed.
"Not really," Minato said in response, as Uzume twisted, her hand touching the ground and allowing her to push forwards with a kick that Hanzo blocked with the handle of his scythe. Still, the strength she had put into the attack was enough to send him sliding backwards. She twisted again before landing back on her feet. And as she did so, her fingers had formed a one-handed Tiger seal.
"Katon," Uzume said, and then the world was fire. Her fireball jutsu formed nearly instantly and was so large that it boiled a good portion of the water on the ground into steam, and the rain that passed its vicinity received much the same treatment as well. Hanzo skated backwards on the water that soaked the battlefield while weaving seals. Water rushed from the ground, the groundwater forming a massive wall that stood against the fireball as both attacks canceled each other. With my Byakugan, I could see Hanzo thread his chakra through the resulting steam, thickening it and weaving in a genjutsu as well.
Uzume's chakra spiked as she formed a single bird seal. The mist, in its whole, was forced away with what was easily one of her most powerful Wind Release techniques. Of course, Hanzo had not been idle while she did so. The mist cleared to reveal three versions of the Salamander summoner. The real one was to the left and back, I noticed. I doubted he felt something as basic as a Water Clone Jutsu would fool the Sharingan, so there had to be something to it.
Both clones ran forwards, heading for Uzume while the original remained at the rear. She shot past both clones, not even bothering to destroy them as she went at the original. And that seemed to play straight into her opponent's hands as both clones turned to her at the same time, weaving seals that the original matched.
Chakra threads joined all three clones, forming some sort of barrier that Uzume was smack dab in the middle of.
"A good opponent, you were, girl. Now die secure in the knowledge that your friend will join you soon," all three bodies spoke as one, lifting their hands to the heavens.
"Sensei, you aren't going to do anything?" Mikoto asked. I scoffed.
"You want your aunt to try removing my head next? There's no chance whatever Hanzo is planning is going to be much use to him," I said, before watching keenly as his chakra left his body and went to the skies themselves.
It was the first time I was watching weather manipulation in this manner, and it was fascinating. The clouds thickened under the influence of his will until they reached a point. A point where they had what he wanted. Even with the ability to see it as clear as day, it was near impossible to accurately describe just what it was that he had done. What was easy to describe was that one second, the clouds were chock-full with chakra, and the next, they were empty. The chakra had fallen to the ground as lightning.
Three different bolts of lightning that struck Uzume head-on. Just like me, she had been watching the weather manipulation as it happened. The barrier was blown apart by Hanzo's own attack as the smoke and dust cleared to reveal the original with a wide smile on his face. A smile that died so quickly, it might as well never have existed. Uzume was there, right in the middle of the impact zone. She hadn't moved, hadn't summoned her Susano'o or anything of the sort. And yet there she was, completely unscathed. Hanzo disturbed his chakra five times in different patterns, seemingly certain that he had to be under some genjutsu. I chuckled.
Uzume walked out of the crater slowly and steadily, and Hanzo ended up disturbing his chakra network two more times before he was forced to realize that the strongest attack he probably had, had hit her head-on and done nothing to hurt her at all. She closed the distance between them.
"Is that the best you can do?" she asked with her customary arrogant tone. The one I knew could get on anyone's nerves. Hanzo shot forwards, pushing against the ground so strongly that he left behind an afterimage as he moved. Of course, I was able to keep up with it all with ease. He slashed at her head. Uzume blocked with her gunbai, weapon still sparking with Lightning Release. They strained against each other for a few seconds, and then he kicked out at her.
She twisted her gunbai out of the contest of strength and used it to block the attack even as she slid backwards. Several spinning jets of water rose from the ground and shot at her.
She jumped straight through them, heading for Hanzo. The attacks that hit her did nothing in the face of her Mangekyo ability as she slammed into her opponent with all her strength. At the last second, he had replaced himself with a water clone. A clone that dissolved into a black liquid that splashed all over Uzume's form. Poison? How interesting.
It had no effect, though, as she kept chasing after the salamander summoner regardless. The ground beneath her shifted as a clone of him rose from it with its blade poised to stab straight through her. She smashed through its guard, kicking its head off, and continued her chase of the other. He moved, twisting into a backflip, and turned back towards her with a bird seal formed.
The air screeched as his great breakthrough sent Uzume flying backwards. At least this time, he didn't seem to expect something so tame to manage to do much damage to her. He ran his scythe along his arm before he began weaving seals, and then he smashed his bloody hand into the ground. "Kuchiyose," he intoned.
Ibuse was just as imposing as I remembered the creature being. Not quite as large as the larger whales I could summon, but still larger than every other summoned creature I'd had the pleasure of seeing in person.
"Careful Ibuse. She's an Uchiha and has some technique that allows her to ignore attacks that should bypass all forms of durability. Be ready. Formation 12," he said, and the summon nodded. Instead of speaking, it opened its mouth, and from said mouth came a rush of purple gas. Poison, most likely. So much of it that I leaned over to my students, tapping their heads to create bubbles of Wind Release over them that should continually offer clean air even if some of the poison ended up making its way up here.
Uzume on the other hand, rose with a spectral armour forming around her form. Her Susano'o.
"Woah, what is that?" Kushina asked, sounding awestruck as Uzume's Susano'o fully formed itself. It was tall enough that its head reached above Ibuse's form, with the summon only making it up to her Susano'o's chest.
The size was not the only thing special about Uzume's complete Susano'o. For one, instead of two arms, it now had four. One set of arms protruding from the shoulder and another set at the level of the ribs. The two lower arms were carrying a single drum between them. In each of the first set of arms was a single drumstick.
"This is the Susano'o. God of storms. Tremble mortal, for you shall be the first to witness my full power." I barely managed to resist the urge to facepalm at her words.
Ibuse belched even more poison, and it covered the distance, heading towards Uzume's form. She watched it approach with a disdainful look, and then one of her drumsticks landed on the drum. Thunder was the best way to describe the sound and feeling the drum made.
It created a shockwave that blew apart the poison cloud in one blow, revealing the summoner and his summon. She raised both of the upper hands of her Susano'o and slammed them down again. She created an even bigger shockwave. Ibuse managed to remain in his spot by digging itself slightly into the ground.
Uzume drummed again. One, two, three, and the ground between them blew apart, and the summon was sent flying. The summoner, I could see, used his hydrofication technique to disappear in the rain while his summon was dispatched with so much ease that it dissolved into smoke before it even landed on the ground again. Uzume kept drumming, blowing apart much of the landscape, but catching Hanzo with that attack proved to be more difficult.
He reformed to her side, and then he jumped at her like a missile. She turned to face him, and the spectral drum and drumsticks were replaced by a set of crossbows, one in each of her hands.
"Susano'o is the god of storms, and before the thunder, comes the lightning. Let me show you what real lightning feels like, pretender," she said, and then aimed. Each of her crossbows charged with a bolt of lightning before firing off at the same time.
Hanzo cooled the water in front of him into an icy platform that he just barely managed to push off against to avoid the bolts of lightning. Uzume fired again, barely needing a second to reload. Once again, the bolts tore through the space he occupied, and he barely managed to avoid them in time.
He tossed his scythe upwards, slamming his hands together in the snake seal. The water beneath Uzume's Susano'o lurched and lifted, multiplying upon itself and slamming against the form of her Susano'o, trying to lift it and carry it with its force. Uzume held her ground, firing again with her crossbows. The water rose further, swallowing the lightning bolts in its shadow before it froze in front of Hanzo, forming a giant ice wall that shattered from the lightning bolts and sent ice flying everywhere.
Uzume did not stop after the massive clash of attacks to take stock of the damage she had wrought. No, she kept moving. Her Susano'o-clad form barreled through what remained of the ice like it was not even there, advancing towards the man that had challenged three great shinobi nations and held them to a standstill. Hanzo was a prodigy among prodigies, a monster among monsters, and the kind of man who clearly was not used to being so thoroughly overwhelmed.
Unfortunately for him, he was facing a version of Uzume who had to contend with not just my mastery of Onoki's Lightness and Heaviness Jutsu but my now almost perfected Kyubi Chakra Cloak. I had ascended to a level where I was certain I had no more peers in this world, and against all odds, Uzume had somehow managed to keep pace.
Before her, Hanzo just came up short. It wasn't like he was weak or anything, but he just wasn't built for this level of combat. He was not built to shift landscapes effortlessly as a byproduct of his combat. Uzume's Susano'o might as well have been said to exist for only that explicit reason. Lightning and thunder were a powerful combination, and when she wielded them together, it was the kind of combination most needed... enhanced means of combat to contend with.
Hanzo dropped to the ground, somehow managing to get his scythe into his grip again, but what use was it? He stood strong and proud. Scythe in one hand and the other forming the ram seal. Uzume bore down on him with all four arms of her Susano'o practically aching for combat. His jutsu was executed a second later. He breathed out a massive amount of mist just brimming with his chakra. And then the water at Uzume's feet rose, covering up to the knees of her armour before freezing solid and bringing her continuous advance to a dead stop.
He clapped his hands together. The water falling as rain stopped, hardening into multiple tiny spikes of ice. And then they began to rotate. I watched the jutsu intently. He was using ice to create mirrors all over. And he was doing the large-scale ice manipulation without a Kekkei Genkai. His Water Release affinity was just that high.
The shards of ice then struck each other at fixed angles. Each of them repeating the same motion at the same angle so perfectly that it could not be anything less than purposeful. Looking at him, I could see blood dripping from his rebreather. Yeah, there was no chance he was doing this without a massive amount of strain, both to his mind and his chakra.
His ice shards struck each other once more, creating a spark of electricity. A spark that his chakra held and cradled like one would hold a child before his chakra began to stoke those sparks.
Uzume could most likely have broken out of the bindings and dealt with him in the time it took to do all this, but she just stood there and watched, clearly just as curious as I was. It was not like something like this would hurt Susano'o after all.
The small sparks of electricity were harnessed and focused, both by his chakra which amplified their base states, and the ice mirrors he created. It was another complicated jutsu that even seeing it couldn't explain. Maybe if I could see it a few times in a row, and get some sort of explanation of how it was happening, I could have a hope of a prayer of one day copying it for myself.
Seeing as that wasn't likely, I didn't watch with intent to replicate. I watched with awe. This is what natural genius was capable of in this world. Everything I created, I already knew was possible. I was the lowest type of thief, taking credit for what others would have created or developed. The uninitiated would have seen Hanzo and me as being cut from the same type of cloth, but in the privy of my mind, at least, I could admit that he was just something else in the end.
A different beast. A unique sort of monster. And it was that monster that used his technique to smite Uzume's Susano'o. Four individual bolts of lightning. Each one bigger and badder than the one he had needed a barrier to protect himself from. A suicide play? Not unlikely. But so disappointing. The attack landed, and then the world itself flashed with the explosion it created. I had to cover my eyes very briefly. And when I did, it was to find that the ground Uzume and Hanzo had been fighting on had just been turned into a massive crater.
There Hanzo was, tossed to the side of the crater, lying on the ground. Impressively enough, he was still conscious. That was the only pro I could point out. His legs were gone. Both of them were nowhere to be found—lost in the explosion somehow. Uzume on the other hand was unscathed. Her Susano'o dissolved as she walked forwards to stand in front of her opponent.
"How??" he asked, clearly shocked to see her none the worse off from what had to be his ultimate attack.
"In my Susano'o, I am the god of storms. How did you expect lightning to ever manage to damage me?" she asked with a scoff.
I lowered myself and my team with an application of wind release so we landed right next to her.
"How was it?"
"He managed to get me all hot and bothered, and couldn't make it to the climax," she said with a scoff.
"You're going to have to get used to people not being able to contend with us, 'Zume."
"It would drive me insane if I didn't have you," she said, turning to me and placing a hand on my chestplate. I looked at her, watching those beautiful red eyes as they danced with mirth. What a cliché line, hmm.
"Ughhhh, get a room, Shori-nii," I heard Kushina say behind her.
A/N: And so we get another progress update— this one from a strength perspective. We can see that Uzume has clearly made a lot of progress on her Susano'o from the fight against Ay. Next six up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early– 15% discount for a limited time.