Chapter 276

“Not specifically.” Crafty ass. He’s trying to worm information out of me. “He and his big blue friend are constantly on the move, they’re hard to pin down for long.

Spiders can’t exactly move at shinobi speeds, not to mention S-rank shinobi speeds. I have to wait for them to pop up again once they leave where they’re at and they’re never in the same place for more than three days.”

…

“Good, that means when I’m ready we can find him.” Sasuke rolls his shoulders. “So we sparing or what?”

“Hold up a moment.” This needs to be clarified. “Did you just admit you weren’t ready to face Itachi? You?”

“Uh yeah?” His brow furrows in confusion. “Alvarcus we’ve got to deal with Orochimaru first. One S-rank at a time.”

“Holy shit. You’ve matured.” I did not expect that. Never would I have expected that.

~Perhaps you should take those words to heart. One S-rank at a time, not a group of nine.~

Oh be quiet they only work in pairs. It’ll be two at once wow that sounds way worse than I expected.

“Shut up you idiot.” Sasuke rolls his eyes. “Orochimaru has to go if I want to kill Itachi. Plus he did… well… I’m not the only one who lost family.”

“True.” I finally take up my own combat stance, it’s a loose one that leave myself wide open everywhere except my chest. “So how about that spar?”

I don’t want talk of Orochimaru to damper the pleasant mood that we’re both in.

“Gladly.” Sasuke smiles to himself. “It’s been a long time since we did this, I’ve got plenty of new moves. I think I feel a win coming my way.”

“You’re right, it has been a while.” I grin at him predatorily. “Just imagine how many new moves I’ve come up with. Now tell me which one is scarier?”

“Fair point.” Sasuke concedes as he springs forward and in one fluid motion draws his sword and attempts to slash diagonally across my chest. He would have reopened the massive scar that Sureddo gave me on one of its earlier uses but I leapt backwards out of his range. “But you’re forgetting that I know your style. I can see through your parlor tricks.”

“You and your damn fancy eyes!” I accuse him as I throw six kunai at him at once. I miss my chakra strings, I don’t use them nearly as much as I used to. They’re my original skill after all.

Sasuke precisely swings his sword and knocks all six of them out of the air with ease. “They’re more than just for looks.”

“Cheats! Cheats I say!” I playfully shout at him. “And you call me broken?”

“You’re way more broken than I am.” Sasuke darts in again, attempting to pierce me multiple times as lighting arcs down his blade. He’s being serious to start out with that, must really want that win.

“Yeah for now. Give it some time, you’ll end up passing me again one day.” I intercept one of his thrusts with my own kunai and close the distance between us. While ignoring the sudden jolt from the lightning I swipe my kunai at his legs in an attempt to slow him down, turns out he’s faster than I am. Not by much but just enough that I want to remove that advantage.

“I hope so. I’m tired of being second.” Sasuke planted the tip of his sword in the ground and used it as an anchor to raise himself up in a hand stand to avoid my swipe.

“Show off.” I lob an insult at him as I swipe at the arm holding him upside down.

He pushes off the hilt of his sword to push his body upwards to avoid yet another strike. On his way back down he easily grasps the hilt again and lands back on his feet and leaps away with his sword to put some distance between us again.

“I hate to repeat myself but, show off.”

“Told you I had new moves.” He cheekily taunts me. “Given that one is really not a good one to try in a real combat situation. I can’t really do much while I’m upside down and balancing on a sword handle.”

“I guess it’s my turn to show off then.” I whip out a scroll and Sasuke’s eyes widen slightly in fear. He knows that whatever is in there does not bode well for him.

He lunges forward with every intent of severing my wrist and by extension removing the scroll from my posession.

Too bad for him I expected that. One stark white mask sprouts out of my back and arcs over my shoulder and shoots out a gale of wind, buffeting Sasuke so much that he’s forced to halt his advance.

“You showed me an impractical move it’s only fair that I return the favor.” I unfurl the scroll as Sasuke has quit fighting to get through the fierce wind and has opted to put as much distance between us as possible. “Although mine isn’t new, it’s more of an enhancement. And a whole lot less impractical now that I know how to make seals.”

POOF

“Wait that’s it?” Sasuke lowers his guard for a moment as he sees what was hidden inside the scroll. “Kuani? Just a bunch of kunai?”

“One hundred twenty seven to be exact.” I pleasantly tell him. I’m stalling a bit, this move takes a few seconds to get ready and a whole lot of focus. “Used to be one hundred twenty eight but I lost one and haven’t bothered to replace it. I’ve slowly doubled the amount of kunai I can use for a specific move of mine. I went back to square one and used a single kunai. Then two. Then four. Then eight. And so on you get the idea. Still have no idea where that one went to though.”

“You think I can’t stop or dodge that many kunai?” Sasuke ask with confidence. “I’ve been put through dodge training too.”

“Yeah but not my dodge training. Plus I’m not throwing them.”

In unison all of the kunai lift up off of the floor and float around me in a sphere. They start to rotate, moving faster and faster until they’re little more than a mass of spinning blades.

Then I take a step forwards.

“Oh.” Sasuke utters out as his face pales. “Shit. You can walk and do that now.”

“I present Metal Tornado 2.0.” I proudly state.

“Whirling Death is still cooler.” Sasuke blurts out.

“Fuck off it’s my move so I get to name it!” I wish I could run and do this. Then he’d have no chance. As it is I can barely walk at a civilian pace, good thing he doesn’t know that.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sasuke rolls his shoulders as I slowly close the gap between us. “Call your stupid move whatever you want.”

“You said this was cool once! Don’t think I don’t remember!” I accuse him as the gap closes even further.

“True but then I figured out a weakness to it.” Sasuke flies through hand signs and rests on the final sign. “You have to focus a lot to keep that going, any huge unexpected change should shock you enough to lose control of the rotation.”

“Good luck with that.” I taunt him as I advance further. “I’m prepared for just about anything. You won’t startle me enough no matter what you do. I promise there’s more weird and fucked up things in my head than yours.”

“That’s it though, I meant literally.” Oh shit. “Lightning Release: Lightning Bullet!”

A super charged sphere of pure electricity surges out of Sasuke’s mouth and slams into my rotating kunai sphere. My metal rotating kunai sphere. The lightning arcs to each kunai, jumping from one to the next in an instant. But something else is going on too, the lightning is also arcing to me from all of the one hundred twenty seven kunai that are floating around me.

The sudden influx of voltage makes me twitch and spasm uncontrollably, disrupting my focus exactly like Sasuke said and the once impressive display clatters to the ground in shambles.

“Dammit.” I whine out while looking at the mess I’ll have to clean up later. “Now I’ll never be able to use that against you again.”

“Nope!” He springs forward once more with his sword held high above his head, ready to cleave me in two. “So how was your trip? Anything eventful happen?”

“You have no idea.” With a single chakra string I pull one of the kunai off the ground and into my hand to parry his blow. I forced the blade to divert off to my left and quickly counter attack by slashing at his hands so he drops the damn pointy stick. “It was the usual for me.”

“So total cluster fuck?” Sasuke surrenders his sword in favor of keeping his wrists intact. He then brings his foot up and plants it on the underside of my chin, forcing me to look skyward and back a step to prevent myself from falling on my ass. He doesn’t stop there, using his leftover momentum from the kick he does a backwards hand spring to snag a kunai off the ground for himself.

“Dude what’s with the acrobatics? You’re all over the damn place! But yeah total cluster fuck. Bumped into Kakuzu of all people at a bounty station.” I start to hurl all of the kunai on the ground at him in a machine gun inspired fashion. Just because I couldn’t keep the Metal Tornado going doesn’t mean the kunai are gone forever.