One Thousand Hands (OC- Senju SI)

Pre-Chapter A/N: Please do check out the first chapter of the novel I'm working on up on patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)- it's completely free to access. 

What can I say except you're welcome? Here we go with the fifth chapter of 2025. Lovely to have you all here, and I hope you enjoy this one. If you do, feel free to head over to patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) and read the following two chapters- I update there on a daily basis so there's always something for you to read. It's also a new year, so this is probably the best time to buy an annual membership on my page. 

That very morning, a team of Chunin under the command of a Jounin were sent out from the Suna camp. The fact that they were making their way back towards their village at pace left little doubt in our minds as to why exactly they had been dispatched and what they sought to achieve. It was just a shame that they had bitten off more than they could chew, and even worse, had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. 

We tracked them for an hour, following as they tried to cover as much ground as possible in the time they had. When they had gone far enough by our judgements, we came out of the shadows, jumping in to block their paths. The Jounin, a woman with long black hair tied in a ponytail and pale skin, stared at us like we were scum beneath her boot. 

"Konoha shinobi. Of course" She spat the word 'Konoha' like the vilest of curses and I blinked at the hostility. 

"That's new" I said, unused to being faced with so much hatred right off the bat with no seeming cause. Her fingers disappeared in her long pockets in a flash and came out with a scroll held in each hand. 

She unfurled the scrolls so quickly that most would struggle to follow, producing two puppets that instantly caught all my attention. Before the smoke from their unsealing had even cleared fully, the one to the right fired several needles like bullets from a Gatling gun, forcing me to spin into a kaiten to prevent any of the needles from finding purchase in my oh so delicate skin. In the end, the rate of fire was massive, but only able to be maintained by the puppet for a few seconds before it clicked closed, and I came out of spin to the sight of Uraume landing a hit right against one Chunin's chest. She didn't send her chakra deep enough to kill, but that gentleman would not be standing up for a while. 

I returned to the puppets, seeing that Uraume had this in hand. The puppet that had sent the senbon flying at me was a scorpion-like puppet. It had two massive pincers and a hard shell around its form that looked to have steel plates in certain areas. The second puppet? Well, I didn't know what to describe that one as. It was just a cylinder with a head and two arms. The words, 'head' and 'arms' were extremely generous for what I was describing, but they were the best equivalents I could find to pass the message. 

With my eyes, I could clearly see the chakra threads that connected each puppet to her fingers. I could probably shunshin there with my wind armour and sever her connection to the puppets with my gentle fist before taking her down, but I wanted to see them in action. Puppets. From an actual puppeteer. Unlike most fans of the series, Chiyo and Sasori were some of my favourite characters in the show. The way they fought was just so cool, and I could not bring myself to miss the opportunity. Besides, she was preparing a neat little surprise with the third puppet she'd hidden in the ground, and it would be mean to not let her show it off. 

The scorpion made it to me first, moving to smash me into the ground with one of its pincers, while the other one stretched out to grab at me when I predictably jumped backwards. Of course, knowing what I was going to do was no use when one couldn't react in time to stop me. I dove in right as both pincers were occupied and tapped the top of the scorpion's head with my gentle fist, sending a lance of chakra deep into the puppet that I saw disrupt her control over the scorpion. It fell to the floor for a second and I saw her eyes open wide in surprise before she panicked and triggered her trap too early. Well, panicked was a strong word. She was a jounin, and jounin did not panic. It was, perhaps, more suitable to say that the shifting circumstances forced her to release her trump card in a manner that was suboptimal. 

The rattlesnake puppet sprung out from the ground beneath me and encircled me in its hard shell, squeezing so tightly that it was virtually impossible to gain any leverage to escape. I admired the puppet, especially the brown scale-like pattern that had been carved into it as its head came around intending to bite off my head off. 

The snake bit off my head and the rest of my muddy body collapsed around it and kept it frozen still, restricting its movement. Substitution complete, I erupted from the ground beneath her, giving her enough time to bring the glorified cylinder around to face me. The snake was for capture and restriction, the scorpion was a short-range specialist most likely, and so that meant that this one would be… 

Right as predicted, the cylinder burst open, sending a massive blast of flames at me. I took a deep breath in to smell the ethanol from the relatively close puppet as I peeked at the internal design before I spat out a massive globe of water that took on the flames with ease before falling upon the puppet and drenching it. I shot around it, deciding that I had seen enough, as I rushed at the woman. 

To my disappointment, it seemed that was the sum total of her tricks, and she was now going to make a suicide play. I avoided using my full speed to make it so that I was just reaching her when she twitched her pinky and the box she had somehow managed to unseal in the first flurry rose to enclose us. I stared at her, unimpressed, as the seals began to release a poisonous gas into the cage. I allowed my muddy body to begin to dissolve so she realised that she had failed to kill me while I attacked her with the last few seconds of existence I had. 

A jounin was supposed to be a well-rounded shinobi, excellent in every field. Maybe by Suna standards, she was worthy of the rank, but that meant little as I left her moaning wreck on the floor before my mud clone jutsu had finished deactivating- meaning she had lasted less than a minute against me in close quarters. 

I considered setting the wooden box on fire and just killing the jounin, but had to stay my hand. Prisoners were worth something in this campaign—we had a Yamanaka, after all. I smashed the box open with a single punch and dispersed the poison with a sealless wind jutsu. Uraume dropped down from the treeline behind me. 

"How were they?" I asked. 

"None gave me any trouble. A particularly tricky auditory genjutsu was the only thing of note, but nothing can hide from these eyes." She said with a shrug, and I nodded in agreement as we moved to pick up the woman I'd knocked unconscious. Picking her up, I silently made the decision to spend some time designing a seal for transporting captured prisoners. In a war like this, one with the potential of acquiring all kinds of valuable targets—both in terms of information they might possess or unique kekkei genkai. Speaking of kekkei genkai, watching my mud clone as it slowly dissolved had given me a unique idea. I knew what earth release looked like, and that hadn't quite been the right shade. 

XXXX 

I watched Uraume leave with the prisoner with a small smile. I'd won the rock, paper, scissors, for deciding who had to return the prisoner to the hideout. I'd used a quick chakra suppression seal along with a weight distribution matrix to make her easier to transport, even as I mentally ruled out a few options for the seal matrix that would serve as the center of my prisoner transport seal. I looked away and turned back to the camp with my byakugan and focused on the command centre. Things were still proceeding as expected over there, and so I took my position and unsealed another one of my Grandfather's journals. 

This one? On the wood release and how he'd figured out the kekkei genkai. Contrary to what most might hav thought, Hashirama wasn't always the wood release guy. When he was younger, he'd been all about basic elemental ninjutsu and just thought he liked trees and trees liked him back. It wasn't until one day he was outnumbered and had been cut off in a forest by some Uchiha shinobi that he asked the trees to move, and they did. That was how he told it, at least. My mud, was different. I'd always seen it as just earth release. 

A flash of my hands formed a shadow clone right in front of me. It was eerie looking at an exact copy of myself. The same armour, the same long hair tied in a ponytail, the same pale skin, and the same sharp white eyes framed with bulging veins that carried more chakra than blood. 

"You know what to do" I said, keeping my attention on him. 

He began to weave the seals, taking care to use the jutsu as slowly as possible. He started with the snake seal, and I watched how his chakra switched to earth release and began to flow towards his limbs. However, it was only the slow progress he was making that allowed me to see something else. Water release chakra joined the earth release nature chakra entirely of its own volition as my clone worked through the seals and slammed his palm on the floor. The surrounding ground turned into mud that we both carefully moulded chakra to remain suspended atop. I could see the chakra of the mud pit and how it seemed as if it wanted nothing more than to grab onto a target and hold on. 

Even in my clone's water walking technique, I could see the unique gray chakra at his feet making the mud keep him atop it. It wasn't even water walking. He was literally making the mud solid right beneath his feet. How the hell had I missed this for so long? I wondered as I pushed my own chakra into the mud and saw how it changed into the gray hue as it travelled across my body. 

Fuck. I have a kekkei genkai. Fuck, my kekkei genkai is mud release. Both revelations seemed to come in sync as I pondered the situation. What could one even do with mud release? I asked myself. 

X- 

It turned out the answer was a lot. One would be forgiven for assuming that it didn't matter that I knew about mud release being a kekkei genkai now since I'd always been using it instinctively, but there was a difference between doing something by instinct and doing it with full cognizance. One of those differences? Control. I could control the mud in ways that I hadn't ever actually considered doing before because I'd thought it to be basic earth release and nothing more. I flashed back to the fight against the Raikage when I had essentially commanded the mud to bury him without using any handseals or even anything that resembled a jutsu. Just like Hashirama with the trees, I'd asked the mud to help, and it had done so. 

I turned the ground around me into mud and with a twist of my fingers, commanded several clones of me to rise from the mud. Looking at them with my eyes, I could see how they differed from the standard shadow clones. For one, they didn't split my chakra in half—in fact they were far from that. It only took a silver of chakra to grant consciousness to the mud. For another, I could tell that they would prove much harder to dispel than shadow clones. You'd need an actual fatal blow to take one down. And better than water clones, they weren't limited to just 10% of my power- it was closer to 70, if I had to make an estimate. 

With that jutsu done, I attempted the next one. One of my clones stepped forward, and I watched him focus his chakra until his left arm had transformed back into mud. As a mud limb, it shifted into a mace, and then a Hammer, and then a sword. I nodded at that before the clone fell apart back into mud, and I turned the ground back into the loose earth it had been before I used may jutsu. Even doing as much as I just had so close to an enemy encampment was just shy of reckless. Doing more as I was tempted to would be suicidal. I jumped back atop the tree that I'd been scouting from and activated my meisaigakure no jutsu to return to my camouflaged state. The scouts were still a few minutes off, so I had to spend some time standing still before they landed in the clearing I'd been using. 

They looked around for a few seconds before continuing along on foot. I took a breath out and deactivated the jutsu once I could see that they were far enough. They'd changed the schedule of their patrols, I noted as I sat down on the branch and took out my own journal. A seal for transporting prisoners was the project I would be targeting today. Definitely something for their chakra, to prevent them breaking out from within or from their chakra wearing against the storage seal would be the first. Something for storage as well- a standard corpse matrix should be a good basis. Stasis? I'd seen something like that in the scrolls the Uzumaki used to transport their food. I began linking more and more seals, fingers moving of their own accord, until I was practically buried in different matrices as I unsealed note after note as I tried to piece things together. 

XXXXX- SHINOBI NO KAMI- THREE WEEKS INTO THE SECOND GREAT SHINOBI WAR 

He took a deep breath and allowed his fire natured chakra to warm his body. He was starting to feel old already. Another war, and this one was being spent behind a desk instead of under a tent, waiting for the enemy so he could kill them with his own hands. No, instead, he was relegated to this role of sending his shinobi out to risk their lives instead of him. He knew his advisers were right- Konoha could not survive the morale blow of losing another Kage so soon. His life was worth more than he was right now, he was a symbol of Konoha's strength, and it was his duty as Hokage to make sure none dared to challenge that strength. 

"You called for me, Sensei?" He turned away from the report he was reading and towards his student. Tsunade might not have been his favorite, not taking to ninjutsu the way he did or even the way her teammates had, but they shared a special body. Tobirama-sensei had been her Granduncle and the grief over his loss was a pain they both shared, which was why he was going out of his way to give her news of one of her last few remaining clan members. 

"Your Cousin's report has come through. He says his unit is confident that they can handle the situation with Suna and that reinforcements are not a priority at the moment," She furrowed her eyebrows, a frown building on her face. 

"What does he mean? I thought you sent 12 of them to delay the Suna invasion, not to fight them. He can't think that he and his classmates can take on thousands of shinobi on their lonesome" She said. 

"I fear that is precisely what he is thinking. On your word, I'll give the orders and the platoon that is being sent out to Rain will reroute to reinforce him at Kusa". 

"That's my platoon" She said with shock on her face. 

"Yes. While Jiraiya and Orochimaru will miss your presence on the battlefield, they can do without you for the time being" He said, even as he hated the thought of splitting his team, he had to recognise that this was Tsunade's family. She and young Shori might not even know it, but they considered each other more as siblings than cousins in plenty of ways. 

"No, no. I'll go to Ame. If Shori says he's fine, then he's fine. He's a liar and a little shit, but I doubt he'd fuck up something this major" She said, and he nodded. 

His advisers did not consider Shorirama Senju as a reliable leader or even a shinobi, but there was a reason Hiruzen had chosen him. He'd watched the boy train with his students. He was a prodigy with even more potential than Orochimaru, and he hated losing even more than Hiruzen's favourite. Furthermore, he'd fight until his last breath to keep Suna at bay simply because to do otherwise was to court defeat. Of course, that situation was far from ideal, and that was why he'd sent him out with his graduating class by his side. So many clan heirs had been a mess to draft into what seemed a suicide mission to most, but the fact that the children themselves had been in favour of supporting their classmate had been enough to twist their parents hands into going along with it. He didn't pick them to assert his position as Kage as some might have theorized. He did it because he knew that any other set of Shinobi placed under Shorirama Senju's command would be dead men working. His personal observations and the psyche evaluations were agreed on that. 

He turned to his next report. The situation in the Land of Frost was developing quickly. So quickly in fact that Sakumo had already engaged the Two Tails Jinchuriki on two separate locations. Danzo's spy network was also progressing nicely, he noted on the next report. The proposal was a good one, recruiting orphaned civilians from a young age to turn them into elite spies. It wouldn't produce results in time to be useful for this war so they would have to rely on their existing intelligence apparatus, but he was confident that by the time the next war came around, they would be in possession of an intelligence advantage few would be able to comprehend. 

A/N; Shori finally starts getting on to the idea. I didn't mean to make the mud release discovery take this long, but that was just the way things flowed. We get the Hiruzen POV at the end to give a bit of an idea of how the rest of the war is going for those involved. Please, please, and please, check out the first chapter of my original novel up on patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)- completely free to access, so have fun. As always, the following two chapters are up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga). If you just want to read complete chapters and not my work in real-time, then feel free to purchase this story as a collection on my patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) page so you get to read each chapter after I finish it and not neecessarily the daily updates available with a regular patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) membership- nice way to support this story and me while you're at it. Enjoy!