The burst of wind chakra jars her leg, but not enough to throw her off balance, and my blade slides right off the padding she's got on the lower half of her legs. So that's what those are for.
We break apart and I realize that Samui is gone now, too. She must have picked up on the other genin's trail. Or abandoned me. Hopefully the first one, though.
...
"So, how'd you guys find us?" I ask, waving a hand and blowing another one of my opponent's kicks to the side. "I thought we did pretty good concealing ourselves with that spot." I swing up a forearm to block another blow, holding back a wince. Even with my wind defense, that's going to leave more than a mark. "Your legs are ridiculous, you know that? How many squats can you do all at once?"
"You won't distract me," she snaps, pushing me back another few steps. "I will crush you in the name of the Yondaime Kazekage."
"With your rockin' legs, right?" I ask, flashing her a grin and inwardly cursing. A fanatic with a cause to fight for. I'm going to be so sore after this.
I dance around the forest with her, true to my fighting style's name, trading ineffectual blow after ineffectual blow. Her leg padding and flak jacket are too tough for me to cut through, which she wastes no time abusing, and there's no way in hell that I'm letting any of her kicks touch me. We fall into a sort of rhythm of blocking and attacking and insulting each other's hopes and dreams.
"You're weak," she says when we come together again. "A disgrace to your village."
"I bet you're real fun at parties," I grunt, pushing against her leg and edging my tanto closer.
Then she starts forming hand seals.
I leap back, gritting my teeth and bracing for the impact of whatever her jutsu is. She doesn't disappoint. "Earth Release: Rising Pillars."
The ground around the kunoichi explodes as stone pillars shoot up from the earth, and I only manage to throw a hasty wall of chakra out before one of them slams into me, sending me flying. I bounce off a tree, stars dancing across my eyes, and send a woozy thanks to the heavens for not making those spikes pointy.
I'm halfway to my feet when the trees above erupt into a flurry of motion, a new genin leaping from branch to branch with Samui hot on their heels. The next moment, they're gone.
"Least she found the other one," I mutter, standing up and rubbing at my shoulder, which had taken the brunt of the jutsu. My opponent is weaving through more hand seals, and I tense, but she just falls to her knees and shoves her hands into the ground after the last one. When she pulls them out, they're covered in stone gauntlets.
Perfect.
I jam my tanto back into its sheath. It really isn't the right weapon for this fight. I'm not going to be able to overpower this girl, especially now that she's got a jutsu to power up her punches. Time to dance.
The Suna kunoichi is clearly more inclined to use her legs than her fists. That jutsu of hers makes her punches hit hard, but it doesn't suddenly change her fighting style, and I abuse that for all I'm worth as I dodge kick after kick, daring her to put her jutsu to work. For all her strength she isn't very fast, not compared to Sasuke or Neji or, god forbid, Lee. Add that to my newfound mobility without my sword, and I find myself holding her at bay without too much trouble.
I hate battles of attrition. They're long, frustrating, and take the fun out of fighting. But god damn if I'm not good at them. With a full tank I can outlast practically anyone that isn't named Hatake, and this girl is no Hatake.
"Let's see how long you can keep this up," I taunt, ducking and spinning away from another strike.
Somewhere off to the right, beyond my vision, Samui cries out in pain. My opponent smirks.
Oh, come on.
"So much for attrition." I spin around a punch, leaping back and starting up a loop of chakra in my throat. The kunoichi follows at my heels, forcing me to keep dancing while the loop wobbles dangerously. I break away once again, this time jumping straight up, into the branches above.
I hop from branch to branch, my opponent practically nipping at my feet as we climb. The loop spins faster and faster in my throat, and I resolve to thank Hatake for drilling me in prepping my jutsu while on the move before we came here.
"You can't escape me!" The Suna kunoichi shouts, throwing one hand out and sending the gauntlet flying off of it. I dodge, but the stone construct keeps going and smashes into the next branch I'm aiming for.
I grit my teeth and shove chakra down through my feet, propelling me just high enough to latch onto a higher branch. Up and up we go, closer and closer to the top of the mammoth tree line while my jutsu builds in my throat. Finally I touch upon the highest branch on the tree, crouch, and tear up into the sky.
I turn in midair, seeing my opponent standing where I had just been, waiting for me to come down. I clasp my hands together.
The Great Breakthrough covers the short distance between the two of us before she can react, and she's sent plummeting to the forest floor amidst broken branches and the fury of my technique. I find myself being propelled even higher into the air by the backlash of the jutsu, and for one crystalline moment the forest is made clear to me. Then the moment breaks and I fall.
I manage to break the worst of my descent with a buffer of wind, and land heavily on one of the still intact branches. I crouch, panting and cursing the Great Breakthrough for making me feel like my lungs have been sucked dry. I take a second to regain my breath, and drop down.
I don't even need to get down to ground level to tell that my opponent won't be getting back up anytime soon, if ever. Instead I stop on one of the lower branches get my bearings, and head off in the direction Samui's exclamation had come from.
I find her sprawled on the ground several trees away, writhing on the ground in agony. Her tanto lies next to her, discarded. Her eyes are shut tight, tears streaming down her cheeks, and little sounds of pain drift from between her clenched teeth. Something wrenches in my chest. I drop down from my branch, falling down to my knees beside her and running my hands over arms, legs, ribs.
"Samui, can you hear me?" I ask, struggling to reign in the urgency in my voice. "What happened to you? I can't feel any broken bones. What's wrong?" She just gasps in agony.
The soft sound of sandals on dirt sounds behind me. I spin around, jumping to my feet, and see the other genin.
She stands a hairsbreadth shorter than me, long brown hair flowing down her back in waves, stormy gray eyes regarding me smugly. She wearing a dark blue battle dress that goes down to her mid-thigh, along with black spandex shorts that end just above her knees. A headband with a crescent moon carved into it hangs around her neck.
I scowl, readying myself for another brawl, but she just tosses her head to the side. Her hair billows out, and the air is filled with the sound of… bells? Are those bells in her hair?
The tinkling of the bells fills my ears, enveloping them. The kunoichi smirks, forming the dragon seal. "Idiot."
Samui cries out behind me at the same moment as I feel twin spikes of ice cold pressure enter each of my ears, burrowing into them and spreading through my body. I grunt, staggering back a step, and take hold of the flighty feel of my chakra in my gut and yank on it. It roars through my tenketsu, clashing with the chilly tendrils and driving them back out of my ears.
I shake my head, rubbing at my right ear, and glare at the kunoichi. She looks baffled.
"That hurt."
I explode forward, the wind roaring around me, and rail against the enemy genin. It's painfully clear that she isn't a close combat specialist like her partner, and I don't give her a chance to run away like I did. I buffet her with my chakra, slap kunai and shuriken and weak punches aside, and push her farther and farther back until she's pressed up against a tree.
I grab her by the throat, pinning her to the trunk, and point back at Samui. "What did you do to her?" I growl.
"I put her under a genjutsu," she squeaks, smug superiority gone from her eyes.
"Thanks." I pull her towards me and then slam her head back against the tree. She crumples to the ground, and I jog back over to Samui.
She's laying on the ground, not whimpering or moaning, just on the ground with her eyes closed. I kneel down and hesitantly prod her shoulder, digging in my memory for a lesson on dispelling genjutsu in other people. It has something to do with your own chakra, I know that much, but…
Samui's eyes flutter open, and I sag in relief.
"What happened?" She murmurs, blinking dazedly up at me.
"You got caught in a genjutsu by the chick with the bells in her hair. You were acting like you were on fire or something." I chuckle, but it comes out strained. "Scared the hell out of me."
"I was on fire," she says, pushing herself up into a sitting position. "I didn't even realize it wasn't a ninjutsu when she cast it."
"Yeah, I'm no good with genjutsu either." For different reasons, sure, but the point still stands. "Anyway, we should probably go. Like, now."
She blinks. "Why? Is your opponent still around?"
"Well no, but I think I might have given my position away when I was fighting her," I say, scratching the back of my head. When I had used the Great Breakthrough, there had been one perfect moment when I could see the whole forest. And in that one perfect moment, the whole forest could see me, too. "I don't know if anyone noticed, but I'd rather not find out."
Samui closes her eyes, breathing a slow, measured breath, and nods. "Okay. Let's go."
"Just let me grab their scroll first." I jog back over to the girl with the moon on her headband and pat her down, find her empty, and make my way back to where the Suna kunoichi fell. I rummage around in the various pockets she's sporting until I chance upon a bulge in her flak jacket. I pull out the scroll within.
The kanji for 'Honor' stares up at me.
...
Don't forget to write a review and throw power stones for the story :)
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/CarriePoppins