Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale Of Two Rivals ❯ A Part Three ( Chapter 3 )
[ P - Pre-Teen ]
By: Shariku Onikage 
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Fantasy / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 03.06.2005 | Updated On: 03.06.2005 | Pages: 11 | Words: 17.2K | Visits: 167 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Fantasy / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 03.06.2005 | Updated On: 03.06.2005 | Pages: 11 | Words: 17.2K | Visits: 167 | Status: Completed
Chapter Three: Infiltration: Where training and tests begin, and even old warhorses find they can be surprised by newborn ponies.
As she stood in the middle of the empty room, with only the cobwebs and dust to keep her company, Sayuki lifted her arms from her sides and brought them together. Calming her breath, her hands blurred before her before stopping dead, finishing in the seal of the rat.
“Bushin no jutsu!” She called out, waiting as she felt the many clones of herself appear around the mansion. After all, what was a heavily guarded fortress if not without guards? She knew it would be unfair to make the genin contend with too much, so she created only fifteen of the chakra filled sentries, excluding herself, This, she decided, would be reasonable against the low level genin, given the number of floors that there were. There were also all the traps to take into consideration, it was more than enough.
It would just be a case now of waiting. In her mind, she tried to imagine How the situation would appear, if she were an actual army general. It was harder than she anticipated, as she tended to look at view this experience from the other side of the mission, being an infiltrator rather than a guard. She would just have to look at it logically. More than likely, the commanding officer of the fortress would just be relaxing in some manner at this moment, not aware that anything was going to happen, but prepared for it nonetheless. To the general's eyes, it would just be another night, waiting for orders from the lord. In that sense, it would just be routine for her. Normally, she would mould some chakra as a warming down exercise and go to sleep for the night, in the same way an officer would leave patrolling for the grunts.
That was too boring though. She was half tempted just to run up to them now, screaming her head off about how she had found them and maybe kick the black haired one a few times. She held the thought, it would be wrong to cheat like that. In such circumstances, she wouldn't know that anyone was coming, even though she did, and she should act like someone that wasn't prepared for an attack, even though she was.
In the end, she guessed it was too hard to fully role-play the scenario she had planned. Both teams knew that each was there, and any motion would be instantly noticed and recognized as coming from the other team. That was expected on their side, infiltrators would expect guards, but guards wouldn't be expecting any infiltrators. The main problem she could think of, was that it would be impossible for the kids to use henge or henso style techniques, since to change form or employ disguises would be seen through instantly, since she would know straight away that they were not one of her clones. They would have to solely rely on sneaking around and hiding whenever one of her `guards' got too close to them. Even then, since they weren't as skilled as she was, she was more likely to sense them. She would have to give them a handicap, dull her own senses and hope they were somewhat skilled.
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.
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“Oh come on,” Kiba complained, his coat becoming heavy with water, as he floated in the ocean. “We're making some progress, aren't we?”
He was answered with a quiet squeal from Hinata's direction, as the timid teenager fell through the surface of the water yet again before popping up yet again and exhaling in surprise yet again. Danjuro was getting annoyed to say the least. He wished he had a campfire and a bucket of cooking oil so he could cook the three of them and be done with this. As Shino plunged five feet down, he mumbled incoherently to himself, something about seven hours.
“Some progress, yes.” Danjuro said, with a hint of irritation. “You've gotten to the bit where you can imagine yourselves as the graceful flat stone, reading to skim masterfully across the water's edge and then fall into the water like three year olds being drowned by their parents. Now if you can just master turning your vertical momentum into horizontal, then we might get back to my country before the exchange program is over.”
Kiba felt Akamaru shake himself dry all over the boy, he realized just how dark it was getting. The moon was now beautifully pitched over the sea, lighting the modest ocean with reflected radiance, the circle actually providing them with a constant direction to follow in order to get back to the Water country. At that moment in time, the four ninja were in or around a small wooden boat. Making it and getting out to sea had been quite easy and the survival-specialist in training was beginning to wonder if they should have just kept rowing.
“The skim stone technique is dead simple, dammit.” Danjuro now shouted as he watched the girl brace herself for another shot at it. “It's just chakra control and a basic abuse of scientific physics. Let me explain it to you all again, just so you've got it.”
Hinata stopped and sat down to listen, more than relieved at getting a chance to rest after an hour of this exercise. Shino pulled himself back into the boat as well. The calm and collected genin hadn't been eager to go into the water, almost as if he had a water phobia. He must have waited about ten minutes before allowing himself to fall in. He sucked at the technique, Danjuro had noticed. He was the worst of the three. It was like he was concentrating on something else.
“Right, first I assumed you would have practiced the Leaf Village's tree climbing exercise. All genin is all villages learn this technique eventually, but since you haven't I now have another reason to cook you while you sleep. You've basically got to concentrate your chakra in your feet. You should all know how to do this, so I won't bother with the details. Then, the rest is this.” He stopped talking and grabbed a flat stone from a pile he had brought with him onto the boat. Standing up casually, he held it above his head and swung it from the side, causing the rock to start bouncing over the top of the ocean. The kids watched it bounce, staying as low to the liquid's surface as possible, before it slowly disappeared out of sight, to everyone except Hinata, before turning back to their instructor.
“You just have to do what that rock did… skim,” he explained. “Toss yourselves off the boat and use the chakra surrounding your feet to skim across the water. When you're feeling you're running out of steam, just push the chakra slightly to give yourself a boost, not too much though, or you'll start hitting the water harder and lose control. We all got that?” He shouted the last bit like a commanding officer, the troops replied accordingly.
“Urgh, swimming sounds like a better option,” Kiba complained, standing himself up again.
“Impossible. There is no island in sight,” Shino stated. “We could not take the risk of not finding any land.”
“But if we master this technique…” Hinata started.
“Correct. We will provide ourselves a faster, more effective way back to the Water Country. Once we are used to the basics, there should be no foreseeable problems.”
“So we just have to get the knack, ey?” Kiba mused loudly. Thoughts popping into his head, he turned to the jounin who was laying back. “Oi, do all students really have to learn this technique in your country?”
“It's not that weird, is it?” Danjuro asked mildly, opening one eye to look at the boy as they spoke. “Don't you have to learn the tree hopping technique in your village before you can graduate. In my country we don't have to bother learning it until after graduation”
“I guess when you put it like that…” Kiba stopped talking to think. He hadn't thought of it that way before. He had learned the ability to bounce from tree to tree with relative ease when he was five. It was so simple a trick that even Akamaru soon caught on to, simply doing it by imitating his partner. This was the Water Country's alternative then, was it? He stood up tall on the boat, making sure not to rock it.
“I think I got it, guys. Just stand back and watch.” The other genin turned in mild surprise at their partner's claim, while the boy just grinned and concentrated. Logically speaking, the tree hopping technique was just skimming along the surface of a tree, so all he really had to do was the same thing. This time though, it would be a flatter surface, rather than the rounded branches of the trees. “Here goes,” he shouted, and threw himself towards the ocean, placing his feet carefully onto the water's façade, before thursting himself forward, ready to skim.
Needless to say, he fell through the solid illusion of the dark ocean and plunged eight feet before he even started to bring himself back up. Danjuro just burst into laughter.
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Had long had it been now?
Half an hour, an hour, two? She laughed groggily to herself , as she became tired. In truth she already knew that, since the exercise began, precisely thirty-four minutes had gone past. Regardless, it felt that an eternity had passed, like a chewed up tape had played out its last five minutes and stretched them to four hours.
She got out of the chair she was sitting on, to prevent herself from dropping off completely. The last thing she wanted to do now was fall asleep; the exercise would be ruined, all her clones would disappear and the group could just walk up to the scroll and walk out with it.
Where were they anyway? They were doing an amazingly good job of remaining undetected. So far, none of her guards had identified any intruders. She briefly wondered if she had maybe dimmed the clones' senses a bit too much. She had given all but one of them the senses of a normal human, in an attempt to make the exercise more realistic. She had the last one remain as a total copy of herself in every way, to add a bit of spice to the exercise. The genin would have no clue as to which one it was. Indeed, they wouldn't even be looking for one. In a real situation, they would have to acknowledge the different awareness levels of all the guards and not just get into a set pattern.
She became tempted to cheat again and just scan for them immediately. She knew she could find them straight away, but it would also ruin the exercise. She needed to be as ignorant to them as they were to her. They were just genin after all. They should have little to no special abilities yet and if she cheated, even if it were just to check on their progress, then she knew it would be impossible for her not to act on it, even to the point where the guards may subconsciously drift towards where they were hiding.
She turned around, surprising even herself. It took her a full second to realize that her body had picked up the sound of a piece of grit getting kicked and a few milliseconds longer to notice that it had only happened 10.5 meters away; she had been too relaxed. The elite ninja let a grin appear on her face and jumped up to the ceiling, her soles sticking silently. She was nearer than any of her clones. She decided to check it out for herself.
The hallway was as barren as it had been about five months ago, when it had last been used for an exercise of a similar manner. The lumber of the floors was slowly rotting and every single nail in the place was rusted. In a few months time the workers would have to come and tear it down. The atmosphere was very isolating, the lonely corridors echoed with memories of past splendor and threatened to crush any trespassers by the ambiance alone. That didn't matter to Sayuki, the only thing that mattered to her then were the few pieces of wood about three meters away from her. For some reason the timber here had grown about half a meter longer than all the other planks on that floor. She walked forward another two meters, before bringing a knife to a neck that was hidden in front of her.
“Come on out!” she barked. “The exercise is over.” She could hear two feet step back and a gasp of surprise as a boy of around fourteen years of age came into focus before her. He had black hair tied up in a ponytail and a bright blue bomber jacket. On his face was a small bandage, covering up a slightly larger knife wound.
“H-How did you know I was there?” he gasped fearfully, scared at getting caught. Sayuki glared at him, not expecting the presence of the fifth ninja.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked simply. She recognized him vaguely. Judging by the headband, he was from the village, a genin too and, judging by his illusion, just out of the academy.
“Hiretani Takashi.” He blurted out, eyeing the knife that was promising to take him on a journey. “I was scouting the place out on request.”
“On request?” she said confusingly. “On request of whom?” I checked that nobody else was going to be using this place.” The boy's eyes widened at this, as the small wooden blade pressed against his adam's apple, forcing him to step back to avoid being cut He cursed himself for believing that no one would keep a check on the place. “Who sent you?” she asked again, losing patience, this was just the lax in security that the others needed to break past her.
“Hiretani Kousuke. Look, I'm sorry Sayuki-ojousan. We were just…”
“Your sister?” That name she did recognize. Also a genin, the girl had a reputation for holding far too many parties. With that, the answer became clear. She picked him up and lifted him above her, then threw him to the floor. “Get out of here.”
“Ye…yes ojousan,” he responded quickly, turning tail and getting as far away from the kunai as possible.
“And if I catch you holding drug parties at this sacred place, I'll wipe out your entire clan, boy!” she sighed to herself, before clinging back to the ceiling, intending to return to the scroll room. On getting there, she checked the scroll to see if it had been touched. The small lock of red hair she had left there remained None of them had red hair, so she could assume it was safe. She then scanned the room for an ambush, but nothing was revealed. She was almost …disappointed.
She still didn't know where they were, and this was getting boring. She knew they could have at least chosen to do something and, unless they were really good at infiltration, which she doubted, they had so far done nothing worth detecting.
Were they waiting for her to fall asleep or something?
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The winds blew strong. Nothing could be seen. The hurricane blocked the senses of even the most acute mind. It was exactly how Sayuki had planned it. As much as she hated to admit it, the last fight with `frying pan moron of the Shinobi katana' had been tough and with no real victor. As a result she had planned strategies against him in her spare time. She had anticipated his intention tothrowthe giant pan like a kunai, although not it returning to him, as well as the need to start collecting a load of debris for her newest attack.
She had pegged him for asa short-range fighter when it came down to it, relying on Taijutsu and weapons rather than sneaking and illusion techniques. She hadfigured thathe wouldn't start using any Suiton until it was necessary, especially since there wasa lack of water in the surrounding area.
Now he was trapped, the `formless prison' spinning furiously around him, trapping the jounin in its centre. By now, he had probably figured that any attempt to traverse through the gales would result in being ripped apart by the debris that had been pulled up. With the rocks being kept inside the hurricane by the girl's chakra, escape from the side was currently impossible.
“Ouch!” Danjuro whined, as he quickly pulled his hand away from the sandstorm surrounding him. Four cuts and a small bruise appeared instantly, and promised that more was to come. He sighed in frustration, glaring around. He was guessing that getting out through the side was going to be impossible. If he moved his feet in the slightest, his knees would get sawn off, his head soon after He would need to try something else.
There was, simply put, no way to move without causing himself near fatal damage, which prevented the obvious answer of digging a tunnel to freedom out of the formless prison, since he wouldn't even be able to crouch down, without the risk of having his kneecaps why kneecaps? You don't dig with your knees. When you first said digging a tunnel, I thought you meant a tunnel under the hurricane. ripped off. A chakra jump might be possible, using his internal energy to rocket into the air, hopefully being able to reach the top and come back out again on the other side.
“No…she would have seen through that idea. Probably waiting to attack if I do come out. I'll be a sitting duck. Plus, if I don't get enough bounce, I probably won't land back here or outside.” His voice was difficult to hear, even for him, as the summoned winds raged around him, absorbing any and all vibrations.
He had to hand it to the girl. It was a pretty nifty technique. It was the ultimate prison. A wall that is not a wall, both unbreakable and impassable. A door that is not a door, empty space in front of him, yet certain doom if he tries to enter it. No view of the outside world, no view of escape, no view ofthosewatching you, no view of the outside full stop. It was near perfect, the only thing he could think of off-handwas that it was all too short term, since the girl had to have tremendous concentration to maintain the elemental balance for the technique.
That, and of course, that she had no view of the inside either.
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She woke with a stifled yawn, shifting herself slightly as she did so. The girl immediately felt herself being held down, something was sitting on top of her. Her assailant seemed chubby and green all over. Her reaction was as fast as it was expected.
“Chouji!” Ino shouted, the genin struggling pointlessly. “Get off me.”
“Quiet, Ino!” A voice came to the left of her, silencing her. “Did you forget what we were doing?” The calm forced itself over her as she took stock of the situation. She looked up to see her two teammates; Shikamaru was keeping an eye through the bushes, Chouji was eating. “Okay, nothing's happened. Did you get anything good, woman?”
The girl didn't answer, but simply grabbed the pencil lying on the floor and began to draw, reciting everything from memory as quickly as she could. Despite not being as smart as Dekorine-chan, Ino knew the ninja technique for blind memorization, used for obtaining the secret plans of the enemy without actually directly remembering anything. It enabled her to relay everything instinctively in a trance. Within a few minutes, Ino had everything she had seen about the mansion down on paper.
They had been lucky really, but the body of the boy who had been unlucky enough to innocently walk past them had been extremely cooperative. A quick interrogation, using both beauty and knives, revealed as much personal information as was needed and the boy had been possessed before he could comprehend what was going on. Shikamaru stopped looking to the mansion to see what the girl had written as she pulled herself out of the trance. The three genin now scanned the information in front of them, showing maps, guards and traps, as well as the assumed location of the real jounin.
“She's using clones for guards. Fifteen of them,” Ino began to explain, pointing to the various little dots that spread out across the map. “They don't appear to be armed, but it's impossible to tell without getting too close.”
“You did do it as I told you right?” Shikamaru asked cautiously. The girl just smiled as she nodded her head.
“Yup. I snuck in and took stock of the traps, then, on the top floor, I let myself get caught. As you predicted, she put me in a position that I could run out of, feigning fear. As I did, I took the longest route possible so I could take stock of the guards.” She hid it well with a smile, but the threats of the jounin had made her want to run anyway. She hoped she would never fight this Cloud ninja.
“Good, that should do it. She'll probably change the guard pattern because of the event,” Shikamaru mused, “but otherwise, she'll probably be getting annoyed and bored at the fact we aren't doing anything.”
“So let's just sneak in and start knocking out guards,” Chouji stated, getting a little bored himself.
“Mo-ron.” Looks like you just spelled it wrong. Try adding a dash or something. Shikamaru chimed. “We can't approach a single guard the whole time we're in there, whether we knock them out or not.”
“What? Why?” Ino asked. “…how?”
“Weren't you listening earlier?” he asked rhetorically. “In an infiltration situation, if the commander of the defending forces has reason to believe there have been any intruders then he has reason to believe that they might have spied upon his plans, so he can't risk the information getting away. In a real situation, we would be hunted down and killed. In this situation, we'll fail the exercise. But even in reality, if we got away, the mission would still be a failure.”
“Because they would change their plans if they suspected the enemy might have gotten a look right?”
“Ya. Anyway, let's start.”
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The clone had no mind. Nothing real enough to call a mind anyway. It was nothing more than chakra flowing around a small piece of rock. It would have been content with this position, if it even had the ability to feel content.
It was mindless, a machine made out of spiritualistic energies, set on a predetermined course through life. A computer program with a starting command, a main program and a self-destruction command for the end. It was brought into existence, told what it was supposed to do and then to just disappear without a second thought when it's task was done.
In a way, exactly like the one who had created it.
This clone had been given the task of just standing still and raising the alarm if it detected something of interest. It had been allowed to turn, but never to walk about. It was told its job was reasonably important, since the elevated surface behind it was the main means of mobility around the place under its protection. It didn't feel a need to do its job well, or even do it badly, it simply knew that it would do it.
The program within had noted something earlier, rushing past at high speeds, but it was told to ignore it by the creator. It didn't feel a need to complain when the object it detected went through its field of detection several times and even once stared at it for a short period. It had been told to ignore it. It did its job.
Now the clone was walking forward, slowly and quietly, as naturally as a baby would gurgle. The clone continued to check if anything was within any of its six senses, but nothing new came up. As it continued stalking forwards, it noticed a small creak. Its womanly figure tried to turn its head to observe where the vibrations had originated. It couldn't, but it was not part of its program to find this strange. It did nothing and carried on walking forwards, outside the main door and into the garden.
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The partnership remains bound. Our mind is doing its part to prevent the water entering this body through its pores. We do not have to worry about being drowned. In return, it asks us to push the flow of our food source so that it conjugates around this body's feet. We have done this, yet still we all fall into the liquid blue. We ask our mind to investigate out the best course of options in order to prevent this.
It states that the dog boy has partly figured out the nature of this test. It is similar to when we hop through the trees of the Konohagakure. However, to hop on wood and hop on water are clearly different. The task is to compose a method so that we do not fall through the liquid blue. We must also be fast, as the body may run out of energy before the task is done and our tunnels through the body will be flooded.
A minor problem has occurred. This body has been pushed into the water by the new jounin. The walls of the food source are stable. Therefore the fluids cannot enter. We have no reason to fear. Our mind has assessed that we should not be in the water long enough to sink. Thus, the symbolism of the stone has a possibility of being useful. For the tree hopping exercise, we are usually asked to make the food source jagged, in order to increase grip upon the target.
The threat is over, the body has pulled itself out of the water and is negotiating with the jounin that it not push the body in again while it thinks of a solution. The jounin has responded with mirth
By remaining jagged, the food source can successfully join with any part of the target it needs to latch onto. From this designation, the legs can apply force to remove the feet from the tree and go along to the next target.
This will not be sufficient in this context though. The jagged shape of the food source has nothing solid enough to grip onto. The thrusting of the legs also pushes one into the water. This explains why dog boy failed.
In order to bring a solution to this problem, we must first start by preventing the legs from moving during travel over the liquid blue. This will prevent the food source going underwater and causing the body to sink. The second part will require the reshaping of the food source as it is brought to the feet. The symbolism of the `flat stone' is the explanation to secure safe travel across the water. To keep momentum, more of the food source should be dispersed along the way, every few hops.
Initial momentum is another factor that our mind must consider. It has suggested that our body start with a jump forward, and land on the liquid with one foot first at the angle of least force. It then states we must `skim' onto the second foot. After this, the technique must change and both feet must come together, so that they can `skim' along the top of the surface with no physical effort required. This is efficient, as it allows us to focus solely on the movement of the food source.
It has been stated that we will take a short break, while the mind informs its other partners of what it has discovered. However, it is insisting on waiting until the dog boy has fallen in once more.
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The clone turned suddenly, it heard the voice of a boy somewhere. It stayed alert for a moment, its senses stronger than those of the clones around it. Nothing came for two minutes, and its parameters told the bushin to drop it as a false alarm. It carried on its walking pattern, changing systematically every x number of paces to provide a near unpredictable variety. After four steps, it turned around pointlessly, before turning back to where it was originally facing and moved on. After another fifteen paces, it stopped again before raising its arms and yawning.
“Nice night,” it said to the darkness of the mansion, not expecting an answer, nor having the capacity to receive one. It continued its fruitless journey to the end of the corridor before turning around again.*
As it did, it picked up a loud rumbling noise that shook the second floor of the building. It sounded like something large was rolling down the corridor of the west wing. Its program told it that that area was important and should be guarded carefully, so it went up to full search status and ran out to see what the noise was.
It only took it fifteen seconds to get to where the noise had been detected and it sensed multiple intruders there. About eight of them, all identical. The female clone's instructions told it to go to full alert status after one final check, but the final check told it to stay in search mode, stating that the intruders were non hostile. The search revealed nothing, whatever the noise was didn't class as a full alert. After another minute of checking, the clone was told to return to its original location. It did so without question, as was its nature. It passed the old broken gap where a window once stood and moved back to its primary location before taking six steps forward, and yawning again.
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Sayuki was starting to feel the sweat pour down her face, covering her cheeks and dripping off her chin. How long had it been? She had lost count after around five minutes as exhaustion had begun to overcome her. The intense technique was taking more than she intended it to. Her chakra was nearly gone and her stamina was gasping, the latter being needed to prevent herself being sucked into the tornado in front of her. Her leg muscles were tense, trying their hardest to keep their grip within the ground she was pushing herself into.
She had been stupid, too impatient to try something new to realize that she wasn't ready for this. Even the wind master Kazekage would be having problems with this technique. It was that stupid moron's fault! She had made this technique to face him. He wasn't supposed to be showing up now. Why couldn't he have waited a month? Now she had jumped the gun, and landed in the path of a bullet, caught between moving or catching it.
Now that she had thought about it, every time she had tested this technique, she had focused far too much on picking up the rocks with chakra and discarding them to the winds, but she had taken her time doing it. In this scenario, she couldn't risk getting lax and allowing a gap to develop. As a result, she had been summoning the winds faster, picking the debris up quicker, losing her stamina more rapidly. This was bad enough for the fight alone, but after defeating this guy, she would have to carry on the mission.
Could she risk it, could she risk releasing him, not knowing if he was dead or not?
She also had far too much control over the formless prison, the entire four hundred mile per hour construction was trapped within her chakra field, as well as around half a ton of rock and other assorted artefacts. None of them could escape the field until she allowed it. Unfortunately, she couldn't remove the chakra field either. This much control was too much of a strain, she would have to allow holes to move the field too drastically, and doing so might cause various boulders to ricochet out. It was far too much of a risk and it meant leaving the target of the technique a two-foot diameter to just stand on. If the target was smart, they could just stand there, moving each time the hurricane did . Why was she only thinking of this stuff now? This also meant they could figure out a way around the technique, especially since…
“Bet you didn't see me there, did you?” his voice snapped her out of her thoughts, she had kept her eyes at the top of the hurricane, but her other senses were dulled by the technique itself. She could hear him, but she couldn't place his exact location. Was he right behind her, possibly holding a weapon to her neck? Her eyes tried their best to stretch around without twisting her neck, the control needed for the technique keeping her practically immobile. She had no choice but to see what would happen next.
“Interesting technique you have. You're pretty cool,” he said, gloatingly, as his voice moved around her. “You use your chakra to first increase air pressure and speed, until you can form the gale force 10 hurricane. Then, to make it even more impressive, you use your chakra to contain, preventing it from going out of control. You even go one step further and use your chakra to pick up rocks and throw them into the hurricane.” As he said this, she swore she felt the hair on her neck being tickled, as if something was breathing on it.
“One problem though,” he stated mockingly. “I said the word chakra three times in that sentence. You must be pretty tired.”
“You think…I'm that…stupid,” She blurted out, the simple act of talking revealing her current weakness. “You're just a…damn illusion.” She imagined the owner of the voice leaning back in curiosity at this comment, before she heard a laugh.
“Oh really,” Danjuro continued. “Yes… I guess that would make sense. It is after all, the main weakness of your technique. It may have blinded me but at the same time it blinds you. You couldn't have possibly seen that I had burned a hole through the ground with my chakra.”
“I…also couldn't have not seen it,” she interrupted, practically wheezing by now. “You're…just…a…bluff and I am the Cloud village's best tool. I will not falter.” Her technique isn't doing him any damage. In fact, iIt's doing worse to her than to him. Unless her mission is to stall Danjuro, she should drop the technique right now. Even though she was saying it, she didn't know whether to believe it or not. He could have honestly found a way out that she hadn't thought of. But was it even possible to burn dirt using only chakra? She had never heard of it, but it took a lot of skill to start burning chakra, if she could just look at his feet.
And why wasn't he attacking? He should be capable of doing so, but taunting was his style as well. The whole event was pushing her, should she continue to keep a ninja that may not be there contained, or should she drop her technique, causing chaos, but giving her a chance to defend herself? She would need at least four seconds at her current level to drop it safely, but it would require her concentration. If he were behind her, she wouldn't be able to defend herself. The options flared through her mind, each insisting that she picked it for all the others. She couldn't decide.
“It was fun in the end, my eternal rival.”
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