„Out of my way, bitch, I’m heading for the box…” the one-eyed Uchiha grumped out through his grinding teeth. It was like the man was full of and leaking rage itself. He acted like he was addicted to something and the certain something was located within the walls of the castle ruins.
“I apologize but I am under orders to keep you here while Kusagoro finds the Box and the girl. I am afraid we’ll be taking everything of value from these ruins unless you’re after some other treasure, then again, I am to believe we’d be interested in that as well…” Remashi gently smiled and stood into a Hyuuga fighting stance, stretching her legs out wide to gain more balance, extending one arm diagonally forward as her whole body leaned to the front and extending one arm backwards for a counterbalance point but also setting up a defensive technique just in case.
The leader of the Sunagakure group only growled angrily and moved his messy black hair off of his face, he quickly pulled his curved swords and spun them around playfully in his hands. The man’s body blurred and then disappeared, only to reappear close to the woman aiming with a wild swing from one of his swords. The blades were highly decorated and crafted from a rather peculiar alloy, the steel of the swords had a strange stone-like texture. The swords were also carved up and more of the slashing and dismembering kind, not unlike other blades that the desert people used.
While the man’s speed was nothing short of impressive, Remashi Hyuuga managed to match it, her hands quickly shot two fingers forward for precision strikes and her arms flared up with flames as her lightning fast strikes greet the man’s blades gently tipping them at the edges and pushing them away from her. To someone standing beside the two, even for a highly skilled ninja, it would’ve been tough to track their moves as they performed combinations of blows faster than the blink of an eye.
Remashi’s precise and swift blows pushed every single slash away, the one-eyed Uchiha referred to by his comrades only by the name of “Jiou” delivered dozens of slashes that would’ve left anyone as countless pieces of chopped up flesh within only fractions of a moment but Remashi pushed each and every strike out of her way with a careless and light tap at the edge of the blade from the side, each strike shot out heated flocks of sparks as the woman’s fingers and her entire hand was enveloped in flames and each strike emitted blinding flashes of light combined with playful explosion of fist sized sparks.
Neither of the two moved to the side, front or backwards, neither of them gave way. Then unexpectedly Jiou decided to end this senseless standstill struggle by performing a deceitfully faster than his previous onslaught spinning attack, the tricky Uchiha purposefully held some speed back so that he could unleash it when it counted and when his opponent felt comfortable. He spun aiming at the woman’s neck, an attack which would’ve left her headless faster than a lightning bolt descended from the sky. This man was a well-trained and remorseless killer, he did not hesitate or consider the worth of killing someone, he only saw an obstacle in his way and decided to act upon it. His single Sharingan eye was racing around following the woman’s every movement, to him his attack was impeccable.
However Remashi was even faster, she spun around as well, at the very same time as the Uchiha did as fiery chakra dyed her spin and emanated a powerful shockwave of chakra, a half-sphere shaped circle of burning inferno formed around Remashi as a blast of fiery chakra similar to the typical Hyuuga defensive rotation technique blasted the blades out of Jiou’s hand but the man kicked his own speed and reaction time to the limit, within immeasurably tiny fractions of a second after the blades even touched the blast of fiery rotation shockwave the man leaped back with a back handspring.
To a neutral spectator, this entire exchange of attacks would’ve happened faster than their brains could have registered, it would have appeared like the two were just standing apart from each other and then they both disappeared before the fiery explosion of whirling chakra appeared out of the blue and then they were both back where they stood when in their time the dueling sides have exchanged most of their blow combinations and already scoped each other out. Well over a couple of hundred strikes came from each side.
“I have seen your every strike, your fighting style is now recorded in my Sharingan and I’d be able to overcome it with a second a clash. Move aside!” Jiou yelled out without a sign of exhaustion or shortness of breath.
“You stroke me as the no-bullshit kind of fighter. Had what you told me been true you wouldn’t have bothered to talk, you’d have merely stricken me down and proceeded forward. You’ve found my Fire Release infused ninjutsu-taijutsu combination problematic, didn’t you?” Remashi replied extending her palm set for a striking condition forward and spreading her legs for balance.
Jiou lowered his head forward, once again his shoulder length hair fell on his face forcing the man to stroke them out of his way. The desert heat was making his missing eye wound hurt and just was all out uncomfortable feel, all this sand from the sandstorm was getting into his eye socket causing an annoying itch. Now there was this woman with her incredibly well thought nin-taijutsu combination.
He was faster than her, he could tell, the problem was that this was the absolute worst opponent he could face under the absolute worst conditions. He was an Uchiha who was the hope of the Sunagakure Uchiha branch. His family pushed him to become the Second Coming of Uchiha supremacy ever since he was a kid. He could create moon-sized fireballs in the sky and crush them onto his opponent, he could create fissures and sinkholes on the earth or even sink entire villages into them. However he couldn’t break loose here “ he needed that castle ruin right behind the woman intact. All he had to use were his swords and his taijutsu.
Remashi smiled slightly, she realized that her opponent realized his fault here, he must’ve seen and analyzed the situation that transpired in an incalculable fraction of a second between them. He was faster because Remashi at one point stopped training her speed, she instead infused her blows with Fire Release chakra causing her blows to burn like hellfire, the problem was that her fire was too slow to follow up on her blows creating an incredibly difficult to bypass barrier around her. Whenever she swung her arms around, faster than lightning itself, she created a following after-trail of flames around her. Such a natural defense created by her all-out offensive style made faster opponents naturally have to adapt to her style and further training her speed would’ve been counterproductive. Even if the man was faster, in close distance the longer he spent around her the more intense her defense was.
“That wasn’t the Hyuuga rotation technique, was it? That was just a wall of flames created by your blows…” Jiou asked in a tone that sounded more like a conformational one than questioning one. His entire tune changed, he realized that the woman may not have matched his speed but with some careful planning she managed to overcome her lacking speed, when compared to him, but also she managed to pin him into a corner by fighting him close to a place he wanted to preserve, a highly volatile place too, one that could’ve collapsed and buried or broken the Box of Ultimate Bliss if something like that happened…
“If it was the Hyuuga rotation variant of my nin-taijutsu, you’d have probably been pretty burnt up, however you were a bit too fast for me to manage that, I had to make do with less…” Remashi admitted.
Jiou’s arm was raised up sideways and started crackling with lightning. The crackling blue lightning intensified until a donut-shaped disc formed around his hand. When the man raised his one-eyed face enough for it to be visible his Sharingan flared up in the cover of the raging sands, two tomoe signs could’ve been evident on the man’s iris, informing that the technique may have been copied from some another ninja this man had encountered throughout his life.
“Lightning Style: Lightning Chakram!” Jiou chanted out throwing the disc forward. Remashi knew that he wouldn’t have attacked her in such a simplistic manner, this technique must’ve been a diversion, the man just saw her move faster than that. Lo and behold, the man’s body blurred and disappeared, racing faster than his lightning projectile, much faster, in fact.
This time Remashi was ready for him, her hands lit up with flames again, something she rarely had to use against weaklings like mercenaries or silly genin children like the one she had to face earlier. The woman switched stances in an instant and started spinning.
“Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven!” the Hyuuga chanted out but her words were uttered so fast that they wouldn’t have ever been registered by a ninja of lesser caliber than hers, let alone a normal civilian. Chakra burst from every chakra point in the woman’s body, similarly to how Kusagoro dispelled his chakra from his except the woman expelled it only from her chakra points and not her body pores. The woman’s rotation created a flaming circle of chakra that blew up and deflected the Lightning Chakram but also, judging from a loud yell of pain she also defended from the attack of the man behind her. The disc of pure lightning proceeded to fly upwards and sliced into and through one of the upper castle towers making it crumble below.
Remashi quickly ceased her rotation and flashed in a fiery blur right behind where Jiou landed kicking him in the back just to send him back to where he stood and further away from the castle. The man moved much faster than lightning, he moved faster even then Remashi and got behind her faster than his lightning cutting projectile did, she pushed him behind her and closer to the castle using her technique which meant he could’ve simply raced to the ruins and left her behind as his speed was greater than hers. Still, even with his greater speed he needed to stop and repurpose his energy into striking her from behind which gave the woman time to respond. His speed didn’t surpass hers by that wide a margin.
The man grunted and picked his body off of the ground, his cloak and desert attire were burnt to a crisp and he only wore smoking burnt up cloak and what little remained of his white desert attire. The man angrily peeled off the armor beneath his attire as it was heating up and starting to melt on his skin, the peeling left nasty burn marks on his chest and his gut.
“How hot is that thing?” the man grumped out, taking his sword fighting stance again by lifting one of his swords above his head for a quick block and placing another in front of him for a more offensive purpose.
“It depends, you weren’t hit by the attack itself, you were hit by the heatwave coming off of it. This is the fastest but also the least hot version I can make, it’s a searing flame hotter than any natural lava could manage. Usually just breathing in close to it burns one’s lungs from inside, it appears you managed to survive, as much as I’d love to cook you up as a stake and eat you up…” Remashi explained fixing her messed up butler uniform and getting her messy long hair back in order, the stress and speed of her movement and the intensity of the flames she created made her tied hair escape its rubbery bonds.
Howling winds gathered up a vortex of rotating sand streams, streams of golden sand which were all too familiar to Jiou, the tornado of sand took the shape of his wife. It was merely a clone that could travel together with her sand, having her abilities in mind with this sandstorm mixed in she must’ve been having a field day. The woman’s clone informed Jiou that she had slipped one of her sand grains within the girl and that she could’ve used encouragement to find the box for them so that they could track her later. After informing her husband of that, the clone dissolved into sand and split all over the area.
“Hmph… I’m afraid you’ll have to give me a moment” Jiou apologized to his opponent and disappeared briefly. He planned on feeding the girl some reverse psychology, maybe encourage her to stay put and try to make her force herself on forward. She looked pretty young, younger than most genin that were allowed to tread to other Countries at least. She must’ve been stupid enough to fall for it, after all, she wasn’t doing this game nearly long enough to recognize this common trick…
It only took brief moments but then Jiou suddenly returned to his opponent with his body simply flashing back to its initial location. “So, you’ve been saying you plan to cook me and eat me? I wouldn’t have taken you for a cannibal, I thought that was something exclusively reserved to some of Kirigakure’s most remote islands. When I arrived I saw you beating that girl up yet you didn’t as much as lick her, didn’t even ask for it, what makes me so edible?”
“Well I actually never managed to really bite anyone, I just always started empathizing with them and feeling bad for them so I left them alone, only now the idea came to me that I can cook people alive…” Remashi scratched her head with a lovely smile almost as if she was discussing family recipes and sharing them with a friend.
“Tsk, forgive me if I sound rude but… A hunter who feels empathy towards his food is not a predator” Jiou rudely shot back at the woman. He felt annoyed by her roadblock, she sounded so stupid and almost ridiculous but she was so incredibly powerful and so lucky that she stood right up to the ruins that Jiou needed preserved…
“You… Take that… Back… Now!” Remashi lost all traces of her cool, her hands burst up in flames and steam started coming out from her chakra points, she was about to use something pretty powerful…
“Hmph, when a man finds himself living his life as a prey, he not only learns to understand the relationship of hunter and prey, he never speaks words he’ll be taking back later. Everything I say I mean fully, everything I do is because I want and need to. You’d never understand the life me and my family has been living these past years but I will go past you and then get that Box and I will use it to destroy that man pursuing us!” Jiou completely lost his own cool too, his face twisted in anger as now this raging fiery woman in front of him embodied that Shadow Man with the eyes of red who was after him and his family, the man who killed his mother the very first night Jiou met him, the man who killed his father just days ago, the man who crushed Jiou’s eye in front of him…
Remashi slapped her hands together in a hand seal and with a loud pop formed three more clones splitting her total chakra into three parts. Each one of the clones started spinning together with her in perfect harmony, all of them were in absolute sync. All three of them spun firing off excessive amounts of chakra from their chakra points, forming the same infernal spherical shield of flames and pure heat but also joining their rotations together into a single colossal and overwhelming attack. Jiou dashed forward, enhancing his blades with lightning chakra he believed he could cut right through this sphere but he was overwhelmed quickly, never expecting the sheer size and the absolutely impossible heat contained within. It may have been five if not ten times hotter than the previous version, maybe even several times his estimation. The overwhelming light blinded his one working eye, the scorching infernal heat made Jiou use out all his reserved chakra for augmentation just so he didn't get incinerated instantly.
The heatwave extended well beyond the castle walls, fire burst through every crevice, every smallest hole made in the structure by the time and pelting sand. However the structure still stood, the fire didn’t blow the structure away, instead it bypassed every obstacle but the shock must’ve still been felt inside, some of it must’ve still gotten in the ruins and did some serious damage. Had Jiou not had enough on his plate to deal with he’d have been seriously concerned with the wellbeing of the ruins he’d have gotten more desperate. If more desperation was even possible in his case.
“Fire Style: Hyuuga Great Revolving Heaven” the four Remashi’s incarnations that remained standing inside that extending sphere of devastation declared with synchronized voices. After the technique ended all the clones disappeared, returning what little of their chakra reservoirs that remained to their creator. The technique greatly exhausted the woman as she was breathing heavily and her body stood in a pose suggesting that she was drawn to collapse on the scorched sand. It wasn’t even sand below her, the floor and the entire sandstorm around the woman got heated until it melted. The ground got shaped into a crystal like structure, almost like the floor was made of glass or crystal, the sand particles in the sky shifted into crystal as well as started raining from the sky. The raging sandstorm turned into an actual crystal rain.
“Y-You bitch… You could’ve blown the castle ruins away!” Jiou’s scorched and burnt up frame roared out into the sky as his clothes got completely decimated and burnt off but the man himself managed to augment his body to avoid disintegration. His body was covered with burns, in some places there were black patches of coal-like texture, elsewhere it appeared like the man was merely singed and dirtied up.
“Hey, hey, you really overdid it, Remashi…” Gokibure’s voice declared standing on a crystal hill as the desert sun created a blinding flashy glow that reflected off of it, the only detail that the battle damaged Jiou or tired Remashi could see was the unconscious young woman in his arms.
“Aisha…” Jiou grunted out to himself. He loved his sister, loved her perhaps even more than it was usual to love a member of one’s own family, after all “ he was an Uchiha and Uchiha were notorious for their ability of great and unconditional love. Love that so often turned into hate. Now he would have to choose “ stay here and save Aisha, take extra time fighting these two jokers or slip into the castle leaving his beloved sister at their mercy… Jiou’s wild laugh echoed through the crystal hills, there weren’t as much as a speck of dust remaining of the shanty town that once was as it was too close to the blast zone.
“You fools, where do you think my wife is now? Do you truly believe she didn’t kill your friend and just slipped past you all into the castle? The fact that she’s not yet here means she’ll find the little magician bitch before all of you and she’ll get the box” the man explained the source of his amusement.
“That’s only if Kusagoro hasn’t found it yet…” Gokibure tried to talk his way out but Jiou’s laughter only spread more powerful and even farther away.
“Then she’ll claim it over your friend’s dead body. My wife may only punch like a woman and she may not be nearly as fast as me but she has her tricky ways of beating any foe” the Uchiha explained as his functioning Sharingan raced wildly across the battlefield analyzing the field and giving him ideas of potential response.
“Except that man chasing you three… Right?” Remashi hit the man’s weak spot remembering his previous ramblings.
Jiou’s face only got serious from a temporary state of amusement. “Well, if HE follows us here “ everyone is dead…”
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