For a moment there Shimo just stood there, stood there watching and sizing his opponent up. She was a relatively short and not by any means a muscularly built lady, she had well shortened hair so trying to exploit that wouldn't have been a viable option. She used senbon, that much was for sure which meant she knew the anatomy of the body and had a pretty good aim. Wherever she planned to hit the genin, she'd hit him if given the chance, she wore a long black dress, an outfit very unlike the people living in the area. This would be an exchange of decisions, if Shimo lost the battle would've been over, if he won he'd be able to fight her for a bit longer – options weren't too much in his favor.
There it was, woman's arm twitched, her exposed shoulder muscles tensed up telegraphing her next attack. Shimo used a short blade – as a close range shinobi he must've had a certain degree of perception and ability to properly anticipate his opponent's moves and respond with optimal response from himself. The boy dashed back weaving handseals using his hands, his handseals were nowhere near the speed that Mana had, a strange thing having his amazing bloodline ability in mind… One would think he'd be a bit faster at that but with little luck the seals might just come out fast enough.
"Ice Plate Jutsu!" Shimo yelled out, he would've preferred to have some sort of water source to use in conjunction but unfortunately he had to settle for freezing air vapor for his techniques for now, at least until he gets smart enough to carry some water around or use a water technique to set his battles up. His female opponent used senbon, she tossed them forward with a straightforward attack but her tools bounced off of Shimo's defensive plates of ice – the two plates of ice that the boy created weren't large, but the size of a buckler but they were enough to deflect the senbon aimed at his gut. "She's aiming to incapacitate?" Shimo thought as he heard the needles clinging down onto the floor.
"An impressive display" the woman complimented, "An Ice Release technique, huh? You're skilled enough to freeze the water particles in air too but it doesn't seem too strong. Just how strong is it? As strong as glass?" the woman taunted Shimo. The genin was alarmed at how much she knew of his techniques, she either was a good warrior who had fought Yuki clansmen in the past or she knew about Water Release and its variations which meant she was a ninja and didn't just use tools. "She knew where she was targeting but she didn't want to kill me because if she did she'd have aimed elsewhere – senbon in the gut would've made it excruciatingly painful to move so I'd be down but not out… What is her goal here? Who even is this woman?" Shimo wondered as his opponent reached for her senbon, now that she knew the strength of his Ice Release she'd not play around. A ninja of her level would simply attack strong enough to both break his ice and take the opponent down.
The woman breathed in, the boy kept on guard but he knew that a ninjutsu technique was coming, so she was actually a ninja! The kunoichi of the Junk District quickly went through couple of handseals and spat a bunch of water out, Shimo leapt sideways to avoid it – that was good, she just made a source of water for him to work with! The woman breathed in again, proceeding to spit another mass of water right at Shimo, the boy slapped his hands together forming a handseal as the water she spat out before formed a flat and strong ice wall. This one was strong enough to withstand ninjutsu up to certain rank, Shimo kept it relatively small though – just large enough to block the assault with no damage to it but also left some space up and to the sides for him to pass.
He was surprised to be greeted not by shouts of frustration but… Laughter! The water that slammed into his ice wall didn't fall to the ground, it splashed up making bunch of smaller masses of water that stayed in the air shortly, they then transformed into needles, needles as large as senbon. "Water Senbon Technique!" Shimo heard the woman yell as the water needles bombarded the genin's body inflicting multiple cuts, moving in through the several spaces he had left for his own attack. The pain was unlike anything that the young shinobi has ever experienced, the pain of small pieces of water drilling through his flesh up to bone and then dissolving as it left marks on his bones in so many places at once – it felt like being shredded to bits!
The boy's injured body was drawn down to the ground, Shimo's hand shot forward to keep his body from slamming the floor like a sack of potatoes. "Are you… The Kirigakure ninja?" Shimo uttered some words, trying desperately to make the woman talk, just give him some time to get his pathetic ass off the ground and back into fighting shape. Shimo knew he could take this, all of what this woman had and more. All he needed was just a short break, just catch his breath and keep swinging back. She was clearly more skilled at ninjutsu, there was no use fighting her that way – anyone with the ability to shape elemental chakra into such complex shapes and at such numbers should've been beyond even Chuunin level.
Shimo's wall melted into a large puddle of water, the woman must've hit his chakra point which forced him to release any active techniques like this ice wall. The woman looked at the side, she was concerned about something, what could've been so important to her?! Never mind her concerns, Shimo got his chance to attack, gathering what he still had of his strength the boy leapt forward charging at the woman using all of his speed, that was what he trained all this time – his speed. That was what Tanshu-sensei told him, he spoke in what sounded like a riddle, he said that Shimo had the lock to his power-up already in his palm and that speed was the key. The genin figured that sensei meant that his body had the speed needed to impress sensei but he still needed to train it to achieve that speed so he spent those days running and pushing his body and ability to spend a great amount of force into quick leaps. Just focusing his chakra into the right muscles, making it work for him to transcend what even peak human condition could offer, all ninja were at peak human condition, it took a very special one to break that wall!
Shimo slipped and fell on the ground, that was impossible, his feet weren't even touching the ground! As the boy looked at what happened he saw water wrapping around his leg as if it was some kind of a whip or something. "Enough of this, kid, I'm not your enemy." The woman spoke, she was still looking at some point at the wall, her full attention was still somewhere else and she managed to counter Shimo's last resort attack? Just how strong was this woman? Finally her cold gaze returned to the genin laying on the ground, breathing heavily as the hard fall reminded him of all of his injuries from before. He quickly started forcing his body to lift off of the wet floor – she completely embarrassed him but he won't give this woman the satisfaction, he won't follow his own advice, he won't run! This woman must've had her eyes set on Mana's or Sugemi's location, she must've been a sensor and wanted to go. Shimo will keep her here, she won't get to where she wants to nor will she get the pleasure of dominating him, he will fight her as an equal to the end!
"I said enough, I'm a jounin of Konohagakure…" she nonchalantly added as the woman's eyes returned to wherever they were before. "W-What?" Shimo grunted out, still affected by the pain. How could this make any sense? Why would she be fighting him in that case, did she know about the Kirigakure deal? What was going on? "Me and my partner were both undercover here, we were on a mission to find out just what and how much of it was this district pulling in terms of criminal activities. Today was when we decided to blow our cover and take it all down – we couldn't allow this Kirigakure deal to go as planned but the man was close, I didn't want to tip him off and so me and my partner volunteered to keep you guys occupied and act like we're killing you when we got the tip from Hanada that you'd be coming. Going to that guy for help was a REALLY bad idea…"
Finally all of this started to make a little bit more sense to the genin. So this woman and whoever she was working with were already on Ooguchi's track and working on taking him down. Team Oak was given the low ranking mission of busting one crime, to just win a battle while this squad was working with winning the whole war! They really must've made all of this difficult for the two by getting involved… Shimo looked away, he was really ashamed of himself and that he got involved, also disappointed that he was so weak and didn't give this woman a good fight at the very least, he wasn't an asset in this mission of these two high ranking ninja at all, just a kid that was in the way… "I'm… Sorry…" he uttered, the woman tsked with her tongue.
"It's alright, I couldn't tip off the Kiri guy so that he doesn't get away, I had to play tough. He was in this house but when the end of the fight was clear he left, I can sense him moving to Ooguchi's place. He was a weird guy, wanted to make the deal only with the fat guy himself. I can sense that there's a friend of yours there, a small chakra signature, larger than yours." Shimo nodded, "Mana-chan…" he uttered, "We've got to go, if this Kirigakure ninja gets there Mana-chan will be in danger!" The woman scratched her head, "Yeah, the chakra of that Kirigakure guy is crazy, he'd probably give both me and my partner trouble, sadly Ooguchi's house isn't our first stop, we need to let my partner know that the rules changed too – without him we won't beat the Kiri ninja if he starts fighting us and he'd kill your other friend fighting him in the meantime. I just hope your friend can stall for time."
Shimo grunted and punched the ground, he was torn as both of his teammates needed help. "How about if I went to help Mana hold the guy off and you went to pick your partner up and then rejoined us. I'm sort of a gentleman, I can't leave Mana-chan in danger again, she always tends to get in trouble and do things by herself, I want to be with her this time!" the woman shrugged "Do what you want, I'm going to pick Dorimi up." she replied without a care in the world and dashed to the side, kicking out a cardboard layer while not losing pace and moving to the eastern side of the district – where both Mana and Sugemi were.
"I'm coming, Mana-chan!" Shimo uttered to himself as he jumped out the same hole and forced his body to move the best he could towards the place where Ooguchi's house was supposed to be.
Sugemi kept throwing punches at the man's general direction, they've been exchanging blows for a while now and he was holding the genin off, even more – he was returning more than he was taking. So far, for entire couple of minutes of non-stop exchanges of blows Sugemi managed to resist the temptation to use any ninjutsu but he had to. This guy already gave him a swollen black eye that will probably look like a second face in the morning, he also must've broken some ribs at least. At the current pace Sugemi might stall the guy but not knock him out. His dream of manga was floating away slowly and this was was all that stood in the way!
"You're pretty impressive, you're a genin right and yet you're giving me trouble at taijutsu. Granted it was never a field I excelled at or trained. I hope you understand that I'm beating you at the game rules of which you set up… That is unfortunate but the difference in strength is apparent!" the man shrugged, his voice, the words he spoke, it all made Sugemi more and more angry. Sugemi crouched up and started yelling loud, he was doing just like sensei showed him, letting his anger flow through his body while his motivation of manga was threatened, it was now that Sugemi was at his angriest and at his strongest, just like sensei said, however, anger made him slower and reckless so his strength was worth nothing!
"First Gate: Gate of Opening… OPEN!" Sugemi yelled as chakra burst out of his body for a brief moment. This was not something he did in battle, only something he trained with. So far Sugemi had never used this in combat but when he was training this technique let him train at least five times more efficiently which meant five times more gain for same amount of training. Still, the technique was not something he could allow to last, it also wore down his own body and his body wasn't tough enough to stand even one gate for too long. "Eight Gates?!" his opponent exclaimed surprised as Sugemi used all of his briefly unlocked speed and the strength of his rage and desire to destroy this man, he slapped his hands together to form a handseal and yelled out in pain and rage, "Shadow Tendril Barrage!" as tendrils of chakra shot out of multiple pockets of his own body – Sugemi's own Nara technique tied around his body, striking his opponent repeatedly from any source of shadow in his body.
The technique connected, the surprise of seeing the Eight Gates being used by his opponent seemed to open up the man's guard and allow Sugemi to catch him unprepared, the fists pummeled his opponent and the Nara gave him no chance to recover, he went all out allowing his chakra to continuously burst prolonging both his One Gate and his Shadow Tendril variant. It was such an exhausting technique that Sugemi needed mastery over his own body to perform it and not collapse, only while using the First Gate could the boy manage to pull Shadow Tendril Barrage off even if theoretically it was just multiple quick succession strikes of a Shadow Tendril technique that he used quite casually.
"No!" Sugemi shouted in his own mind, he could feel pain and exhaustion in his arms, his actual body was crumbling on using so much chakra and the strain of the gates. Sugemi's body was still quite puny, he wasn't used to it being pushed too far so even the First Gate was straining enough to be the boy's limit. No! No more limits! Just one more! "Shadow FIIIIST!" Sugemi yelled as the multiple Shadow Tendrils quickly wrapped around his arm forming a bigger version of his fist. His punch hit the man in the jaw, the boy felt a rush, he felt like he still had something in him and that if he didn't use that last amount of force his opponent will stand up, him standing meant Sugemi's defeat and death, death meant no manga for him, that was unacceptable! The boy roared as he pushed his fist to fling his opponent back using all of his force.
Just as the woman in a black dress settled on a small wall, built entirely out of discarded household things like ovens and washing machines she looked at the home – she still couldn't quite understand what was going on, her partner was in there, right? Why did he make that boy's chakra dip so much? It was like he was getting closer and closer to death but at the same time – Dorimi was struggling as well, his chakra took some dips too meaning he must've used a technique of some sort to defend but… His flow was calmer which meant he was in no danger of…
The entire damn scrap house collapsed as the side wall burst open with her partner flying out through it! The woman even jumped out of surprise, what kind of force can cause something like that? That wasn't the amount of force a genin should be capable of putting out. A boy walked out through the hole just before the whole thing went down, no, he just barely stumbled out – his body was strained, just like his teammate this kid was giving his all, did he even know he was fighting a Jounin? Then again, it didn't seem like Dorimi was doing much more than defending… The man that was flung out by something the genin did stood up, his Earth Armor collapsed! No. That wasn't even it, the man wiped blood coming out of his lip that was open, he spat some to the side – this kid caused Dorimi damage!
The kid fell down, just like that other one that faced the woman, he used all of his remaining force to keep his body at least on his knees with just one arm to keep him from kissing dirt. He was huffing heavily and sweating profusely – he was in no fighting condition but… This kid… He'd go places if he didn't die a youngling. "Hey! Stop playing, let's go, the cover's blown, let's proceed with takedown." the woman yelled from atop a barrier of junk.
"I see…" Dorimi spoke, he then quickly stomped the ground shooting multiple rock pillars that surrounded Sugemi and pressed against his body – an efficient way to keep him from making more trouble. Now that the man could safely use his Earth Release he settled this in just an instant! "You're a fool, stay here so that you don't hurt yourself any more than you already have. You pack a punch though, well done." the man replied as he picked up his bandana off the ground and tossed his broken shades away revealing warm and funny green eyes. "Let's go, Shibari-chan…" the man addressed the woman on the fence, "I assume you will now put on your glasses in that case? Your aim is horrible without them?" he smiled as the woman pulled out a pair from behind and put them on. "Yes, sadly it is, barely can see a thing without them, having to aim using sensory alone is weird, fighting genin like that doesn't bother me but that Kirigakure ninja will be trouble."
The two ninja head out their way, leaving Sugemi struggle and kick around trying to break out of the improvised prison he was left in. The head was the only thing he could use so the Nara kept trying to break the stone with it, however nothing was achieved but drawing his own blood. Sadly using the gates made his body more vulnerable after use too…
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