Chapter 240.2: Shadowed Blades
"I would be remiss not to thank Lady Kurosawa for going through the trouble of arranging things so that I would be paired with her village's tournament representative," Shikamaru intoned, staring into the middle distance. (Ino and Chōji had both told him that he should liven up his speech (her exact words had been 'almost as much passion as if you were reading tax forms'), but he just couldn't be bothered.) "I am ever so grateful for the honor." Now at last he looked at Ito, moving his eyes but not his head, as that would be too much work.
A protracted moment of silence later, the crowd began to murmur as they realized Shikamaru had said all he was going to. Ito's face twisted into a mask of disgust as he began to speak.
"Too lazy to even give the audience a good show, Nara?" he spat. "Come on
boy, whatsa matter? Did you not sleep well last night or somethin'? That's fine, I have no problems knocking a stupid kid's lights out. Seriously, where's your sense of showmanship? Where's your
spirit? Where's that
Will of Fire you Leaf monkeys are always hooting about before the
real ninja slit your useless throats? I know you
think you can handle Mist nin because you can whip those incompetent traitors, but I'm here to show you how an actual shinobi fights. Frankly, you're lucky my superiors have required me to let you wake up again."
Shikamaru cocked his head in sudden interest. "Are you saying that if I concede this match I'm allowed to take a nap?"
The audience laughed.
Ito glared. "Listen, you spineless Leaf bastard—"
It was simply too much. Shikamaru turned and slumped towards the edge of the arena, calling over his shoulder. "I'll be waiting down there. Once he's done boasting, please have him join me. Don't worry, I won't do anything until he gets there."
Before the judges could say anything, he stepped off the edge of the cliff and dropped.
The wall was jagged and craggy; he stepped down it with the minimal effort he could, adhering one foot here or one hand there as necessary to manage his speed. (He had done a series of experiments when he was seven to verify the optimal balance between effort expended and unpleasantness of impact. His analysis had been workmanlike at best, but useful.)
Touching down, he stirred himself to move across the floor of the arena at a non-Nara's definition of a reasonable speed so as to be in position before the opponent arrived. The sun was lowering and there was a useful pool of shadow off the west wall, so he chose to pull out one of his storage-seal-equipped disks and unseal his beach chair there. After a moment's thought he rooted in his pockets and pulled out a half-dozen other disks so that he could also unseal a sidetable, a hot chocolate drink (The stresses of the storage seal had thoroughly crushed the ginger root mixed into the chocolate and added a nice piquancy (Which was appealing both because it was better at releasing the juices than beating the root with a hammer, and because it was much less exhausting.)), a napkin-wrapped trivet so that he didn't damage his side table, a blanket for his legs (Ugh, he hated the cold), and a sewn-shut sock filled with heated sand to go behind his neck. He tucked the now-empty disks away, holding the last one out so he would have something to flip between his fingers (Mother insisted that manual dexterity was important and she would yell at him endlessly when he got home if she found he had been slacking on his exercises.) while he waited for Ito. He really needed a better system for organizing his seals (That list-based system that Gōketsu Hazō used was intriguing and sufficiently simple that it would be a good fit for something straightforward (Although, speaking of Gōketsu, what were the OPSEC implications of listing the contents of storage seals? On balance, it was probably less effort just to memorize all of it.) like this) because it was annoying to have to search for things.
It was perhaps all a bit gratuitous, but he had earned the extra comforts; it had been an exhausting day. Ino had insisted on waking him up at the horrifically early hour of eleven and virtually dragging him through the city for yet another shopping expedition (What in the names of the Sage did the girl need with
another set of shoes? And what did 'totally spessy' mean? Apparently skirts, shoes, and bracelets could all be 'spessy' but handbags could not (Or, at least,
those handbags
were not. Must always remember that it could only be said that one dire sheep was black on one side.), so either it was a category or a property of individual objects. Or perhaps just a corruption of the word 'special', since Ino enjoyed causing him headaches by, as she delighted in putting it, 'weirding language'.) before her match, which had gone precisely as expected. A Yamanaka's understanding of psychology would have made the fight trivial even without the new techniques, as Kiba just wasn't deep enough to be resistant to manipulation (Problematic (Although potentially useful, as exploitation would be straightforward once Shikamaru ascended to Clan Head and had to decide whether it would be preferable to gain the combat advantages of absorbing the Inuzuka or to avoid the concomitant exhausting interpersonal issues by continuing to allow them to exist as a separate clan (Ugh, he still needed to write that monograph on the subject that Father had demanded he complete before returning to Leaf (Hmm...if he never returned then he wouldn't have to write it. The Gōketsu had implied that being missing-nin wasn't that bad....) after the tournament.)), since he was a clan heir and such a person being an idiot could be damaging to Leaf) and therefore the competition had been extremely predictable.
Ito apparently had poor understanding of crowd psychology, because a full minute had passed since Shikamaru set up in the shade (He found himself vaguely surprised that Mist had structured the combats in the order they had; forcing him to fight at noon, when the shadows were shortest, would have given their ninja a more advantageous scenario and at least a fifteen percent (Granted, the confidence interval on the estimate was annoyingly wide (at least nine percent!), since Mist intelligence agents had successfully prevented Nara spies from observing approximately one week of Ito's training during the break. Still, it was unlikely that he'd managed to acquire any jutsu that wasn't in his file, at least not with any proficiency, during the time window in question. There had been a concern at the (terribly exhausting) hour-long strategy session that Father had made him attend that perhaps Ito would bring lantern seals in order to dispel shadows and thereby render the Nara techniques 'useless' (Because of course non-Nara would feel that Nara techniques were only useful when there were extant shadows. The rest of the world lacked imagination.) which could have perhaps been challenging, but given the way Mist had limited the rules on seals in order to cripple the Gōketsu in general and Hazō in particular, that was not going to be an issue.) higher probability of victory.) and he still had not arrived.
Finally, there was the soft crunching of approaching footsteps on sandy soil. Shikamaru climbed to his feet, stretching lazily and walking forward a few steps so that he was standing five feet from the edge of the cliff's shadow. He continued spinning his fidget toy between his fingers, because having Mom yell at him was troublesome.
"You think you're so smart, don't you, scum?" Ito growled, stopping well short of the shadows.
"No, just smarter than you," Shikamaru said (Ino had insisted.), interrupting before Ito could continue.
"Well you're not! You're a coward, just like the rest of your village! You think you can just sit in there and hide, right? Wait until the sun gets lower and the whole arena is shadowed? Well it won't work! I'm going to—"
"Would you like some hot chocolate?"
Ito stopped in mid-word. "What?"
"Hot chocolate," Shikamaru said, waving his mug vaguely. "With ginger. It's good."
Ito's eyes narrowed. "What are you trying to pull? You think I'll let you drug me?"
Shikamaru sighed. "Obviously not. It's cold, and I thought you might like something warm while we negotiate future relations."
"...What?"
"I care more about forging bonds with other villages than winning the tournament," Shikamaru explained, offering the benefit of the doubt and not going into detail yet. "This entire event is a farce. We are both in the Chūnin Exam tournament. We are objectively among the top candidates of our year, and both of us will therefore be promoted regardless of what happens here." (And wasn't that just annoying? There would be all sorts of new paperwork and job responsibilities to go with the unwanted rank.) "The only purpose of this event is to provide the masses with some entertainment and the Kage with a chance to get together and have negotiations in safety. It's all very troublesome."
"Are you crazy? This is the Chūnin Exams! Competing is a major honor and winning will make your rep!"
Shikamaru shrugged one shoulder, because shrugging both was too much effort. "If you're good enough to be here then you'll make a reputation for yourself regardless."
Ito snorted in surprise and contempt. "You really are a coward, aren't you? People have been telling me for weeks but I couldn't believe it. Even a Leaf worm should have more spine than this! Water Element: Water Blades!" A quick chain of handseals brought into existence a swirling aura of mist around Ito. It rapidly condensed into dozens of tiny razored slivers of water that orbited him at high speeds, about ten feet out.
Shikamaru sighed. "Fine. I suppose we shall have to play it out." He tossed his fidget toy behind himself to free up his right hand so he could pull a kunai from his belt, before taking a drink of the hot chocolate he still held in his left hand. "It is at this point that Kiba likes to say 'Come at me, bro'."
Ito, of course, was not Kiba; he wasn't stupid enough to be taunted into charging into shadows against a Nara. His hand went into his pouch, producing what was undoubtedly an explosive tag (Because after the Gōketsu had so exhaustively demonstrated the utility of massive amounts of explosives during the fifth event, all of the contestants had been heavily outfitted by their villages (Hm, was there danger of chain-firing explosives on someone's person?) and would undoubtedly be making significant use of them (Although perhaps not as much as the Gōketsu, since most people would not have so thoroughly internalized the infinite availability of the things.) throughout the tournament.), primed it, and cocked his arm back—
At which point the timer on the storage seal that Shikamaru had so casually tossed behind himself went off. It produced a four-foot tall drum filled with burning oil. The flames backlit Shikamaru nicely, making his shadow leap outwards and intersect with Ito's.
"Shadow Possession complete," Shikamaru said calmly, flicking his right hand out in a throwing motion that sent his kunai off towards the southern wall. The Shadow Possession jutsu forced Ito to echo the maneuver, throwing his primed explosive tag off to the north where it exploded harmlessly.
"Would you like to surrender?" Shikamaru asked hopefully.
"No!" the Mist nin snapped. "You can't hold this forever. You're too lazy to have developed your reserves. You'll run out of chakra before I do, my Water Blades will keep you from getting close enough to do anything to me, and I'm too strong for you to completely control."
Shikamaru tested the last assertion and sighed. It was true. Ito was extremely resistant, and making him perform fine-motor actions such as drawing a kunai would be annoyingly difficult. That meant that the standard Nara techniques for forcing surrender were off the table.
He pivoted thirty degrees left; across from him, Ito pivoted to
his left, his body compelled by the jutsu that puppeted him through their connected shadows. Shikamaru started walking, struggling against the other ninja's opposition the entire time but winning at every step. Every few yards he unsealed something—a beach chair, a hatrack, the steamer trunk in which he kept his spare clothes—in order to stretch the shadows farther and farther so that the connection between his own shadow and Ito's remained solid. Ito echoed his every movement, miming pulling things from a pocket and dropping them on the ground.
After enough steps and enough victories, Shikamaru turned around so that he and Ito were facing each other again. Shikamaru was standing well out into the sun-dappled arena and the other ninja was standing a foot from the wall, face red with rage.
"I can feel you weakening, you bastard," he growled. "As soon as I break free of this, I'm going to kick your ass. Fragile as you are, I doubt anyone will doubt me when I say that breaking your leg was purely an accident."
"That sounds exhausting. Are you sure you wouldn't rather just surrender?"
"No!"
Shikamaru sighed and shrugged (It had been years since watching people echo his body language had been amusing.) and turned around so he was facing east once again. He took a breath and then bowed, fast and deep. Behind him there was a loud
thunk.
Given Ito's expressed intent to inflict serious damage, Shikamaru felt justified in bowing several more times.
Author's Notes: Once again, XP will be awarded after your own fight. There will be no voting.
