December 24, afternoon.
"Anything you two want to say?"
Noburi nudged Hazō; the young sealmaster shook himself out of the light doze he'd dropped into and started once again paying attention.
"I do," said Akimichi Chōji. Akimichi turned to his enormously smaller opponent. The two of them standing side-by-side reminded Hazō of a dire boar standing over a baby rabbit. Hinata was short and slight while Akimichi was built like a brick with padding strapped on, and his voice was already rocking the bass. His hair was spiked up into two tufted-owl horns; it was sufficiently weird that, every time they were in the same room, Hazō needed to make a real effort not to stare.
"Hinata, I know you're going to do great," Akimichi said with a smile. "You absolutely earned your place here, and no matter what happens I know you'll do Leaf proud."
Everyone, from the Mizukage to the lowliest shoemaker in the crowd, blinked.
"Thank you, Chōji," Hinata said, not allowing herself to be ruffled at all. "You also earned your place here. It saddens me that I will need to put you out of the tournament."
Akimichi laughed, loud and boisterous. "Oh, somebody's feeling confident! Don't count me out just yet, okay? You're really good, but I'm not giving up just yet." He paused, suddenly becoming serious. "Oh, I almost forgot...you don't have any phobias, do you?"
One delicate eyebrow went up. "Excuse me?"
"Phobias. You know, things that could really traumatize you if they happened unexpectedly. I want to make sure I don't accidentally trigger anything if you happen to...I don't know, have a fear of tight spaces and I have to bury you in the ground. Something like that."
Not even the Hyūga calm could completely roll past that. "Thank you for your concern," she said after a few seconds. "I believe I shall be fine. Do
you have any phobias that I'm not aware of?"
"Going deaf." He grinned. "Then I couldn't hear the dinner bell."
The audience laughed.
"Anyway, I talked to Ino about it earlier, and she said that if you do end up traumatized after this fight then she'll be glad to get her dad to help. I really want to win, but I don't want to damage your career or break your mind."
"Why don't you let me worry about that," Hinata said, a certain amount of acid creeping into her tone. "I am familiar with your capabilities, Chōji. I don't think I'm the one who needs to be worrying."
"Okay, that's enough," the senior judge said. "Both of you, get into the arena."
"Of course." Hinata vanished, Substituting herself with a rock from down in the quarry. She arrived facing back towards the lip of the quarry where Chōji waited; her fingers were already making the handseal necessary to activate her bloodline. Her voice drifted back with a faint cry of "Byakugan!"
"Yes, ma'am." Akimichi said, smiling at the judge. He flipped a short, two-fingered wave to his teammates waiting off to the side, then Substituted down into the arena himself. No sooner had he arrived than he flipped through his own handseals and shouted "Akimichi Clan-Secret Technique: Partial Multi-Size Jutsu!"
A wave of gasps went through the civilian portion of the audience as Akimichi's arms ballooned out massively. A moment later, his upper biceps were as thick as Hazō's thighs, his forearms were as thick as Hazō's upper body, and his hands were almost as wide as Hazō was tall. The boy should not have been able to move such massive limbs, but somehow he seemed utterly unbothered by the freakish proportions and extra mass as he took up a modified taijutsu ready stance.
Hazō had expected Hinata to attack immediately, but she didn't. Her jaw dropped open and she momentarily dropped her hands in shock. It was over a second before she managed to close her mouth and charge, and even then she seemed less sure of herself than usual.
Hazō had watched Hinata spar back in Leaf. The girl was terrifying; what she lacked in power and mass she more than made up for with insane speed and precision. That was hardly surprising, of course: she was a Hyūga. The Gentle Fist, the legendary combat style of the Hyūga, had been honed over generations to maximize their natural advantages.
The legends of the Byakugan were many and varied—it allowed you to read the contents of a person's mind and soul, it could see into the past and the future, it could follow the movement of every drop of water in a cloud, it could...do anything, really. No one knew exactly what the limits were, aside from the Hyūga themselves.
What everyone
did know was that the Byakugan allowed the user to see everything in a sphere around themselves and it allowed them to see chakra. Their entire combat system was based around this fact. The Gentle Fist was the softest of soft styles, containing few actual strikes; a Hyūga simply used the Byakugan to locate their enemy's chakra points, then used the Gentle Fist to jam thin spikes of chakra into those points, cutting off the flow to that point and beyond. The effect was painful, and shutting down enough points could injure or kill just as easily as a hard-style strike to the organs. Hinata was well known for being very, very good at the Gentle Fist for her age.
Akimichi appeared not to be worried by any of this. As Hinata came at him, his massive hands swiped at her, the left gouging up piles of dust and rocks and flinging them at his tiny enemy while the right slapped down on her from above. It was an elegant move; the left hand provided a smokescreen and the right hand came from a direction most enemies would not expect. Granted, neither of those things would help against a Byakugan user, but it was undoubtedly a trained combat pattern that happened almost without thought.
Hinata leaped up and to the side, her body horizontal to the ground for a moment as the bulk of gravel shot past below her. She tucked and rolled, landing on her feet as Akimichi's flyswatter hand slammed into the ground beside her. She leaped in, raining a frantic patter of slaps across Akimichi's arm and body that left the boy's fat jiggling and flopping in waves.
Jiggling and flopping, but nowhere near shut down.
Akimichi should have been either reeling or actually on the ground after a drumroll of Gentle Fist strikes like that. Instead, he simply pivoted and snatched at Hinata with both hands. The girl managed to evade the right hand but that only put her in the way of the left. An instant later she was completely engulfed, only her head and shoulders sticking out of Akimichi's enormous grip.
Akimichi appeared to say something, but they were too far away for Hazō to make out the words. Hinata shook her head violently and struggled to free herself, even going so far as to bite at Akimichi's tree-trunk fingers. Akimichi responded by yowling in pain and shaking her vigorously.
Using the Partial Multi-Size Jutsu to engorge your arms and hands clearly gave some advantages in, well, hand-to-hand combat, and it must have provided enhanced strength in order to handle the extra mass. Offsetting that, it appeared to slow Akimichi down quite a bit—although perhaps that was simply the result of needing to pay attention to prevent his prisoner from wiggling loose as he carried her across the arena to the edge of the lake.
Hazō's eyes went wide in realization and he instinctively held his breath.
Akimichi appeared to ask her something, but Hinata simply shook her head and struggled harder. With a fatalistic shrug, Akimichi shoved his Hinata-containing fist under the water for several seconds, then pulled her up and asked her his question again.
This time, her response was loud enough to be heard from the stands, and contained words that had matrons tut-tutting. Akimichi shrugged and pushed her back under.
When he brought her back up for the second time she nodded. A massive thumb gestured back towards the stands, causing Hinata to raise her voice.
"I surrender!"
Akimichi immediately set her down and canceled his size-shifting jutsu. This, of course, meant that a soaking wet Hinata was no longer wrapped in a nice warm giant hand and was instead exposed to the freezing December air. As thin as she was, the girl almost instantly started shivering so badly that Hazō could see it from where he sat. She tucked her hands into her armpits and started stumbling towards the audience...only to stop at a word from Akimichi.
The boy was busily pulling storage seals out of his belt pouch. A four-foot iron barrel full of cheerily burning fire. A pile of thick rugs. A folding canvas table holding what looked like several large, fluffy, and probably heated towels, plus a change of clothes. Hazō was even pretty sure that he'd seen a hairbrush on the table before Akimichi produced a shoji screen and set it to block off view of the field-expedient boudoir. Hinata flashed him a grateful look and ducked behind the screen.
Akimichi waited patiently, his back to the screen and his newly-normal hands tucked behind himself, rocking back and forth on his heels. Outside the arena, the audience started laughing. The laughter got louder when a bundle of soaking wet clothing got tossed out from behind the screen.
Two minutes later, a dry, warm, and freshly-dressed Hinata helped Akimichi put everything back in the scrolls before accepting his offer of a ride back to the edge of the arena while she stood on his shoulders like an acrobat at the fair.
o-o-o-o
December 25, afternoon.
Ikeda handled the judge's hype calls the way she handled all boring and unimportant buffoonery: stand at attention, put an expression of attentiveness on your face, and think about Miko. Miko and her long, silken locks that made you itch for the chance to run your fingers through them. Miko and her full lips, so naturally red that she hardly ever bothered with makeup and wouldn't it be so nice to—
Ikeda quickly forced her thoughts elsewhere and hoped she hadn't actually let her expression slip. Fortunately, the judge had been keeping everyone's attention so it probably didn't matter, but it sounded like the woman was winding down.
"And now, let's hear it from the Scion of Shadows, the Lord of the Lazy, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know...Naaaaara Shikamaru!"
[wordless grunt of exhausted and annoyed acknowledgement]
Ikeda very carefully suppressed a laugh.
The sound-amplification effect cut off for a moment and the judge hissed something at Nara. The boy sighed and nodded.
Ikeda studied her opposite number carefully, and appreciatively. As annoyed as Nara appeared to be about addressing the crowd, he had clearly put some work into his appearance. His hair had been brushed to within an inch of its life (probably by Yamanaka, because from what she'd seen of him this far she couldn't imagine the Lord of Laziness going to such trouble). It was glossy and sleek, an elegantly-patterned wooden barrette confining it into a spiky ponytail so not even a wisp got in his face and distracted the eye from those cheekbones, the exotic caramel-colored eyes, and the absolutely adorable frown lines. His clothes just completed the picture—a cut above what was necessary for a fight, he wore an elegant midnight blue version of the standard ninja uniform, with multiple pouches, a small backpack, and weapons in unusual places. It really complemented his eyes and, again, Ikeda felt sure that his teammate had chosen the clothes for him.
When you put it all together it was very much a 'Yes, please!'
Ikeda found herself wishing that perhaps she had dressed up a bit as well. Her hair (her best feature, in her own opinion, and she was furious about having to burn much of it off in her fight with Kawaguchi) was concealed in a tight bun at the top rear of her head, out of reach of grabby hands. She had painted her face in red and white to resemble a demon's mask, but her clothes were a standard camouflage uniform. All in all, not so impressive.
Nara stepped forward. "I wish to offer my thanks to Mist for hosting the tournament this year, and for how gracious they have been after having their only competitor eliminated in the first round. Leaf has never had the opportunity to show such good sportsmanship but, if the opportunity comes up at some point in the future, I hope we will behave as well."
He fell silent until a hiss from the judge made him roll his eyes and continue. "The judge has reminded me that we are growing closer to the time when I must crush my enemy like an egg. One of the thin-shelled ones...perhaps a lesser spotted woodbiter. Definitely not any of the dire owls, as those have eggshells that can be used for armor, so using them as the analogy would cause Ikeda to appear extraordinarily durable and I am told that the point of this exercise is to make her seem weak. Yes, I shall crush her like the egg of a lesser spotted woodbiter. Woo. Woo. I am mighty. And clever. And she is not. Woo." He thumped his chest twice in the most ridiculously desultory fashion imaginable.
The judge facepalmed and the audience laughed.
Nara sighed. "Very well. On to more important matters." He surveyed the crowd for a moment. "I would like to announce that my family has recently been the target of an alliance between three different intelligence agencies." He looked up at the Kages box, his eyes moving from left to right without lingering on any of the five for suspiciously long. "We captured the latest spy and had our allies, the Yamanaka"—he paused, making a sour expression—"'shred his mind like a squishy, squishy grape.' I apologize for that turn of phrase, but Ino insisted." He gestured to where his team sat in the front row; the blonde girl yelped indignantly.
"What?" Nara demanded. "It is not a sensible phrase, Ino. One shreds carrots, or potatoes, or other foods with a high tensile strength. One does not shred grapes, because grapes lack the structural integrity for shredding. The best you can hope for is to splatter them."
He looked away from his fulminating teammate and back to the audience. "As I was saying, the Yamanaka interrogated the spy and informed us that we were being targeted because we are perceived as one of the weakest yet richest clans in Leaf. Destroying us would badly damage the Leaf economy, thereby serving as an excellent opening move in economic warfare."
He paused, letting the moment linger. The laughter and good humor slowly abated.
"My family are not weak."
The words were cold, all trace of laziness discarded.
"I am ordered by my Clan Head to repeat the following words that he spoke: We have gone to quite some effort to disguise our capabilities, but four of Shikamaru's cousins were murdered in a bungled attempt at kidnapping. Today is one of the few times when all the Kage and important people of the Elemental Nations are gathered in one place, thereby enabling efficient information delivery. I, Nara Shikaku, have already spoken to my Kage in private, but I feel the need to make this announcement public so that there is no chance of ignorance on the part of our enemies. The Nara will seek reparations from our attackers—and yes, we know who you are—within the next three weeks. In the meantime, I have ordered Shikamaru to provide a demonstration of one of the capabilities we normally keep hidden, in the hopes that it will prevent things from escalating. If the reparations are forthcoming and there are no further attempts on us, we will let the matter go."
A trace of Nara's boredom fell away as he turned to face her. He studied her carefully, then gestured with an open hand. "Ikeda, I do apologize for involving you in this ridiculous posturing. If you'd like to concede I could simply do a brief exhibition?"
"Pfft. As if. I'm going to stomp you into the mud, you lazy brat." Okay, it wasn't high-falutin' and elegant, but it made the point.
Nara sighed. "You do understand the history of my family, yes?"
Ikeda felt her confident smile slip, just a bit. "Yeah, everyone knows about you shadow freaks. I'm a Fire user, nitwit. I've got your number."
He cocked his head. "Ikeda...you know that we were among the earliest clans the First Hokage recruited to join Leaf, yes?"
"Ooh, look at me, my clan is old and important!" She waved her hands at him dramatically.
"My point is that the Nara prefer to form alliances with powerful people by way of marriage, so as to incorporate their bloodlines and knowledge into the clan. Have you considered what that would mean when we made an alliance with Senju Hashirama?"
What was he sayi...no. No, that was bullshit. The Nara were shadow users and tacticians, they didn't have bloodlines...unless maybe they did? Every clan kept their abilities secret as much as they could, so could it be that the Nara had managed to keep an actual bloodline completely unknown to the world? They were known for their tricks, so if anyone was going to pull such an epic long con then it would be them...no. No, he was messing with her head.
"Nice try, Nara. You are not a descendent of the First Hokage and you do not have the Wood Element."
He shrugged. "Not a direct descendant, no. Not even an acknowledged relative; it was his bastard son who married in."
Ikeda snorted. "Sure. Pull the other one."
Nara sighed. "Very well. I had hoped to do a simple demonstration and then take a nap, but I suppose I'll have to actually fight. So troublesome. Perhaps—"
"Okay, you two, that's enough. Get in there!"
Nara glared at the judge for interrupting him; he opened his mouth to say something, then ran his hand through his hair in frustration and sighed before vanishing without a word, replacing himself into the arena. Ikeda followed behind.
She had expected him to appear in the shadow of one of the walls, where she wouldn't dare go after him for fear of being captured. Instead, he was out in the center of the arena, the full albeit dilute light of the winter sun beating down on him. She charged, hoping to finish it before he could pull out any of his tricks.
His long, elegant fingers danced through seals; he thrust the final Horse seal out dramatically and shouted, loud and clear: "Wood Element: Fortress of the Leaf!"
Ikeda could feel the blood drain from her face as a fucking
wooden castle appeared around the kid. It was small, really more of a rectangular box ten feet long and six feet high and deep, but it had clearly been shaped to look like a castle.
Holy fuck.
She slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt well away from the Fortress, but she didn't waste time being amazed at the resurgence of a bloodline so powerful it had been feared across the Elemental Nations. One thing about the Wood Element...it was wood.
"Fire Element: Furious Fireballs!" She windmilled her arms, walking a series of the missiles down the base of the Fortress and setting it alight. The wood was green but the Fireballs were hot enough; within seconds flames were inching their way up the sides and she was reaching into her belt pouch for her anti-Nara trick.
She was still keeping one eye on the Fortress while she prepared, so when the grapefruit-sized clay orb went up from inside the Fortress she was not surprised. Nara had clearly thrown it as hard as he could, but that wasn't super impressive. The globe was maybe thirty feet in the air when the explosive tag on the side went off.
She then had to forget about finding her storage seal, because she was much too busy dodging a rain of...junk. Two beat-up old dressers, a rain of red and blue confetti, an armoire with a broken leg, a bunch of lit oil lanterns with cracked or missing glass shields, a rolled-up carpet, half a dozen kegs (three of which broke open on impact, leaking a pale yellow fluid), a set of bookshelves, a writing desk with one side crushed, several boxes of silverware (which had clearly been broken by the storage stress, because they sent spoons and knives everywhere), and three tall hatracks that had been tied together to form something vaguely like a caltrop of haberdashery support.
The stuff wasn't aimed, it just rained down at random. Most of it didn't even come near her. As an attack, it was pathetic. Had he somehow grabbed the wrong ball of stuff? Yes, there had been a half-dozen oil lanterns that were now happily burning and therefore throwing shadows. Still, they weren't spaced evenly enough to have provided good coverage. Staying out of the shadows they threw would be trivial.
She refused to be distracted by what was almost certainly a psyop. Instead, she grabbed her storage seal and activated it.
A metal platform appeared, an upright pole at each of the four corners. A whole series of oil lanterns were hanging from the poles and arrayed around the edges of the platform in order to dispel any shadows in the area. She hopped up on the platform, giving her the height she needed to see over the Fortress, and also an island of safety where his shadow tricks could not reach. (The Wood Element...well, that was another story.) Just for luck, she sent another round of Furious Fireballs into the wood that surrounded him. The faster it got burning, the better.
A moment later, another clay orb went up and another rain of random junk came down. Kettles, frying pans, random children's toys, a pot of boiling water full of half-cooked noodles, more lanterns, a handful of party hats, another handful of colored confetti...no rhyme or reason, just stuff.
"That the best you've got, Nara?" she called, grinning. "It doesn't make that much of a shadow and your shadows can't reach me here."
A panel on the front of the castle kicked loose and Nara dove out, rolling back to his feet in a spray of dust. The backlighting of the blazing Fortress threw his shadow towards Ikeda's platform, but the shadow could not reach past the shield of light around her. She began to form another set of Furious Fireballs, but he was faster; he jumped back, zipped through handseals, and shouted, "Wood Element: Corpse Tree Barrier!"
A no-kidding tree trunk appeared in front of him, ten feet tall with a wide base that narrowed rapidly as it went up but was still wide enough for him to disappear behind. It was ashen, leafless, and the burl on the front looked all too uncomfortably like a screaming human face.
"How in the name of the Sage are you doing that?" she yelled. "You do not have the Wood Element! You do
not!"
From behind the tree she heard a dismissive snort. "I told my father that this would not work. There is not an ounce of rationality in any of you non-Nara. You are all so closely tied to how you believe the world should be that you are unwilling to update your beliefs given new evidence. Even when you literally watch me perform the Wood Element in front of you, you find your beliefs more comfortable than the idea that you might be wrong." The words were followed by a long and gusty sigh. "I blame my mother. She married into the clan and, as much as I love her, honesty forces me to acknowledge that she can be very irrational at times. Unfortunately, she is incredibly good at persuading father to do things. It is most troublesome."
No. Just no. There was No Fucking Way that this little brat was throwing around the Wood Element. No one had wielded the Wood Element in living memory. She was not being irrational. She was being...cautious, yeah. That was it. No, wait. 'Cautious' is what you called a ninja when you were too polite to say 'cowardly'.
She looked down and noticed that the shadow of the tree was still struggling to push its way through the moat of light around her platform. It shifted around, looking for an entry point on left, front, and right of the platform, but there were none.
"Come on out and fight, brat! Your shadow tricks can't get me here."
"Better idea," Nara said, stepping out from behind his blast shield. "Nara Clan Technique: Shadow Blast."
From the very end of his shadow, a pair of explosions rocked the stage. One of the leaking casks was at ground zero of the first explosion and it erupted, splashing lamp oil outwards in a wave that splattered across the stage and across Ikeda. Some of it also splashed into one of the burning lanterns; the heat was enough to ignite the oil in the air and suddenly the world was fire.
Ninja-fast reflexes had thrown Ikeda backwards off the stage just as Nara was finishing his jutsu. She wasn't caught in the direct blast of the massive fireball but, for the second time this week, she was on fire.
She fumbled through the fire-extinguishing jutsu, barely managing to make it work. Oil was hot and easy to reignite, but between the jutsu, her fire-resistant uniform, and a quick series of rolls she managed to put herself out. All it cost her was the rest of her hair, her eyebrows, her eyelashes, and first-degree burns across her chin, forehead, and hands where she'd shielded her eyes.
She pushed herself to her feet and glared at him where he stood, casually waiting as though for a lunch order.
He raised a hand in a 'wait' gesture and lifted a pouch off his belt, holding it out to her. It was silk, filled with what looked like coins, and clearly heavy. "I apologize for the burns. I do not even particularly want to be here, but I have been given orders by my Clan Head. I have, however, made my demonstration and there is no need to keep fighting. If you are willing to tap out then I would be delighted to give you this. It would pay for a week of a medic's time, the services of the best wigmaker, and a good deal left over as an apology for the harm I've caused you."
She stared at him in disbelief. "Are you seriously trying to
bribe me?"
He studied her for a moment, then shrugged and tossed the purse aside. "Apparently not. Pity. You are facing someone who has demonstrated the Wood Element and you've already been injured. Your reputation is made simply by being in the tournament and winning your first match, and you will definitely be promoted to chūnin when you go home. When weighing a massive financial bonus against a minor reputational cost, an intelligent person would take the money."
"I am going to fucking
end you," she growled. "Fire Element: Phoenix Fire Aura!" Golden fire leaped from the sky, limning her body in a shadow-dispelling aura that would roast anyone she touched yet left her skin and clothes unharmed. Chakra surging through her muscles, she threw herself at him.
Her fist was inches from his face, the heat of the flames already crisping a few of his hairs, when he disappeared. He Substituted away, replacing himself with a broken clothes dresser with its drawers hanging open.
Drawers which, now that she was close enough to see, were partially filled with lamp oil.
The oil trap was in front of her, the tree to her right; she threw herself left, rolling frantically to reduce her target profile in case the heat from her Aura was enough to ignite the oil behind her.
And then she rolled across the purse that Nara had so casually tossed aside, and things got bad.
The flames of her Aura touched the purse and destroyed it; the silk must have been soaked in something flammable in preparation for this moment. The instant it was destroyed she was rolling across a long, shallow pan. A pan filled with caltrops, water, and more fucking lamp oil.
She was halfway through the roll, her arm just about to make contact with the ground, as the pan appeared. She had no choice but to roll down the length of it, soaking her entire body in oil that promptly burst into flames, and vaporizing much of the water so that superheated steam blasted across her exposed skin. The caltrops were small, their tines far too small to cause significant damage, but the ends were barbed. They scratched at the skin of her arm and back as she went by, ripping lines in her clothes. She completed the roll and hurled herself out and away, yanking at her shirt because this fire was too large for her command of the extinguishing jutsu.
And that was the moment when she discovered the final insult.
The caltrops she had rolled across were connected to the pan with metal wires, perhaps three feet long. They had not managed to gain purchase in her clothes or skin, but three of them had stuck in the soles of her sandals. She was now dragging a long metal pan of flaming oil with her wherever she went. There was no way she could fight like this.
Of course, fighting was not her biggest problem right now. Her biggest problem was that she was once again
on fucking fire!
Like all fire-element ninja, being on fire wasn't an unfamiliar experience. Mishaps occurred during training. Right now, however, this was not a mishap, this was enemy action. Fortunately, there hadn't been a lot of oil; he clearly was trying to be careful.
She dropped the Phoenix Fire Aura, yanked her shirt over her head and cast it aside, then flicked through the fire-extinguishing jutsu as quickly as she could. She grabbed the wires and yanked them loose from her shoes—
And froze, as a voice behind her said "Shadow Possession Complete."
XP AWARD: 0
Author's Notes:
- The above fights were rolled and plotted out action-by-action, but I'm not including the specifics.
- The Ino/Shino fight happened, but I don't have the energy to write it. If @Velorien or @OliWhail want to that would be lovely, otherwise we'll just announce the results.
- The two fights have been presented together, but actually take place on separate days, as indicated by the timestamps at the beginning of each. The first fight takes place after Chapter 241: Sibling Rivalry, Part 2. The second fight takes place after Chapter 247.1: Bug Bites.
@Velorien, do you want them to vote in a plan for Thursday or would you rather do the fight?
If voting is happening, then it ends on Wednesday, February 13, 2019, at 12pm London time.
