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The minute's break after the second round was almost impatient; neither side reached for water or a towel. Mikoto smiled as she followed a butterfly orbiting her. She raised her hand, and it settled on her pinkie finger.
"Go," she said without looking at her student.
They rushed each other from where they stood. Takuma gathered chakra in his arms, but as they neared, Izumi slid on the ground in a forward tackle. He leapt up, feeling the rush of air as she slid past underneath him. Hands wrapped around his ankles, and he nearly pitched face-first into the dirt field, barely managing to prop himself up with his hands.
The gathered chakra slipped from his control like sand from a fist.
He turned around to see her scrambling at him with a raised kunai and kicked. She pushed the leg aside and climbed up on him. She forced the blade down while he locked his hand around her wrist, their muscles straining in the struggle. He brought his other hand in to push the kunai away, but she cuffed it to the ground with her free hand.
The kunai trembled between them, the edge flashing near with each desperate shove until he managed to turn them around with a grunt so he was on top of her. She tried to turn them around again; when that didn't work, she kicked him, almost getting him in the crotch. The second kick freed her, and she swung, missed, and then threw the kunai towards him as he scampered away.
He caught the kunai and immediately went to stab her while she was still on the ground. Izumi's sweeping leg caught him by surprise and knocked the kunai out of his hand.
They froze for a heartbeat, straining to anticipate the coming strike, before lunging into their next moves. The jagged, earthen spikes from the jutsu before cracked free from the ground on his command and surged towards her as she rose. Two struck her squarely, bringing her to the ground.
Seeing an opportunity, Takuma charged at her, only to stop short of his target as a long strip of cloth, smooth as silk, sliced through the air. Its movement shifted—like a nimble eel gliding underwater—before it slithered around his thigh. The soft fabric stiffened, hardening into rigid steel that gripped like a vice. The cloth jerked him forward, taking away his balance, while the other end of the strip, coiled and hardened around his arm, when he went to grab the end around his thigh.
She held the cloth, most of it still soft as silk, like she was trying to wrangle a bull.
The long strip of cloth that went around her back was made from a special weave of treated fibres and chakra metal alloy, allowing it to be controlled deftly mid-air and giving it the property to harden when chakra flowed through it. It was an uncommon weapon of choice, used to ensnare targets and immobilise them.
Her face flecked with pain, a darkening red bruise on her arm visible from the open sleeve top—as she dug her feet into the ground and pulled, taking him off his feet and flying in her direction. He tried to balance himself in the air, only for her to draw on his leg.
All Takuma could do was twist in the right direction to make sure she didn't get his back.
She weaved a short D-rank Fire Release ninjutsu, and her flaming kick, through no fault of his own, slipped in through between his guard perfectly and slammed into his chest.
He clenched his jaw tight, biting hard enough that his gums hurt—the only barrier between himself and agony threatening to break out as she spiralled through the air. Even without the ninjutsu, there was a concerning amount of power inside her lithe physique, which shouldn't've been a surprise because she was a taijutsu-forward combatant.
A tug on the cloth snapped him out. He slammed onto his knees, scrapping the dirt as he slid backwards, grit biting into his skin. He grabbed the hardened fabric and tugged on it—if she wanted to compete on strength, he was all for it.
But now that he'd regained his footing, it was her time to fly, but as he tried to tug the second time, the fabric went limp and soft, slipping out of his hand as she pulled from the other side.
He looked up, his plans to throw her balance into disarray disrupted, and saw her in the air, already forming hand seals, her body perfectly balanced as she sailed through the air.
Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu
The heat rolled outwards from the giant ball of fire, scorching the air and making each laboured breath hot and stinging in his lungs and bruised chest as it barrelled towards him.
There was no time to get a ninjutsu going. He clenched his fists tight. One full-power augmented punch, that wouldn't rip his arms off from the backlash, wasn't enough to rip through the fireball, either.
But what about two?
Chakra fed into his arms, compressed into his hands. He cocked the back and stared down the ball of fire that filled his vision until it was moments away from swallowing him—he didn't notice Mikoto appear behind him and reach out before pulling her hand back—when he slammed his fist forward, releasing all the force.
The ball of fire that was going to swallow him with unstoppable momentum halted in the air for a couple of seconds. Then, the rolling flames screamed, as though they were being denied a feast, and split into a blooming flower, its petals roaring away from him as the force from the augmentation parted her jutsu.
Izumi was eyeing her ninjutsu with suspicion as she descended when it split open, and Takuma charged at her with unbelievable speed. He grabbed her by the neck and dragged her into the ground for several metres. Even as her head was being pulled through the dirt, her cloth weapon that was wrapped around her waist, latched onto his arm. He punched her chest, revenge for earlier, but the cloth pulled his arm in the last moment, just enough that the augmented strike hit the side of her lower rib instead.
The ground under her shattered into a shallow crater.
He shook off the cloth weapon as its grip weakened and pulled another clump of chakra into his fist. But even as his attack wracked her body, Izumi's cloth weapon came alive and wrapped itself around his upper body. He wasn't going to let that happen and contested it with all of his power, pulling it apart with his hands as the fabric tightened and hardened, weaker than before.
Proof enough that she was feeling his attack. However, just as he was about to pull it apart, her legs suddenly wrapped around him, trapping his arms. With a face flushed red and no air in her lungs, she pinched her legs around him to take away his arms from use.
But Takuma was considerably stronger than she was, so he put a knee on her belly and began to force his arms out. She slammed her head against his forehead, but he clenched his teeth through the pain and continued.
As they separated, Izumi smashed the base of her wrists into his temples.
Takuma's vision doubled, and he staggered back, resisting the urge to squeeze his eyes shut.. He pushed himself further away from her, thinking that she might launch another attack, but she, too, stumbled away, holding her ribs.
Were this a real fight, they would've taken the risk to go and make something out of the other's weakness, but instead, they stood their ground cautiously until the three-minute limit ran out.
———
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"One minute," Mikoto announced at the start of their break.
Takuma sat down heavily and poured the contents of his water canteen over himself while breathing a long sigh. The water soaked through his clothes and soothed the light burns from Izumi's flaming kick.
She was undeniably more skilled than he was, but that was to be expected. With how Mikoto used her sharingan, a high degree of skill was all but given. Even though Izumi had only been Mikoto's student for as long as Takuma had been studying the sword, she was holistically better than he was at fighting, while he still sucked at using the sword.
Though it wasn't as if Izumi was learning a new methodology from the ground up, so that
He could feel the faint stings and aches all over his body where she had hit him. The number of times she hit him embarrassingly dwarfed the number of hits Takuma had landed. If they were going by boxing rules, with the kind of match they were fighting, either Takuma would lose by unanimous decision, or win by knockout.
The problem was that Izumi was equally skilled at avoiding being hit by him as she was at hitting him. Takuma had sparred against Uchiha Gouki a couple of times, and the difference in skill between the two Uchiha, just looking at the Uchiha Interceptor Fist, was comparable to that of a toddler and a master. Not only did Izumi exploit every, but she stopped him from entering a flow because she was always working to disrupt his momentum and attack by putting him in a less-than-favourable state. It was utterly infuriating.
He wiped his face with a towel, got up, and dusted his clothes.
Neither of them had shown their full capabilities, and the purpose of the spar was to assess their sparring partner to push them to their limit. But he had gained an upper hand in the third round. Winning wasn't impossible. He felt like he had seen enough to push her to her limit
If his skill was lacking, then he was going to make it up with experience. She hadn't used her game-changer yet, so if nothing else, Takuma was going to force her to use her eyes.
"Ready!" he shouted after walking up to where they had started the first round.
"There are still fifteen seconds left, Takuma," Mikoto said, raising the dainty timepiece around her wrist.
"I know. I'm ready," he replied as he gazed at Izumi, who had also turned around at his shout.
He enjoyed the slight change in her expression more than he should have.
———
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Izumi ignored Takuma's provocation and took the full minute to rest and prepare before she walked up to face Takuma for the fourth round. Mikoto walked around them a few times, building tension between the two, before suddenly declaring the start with a simple, "Go."
His hands twitched into action, signing hand seals. Her cloth weapon, tied around her waist, jumped at him. She had been consistently targeting his legs to disturb his footwork, but this fabric strip attacked his hands to stop him from completing the ninjutsu.
The ninjutsu was only a D-rank utility spell with an extremely short hand seal chain. He only needed a side-step to gain another second to complete it before flowing into a second set of seals without a break.
Water Release: Water Spout
A little over thirty litres of water spewed out from his general vicinity with barely enough pressure to push down a child who wasn't paying attention.
Not knowing what it was, she leapt away while throwing a volley of shuriken at him. She would've recognised it as a weak D-rank jutsu if he hadn't continued on the second set of seals. It gave him space to complete the real jutsu he was actually targeting easily.
Water Release: Deep Sea Arms
He rolled to the side to dodge the shuriken volley, rolling in the drenched mud. The water from the utility jutsu that had splashed on the ground rose up en masse, following him as he moved. He got up and sprinted forward, and the water followed, gathering behind him. Rippling waves echoed on the surface of the liquid mass stuck to his back before eight tentacle-like appendages shot from behind his back.
Deep Sea Arms was a retooled Eight Tentacles, unofficially elevated from its D-rank origins to C-rank through the use of shape and nature manipulation. The longer and thicker tentacles had a deep ocean colour due to the increased density of water in the nature chakra of the tentacle's body.
One of the tentacles dipped into a weapons pouch and sucked up a row of shuriken. They lined up uniformly in their length as mini-rotating currents began to spin them to a high rotational velocity.
As he caught up, the tentacle came out of hiding, aimed its tip at her, and shot the spinning shuriken like a squid's surprise ink. Though she was watching the tentacles vigilantly, she wasn't expecting the shuriken. Even with her speed and nimbleness, she didn't manage to deflect or dodge all of them—three grazed her, drawing her blood.
Not much damage, but they caught her off guard.
Dirt beneath his feet exploded as he zapped forward and invaded the melee range in a split second. His augmented fist connected with her arm guard. She flew back, and each time her feet connected with the ground, she would bounce off the ground, hopping on the ground like a skipping stone until she finally gained enough grip to stop herself when she saw tentacles push him into the sky.
He weaved hand seals before pushing his hand into one of the tentacles to take out a globe of water in his palm.
She was still feeling the effects of the augmented punch and couldn't weave hand seals when he landed near her and fired two bullets from the floating water globe. Her eyes widened as it took everything in that moment to move at a blazing fast speed to dodge the bullets. Two more bullets burst up the dirt near her feet when she barely stepped back to protect her legs.
Her attention sharpened as she watched. His body and feet pointed to the right, so she moved to the left—only for the tentacles to push him to the left, reducing the space between them. She seemed to teleport as she dodged the bullets, but the gap by which she evaded them shortened with each successive shot.
On the other hand, his feet were no longer on the ground as the tentacles moved like a spider's legs. He was slower than if he were on his feet, but his movements were inhuman, catching her off guard.
Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu
Water Release: Wild Water Wave
The two C-rank ninjutsu of opposites clashed. The resulting gust of hot steam blew over her side. He took advantage and rushed forward. She was ready. The cloth fabric shot forward, aimed at his leg, but a tentacle intercepted. With it entirely made of water, there was nothing to grab, and it slipped out, only for him to clutch it and pull on her. The tug barely did anything as she let the silk slack, but it stopped her for a second, allowing him to close the distance between them.
The length of the tentacles abruptly changed as they stretched out, their wet tips lashing at her limbs and torso like a frog's tongue. Then, almost instantly, the water thickened, ensnaring her tight and reeling her in. Their grip didn't last more than a second before she ripped them apart—but they kept her occupied just long enough.
Her eyes widened when she saw him flying towards her, feet first. She barely managed to cross her arms over her chest as the augmented kick smashed into her.
The next second, she was in another part of the training field.
Izumi managed to stay on her feet for a moment until her legs gave out from under her, but forcefully held herself up, refusing to take a knee.
He rushed towards her with his tentacles floating behind her and grinned when he saw a grim expression on her face for the first time since the start. Come on, use it, he thought, charging his fist with chakra.
She pulled out a kunai in each hand and charged at him with a short yell.
They met in the middle, and immediately, the tentacles sprang at her. For a second, they latched onto her, but it seemed to be a trick of light, as the next moment, she was to the left, already found an opening. She slashed with her kunai, which ripped through his gear and left a skin-deep cut along his side.
The tentacles moved to cover while driving him away from her, but she was faster as she cut down a tentacle to create space to jam a kick just below where she had cut. Taken aback by her sudden burst of speed, he kicked the ground, sending dirt up, hoping to gain a second or two— only for a kunai to punch through the dirt.
He easily deflected it, but her cloth weapon untied itself from the kunai's loop and took a life of its own as it wrapped around his neck—he managed to get a hand in there—and pulled him down.
His tentacles kept him upright, but one of his feet touched the ground for extra balance. That's when she appeared from behind the dust, one of her legs halfway covered in fire, ignoring the tentacles that jabbed at her, and kicked him in the knee, collapsing his footing as the tentacles, working on his instinct, moved themselves between them, and only when he was falling, did he consciously move them to keep himself up.
The tentacles between them turned to shreds while she moved in, only to be hit by a Second Form augmentation. It was nowhere powerful, but she staggered back. The heavy augmented kick had done some damage that she had just pushed through.
"And that's three minutes. Break time."
As both of them moved away, completely focused on the other as they gathered themselves, Mikoto was suddenly there with a smile on her face, her voice snapping them out. But even then, it took a moment to shake free of the adrenaline.
The fourth round of sparring was over.
———
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Takuma gritted his teeth as he hobbled on one foot with his tentacles serving as support.
Despite the somewhat reversal at the end, the fourth round was undoubtedly his best performance. He found opportunities like he wanted to and capitalised on them to deal serious damage. The element of surprise had done some heavy lifting to give him an advantage, but he still had some more tricks up his sleeve.
But he'd failed to force out her sharingan for yet another round. He wasn't getting trounced as Mikoto claimed he would, but did that mean anything when Izumi wasn't bringing out the one thing everyone expected her to use?
Despite his confidence to keep it up in the next round, he didn't ignore the last bit of the fight. She had managed to break through, and he knew it was only going to get harder. He was stronger, but she was faster. He couldn't hit her if he couldn't catch her. If he were in her place, he would keep some distance, and he expected her to do so.
Ideas began to form in his mind on how he would respond if she used that strategy. Perhaps this was what Anko and Kurenai were talking about. Thinking about the possibilities and then testing them out to see if they worked.
"I'll start the minute when both of you get to your stuff. Go on, you can be slow if you want," Mikoto said as she urged them to move with a clap.
"Can I keep these on? Or do I need to start over?" he asked, pointing to the tentacles.
Mikoto hummed before looking over at Izumi to see if she was okay with it, but she was walking away with her head hung low, as though she hadn't heard a word. She gazed at her for a moment before turning to him.
"You should keep them on."
"Great, thank you."
As he allowed his tentacles to carry him to rest his leg, he missed how Mikoto had used 'should' instead of 'can'. It was a small thing that could've been a straightforward reply, but it seemed she meant something more because he got what he asked for in the fifth round.
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