Muhehehe, gimme all the powerstones.
...
"Might Duy, I challenge you to a spar!"
Hidetada's voice rang out in the quiet, oppressive canopy of the forest. Duy turned to face him from where he was leaning against a knotted trunk, his brow lifting in surprise. "A pure Taijutsu spar," Hidetada continued, grounding himself. "No Ninjutsu or chakra will be used by me."
Duy's eyes became narrowed as he stared at him with a sharp gaze, "A challenge from the scion of the Senju! Hidetada-sama, you honor me with your burning desire for growth! To test one's mettle without the use of Chakra is the ultimate testament to the spirit! I accept with every fiber of my being!"
Standing up with a smirk, Hidetada raised both arms above his head for a deep stretch, "There are no rules, Duy. Anything goes. The person who taps out first loses."
Duy let out a boisterous, belly-deep laugh, punching his palm with a fist that sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil. "A battle between the two of us! Indeed it is going to be glorious! Let us spar in the sprintime of YOUTH!"
"Right, I forgot to mention," Hidetada added, his expression sharpening. "Make sure that you keep increasing the chakra pressure on the Gate of Opening while we are sparring."
With a flex of his muscles as he prepared for the spar, Might Duy nodded gratefully at the reminder before going back to loosening his muscles properly.
Stretching sideways with his arms folded, Hidetada prepped himself. To be entirely honest, he did not truly know the depths of Might Duy's prowess.
He returned his arms to his sides before loosening his hamstrings, watching the spandex-clad man bounce excitedly on his heels. Duy's true strength was a mystery; while he did not have the Eight Inner Gates active yet, his physical strength was no joke. He had spent his entire life in a state of near-torturous physical conditioning. During their race, Might Duy had kept up the pace with him while carrying immense weights wrapped around his ankles. In conclusion, it would be a great mistake to underestimate the man.
Looking around, Hidetada noted their surroundings as he jumped on his toes, testing his weight distribution. He was confident in his Taijutsu, but he was facing one of the village's most dedicated specialists and that was ignoring the fact that Duy had been training for a lot more years than he was born. Without chakra, the playing field was level, maybe even a little tilted in the Genin's favor.
"I am ready, Hidetada-sama!" Duy called out, his grin nearly splitting his face. "LET US FIGHT UNTIL OUR HEARTS SCREAM WITH TRIUMPH!"
Duy sank into his stance. He tucked one arm behind the small of his back while the other extended forward, fingers bladed and poised. His lead knee was slightly bent, the trailing leg stretched taut behind him, anchoring him to the soil. It was the same stance that he remembered Rock Lee had used as well. Every muscle was tensed yet vibrating with potential energy, ready to explode the moment Hidetada twitched.
Dropping his weight onto the balls of his feet, Hidetada slid his rear leg back. The friction carved a shallow groove into the dirt, sending a fine spray of dust swirling into the air.
He could feel it. The thrill of a good battle.
His heart began to drum a steady, heavy rhythm against his ribs, prepping his blood for the rush of combat. The background noise of the forest, the rustle of leaves, the distant calls of insects, faded into a dull hum. His world narrowed until it he was completely focused on the still of Might Duy.
Hidetada pulled his arms up, one lead and one guard. The Senju Taijutsu style, ingrained into his very muscles through repetition, flowed to the surface.
A sudden gust of wind whipped through the clearing, tugging at Hidetada's clothes and Duy's hair cut. For a few heartbeats, the silence was the only thing that reigned.
Then, Hidetada's foot snapped against the earth. He kicked a jagged rock into the air between them, "The fight begins the moment that stone touches the ground."
Their gazes locked as the rock reached the apex of its climb and began its inevitable descent. They ignored the stone itself, focusing instead on the micro-twitches of each other's muscles and the shifting of weight in their hips.
The rock was an inch from the dirt.
Both Hidetada and Duy bore matching, hungry grins. Their bodies were coiled like iron springs, ready to snap.
A dull, heavy thunk echoed as the stone hit the earth.
Hidetada moved first. He released the stored tension in his ankles, darting across the gap before the sound of the rock's impact had even faded. His figure blurred as he closed the distance. He twisted his hips, rotating his entire frame to put the weight of his momentum into a vicious hook aimed at Duy's jaw.
Duy's reaction was immediate. He simply leaned back, the fist whistling past his chin by a fraction of an inch as he shifted his weight to his rear leg. Using that backward momentum, Duy swung his lead leg upward in a devastating, high-velocity crescent kick aimed squarely at Hidetada's temple.
Predicting the counter, the Senju righted himself instantly, snapping his forearm up to intercept. A heavy thud rang out as the weight-laden shin impacted his bone with brutal force.
A sharp hiss escaped Hidetada's lips. His arm throbbed from the blunt trauma, but he didn't give Duy a chance to relax. He reached out, his fingers clamping like iron bands around Duy's ankle, and heaved. With a grunt, he launched the man toward the thickest oak in the vicinity.
Duy's back collided with the trunk with a sickening crack, the impact carving a deep indentation into the ancient bark. Hidetada was on him in an instant. He lunged forward, throwing a straight punch loaded with every ounce of his physical strength, aiming to end the spar right there as the man slid down the tree.
At the last millisecond, Duy rolled across the rough bark. His eyes were alight with a terrifying, ecstatic flame. Hidetada's fist buried itself into a massive, exposed root instead, shattering the timber into a spray of splinters and pulp.
Duy slid across the dirt to regain his foothold, then surged forward. He uncorked a lightning-fast jab aimed at Hidetada's temple, but the Senju heir dropped his weight forward, his face nearly skimming the dirt as the blow passed harmlessly overhead.
Just as Hidetada was about to faceplant, he planted his palms and transferred his momentum into a high kick. An echoing crack followed as his shinobi sandals struck Duy squarely in the solar plexus. Might Duy's eyes bulged, the air driven from his lungs in a sharp wheeze.
The force of the strike sent the man airborne. Hidetada, refusing to let up, flexed his legs and leaped after him. High in the air, he spun with predatory speed, driving a downward heel-kick into Duy's midsection.
The spandex-clad man plummeted. He hit the center of the clearing with enough force to kick up a thick, choking veil of dust that obscured the forest floor. Hidetada landed a few feet away, his breathing calm as his eyes fixed on the settling cloud.
A second of silence passed.
Then, a jagged, excited peal of laughter cut through the air. A gust of wind, generated by a sudden surge of physical movement, blew the dust away.
Might Duy was perched high on a branch, looking significantly worse for wear. His green spandex was shredded at the knees and elbows, stained dark with damp earth and the green smears of crushed moss. A thin trail of saliva leaked from the corner of his mouth, and his chest was bruised a deep purple beneath the cloth where the kick had landed. Yet, his energy was more intense than ever.
"It seems I underestimated you initially, Hidetada-sama! Forgive my arrogance!" Duy stopped laughing and reached down, pulling back the orange leg warmers to reveal heavy, leaden weights strapped to his shins. "You deserve to face me at my absolute peak, my Eternal Rival! Let the GLORIOUS SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH FINALLY BLOOM!"
Duy unwrapped the first weight and then the second. He stood straight on the branch, holding them out at arm's length.
Hidetada wondered just how heavy those slabs of metal would be. If the man could lift them so casually, surely they wouldn't weigh that much, right?
Without another word, Duy let them go.
Hidetada got his answer a second later.
The tumultuous roar of the weights impacting the ground echoed far beyond the Forest of Death, causing the birds to take flight in a panicked cloud for miles. In the village, people around the area paused, glancing toward the training grounds and wondering what kind of explosion had just occurred.
Huge chunks of dirt and stone were uprooted and launched into the air as the weights buried themselves deep into the bedrock. A massive, solid wall of dirt hung in the air for several seconds before gravity bought it back down.
Still standing high on his branch, Duy grinned down, his teeth flashing with a brilliance that felt predatory.
In his hands, he held another two weights.
It took Hidetada a moment to realise where he had pulled it from.
For the second time in a single minute, the sound of the earth shattering itself apart reached the village. Shinobi around the training grounds looked toward the forest with genuine concern, wondering what Jutsu a Jonin was practising inside the forest.
Meanwhile, staring at the craters and the now-weightless, blurring speed of the man above him, Hidetada Senju realized that he was sort of fucked.
Within a second, Might Duy was upon him, his wrist snapping out with a sharp crack to punch Hidetada in the face before he could react. His head snapped sharply to the side as the knuckles connected with his cheek.
Sliding his feet across the dirt to maintain his balance, the Senju barely managed to stay upright before the green blur was lashing out at him again with a brutal kick aimed directly at his ribs.
Getting launched into the hard earth was not a very fun experience.
The impact sent a jolt through his spine, but Duy, without giving even a second of respite, started his attack again like a man possessed. The air hissed as Duy's foot descended. Hidetada just managed to roll away in time, his skin grazing against the rough roots of an ancient tree, before he darted back to a safe corner of the clearing.
Even after taking that physical beating, a mad grin remained fixed on Hidetada's face. His eyes narrowed with focus as he stared at the blurring figure of the spandex-clad man. His heart beat even faster in his chest, a frantic drum in the silence of the forest, as adrenaline was pumped throughout his entire body.
A gust of air blew over the crown of his head where Might Duy's fist had just barely missed its mark because of Hidetada ducking down at the last millisecond. His leg muscles tensed until they felt like drawn bowstrings, and he launched a blistering uppercut right at Duy's face, only for the man to maneuver himself out of the way with an almost impossible mid-air twist.
Within a fraction of a second, another kick lashed out toward him. Dropping low to the ground to avoid the strike, Hidetada tried to sweep the man off his legs in a circular motion. Having predicted the move, Might Duy jumped up, soaring over the sweeping leg. Before he could land back on the ground, Hidetada snapped forward like a striking snake. His fist impacted Duy's open palm as the man managed to react in time to catch the blow. Jumping back with a powerful flex of his calves, the Green Beast managed to clear some area between them, his boots skidding through the thick mulch of the forest floor.
Without wasting a single second, Hidetada dashed forward toward him. Their limbs became a blurry mess of motion as they blocked, counterattacked, and dodged each other's punches and kicks. The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed through the Training Ground Forty-Four like a series of rapid-fire gunshots. Every block sent a vibration through their bones, and every near-miss left the air whistling in its wake.
Finally finding a breakthrough in the exchange, Duy managed to plant a firm kick against Hidetada's guard, shoving him away to create a wide space between them.
Letting out a heavy huff as he took a deep breath, the grin on both of their faces could not be wiped off. Their skin was slick with sweat, and the humidity of the Forest of Death clung to them like a second skin.
This was what Taijutsu was truly all about.
The academy teachers might say that the forms and katas were the essence of fighting, but Hidetada knew they would be wrong. At the highest level of a Taijutsu battle, the only thing that it truly came down to was your reaction time and raw instinct. No matter how many fighting styles you studied or how many scrolls you memorized, if your muscles could not twitch and react at a moment's notice, it was all a lost cause.
The intensity of the fight had actually made Hidetada wonder how Might Duy was not promoted to a Chunin or even a Jonin yet.
The man's speed and power were undeniable. But then he remembered the rigid structure of the village; to attain those higher ranks, a shinobi usually needed to demonstrate a mastery over at least one Chakra Nature along with other versatile techniques. These were the very things that Duy could not practice due to the inherent inability to mold his chakra into external forms.
Might Duy seemed to have finished his brief recovery and dashed forward once more, his orange leg warmers appearing as a bright streak against the dark moss of the trees. But Hidetada was prepared for anything that the man could throw at him now. This time, he did not give Duy time to react as he slipped under a heavy punch, the wind of the strike ruffling his hair. With his knees bent slightly to anchor his weight, he pushed the explosive energy from his legs through his torso and into his fist. His hand struck out toward the man's abdomen. With a solid crack, the blow connected, sending Duy flying backward several meters before he managed to dig his heels in and place his feet back on the ground.
Hidetada stood up straight, his chest moving as he took a calm deep breath into his lungs while wiping the trail of sweat that had formed on his forehead.
"Let's call it a draw."
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Word Count: 2528.