(6th of August, year 55 AK)
"Took you long enough." Hikari said with some annoyance in her voice as Yuta walked up to the participant's balcony.
"I was having fun, and you ruined it." Yuta replied with a bit of resentment in his voice, although he was just acting and he didn't feel any resentment at all, since when Hikari shouted before, Yuta was already about to end the fight anyway.
"You genjutsu users, it's so boring to watch you fight, nothing interesting were happening and then the fight is already over, where is fun in that?" Hikari said with a sense of superiority.
"You've got it all wrong. It's you taijutsu users who are boring. Strength and speed decide everything, the strongest one wins, there almost no intrigue in it, no complex tactics, no game in which the one ninja outplays the other through clever moves and by outsmarting the other."
"Humph, you still don't get it, do you?" Hikari said, "The strength is everything. You can't possibly outsmart and outplay someone who is much stronger than you. All your tricks won't save you in the face of overwhelming strength. You'll see one day. Maybe even today..."
...
"Well, you might be right, in the face of overwhelming strength all clever tricks and complex tactics are indeed useless." Yuta slowly said as he thought about it a bit deeper, "But in the face of overwhelming strength everything would be useless anyway, so what's the point even bringing it up? I might not be able to defeat an opponent that is overwhelmingly stronger than me, but I should do just fine against someone that is stronger than me by a moderate degree."
"Humph, whatever you say..." Hikari said dismissively as she turned away and looked into the arena instead.
'She is especially irritating today...' Yuta thought as he walked closer to the handrails of the balcony and looked into the arena as well, just in time to see how Itachi knocks down his opponent in an instant, the fight lasted only a second or so, if it's even appropriate to call it a fight.
"Saw that?" Hikari commented by his side, "That is how the overwhelming strength superiority looks like. If you were on that guy's place, you would've been knocked down just the same, no amount of tricks and clever tactics would've been able to change that."
"And your point is what exactly? Should I abandon my tricks now and confront my opponents in a direct clash instead?" Now Yuta started to get irritated for real this time.
"That is not what I meant." Hikari replied, no less irritated, "Forget it. Why do I even bother..."
...
Another fight started, this time a slow and boring one, and Yuta was standing leaning against the handrails as he was thinking with irritation about what Hikari said before.
'Sigh, what does she even want to say by that? I don't understand. Strength this, strength that, okay, I get it, overwhelming strength beats everything. But so what? If I'll figure out what Shisui meant back then, I would be able to beat Itachi as well, isn't that strength? What does she even know about strength anyway?' Yuta's thoughts were still filled with irritation. He felt like he lost the argument while being right, and that feeling had irritated him to no end.
A few more matches were concluded, both Itachi and Hikari had fought two fights each by now, although it was hard to call fights, both of them won their fights very quickly and efficiently.
And finally, the time came for Yuta to fight Hikari. When he was summoned to the arena, he walked down the stairs and approached the center of the arena where Hikari already stood as she jumped from the balcony directly. Yuta assumed that she was still irritated after their previous conversation and didn't want to walk together with him down the stairs.
As Yuta approached the center of the arena, he thought a bit nervously, 'Okay, calm down, I already thought a lot about the tactics for this fight. I don't know why she was being so overconfident before, but after everything I had prepared for this, I should be able to win this fight without too much problem even without my Shadow Chains. Mirage and Cloak will be more than enough, I'll slowly corner her through a dozen moves and then catch her with a one decisive strike, should work just fine...'
"Hikari, Yuta, ready?" The proctor asked as he looked at them, "Begin!" He signaled right away as he heard no objections and jumped out of the way.
As soon as the fight started, Hikari ran at Yuta with full speed while unsheathing her sword from her back.
'So fast...' Yuta thought while already preparing his Shadow Mirage genjutsu, while jumping slightly back to win a few more moments before she would get to him.
"Not fast enough." Yuta said calmly as he finished preparing the Shadow Mirage genjutsu and cast it through his voice on Hikari without using any hand seals. At that moment Hikari had already closed the two thirds of the distance between them.
Next instant Yuta multiplied in her vision into seven copies and each of Yutas quickly encircled Hikari while she stopped running and started looking around at multiple copies of Yuta in alert, adjusting her stance into defensive one.
"A new genjutsu, huh?" Hikari commented with a confident smirk.
Next instant all seven Yutas pulled out two shurikens each and thrown them at Hikari simultaneously. The trajectories of shurikens weren't random and all of them were cleverly interconnected to weave a net around Hikari with all escape routes firmly sealed, and there was also seven shurikens that were targeting her body, although neither of the seven were targeting any vital points.
As the Shurikens flew, Yuta was already preparing another Shadow Mirage jutsu, perfectly predicting what Hikari would do next.
Next instant Yuta sensed through his active genjutsu how Hikari's chakra flow suddenly stopped being suppressed by her own will, and Yuta said immediately, "It won't be that easy.", casting the second layer of his Shadow Mirage on top of the first one, timing it perfectly with Hikari's strong surge of chakra that followed and tore apart the first genjutsu, although the second layer of it connected perfectly with the tearing apart first one.
The genjutsu held on and wasn't dispelled.
'Sigh, so far it goes exactly how I imagined, although it won't be enough to corner her just like that...' Yuta thought.
Hikari, after realizing that her efforts weren't enough to dispel the genjutsu, she didn't panic, instead she jumped in the seemingly random direction, avoiding the majority of the shurikens. At the same time, she twisted her body flexibly, avoiding some of the shurikens, and quickly swung her sword a few times, deflecting the others in time, although that turned out to be just illusions.
Either way, she successfully escaped the trap. She moved right through one of Yuta's copies ignoring him completely, since the shurikens she tried to deflect came from this copy, confirming that this one was just an illusion all along.
Next instant she tried again to stop her chakra flow and to tear apart the genjutsu through an even stronger surge of her chakra.
"Not bad." She heard Yuta's calm voice in the process. She wasn't able to pinpoint Yuta's exact location through it, since it sounded as if it came from the wrong place where not a single Yuta was standing. Hikari realized that Yuta was tempering with sounds, so he wouldn't be detected through the sound of his own voice like that.
Next instant, as she turned around to face the seven Yutas, ready to launch an attack on the real one when the genjutsu dispels with her even stronger surge of chakra this time, next moment she saw how all seven Yutas disappeared at the same time, not a single one remained.
Immediately as she saw that, she released the handle of her sword and formed a hand seal, next instant she flickered and reappeared far away by the edge of the arena. Her sword slowly fell to the ground where she stood a moment ago.
'Well, I didn't expect it to be easy, but this? This is cheating!' Yuta thought as he watched with a bit of irritation how a bunch of his shurikens flew past the area where Hikari stood just a moment ago. He had thrown those shurikens after he casted his Shadow Cloak on Hikari to hide himself for this sneak attack follow-up. But Hikari just used Body Flicker jutsu to leave the area entirely, since she was able to recognize his Shadow Cloak jutsu the moment all seven Yutas disappeared at once.
Hikari knew about his Shadow Cloak jutsu so she knew what was going on and since for some reason she wasn't able to dispel Yuta's genjutsu right away, she just left the area and flickered far away, so she wasn't being in range for Yuta's sneak attacks any longer.
Next instant Yuta felt how his Shadow Cloak jutsu was being dispelled. He was still in range to layer another genjutsu in time through his voice if he were to shout, but since Hikari was far away now, he didn't cast it because he didn't have a decent follow up attack at this range and it would be a waste, so he allowed Hikari to slip from his genjutsu's grasp for the time being.
'Well, this might be a bit more complicated than I thought. But I still don't see anything special that Hikari might've prepared in advance for me and what was giving her so much confidence...' Yuta thought.
'Doesn't matter. Although she had slipped away from my multi step combination this time, I just have to account for the possibility of her using the Body Flicker jutsu like that next time. I just didn't expect her to run away like that, she doesn't seem the type to deploy such clever, efficient but a bit cowardly moves.'
'No matter, I'll still get her in the end.' Yuta thought as he readjusted his strategy in his mind.
--- AN ---
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