People were looking at him like he was an idiot and in the middle of the arena some generic jounin in totally boring old-school all-black ninja-wear complete with split-toe black booties and mask and hood was giving him the evil eye.
Izumo shoved him hard, hissing, "Iruka! It's you and the psycho-chick! Hello, idiot! Third part of the chuunin exam!"
Oh, right.
Iruka waved at the crowd, hopped up to the rail, jumped down to the fighting ground.
He wasn't really listening to the jounin's short speech about yielding or fights being stopped or killing being allowed but unnecessary killing being frowned upon.
Onizuka Iruka was still day-dreaming about the first time he'd seen Yuhi Tomoko's fabulous body. If only her daughter Kurenai wasn't such a butch girl, hiding her figure in baggy clothes as some kind of feminist rebellion against her totally super-feminine mother... On the other hand, good thing she didn't dress like her mother or Iruka would just have to hit on her and that would make things really, really awkward if Eikichi ever married Tomoko.
"Now, fight!"
While he was still kinda fuzzy and lost in memories, he was just fast enough that he did not get caught by the sudden violent attempts of his opponent to castrate him. He side-stepped, he twirled, he dodged kunai and slapped kicks aside and redirected punches away, and finally, after a particularly brutal exchange of close-in teai attacks and elbows, he tied up his foe's arms in a complicated lock, and she was snarling and spitting in his face, he finally, finally managed to shake his thoughts free from the glorious, hazy thoughts of those lovely thimbles poking through the light material of that amazing dress with the so-deep décolletage and the so-high slits up the sides and the little chains that made such little sounds when she moved.
"Oh, Flat-Chest! I'm fighting you?"
"Anko! My name is Anko, you asshole!"
She wrenched her arms loose and powered a knee towards his crotch.
He stopped it with a heavy-handed shoda that left a big palm-shaped bruise on her thigh, and hopped back, smiling. A man of normal strength could not stop a knee strike with a single hand, but Iruka was now Eikichi's heir, and the secret principles allowed for some very showy displays of sheer muscle power. No chakra needed at all, just power.
"Don't take it so personal, sheesh."
Now Anko, he really liked Anko. Ever since he'd given her that nickname when they were eleven, she had gone crazy trying to one-up him and, in the process, all that training had given her a pretty nice figure which she showed off with totally skimpy clothes. Nice muscles on her arms, not like the sticks on the wussy girly girls, strong hips and calves, a hard belly, and the pecs she got from doing all those push-ups lifted her boobs (which had finally started to grow in) out and up.
"In fact," he gently redirected an elbow that would have pulped his nose using a circular motion that dissipated the force, "your boobs are well on their way to being almost hot."
She screamed and tried a reverse cut with a knife she'd produced in her left hand. It would have gutted him like a fish, instead it cut his t-shirt open from sternum to belly.
"I SO hate you Onizuka!"
She front-kicked him then and so, hey, he front-kicked her too, and having longer legs, his kick was the one that landed, propelling her backwards.
Anko was way tougher than a pansy-ass like Mizuki though - she didn't even lose a beat as the breath exploded out of her from her abdomen being compressed by the impact of his boot.
Then with the fireballs. Oh, fireballs. Those hurt if they hit. Didn't matter how much muscle you had - fire burned.
He was dancing around them and the explosions from her explosive notes and the wires that were tied to her kunai that she was throwing everywhere and then there were the clouds of poisonous gases from packets of powders and stuff that she was igniting and spreading all over the place. The battlefield was getting really, really hazardous.
He supposed that he teased her a little too much. But she had just been too cute. She'd been all insecure and quiet once and look what he'd done for her! Some teasing and along the way she'd turned out extroverted, tough, violent and deadly sexy and sexily deadly! She'd grown out her short boy's cut into long dark hotness, wore low cut hot pants that showed off the top of her thongs and halter-tops that took a lot of skill to move in without losing during vigorous high-speed combat.
Iruka was downright proud of her. Just like him, Anko had come a long way.
Now, thousands of people up in the stands were watching them. Misfits, kids who had not had the benefit of ninja parentage.
He could hear them cheering and clapping and yelling.
They paused thirty feet apart, craters and gaseous clouds around and in between them. She was panting by then, and, keeping those blazing eyes on him, her fingers swept along her weapons-pouches, ticking off how many various implements of death she still had left.
Iruka ripped off what was left of his coat and shirt. What was it with the clothes destruction today? He had yet to see any kunoichi getting their clothes chopped or blasted off of them during either the second test or the first couple of matches. Heee hee. The day was young though. Nobody talked about it, but all the guys knew that half the reason so many civilians attended this part of the exam was the possibility of seeing half-naked ninja hotness.
He liked to imagine that he heard some girls gasping at the sight of his perfectly carved abs and square chest and his totally cut arms. Or... wait. Was that Anko?
"Look, I promise, I'll stop calling you that."
"Too late you, you total jerk-face! You've so gotta die!"
"Will you go out with me after this?"
She was spluttering and red and he was sure, utterly furious. And so, so cute.
Then she dropped the wrist weights and ankle weights and holy shit, when had she started with that little trick?
The audience gasped when she disappeared, and he was sure he did not imagine hearing that.
She was now moving faster than the civilians and about half of the ninja audience could see. Thunderous footsteps approaching from all directions. She was cutting at him and punching and kicking and trying all kinds of nasty tricks... well the same nasty tricks as before, but at double-speed.
"I really have to get Bro to talk to that Gai person," Iruka muttered as he pushed his own body harder and harder to defend against that relentless assault. He glowed with the effort as he flipped the switch in his mind and changed his breathing patterns to unleash his full physical potential.
That trick with the weights was just not healthy, putting such tremendous strain on the extremities of growing teens. It put stress on the joints and messed with your center of gravity, and you were never quite comfortable without the weights on because you spent so much time training with them on. There was a real risk of injuring yourself using that training method.
And it just was not necessary for real speed.
Of course, Iruka had the advantage of the secret principles of Eikichi's martial arts - tricks his Bro taught only to his very small inner circle of favored students. Heh, what a hoot it would be if some poor ninja shmuck made the mistake of picking on one of the five civilians in Konoha that were stronger and faster than nine-tenths of its jounin.
Anko was at about the limit of strength and speed a human could reach without opening the Celestial Gates or knowing the secret technique of Tenryu Kokyu Ho, reserved only for the few Bro considered worthy.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Anko was yelling as she tried alternating kicks to the body flowing into knees to the legs and then a short uppercut with the left followed by an elbow swinging in from the right. She could not find the range.
Every time she was sure she moved just close enough and all those successive high speed strikes missed or were gently pushed off-line and made to miss. Iruka would just subtly alter the distance between them faster than she could, getting just a bit too far out so a blow would come up short or coming in just slightly too close, robbing her attacks of the power of full extension and making it easier for him to stop them.
"Why can't I fucking hit you!"
Okay, now Iruka felt a bit bad. She had really pushed herself and he was maybe laying it on too thick. It must have been hell acquiring this kind of speed using the dumb-ass methods of that Gai moron. Day after day of training, pain that no one saw, and then at night when she finally took the weights off to give the body time to recover, sore muscles and worse, over-used chakra pathways from all the pushing it took just to keep her body moving normally with such drastic weight on it. He didn't want her to be discouraged... and he really didn't want to make her look inadequate. Big Bro would not approve.
A palm thrust to his chest made his ribs creak and then he was bouncing and rolling along the ground, propelled backwards fifty feet. There was thunder at the impact. His back left a permanent impression on the wall enclosing the fighting ground.
"Ouch."
He pulled himself out of the cracked concrete.
Anko was frowning and looking down at her hand. Right, she could tell that he'd let her hit him. Shit, now she'd be really upset. Sometimes, there was just no winning.
He pondered what the quickest way to end it would be. Without embarrassing her or hurting her too much.
Then he let out a breath as she raised her hand.
"I concede, examiner. I'm... I'm out of chakra. And out of bombs. And poison. And everything," and she sighed, head drooping as the audience clapped and they announced his victory.
Iruka walked up to her and raised her fist with his hand and they cheered louder.
"Don't look down, Flat-Chest. Be proud. You did great. They're going to make you chuunin."
"You really going to go on a date with me, Iruka? I bite."
But she did look up and the fire was back in her eyes. She brought her shoulders back and thrust her chest out and hoooo boy had she ever grown out of that nickname he'd inflicted on her.
He smiled.
"Lemme just take care of business in the next round. Then. Well, there's this dumpling place. Okay?"
She slugged him a really good one that left him bent over and coughing and gasping.
"Ask me again if you win it all, asswipe."
But she was smiling.
Oh shit... She wasn't supposed to say that. She was supposed to hate his guts. Was this a good way to begin a relationship? What if it was just lust and adrenaline? What if she didn't really like him? He'd better remember to have a talk with Bro about this some time during the one month training period before the last round.
Izumo and Kotetsu looked both a bit disgusted and a lot amused when he trudged back up to the participants' seating area. They hadn't made it past the preliminaries, but got to sit there because of their respective families' pull.
"Dude, I don't know if we're supposed to high-five you or console you or what. She has quite the rep, you know."
Well... of course, that was his fault too, Iruka acknowledged internally.
Then a shadow loomed over him, and a hand smacked him on the back with about twice the force that Anko had hit him with, leaving Iruka crumpled on the concrete and feeling demolished and breathless. The steel railing he had bounced off of was bent alarmingly now. And damn it... he couldn't breathe!
His bro was there in one of his typical white ensembles complete with blazer over the blue polo shirt and the red tie, and grinning like a madman.
"Mr. Employee! You got a date with such a hot chick! How come you never bring her by these days, huh?"
...Okay, maybe bro wasn't the best person to talk to about it. Iruka hoped he'd remember to ask Tomoko about it next time there was the opportunity, but he still got a bit stupid when she was around. How is it some women just got hotter as they got older?
Girls were such a mystery. Hopefully he'd be able to start breathing again so he wouldn't die embarrassingly from a congratulatory pat on the back and never have the chance to delve into the great mystery...
