Incident Three – Forceful Competition
Lightning Country – Undisclosed Encampment
Ninja Governed Territory
Concurrent with Manga Chapter 314
The contest had begun long before Saito gave the signal to start, each ninja carefully measuring the foe. Yadome stared deep into those crackling eyes, and took in all of Togawa behind them. She acknowledged the potency of that mask in doing so, it was a greatly useful tool, to hide one's eyes so completely, and to be able to use shifts of current to disorient anyone who tried to meet that gaze, a potent advantage, and one Yadome was sure could be turned to greater purposes.
The pudao sword was more obvious, but no less dangerous. A curved, almost hooked blade, and sharp on both sides it could be wielded either way, forehand to rip into a person, or backhand to slice open. Yadome was certain Togawa could switch between the methods with effortless ease.
She was at a disadvantage of course, facing the master ninja like this, in the open field. It was not the way to fight with a bow, and few of her techniques would be useful in this situation, but the deadly gaze was undaunted. This would be the perfect test, to try and master this situation, this disadvantage.
"Begin!" the strong voice of Saito cut through the dead air between the two ninja.
Togawa's eyes burst into a blinding flash of lightning the moment the battle began, robbing Yadome of vision instantly.
She was ready for this, had expected something of this nature. Togawa would try to close with her; he had to do so, so disorienting her was a logical first step.
Eyes closed Yadome relied on her other senses, an arrow coming effortlessly to her bow, as she listened to the shift in the air, and discerned the path the jounin would take.
Once, and then again, the bowstring snapped, hurling its darts through the low hanging air. Yadome leapt back as she did so, only now daring to open her eyes.
The deadly darts flew accurately, meeting Togawa's shifting path, but Yadome knew it would not be enough.
Without stopping, the jounin spun forward, his sword close to his side, shifting low and high with his motion, knocking both arrows away without losing speed, something he could not have done facing straight forward. When he came around again that hooked sword darted out to pierce toward Yadome. "Bourakurai!" A blast of lightning burst from the blast.
Had she still been on the ground it would have been all but impossible to evade that attack, given its suddenness, but Yadome had already leapt to the trees. Channeling her chakra, she spun herself around to hang upside down, launching an arrow back at Togawa even as the jounin's blast of lightning passed over her head.
There would be no pauses; Yadome knew now, no gaps or breaks, for her foe's skill was too great to allow the motion to cease, to cede the initiative to the archer. Channeling chakra carefully the sniper rotated herself around the tree branch and flipped backward.
Togawa had already rolled aside from her arrow and was advancing again.
As she zigzagged backward Yadome made an effort to disrupt her foe's still unceasing advance. Again and again she pulled back her bowstring, releasing with pinpoint accuracy at great speed. Twice a second she went launching forth arrows not of wood and metal, but formed of lightning.
A simple technique this, one any genin could learn, but no less effective for its simplicity. Though a lightning arrow had not the power to kill, its burning power penetrated armor and flowed through blocking weapons, and the bolts of electrical power, having no physical form to fight the air, moved ten times the speed of a normal arrow. At the very least Yadome believed she would force Togawa to halt his advance in this way.
Lightning eyes crackled and the cloudy voice burned with something distantly akin to laughter. The jounin's left hand lanced down his the arc of his blade, forming seals as he went. "Shizuruheijin," he hissed. Energy slashed down the hooked weapon, enveloping it in a sheath of charged power.
Flipping the pudau sword to his backhand Togawa effortlessly blocked arrow after arrow, and ate up ground toward Yadome even as she fell back before him.
Though her gambit had failed, Yadome spared no time for regret or panic, only considered new options. An archer is always faced with a thousand obstacles and must try and try until a way is found to overcome them all. Saito had taught them all this, though Yadome had long known it intuitively. Her eyes never left Saito's moving form, and in a moment she had read his advance, and knew an opportunity.
Yadome leapt backward and right, and for the merest fraction of a second a slender tree blocked the space between the two combatants. In that moment the bowstring was drawn back and snapped once again, her aim not at her antagonist, but at the tree before him. "Banrai no Ya!"
A great crack split the taut sound of the encampment as the mighty force of thunder burst upon that slender wood.
Young and supple, it was only a small tree, and had not the strength to stand against such an irrational assault. The trunk blasted apart, and the air was filled with wooden splinters.
Those wooden barbs filled the air about Togawa, but the jounin's reactions were frightfully swift and sure. Yadome watched in awe as his right foot slammed down in time with his normal stride, but with channeled chakra his whole body was thrown left, spinning a horizontal path through the air. His profile thus shifted away from the path of the deadly darts he bent his knees hard, so that the hardened armor covering them blocked all the improvised projectiles.
Yadome twisted her own motion and steadied herself to strike her foe with an arrow and end this the moment his profile straightened.
Only too late she realized that she should have made the shot no matter how difficult when she had the chance, for Togawa never straightened.
The jounin had gauged his enemy well; his left hand reached out above his head and grasped the trunk of a nearby tree. With a tremendous display of personal strength and use of chakra he slingshot around it, to come leaping back face front, his blade before him to knock Yadome's arrow aside.
They now held a position opposite each other much as they had when the match began, all the work by both for nothing.
"Well," Togawa murmured. "You're quick. But can you dodge this?"
Yadome knew he would try something dangerous when Togawa spoke, but she had to cede him the moment, for face front to him as she was there was no way to launch a sure attack, and she had no wish to waste precious chakra. Still, she moved the moment he made the first seal, dashing left, aiming for a nearby tree. If he left his guard drop for even a moment in invoking the jutsu she might be able to imitate her foes' own move and position herself behind him.
"Kyuuden," Togawa invoked his technique.
From the air around him six orbs of deadly jagged electrical power sprang to life. Even as Yadome hurled herself past Togawa, moving behind, they shifted into motion: seeking out her form with unerring accuracy.
Not limited by the constraints of physical motion, those balls of charge could traverse the air freely, and so they interposed an obstacle to any strike of hers, to say nothing of the direct danger they presented.
Still, they were only charge. Knowing this, it took only the infinitesimal time necessary for Yadome to draw an arrow to have a counter ready. She skidded to a stop then, and turned to face Togawa's position; her bow drawn and ready. Now was a moment for absolute confidence, the perfection of patience before destruction, completely mastery of the nerves, as the ball lightning closed in upon her. Yadome had to wait, needed them to compress together just enough.
There.
"Fudenki no Ya!" Yadome let the arrow go, electrical power enveloped it much as it had done the jounin's blade moments before, but this charge was of a different stripe. Counter to the power of those spheres of death it passed through them and pulled them all together.
The joint energies discharged with tremendous force, a shriek and flash of light that obscured all eyes, fighter and spectator alike.
Yadome did not move during the release of energy, knowing her foe could almost certainly still see, granted the power of his mask, and besides, staying stationary was surely not what he had expected.
When vision was restored Togawa had moved, but not far, just slightly to the side, enough angle to force a shift of the body should the lady sniper fire, and no more. However, his hands already passed through seals, his blade stuck into the ground before him.
"Hmm…" the veteran mused. "I can't seem to get to you, but perhaps its not necessary…" with the last seal complete even as Yadome sent an arrow flying at his face, Togawa grasped his blade, bringing it up to cleave her arrow clean in half, and then slamming it down to the earth again.
"Houwakaden no jutsu!"
The world tightened. Every hair on Yadome's body went stiff, and energy seemed to cling to every pore, all poised to release at the slightest disturbance.
With a cold realization Yadome understood what Togawa had done. He had covered the world in a layer of charge.
Lightning mask burned with blue fire and the pudao sword came free of the earth, coated in livid electrical energy once more. With all his impressive speed the jounin took up the blade and charged, the energy seemed only to gather to him with every step.
It was a complex maneuver, but Yadome figured it out quickly, for she had to. Should she touch anything the electrical power would surge into her, burning and blasting away her nerves. She could stand steady and shoot arrows of course, but Togawa's charged blade could block them easily, and he was somehow shielded from the effects of his own jutsu. The means, whatever it was Yadome did not know, did not matter, he had stolen her maneuverability in a stroke, a perfect way to change this battle and a classic ploy.
Her options limited Yadome considered for a sole, deadly second, and then grasped a plan.
She hurled her quiver into the air, spinning upward and releasing its arrows as it went.
Legs bent, the lady sniper gathered her chakra, let loose her left hand, and leapt.
She jumped upward in a spiral spin, one counter to the released arrows she had thrown before her. Again and again her hand grasped an arrow, fitted it to the bow, and fired, aiming at nothing but the earth beneath her. There was no time to watch the bolts as they released, only to trust instinct and endless training to form the correct pattern.
At the apex of Yadome's leap she struck her empty quiver, and her hands wrapped around the grip of her bow to make a single seal. "Motokadou no Jutsu!"
Chakra had been invested in each arrow as it was shot, chakra along with the energy behind each snap of the bowstring, and now it bent outward into bands of power, shearing whirling and howling energy, all harkening back to the center point: the grip of the bowstring from whence they came. The spiral pattern, shaped so carefully, bent those paths of energy around each other, forming a funnel, a deafening vortex of fury descending on fletched wings toward Togawa.
The jounin reacted without hesitation when he saw what Yadome had unleashed. He lashed his arm forward and hurled his sword, spinning, into the center of the vortex. "Houden!" he shouted over the roar of the jutsu.
All the gathered charge descended upon the blade in an instant, and then was released.
A massive eruption of power burst through the trees as a boulder falling into water from great height.
Yadome shut her eyes just in time, and was thrown back by terrible, overpowering force, as if the hands of the gods had tossed her. She whirled disoriented through the air, only to strike some distance away with enough force to drive all breath from her body. An audible crack accompanied this strike, the sound coming not from bone, but wood.
Through the pain Yadome gulped down air and her eyes snapped open, their blurred vision nevertheless focusing on the crackling orbs of Kazumasu Togawa's mask. The jounin was advancing. His sword was gone, but he held clenched fists ready.
Yadome did not need to see to know her bow had snapped, and she discarded it without even turning her head, reaching back instead to the pouch of thrown weapons she still carried. Her right hand grasped a pair of kunai and threw these forward, tracing toward the most obvious indicator, those terrible lightning eyes.
It was not a move designed to defeat her foe, kunai were slower in the air than arrows, and Togawa could surely dodge, but it should buy her a moment's time in order to evade his charge.
The kunai came straight toward Togawa, but the jounin did not pause, only opened his hands to reveal two shuriken held between clenched fingers. Yadome's darts were too well thrown for any but a Hyuuga to rip them from the air, and the veteran ninja did not even try, only reached out and let each pierce directly into the holes at the center of the shuriken, stopping them from touching his flesh and then throwing the wasted weapons away.
A sudden, final burst of speed and Togawa was before Yadome, she knew that this time she would not be able to evade, and she must find a counter, but she had no weapons of use. Or did she?
Hidden on the inside of Togawa's wrist was a slender blade, and now it flickered into his hand. Yadome tried to dodge, but he sidestepped her and brought the blade in.
"Got you!" the lightning eyes shined with satisfaction as the blade stopped an eyelash's width from Yadome's throat.
"Have you?" she asked casually, her own eyes passing downward.
Togawa's eyes could not be seen to move, but in a after a long moment of silence her stepped back slowly, having clearly noticed what Yadome had arranged. Her right arm held a shuriken to the broken top half of her bow, the powerfully corded wood bent well back, anchored by her right foot. If she released it the metal dart would be propelled with substantial force into the jounin's skull.
Sharp, punctuated laughter broke out in the clearing, drawing the spectators previously left behind by the destructive force of the cancelled jutsus.
"A draw then?" Togawa chuckled once more. "Impressive, very impressive." He put away the small blade he held, and Yadome, knowing the conclusion was reached, did so as well with her improvised weapon. She stood with her back against the tree that had stopped her still, not certain what happened next. This was the part she was never good at.
Slowly Togawa reached up as touched a hidden clasp on his helmet. The mask fell away from his face and his eyes were revealed in their true form even as he brought his face within inches of Yadome so no other could see.
The lady sniper could easily tell that Togawa did not need the mask to be intimidating. His face was crisscrossed by a trio of nasty little scars, and his visage was dark and grim.
"You have the skill to kill them," the jounin began. "I did not use all my tricks, but neither did you, and still, you could almost match me in this, your worst field. In the open I suspect I still win, though only barely in a life or death contest, but as the archer, you would destroy me." Somehow, it Togawa managed to speak those words without conceding anything at all to Yadome, and she wished she knew how he had done it. "Your chakra total is low, very few reach jounin with less," Togawa pointed out something Yadome had long known herself, her greatest weakness. "But it should not matter, your movements are flawless, you waste no energy, expend only the necessary power. I needed far more chakra to compete with you. I did not believe at first when the Raikage said he would send you against them, but now I do," again, with slow careful motions, Togawa replaced his mask, letting lightning envelop his dark eyes. "Do not disappoint me."
"Of course not, sir," Yadome answered, and managed the slightest of smiles.
"Hehe…good," Togawa turned about then and stepped aside, letting the Raikage and the Shinobi-Ite in to assess the contest at last.
Chapter Notes:
A Pudao is a broad-bladed, somewhat curved or hooked weapon of Chinese origin. Togawa's is sharpened on both sides, something normally not done.
Jutsu Names:
'Bourakurai' means 'Spinning Lightning Bolt'
'Shizuruheijin' means 'Sizzling Blade'
'Banrai no Ya' means 'Heavy Thunder Arrow'
'Kyuuden' means 'Ball Lightning'
'Fudenki no Ya' means 'Negative Charge Arrow'
'Houwakaden' means 'Saturation Charge'
'Motokadou' means 'Seeking Vortex'
'Houden' means 'Discharge'