Hello all, welcome back!
Previously:
"Well, Jeremiah, everyone either has a clan name or some title to go with their given name. For example, your Jonin-sensei over there is Asuma Sarutobi. I'm Roshi of the Yoton, and Han is Han of the Futton." Han visibly looked irked by Roshi talking about him, his arms crossed angrily. "Let's give you a title now, too. It will probably change. You only use lightning jutsu and lightning chakra, right? I'll call you Jeremiah of the Raiton."
The doctors told us that we would have to stay for at least a week and a half. They barely had the civilian doctors to spare for my injured teammates, so they would have to heal through civilian practices for the most part. Medic nin would be popping in and out on occasion, to treat the Ino-Shika-Cho trio when possible, probably so that we could leave as soon as we could. It seemed that Iwa still harbored no love for Konoha, regardless of the very tenuous treaty the two villages share.
So Asuma and I were given a room in a hotel that seemed to at least tolerate us, and were given a training ground that was quarantined off from everywhere else in the village. So, I began going every day to do physical exercises and some katas that I remembered from some of the various styles I picked up while trying to create my own style, before I learned one of the many Anbu styles while training with Cat. It was a brutal taijutsu, which focused on overwhelming your opponent with misdirections and speed, forcing them to create an opening, before you landed several strikes before they knew what had happened. It was a polar opposite to the Goken that Maito Gai had mastered, which focused on forcing your opponent to create openings by beating the openings into them with superior speed and strength. Asuma recommended the misdirection through the training, saying that he didn't want to give Iwa any more knowledge on us than they already had.
So, the only real training that I did all week was intense physical activity with my weights on and slowly adding more and more weight as the week went on. That all ended rather abruptly on our seventh day in Iwa around noon. I was very slowly flowing through Tai-Chi katas when a kunai stuck into the dirt right next to my foot. I blinked slowly, as the tag on the kunai started to sizzle, before exploding forcefully, throwing up dirt and dust around it, and leaving a crater in the ground. I was saved from my leg getting blown off, by throwing myself off to the side right before the kunai exploded, rolling and coming up on one knee. Dashing off away from the crater, I pulled my weights off, dropping them onto the ground, my legs tensing and twitching slightly as I ran lightning chakra through them, waiting for my attacker to reveal themselves.
My patience was shortly rewarded, my opponent dropping down into the cloud of dust, a long brown cloak, hood pulled up, obscured everything physical about my opponent, barring the height, which, as best as I could tell, was an inch or two at most shorter than I was. I very slowly drew my katana and held it in a reverse grip. Blue lightning flashed as I shot across the ground, leaving small craters from my initial push-off. As I drew up to my opponent, I swung my sword forward, aiming for my opponent's neck. However, at the last possible moment, my opponent brought up two kunai to block my katana, and successfully redirecting the blow up and over their head. Using my momentum, I pushed chakra through my feet, spinning me around faster than the eye could follow. My opponent barely ducked under it as they flew through hand seals, and they sunk into the ground as the wind from my katana flying past pushed their hood off their heads. I was able to see a shock of black hair before they sunk under the ground.
Waiting on edge, it was barely a minute before I had to flip away from hands emerging from the ground, trying to grab my ankles. I landed and dashed forward as my opponent flew through hand seals again, my blade crackling with lightning. My gaze drifted up to my opponent's uncovered face as I ran, and my green eyes met startling pink eyes as Kurotsuchi smirked at my momentary distraction, and slammed her hands on the ground. The ground around her rapidly liquefied, superheated into lava which spread out around her much faster than any lava had a right to.
Reacting as quickly as possible, I did the only thing that came to mind, and threw my katana several metres in front of me, and used it as something to kick off of to turn around and run away. I paused for a short moment, looking regretfully at my katana as the lava swallowed it up, turning it into slag. I waited for the lava to cool, glaring angrily at Kurotsuchi from across her moat of liquid rock. Once enough hard patches formed, lightning chakra crackled through my legs, and I shot forward, using the patches as stepping stones. As I reached her, I dropped down, sliding forward to take her legs out, forcing her to jump. My hand shot up, grabbing her ankle, and swinging her down against the ground as hard as I could. While she was dazed, I tried to flip around, and hammer kick her in her stomach. Kurotsuchi rolled out from under it, my ankle slamming against the ground. I popped back up to my feet, taking a couple steps back to reassess my opponent. Clearly she was much more talented than I had originally thought, though she clearly had underestimated me in the forest. The majority of her skill seemed to lie in her skill with her ninjutsu, clearly capable of using Fire, Earth, and Lava manipulation, all of which mostly focused on large scale destructive jutsu. I threw a kunai directly at her, immediately following it. When she deflected the kunai, I blinked behind her, pulling my right arm back, and launching it forward, trying to hit her in the back of her head, and succeeding, sending her rolling away across the black igneous rock. However, as she was rolling away, she flashed through hand seals in a display of ninjutsu skill and discipline that I could not match. As she was rolling, she managed to right herself, and slam her hands on the ground as she slid farther away from me, her momentum carrying her a few meters back.
I tensed to shoot forward again, only to slowly let all the tension out of my muscles when large spikes, easily several feet taller than me, erupted from the ground around Kurotsuchi, forcing me to back up several meters to keep from getting impaled. The various concentric circles of her spikes then started to rotate, all going different speeds, and some going opposite directions from others. I watched the jutsu with wide eyes, trying to discern a pattern from the seemingly orderless chaos.
"Why did you attack me Kurotsuchi?" I asked, stalling for time, but also genuinely interested as several possible reasons popped into my head. A plan was slowly starting to form itself in my head, considering multiple possible approaches.
"You embarrassed me. I underestimated you, and you beat me with little difficulty, even after defeating my comrade. I cannot let that hang on my shoulders. I could not stand the looks my grandfather was giving me, knowing that he was disappointed in me for losing so easily to some like Konoha ninja who plays at being a member of Anbu!" She was screaming at me by the end, her eyes filled with rage, as she made a single handsign, and the spikes of rock exploded, sending chunks of rock away from her in all directions as she screamed. Tensing, I brought my hands up, lightning flickering through my arms and legs. The wall of dust and rock reached me barely a heartbeat later, and I found myself ducking and dodging for my life. Any rocks I couldn't dodge were kicked or punched, and vaporized by a release of lightning chakra. However, I was only able to keep it up for a couple seconds before the dust got into my eyes, forcing me to close my eyes, and bring my arms up in front of my face and around my head to protect it from flying debris, dropping to the ground quickly.
I could feel the small rocks and pieces of dirt making innumerable small cuts all over my arms, torso, and legs, and felt more than a few larger pieces of rock hit me somewhere with bone bending force at the least, although it was hard to tell if any bones had been broken at the moment. The explosion couldn't have lasted more than twenty seconds, and yet, it felt like an eternity. When it ended, I jumped up, bleeding from my cuts, and staggering slightly from ribs that had definitely been cracked. Nonetheless, I raised my hands, fully prepared to continue the fight, when I saw that Kurotsuchi, while slumping with fatigue, had already finished more hand seals and was locked in a snake seal, as two large slabs of rock rose up on either side of me.
"If you make another move, Anbu wannabe, I will sandwich you between stone." She said, menacingly, glaring at me with her pink eyes that seemed to suck me into them. I very slowly lowered my hands, pulling my mask off my face slowly, and just stood there, staring back at her unemotionally, looking her up and down very slowly before I took a step forward. "Stop moving, you bastard! I'll kill you!" I very slowly took another step, and another, and another, before I stood right in front of her, and smiled dangerously.
"You don't have enough chakra to do that. You're straining yourself past your limits just to keep those slabs up." I then took a step backwards, my smile dropping as my shoulders slumped with fatigue, holding a hand up to my face, watching it tremble. "For that matter, I'm surprising myself just by continuing to stand." I lowered my hand and a genuine, though tired, smile crept across my face. Out of nowhere, a fist slammed into my face, whipping my head to the right. I slowly brought my head back around, massaging my my neck slowly and sheepishly.
"I still hate you, you bastard." Was the last thing that Kurotsuchi said to me before she walked off, face clouded with rage as she glanced back several times, her gait closer to a stumble than a walk as a result of her fatigue. When I was sure that she had left, I sat down heavily on the ground, grunting in pain as my ribs protested my movements. I very slowly lay down on my back, my arms wrapped around my midsection to cushion my ribs. I lay that way for a long while until Asuma showed up to make sure I wasn't dead. He was able to use his fairly limited knowledge of medical ninjutsu to patch my ribs up, since they weren't injured much, although one rib had a crack that took him several minutes to fix. By the end, my ribs still ached, but I could at least move, and my ribs should be fine after a day or two of rest.
Asuma and I went back to our hotel room, and spent five more days there before team Ten was released, and we were allowed to leave. We left the day after their release from the hospital, escorted to our exit by Han and Kurotsuchi's genin team. We left on the side of the village opposite where we originally came in, so many days ago. I couldn't help but notice the looks that Kurotsuchi sent me the entire team, though no one on their team said anything to mine. Her glances seemed filled with conflicting emotions, though I don't pretend to be able to read people I barely know, especially just by analyzing their glances. She was angry, obviously, but she also had another emotion present. It was close to admiration, but not quite. Perhaps respect? But that would require her to respect not only a Konoha ninja, but a 'wanna-be-Anbu'.
As we were leaving, the Tsuchikage stopped us as Chouji opened the door, and pointedly got Asuma's attention. "Tell that old bastard of a father you have that Iwa will be sending a team to the Chunin exams this year." He smiled evilly at me as he told Asuma this. Asuma, obviously taken aback by the Tsuchikage's declaration, simply nodded before he ushered the four of us out of the office and led us to the side of the mountain range opposite where we had entered, where we waited while a couple of Iwa shinobi opened a hole in the mountain for us to walk through.
We hurried through, and continued on our journey towards Iron country. While we were going at a fairly quick clip, we experienced little obstacles, the most dangerous encounter we had being an overzealous wolf who had clearly lost his pack. A quick slap across the muzzle from Chouji sent the wolf scurrying off into the the mountains and hills. We traveled west for roughly two days before we finally slowed down. Asuma signalled to us, and we all came to a halt for a moment before we started forward again at a much more leisurely pace, barely above a quick jog.
About an hour after we slowed down, I started to see shadows darting between the boulders that had become more and more plentiful as we approached the border of Earth Country. A chill started to settle into the air as we got closer and closer to the seemingly perpetually cold Iron Country, forcing us all to don heavier travelling cloaks to ward off the cold. It wasn't long after we put on our cloaks that the bandits decided to attack. They jumped out of the bushes around us, easily twenty, possibly even thirty of them, all rushing at us recklessly with no obvious patterns or plan of attack behind their assault. Of course, our response was to immediately counter-engage them, Asuma, Chouji and I rushing forward to them, as Ino and Shikamaru both stayed back, flipping through hand seals.
Right before we reached the bandits, one of them stiffened suddenly, before taking the kanabo in his hand, and brutally slamming it into the back of one of his fellow bandit's heads, dropping him instantly. Moments later, a group of about five bandits all stopped dead in their tracks. A cursory glance downward saw that their shadows had all linked. Chouji raised his hand as it grew to startling proportions before slamming his hand down on the group as the shadows all slithered back to their owners, heartbeats before they were all crushed to death. The traitorous bandit continued to swing about himself wildly with his club, smacking any and every bandit within reach, before he slumped suddenly, straightening back up as another bandit separated his head from his shoulders with a very chipped and battle hardened katana. Asuma was easily taking on half the bandits himself, killing a bandit with every swipe of his knuckle knives.
I disgusted myself. I blinked around ten of them, killing them all with a kunai before they even had a moment to react. Ten men. All dead in what, to them, was hardly more than a second, but to me, felt like a minute, easily, the combination of Shunshin and adrenaline speeding up all my senses, seeming to slow down time. I stood quietly behind the men, watching as their stunned eyes looked up to the sky, open wide in surprise as their crimson blood stained the snow underneath them, as the beads of crimson slid down the edge of my kunai to fall down and stain more snow red, as disgust seeped deep into my soul to stain it forever the color of blood-stained snow.