So originally I had pre-typed a few chapters in case something got in the way. I'm really bad with commitment...and I'm still trying to figure out if I should participate in Nanowrimo and crank out a novel. It really isn't that much; I'm just too lazy...well whatever, I'll probably do it for the hell of it anyway.
But enough ranting, enjoy.
Midori Fujiwara
Kakashi still didn't like the idea that Anko believed the cursed seal's power should be valued. He still wanted to persuade her to seal it because its power was unstable. And not only that, she was harmed by utilizing its chakra as well.
He turned to Anko. "Anko…doesn't it hurt when you use the seal?" he asked directly.
After traveling for a few minutes, Anko couldn't believe this is what he wanted to talk about after all that time. And, he was bringing up a subject they had already argued over. Did he intend to try to persuade her to his reasoning again?
"Yes it does hurt, Kakashi," she replied nevertheless. But before Kakashi could say another word, she added, "but the power I'm granted is all worth it in the end."
Kakashi breathed in to utter a word, but thought better and kept his mouth shut. But he noticed that she was breathing rather heavily.
The curse mark demanded lots of energy as well.
Kakashi scanned the surroundings they were traveling through. They were extremely vulnerable to attack. Sure, the ANBU were taken care of—knocked unconscious—and Orochimaru's men were dead in Anko's rage, but that didn't mean there was no one else after them.
Kakashi was tiring himself, and Anko didn't seem to have too much energy left either. Kakashi had lost a decent amount in the injury Anko had given to him, and he'd physically need rest sooner or later.
What would just suck was if they got attacked at this particular moment.
Imagine Kakashi's luck when two shinobi suddenly appeared out of the brushes ahead of them.
They didn't even bother making a surprise entrance—completely confident that Kakashi and Anko would be capable of inflicting much damage.
Anko hissed, recognizing the smell of Orochimaru on their clothing, roped in the same manner of the Sound Country shinobi.
Both Anko and Kakashi could tell something seemed to be off with these two opponents; however, neither could put their finger on it.
Anko brushed her cautiousness off and whipped out two kunai, running her tongue along both to test the sharpness. Metal stung her tongue, and satisfied, Anko threw out a shower of needles with her other hand, coming in for an attack after her projectiles.
Kakashi didn't support Anko's recklessness, and so watched her fight, hoping to get some clue about the opponents, while setting a trap discreetly and replacing his form with a clone.
The two opponents gracefully dodged Anko's projectiles. Assuming they were distracted, Anko charged at one of them while her foot prepared to extended in order to block off the other.
But her kunai never hit her target.
Her kunai swished against some invisible barrier. She slashed at it, but could see nothing between her target and herself.
Yet an invisible barrier prevented her blades from tasting the enemy's blood. Anko slashed at the barrier quickly before retreating, nothing black liquid trailing behind the damage her kunai would have made.
Anko's eyes narrowed. What the hell was this?
She leapt back to meet up with Kakashi again, rather his clone, making sure not to set off any triggers of his trap.
The white-haired enemy laughed mockingly, turquoise eyes glinting with satisfaction. His companion had a bandage over both eyes, and Anko suddenly wondered how the second had dodged all her needles.
Were these two connected in some way?
"Are you done with your move yet?" the first one asked.
Anko grit her teeth, sneaking a glance at Kakashi's composure. He was tense, but his face was as calm and as stoic as ever. He hadn't even lifted his hitai-ate to check things out with his Sharingan yet.
Kakashi's eyes caught Anko's eyes and a speechless conversation took place between them within split-seconds. Anko looked back to the opponents.
She had to be careful not to push her chakra too hard. Otherwise she'd risk injuring Kakashi with the awakening of the curse seal, and Anko wanted to keep her words with meaning.
She created three shadow clones, and sent each one out on a different task. She herself made a few hand signs and had snakes extend from her sleeves, intending to capture the opponent and wipe the smirk off his face.
As expected, her clones were finished off, but that took his focus off just enough for her to be able to take hold of him.
His bandaged and apparently blind partner tried to prevent harm to his companion and quickly made his way over to stop Anko's capture, but set off a trap by stepping out of the perimeter that Kakashi had previously set.
The bandaged opponent blocked the incoming kunai with a swish of a large shuriken in front of him, and Kakashi took the opportunity to attack from underground, rising up underground behind the bandaged opponent and charging a bit of lightening through his punch.
But Kakashi was interrupted by the sensation of a sharp point against his back. He realized he was attacking a clone and whipped around to defend himself from any further harm.
The two had a good taijutsu combat, and Kakashi could figure out how the blind opponent could be so accurate, blocking each attack and landing his own perfectly. Unless the fabric around the opponent's eyes wasn't as opaque as it looked to be, or unless his companion shared vision with him…
"When you don't have sight…" the opponent explained. "You see so much more through your ears."
Kakashi decided to leave it at that. So his opponent had extremely sensitive hearing.
But Kakashi had other plans he could take and implement as well.
Anko, on the other hand, was successful in grabbing hold of her opponent.
Or so she though.
Her snakes simply passed through his body.
What? A genjutsu? A technique?
Anko furrowed her eyebrows. She had her snakes retreat back into her sleeves. First, some weird barrier and now a body that was like air! Was this an ultimate defense? She watched Kakashi struggle with his own opponent, flipping here and there for a match of taijutsu.
Anko decided that more than one person had to take care of either of these opponents. She had to help out Kakashi, but couldn't if her opponent was still concentrated on her.
If the opponent can't be attacked…
Anko set off her own trap, and a large barrier trapped her opponent into a cage of snake skin. She made sure her opponent was trapped within the cage before running over to help Kakashi.
However, once again she was blocked by some invisible barrier. Anko's teeth grit. What was this shield? Both opponents had it? And how…what exactly was it? How could either opponent even think of defending when they were directly under attack from two directions?
Anko clicked off some possibilities in her head.
But then Kakashi's clone was damaged and disappeared. She had no idea about Kakashi's true location, but she knew that she didn't want to deal with both of the opponents on her own.
What to do now?
Anko was grossly in thought trying to figure out what to do to counter their counters that she didn't notice the blind opponent about to attack her. It was too late for her by the time she noticed, and Anko felt blade bite her cheek, tasting her own blood.
Anko cursed and checked to see how the other opponent was doing. He still seemed like he was trapped in her snakeskin. So Anko could concentrate on the one in front of her. She made a few hand signs and let fire out of her lungs in a Fireball Technique.
Suddenly, her technique seemed very weak in comparison to what she was doing the last fight with the curse mark. The curse mark was itching to be used, telling her that with it she was capable of doing so much more…
But Anko resisted the urge to depend on a foreign source of power, choosing to fight on her own accord.
However, Anko was never good at close combat, and began to fall behind, unable to keep up with the fast movements of the enemy.
Anko's kunai was knocked out of her hand and she cursed, seeing the opponent's blade come down on her.
Then she noticed a blur come between them. Kakashi!
Kakashi took the blow with the metal plate of his glove and continued her fight.
"Anko!" he called. "There has to be another shinobi hidden that is making this fight harder than it's supposed to be with only two people. There has to be someone else. Find that third person!" he commanded to her, whispering quickly in her ears when she came up to the side of him.
She nodded and put a scroll down on the ground after processing a few hand signs. A hissing sound erupted from the ground. Anko had summoned her chakra tracker snakes, hoping they would lead to the nearby hidden enemy. In the meantime, Anko took care of the opponent she had trapped in snakeskin, surprised he hadn't tried to even escape.
She slowly stepped up to her prisoner, who still carried a smug smile on his face.
"And what are you so excited about?" Anko snarled, angry that her opponent was mocking her.
Her white-haired opponent just kept the smile in his face. Anko didn't waste anymore time. She would roast him inside the snakeskin and compress her body while the skin dried and tightened up.
After performing the mandatory hand signs, Anko hurled a large fireball in front of her. The smoke and heat cleared, but yet her opponent appeared unscathed and completely free of injury. He held the now shriveled snakeskin in his hands.
Anko got even more pissed.
But she related this incident to the one before. Excluding the invisible barrier she had bumped into a few times, her opponent's body didn't seem to have substance.
Rather than being solid material, her opponent's body had the qualities of air. Completely penetrable but unable to harm. Anko wondered if that meant he couldn't attack her physically as well.
In any case, even if he was a ghost, Anko sought to end his life again.
Her fire element jutsu didn't seem to have any effect on him, but the earth-style snake skin prison held him in. Unless he was acting, Anko assumed that earth –style jutsu would work best against him, or at least disable him.
Still, it bothered her that his body had no substance. She had made no scratch or mark on him, and he hadn't even took on the offensive side yet.
Unless…he didn't do offense, and his blind sidekick died.
Anko clapped her hands in front of her. She shaped her fingers into a sequence of hand signs and ended, putting her left hand against the ground. Nothing happened for a while, and then a vortex began to form, shifting leaves around and tossing loose branches up into a circle.
Her opponent clamped his jaw hard.
Anko smirked. Her "ghost" opponent had to have some weakness. He was just air? So let her push him around a bit.
Anko stepped out of her vortex's range, allowing the center to encase her opponent in a wall of superspeed air. She waited for her wind to pick up even further, until she could no longer see her enemy within the hurricane she created. Then she produced some more chakra and shot it out toward the center and the current snaked around until finally stabbing at her opponent. Anko forced another string of chakra. This was practically her last jutsu, it would take up the rest of the remaining chakra she had.
That meant it had to work, she couldn't just waste energy.
She added a little more chakra into the whole mess, and then, exhausted, released control of her wind-jutsu. This jutsu, she called, Viper Strike Vortex. Which was a little bit of the spiral Fireball Technique, some wind manipulation, and her own unique twist with serpents. It was new, and she had never used it in battle before, and, even during training, had never reached that extent in utilizing it.
Neither did she realize how much energy the jutsu would actually take until she almost tripped on herself, stepping backwards to observe what impact she made.
Winds sideswept and disappeared; what was left was nothing.
Anko's eyes widened. Don't tell her…the enemy had escaped and she had been attacking nothing the whole time?
"Shit," she cursed, and she glanced over to see how Kakashi was doing. Kakashi was well-occupied and she doubted he could handle becoming her back-up as well.
And he had mentioned there was another enemy lurking. Her summoned snakes hadn't found the extra shinobi yet…whoever was the third was pretty far away…or perhaps time hadn't been passing as quickly as she had thought.
A dead silence passed over and Anko returned her sight to the area where her opponent had once been.
"Nice technique…" a voice said, the enemy's no doubt. "But…"
Anko couldn't keep her mouth from dropping her jaw when she saw droplets of moisture suddenly come together and reform her opponent's body.
Anko cursed. A body that could reconfigure itself in the form of water droplets?
That's when she realized Kakashi's chakra affinity would be very advantageous—
"Moumoku! Formation, now!" her opponent commanded to his partner.
They had a plan, too? Shit!
Kakashi seemed fazed as well. Anko and him had an eye-conversation and agreed that working individually wasn't working well, but they had no choice because there were more than two enemies, one of which was hidden.
Within the moment Kakashi was paying attention, Moumoku, the blind enemy, kicked Kakashi's abdomen hard enough to throw him off his feet, about to land on Anko.
Anko put her arms in an X in front of her to block the impact for when Kakashi would come crashing down on her. However, she thought better of the situation. How to protect herself and not harm Kakashi? She doubted she could manage to carry his body weight and momentum.
But that didn't matter anymore, because the opponent now stepped to Anko and kicked her up as well, sending her body toward Kakashi's.
They were using Anko's and Kakashi's own bodies against themselves!
The two hit each other, back to back, and crumpled to the ground, coughing, but standing up soon after.
Anko leaned on Kakashi's back. They exchanged some quick words, but were interrupted upon noticing Anko's opponent create clones to surround the two in a perfect circle.
Anko noticed Moumoku on a tree branch overhead. "They're expecting us to go up to avoid his clone attacks," she said.
Kakashi did some quick thinking as the clones of the opponent came charging at them.
"Anko, press yourself against me!" Kakashi said, putting together a hand sign sequence.
She didn't ask any questions.
Then she heard the familiar sounds of Kakahsi's Chidori and saw powerful blue currents surround herself and him.
Genius, he had used Chidori as a defensive field, and the opponent seemed to be of water-elemental anyways.
After Kakashi's defensive measure, Anko and Kakashi checked their surroundings. But it seemed like the two opponents had disappeared.
Anko put her hands together, index fingers and middle fingers together and up. Her vision became conjoined with the vision of her previously released snake.
She noticed the other opponent Kakashi had suspected really did exist. She had out a paper and brush.
Long distance attack? Strategic plans?
Anko put down her hands to return to her normal sigh. She'd tell Kakashi later, because it was highly unlikely these opponents were done with them already.
She had guessed correctly.
The blind opponent came up from underground between them. Anko jumped up into the nearest tree, and Kakashi dodged to the side. The other enemy wasn't in range, but Anko decided to ignore the fact he was probably still lurking. She had to work with Kakashi to defeat one of the opponents.
Anko waited for an opening, and threw a network of shuriken onto the ground, setting up a capture net.
Then she released snakes from her sleeve, each snake looped independently, trying to catch the blind opponent. But despite not having vision, the opponent was swift—if not, swifter—as Kakashi.
Anko decided to throw herself in the taijutsu, and somersaulted down, landing a heel kick down to the opponent's outstretched arm.
Her kick actually hit the opponent, a nice change from the other opponent that she couldn't get her attack on.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed a sharp glint near Kakashi's face.
"Shit," Anko cursed, realizing that her water droplet opponent was the one camouflaging into the air behind them. She threw herself in front of the now-appearing sword to take Kakashi's attack on her arm.
Kakashi, understanding what was happening, pushed Anko to the side so that she didn't get harmed. He was about to guard himself with his protected gloves, but lost a second.
A deep slice went through his jaw up to his cheekbone.
Kakashi cursed, tasting his own blood.
He stepped back. Two opponents….
Anko threw a few projectiles at them, but some unseen barrier kept them from inflicting damage. She connected this to the opponent her snake had seen while she had shared vision. Perhaps with that brush and paper…she drew barriers?
"Hm," the water droplet opponent smirked. "You still haven't figured out anything."
Kakashi grit his teeth. So lightning wasn't an option. Kakashi knew that the blind opponent who used solely taijutsu should have been dealt with first, but the other enemy was annoying him a bit too much.
Kakashi had seen Anko's powerful wind jutsu, surprised at her ability, not expecting anything of that extent from her. It was probably a new jutsu she was modifying…but could she do it again?
"Anko, use wind-style," Kakashi suggested, and got ready for a water-based jutsu. Recalling his previous experience with the kekkai genkai of the combination of wind and water…
Anko hesitated and formed a few seals, winds starting around the two opponents. Kakashi combined her attack with the water dragon jutsu he had copied off Zabuza a few years ago, surprised his hands still remembered the sequence of hand signs.
The water dragon rose up from under the ground and charged into the torrent of wind around the two enemies.
Water and wind made ice.
They could at least attempt to manually recreate the kekkai genkai.
After all cleared, the two opponents appeared, frozen in a thin layer of frost. Oh well, full fledged ice couldn't be created without the hereditary power to do so…but even just a few crystals took care of the enemy of water droplets. That enemy was fully crystallized, and his blind partner looked discrouaged.
Anko gave Kakashi a quick smile, congradulating him on the feat, and rushed in to help him settle the battle with the blind opponent.
Precisely at that moment, Anko set her trap off, scooping their enemy into a tightly woven net. She smirked, having done something, but gawked when she realized the frozen water droplet was in the net instead of the targeted other one.
A…replacement jutsu?
Kakashi hurled kunai to release the frozen opponent, hoping that the gravity would be strong enough to shatter the opponent to bits upon hitting the ground.
However he didn't fall to the ground, instead, just hung mid-air.
Anko cursed. It was the manipulation of the latent opponent with the brush and paper.
Then they both cursed when the blind opponent landed on the same invisible ledge as his partner and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
"They'll be back…" Anko muttered.
Kakashi took a deep breath in. "Let's go find a place for rest."
Anko nodded, agreeing, and stepped up to catch up with Kakashi.
"You have new tricks up your sleeve," he stated simply.
"Of course," Anko replied. "I wasn't just eating dango all these years, you know."
Kakashi said nothing, but grimaced instead, putting his hand discreetly over his broken mask to wipe off some blood.
Anko couldn't help but feel aroused by the spilled blood. Damn her sensei…she now had physical bloodlust that he had taught to her when she still looked up to him. "You're hurt," she bluntly said, as matter of fact.
Kakashi looked as though he got ticked off for a moment. "I know."
Anko noticed a large overhanging tree branch. She pointed to it, suggesting it for the night.
Kakashi shrugged.
Anko's eyebrows furrowed. He didn't seem so much like his normal character at the moment. But she dismissed it, and laid herself along one end of the branch.
Kakashi took his seat against the trunk side of the branch and pulled out a canteen of water, pulling down his mask and pouring some water over his injury.
Anko gulped when seeing how serious the cut was, forgetting the fact that Kakashi had his full face exposed again.
Anko reached into her pocket and produced a tube of some balm that Tsunade had previously given her before Anko had left the village. It was to help prevent infection and quicken recovery time.
Anko would have to apply this to his arm gash as well.
"Here Kakashi, use this," she offered.
He studied the tube and opened it before trying some, applying some over his wound.
"No, idiot," she hissed. "You have to rub it in." Anko put her hand over to Kakashi's face to help with precisely what she said, and helped apply the excess to his arm wound.
Kakashi sat there, helpless for a while. She snatched the rest of the medicine and applied more to his arm.
"Thanks," he said a moment after she was through. He looked over at the horizon, past some branches, his face turning to the side and glinting in the moonlight.
This would be the second time, Anko thought. The second time she got to see his face.
She let her body lean closer to his a bit, her face approaching his. Her hand came up from behind her and slowly worked its way up his back to his neck…
"Anko? What the hell are you doing?" his eyes wildly shifted from her face to the weapons she had pointed at his neck.
Anko clapped her hands together into the sign of the tiger, Tora. Kakashi didn't appear to do anything to counter her upcoming fire jutsu so she let out a ball of fire, but didn't expect Kakashi to be harmed because of difference in speed.
He came up behind her and touched her shoulder, which she knocked off her. She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Don't touch me," she snarled.
"Anko, remember what I told you? Don't attack the comrade?" he asked with heavy sarcasm.
"Ah…so you've been following us for quite some time," Anko smirked.
"Ah…" he smiled in return. "So you do know…how did you figure out so quickly that I wasn't your comrade?"
"I just know," she insisted.
Then she got up close to his face, kunai blade hovering next to his body.
"Besides," she whispered, and dragging her kunai over her tongue before caressing his face with the point. "I saw your face. You're cute….but Kakashi's hot."
I don't know. I just ended it there. Hopefully the fight scene was comprehensible, and nothing too crazy. Feedback?
Midori Fujiwara