"So there's no chance I could talk you out of this?" Hari asked, clinging to a faint hope that he could talk a battle freak out of a battle.
"I don't like it when someone tries to trick me." She growled, yet continued grinning. "I like it even less when it works. So I'm gonna give you a beat down, find your friends, give them a beat down and steal all your tokens. But don't worry. As long as you held up your end of the deal I won't kill any of you... Probably."
"I'll take that rambling speech as a 'no', then." Hari muttered, forming a rat seal to perform the Nara signature technique, his shadow stretching out in front of him in an attempt to latch on to the kunoichi's own. The girl was not stupid, however, and dodged to the side. The shadow followed her so she moved again, circling around a tree before climbing it using chakra.
"You think shadows aren't cast on trees?" Hari asked rhetorically as he directed his shadow up the tree Kurotsuchi had walked up.
"That technique is really annoying, you know that?" She grunted, watching the shadow move closer. At the last second she moved around the tree to face Hari and launched herself at him, moving through some quick handseals. "Doton: Kengan (Earth Release: Stone Fist)!" Stone began forming over her wrist, then palm, then fingers to create a stone gauntlet around her own clenched fist. The momentum of her charge plus the strength of her arm plus the weight and toughness of stone plus the intent to pulverise the annoying prick meant she could end this fight in one strike.
Hari meanwhile, had released the shadow technique as soon as Kurotsuchi had left the tree, retrieving a set of senbon by the time Kurotsuchi had finished her technique. Four were sent her way in pairs. The first two she managed to dodge with a flailing midair movement, a third she blocked with her stone fist. The fourth...
"Ah!" She involuntarily shrieked as a three inch lance of metal pierced the flesh of her foot.
But she had suffered worse, and she would fully pay him back for it by cracking his skull open. Landing on her good leg, she immediately pushed off with it to bring herself within melee range and brought ten pounds of solid stone onto the Leaf bastard's head.
The sound of wood shattering to pieces met her ears and looking at her where her target had been she saw nothing but wood chips. Both feet hit the ground, causing her to stumble and allow several more senbon to pass overhead.
She allowed her stone fist to disintegrate and crumble to the ground leaving both hands free. Grimacing, Kurotsuchi ripped the needle out of her foot suppressing any instinct to cry out at the pain. Turning, she threw the bloody needle in the direction the others came from.
Hari, in his surprise that she would do such a thing, forgot to dodge and got one of his own weapons lodged in his torso for the failure. It hadn't hit anything vital and he could probably leave it there without much fear.
The Rock kunoichi's wound on the other hand (or foot, rather), was bleeding freely and no matter how capable she was at ignoring pain it would hamper her movements.
"Man." She breathed heavily. "I was just trying to feel you out, see what kind of fighter you were. You don't fuck around, do you?" She laughed awkwardly.
"Are you done?" Hari asked very much hoping she was.
Her laughter stopped. "Am I done?" She growled. "What kind of ninja do you think I am?! You think one little flesh would is enough to get me running home to Mommy?!" Faster than Hari could follow she moved through over a dozen handseals and slammed her hands on the ground. "Doton: Doro Engo (Earth Release: Mud Pit)!"
Hari's reaction was a second too late. By the time he realised what she was trying to do his feet were already sinking into seven feet of low density mud, his head dunking slightly under before he started to tread water... so to speak.
Kurotsuchi still wasn't done. "Doton: Daichi Kara (Earth Release: Solid Earth Shell)!" The earth itself formed a solid shell over the top of the pit, leaving just enough space to hold Hari's head in place, restricting his movements.
'Okay... This just turned into a bad situation.' Hari decided, trying to think of a way out of his predicament and finding... nothing. It was hard to move in the mud and the shell that had covered the pit was solid. It was a well named technique, really. He couldn't move to dig his way out because of the shell keeping him in place. And obviously hand seals were out. With no options left, Hari let out a short whistle.
"You think I'm so weak I'd stop after one lucky shot?! Ask me if I'm done when you're being boiled alive! Katon: Kasai Nagare (Fire Release: Fire Stream)!" The Rock kunoichi inhaled deeply before releasing a stream of fire directly onto the shell she had created. She wasn't interested in killing the Leaf nin anymore. She wanted him to suffer for the insult he dealt her.
"CAW! FEATHER STRIKE!" Sounded from above before a rain of small objects slammed into the shell with a surprising amount of force. It was enough to fracture it, giving Hari the chance to force his way out, deliberately sending shrapnel in the direction of the surprised Kurotsuchi.
Choking slightly due to the premature ending of her fire technique, Kurotsuchi was struggling to understand what had just happened before coming to the obvious conclusion. No longer on her one-track mind of crushing her opponent, she looked up to try to pick out her opponent's accomplice. High up in the trees was a rather large, black bird. Some sort of crow or raven. 'I guess that answers whether he has chakra exhaustion.' She thought before her body moved on its own, hunching and moving as though breathing heavily. Her eyes darted about to try to understand what was happening when she spied a mud-soaked Hari, moving very similarly to her.
Identically to her, in fact.
"Kagemane..." Hari began, breathing heavily from the exertion of scrambling out of the mud pit, "successful. You tried to boil me alive." he accused.
"You said I was weak!" Kurotsuchi retorted as though it was equally horrible.
"No. I didn't. I asked if you were done attacking me because I have more important things to do than fight you. Thankfully, the fight is over now anyway."
"Tch! Like hell!" She snapped, trying to force her body to move. "You can't hold me in this technique forever and-" She stopped abruptly as she noticed he was walking backwards. And so was she. "What are you-?"
"Sweet dreams, Bright-Eyes." Hari told her before jerking his head backwards.
Kurotsuchi imitated the movement, slamming her own skull into the tree behind her. She collapsed bonelessly.
Hari sighed, and allowed himself to properly relax for the first time in seven hours. He was tired but thankfully the fight itself had taken very little chakra. He wasn't in danger of backlash yet.
Kuu flew down from out of the trees and landed on Hari's head, immediately pecking at it.
"Ow." Hari said, no feeling behind it. Kuu had grown quickly as far as Hari was concerned. The little crow had gone from a few inches tall to slightly larger than an adult crow in only a few months. It would still be a few years before he was a similar size to the great ravens he had met but the progress was promising. Hari's familiar was now big enough that his head would bow whenever Kuu decided to perch on it, which was often.
"You look like a swamp monster." Kuu told him.
Looking down at himself, Hari silently agreed. He was absolutely covered in mud from the neck down. He would need to wash somewhere before heading back to camp or he'd leave a trail. "Did you see where Kotetsu went?" Hari asked the bird.
"Back to camp, it looked like." Kuu answered.
Not a bad move as far as Hari was concerned. Iruka wasn't the best fighter and could use someone watching his back.
Hari wasn't aware there was a slightly more malicious intent to it. Something along the lines of 'let Hari fight the crazy Rock lady this time. Asshole.'
"Well. Unconscious opponent. Seems like a waste to not check to see if she has a token." Hari decided, moving to search the collapsed kunoichi, eventually finding what he was looking for. It was the 41 token. Kotetsu's target. Go figure. "You're welcome, Kotetsu." Hari muttered before heading out to maybe find a stream or something to wash in. If not, he'd use the ocean. "Kuu, could you go tell whatever Rock guys are back there where Kurotsuchi is?" Hari requested.
"Didn't she try to boil you." Kuu asked deadpan.
"I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it." Hari answered reasonably... in his opinion at least.
-(-)-
It didn't take long for the burly, armoured Rock nin and the medic to find Kurotsuchi's unconscious form. The medic immediately got to work, first healing what he could of her foot before rousing her from her state. "Kurotsuchi-san? Can you hear me?" The medic asked her patiently.
"M-huh?" She asked, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
The Rock kunoichi squinted in his direction before grunting. "One. And fuck you too."
The medic smiled slightly. "She's fine."
"What happened?" The armoured ninja asked flatly.
She recalled the fight as the last thing she remembered. "Looks like the Nara doesn't have chakra exhaustion. Not if he could summon again."
The medic paled. "He summoned another of those giant crows?!"
Kurotsuchi shook her head and immediately regretted it. "Not a big one. Normal size. I caught the Nara in a mud trap but the bird broke him out. I got too focused on the bird and he caught me in that stupid shadow trap thingy they do. Knocked me out, I guess."
"Caught him in a mud trap?" The medic asked, looking at Kurotsuchi's clothes and seeing mud stains all over them.
"Where is your token?" The armoured nin asked her.
She tilted her head quizzically at him before her eyes widened. She took off her right sandal and found the space she had cut out to store her token was empty and covered in mud stains. "I'm gonna kill him." She vowed. It was then she noticed that wasn't the only place with the stains. It seemed she had perhaps hidden the token too well as her assailant had clearly had to spend a great amount of time searching her clothes for it.
Then she found the handprint under her shirt.
-(-)-
"It was an accident!" Hari insisted to Kuu who still refused to believe him.
"Suuuure it was. Pretty kunoichi completely at your mercy and you just happen to accidentally grope her chest. Yeah. Perfectly reasonable thing to happen."
"Mud is slippery, okay?! I was searching her pockets and you sometimes hear stuff about girls sometimes hide stuff... in there, you know? And I wasn't finding it anywhere else so I thought maybe there! And so I lifted her shirt a little to check... there and... and my hand slipped."
"Right onto her breast?" Kuu asked deadpan. Honestly the bird didn't understand or care about this weird fixation humans had on breasts but this made his summoner flustered. So it was good entertainment in his opinion.
"Yes! It was a complete accident! I took my hand off right away!" 'And memorised the feeling as much as I could.' He added silently.
"Well I hope she accepts your explanation the next time you meet." Kuu said, only half-sincerely. It would be more entertainment for him after all.
"What are you talking about? How would she know?" Hari asked before his tone turned accusatory. "You're not going to tell her just to mess with me, are you?"
"I won't need to. Did you forget you were covered in mud when you 'accidentally' fondled her?" Kuu asked innocently.
"I-" Hari cut himself off once he actually processed Kuu's question. He had been covered in mud. And mud leaves behind marks. He had seen them on her clothing but he had backed off so quickly after his 'slip' that he hadn't seen if there were any under them. "Oh. Balls."
"Yep. Savour every moment you have with them. I think you'll be losing them soon." Kuu nodded sagely.
-(-)-
A/N: ERMAGERD! Another chapter finished the day after the last one! What is happening to me!
Well, fight scene finished as promised. Surprised I actually delivered one rather than finding some lame way out of having to write it. So Kurotsuchi could have done this fight better, definitely. If she had stuck with her original plan of going up she could have kept switching trees and made the shadow technique worthless. But she's too much of a head-on fighter for that. She'll either go straight for you or set traps to hold you still so she can go straight for you. Further, if she had actually managed to close to melee range properly she would have had a massive advantage because Hari kind of sucks close up.
Hari, meanwhile, is not used to blood knight/determinator tactics so was taken off balance when someone made their own injury worse to take a shot at him. And even more so when she misinterpreted his... admittedly condescending 'request' for her to stand down.
Kuu was summoned before the Leaf group reached the Rock hideout the first time. Having another set of eyes around was imperative. Not to mention some timely firepower/distractions should they become necessary (like they did here).
So we're done with Kurotsuchi for now. I had another plan for her during this exam that involved Hari but... probably better to save that particular event for the third round. Which means we're pretty much done with the second exam. Some minor events to do then we can end this shindig, ya dig?
… Sorry.
O! BLI! GA! TO! RY! PLUUUUUG! Fandom Flux Podcast! Go listen to it on Youtube! Let it enrich your life and your fanfiction writing skillz! Manga Reflux! Go listen to it on Youtube! Let its bitchiness about the two shittiest shonen manga currently running wash over you like a cleansing wave! … Also we do some LP stuff that we call Flux Play. They're pretty good too.
Thanks for reading!
UPDATE MAY 2016: Added the nickname that is probably going to be a thing now.