THE DAY OF THE PARTY: THE SECOND FIGHT
The kunoichi gazed up at the moon, its light partly obscured by a lone cloud. Tenten sighed. She knew that was Akiko. Getting her to come down would be no problem, but getting her to hurry up would be impossible.
A drop of rain fell to the ground. Another followed, and Tenten took a step back. She pulled on several weapons and holsters and waited, still in a defensive crouch, relaxed but alert.
The rain continued to fall- but only in a circular patch a meter away from the Konoha kunoichi- but seemed to peculiarly stack up on top of the other drop that had previously fallen, instead of seeping into the ground. Tenten was soon staring at a pair of daintily placed stiletto clad feet made entirely out of water.
The kunoichi groaned. Akiko, before battles, would often prepare herself and calm whatever nerves she had by choosing a 'gorgeously sexy killer outfit' and deciding on an impressive entrance. These outfits and entrances were neither practical nor entirely appealing- she only wasted chakra in her admission to the battle and ruined her clothes, or what little there was to ruin, anyway.
The water droplets continued to rise but Tenten was slowly losing patience.
"Akiko," she said slowly, "if you want this fight to happen, hurry up already!"
"You," came the disembodied reply, "cannot rush perfection."
Tenten glanced at the water's progress in forming Akiko's body. She was presently staring at a pair of long legs wearing a miniskirt, accompanied (from what detail Tenten could make out) by fishnet stockings.
Tenten sighed and began twirling her kunai in her left hand, then switching to her right, and tapping her foot. With an admonishment she stilled herself- a kunoichi should be able to stay still for hours without movement – it was one of the things required in reconnaissance missions – basically, spying.
Akiko was now fully formed up to her misshapen eyebrows that had recently been shaved and drawn in a fashion that made her seem to have a both permanent look of surprise, along with anger.
The kunoichi, currently from the Wave country, and previously from the Fallen Leaf, was wearing a midriff top with, once again, fishnets on top. She wore fingerless gloves that extended to her elbows, of the same material and her fingernails had been extended and sharpened into talons.
Tenten bared her teeth and snarled, feeling the rush in her system begin. Her heart began pounding faster with each beat, her body tensed in apprehension.
A mist quickly shrouded the water-Akiko's body, covering the liquid as it completed its form.
The cloud dissipated and Akiko stood in its place.
Tenten's snarl turned to a laugh.
"Did you consult the thirteen year old Lee before putting your outfit together?" Tenten flicked her wrists, the knives becoming unsheathed and glinted in the moonlight. She jumped onto a roof in the blink of an eye and back down, behind Akiko. The other girl was raked across her bare back, blood marring hr pale skin like scarlet ribbons. She turned and struck out with speed, but it was not fast enough. Tenten flipped back and shifted into a defensive stance once more.
"What happened to your eyebrows, Ki-san? Did your latest boy toy shave them off?" Tenten taunted, grinning wickedly.
"My latest boy toy is your bloody beloved Neji-kun whom you are so deeply in love with." Akiko mocked, putting on a breathless, girly voice.
"Mocking me won't work, you know." Tenten said lazily. "By the way, did you know that the only reason why Naruto never went out with you is because he thought you ere despicable? He said he hated sluts like you. He actually said your name, Akiko."
Akiko attacked Tenten in a mad, reckless frenzy – all of which Tenten blocked. Akiko moved fluidly, like water, and no matter what Tenten did, she still kept up her assaults. In a quick manoeuvre, Tenten had managed to break one of Akiko's horrifically long nails. She jumped back and looked up at Tenten with hate in her eyes.
"You broke my nail!" she screamed.
"You broke my nail!" Tenten mocked. Akiko drew out some concealed weapons and launched herself at Tenten, with a renewed vigour. Tenten was glad that her training with Neji had improved all of her aspects as a kunoichi, and she wouldn't take for granted those long hours he had kept her out for a little less than ten years.
There was only the sound of their quick footfalls, Akiko's harsh breathing and the screech of metal grating against metal. Tenten felt herself being pushed in the stomach. Seeing her opponent winded, Akiko threw more weapons in a fashion which was impossible to dodge.
Tenten fell to the ground, rolled and jumped up, avoiding the kunai aimed at her hamstring. She arched her back, feeling the senbon needle slip past the small of her back and threw her weight backwards, feeling a shuriken graze the base of her throat. Tenten flipped gracefully and landed on a rooftop.
Akiko paled. Tenten had truly become a great kunoichi, and for a moment, running away seemed like a very appealing option. However, her thrice-accursed pride would not let her, and no one had ever defeated her trump card.
The scantily clad kunoichi put her hands together and formed strange seals. Tenten lightly ran her left index finger over the knuckles on her right hand. There was an almost inaudible click and she flung out her hand in Akiko's direction, the knives flying out with force.
Their target bent her knees and leaned backwards, avoiding the daggers, still forming the seals with her hands and whispering words that Tenten had never heard, and had never been heard in anyone's lives – except for Akiko's. Akiko straightened and deftly slashed her wrist. Her blood spilt to the ground, warm and crimson.
With an air of finality, Akiko formed the final seal and plunged her uninjured hand into the pooled blood, her injured hand flung out for Tenten to see. In the silvery moonlight, the kunoichi could see, to her horror that the other girl's wrist was healing- as if it had never been cut. The owner of that wrist straightened and stepped backwards, pulling her hand out of the earth as she went. That, too, was clean and unharmed in any way.
Tenten fell instantly and reflexively into a guarded stance and waited for an attack for a few tense minutes. None came, and Tenten sneered.
"Your mutterings and blood came to nothing, just like always. Is that the best you've got?" Tenten pulled out a katana from seemingly nowhere (in Akiko's opinion), sensing a real attack. Moments later, Akiko flew into the sky and into the moon's radiance, her shadow falling across Tenten's eyes. Four kunai flew to the earth, and Tenten quickly dodged them all easily, watching them plunge into the ground, a scant hands breadth from her body. The weapons mistress frowned and looked around for her enemy. She was on the other end of the street. Tenten tried to move and slink back into the shadows, but found that her feet could not move. She looked down.
The area in which she was enclosed by the four kunai was covered in a layer of blood, coming from the ground. The earth was bleeding. Tenten wrinkled her nose in distaste. Blood made everything slide and hard to grip. Upon a sudden inspiration, Tenten covered her hands in the red, sticky fluid and simultaneously moulded chakra around the soles of her feet. She jumped up and flipped back, bot not before getting her inner arms slashed by the kunai, no longer embedded in the ground.
"You're positively stupid and weak. I am too strong for you." Akiko called as she watched Tenten disappear into the shadows. "You're weapons may be strong enough to draw my blood, but my blood is stronger and more potent than any weapon you can wield."
Tenten ignored her opponent and quietly and swiftly crept through the darkness.
"It's my turn," she whispered as she flitted over to Akiko's ear. She smirked as the girl jumped. Neji, she knew, wouldn't mind her taking a leaf out of his book.
The kunoichi formed a few seals behind her back and felt her hands flare up with unseen chakra. She then struck out without warning, and Akiko blocked – but only just. Even if the other girl could match Tenten blow for blow, it would not be enough- not for this technique Tenten had developed, watching Neji.
After a few more hits, Akiko decided that proposing a challenge of a fight was futile if it meant losing. She fell to the ground sobbing.
Akiko looked up at the weapons mistress, contempt barely visible in the pain-clouded eyes.
"You… you broke my arms?"
"No." Tenten replied calmly, looking down at her foe. "I've fractured them." she pointed at blood smears as she listed, "your arms, a few ribs, your right femur and left tibia… and maybe a few torn muscles, but what would I know?"
Akiko didn't reply. She just hugged herself with a pained expression on her sallow and pale face.
Tenten bent down to her ear.
"Hey Akiko," she murmured. "Do you want to see what else I can do without those weak weapons of mine?"
Without waiting for an answer, Tenten formed a series of complex seals so fast her hands were just a series of red blurs, and then she laid, with an excruciating slowness, both of her palms down on the ground. Seemingly satisfied, she stood up and spun around in an anticlockwise direction, and felt the ground shift beneath her feet.
Akiko watched, fascinated, despite her pain and know that this move would probably be the last one that she'd ever see Tenten perform. There was a slim chance, however, that the whole thing would backfire and she, Akiko, would emerge from this battle, victorious.
Every thought that Akiko had of this were wiped from her mind as Tenten kicked her deftly, knocking her out, and the weapons mistress hauled the small figure into the middle of her crater. Taking a deep breath, Tenten sat down on the lip of the shallow dent, and waited.
Akiko regained consciousness when the sky began to lighten. The sun was a small pink sliver above the horizon and the clouds had been dyed peach, just for that moment. The pains in her body had lessened- her chakra had automatically gone towards healing it enough to move with minimal discomfort. She smiled. Maybe Tenten was as weak as she thought, and had decided to leave Akiko for dead. The smile died when she saw her enemy sitting not even a pace away from her.
The kunoichi was struggling to keep her eyes open, her palms flat against the ground for support.
"Tenten..." Akiko murmured. "So naïve. You thought you could beat me by fracturing my bones and making this stupid little crater…" she prepared to attack, but realised, with a jolt, that she was running very low on chakra. Her wounds had obviously taxed her chakra reserves, and she knew that if she were to act, it would have to be soon.
Other than that, if Tenten started using weapons again, and she was cut, Akiko would die of blood loss- she felt slightly dizzy at the moment, and had to get some rest.
She jumped out of the ditch, only to find herself drawn back into it, the exact spot that she had just left. A few more unsuccessful attempts to escape her very shallow prison had woken up her enemy.
Tenten looked into Akiko's eyes.
"You're dead, now. And you knew it, too." She whispered. Akiko was taken aback more by the sight of her eyes that by her words.
"You sick bitch!" she cried, horrified. "You stole his eyes!"
"What was that?" Tenten shrugged. "Oh you mean these? Well the thing about them is…" she blinked innocently, and they changed colour back and forth from snow white to deep amber. She then looked down at her hands once more and Akiko followed her gaze, a peculiar sense tumbling about in her stomach.
It hit her the moment she saw the small, steady and controlled chakra flow out of Tenten's fingertips. It was a sense of doom, and inevitability. She was going to die, but she resolved it would not be without a fight.
"What's the chakra for?" she asked, her voice wavering. Tenten looked up into her eyes. Akiko flinched, and averted her gaze.
"What do you think?" Tenten asked softly, looking meaningfully at Akiko's feet, which was covered in white chakra strings.
Akiko's terror grew. All rational thought scattered from her mind as she slowly lifted her arms to form seals.
Tenten flung up her hands.
"Stop!" she cried. Akiko's hands froze. "By our blood, I bind your hands to your body!" Akiko's hands snapped instantly to her sides and would not budge.
"What is this?" she cried.
"Well, when I jumped out of that bloody patch over there, the kunai cut me, all down my inner arms." Tenten said, as calmly as if she were discussing the weather. "My hands were already covered in your blood and they intermingled. When I hit you, your blood and mine ended up on your skin. Those handprints there act like a lodestone. When you leave, it wants to draw back more of my blood and yours mixed together. As you are the closest thing, it seeks the blood on you. Okay, is there anything else I've forgotten? Oh, yes, there is, but I'm not going to tell you." Tenten smiled and shrugged, and all Akiko could see were those startlingly white eyes.
Akiko summoned all of her strength to curse her somehow, and she opened her mouth. Tenten was already two steps ahead of her.
"Silence!" Tenten's hands flew into the air once more. "By our blood, I now banish your voice!" she whispered with a deadly ferocity. Akiko felt the feeling in her stomach again, and she saw Tenten's eyes flare even brighter. She realised, with even more fear, that the kunoichi was drawing upon her chakra.
"I see you've picked up on the thing I didn't tell you." Tenten nodded. "Your chakra is white. My eyes are white. This chakra here is white. I am using your chakra to see you and your body and, thus, control you. Isn't that cool? So anyway, you'll die when I consume all of your chakra." She said conversationally. She stood up and turned around, as if Akiko's last moments were of no concern to her- only the rising of the sun.
Akiko knew that her death was coming. She had only a few seconds to live- half a minute that the most.
With all of her mind power, she gathered all of her spirit, mind and soul, jealous and rage consumed, and cast it from her body, at Tenten's back, breathing her last breath. Her last thought, just before her lifeless body hit the ground, was that she would not be the only kunoichi to die that day. Somehow, it was not really any consolation at all.
Akiko was not a skilled ninja at all. If she had been on the same level as Tenten in any skill whatsoever, the outcome of this entire battle would have been different. As it was, the death curse that she had created was not enough to kill her opponent, but only to suspend her in that thin, ever wavering and unsure line between life and death.
When Tenten woke up in the hospital, the room was bathed in golden, midday sun. She sighed. It felt good to be out of the black all-consuming and disorientating hole called unconsciousness. The kunoichi stretched and turned over onto her side and found herself almost kissing Neji, who lay asleep on the bed beside her. He looked immensely tired, as if he had battled all of the monsters in this world to get to her bedside. She tentatively stroked stray strands of hair away from his face, smiling gently when he murmured something incomprehensible and frowned. He seemed to remember something in his sleep, and his expression went from one of perplexity to one of contentment.
A nurse came in and dropped her clipboard at the sight of Tenten. Neji woke with a start as it clattered to the ground, the metallic sound clattering through the empty room.
"Tenten," he whispered, tracing the planes of her face with his thumb. Tenten sighed and looked back at him, drinking in his features with a look of longing on her face. Neji slowly closed the distance between them and kissed her lips chastely.
She looked at him.
"There's something different about you." she murmured, surprised at the sound of her husky voice. "Your hair…" Tenten ran her fingers through his long raven locks. They were no longer smooth, clean and silken, however. They were straggly and oily, and looked thoroughly unkempt.
Sakura came in, dressed in a skimpy elf's outfit- complete from the pointy hat to the thick black belt to the three inch boots.
She, like the nurse, froze when she saw the kunoichi awake, and talking to Neji. In a moment, she had composed her features and bent down to pick up the dropped clipboard.
"Why does everyone who walks into the door freeze or something?" Tenten said, her voice still husky. "It's like I'm some kind of freak, or I've come back from the dead."
"Tenten." Neji said placating her by placing a hand on her arm.
"What?" she looked at him, her tone a bit hurt. "I think I would like an explanation- I mean I saw it in you too- you thought I was a dream, and you almost doubted me."
"Tenten, I'm sorry." Sakura said, coming to stand by the bedside, checking the various monitors situated around the bed head. "It's just that you've been in a coma for six months to the day." Sakura pulled out a box from under the bed and threw her red hat with faux fur trimmings and a pompom at the top onto the bed at Tenten and Neji's feet.
"Six… months?" she frowned. She had thought that it would only have been six hours- it had definitely felt like it.
"Tenten," Neji said softly as Sakura rummaged around in the box. "It's Christmas."
Yay! Almost done! Hope you liked it- please review- the next chapter (it'll be a long one, I promise!) will be coming out hopefully within the next few weeks!