The Better Part of Valor

The white-haired shinobi blurred out of the way of my fireball, only to throw at me small bullets of bone by flicking his left hand at me with the purpose to cover for his swift approach.

He was wearing a large sleeved, lavender-coloured kimono over a pair of large dark trousers tucked into standard shinobi footwear.

Telling however, were the twin thumb-sized red dots on his forehead: I couldn't mistake Kimimaro Kaguya for anyone else.

Immediately aware of just who he was and what he was capable of in close range, I decided to keep my distance, throwing a single shuriken to interrupt the path of the projectile that would have forced me to dodge while my opponent charged me.

I spun to the left, my breathing controlled as I kept the faint awareness of my enemy even under the veritable hurricane that Orochimaru and Jiraya' presence generated to my newly found sensing technique.

Two kunai left my hand when my feet landed on the side of a trunk, that I pushed away from while I threw another shuriken and immediately I pulled on a wire, forcing the ninja star to alter its path and to clip my previously thrown weapons just enough to target my enemy's eyes.

Kimimaro kept up with his high-speed movement, tilting his head forward and letting a small protrusion of bone deviate the kunai.

Because of course, he abused his Bloodline to be immune to thrown weapons. I grimaced as I rocketed through the trees, shuriken, and kunai snapping away from me while tied to wires in order to impede my pursuer somewhat.

Predictably, the bloodline wielder barreled through the tense wire like it wasn't there, sharpened bone on the tip of his fingers enough to snap the steel-cable.

My left foot made me skip over a root as I threw myself towards the ground, avoiding, if just barely, another slew of the bone-made bullets. They have a flat head. I almost sighed in relief: they would only hurt a lot, but they wouldn't be immediately lethal.

I rolled to my left and spun up a tree trunk, avoiding Kimimaro's casual swipe that broke through the bark as if it was paper. He's fast.

Still running from my pursuer, trying to gain time to elaborate a plan that had some hope of working, I jumped from the trunk to the underside of a nearby branch, pushing towards the ground and meeting the green eyes of the enemy for the first time since I had tried to disengage among the trees.

My chakra slipped into his system smoothly, and two kunai, still intended for his eyes, left my right hand, my left coming to my mouth as a fireball took life in my mouth. For a moment, Kimimaro didn't change his direction, and I hoped.

I felt my illusion being torn apart hungrily while the Kaguya's eyes found mine once more.

The searing hot ball of flames exploded out of my mouth as fast as I could make it, the air crackling as it expanded because of the heat and a light funnel of wind following my ninjutsu.

Then my left hand touched the grass and I tucked in a roll, turning my vertical speed into horizontal as I used a shoulder roll to keep my momentum.

The presence of Kimimaro didn't waver to my senses, and I threw myself to the left, narrowly avoiding a kick while I retaliated with two fingers pointed out and slashing at the eyes of the opponent. The white-haired shinobi leaned back, precisely avoiding the chakra scalpel that I had recreated through sheer chakra control a moment before.

I kept spinning and kicked off from the hip of my opponent, who was prevented from immediately following me as I stopped his step in my direction.

As I flew through the air, my Sharingan took in every detail of my opponent, and now that I had confirmed that he wanted me alive, and that I had some time to reel in my instinctive panicking reaction, I took the full measure of him: and in an instant, I knew his range, and I could estimate his baseline strength. He had a signed sleeve and a thin cut on the side of his forehead.

If only he didn't have a bloodline that makes him basically immune to hand-to-hand attacks. I held back a grimace while I confirmed that I wasn't able to generate a punch strong enough to break his bullshit bones, and I observed how his cut bled just a little less than what it should have.

"You're more capable than what I was told." Kimimaro tonelessly noticed, eyeing his signed sleeve with cool eyes that didn't betray his thoughts, "Capturing you without inflicting damage is no longer a viable option."

With a flick of his wrist, sharp bone jutted out from his wrist, breaking at the base once he deemed he had the weapon he wished for. Yeah, I'll remain the fuck away from you.

Once more I disappeared among the trees, genjutsu after genjutsu covering my escape as I casually assaulted each of my opponent's senses. Sadly, he was more than simply proficient in dispelling my illusions, and I knew that he had been the first choice for a new body for Orochimaru before his illness was revealed. The memories I had of Kimimaro could only underline how casually he held up against Gaara and Rock Lee while he was dying.

With my breath forcefully even, I jumped among the higher branches, abusing my Bloodline so that I never let myself be fully seen by the Kaguya who was now pursuing me with a sharp bone-blade-spike-whatever ready to skewer me.

As I somersaulted a particularly thick branch, I turned my chakra into Raiton and my hands went through the tiger, serpent, and dragon hand seals, quickly shaping into reality a clone made of lightning, who continued in his escape, barely letting himself be seen as it followed my directions.

I stilled on the backside of the bough I was on, letting it shield me from Kimimaro's eyes as I inhaled deeply, letting myself disappear from any form of chakra sensing as I made sure that my life-energy didn't more than trickle out of my tenketsu.

An instant later, Kimimaro passed me by, and I quietly and quickly slipped off my bag, fishing out a scroll marked by a red stripe: at speeds that would have made the Fourth Hokage pause in surprise, I unsealed and donned my blood-red armour, happy that the previous month I did spend some time adjusting the leather strips to accommodate for my slightly larger size.

With my small bag secured once more on the small of my back, I started to plan, and an instant later I heard the violent discharge of a lightning bolt. This was immediately followed by a small explosion. The clone used ninjutsu and got clipped.

With a frown on my face, and for the first time lamenting the showmanship that forced me to make my armour blood red, I turned south-east and started to move as stealthily and quickly as I could, my breath even as I used the bare minimum of chakra needed to speed through the trees, the echo of the battle between Jiraya and Orochimaru still rumbling over my mediocre sensing.

The thought of going towards the two Sannin never touched me: I would be a hindrance for the Toad Summoner and simply offer myself to be swallowed whole by Orochimaru. The best I could do was to avoid being captured by the wielder of the Dead Bone Pulse Bloodline, and given that I was under no illusion that in a close-quarters confrontation he would trash me, I needed to be as much of an asshole as I could be.

Small illusions, misdirections, a trick already used repurposed as a cover for something else, large maneuvers, and small jutsu to spare my reserves.

As a plan quickly formed in my mind, I fell backward, pushing back against a bough in order to avoid the sudden white slash of bone that would have made me quickly fall unconscious because of blood loss. My left arm rose sharply, and with a hail of cracks, my armor protected me from the worse of the bone projectiles that Kimimaro had set to catch me unaware.

"Katon, Raiton." the Kaguya commented tonelessly, "Orochimaru-sama will be pleased."

I didn't answer as I cartwheeled back, pushing against the ground to avoid a kick that would have slammed my head against a nearby tree. I didn't know why he was offering this kind of commentary: if it was because he wished to know how much I knew of Orochimaru's plans or simply because he hoped to unnerve me. He's obviously faster than me on long distances.

But, with the precognitive abilities of my Sharingan, with his likely overspecialization in his bloodline, his inability to cause grievous harm to me, least he damaged me too much... I could make it.

Ram and Tiger brought into life a Katon Bunshin while I spun behind a tree, letting myself be seen openly while my copy run among the branches: as soon as the white-haired pursuer entered his range, his eyes meeting mine for an instant, my cone dumped half of his extremely refined fire natured chakra into a fireball, that rushed from above like a veritable waterfall of flame.

With the Sharingan spinning in my eyes, I measured the jutsu of my clone and set to work to bring into reality something that I had only theorized about: if the Sandaime had the obscene experience needed to perform combination techniques on his own, and canon-Sasuke would casually perform a Katon-Futon combination with Naruto, how difficult it would be for me to do the same with something as familiar as a bunshin of myself?

Ram hare and serpent hand seals shaped my illusion as it rode the chakra that generated the fireball spit by my clone, and Kimimaro, for a single instant, remained mesmerized by the flickering of the flames, by their swift crackling as they rushed towards him, by the intense heat that barely preceded the fire.

When he broke through the genjutsu, it was too late to avoid the fireball, and I was ready to dart in to deliver a punitive wound that would buy me enough advantage to make my escape, when he simply blurred through the fire: bones erupting out of his skin in a complex configuration that made the flames almost flow around him, and an instant later, his bone-blade had pierced my fire-based clone.

My clone exploded in the expected rush of flames, and after the split second that I had needed to overcome the surprise of seeing someone actually walk into a fireball, Kimimaro was in my face.

I lashed out with a kunai that was negligently parried, his height and choice of weapon granting him all the range he needed to pick me apart.

As if. I stepped closer to the enemy that was clearly above my pay-grade, Sharingan swirling madly as I squeezed every advantage I could out of it: and I moved like I never did before.

I ducked a backhanded blow and stepped sideways, letting the kick meant to cleanly dislocate my kneecap pass me by as I stabbed my enemy with my weapon.

The kunai was aimed perfectly, my eyes granting me the perfect timing to sever a major blood vessel, and behind it, there was the complex mechanism of my arm, my wrist perfectly angled, my muscles taut, my shoulder leveraging everything it could.

And the tip of the kunai broke just beyond Kimimaro's skin, meeting a plate of bone that I could have sworn wasn't there an instant before. Okay then.

I kept close, and the Kaguya let his blade fall to the ground, needing both arms free to secure me without killing me on a too eager bone-spike: I needed to find a way to wither kill him or wound him enough that it wouldn't allow him to pursue me on longer distances. He was deadly, but as long as I prevented him from taking a single step away from me, I could anticipate him and use my smaller frame to my advantage.

With my breath as even as always, my eyes picked up on his muscles tensing just as he decided an avenue of attack, and I dodged blows that I shouldn't have been able to see: sidestepping allowed me to remain too close, and he had to use elbows and knees to have any hope of landing a hit. I ducked an elbow meant for my chest, and kicked off a sharp knee thrust while a little chakra made me slide on the grass.

He punched with his left and I twirled on the side, making sure that none of his straight bones pointed at me, fearing that he would pull a Wolverine and suddenly impale me. He slashed with yet another of his weapons, and my eyes met his: genjutsu ensnaring my target for the spit second necessary for me to throw a kunai towards his eye.

A light frown appeared momentarily on the otherwise impassible face of Kimimaro, and his presence shivered to my newfound sensing as my illusion got torn apart. I took another step forward and to the side, chakra flooding my body as I kept up with the insanely skilled man who should start growing frustrated from his lack of efforts: I pushed the bare minimum against the side of his limbs, just enough to keep him from striking me, to the point that I was only slapping against his attacks while he kept up a precise offensive, the holes in his defense were simply feints and traps, that I didn't dare exploit.

He kicked me with a lightning-quick motion, and I lashed out in turn my knee striking the side of his shin as I used the momentum to spin to my left, my eyes momentarily leaving my opponent while my hands moved, familiar hand seals manipulating the Raiton under my control.

The lightning buzzed on the edge of my hand, and as I completed the twirl, my limb intercepted the punch that was aimed at the back of my head: instead of slapping him aside, his skin split, and the bone underneath cracked as my ninjutsu unleashed its concentrated energy into Kimimaro's, whose frown worsened briefly.

I leaned back to avoid a retaliatory backslap, and I thrust forward my Raiton: Nokogiri, only for my opponent to actually jump back.

I followed, releasing the built-up energy into the bolt of lightning that made Kimimaro sprout a bone spike from the ground in front of him, which exploded upon the impact.

After the flash of lightning, I was once more inside my opponent's guard, and two kunai were thrown once more against my opponent's eyes.

With a calm that I didn't know I possessed, I tried to never be face-to-face with my opponent, but always to the side, aiming to reach his back: when he tried to step away to gain the advantage in reach we both knew he could leverage to devastating, I followed, and when he outright jumped away for a second time: I did the same into another direction, and the chase began anew.

Either I remained too close, or I ran: in the fraction of a second that he needed to gain enough distance from me, I flickered away through the trees, shurikenjutsu and wires constantly targeting his eyes now that I knew that he could simply manifest a bone plate armor under his skin. And paper bombs, lots of them.

Methodically, now that my panicking reaction had abated and was fully under my control, I ran a large circle, keeping up a barrage of meaningless illusions, with my short-range sensing barely enough to feel of my genjutsu got broken apart. I'll need actual magic to fuck off... With that words in my head, I got a brilliant idea.

My feet scraped against the bark, and genjutsu rode the sound into Kimimaro's pathways, only to be shredded while he somersaulted a tense ninja wire and flicked the bone-blade he recovered in order to deflect the kunai aimed for his eyes.

As we moved, my path grew increasingly erratic as I darted in and out of my planned course to pick up the weapons I had thrown during the beginning of our confrontation. After all, I didn't carry an arsenal with me, and I had no idea how long this fight would last.

I clipped a branch with a shoulder, using the sudden spin to get my feet on the side of the length of wood to push me off in another direction: exhaling sharply, chakra flowed harshly through me as I skittered up along a tree, sticking three paper bombs on one side and feeling how the single thread of chakra connected us.

Bouncing off another couple of trees, I twisted my body just enough for most of the projectiles Kimimaro threw to

I performed again the combination of a fireball spit by a Katon bunshin and my actual self using the light cast by the flames to ensnare Kimimaro in a genjutsu: again, he broke through the fireball, but this time he followed me, impaling my clone with a bone spike as long as I was tall. Good.

The better part of a magic trick was shaping the expectation of the audience.

So I ran across the trees, my breathing starting to get heavier as our confrontation became longer and longer.

One last time, I moved so that Kimimaro didn't have a direct line of sight with me my hands forming a crosslike seal as a Kage Bunshin appeared at my side making me grimace at the sharp dive of my reserves. As I somersaulted a branch, I turned my chakra into lightning-natured as that same kind of clone appeared at my side.

With the next breath, Katon surged through me and a copy made of fire appeared at my other side. I inhaled and I collected my chakra as much as I could while I scampered on the side of the tree trunk.

When Kimimaro appeared I encountered him with a tiger seal ready: fire bursting forth in a constant stream that blinded my opponent for a split second, while my Kage Bunshin wove an illusion matching my ninjutsu.

Kimimaro, used to my trick by now, threw a bone spike at me while he chased my Kage Bunshin, who flew through hand signs and kawarimed with a piece of wood while my lightning natured clone charged: Chidori screaming in his hand as he tore through the ground.

Faster than he thought I could move, my clone nailed the thigh of my opponent an instant before being killed by a bone spike puncturing the frail chakra construct next to his left kidney. The lightning exploded out of my clone and the Kaguya shrugged it off, bone taking shape in a split second around his form as my Kage Bunshin and myself charged in, Sharingan making us perfectly able to work together perfectly.

As my opponent didn't know which of us was the real one, he couldn't simply impale either of us, and genjutsu came in handy. Cheap as they were on my and my clone's reserves, allowed us to gain the upper hand when we needed it.

Kimimaro sprouted a bone staff as long as he was tall and started to twirl it so fast it whistled through the air, but it was a long weapon, and my eyes made it even more predictable than it would have normally been: my clone and I used our kunai freely to deflect the impacts, never losing momentum as we avoided pitting our strength against his directly.

When Kimimaro's elbow descended with enough strength to break my shoulder, my pauldron stopped the hit from being immediately crippling, but I slid under the blow, my ankles twisting as if in a mockery of a dance, and dance around my opponent was almost all I did.

Methodically, my Kage Bunshin moved through a set of familiar hand seals, and a buzzing blade of lightning surrounded the right hand that he kept knife-like.

Immediately Kimimaro tried to slam his bone staff over my head, and I exhaled sharply, clamping my hands over the weapon as a surge of chakra kept me from crumpling under the strength of my opponent, a kick lashing out to stop the Kaguya from easily avoiding my clone.

While my copy attempted to slash at the base of my enemy's spine, I jumped as I pulled on the bone staff, my free leg kicking at the head of the green-haired shinobi.

In a move that left me flabbergasted, a curved spike erupted from one of Kimimaro's ribs, and even while he received a deep gash on the thigh, my Kage Bunshin was dispelled, a lot of my chakra returning to me while Katon surged from my gut: a point-blank fireball exploding out of my mouth.

I flickered away after a single breath, the smell of burnt air barely anticipating the surge of chakra that accompanied an explosion of bones that made the fire roll like liquid over his shape.

I flew through the trees, the Katon Bunshin I had created just before the last exchange changing place with me while I did my best to erase my presence: when Kimimaro pursued, I barreled into him, mule kicking him on the side of his head, my eyes meeting his just before a bone spike almost nailed me.

He dismissed me as my illusion supplied a burst of smoke around my form, as if I was another Kage Bunshin, trying to prevent him from following the real me.

An instant later Kimimaro was on the fire-based clone, his hand clamping down on him as I followed: and while my last diversion exploded, I buried my kunai into the Kaguya's eyes, hoping to reach the brain.

When my wrists jarred from the sudden stop of my weapons, I was somewhat unsurprised: before the kunai could kill him, their points broke against a sudden plate of armor that had appeared in a split second.

Then, an enraged scream covered the rush of the flames as I was thrown like a ragdoll across the underbrush.

Before anything else could happen, I turned my uncontrolled flight across the trees into a run, and I didn't look back as bones started to explode out of everywhere.

AN

Just a big fight here, I hope I managed to string together the MC's skills without making it look forced. Opinions?

I too would have preferred a straight-up taijutsu-ninjutsu confrontation, but as someone mentioned in the reviews: Kimimaro, especially at this point in time, is fuck-off strong. Not quite S-rank, but I'd say on Kakashi's level. The only reason why Sasuke has any hope at all is that he overspecializes and he cannot truly harm the Uchiha: his bloodline with the 2nd stage cursed-seal becomes something with Area of Effect attacks, without that, he's a very skilled and lethal tank in close quarters. But the Mc only needs to dodge, and the Sharingan is made for that.

In the end, being underestimated was very important.