The Chuunin exams in the valley of rain were about to continue and Aburame Shino had won a very good victory over his counterpart once again due to his impressive improvisation and observation. The next to fight was Yamanaka Ino, against a local from the Hidden Valley of Rain. The crowd made it aware that she wasn't their favourite against their local genin and cheered as the opponent entered the battlefield on the other side. Ino had been able to learn quite a bit from Tsunade and even Sakura, but still had her techniques handed to her by her father. She was getting better though and had improved her strength immensely since her help from Sakura and Tsunade, but she couldn't concentrate her chakra to a single point as good as them yet. She couldn't think about that now as the referee officially began the match.
Ino considered using the mind body switch technique straight away, but didn't know if she would be playing into any trap straight off the bat. Her opponent didn't want to wait and charged in with a frontal attack. Ino readied herself and threw some kunai towards her. The rain ninja easily dodged the kunai Ino threw but wasn't ready for kunai that Ino had thrown in a blind spot and seemed to be in no position to move out of the way. Ino had a brief moment of applause for herself with the early advantage she had gained in this match and began charging in to follow up the attack.
Ino had unfortunately lost concentration and was taken by surprise when the rain ninja disappeared from view and the kunai went straight past where she should have been and eventually ran out of momentum and dropped to the ground. Ino looked around, waiting for an attack from behind but couldn't see her anywhere. She even moved away from where she stood in case she was underneath, Ino didn't like the look of what was going on, for the ninja to completely vanish couldn't be a good thing. Especially when she could hear some of the crowd laughing as they knew what was going on. She had to stay calm and concentrate. She felt a presence behind her and she turned around to block a vital shot, but couldn't stop the kick to her mid section and dropped her down into the mud. The crowd went wild as the Konoha ninja had been bested by their own and they could see the kick had done some damage.
Ino
would normally be furious about her hair being so dirty, but she had
to think of a way out. The ninja vanished again and once more she was
knocked down from behind and she couldn't help but hear Shikamaru
say "this is troublesome" in her head. She couldn't keep turning
her head forever; she couldn't concentrate if she didn't know which
way the enemy was coming from. Once more, she felt a presence and
turned to see her opponent coming at her, she waited and
counterattacked but it was only an ordinary clone. The real enemy was
just behind her and struck forward with a forceful punch. It was her
turn to be shocked though as she hadn't found Ino's vulnerable spot
as it was a clone just like her own. She then felt a massive kick to
the side of her face and sent flying and crashing as Ino just did.
Ino didn't waste anytime; she needed to keep at this ninja without
giving her opportunity to fight back. This ninja from the rain
village was quite ugly, her hair hung in her face and showed no signs
of being taken care of, she was a fighter and Ino wanted to test her
taijutsu.
The ninja saw Ino coming in for close combat and before
she knew it, Ino was upon her releasing a chain attack of punches and
kicks in combos. From what Ino could tell, her taijutsu wasn't as
good as hers as she struggled to keep up and before she knew what was
going on, her opponent smiled, "Time to go," and disappeared
again. Ino was angry she had lost her, but she had seen how the ninja
was disappearing. She was sinking herself into the puddles of water
on the battlefield from the continuous rain. If she was moving
through the water and could hide amongst the shallowest of puddles,
then she could freely move anywhere on this battlefield quicker and
swifter than her.
Ino needed a plan, she needed to know how she could at least tell which body of water this ninja could be in at any time and she stalled while she thought. She could try to stomp directly on the water to flesh her out, but there were so many puddles, she could just merely tell which one was her. If that was the case she would show how it is done and charged toward the last puddle she saw her in. She punched the puddle, rumbling the ground slightly and no surprise nothing happened after she hit it. She looked behind her to see her opponent and she quickly fought and beat it to show it was a clone. In a rage she hit the ground with her fist, "Why don't you come and fight?" She hit the ground a few more times, but it didn't bring her opponent out. Finally, when she seemed to angry to continue, someone came up from behind her and Ino turned around to swing an enormous punch but only skimmed the rain ninja who took advantage of this miss and sent her flying backwards clutching her face. "You cannot stop me in my own village, with our technique type. I can see you have been able to get a grip on my movement, whether you can see where I am is a different story so it seems I cannot travel through the puddles anymore." The crowd cheered for their competitor and began screaming out patriotically for their country. They all wanted to see a ninja from the great shinobi nation lose to their village, but Ino wasn't planning on losing this fight. She stood up and readied herself in a fighting stance and watched as the enemy ninja made some seals and this time, didn't sink into the puddles, but faded into the rain coming down around them. Ino could hear the ninja talking to her, "I admire your skills and will, but this ends now there is no seeing me when I am invisible." She would move through the rain droplets rather than the water, which seemed quite complicated and difficult, but there was always a way around techniques. She looked around her and threw a kunai down on the floor with an explosion note attached to it. "Looks like I have to throw this down and hope." She jumped out of the way of the explosion, knowing fully well the ninja would dodge the attack, but not escape her vision. She quickly got her seals ready, "Mind Disturbance Technique." She instantly heard a gasping sound; she had successfully caught her opponent in her technique. "How did you know I was here?" Ino seemed to be looking into thin air with someone in her technique, but she definitely had her. "The puddles on the ground react to natural disturbances on the water like the rain, but they are also reactant to vibrations from the ground underneath. When I was attacking before and hitting the ground, it wasn't to hit you, but find out how I could see you and that was always the puddle that never rippled whenever I hit the ground. You thought that by fading into the rain was your final finishing move, but I was planning you doing this. All I needed was the exploding tag to send shock waves out and see which rain droplets were not moving and I knew you were there."
"Yeah but you cannot do anything now, once you release this technique I will disappear again."
"I decided to take a note from our last Leaf ninja to fight and our own Aburame Shino could have shown you a thing or two about planning ahead and disguising attacks. You know when you attacked me before and I missed the punch…it was on purpose for my final attack". She made a seal and in mid air, there were some sparks that came from nowhere. A small explosion from a mini exploding tag and the rain ninja went flying through the air towards Ino and her final punch in which she had summoned up all the chakra to her hand for the shot to her face. It landed cleanly and the winning punch was enough to knock her down and leave her unable to get up. She had officially won the match and cheered and cheered, but wanted to go wash her hair. The crowd were disappointed their ninja lost but applauded Ino on her efforts to win.
The rain was still pouring over the battlefield in the Country of Rain while the next fight was being announced. This time it would be the first shinobi from the Hidden Sand Village-Kankuro would fight. He had seen two ninjas from their allied village already fight, including Aburame Shino whom he once fought and wasn't disappointed to see they had lost. There was no way he was going to lose and look weak in front of them. As he walked out, he got a good luck from Inuzuka Kiba and his sister, which gave him some confidence. The mud was heavy under his feet, and because he wasn't that good at taijutsu, he would have to be sure to keep some distance between him and his opponent. He saw across from him where he saw the ninja he was fighting, she was a ninja from the rain village-so another local favourite. The referee waited and officially began the match.
Kankuro took out a scroll and summoned Karasu. The female ninja looked at him, sizing up how he controlled his puppets and the crowd as well were very interested in this style of fighting. She did some seals and Kankuro waited form something to happen. When it didn't, he got a little worried. He saw her edging closer to him slowly, but she was still a distance away and it was then Kankuro noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He looked around to see another form of his opponent attacking from behind. It couldn't be an average clone, as it had appeared too far away from the body to be a clone. It could possibly be an illusion, but either way Kankuro had to assume he was caught from in front and behind. The form of the ninja that just appeared charged at him from behind and leapt in at Kankuro. He was able to jump out of the way of the attack and also fire off some poison darts at both forms of the rain ninja hoping to get some insight into her attacks. One of the figures faded away, showing it was an illusion and this meant the damage it did was a result of his mind. The real one prepared another attack and threw some kunai from her belt at him. This was useless though and Kankuro easily got Karasu and he realised that this attack was so easy to stop there had to be a trick to it, so he had to keep on his guard. As the kunai came closer, the second illusion form appeared again, caught the kunai in mid flight and threw it again from a different angle. An interesting tactic that she used which was doing a simple attack and then catching the person off guard by using her ability to change the path of kunai and use another stimulus to react to. This was the trick Kankuro had been counting on and he was on guard enough to once again stop the attack. It seemed this illusionary form, could actually physically touch things, which meant if it hit him, it was real damage rather than genjutsu. He managed to once again get Karasu in the line and successfully block the kunai, but Kankuro realised he had been caught out by thinking he had stopped the attack. Kunai came whizzing passed Karasu, aiming for him and he realised that whole time was just to take Karasu out so he couldn't block himself. There was no time to bring his puppet back to him now and he moved his other fingers to bring Sanshouo out of the ground that he had summoned in secret and camouflaged in the mud to encase him within it.
It was very roomy within his puppet made for an iron wall of defence. There was no getting him while he was in here and he took the opportunity to look out of it and see his opponent standing a distance back. There had to be a trick to her attacks and he had to figure it out if he was going to win the fight. He saw her do some seals again and waited to see the figure. He was almost ready to come out of his puppet when he looked next to him and saw his opponent in there with him. It wasn't possible? Kankuro was shocked and drew out his kunai, but wasn't as quick as her who jabbed her kunai into his hip. He winced from the pain and jumped out of his puppet waiting for a follow up attack. The form of his opponent in his puppet had faded, but one appeared right in front of him following up the attack hoping to wear Kankuro down before finishing him off. Kankuro blocked all the attacks; he only had to do it for enough time till the poison darts he made Karasu fired off hit the opponent from behind. Her face didn't change when they hit, but the form faded away again like a ghost. This wasn't an average type of clone and Kankuro looked down at the opponent who was still some distance away. She never came in with her clones to have a two on one fight against Kankuro; this must be because she couldn't. So whenever she used one of her ghost clones, she loses a lot of her ability to fight. So she can create a moveable fighting clone anywhere, but then loses the movement of her real body. Then Kankuro realised what her ability was. It was astral travel. Kankuro favoured his wound, he had figured out how the ninja fought, so he just needed to end it as the longer it went, the more it disadvantaged him.
He charged at the ninja, taking Sanshouo and Karasu with him. It slowed him down to move with both, so he cut off Sanshouo's chakra string. Karasu spat poison needles at the real opponent to get things moving and then followed up with poison gas to pressure her into a corner. He was still a distance away and he noticed she had astral travelled right next to him with a kunai aiming for the same wound. Karasu was too quick though and sliced through the projected body with a blade concealed in the mouth. Kankuro got to the opponent he perceived to be the real one till it disappeared as a projection form. He had been sure it was the real one and he looked behind him to see that the rain ninja was coming from behind with the finishing blow to the fight. Kankuro twiddled his fingers and back where Sanshouo was, something happened. It's back opened up and Kuroari came roaring out. It completely caught the rain ninja off guard and completely trapped her within it. "When we both jumped out of the puppet before, I left my trap puppet hidden within it. I was so sure that I had got the real body after the poison gas that I knew it couldn't be that easy. You done a simple replacement technique with one of your own astral projection forms, but that made it slower to finish me off and gave me time to trap you." Kankuro had shown his opponent why separating mind and body to fight was very risky as they were dependant on each other to beat another person. He had her in his trap and could have easily done his black secret technique to kill her, but decided not too, there was no way out and the referee had also believed the match to be over. Kankuro had won the fight against the rain ninja.