Author's Notes: Don't look at me like that. I am FULLY aware of how long it has been since the last update. But I have been doing some writing here and there. As you may know, I rolled out a post-epilogue-epilogue for Shikotsumyaku on the first day of this year. I've also been working on an as-yet unveiled story with a minimum of ten thousand words per chapter (I'll admit to being little stuck on chapter 4 [which may be re-classified as chapter 7 depending on how things go] right now.) Still, I managed to come up with a way to make this chapter go the way I wanted it to. Stay tuned for another chapter sometime soon(-er).
Disclaimer: Look into my eyes and tell me that I do own Naruto. Can you withstand the burning waves of "I don't believe you"?
Tsukasa tried to find his feet as he sailed backwards through the air. His foot slipped on a piece of shattered masonry, that was itself moving, and he continued tumbling backwards until he came to rest in the ruined remains of a previously intact table. He fought a fit of coughing, trying to ignore the pain in his chest which was almost certainly a broken rib. With a hasty sweep of his arm, he threw one of the black hair ropes at the hole in the wall he had made on his passage through it, and then wrenched it back hard. Imbued with the power of his Bloodline, Touhatsujyuu, the rope wrapped itself around Kimimaro's midsection and then dragged him forward with all the strength Tsukasa could muster. Kimimaro took a wild stab at him on his way past, which clipped Tsukasa's shoulder, before slamming into the far wall. Then the other one(s), with orange clothes and blonde hair, were coming though as well.
Gathering all of his available strength, Tsukasa lurched to his feet- using the movement to send his red hair fanning outwards in a rippling, razor-edged arc. The hair hit a few of them, and there was the unmistakable twitch of contact, but the bodies summarily burst into smoke. A few of them managed to duck or jump clear and made to come at him again.
Having been given a moment to think, Tsukasa had already begun his escape plan. At the same time he was attacking the clones, he had simultaneously been cutting a hole in the floor, which he fell through before he was in any real danger of a counter-attack. Or would have been, if Kimimaro had been even slightly slower to recover.
A pale spike of bone, followed by a pale hand, came at him as he fell. It grazed his shoulder, in almost exactly the same place as before, but this time it also slipped through and under his shirt. The tip of the spike lanced into the side of the hole in the floor, and Tsukasa's rapid descent abruptly stopped, hanging by a piece of his his shirt no wider than his hand. Kimimaro, of course, used this opportunity to attempt to impale him.
Tsukasa flung up a forearm to protect his face, and the bone spike met the thick, straw-coloured hair woven into the inside of his clothes. Even its remarkable defensive properties failed to stop the bone spike completely. The tip punched through and carried on to strike his forehead, but the killing blow was dulled to a deep gash that started bleeding profusely. Before Kimimaro could strike again, the fabric of Tsukasa's shirt gave out and he fell the rest of the way to the floor below.
Managing somehow to not land incredibly awkwardly and twist an ankle, he rolled back to his feet and then jumped at the nearest window as hard as he could. He decided that he should at least be able to find his feet outside before Kimimaro could disengage himself from the floor and come after him again.
His plan only had one flaw: as he threw himself at the window, braced to smash the glass with his body, he failed to notice that the orange-wearing blonde was coming in from the other side.
The blonde shattered the window while Tsukasa was still coming to terms with this- a process that was interrupted by a pair of feet blasting into his chest. Then, since it seemed to be the only thing that he was any good at that day, Tsukasa smashed through another wall. And this time he didn't even have time to dig himself out of the wreckage before someone kicked him in the face. Now seeing red, and almost completely unable to breathe, Tsukasa coughed up a mouthful of blood and tried to steady himself against a wall.
He sensed, more than saw, the tip of something sharp being pointed directly at his forehead. Without moving his head in any direction, he cleared his throat and spat a gob of blood on the floor in front of himself. Or onto his leg, he wasn't quite sure.
'Give up, Tsukasa. You had your chance,' came the distinctive, flat tone that Kimimaro so liked to use when trying to intimidate people. And that made the whole situation worthwhile.
'Hn. Hmhmmhmhm. Ahhhahaha. Haha-'
'What's so funny?!' Ohh, Kimimaro must not have found it as funny as Tsukasa did. He couldn't help it, of course. And, while killing Kimimaro would have been icing on the cake, the way things had turned out was also acceptable.
'HAH- nothing!' Tsukasa let a wide grin pass across his lips. 'It's just amusing: how little things have changed. Here we are, fighting- you always being stronger and faster,' he said the last part with a hint of melancholy, slowly raising his face to look at his old nemesis.
Kimimaro could hardly be blamed for recoiling slightly. The gash on Tsukasa's forehead was staining his already scarlet hair a deep crimson. Blood was also tricking down his face and into his eyes, some of the blood-tears tricking into the corners of his disturbingly wide grin. The best word to describe his appearance would have been "ghastly."
'Always strong enough to beat me up,' he continued. 'But this time...' his eyes widened with every word and he stretched his neck towards Kimimaro as he whispered the most important part:
'I. Still. Beat. You.'
Daruma, buoyed by his recent run of luck, decided that this was the perfect opportunity to call in his backup. Since he had overpowered the Yamanaka girl, he seemed to have managed to stay ahead of the pursuers which were, without a shadow of a doubt, coming after him all the same. There was the minor issue of his leg, which was starting to hurt like a bastard now that his adrenaline rush was wearing off. He had, it seemed, abused the shit out of it in his mad rush to escape capture. It had paid off in the end, but that would hardly make it better just by giving him a smug sense of satisfaction.
Fishing around in the girl's hip satchel awkwardly as he ran, he managed to find an exploding seal. Must have been about the only damned one she hadn't tried to kill him with on their first meeting. He abruptly forced himself to focus on something else; it was hardly worth getting upset about that now.
Using some fancy finger-work (and his teeth, where necessary) he tied the exploding tag to a kunai, activated the tag, and hurled them both as high as he could. The tag detonated well above him with a crack that sent the kunai it had been affixed to spinning end over end until it came to rest on a rooftop somewhere. But that should have been all the signal he needed to give- both to let his pursuers know exactly where he was (not that they weren't tracking him already), but also to alert the Kirigakure shinobi standing by in Enrai that something was going on.
He had been out of the loop for a while, and he was royally screwed if his colleague tasked with watching the Imperial Castle had been pulled for another assignment, but Daruma was feeling lucky. Very lucky.
He decided that was a very stupid thing to feel almost immediately. His bad leg unexpectedly refused to work for a moment, just when he was attempting to land with it (probably a bad idea to begin with), and he stumbled painfully before regaining his feet and running on. His stumble drove his shoulder hard into the girl's stomach, who gave an "oohf" of discomfort.
Crap. It would be bad if she woke up now.
And, just to prove exactly how lucky he wasn't, wake up was exactly what she proceeded to do. Doubtlessly the action was inspired by years of experience, combat training, knowledge of anatomy, and sheer wit. In a true showing of expert assassination techniques, Yamanaka Ino reached down Daruma's back, grabbed his sides between his ribcage and hip, and pinched him for all she was worth.
Pain, shock, and a spontaneous urge to defend himself against the completely unprecedented attack overwhelmed Daruma's determination and clove his concentration apart. For just a moment his entire body convulsively attempted to assume a foetal position before his better judgement had time to override the action. And, in his haste to both escape his assailant's clutches and stop himself from face-planting into the very solid, stone rooftop, Daruma hurled Ino away from himself and turned his fall into the most awkward roll possible.
Even before he finished moving, he knew he wasn't going to be able to stand back up. His much-abused leg, battered and bloodied, and choking on toxic levels of lactic acid, had been too surprised by the sudden emergency signal sent to from the brain which totally contradicted its current instructions. Its resultant, berserk movements had finally pushed it past the limits of endurance, and had seized up. Maybe he would be able to move his foot in a few minutes, if he was lucky, but not straight away.
The pain in his sides had gone away as quickly as it had come, and it would probably be best if he didn't stay curled up in a ball now that the Yamanaka girl was awake. Carefully, but urgently, he manoeuvred himself around his frozen leg and into a sitting position. The girl was having trouble enough of her own, it seemed.
Ino slid across the roof after landing on her back. Daruma hadn't exactly had her well-being in mind when he threw her, and her head had bounced off the stone painfully when she first landed. The impact nearly knocked her out again and she struggled to prop herself up on her arms. She was once again reminded that her arm was broken, forcing her to rely on one arm only. At least her legs were alright, and it looked like she couldn't say the same for Daruma.
She could see that his leg was crooked oddly to one side, and he was trying to lift himself up with just the other leg and his arms. When he saw her watching him, he decided to kneel instead. He glared at her, rage smouldering in his eyes.
'You just don't know when to quit, do you?' she spat, gingerly raising herself into a standing position. That earned a grin from Daruma.
'Oh, I think we both know how this is going to end,' he said, clasping his hands together and forming a set of hand-seals. 'Suiton: Bakusui Shouha!' Saying so, and cheeks bulging grossly, Daruma vomited a pool of water onto the roof before him. But his hands were still moving. 'Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu!' The trickle of water stopped moving completely for a moment, before it started lifting itself off the roof and forming a silhouette of Daruma.
Ino, had she known just how many water clones he had made via this process, and how much of his chakra he had distributed between them, would have been surprised that he had enough chakra left for this latest trick. Daruma was being vary careful to conceal his fatigue as best he could, so the performance was at least a little worrying to her.
She took a step back. The now solidified clone of Daruma, rose and took a step towards her. The fact that the clone was between herself and Daruma made it impossible for her to use Shintenshin- but then it was still just a clone. Even a water clone, while able to physically attack her, was only ever fractionally strong compared to the original. So, while Daruma could probably still beat her to a pulp, he was temporarily disabled and his clone would be feeble at best. She drew a single kunai from her pouch with her good arm and threw it hard at the clone's chest.
For a moment she wasn't sure if she had imagined it or not, but Daruma's reaction confirmed her suspicion. The clone's body started losing its integrity a split second before the Kunai even hit it. The water it was made of, resisting the Kunai moving through it while also starting to fall, robbed the weapon of its momentum and altered the direction it was moving just enough that when it passed through the collapsing clone's body it arched lazily downwards and clattered to a halt just out of Daruma's reach.
Leaning forward awkwardly and visibly wincing at the pain in his leg as he crawled forward the short distance to reach it, Daruma snatched up the Kunai before resuming his kneeling position. After settling himself, he gave Ino a cocky smile and started tossing the kunai from one hand to the other.
Great work, Ino. He still can't move, but now he has a weapon again.