County Fair

By Magewriter

Chapter 2: Whomp'd

Disclaimer: All characters and places belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

This was originally part of Chapter 1. I just copy-pasted up to "It doesn't work so well when you're fighting barehanded without any jutsu." so I don't have too much to write… I just thought I needed to start separating chapters or this would be one enormous oneshot.

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"You have three minutes. You have both read the rules on the sign over there. Are both parties ready?"

"Yes."

"You bet I am!!!"

"Begin!"

Ritonno backed up to the wall, something that you're never supposed to do. Itachi rushed at her. He purposely ran to her side, hoping to do a replacement jutsu right before he hit the wall.

Before he was able to, however, she stepped to the side, making herself too far away from him to do such a jutsu.

He rammed his shoulder into the wall.

Ritonno now did a trick that she hadn't done in a long time: she turned herself invisible. It was like Itachi's sharingan moves in that she didn't have to do any hand tricks to get it to work. On the wooden stage, he wouldn't know where she was.

Suddenly, something pulled his hair back and kicked at the small of his back, creating two painful effects. He stood up (the attack had sent him to the ground; this is perfectly logical if you think about it) and looked around with his Sharingan, paying special attention to the floor.

He was kicked in the stomach, sending him backward. In the interest of fairness, Ritonno then turned visible again.

"Give up, already, Itachi! Women are better, and you know it!"

"I thought we were fighting over something else," he said as he stood up. Ritonno rushed at him, which should have told him that something was wrong, but he was happy that she was coming to him.

He punched her, or the place that she had been before she had jumped to the side. She kicked him in the back again, sending him stumbling. "We're fighting because I said that men are stupid and you laughed at me. Now, is this going to be a serious fight or are you going to keep fighting like a chunin?"

Igniting peoples' tempers was a favorite game of Ritonno's. When people got mad, they were easily distracted. As he lunged, she put up her knee, hitting him in the stomach. His torso absorbed most of the shock – she couldn't send a man as heavy as Itachi flying the same way he could send Sasuke across a hall – but it was effective.

"(expletive), why do you have to do things like that?"

"You're rushing blindly, Itachi. Sometime, I need to help you with your technique. If you were to stand against Orochimaru or someone more powerful than you, you wouldn't stand a chance! That style works most of the time, if you have a kunai or a few shuriken stars and you're allowed to use your mangekyo. It doesn't work so well when you're fighting barehanded without any jutsu."

This made him even angrier. At the end of their three minutes, Itachi was panting heavily but not really hurt, Ritonno was in perfect condition, and she was declared the winner.

Ritonno was also asked to enter the advanced competition that night. To win a fight without hurting the other person was a great skill.

.-..-..-.

After several more rides on the Tilt-a-whirl, Seiya and Deidara decided to go off on their own. Tobi followed them. It was so cute, the way he followed Deidara everywhere. It was like a little duckling…

Wait a minute. That would make Deidara a woman. Ritonno did her best to push this out of her mind.

Ritonno went to get herself a sno cone, since she didn't have anything better to do, and when she walked away, she saw Leader leaning against the stand. He looked stressed.

"Rei-sama? Is something wrong?"

"Ritonno-san! Um, no. Nothing's wrong." He sounded nervous. But Leader never sounded nervous…"

"Are you okay? You aren't acting normal. Do you have a fever?"

She put her hand up to feel his forehead.

He knocked it out of the air. "No! Really! I'm fine! I just… I got off a ride that made me feel sort of sick… vertigo and all that…"

"Oh, yeah. Some of the rides here look pretty hardcore…" She turned to walk away.

"Actually, um…" She turned to face him again. "Would you like to watch the fireworks with me tonight? They're supposed to be really nice…"

Now she knew why he had been so nervous! She smiled at him. "Sure! It'll be fun! Do you want to hang out for awhile? …I mean, you said we should be home by two. That gives us until midnight to stay here. So, we have plenty of time."

"Sure…"

Ritonno bit off of her lime-flavored sno cone and eventually they came upon Deidara, Tobi, and Seiya.

"Hey, Ritonno-san, yeah! Hello, Leader-sama, yeah. We were going to get funnel cake!"

"Awesomeness! Leader-sama, do you want to share a funnel cake with us?"

"I'm assuming that we're going to have some sort of knife to cut it with…?"

"No, just forks. Are you okay with that?"

"Um…"

"None of us is diseased or anything. And funnel cakes are really good! It's batter poured into a deep-fryer and topped with chocolate and powdered sugar! …Or we could get other toppings. We ought to get chocolate, though…"

"…And you normally split them up that way?"

Seiya interrupted Ritonno before she had the chance to answer. "Yep! Just stab it with your fork and rip off a piece."

"You make it sound so vulgar… what ever happened to chopsticks, anyway?"

"Forks are easy to make out of plastic. And they grab the funnel cake really well. We would never get anything eaten if we used chopsticks!"

"…"

"…Now, do we want a funnel cake or not? Everyone has to pitch in, okay?"

Ritonno scrounged in her bag, Tobi and Deidara in their pockets. They each managed to produce paper money of some type. Then they went to discuss flavors.

"…Well, it has to have chocolate…"

"…and whipped cream."

"Definitely. Dei-chan! Tobi! You want anything special? …Like strawberries or anything?"

"We're fine, yeah."

"Okay. So, chocolate and whipped cream? That good with you, Ritonno-san?"

"Yeah. You sure you don't want any, Leader-sama?"

He was silent.

"Okay. Let's order, then." She skipped into line. "One funnel cake with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, please!"

The woman got a fresh funnel cake and drizzled chocolate sauce onto it, then sprayed some whipped cream out of a can and onto the deep-fried piece of chocolate-covered goodness. Then they all grabbed forks and found a table.

They were surprised when a fifth hand joined into the scramble.

"Hey! You're getting some funnel cake after all, yeah! Good for you, Leader-sama!"

"This really is pretty good…"

"Tobi-chan, you have to be more aggressive if you want to get any funnel cake! Don't just let up whenever anyone wants something near what you were about to take!"

"This stuff really is amazing, yeah!"

Finally, they were down to chocolate-sodden dough with a thin, uneven layer of whipped cream over it.

"Okay. Now, everyone stick your fork in, and what you get, you get. Okay?"

They each stuck their fork into a distinct part of the funnel cake and pulled it into five pieces.

"Yay! I get the most!!!"

"Aw, Tobi-chan, do you want part of mine? You barely got any!"

"We decided that it would all be decided that way, though, yeah…"

"I guess so… Isn't this stuff awesome?"

"It is."

"Definitely!!!"

"We have to do this every time we go to fairs, yeah!"

"We won't be going to any more county fairs! This is a one-time thing! What would happen if someone recognized us?"

"…But whenever Ritonno begs you, you do whatever she wants."

"Shut up!" He glared at her and walked away.

"Seiya-chan, that was mean, yeah!"

"It's true, though. Ritonno-chan, where are you going?" Ritonno ran away from the trio in approximately the direction that Leader had gone. She didn't even take the time to glare at Seiya.

She finally found him leaning against the tee at the front of the fairground.

"Leader-sama!"

He looked up, glaring at her. "Shut up and go away."

"But… That wasn't my fault! I came to apologize!"

He made an apathetic (for him) swipe at her with a kunai.

"…And here I was going to watch the fireworks with you. If you're going to be antisocial, I don't have to do anything with you. If you want to, I'll watch them with you, but you have to say something, okay? Last chance."

"Stop." He mumbled it, so Ritonno didn't hear it very well.

"What?"

"Stop. Why do you have to be so hard on me?"

"Because if you're going to have a crush on me, I want to make sure that I'm respected. I'm not going to let you play around with my sympathy just because I'm a lower rank than you."

"I would never do that."

"There are a lot of people who would, though. The world is full of people who don't respect other people enough to give them that courtesy. So, I just wanted to make sure that you were the person I thought you were… Where do you want to watch them from?"

"High ground… Perhaps the ferris wheel?"

She laughed. "Do you know what going on the ferris wheel with someone suggests if you aren't just friends?"

"We'd be going to watch the fireworks."

"Yes, but some people have strange minds. Think of Itachi and you'll know what I mean."

"Oh."

"Exactly. So, just don't suggest anything like that, okay? You and I both know that we're definitely not ready for kissing yet, but I'm not so sure that the rest of the Akatsuki are quite that smart."

"Okay. Perhaps the field that Zetsu are in, then."

"Sure. Let's go check it out." It was getting close to dusk. They decided that the field would be a nice place to watch the light show from. Then Ritonno remembered her obligations.

"Oh! Leader-sama! I forgot – I need to go to the sparring stage. I said I'd help with an elite show."

"So did I."

"Really? Who'd you spar?"

"Some woman. Does it really matter?"

"No… let's get going, though. We don't want to miss the fireworks for sparring!" She ran through the fair to the building at the front. "C'mon, Leader-sama! Race you!"

She won, of course, since she had gotten such a big head start, then walked into the auditorium.

They were recognized as the people who had had superior fighting abilities, and it turned out that they were just in time.

They were the last two to come.

This meant that they were going to fight each other.

"Pleeeeeeease? Could I fight someone else? Anyone else? I can beat anyone else! …Just, not him!"

"I'm sorry, miss, but rules are rules."

"Are there any people who tied? We could replace them!"

"No! These are the rules!"

"Then I'm not going to fight."

"What?!"

"I'm not going to fight someone when, even though I know his style exactly, I'm going to lose. I can spar him any time with whatever rules we choose. That would make it rigged, wouldn't it? He knows every move I'm going to make. So it's rigged."

The mediator went to talk to the person organizing the event.

"Okay, you've been split up. Which of you will fight first?"

"I will." Leader stepped forward.

"Okay!" The other person stepped onto the stage. He was slightly muscular, but he also looked as though he didn't have perfect control of his body. One wrong step could be the difference between defeat and humiliating defeat. "You both know the rules. For this fight, you have five minutes! Begin!"

Leader's opponent punched at him. Leader dodged and, in the half-second between the time when the man threw the punch and the recoil, grabbed his arm and flipped him onto the ground.

He made a very satisfying thud. Then he stood up.

"That's no way to throw a punch. A proper" Leader threw a punch "punch is like that. And it works best if you do it when it isn't expected."

"Do you think I'm a chunin or something?"

"No, I can see that you have a jonin vest sitting on that chair over there. I'm saying that maybe you should take some time to work on the more basic techniques." Leader threw a low kick to the man's ankles. The man jumped and Leader punched him, throwing him off-balance. Then he kicked him in his side. Remember that he's saying his monologue as he's doing this. "They're easy to forget to practice."

"Ow…."

"I know that you're jonin. It just-so-happens that I'm S-rank. But a chunin could defeat an S-rank with the proper technique. It just happens that most people who make it to S-rank have already perfected their technique and they tend to stay on-guard even when they think that nothing is happening or going to happen." The fight continued. Leader had beat his opponent – officially – at exactly 4 minutes and 58 seconds.

Ritonno was up next.

She smiled as her opponent stepped into the ring. She recognized and despised him.

"You have five minutes. Begin!"

"You know," Ritonno said as she dodged and threw attacks, "I know someone who reads your books. He's scum! …And, once I read a passage from one of them… it will be a pleasure when I beat you."

"You don't appreciate my work? I have fans all over Konoha and the world!"

"Yeah, but they're men!" Then she made a stunning realization, but managed to contain her surprise to a half-second. "You were Orochimaru's teammate!"

"Yeah, so what?"

"I work in an organization that he used to."

"…So you were his girlfriend?"

"Are you kidding? You honestly didn't know he was gay?"

"What?!" Jiraya couldn't contain a surprise of that magnitude the way that Ritonno could. His defenses dropped and Ritonno threw a kick to his stomach. There was a much better place to kick, but it was against the rules.

"But… but we did research together!"

"Teenagers try to force that stuff sometimes. He was probably still figuring stuff out. All I know is, neither I nor my female friend who was there before me ever took any abuse from him. It was always the guys. And he was stronger than us – he could have done whatever he wanted."

"How do you turn gay if you're on a team with Tsunadae? I didn't even know that was possible!"

"You don't 'turn' gay, you're born gay. Duh!"

Being at about the same rank, they were having their fight during this discussion. Ritonno, because she was beginning to lose, made herself invisible.

"Wha – where are you?"

"Right here."

He threw a kick to where she had been and she kicked him in the back. Because their conversation had been slowed by punches, kicks, etc., they were now almost at five minutes.

Ritonno made herself visible again. "Sorry. Just wanted to get in one really good hit."

"Genjutsu aren't allowed!"

"It's not genjutsu – jutsu have hand signs that go along with them. It's an illusion, but it sure as heck isn't genjutsu. See?" She made herself invisible, then visible again. During that time, she managed to get her knee into his stomach, which, because they were almost out of time, was the final blow of the match.

It was very close, but Ritonno won.

They had several more fights. Leader's next fight was against Tsunadae. Fortunately for him, he was very good at controlling his lust, especially when fighting. He got a few injuries from Tsunadae's high heels, but he did win the match.

Finally, it came to the last fight. It was Ritonno and leader. There was a break called so that they could rest. Ritonno walked into the crowd. Leader, curious, followed.

"What are you doing, Ritonno-san?"

"There's a man taking bets in the crowd. I'm going to get some money from him."

"Why? Are you really that confident?"

She turned to him. "Do you promise me that you'll do your best? …Because I'm not going to make this bet otherwise. Promise me that, if I win, it's going to be entirely from skill."

"Okay…"

"Great." They had reached the betting stand. She took her wallet out of her bag and took out all of the money in it. The man running the stand counted it and asked who she would like to bet on. "I'd like to bet on the orange-haired one, please."

She took her betting stub and turned away from the booth. Leader looked stunned. "Do you really have that little confidence in your ability?"

"I have full confidence in my ability. It just happens that you've never lost a single fight to me, so you ought to be able to win now. And, I prefer having money over winning against my leader. I've already proved that I'm one of the two strongest ninjas here."

"If you say so…" They walked back up onstage. The announcer/mediator came back.

"This is the final fight! Who will win between the two strongest ninjas? Place your bets now everyone, the fight is about to start! Ten minutes from now, we'll have our answer! Are both parties ready?"

"Yes."

"Of course."

"Begin!"

They had a relatively serene conversation as they fought each other. Of course, Ritonno was nearly as good as Leader, but only nearly. He was the elite ninja, perhaps even against Orochimaru. In the end, he won.

"And we have a winner!!! The woman looks pretty happy about it, though! What are her thoughts?" The announcer went on like that as the ninjas left the stage, heading for the betting stand.

Ritonno gave her stub to the man who had taken her money.

"Hey! You're –"

"Yes, I know. As I said during the first round, we know each other. I never win against him, no matter how hard I try. So, it followed that I would bet on him, no matter who was fighting him."

The man gave her twice the money she had bet and the almost-couple ran to their place in the open field. After all, the fireworks were just about to start.

When they got to their spot, they found Deidara and Seiya there. Apparently, they had found a way to get rid of Tobi because he wasn't there.

"Hey! I just won a whole bunch of money betting on Leader to win a fight!"

"Really?"

"Who against, yeah?"

"Myself."

"Awww, poor Ritonno! Did he hurt you?"

"No. He got hit by Tsunadae – you know who Tsunadae is, right? – well, she fights in heels, and he got a couple of nicks and bruises from those, but we're both fine. Guess who didn't know that Oro was gay?"

"Who? Tsunadae?"

"No, someone I fought. Jiraya."

Seiya, already sitting on the ground, rolled onto her side laughing. "Really?"

"Yeah! First I told him he was scum, then I remembered that he was Oro's former teammate, so we were talking about that and somehow that came up. It helped me win the battle – he was pretty surprised."

"I'll bet!" Seiya exclaimed, still laughing.

"Look! They're starting, yeah!" They heard the loud crack of a firework going off and saw the bright sparkles in the sky. They were beautiful…

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School starts at 10:10 today! …So I'm writing this at 7:17, when I would normally be brushing my hair or tying my shoes because I leave for the bus stop at 7:21. I'm walking to school with my BF today because we have so much time. It takes about 45 minutes, but we're planning for and hour and fifteen just to be sure because we can't be late for school! We're leaving around 8:45 or 8:55… I might get halfway through the next chapter, even!

It recently occurred to me that I have fifteen stories. That's totally awesome.