Chapter 21: The Third Stage – The Samurai
"Shoryu. Got a guest."
The boy stirred uncomfortably in his sleep, eyes blinking open and taking in the new day's radiance with a mild amount of strain before a bucket of icy cold water was tipped over his head. Shoryu leapt out of bed with a start. Shivering and alarmed, he tripped up over his own left foot and tumbled back down to the floor. The next sound he heard was Kazuya laughing contentedly, along with a shocked female gasp that sounded all too familiar.
"That's way too harsh! You guys have no limits whatsoever do you?" said the girl.
"I'm afraid not. Any kind of boundaries went out of the window a long time ago," admitted Kazuya.
Rubbing the sleep quickly out of his eye,s Shoryu followed the first voice only to have his spirits rise in elation as his hopeful suspicions were confirmed. In the rays of summer pouring in through the window her natural blonde hair seemed to shine with a golden glow as she gave a charming smile. A cast covered the entirety of her left leg and she walked with a crutch to support her, but there was no mistaking her for anyone else.
"Ayako!" cried Shoryu.
Her smile widened upon knowing that even in her brief absence she'd been missed. "That's me," she said.
"But how'd you get here? Don't tell me you're competing in the finals?"
"On this thing? Hell no." Ayako gave a wary glance at the rock solid cast that almost doubled her weight. "When the deadline came last night the order was given out to gather up all students who'd either been injured or couldn't complete the third stage. Since the three of us were so close to the doors we were some of the first to be extracted, and we get rewarded for our almost-victory by being allowed to watch the third stage play out."
"That's great!" Shoryu went numb even as he spoke, partly due to the cold water still freezing him, but also due to the unnecessary stress he'd have to cope with again. He wanted her by his side, but it was on the battlefield where she belonged. Seeing her cheering from the sidelines along with his mother would just put more pressure on him. There was still one question he was curious about though. "What about your leg?" he asked. "Is it gonna be okay?"
Ayako made a face of disappointment and folded her arms. "I'll be in this stupid cast for about three months, followed by another two of rehabilitation physio before I'm running around again."
"So there's no lasting damage?"
"Stop being so optimistic!" she insisted with a laugh. "I'll have surgical scars, not to mention five months of my life that I'm never going to get back! Five whole months!"
The boy shrugged, sharing her good humour with a grin. "Hey, at least that puts you in top form just in time for the next Chunin exams," he observed.
"That's true enough. Assuming you two pass this time I think I'll take it with Yuudai and Jinga in the next term."
Kazuya nodded as if in approval to her smart suggestion, leaving Shoryu with an overwhelming sense of confusion. He blinked twice and cocked an eyebrow as he addressed his comrades.
"Did I miss something?" he asked.
"Oh yeah." Kazuya motioned to the door nonchalantly. "Hoshi passed."
"What?" A dumbstruck Shoryu pressed for answers; where was he when this had happened? Had he really slept through it all? How long had he been asleep? Now that he stopped and took in his surroundings, the light pouring in through the window outside suggested a time much later than the break of dawn.
"Yeah! It was about an hour ago - Hoshi lost her battle against those three Mist ninja but they still let her pass," Ayako explained. "She did take down two out of three after all, including that guy with the club who broke my leg. In fact he was easiest of all for her – he just rushed at her like an idiot so she used that kinetic displacement thing to turn his force against him. I think she broke his sternum."
"Seriously? That's great! But hang on, what time is it?"
Kazuya took the answer to this question, wanting to be the one to break the disturbing news to his sparring partner. "It's one in the afternoon."
"What? No way!" Shoryu threw on his shirt and scratched is head. "But we went to bed at eleven! You mean I've been sleeping for fourteen hours? You could've woken me up!"
"We could have, but we figured you deserved the sleep; you probably spent more chakra, energy and brainpower than any of us in those first two stages and we never got a proper rest throughout all of it. I figured we'd make full use of our resources whilst we've got beds to sleep in and four walls around us."
Eventually Shoryu sighed and nodded in understanding. He still would've liked to see Hoshi's fight, but if getting up earlier than he had to meant losing precious energy for his fight then he couldn't risk it. He was sure Hoshi would understand his absence, but fourteen hours? He never realised how tired he'd been last night until he compared it to the alertness he now experienced.
"Don't feel so bad – Yuudai hasn't woken up yet either," lamented Ayako.
"Is he alright?" demanded Shoryu, suddenly being reminded of the events of the previous day. "What about Jinga?"
"Calm down, they're both going to be fine." She gave a reassuring smile. "Jinga completely exhausted his chakra supply but he's back on his feet now. Yuudai lost a lot of blood and he used up all his reserves as well; then again, his chakra capacity is bigger than anyone we know so it'll take him much longer to recover. The bigger they are the harder they fall I guess - he'll be fine though."
"I'm glad they're alright. We owe them a lot after everything that happened last week," said Shoryu. He turned to Kazuya and began again, "so what time is our fight then?"
"Two o'clock," the samurai replied, showing not a hint of sympathy
Shoryu's heart did a somersault in his chest. "One hour?" he demanded. "You didn't think to wake me up until one hour before we get started? We've got to plan! We've got to get ready!" The boy rattled on at some length like this for another five minutes before he reminded himself that his lecture both fell on deaf ears and robbed him of what little time he had remaining.
He bade Ayako a brief farewell before retreating into the en-suite bathroom for a shower – the warm and refreshing kind complete with actual steam that he hadn't experienced in over a week. He could've stayed in there for the remainder of his hour, but the battle was close at hand; with agonising difficulty he tore himself away from the therapeutic splash and the tickling bubbles to get dried up and change back into his outfit, which actually appeared to have been dried overnight.
After his revitalizing soak Shoryu met up with Kazuya in the armoury on the west side of their apartment. Shuriken, swords, ropes, paper bombs, kunai; anything that a ninja could possibly have a use for was kept here. Kazuya agreed that many failed on this stage simply due to the overwhelming amount of choice. Students would kit up with equipment they had little experience with simply because they could, and their unfamiliarity with them led to their failure.
It was because of this that the pair decided to take only what they needed. Shoryu restocked his trio of windmill shuriken that had been reduced to one in the second stage, though Kazuya needed nothing; his sword was all he required. The two wandered between the three aisles and casually inspected the odd tweaks of strange metals and the faded paper of ancient scrolls. As they walked they discussed strategy, using their forty minutes remaining to devise some kind of a plan.
It took them only a few sessions of fast-paced brainstorming to come up with a basic plan. Kazuya had been right all along. Now that Shoryu had seen the Raikyogan half a dozen times, thinking up a counter-attack to it didn't take long at all. Of course this only applied to Kouta – Suzume and Norio were a completely different story when they had no idea what either of them were capable of.
Shoryu bit off a curse, scolding himself for not asking Ayako to investigate the Oyama clan when he had the chance. After all, deception and intelligence gathering was part of a ninja's job, so would it be against the rules to send someone who had already been disqualified? It mattered little anyway – for now they had to stick with what they knew on Kouta and play the rest as it came.
What worried Shoryu was the fact that their current plan relied on the two of them being partnered together. If they found themselves separated it was all for naught. He couldn't summon Kyoh for backup either. Ever since Reizo had warned him that spies for the clones could've been everywhere his paranoia grew whenever he saw a large crowd of people. One hundred thousand people would be watching today, and it only took one of them seeing Kyoh to make sure a nice bull's-eye was painted on Shoryu's forehead.
Countering Kouta by himself would be difficult, but not impossible – he just needed a solid plan. Shoryu found himself pacing back and forth along the aisles before he eventually came to a mannequin, fitted with tough fibres and overlays for protection. The outfit might have been handy, but it hindered his movement and was too foreign to move in comfortably. Shoryu's eyes instead wandered down to the statue's hands before lighting up in glee.
As Kazuya began to question his erratic behaviour Shoryu bolted down the second aisle and tipped up a basket of assorted gloves.
"You had better not be lying to us Hiromasa or I swear I'll smash the white right out of those eyes!" roared Teruo. The eleventh Mizukage had abandoned all pretence earlier on and was as blunt with his words as an infant. The shark-fin Samehada sword quivered on his back, as if restless – thirsty for blood in reacting to the emotions of its master.
The twelfth Hokage meanwhile sighed and placed a hand to his forehead. He swept away a strand of chocolate brown hair that parted down and tried his best to keep his composure. "For the last time, why would I kill the Tsuchikage? What possible motivation do you expect me to have for commanding an army of clones to kill one of my oldest friends?" he said.
"Don't give us that sympathy rubbish Hokage," chided Kira. His insults had gone so low in the last few hours that nothing surprised Reizo anymore. "We all know your clan; you Hyuga, no one has ever trusted your kind, with your archaic ways and your secrecy – you're always there when something bad happens, it's a historical fact."
Finally the Hokage's threshold had not just been crossed, it had been utterly broken. After keeping calm for so long the Hyuga stamped down an infuriated fist to the table and fixed the Raikage with a cold stare that commanded silence from the room. "You really are a fool," he muttered. "You have the nerve to use my family's unending loyalty to its country as a base to accuse me of treason? What idiocy is this?"
"Alright, alright," said Peparo, waving his hands up and down as a plea for them to stop. "Just chill – I think we can all agree that out of all of us, Hiro is the least likely."
But the Hokage wasn't finished on his rant just yet. "I believe I speak for all the other Kage when I say that you've been in that chair for too long old man; your judgement is truly clouded."
Kira rose to his feet and seemed about to reply with an equally angry remark when Kikuchiyo beat him to the punch. Sweating and nervous, the samurai's bald head gleamed like polished steel under sunlight as he addressed the roundtable.
"That's quite enough!" he bellowed. After the heat settled into cool animosity the Taisho dabbed his head and spoke again. "Session adjourned for half an hour; if you can't come up with a resolution in the next meeting then there's nothing more I can do. Go now to your advisors, and come back with a clear head if you can manage it."
As Kira fetched his stick and began to slowly inch his way over, Reizo took the time to look at the other bodyguards of the Kage. Peparo's and Hisae's Jonin gave them a hard time and advised them to be more cautious, but Teruo's on the other hand seemed just as brutish and uncivilised as he was. Hiromasa Hyuga was actually the only one who seemed to be listening to the concerns of his peers; Reizo respected him the most for that, not to mention his comment on the Raikage that he'd wanted to say his entire life.
The striking of a match alerted Reizo to Kira relighting his pipe beside them. The two of them along with Hatori huddled up and retreated to the outer columns of the room, where their voices wouldn't be so easily heard. After drawing in and exhaling smoke the Raikage pressed Hatori for details.
"So what did you find?" he asked eagerly. "It was the Hyuga wasn't it? I'm right aren't I?"
"Uh, no sir," replied Hatori, as if apologising. He cast a glance over to each of them before elaborating, sure of what he'd seen. "Actually, I found that none of them were lying."
"What?" Kira became angry in his confusion.
"Well, I studied all four of them in turn and came out with nothing. The Mizukage probably has a few skeletons in his closet but where matters of the clones where concerned they were all completely sincere."
"Hmm." Kira took another suck of his pipe and pondered, and his expression was thoughtful as he considered the news with suspicion. After a number of smoke rings he responded accordingly. "I see three possibilities. First: that one of them has managed to shield themselves against Hatori's power. Second: that the culprit is not in this room – the Kage may have had documents stolen from their office. Third: that one of the Kage is being manipulated into acting for the clones. They may not even know that they're leaking information, hence the lack of lies."
"Perhaps," offered Reizo, staring into space in deep thought.
The Raikage spared Reizo a look of unease before once again going off on a rant and venting his frustrations on the Jonin pair. He spoke in jumbled insults about each of the Kage and instantly dismissed or ignored any advice the two of them had about how to handle the final meeting. When the half an hour was over Reizo felt like he'd been standing in that dark corner for a week.
Kikuchiyo hollered over for the five Kage to return. Reizo let Kira take the lead by a few steps as he made his way back to the roundtable, but when Hatori passed him the Jonin gripped him by the arm.
"Listen to me," Reizo hissed, careful to keep his voice as quiet as possible so that it would be dimmed to outsiders by the dull chatter from the table. "Before we go back there, there's something I want you to do." After that, Reizo leaned in closer and whispered a specific set of instructions in Hatori's ear, paying no attention as the man's expression went from intrigued, to confused, and then to horrified.
"But that's treason!" he hissed back. A shush from Reizo came his way when the Kazekage noticed them bickering.
The Jonin lowered his voice to reply. "It's just a precaution. I don't want to believe it any more than you do, believe me, but we have to be sure. Besides, he never has to know about it, and it's not treason it turns out to be true."
The first thing Shoryu noticed when he stepped out onto the arena floor was his eyes and ears being overwhelmed with information. The sun had reached its zenith right over the coliseum, bathing the whole structure in a cool glow and transforming the gritted surface into a harsh yellow glaze that made him squint. Blinded, he realised with a start that he hadn't yet set foot out of the cool, dim hole of his quarters today – hardly a good start.
As his eyes began to slowly adjust his ears became the next victims of the torture. Cheers from one hundred thousand screaming fans deafened him, and all around him the mixed voices blurred into one fragmented shout that made his ears ring. A slap on his back startled the boy until he realised it was a reassuring gesture from Kazuya.
As the giant screen lit up with their profiles the two hopeful Chunin strode out onto the field, prompting the cheer to grow louder to mark their arrival. The arena floor was a plain circle of orange turf, yet its size dwarfed that of any structure Shoryu had ever come across; it took the two a whole minute to reach the centre. By that time the screams had died down only to be replaced by another deafening roar to accompany Mixed Squad One's arrival.
Shoryu couldn't help but feel that the cheers for Kouta's gang were louder than their own. Worse still, Kouta himself seemed to relish the attention. He kissed his hands and waved to the crowd in his arrogance whilst his teammates modestly plodded behind him. Shoryu took ten steps apart from Kazuya and took his position, shifting uncomfortably in his new gloves as Kouta took place opposite him twenty paces away. Suzume did the same with Kazuya, though Norio hung back a little; Shoryu wondered what he was up to.
After studying the smaller boy Shoryu's eyes wandered to the viewing screen. It displayed a simple digital timer showing the time to be three minutes to two, counting down the seconds ominously like the ticking of a bomb.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" called out a voice. Shoryu looked up to source only to find his gaze blinded by sunlight. The crowd fell silent as the boy finally made sense of what he was looking at: Saito Yukizawa's voice was amplified around the arena, though the source of it came from the platform raised some two hundred feet above the action. His figure was merely a silhouette in the light, yet the sound of his voice and charismatic swagger assured Shoryu it was him.
"Following the climactic last battle of the Mist against the Cloud, we now have another feature in store for you. These ninja need no introduction for those of you following the stages." Despite his claim, upon Saito's last word the great screen lit up again to show the profiles of the five competing ninja. Shoryu noticed that his information segment had now been updated to mention his outcast from his clan.
He also noticed something else too; around the arena floor and up on the stands the blinking red lights had been replaced with cameras, no doubt to capture the action and see every gory detail in a glorified resolution.
As Saito spoke Shoryu's heart began to pound against his chest and he began to sweat in the heat. Two o'clock wouldn't slow down for him - time began to fly by in the blink of an eye until the moment he'd been dreading would finally arrive.
"Hey!"
Shoryu looked up, seeing that it was Kazuya who had disturbed the chaos in his mind.
"You'd better relax, stop shaking," he added. "Just stick to the plan and we'll be fine."
Shoryu nodded and swallowed his nerves; he never even realised he'd been shaking until told. He quickly told himself that he had to get back in the game and focused his attention to his immediate problem. He probed Kouta for any kind of weakness before moving onto Suzume. Once he'd gotten back into stoic mode of analysis Kazuya hummed in approval.
Saito continued, "Mixed Squad One: Kouta Renazawa from the Village Hidden in the Clouds along with Suzume and Norio Oyama from the Village Hidden in the Mist! Cloud Squad Thirteen: Shoryu Aizawa from the Village Hidden in the Clouds and Kazuya Takashi from the Village Hidden in the Glacier. So we've got a samurai in our midst – I thought these were Chunin exams!"
To his credit Kazuya completely ignored the jape made at his expense. Even when a collective laugh of the entire crowd echoed from all directions he remained still and motionless. Admiring his composure, Shoryu did his best to follow his partner's lead.
To Shoryu's left the giant screen flipped into different segments again, this time displaying two halves depicting the teams in live action. On the top half Mixed Squad stood poised and ready for action – Kouta had even found the filming camera to wink at – and on the bottom half Shoryu and Kazuya remained stationary. At the line where the two halves met, the red digital timer continued to count down. Ten seconds left – Shoryu wondered where all the time had gone. Nine, eight, seven.
"So without further ado!" called Saito, clearly watching the timer himself.
Six, five, four.
"Let the battle . . ."
Three, two, one.
"BEGIN!"
Right off the bat two of the combatants fell into a short sequence of hand signs before Shoryu had time to react. Kazuya and Norio had been the quickdraws, and the battle took a turn for the worse in the first few seconds. Kazuya, being only vaguely familiar with his jutsu of choice, took six whole hand signs to cast his measly spell. Norio on the other hand was a clear master; he took only five seals to execute a jutsu far more powerful.
"Lava Style: Hell's Fountain Jutsu!" he cried.
Kazuya started his sentence in the moment Norio finished his own. "Water Style: Aqua Pistol!" He turned and aimed the shot right towards Kouta, hoping to soak the Zawa right before he had the chance to activate his precious Raikyogan. Since Norio's jutsu came first though, his own was interrupted.
Kazuya's dismal jet of water no more powerful than a splash evaporated into nothing but steam when the ground between he and Shoryu burst open and a great tirade of lava leapt into the sky. Norio had cast his jutsu – a powerful technique well beyond his years – out in a T-shape in front of him. Kazuya's left and front were blocked by the fifteen foot wall of relentless magma, and behind him the borders of the arena blocked any way for him to get to Shoryu.
Norio no doubt stood behind his makeshift wall, keeping his hands to the floor and segregating the battle into two fights. Kazuya was locked in his own arena with Suzume, whereas Shoryu had to face Kouta head on. It went exactly as the enemy squad had planned. As honour bound as he was, the samurai's first instinct was to get to Shoryu. Nothing else mattered; he had to back up his partner and disable Kouta's Raikyogan. Without thinking twice he eased into a trio of hand signs and blasted at the flaming wall.
"Ice Style: Cryo Blast Juts-"
A heel connected with his jaw, suddenly knocking the boy right off his feet and onto his back. He was hit with such force that he almost rolled right into the hissing wall of surging lava. He got to his feet the moment he regained clarity though, and found himself facing Suzume as he'd expected.
It was strange; she'd crossed the distance between them much faster than physics should have allowed her to, and her kick contained far more momentum and power behind it than her small stature permitted. Whoever this was - whatever answers she had, they were irrelevant now. Squad Thirteen came first, and Shoryu was in danger. In spite of his eagerness though, Kazuya knew that if he kept taking blows like that one he'd be rendered unconscious before half a dozen fell. He had to find some way around her – if he turned his attention to the lava barrier she'd exploit the opening in a heartbeat.
"I expected better," she mused.
"I don't have time for this," said Kazuya. "Move it."
"I think you've got bigger problems to worry about than your teammate right now. You can't expect to get to him without going through me. Forget about him – your target is in front of you."
Kazuya mumbled a low growl as he began to form hand signs. As he'd suspected she was dead right. It was pointless going after Shoryu now – his hands were full. "So be it then. Cryo Blast Jutsu!"
"Molten Blast Jutsu!" replied the girl.
The samurai almost couldn't believe his eyes when the pair ended on the exact same sign only to fire out parallel attacks. His own jet of frozen, scraping ice was met with an equally potent blast of bubbling magma - the same kind that enclosed them in battle. A bang marked their collision as steam rose up from the site of impact, sweeping west with the wind away from the battle.
When the smoke cleared Suzume wore a sneaky grin. "Impressive. It looks like we've come to similar stages of development," she noted.
"You can't beat me, so stop speaking as if you know me. I'll admit it's remarkable that you managed to match my attack, but this ends here."
"Oh?" Suzume raised her eyebrows, showing off those stunning, caramelised eyes, conveying an innocence that her tone did not. "I think you'll find we share more in common than just that."
Kazuya paused, unsure of what exactly the girl was getting at. She spoke like a snake, enticing him into pressing her for details that he'd hungered so long for. Even with one hundred thousand people watching the event he would have her spill everything she knew about him. He cleared his head and spoke calmly, "What do you mean? Just who are you? It's been annoying me for a while now."
Suzume chuckled once more. "Really, in front of all these people? You know they have microphones on those cameras too – they can hear our every word."
Angered by her flamboyance, Kazuya snapped up his right hand and formed shards of chakra concentrated into icicles, blasting them at the stationary cameras mounted on the nearby floors and up on the stands. He always kept one eye on his target though, meaning that when Suzume fired off another jutsu he was already ready.
"Lava Style: Infernal Bomb!"
With Kazuya's guard open and his right hand occupied the girl had seized the opportunity to lob a sphere of magma in his direction. The samurai's left arm moved in a blink however, whipping out his sword and holding it before him as he finished off the last camera. Instead of cutting through the bomb as he figured though, the heavy mass of frothing lava stuck to the top blade of his sword. Its weight required him to use both hands to supress it, and when he finally got it off his sleeves were already burned by its dangerous sizzling.
He fell back into stance, pointing his left hand back towards the girl. "Now talk," he ordered. "Who are you?"
"My name is Suzume Oyama, I was born fourteen years ago on the fifth of March; I like long walks and reading books –"
"Get to the point."
"I was just about to," she said softly, smiling afterwards. "My father was Ando Oyama, and my mother is Madoka Oyama."
"I'm not sure that's relevant," Kazuya observed, coldly staring back at his mark.
"Oh but it is," said Suzume. "You see, before she married into the clan, my mother was an outsider – her name used to be Madoka . . . Senmatsu."
Despite all his training and his mental focus to remain as impartial as possible in battle, Kazuya's heart skipped a beat when he heard that name again – his father's surname. His surprise was such that he failed to notice something crucial, something that would change the battle for the worse; Suzume had begun to form hand signs – twisted, obtuse shapes made from awkwardly intertwining her fingers.
In seeing how stunned her relative was, Suzume decided to speak again when no reply came. "She's your father's sister – your aunt."
Kazuya paused. "Which would make you-"
"Your cousin, yes. Actually I'm your only first cousin on your father's side. Took us a while to track you down, but we always suspected he had a child." Suzume recounted the revelation with such boredom one would think her totally uninterested, a stark contrast to Kazuya's reaction.
"What happened to my father? Where is he now?"
"Michio? Oh you don't know?" she teased. "Oh Kazuya, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but your dad's been dead a long time – almost eight years now."
The samurai flinched ever so slightly and bit down on his tongue; he'd expected as much, but the reality of it still managed to shock him. The only thing he could do was to ask the obvious and pray for a straight answer. "Then how did he die?"
Unfortunately he didn't get one. Suzume grinned and gave an aloof jerk of her head – towards the bubbling fountain of molten lava that split the arena in half and separated him from his teammate. "Maybe you should ask your partner," she suggested casually.
"Shoryu?" demanded Kazuya, his heart rate doubling again. "What does he have to do with thi-?"
"-Looks like I'm out of time!" Suzume cut him off before he could finish his sentence, slapping her hands for the fifteenth and final hand sign. Only then did Kazuya notice the strange familiarity of the hand signs she'd been working into – they were his own. The girl closed her eyes.
Kazuya centred himself as best as possible and braced himself for the technique that was to come; he feared what was on the way and prayed it wasn't the case, though somewhere in the back of his mind he knew exactly what those eyes would reveal. He dropped into stance and prepared his mind, showing no signs of surprise when Suzume's eyes opened to a black and white spiral pattern. He'd never met another who possessed the same eyes as himself.
"Jikogan!" she said
Well, he supposed. At least I know what it's called now.
Kazuya drew his sword and flourished it over his head as the girl's speed accelerated to inhuman heights. He saw only a blur as she zipped left and right in a zigzag path towards him before leaping up to the air. When she began her descent Suzume arched her body into a descending crescent kick, but Kazuya knew the dojutsu better than any; he told himself that countering it would be no problem.
He lashed out once, wheeling up the lower blade of his weapon with perfect accuracy and pinpoint precision in a manoeuvre that would've cut most in half, or at least claimed a leg. Neither befell Suzume. Instead she twisted in mid-flight, avoiding the damage completely and spinning into a kick that must've surely cracked a rib. Bruised and beaten, Kazuya was hurled a whole eight feet by the force of her amplified impact.
But this was no time to recover from his injuries. The moment the samurai looked up from his back a torrent of lava came surging his way. He rolled away on his stomach before hopping back to his feet, narrowly avoiding being turned into broth by the scalding hot substance. By the time he regained focus she was upon him again. Utilising a still mind and perfect concentration allowed Kazuya to dodge the rain of strong punches that she threw his way in a hazy sequence of blurs.
Each of them hit him, yet he was saved the brunt of the impact by closing himself off and relying purely on instinctive reflexes. They would graze off his arms or hammer into less vital spots in his body, and at the end of it Kazuya was still standing when Suzume decided that her Kekkei Genkai was suitable. He glimpsed her forming hand signs and did the same, only his was shorter and far less complex.
"Ice Style: Frozen Wall!" he announced, planting the ground as he did so. His three-foot thick pillar of smoking ice rose from the ground before him mere seconds before it was ravaged by the onslaught from Suzume's Molten Blast. It would melt in seconds if he was lucky, buying him only a moment, if a very brief one.
Think, he told himself, trying his best to imitate Shoryu's analytical approach. If I want to stand a chance I need to activate the dojutsu – it's the only way to go toe to toe with her in close quarters. But I don't have the opening to form fifteen hand signs; she's pinning me down before I can form even three. I need to create some kind of window – about ten seconds at best.
A sudden reflection came to Kazuya; he considered for a moment that he'd never actually thought like this before. Usually in a battle only his movements and his opponent's mattered, but now he was debating strategy, different approaches and even deception. These were the Chunin exams after all, and he'd stated already that he was willing to put aside his ideals just this once if it meant victory.
With that in mind an idea worked its way into his head. He felt guilty for even considering such an underhand ploy, but before his conscience told him otherwise he'd already discarded any remorse and began a complex sequence of signs. Once his barricade had been melted into mist his last seal was complete – he struck the ground with a fist.
"Ice Style: Cryo Valley!"
With no other way to progress Suzume was forced to retreat as jagged spikes of ice bloomed from the ground beneath her, sprouting up into a crystal formation of razor-sharp pillars that grew fifteen feet into the air. White-blue against spires made a nice contrast against the steady river of magma shooting to the air behind it.
"Ice Style: Substitution!"
She heard his voice call out again but paid it little heed with her attention focused on dodging the frozen skewers that grew like flowers underfoot. After quickly darting away Suzume managed to get clear of the blast's radius and gain a moment to survey just what exactly had happened.
Around Kazuya a vale of ice had been formed in a full circle, spanning out for a whole three metres surrounding him. Had she been a sentimental being Suzume might have thought the arrangement rather beautiful. The gaps between the shards were too narrow and too sharp to slip between to reach him, and far too high to be within jumping distance. She debated walking up them and traversing across once she was atop the barricade, though another look at the impalement which would surely greet her if she lost footing told her otherwise.
Suzume clapped slowly and deliberately, congratulating the boy for his devious and powerful technique; doing it by speaking would be impossible due to her lips being sped up along with the rest of her body. Without wasting any more time the kunoichi showed a trio of hand signs that moved as a blur to any of the front-seaters who witnessed it.
"Molten Blast Stream!"
In a show of equal mastery of the stream technique Suzume concentrated her jutsu into a steady flow rather than a single burst. Lava spilled from her hands in a relentless waterfall of bubbling orange; she smirked as it washed over the Cryo Canyon like a disease, gradually melting it down into nothing but malformed pillars already fading into steam. She'd flooded Kazuya's protective shielding with her own signature jutsu, and before long all that remained was the stationary figure of the samurai at its centre.
"Gotcha," she muttered to herself. From her pocket Suzume snatched a trio of shuriken; she gripped them between her fingers and with a flourish of her wrist sent them spinning Kazuya's way. Her smile widened when the projectiles hit their target. They buried into him one after another, one meeting his larynx, another hitting his chest and the last burying itself under his arm. Each of them was a perfect shot – pressure points that should've made him writhe in agony.
What bothered her, though, was that Kazuya remained perfectly still, and what troubled her more was the fact that not a single drop of blood came from the exposed flesh that her shuriken had struck. Her answer was accompanied by a heart-sinking revelation as he shattered into fragments of ice, scattering his appendages to the magma-soaked surface of the arena.
Suzume gritted her teeth and whirled around. "A substitution?" she said.
A reply from a spiral-eyed Kazuya came in the form of him streaming towards her like a missile and looping over with a mighty swing of the double-edged sword. Her speedy reactions meant that he missed her by a hair's breadth, yet he followed up on his attack by assaulting her with a complex barrage of timed swings. She began to utilise a strange jutsu that reminded Kazuya of the wall-walking technique, using her chakra-shrouded hands to bat away the slashes and protect her palms from the naked edge of the sword.
Just having a counter-move to the blade of a samurai didn't tip the exchange in Suzume's favour though. Now that his dojutsu – the Jikogan – had been activated, Kazuya's reflexes were on par with her own. The two duelled over their enclosed portion of the arena, matching attacks and striking back with practiced footwork and precise blows. Kazuya would manage to nick her across the arm with one edge of his blade only to have a kick from Suzume glance off him and leave a nasty bruise.
After a whole minute of the lightning blitz (made substantially longer in Jikogan time), the cousins grew weary from the duel. Simultaneously they formed a hand sign and blasted away. Lava and ice connected with the combined ferocity of a tailed beast, resulting in a steam-charged explosion that propelled them off their feet in separate directions.
Kazuya hit the ground hard. He felt the wind being forced out of him from landing on his back at such speeds, but after a cough for air his vigour allowed him to get back to both feet.
"Not bad at all Kazuya," started Suzume. Now that both had matched the same level of rapid acceleration, speaking became possible. To any onlookers their words would be complete gibberish; even if the cameras were set back up this conversation would be completely private. "I honestly didn't think someone could master the Jikogan so well without the proper training – you didn't even know its name."
"So are there others who can use it?" Kazuya asked. He doubted he'd even get a straight answer after that last cryptic message.
Suzume actually surprised him with her reply, "Four, actually – well five if you count your late father. There's me, you, my mother and our grandfather."
"Our grandfather?" asked Kazuya. The idea that he actually had a grandfather never even occurred to him; Suzume's words indicated that he was still alive too.
"Of course – he created the Jikogan," she said with a shrug.
"He created it?" Kazuya's brain wrinkled as he considered the implications. "But how could he-"
"Oops!" Suzume slapped a hand to her mouth and sniggered. "I think I might've said too much there."
Kazuya growled, irritated; clearly she had no intention of discussing the matter further and took joy in infuriating the samurai by only offering him a small piece of the great puzzle. He knew that he shouldn't have asked about more for fear of the same thing happening, but his words tumbled from his mouth without his realising.
"So why are you here? What is all this? Why enter the Chunin exams just to pursue me?" he demanded.
"I was ordered to check how you were getting on of course – to see if you're ready to be taken yet."
"Taken? . ." Kazuya trailed off – where had he heard that before?
The answer hit him after a few seconds of pondering. When Shoryu had recounted the events of Kiyoshi Uchiha's life to them, he'd mentioned that the Uchiha ran into a boy who bore the same symbol that connected Shoryu's father, the clones, Kiyoshi himself and Kamiko Honami. Shoryu had gone on to say that this particular boy told Kiyoshi that he was 'surprised he hadn't been taken yet'.
At the time they'd thought it strange and debated on it for a while. Why now was the same phrase being said to him? What was it that bound together all these groups? She had even hinted that she knew Shoryu too. There was a connection – there was no doubt about it. He looked for that same symbol tattooed on her arm, yet to his dismay she wore long sleeves. A million questions flooded into his mind, yet only one came out – the most obvious query that would tell him whether she was truly malevolent or a simple trickster.
"Do you know something about the clone attacks?" he asked.
Suzume smiled and licked her lips in excitement. Then she replied, "You don't really expect me to answer that do you?"
Kazuya snarled in aggression, the limits of his patience finally surpassed. His sword was redrawn in a flash and the spiral pattern in his eyes seemed to grow all the more intense. "I'm taking that as a yes," he growled.
"Suit yourself," muttered the girl. She remained open and bored-looking as she cast her eyes back to the crowds, giving Kazuya the opening in which to attack. He'd get no more information from her today, that much was clear; all that remained was to defeat her and move on whilst he still had the time.
Crossing thirty feet of open ground in a matter of seconds, Kazuya bridged the gap between them before suddenly lunging into a giant swipe of his sword. He could've sworn he made a direct hit; the blade of his ancestor had carved a great arc in the ground where it swept and kicked up the dust of the arena in its curve. Yet something troubled him, as right before he made the attack Suzume had flashed her mirroring eyes back towards his rushing figure.
"Playback One," she said.
Kazuya had paid it no heed and continued with the attack only to find that he slashed apart nothing but thin air. Suzume had hopped back just in time to avoid the attack, but when he began to move towards her something struck him from above, something with all the force of a falling comet making impact upon his crown.
Kazuya hit the floor, his head boring into the dirt powerful enough to bury his temple in a small mound. Blood rushed to the top of his skull and quickly flowed down his face, dripping over his eyes and matting his hair of a usual pure white sheen. Just what had happened? He coughed a small cloud of dust from his mouth as he forced himself to look up, seeing through a haze of red that it was Suzume who had struck him.
What happened? She had been stood in front of him a moment ago, how then had she also hit him from above? Was it clones? Or was it some other trickery that he knew nothing of? He wondered on these as he managed to push himself back to his feet – struggling at first.
Suzume decide to elaborate when she saw the look of confusion on her wounded opponent. "Wow Kazuya, you're really ignorant about a lot of things aren't you? Do you know anything about that power of yours? Your family's power extends beyond anything you could ever imagine. I'm just the beginning."
The samurai paused; so it had been a technique of their dojutsu – the Jikogan – which she'd hit him with after all. He settled on ignoring her taunts and easing back into position. He centred himself, ensuring he was fully prepared when the next attack came.
"Playback Two, Playback Three."
A vague smokescreen shrouded the girl as from behind its silhouette she appeared to split into three different beings. The wind ushering it away proved this to be correct; three identical clones of Suzume had appeared and stood facing him with similar expressions of disapproval and boredom. He prepared himself and began to try and analyse the situation, knowing that only one of them could be the real thing.
Suddenly one broke off from the three and sped towards him, her hands each containing a fistful of magma. Immediately he noticed that her speed was on another level; this version of her must've used twenty five hand signs – the maximum speed of the Jikogan that came at the price of rapidly absorbing the user's chakra. The true Suzume used fifteen in standard combat just like Kazuya himself, so this one couldn't have been real. Then again, he wondered whether this form being 'real' or not made any difference to whether the attack itself would hit.
He decided to play it safe, stringing three seals together and blasting the high-speed Suzume with a Cryo Blast Jutsu straight out of his steadily declining chakra. Instead of freezing solid like usual though, the beam of rushing freeze simply made her dissipate and fade away, as if in static.
It was then that Kazuya noticed another Suzume had leapt straight up and loosed a collection of kunai in his direction. He blocked five as best he could with a flourish and a dodge, but another three slashed across his appendages and a final four bit into flesh to make direct hits. His left leg, both shoulders and gut had been struck, stabbing their way past his tight-fitted violet tunic and carving mouths of blood into his skin. He hissed in agony and fought past the pain, hoping to catch the flying Suzume as she descended.
"Cryo Blast Jutsu!" he cried again.
He hoped and prayed that he'd targeted the right one, for his aim was true and his outburst of ice quickly overwhelmed the second Suzume moments before she hit the ground. Again his mark flickered into black and white static as the final Suzume came rushing through the dispersing haze of the first, slamming a fist straight into the stomach of the samurai.
The pain became more intense than any punch Kazuya had endured before, even one from the great Kiyoshi Uchiha. It dealt so much damage that it threatened to break his concentration and disrupt the stillness of his mind, and as he looked down he quickly understood why.
Whether it was intentional or not was unclear, but Suzume Oyama had managed to land her strike right on the end of the protruding handle of the kunai knife digging into his stomach. She drove it further in with her fist, pushing deeper and deeper until her bare knuckles met the violet strip of cloth that was Kazuya's outfit. By that time the kunai might as well have been surgically implanted in his belly.
The samurai howled in pain as another punch slammed him off his feet – he hardly felt it though – he clutched his stomach and squirmed on the ground, letting his scream drown out everything else that happened down on the arena floor. It came back to him suddenly; the fact that he was too young for this occurred to him after never surfacing in his entire life.
He was thirteen years of age – a child and barely a teenager by the standards of modern men. He'd been brought up a warrior, a true man conditioned to withstand any and all forms of pain. Now he finally saw that some things couldn't be practiced or prepared for; Bishamon would've never driven a kunai knife all the way into his stomach just to toughen him up. He had to take his own initiative if he wanted to survive in future.
"Aaaand Kazuya is out of the m-"
"DON'T!" instantly, reflexively, Kazuya had struggled back onto his knees. His Jikogan was disabled and his chakra at an all-time low. A chubby announcer had called out through a microphone on the lower stands, and the samurai fixed the man with such a look of unfocused, wide-eyed rage that he was forced to avert his gaze. "Don't you dare," he finished.
Still not looking, the announcer replied, "But you're in no condition to fight. The rules say that-"
"I don't care what your rules say!" bellowed Kazuya, once again rekindling the man's terror. "I am a samurai! We fight until we DIE!"
With that one final shout Kazuya was back on his feet, fighting off the pain with renewed vigour and closing his eyes to try as best he could to focus. Around him all noise vanished as he lost himself to a few brief moments of strategic thought.
Concentrate, he told himself. I can't win if I don't think this through. There has to be some way past her attacks. Kazuya then thought back to the 'Playback' technique – before those came out he'd been perfectly level with her, but there was something about them that bugged him. Their attacks are real, but when defeated they vanish like clones – but it's different, it's in that weird kind of static, like a monitor having its video feed cut off.
If I think of this dojutsu as a kind of video recorder it almost makes sense. The most basic ability speeds me up in relation to the world around me, in other words, a fast-forward function. 'Playback'. . . Is she playing back recordings of herself? Is that what it is? If that's the case then Playbacks Two and Three would be the rushing lava attack and the jumping kunai strikes. Playback One though. . . He thought back to that moment. One of them had come from above and the other had backed off in decoy – he hadn't seen which one was real, meaning he would have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right if she tried it again.
"Playback Two!" she cried again, her voice sped up to him now.
Here it comes - the lava attack, he told himself. The moment he looked up, the high-speed dash of the Suzume playback came rushing towards him the same as last time. He rolled away from it as the space he'd last stood was doused by a concentrated puddle of magma. He whirled, turning into Suzume herself and barely ducking under a swing of her right hand.
The clenching of his abdomen made another wave of pain course through his body, as though the kunai embedded in his stomach was trying to wrench itself out of him. He gritted his teeth and formed that pain into power without a second thought. Drawing himself back up to full height, Kazuya blitzed a complex manoeuvre of slashes at the maximum speed his natural body could put out. As adrenaline coursed through him his swiftness increased, his unpredictability forcing her to quickly withdraw despite his lack of the Jikogan.
As she retreated back to a safe distance the girl activated the same technique again that her spiral eyes granted her. "Playback Three," she said. Just as before a static-shivering clone of herself dove into the air and released a torrent of kunai. Flimsy shards of thin metal though were little match for a wall of ice.
"Ice Style: Frozen Wall!"
The projectiles either bounced off or embedded themselves in Kazuya's barrier, protecting him from all harm. Even before they struck Kazuya was already using the time to restart his strange hand signs.
"Playback Two!" she called again.
After a quick calculation Kazuya deduced that his wall wouldn't hold for long. With her doppelganger running towards him with a fistful of lava the dripping barricade of ice would stand little chance. His eyes flashed back into spirals and he immediately formed another pair of hand signs, holding the last one steady. He waited for the perfect moment to act whilst his chakra filled.
The samurai watched as through the murky lens of his wall an orange glow began to form at its centre as she approached. He held fast until she charged through it, magma in hand, threatening to devour him with unbearable heat. Ice scattered and steam plumed around; she was upon him already.
"Ice Style: Substitution!"
Suzume's lava-punch hit nothing but solid ice. In a blink Kazuya had formed a replica of himself with his Kekkei Genkai and swapped out with it, placing it in front of him and flipping away from the resulting crash before it could finish him off. He landed smoothly not too far away, though a shadow pooling at his feet told him that the real kunoichi herself had joined the fray.
He drew, turned and cried out with a lash of the back edge of his double bladed sword; the attack was quickly blocked by a chakra-swimming palm from Suzume, who retaliated by snapping a straight left hand in his direction. His head ducked back upon instinct, the jab missing his nose by a fraction of an inch before it recoiled and allowing Kazuya to strike back.
He brought up his leg; being as lithe and flexible as an acrobat allowed him to get his foot all the way up to chin height, so naturally the heel of his boot slammed into Suzume's chin. With an opening present he let out another swing of his sword.
Suzume dodged back in fright, yet for all her agility the slash still carved a nice cut into her ribs. Whilst hardly serious, it still caused pain and would refuse to stop bleeding until the end of the fight. One way or another, both knew that this end was close at hand.
She studied Kazuya, using a look of shock and genuine interest to look upon him as he laboriously breathed and clutched the wound in his stomach, keeping his ravaged flesh as closed as he could. It did little good; blood still formed a river down his leg and a puddle at his feet, and his once-stainless tunic was tainted with red across its lower stretch.
"How?" she said at last. "How can you still be standing after that? You should be dead - or at least out cold with that wound!"
Kazuya spat and restated his posture. "Are you finished? You think a wound like this can stop me? Let's end this already."
Suzume recoiled in shock, believing to her fright that he could go on like this all day. He couldn't, but that was the point of the exchange – he wanted her to think so. She swore and flashed her eyes. "Playback One!" she said.
Just as before, a smokescreen blotted out any view of which Suzume was real. As one version of her leapt up to the skies to come down with an aerial attack the other hopped back as a decoy. Which one was real? He could guess and pray for the best or he could attack them both with a Cryo Blast and find out, the problem remained though that he didn't have enough time to cast two jutsu before one of them attacked.
Instead Kazuya saw a third option – one that only a samurai could see. The moment it occurred to him he acted, for he knew that if he dwelled on it he would lose his nerve. Kazuya sheathed his sword, though instead of going immediately into seals he placed a hand on the wound at his gut, where the kunai had been injected right into his body. Without thinking twice Kazuya plunged his hand into the hole, uttering a wordless, stifled scream at the pain that shook him.
He seized the kunai by the handle and, in one fluid motion, ripped it out of him before flinging it up to the sky. The projectile struck the descending Suzume between the eyes, making her vanish in static, but Kazuya was already too busy forming hand signs to notice. The second Suzume closed in from the ground, running straight into the crossfire of his signature jutsu.
"Ice Style: Cryo Blast Stream!"
As Kazuya's jet of ice enveloped her Suzume screamed. From the feet spreading up she was consumed by it, until eventually the frozen water choked out her screams by slithering all the way up her neck and covering her mouth. Before long the girl was imprisoned, solid in that same stationary pose in a block of ice. Eventually she would thaw out, but if she survived she would not recover for a while – the match between the two was over.
And so Kazuya turned his attention to the volcanic wall of molten lava blocking his access to his partner – to his friend.
On my way Shoryu.
.
Author's Notes: Care to see how Shoryu fared? Well awesome, because there's more!