The muscle of Kei-J's hand twitched, it was a telegraphing signal that the exceptionally skilled weaponry and hand-to-hand user shall resume his relentless and, so far, tremendously successful assault. The Kumogakure genin shot his hand up, unleashing a handful of his custom made, larger than normal triple bladed shuriken at his opponent. Stea moved aside to avoid the attack but a sound of tearing silk suggested that she did not escape the shuriken completely unharmed. At that moment Kei-J's free hand moved into a hand seal position.
"String Reeling Jutsu"! He chanted out as strings of steel wire lit up in the air, as the light it reflected danced on its metallic texture, tied around the shuriken he had just previously tossed. As an additional method of assault, the genin threw another handful of shuriken with his hand seal weaving, free hand as well, while his other hand used the wire to reel his fired shuriken back at his opponent from behind her.
Stea's pain ridden shouts filled the hall making the audience feel uncomfortable as she managed to bend her body in a manner where the shuriken, both coming and passing from behind, managed to miss her, yet still left their marks on her body. Both the highly elastic manner of her gymnastic dodge and the injuries she had gathered from this improvised shuriken assault, in addition to the internal injuries already present in her body from the previous battle, made it difficult for Stea to keep going.
"She's seriously injured already", Kiyomi noted, "If she was holding something back, wouldn't you think she'd have shown it at this point? She'd have to be some sick bitch not to feel pressed to the wall right now".
Mana remained silent. Had she been in Kei-J's place, knowing what she knew currently, she would be more scared than she would be being in Stea's. The magician felt equally baffled by a highly self-sacrificial manner of Stea's fighting style. She just kept getting hurt more and more, it was not like her attacks were inefficient, she barely even showed any incentive to attack, to begin with.
Stea's hands weighed down from clutching at the wounds on her shoulders, biceps, her abdomen as well. She coughed up some blood from her mouth, Mana noticed the extent of injuries that were acquired. These were injuries caused due to lack of any chakra augmentations, Stea's chakra signature felt just as massive as it was when she started the match – she had not even begun spending it. Every damaging blow or cut she took with her body and physical endurance alone. It was easy to notice a fighting style which Mana herself used to incorporate into hers for so long, until so recently.
"I'd advise you to surrender", Kei-J firmly stated as he took an offensive stance, picking back up his sword-staff and preparing to attack his opponent with more of his relentless and, seemingly, flawless and immensely aggressive weaponry style. "Haven't you suffered enough already"?
"Suffering"? Stea grunted out through the pain of her inner bleeding injuries as her hands quickly flashed through a bunch of hand seals. "What would a native of a Great Ninja Country know of suffering"? She asked as her hands lit up with emerald green glow so intense that it transcended anything Mana had seen before, the intensity of the green glow went into a bland indigo colored glow at the end making the Mystical Palm Jutsu she perform appear almost a little majestic and divine visually.
"Have you seen parents cannibalizing their own children because the village hasn't got enough income to feed its villagers?" Stea's voice cleared up as she kept on healing herself, regenerating almost momentarily in her opponent's eyes. Had the speed of her regeneration not been so rapid, Kei-J may have considered trying to interrupt her but seeing what he saw just made him freeze in place.
"Have you seen your village leader address his people, in the midst of a war, and commit suicide in front of their eyes right after telling them it's not all hopeless"? Stea angrily asked her opponent as she straightened her hunched back out and moved her hands away from clutching at her injuries and back into an offensive pose.
"It's over", Mana stated.
"Yeah", Kiyomi nodded.
Both girls had realized something absolutely terrifying about Stea just now. They've pieced her fighting style together in just what little Mana had shared about seeing Team Phobos in the Forest of Death and seeing Stea's Mystical Palm Jutsu transcend anything that a kunoichi of her rank could show.
The Getsugakure kunoichi was empowering her own ninjutsu and medical ninjutsu she used by using parts of the damage she stored inside the damage seals. Doma of Team Phobos must've had a similar ability, but he was unable to use medical ninjutsu and was therefore limited in his potential damage seal ability, after all, a damage seal user still took damage to their body from whatever part of the damage they took they sealed away. Not only would Stea's ninjutsu and sealing potential grow with time she spent getting injured, but she'd be able to heal herself more efficiently as well while keeping all the damage she had stored inside her seal.
"Do you know any shortcomings, ways to beat this ability"? Kiyomi turned to Mana who just shrugged with scared and saddened eyes.
"There's something we don't know. Maybe a time limit, maybe a storage limit… Other than that…" Mana wondered in the dark.
"No genin can use Mystical Palms to heal this much so fast", Kei-J still stumbled in even more dark himself.
Stea's body weightlessly hung in the air as she relaxed her muscles, letting go of her balance while she fell forward before instantly tensing up her lower body and shooting off at the direction of her opponent. Kei-J twirled his sword-staff around, trying to catch Stea in a couple of cheaper blows but the Getsugakure genin avoided the handful of slashes before punching with all her might right at the center of the staff, cracking it in two as her punch smashed at Kei-J's chest, sending him flying back at neck-breaking speed.
"Contestant Kei-J – ring out", the overseer ruled seeing the Kumogakure genin whizz past the barrier and smash into the wall beside it. He may have had enough prowess to recover had his senses not been temporarily punched out of him by the unexpected burst of speed and power of the Getsugakure genin.
"Look at me", Stea loudly declared, "Do I look like any lesser ninja than you Great Ninja Country elites? Yet, in times of disarray, no client willingly comes to a village such as ours, they choose to ask for one of the Great Ninja Countries for help instead. Things are even worse in times of peace. I despise violence and conflict so it sickens me to wish for war, just so the children in our village can eat".
"You tell them"! Doma loudly chanted, raising his fist up in the air as he cheered his teammate on, "We're gonna become chuunin, then jonin, then we're gonna steal the bread from all you pompous assholes! We're gonna steal it back"!
"My intents are not as violent as those of my teammate", Stea shook her head calmly after the entire audience shook in an uneasy rumbling. "I merely wish to show my abilities on the grand stage of the Chuunin Exams finals, so that more people saw the power that us small and poor villages have been forced to obtain in order to survive. While Doma may not believe in a bright future, I do believe that just being seen would be enough to be acknowledged and change our village's situation at least a little bit"!
Overseer let the audience sit in calm silence for a while before walking up to the tag scroll and unsealing the clumsy Aburame girl from it. Stea placed her hand on her own tag scroll and unraveled it almost at the same time as the overseer, tagging out into her teammate.
"Huh"? Juhi curiously muttered seeing the oddity of her teammate getting dragged away and helped to stand back up from outside the arena while both of her opponents stood right in front of her.
"I know you are a support ninja and therefore a front line, one on one battle scenario isn't your comfort zone, Erumo. However I would like to rest for a while, please let us switch", Stea politely requested as the two girls switched places and the Getsugakure young woman got absorbed in her tag partner's place.
"Hmmm? You think Stea's actually tired"? Kiyomi wondered, "Could it be her weakness"?
"I'm not sure", Mana shook her head, "I don't think she's actually tired, I think that she's just feeling bad about beating Kei-J like that and that she just wanted to switch, and that's all. However, her chakra has certainly decreased visibly after that Chakra Enhanced Strength punch. There may not be a limit to her potential growth using the damage seal, but she uses chakra for her techniques just like all of us do, that may be her only limit and weakness".
"Such as it is", Kiyomi sighed, "We also use chakra for our techniques, so does everyone else".
Seemingly ignoring Kiyomi's concerns completely, Mana could not help the feeling that Stea may not have even been of the typical ninja mentality like the others. She may have been just someone who wanted to help her village shake off the horrors of famine and economic difficulties and enrolled into the Ninja Academy. Stea did not look like someone seeking fame for the sake of fame itself, more so, she sought fame to expose the problems she fought for.
"Stea is just like me", Mana muttered under her own nose, alerting Kiyomi, "She's just like me, except she's actually strong enough to change the world around her. She's just one step away from actually doing it. All she needs is to look good in the finals for all the potential influential clients".
"Is that why you can't expose her weaknesses? You feel bad for her, or you're already on her side"? Kiyomi wondered.
"Not really. She's probably still hiding plenty. I'm not even sure she's shown her ace jutsu yet. If she enhances her offensive abilities using the damage she's storing as well, she's shown very little of her offensive capabilities of exploiting it. Her hand-to-hand skills aren't the greatest either. She can't possibly be relying on her enhanced strength alone to end her battles". Mana shook her head gently.
Aburame Juhi, meanwhile, extended her hands wide after forming one hand seal. It was similar to all of the Aburame clan's Parasitic Insect jutsu uses Mana had seen or read about, yet when Juhi extended her hands no insects were seen. Usually, there were entire swarms of black insect clouds aiming to overwhelm the opponent with their chakra devouring properties meanwhile now it looked like Juhi was just cosplaying as an Aburame.
"Huh? Are you having performance issues"? Erumo curiously and innocently wondered, taunting her opponent as well. As a trap-using support ninja, Erumo despised the close and personal type of fights so she wished to stay back and just weave her traps. Her abilities got rendered useless by inactive or not overly aggressive opponents that refused to engage her in battle so certain ability to irritate one's opponent was useful for such a ninja.
What an odd innovation on the Aburame Parasitic Insect jutsu. Juhi could not have been using nano-sized insects in her rank. That was for advanced users that were capable of handling and commanding these types of Parasitic Insects, no genin could've done that so her innovation on the clan ability must've laid elsewhere.
"Parasitic Insect Jutsu: Grip"! Juhi calmly chanted out as she weaved her hand seal again, commanding, seemingly, a non-existent army of insects to move in on the opponent. Even Erumo took a couple of worried steps back, the enemy she couldn't see scared her more than a casual Parasitic Insect Jutsu would have.
Out of nowhere, a cloud of black, crawling minuscule insectoids wrapped around Erumo. The audience rustled uneasily, the creepy crawlies appeared out of the blue and in such massive quantities that they completely blacked the girl they covered out up to her neck, burrowing her under where the pressure of the insects must've been suffocating from inside. That was the least of Erumo's troubles, if these insects started leeching off her chakra – she'd be emptied almost instantly.
"Where did these insects come from"!? Erumo grunted as she tried to overpower the swarm, a fruitless effort.
"These are my custom bred species of the Parasitic Insects. They have most in common with a simple Constructor Ant of the Kumogakure savannas." Juhi explained. "Their Constructor Ant properties allow them to form complicated shapes and move in from underground. Most Parasitic Insects fly at their opponent, I find restricting the ground as being more effective".
"Jeez, never get an Aburame talking about their insects". Kiyomi scratched her temples. Her frustration didn't appear to be completely based on some sort of freaky fear of insects but it didn't look like a topic that the blonde would've loved to speak about. Mana had to admit that she shared that sentiment and found insects equally creepy.
"It was a clever strategy though. She commanded her ants to spread out and move in on her opponent, not in a swarm, but separately which rendered them almost completely invisible unless one knows what they're looking for. Once the limited arena space was completely dominated by insects – she snapped the trap shut", Mana smiled a little. While Juhi was a pretty awkward girl and assumed that most people wanted to talk about her insects way too often than they actually did, she was quite clever.
"I see, thanks for letting me know"! Erumo grinned at her opponent after the entire clutch of insects lit up in flames, the ants appeared to be even less resistant to flame than their more common generic counterpart. They also didn't look like they felt any pain or heat at all as they simply stood still and chose to burn to a crisp as Erumo shook their crispy corpses off and dove out of the flames, using very limited chakra augmentation to protect herself from the low ranking flame trap she had set.
"Not bad", Juhi bitterly admitted.
"A weak flame trap was the first trap I set when I realized we'd be facing you", Erumo gave herself the thumb up before pulling out a kunai and wrapping some string wire around it. She must've had a limited supply of traps left remaining and setting up new ones in plain sight would've been quite difficult, not to mention very inefficient. Her kunai and steel wire combination could have functioned as a makeshift grappling hook when used in tandem with the String Reeling jutsu.
"It was a brave way of obtaining information about my abilities, however", Juhi placed her hands up commanding her insects to move in again. "Just how much chakra did you sacrifice in captivity to obtain that information"?
The ants once again scurried from underground and the sides of the arena, forming a human palm and trying to crush the trapster, effectively burying her under a sea of chakra eating insects. Erumo gracefully leaped away but she underestimated the splashing effect of the ants smashing against the arena floor as quite a handful of insects landed on her, beginning to scatter all over her body, looking for spots where they could feast on the trapster's chakra unnoticed for prolonged periods of time.
"Crap"! Erumo shouted out as she did her best to remove the leeching insects quickly by jumping around erratically and trying to shake the ants out of the girl's clothes and off her skin. Having spent so much time in the Forest of Death, Erumo had a clear idea of the danger of a leeching insect being allowed to suck on her chakra or blood for a prolonged period of time unnoticed.
"Wow, she's lost a large chunk of chakra already", Mana muttered in surprise by how simple yet effective Juhi's offensive strategy was in a limited area. "She's dangerous, chakra is the only wall Stea can hit as well. Juhi may not just be out of the exam yet".
Erumo slung her innovated grappling hook to the ceiling of the gym, pulling herself up in the air by using brute force. It seemed quite a risky strategy, given the limited maneuverability in mid-air, yet the trapster just kept on using the grappling hook to zip herself away, using it to root herself to the ground when she ran into the danger of a possible ring out. It may have given her a possible aerial space to move in, which helped her evasive measures tremendously, but Erumo lacked a proper offensive strategy, a common weakness of most supporting role ninja.
"Parasitic Insect: Twin-Mace"! Juhi shouted out, ordering the ants to form two horizontally aimed massive mace shapes that smashed from both sides, aiming at Erumo. The trapster pulled out a tag from her ninja kit just before the insect maces slammed her between them. When the maces collapsed into just messy piles of parasitic ants, however, they appeared to have been only feasting on a log.
Juhi picked up the tag that got left in the place together with the log, the tag appeared to be a sealing tag, similar to the explosive tags that ninja used in conjunction with kunai to create projectile explosives. However, this tag carried on it the symbols of "Substitution Jutsu", symbolling that the Konoha kunoichi carried around sealing tags not of explosive nature, but instead with the generic Academy techniques sealed inside of them, in case she was herself trapped and unable to use them otherwise.
A loud and ground shaking rumble alerted the entire audience, there was restraint in the detonated explosives, they also had quite a curious placement, an entire bucket load of dirt fell out from the basis of the arena as the whole northern part of the structure crumbled into just specks of dirt.
"Contestant Juhi, ring… No, wait"! The overseer already wanted to rule the possible ring out but then he noticed that a bridge of ants, connected from the still standing southern part of the arena held the Aburame in the air and prevented her from falling down together with the collapsing northern arena.
"Tsk", Erumo angrily grunted as she landed on the southern edge of the arena and lamented the vastly diminished space of the arena for her to lay traps on.
"This must've been your last trap, Erumo", Juhi smiled with relief. "There is no way you'd have detonated entire chunks of arena without it being your last resort".
"Sorry, I am not Erumo", Erumo smiled when the shape poofed in a cloud of smoke revealing Yushijin, the trapster's teammate standing in the girl's place.
A deafening thud made the confused audience members cover up their eyes after Erumo swung in from above, driving both of her feet at her opponent and trying her best to ring her out. Juhi's injured shape got slung at immense speeds outside the arena and smashing into the side wall, way past the barrier.
"Ummm… I'm gonna need some explanation here before I can make my ruling", the overseer scratched the back of his head. "How come an audience member is standing in the ring, transformed into contestant Erumo"?
"I used Substitution Jutsu to replace myself with an audience member before pulling myself up, during the messy affair of the arena falling apart. You see, the Substitution Jutsu can be used to replace one with people, but only willing participants, therefore I had to use my teammate for this. He didn't interfere with the match either, I used this sealing tag with the Transformation Jutsu already sealed into it. I just slapped it onto Yushijin's chest when I replaced myself and forced the transformation", Erumo cheerfully explained.
"Oh… That's… Highly unconventional, you've clearly premeditated this strategy if you've made those tags", the overseer scratched his neck lazily. "Alright, as long as contestant Yushijin clears the arena grounds, I'll allow this move, seeing how it's highly unlikely that any other genin premeditated and made such a tool themselves".
The overseer looked back at Lord Sixth who just lazily nodded in approval of the ruling, as a past Black Ops member, the Hokage was quite likely to look at similar dirty stunts more leniently. It was something Mana decided to remember for a possible clutch situation in the future. Looking a bit confused by the complicated switcheroo trick, but also happy for his teammate, Yushijin leaped off of the arena and outside the barrier.
"Contestant Juhi, ring…" the overseer raised his hand for a ruling before he noticed that the Juhi that was kicked out had just collapsed into a mass of insects and scurried away, revealing it to have only been an Insect Clone.
The arena ground of the southern, still remaining arena wing rippled, revealing the insect user pulling off a Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu off of her formed using her sleeveless long winter jacket, the Aburame quickly shoved her hands forward commanding her insects to move in according to her orders.
"Parasitic Insect: Shove"! She grunted out as the insects gathered into a shape of a vertical pushing palm and darted off, shoved by the other ants positioned under and from behind of the construct. Erumo braced herself for impact as the limited arena space gave her very limited options for moving around…