Kiyomi carefully observed her opponent. Without a doubt he'd have noticed her last name when the match was announced, even if he was numb-skulled enough not to have recorded that, Kiyomi's ridiculously flashy blond hair and her bright blue eyes were a dead giveaway of her Yamanaka bloodline. He will know what she is capable of, he will know that one missed hijutsu will lead to a loss and he will be careful.
"Or he could just go right ahead and try the Summoning Jutsu", Kiyomi ironically thought to herself as she saw her opponent reaching in for that very thing.
Kiyomi dashed in. Feeling grateful for all the close range training and overall improvement to her non-ninjutsu related fighting skills during the week of training. She could feel how lightly her each movement made her, the air picking up and rustling her hair and her clothes, pressing them tightly against her skin and the back of her head as she blitzed in, smacking her left elbow to the wrist of Zahafbit's right arm and stopping his hand seal mid-way.
A strong smack to the side of his neck, the towering summoner appeared to white out blank from that blow alone but the blonde simply couldn't risk him waking up from the dizziness and punish her bold close range advances with anything he still had to show. Another barrage of quick chops to the exposed neck and a push kick to the side of his knee before another palm strike straight to his nose, just as he recovered and tried to get back up and respond. That last strike may have been borrowed from Mana's arsenal but the magician was not anywhere near to be able to see it and call Kiyomi out on it. All the sparring they did in the Yamanaka resort seemed to be mutually beneficial.
Zahafbit shot his hands up, palms to the ground and pushed his body back into a rather impressive back vault. Kiyomi just informed the young man that she will not just let him do whatever and that he had to play it smarter if he was to pull off his Summoning Jutsu. Blood still dripped from the thumb he bit into, that may have been dangerous, as he would now take even less time to complete his string of seals…
The young brute reached in for his collar, pulling on his long cloak and removing it with a single motion. Kiyomi followed his movements carefully before realizing what he was doing, once again, the Yamanaka moved in to counter the tricky attempt to hide behind the casual act of removing one's clothes for lighter and unrestricted movement.
Kiyomi's arms grabbed the large wrists of the summoning ninja and kept him from completing their strings, for a brief moment the two toyed around with the floating cloak. Zahafbit attempted to wrap it around Kiyomi's head before delivering a barrage of cheap blows while she was blinded, Kiyomi attempted to tie her opponent's hands in it, restraining his ability to weave hand seals.
The blonde delivered a softening push kick that made Zahafbit flinch for just long enough for her to jump onto his shoulders and wrap the long torn cloth around his wrist before she dived down, wrapping another string around the man's throat and putting him into a neck and hand lock.
Kiyomi tightened the lock, again, then again. She was ready to struggle down there for the whole half an hour needed to choke out an ordinary lower ranked ninja to the verge of passing out. Zahafbit grunted in pain as Kiyomi controlled and was continuously wearing out both his wrist and his throat, which effectively provided air and therefore the source of strength for his entire body.
With a strong roar, Zahafbit used his other arm to help him tear his cloak apart before reaching in for Kiyomi's own throat. The brutish genin lifted Kiyomi up and despite the girl's rapid attempts to smack at the soft spots on his wrist, managed to slam her around a couple of times before kicking her rolling away.
"Those kicks were strong", Kiyomi coughed up, feeling the faint taste of blood in her mouth. "I shouldn't take too many of those or try matching strength with him or I'll be in trouble".
She was lucky that instead of keeping up the tug of war with Kiyomi's physical strength, the genin reached in to tear the cloth. Had Zahafbit gotten the other free hand on her earlier, with the cloth still being a factor, she would have ended up in an even stickier close range situation.
Kiyomi grinned, feeling a strand of her hair shiny blond hair irritatingly rubbing against her fingers. She may have needed to approach this big guy up close one more time. It was a gamble but one with a very pleasant possible payoff, if things went her way.
The Yamanaka heiress relaxed, letting her body completely go numb before flexing all of the muscles requiring for a charge forward in one quick flex, maximizing her movement speed. Her discus elbow missed the large youth entirely as her hand brushed only against floating torn coat of Zahafbit.
"Substitution"! She instantly realized as the large genin used his torn clothes for substitution just to give him a brief time advantage to squeeze his hand seals into.
"Summoning Jutsu"! Zahafbit triumphantly declared as each of his past failures lead to a successful summoning technique return – his first failure helped him draw the blood from his thumb, his second one provided him with an object for substitution and briefly weakened Kiyomi.
A towering red and yellow patterned spider with striped black and golden legs spread out wide and holding his entire frame by supporting his body while using the out of the arena walls of the gym hall for support. Kiyomi wondered why this kaiju-esque monstrosity would ever be one's summon of choice in such a small and tight arena.
Zahafbit's massive spider lowered its diamond shaped belly lower, placing it down against the out of ring floor as a large eye opened up on the lower part of its abdomen. The bulky genin once again initiated a bold attempt at completing a string of hand seals.
Kiyomi placed her hands in the specific Yamanaka hand seal position. She had the advantage, her opponent may have started performing hand seals faster and had a slightly superior hand seal weaving speed but she only needed to perform one.
"Mind Body Disturbance"! Kiyomi shouted out, finally unleashing her risky roll of a dice. She wouldn't be sending her consciousness away like it was in the case of her weaker jutsu, but, as a B-Rank hijutsu, this version cost significantly more chakra to perform so it was a risky move all in of itself.
Zahafbit's body blurred and moved sideways, it was a nice read, as irritated and shocked Kiyomi was from being read so easily by her opponent, she had to admit that much. The spider resting behind Zahafbit shook as if overtaken by chills, feeling foreign chakra entering its primitive nervous system, the arachnid raised its front legs as a warning but it was all in vain.
"Genjutsu: Speyeder"! Zahafbit grinned after completing his interrupted string of hand seals. The colossal eye located on the abdomen of the arachnid opened up and lit up in quite a light show. A bright green flash began seeping into Kiyomi's eyes and a creeping up feeling of falling and the ground collapsing beneath her feet began to overtake all of the other thoughts. Kiyomi was slipping away into unconsciousness, feeling that sensation of helplessness extended over what seemed like an eternity.
"Release"! A commanding voice roared out in the darkness. For a brief moment, Kiyomi wondered whose voice it was. Then, just as her sight, smell and other senses began returning, she began feeling her own chakra pulsing and racing its way through her network and the control over her own body and mind returning as well, the Yamanaka heiress realized that it was her own body and mind that issued a command.
A tremendous shock of pain and gravity shock hit Kiyomi right in the knees, the girl bent down, managing to grab hold of her knees with her hands just barely in time before planting her face all over the arena. The chakra strain of cancelling that genjutsu was tremendous, twice the cost of any jutsu Kiyomi had ever performed which meant that it must've been a high ranking illusion, to dispel it one had to match the amount of alien chakra inserted into their system and then some so Kiyomi tired herself out quite worryingly right there.
"Hmmm. That's impressive", Zahafbit grumbled, looking both sorry and a little bit impressed. It was not an emotion this youth showed often as his face looked weird caught in that weird expression. "To identify that you were under an illusion and then have the chakra needed to break out of it…"
"Next time, when you're trying to surprise someone with genjutsu, don't name your genjutsu starting with Genjutsu", Kiyomi snapped back at her opponent. Truth be told, she herself had basic knowledge and skill in genjutsu, she just never really applied herself in that area since before meeting Mana she kind of had to compensate and perform other roles in her past team. After meeting Mana, such skill would have been irrelevant as Mana was an innovator and a genius in the field. Kiyomi spread her specializations all too wide to be able to match someone as focused on improving that one field as the stage magician was.
The Yamanaka heiress could not let Zahafbit perform that jutsu again, under no circumstances! It took such a massive toll on Kiyomi's chakra pool even right now, at the beginning of the battle to dispel this illusion. By using her most potent Yamanaka hijutsu, then dispelling Zahafbit's illusion, Kiyomi wasted nearly half of her chakra already. She needed to pull all the stops. No hijutsu, no matter the strain or the risk, was riskier than letting that illusion hit Kiyomi again!
He used that spider to initiate the genjutsu and yet… Kiyomi had invaded its nervous system with her Mind Body Disturbance. It was supposed to have been under her complete control and attacked Zahafbit by smashing him with its massive front legs and spitting web, poison, acid, or whatever it was that dripped from its detestable mouth right at its master.
Then again… It was a spider whose mind Kiyomi had invaded. It was no insect but an arachnid, yet it may have just had too primitive of a nervous system to be assaulted through illusions or mental ninjutsu. Kiyomi could vaguely remember hearing that observation from Mana during their training together and seeing refusal to target such feeble targets for illusions by some other genjutsu users. So it was Zahafbit himself, and only him, that needed to be hit by hijutsu. That could have been troublesome!
Zahafbit's hands once again started rushing through hand seals, aiming to initiate his illusion. At least he was a one trick pony, had he had more summons to aid him or more techniques to quickly identify and counter, he'd have been a fairly troublesome opponent.
Kiyomi reached out for her ninja pouch the moment that Zahafbit's arms weaved the first hand seal, she threw a quick pair of kunai knives at her opponent to interrupt his movement and hand seals before she could plan further ahead. Kiyomi's ninja tools got easily swatted aside, that left a shallow cut on the back of Zahafbit's palm but he managed to outwit Kiyomi's attempt to exploit Zahafbit's blockhead nature. Had the genin simply leaped aside again, using his impressive speed and reading Kiyomi's moves, he would have let the Yamanaka hit his spider right in the abdomen eye, disabling its ability to use Speyeder.
"Genjutsu:…" time seemed to slow down when those fateful words left Zahafbit's mouth, Kiyomi's entire body was overflowing with adrenaline and raced to perform the actions she had started before those fearsome words were spoken. The Yamanaka had launched a handful of explosive tags in the air and had begun weaving hand seals for a little ninjutsu of her own. Now it was just a race of time, her own ninjutsu, against the time it would take for Zahafbit to finish that sentence and for Speyeder to set in and overwhelm Kiyomi's mind completely.
"Genjutsu: Speyeder" Zahafbit shouted out.
"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar" Kiyomi responded, racing with her opponent, not too long after.
The blinding emerald glow once again blasted its salad shine onto Kiyomi's eyes, after the initial needle-like poke of pain to her ocular receptors, soon the illusion completely hypnotized the Yamanaka. Just as the blonde felt at ease and about to fall into a comfortable and warm sleep, a powerful blast of both the fiery blaze sight, bitter smoke smell and the ear-sieging shockwave noise variety made her snap out of it. Making the girl shake her head in a desperate attempt of shaking off the lingering smolders of the illusion still in her network.
A painful pulse emanated through Kiyomi's temples, making the Yamanaka rub them worryingly as her entire body felt an intensified tenfold pull of the gravitational forces. The answer was one of the two: either the forces of physics just decided to challenge the girl and change the gravitational pull of her world, or it was merely a way for her own body to relay the information of how strained she was.
Kiyomi tumbled onto her knees, her arm muscles tensed up as she clearly struggled to keep her body standing. She had seen similar signs of fatigue in others. So far she had only the shortness of breath, muscle pain and general feeling of exhaustion. There was no failure in chakra augmentations, failure of chakra control or the black bags under her eyes or bloodshot rings around them. And yet… It was still so difficult to just stand up and keep going.
"It's just a matter of time…" Zahafbit grunted, moving away from his body-shielding pose and trying to look confident in front of his opponent. "You've clearly hit the nail in the head in attempting to settle this – you know that one successful use of Speyeder signals your loss but you can't avoid it forever".
He was talking. That was good. That meant he needed to talk, he needed to stall for time. Those bruises and tears of open flesh and bone all over his muscles betrayed just how much damage he had taken. Sure, it was just grazes and bruises, but it was something. It looked painful and on top of that, it showed something very interesting to Kiyomi…
"So that's what it's like. To know, to see your limits but choose to move past them. To try at the very least…" Kiyomi thought to herself, choosing to completely ignore her opponent's deceitful web of tempting her to end this test. "You two have hit this wall so often, you move past it with such ease that you make it look easy but… It isn't, is it"?
Zahafbit looked back at his spider, the massive arachnid danced with its front legs aggressively shaking the whole arena and cracking several tiles, bumping through several holes in them. The guy may have been a pretty cocky prick, but he did display certain care for the spider, even going so much as to not move away from an upcoming barrage of rising ground pillars carrying explosive tags stuck onto them – one of Kiyomi's more classic combinations.
"You look like you're beginning to hit a wall there. If you try to dispel the illusion now – you may really begin to choke yourself out then. It's always a risk, approaching your limits, not knowing how far you can truly go before you pass out", Zahafbit tried, again and again, to intimidate Kiyomi into surrendering. He talked some mean game. Maybe, three or five years ago Kiyomi would've bought it too…
"You're right", Kiyomi finally gathered enough strength, enough will to keep going and stood back on just one knee. "I just saw a young lady, very dear to me, push herself to her very limits. Past them even. Sacrifice her own body even if it meant that she may as well never walk again! All not to win, not to rank up, but to just prove she's where she belongs to be, to prove someone else wrong and punch them in the face".
"How closely have you been observing the fight of that magician, really"? Zahafbit taunted Kiyomi with a shrug, trying to mock how her recounting of Mana's fight barely even matched the truth.
"I'm not talking about Mana"! Kiyomi shouted out, "Although she also has things to teach me, even though she keeps treating me as if I'm her older sister. She's someone who always counts on the outcome she wants, betting it all and going all in on it, not accepting any other outcomes".
"What of it? Those two are crippled and passed out right now, hardly very fitting role models", Zahafbit shook his head, mocking her friends again. Somehow, Kiyomi was strangely calm about it.
"True, but I wish to be a chuunin, a squad leader. Truth be told, I have played this role in our team for a short while now. Do you really think that after seeing my teammates, those I have lead, give their absolute best and more, I'll accept anything less from myself"!? Kiyomi finally lost her cool. Still, this was no blind anger, this was hype and it most certainly was not blind.
"Suit yourself, as far as my Speyeder goes, it only takes one to knock you out", Zahafbit grumbled as he placed his hands in a preparation stance of hand seal weaving.
"Oh, but one is all you have, isn't it"? Kiyomi smiled, her eyes may have been sunken under her unruly blond hair but her hyped grin was evident from all the way under it.
"What? How much do you underestimate my training to suggest I am only capable of three shots at a B-Rank genjutsu"? Zahafbit grinned, it was a vain and scared smile though, Kiyomi could see it now.
"I'm not talking about you", Kiyomi slowly lifted her arm up, her finger was pointing at the repulsive head of the spider, snapping its large jaws above the arena, due to its size looking too clunky to be able to reach the Yamanaka with them. "I'm talking about your arachnid".
Zahafbit shut his mouth, his smile was changed by a desperate expression of a young vain man grinding his teeth in rage.
"It's a creature of nature, it hunts using that illusion. Why would it have enough chakra for a second, leave alone third shot, if one is all it takes for any prey, small or large, to fall asleep", Kiyomi suggested.
"That's what you're basing your final strategy on? Presumption?" Zahafbit bellowed.
"Oh, no! It wasn't my mind putting it together that told that to me, it was you looking at your partner with such fear after the second shot. You've never done two in a row, have you? You're wondering if you can pull it off, you're treading new grounds threatening me with a third one", Kiyomi concluded.
"No! I just care about my partner, that's all"! Zahafbit lied.
"Huh? An ass like you couldn't help but care only about yourself. The only reason you care about that spider is the same reason a jock cares about their geek pet. The geek gets them through Projectile Trajectory classes", Kiyomi pouted her lips. "You've never once even referred to the damned thing by its real name, can you even remember it at this point"?
"So come, fire away with your third and final shot. Let's settle this already, I have your partner to beat up still", Kiyomi punched her other hand with her knuckle menacingly. Just this time, just this once, it was Zahafbit, the one who usually acted like the apex predator of genin, who looked sweaty and afraid. People who won through one shot jutsu usually couldn't handle the tension of betting everything they had. They felt so often like they had so much else they were holding back, that the very prospect of pulling all of that out petrified them.