Sugemi crouched down on one knee, placing his hands together in the Nara hijutsu hand seal position. Deciding to press on his advantage, he mumbled out the name of his "Shadow Tendril Jutsu" sending an elongated shadowy line across the thin layer of snow and toward the broken collection of thinly grown together trees.
Emerging from the large clump of shadows, which Sugemi once again utilized for his Nara clan hijutsu, the shadowy tendrils smacked Vinda around, from one to another before the final one wrapped around the girl's neck, swung around and slammed her hard into the ground. The slam was so strong that the resulting shock lifted the downed trees lightly up in the air while shaking those that Vinda's flight after she was punched had not cut down just yet.
The kunoichi picked herself up and dashed her way outside the small patch of artificial forest and into the opening, where the limited sunlight would have been enough to make it more difficult for Sugemi's hijutsu to connect properly and would have required a direct contact with her shadow to be set off. Her hands moved at a respectable pace while they worked on hand seals.
"Water Style: Acid Shower!" she yelled out with frustration and deep-seated pain that she tried to hide away but the battle damage she had sustained spoke louder than her intent on hiding it. The girl spat out a direct, powerful stream of water right at Sugemi who simply disappeared into thin air before the acid could cover him head to toe.
Using his superior speed and physical strength, the Nara moved in for a beatdown, delivering a combination of powerful straight punches as his blurry body moved up close to his opponent. After a powerful uppercut and a spinning kick right to Vinda's back while the girl was still airborne following her being knocked up by the uppercut, the Getsugakure native was sent dragging across the battlefield and eating dirt again. Sugemi's ruthlessness and complete silence was alarming and, frankly, a bit scary.
"This is a complete curb stomp, he didn't even use his gates yet…" Kiyomi pouted, she felt a little bit glad that the outspoken and rather sadistic girl got shut down and up by Mana's ex-teammate but still, the match barely even seemed entertaining.
"I don't think you're reading this quite right. Sugemi is not using his gates for a very smart reason – the strain on his body", Stea interrupted. "Didn't you see how the second splash of acid did more damage than the first? That's because there's more to Vinda's Water Release ability than meets the eye and Sugemi instantly picked up on it – each successive neutralization of her acid requires more effort and chakra. Her acid is corrosive in more ways than one, it corrodes his bodily and spiritual defenses just like it does his flesh".
"So if he used his gates, that looked pretty painful and tiresome to him back in the semi-finals, he'd have an even harder time neutralizing Vinda's acid? She locked down his most powerful ability like that…" Erumo exclaimed in wonder.
"This must have been the focus of her training during these five weeks. Seems a bit too lucky of an ability for her Water Release to have developed given the occasion for it to be otherwise", Mana concluded.
"So what kind of Advanced Bloodline even is Acid Release?" Erumo asked, "Water and Fire Releases combined, water and lightning?"
"It's not an Advanced Bloodline at all nor is it a clan ability". Kiyomi shook her head. "A part of manipulating an elemental nature is being able to control its properties. Acid Release is an actual Advanced Bloodline – a combination of Earth and Water Releases but the acid that Vinda uses is merely an advanced manipulation of Water Release, which is why it is so easily nullified by even opponents of matching or lesser skill".
Covered in bruises, donning a cracked lip and an eyebrow and with the right half of her attire tattered, Vinda tumbled back up on her feet. It was quite interesting how neither of these two had used the Substitution Jutsu quite yet, knowing of how explosively lethal their respective opponent's abilities were and that there will undoubtedly be more useful times to play that card.
Vinda grinned sadistically before making a move, reaching in for her ninja pouch. Sugemi did not appear to be in a mood to let that ninja tool façade set off, he immediately darted off, using all of his impressive superhuman speed to make it to his opponent. Before he could, however, Vinda's other arm slipped out a kunai knife, held separately and outside her ninja pouch and swiped at Sugemi, leaving a cut on his chest and very narrowly missing the one eye that carried no previously acquired scars.
Now, with a blood red dyed kunai blade in one hand and a handful of them in the other, the kunoichi dashed sideways before unleashing them at split intervals and timings, aiming to catch her opponent unprepared and knock him out of the peaceful fighting on his terms rhythm. Sugemi easily evaded each and every kunai, as his impressive speed and composure after being tagged once helped him do. Pulling his own kunai outside the pouch by his side, he even managed to deflect a whole handful of them on his mad dash towards his opponent and plant it into her abdomen.
For a moment the girl's body jerked and twitched in pain before poofing away, having replaced herself with a piece of wood from the trashed trees from before. Using her newly acquired position beside the trees, Vinda took a powerful leap into the air, whereas Sugemi, having realized he got his shoddy mass-produced kunai stuck into Senju-grown wood, let go of the tool and moved back to return to a stance where he'd be able to defend himself.
The airborne kunoichi sent a kunai with a small parcel attached to the other end, where usually explosive tags were located before the thing popped, letting a mass of marbles wrapped in explosive tags roll out and detonate all at once in a chain of explosions. With the range and spread of the blasts being too wide for him to dodge properly, Sugemi covered himself up to protect his most sensitive spots like exposed wounds and his eyes from the resulting blasts.
"Water Style: Water Assault Jutsu!" Vinda shouted out as the small pond of freezing cold water formed a tendril of water, which smacked Vinda to throw her even higher up into the air and help her maintain her airborne position. The unusual manner in which the kunoichi used an offensive Water Release jutsu on herself, instead of commanding the appendage of water smack at the enemy confused Sugemi, that much was evident from his expression.
As she was diving higher up in the air, the Getsugakure kunoichi went through another collection of hand seals before breathing in deep so intensely that her chest inflated.
"Water Style: Acid Shower!" Vinda roared out as she spat out the intense stream of an acid shower from above, aiming to wash her opponent away with this spraying acid hose.
Sugemi prepared to evade the straightforward attack before he noticed that the entire arena was filled with knee-deep craters from when Vinda calculated all the explosive spheres scattered all across. The riddled with craters battlefield was almost impossible to properly navigate with powerful super-fast dashes and required a more slow and subtle approach so that one didn't trip up or sprain an ankle or bust a knee open.
The shower of acid covered Sugemi head to bottom but with a loud popping sound, the young man telegraphed his desperation escape using the Substitution Jutsu to replace him with another piece of wood from the broken down trees from before, letting the wood completely melt away.
Vinda turned her head aside, controlling the stream and keeping propulsion of her acidic stream that kept her afloat and airborne. Sugemi grunted and prepared for the difficult task of evading the continuous stream but then he realized that the girl was no longer even aiming at him. He kept on frantically looking around before, much to his horror, he realized – she was filling the craters with her acid, creating a bunch of small acidic ponds all over the place.
"String Reeling Jutsu!" Vinda yelled out with a slightly winded voice as she used steel wire to reel herself on an unlikely trajectory and onto one of few remaining standing trees in the arena, landing on the thickest top branch that could support her weight.
"You aimed so intensely and still you missed?" Sugemi shouted out, taunting his opponent. He wanted, no, he needed to get her talking. He needed to get her taunting until he could figure out her plan. It could not have been as simple as to create this intricate speed-limiting battlefield. It required too much chakra for that, she probably wasted half of what she had after using that Shadow Clone Jutsu just setting all of this up – it had to be her ace move. Not some big bad amazing jutsu – a strategy of some sorts…
"Nope, I hit all the marks I needed to!" Vinda grinned sadistically before reaching in for her ninja pouch and removing a handful of identical looking cyan colored scrolls.
Whatever Vinda was planning, Sugemi did not wish to allow her to proceed with it unimpeded. He had to at least try to intercept her jutsu, at least try to keep her moving and too busy defending her life to complete her plan! Problem was that there was too little he could do. The ravaged battlefield would have impeded his movement speed and his hand seals would have been too slow to interrupt her…
"Water Release: Great Gunshot!" Vinda shouted out triumphantly before flipping the scrolls up in the air and pulling on their tips at the same time using steel wire attached to their ends. As the scrolls unrolled, a giant pressurized water bullet fired off from all of them together.
Sugemi prepared to carefully scope the bullets' trajectories and avoid them if needed but… Neither one of them was aimed at him, that would have meant that there could have only been one possible target – the acid pools.
Upon impact, the water bullets caused a violent reaction. Almost instantly, the temperature rose up drastically to the point where it felt like the pools of water were boiling and heating up the entire arena. The pools of water began splashing about and foaming, releasing corrosive vapor and raging about. Rising tides of violently vibrant acidic waves came crashing down from all sides, in addition to the boiling temperature air surrounding the arena and the corrosive mist, the resulting combination was completely unavoidable.
Kiyomi's heart whimpered after she heard Mana's desperate scream. It was so unexpected, almost like the magician did not see the reaction coming before it was absolutely too late, similarly to how it would have been for Sugemi as well. For someone so brutal and destructive, Vinda sure had a clever combination under her sleeve. It took a pretty clever and twisted mind to surprise Mana this way.
A powerful ripple of air pushed the air away from Sugemi's surroundings, blasting away the corrosive vapors and holding the foaming and crashing waves of acidic waters away with sheer chakra pressure. A bright green pillar rose up from Sugemi and emanated all the way to the protective barriers that lit up to contain Sugemi's chakra pressure inside the arena, just as it protected the audience from Vinda's ace exothermic reaction combination.
Sugemi's body was twitching, veins shot out all over his body as he tilted his face up and let his eyes scan the surroundings, looking for his opponent. The creepy ocular orbs of the young man were completely missing irises or pupils, white as the snow that was coming down.
Vinda leaped aside from the branch she was situated on, a small splash of acid fell down on her arm forcing her to move backward. She had performed this combo before, she knew that this distance was safe and she should not have been affected. That only meant that her opponent used something to survive Vinda melting him away.
Slowly, perfectly controlling his stressed and overly strained body, Sugemi moved his hands behind him before putting his palms open and up front, like he was preparing to perform a palm slap before his shadowy tendril began wrapping around the pillar of chakra he was emitting which was keeping the acid away from consuming him.
"Gate of Life: Shadow Push Jutsu!" Sugemi shouted out before shoving both of his palms up front, letting the massive shadow tendril form a shadowy blob and rush at his opponent in the shape of a giant palm. The range of his selected jutsu was tremendously too short for the distance it needed to cover so it was no surprise that the palm just froze suddenly, having made a good half of the distance.
Sugemi's attack was no empty effort, his palm, thrust forward, had pushed and redirected the flow of the acid and generated a massive crashing wave, about to drown Vinda in a tsunami of her own medicine. Oddly enough, just as Sugemi finished his jutsu, his Third Gate faded away just as suddenly as it had appeared, making him also drown in the lingering small pools of acid.
With a powerful burst of chakra, Sugemi neutralized the lingering effects of the acid he was drowning in after the wave had moved away and smashed at the side of the arena where Vinda was in. Shaking in pain from the multiple patches of burnt skin where his chakra augmentations and attempts to neutralize the acid had not done as stellar of a job as the Nara had wanted it to, with hands lowered down and his body hunched over, Sugemi observed the wave of acid washing Vinda away. Then, as it smashed her against the protective barrier before settling down and spilling back into the craters.
"The match is over!" overseer Oke raised his hand, emerging from a tub of obsidian and moving the demonic skull and spikes decorated lid off of where he hid for safety.
Within an instant medical ninja in cloaks swarmed the battlefield, using Art of Tree Climbing to balance on the surface of the acid they pressed their hands against its surface to neutralize it all and extract Vinda from one of the pools. The girl was covered in severe burns and it became evident that she ran out of chakra to use to neutralize all of the overflowing acid, which she was literally drowning in. One of the medical ninja quickly pressed his hand against her chest, emitting a pulse of chakra that neutralized the present corrosive effects of her Water Release before quickly covering up the almost completely naked, as most of her clothes got corroded completely, and burnt up girl with one of their cloaks and moving her to the infirmary.
"There's no way they'll let us fight in this arena…" Kiyomi sighed. "There will definitely be another break." She nodded as if affirming herself.
"Do you think Vinda will be OK?" Mana wondered, "Those burns looked really bad."
"The wounds of her opponents in the semi-finals were much worse. I've seen them completely recovered within a week or so with minor scars, she'll be fine", Stea calmed the magician down before looking up at the screen telegraphing the beginning of the next match. "Although, it appears you've been wrong in that assessment, Kiyomi. They will let us fight in this battlefield."
"Yamanaka Kiyomi V.S. Tanko Shigin" glowed on the screen, telling the contestants to make their way down the corridor and enter the arena.
"Be careful, don't fall into one of those pools. There are better things to spend your chakra on", Mana warned her friend with an encouraging smile to which the Yamanaka just gulped and nodded.
Here and now was the time to show off what all of this time and these entire exams had lead up to. Now she had to show off all of her training in creative enough ways to impress the council. More so, as the de facto leader of her team, she had to display and prove her strategic mind being just what the mind of a chuunin needed to be: calculating, capable of cleverly managing a team of ninja and utilizing their strengths and exploiting their enemy's weaknesses.
The blonde turned away and began slowly walking towards the corridor that lead to the arena entrance. Mana gently pressed her hand against Kiyomi's shoulder making the Yamanaka turn around and look at her blindfolded friend.
"I wish I could see you fight clearly. Good luck, I'm sure you'll do great", Mana smiled.
Kiyomi lightly wrapped her fingers around Mana's hand, clenching it into a fist before bumping it with her own. The blonde then turned around and boldly rushed to the corridor while staff ninja wearing Konoha chuunin vests performed menial maintenance job and quickly repurpose the battlefield into a version of its previous self, riddled with pools of acid.
As the Konoha kunoichi made her way downstairs she noticed a curious sight – the dumb, square-shaped face looking at her through those small, round eyes and thick dark brown eyebrows and rubbing its spiky brown hair.
"It looks like both of us took the same side of the entrance", Shigin laughed out loud with his silly, nothing kept back laughter. As if something like that was worth laughing at. "Let's enter the arena together, side by side, all epic-like!" he cheered, lifting his fist up into the air, almost hitting the lamp that illuminated the place.
"Whatever", Kiyomi closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. She knew what Shigin was capable of, she was preparing for his curious ability for five weeks and it would be shameful of her to lose. Together, shoulder to shoulder, the two genin left the corridor and entered into the gloomy light of the arena. Only at that moment did Kiyomi notice all the eyes watching her, the Ninja Council, the villagers, Mana and the other girls, the boys, most importantly – Meiko.
It would be shameful of her to fail here. She'd rather burn up where she stood than revealed to the world that the future heiress of the famous and noble Yamanaka clan could not properly prepare for a powerful opponent in five whole weeks! Her life as she knew it would be over! Kiyomi's eyes wandered up and to the right, meeting a faint shape she perceived as Mana. The magician was always ready to bet her whole life, her ideals and her reputation on a roll of a dice just like Kiyomi did now. How did she do it?
No, this will not be a roll of a dice, chance will have nothing to do with this fight. That was how Mana did it – she realized that. She realized that there was no place for chance, she was either prepared for her trial or it all could have gone to hell because no other outcome truly mattered!
"Bring it, Shigin!" the Yamanaka heiress thought to herself while she took another deep breath and calmed her racing heart down.