Just as the overseer's signal to begin the match echoed through the gym, Kei-J leaped in the air an impressive distance with a jumping spinning dive-kick aimed straight at Erumo. The high-flying genin didn't hit his mark, however, instead, he simply disappeared in a cloud of dark smoke, emanating from a simple smoke bomb that most ninja carried in their arsenal.

From what little the audience could see inside the smoking cloud that the Kumogakure competitor found himself in, it was evident that the young man struggled to read Erumo's future movements. He flailed around, trying to predict where his opponent's next attack would come from and just what kind of an attack it would be. He did not know Erumo's abilities as his team had finished the exam early on, the advantage of having been near the last teams that left the Forest of Death was that there was enough time to know pretty much everyone a little bit better than not at all.

Smoke bombs were not a usually employed strategy. It was easy to understand why Kei-J was so confused and continued to look for a follow-up attack that simply did not come. Very few higher ranking ninja even had enough grasp of strategy in their minds to utilize tools like the smoke bombs, the more tools one had within their reach – the tougher to come up with an efficient way to use them all. That was where patterns came into play, Erumo must have been a very specific kind of ninja, her use of smoke was not random – she needed it for something.

"What is this foolishness"? Kei-J impatiently raised his fist and shook it in thin air. "Referee, disqualify her at once, she isn't engaging me"! He demanded.

"Not fighting isn't against the rules. There is not a time limit to completing a match either. Continue the fight", the overseer grumpily overruled the Kumogakure genin's objection.

If he was not so hot-headed and looking to directly engage his opponent, perhaps Kei-J would have noticed that his opponent had slipped into the Cloak of Invisibility technique, using her green jacket to cover herself up partially. Even from a lower angle, she would have been completely disguised had it not been for Mana's higher than usual degree of perception, given her prowess in weaving illusions herself.

It was tough to say just what exactly the kunoichi was doing, just crawling around the arena, covered up and disguised to appear just like the floor but she was not moving randomly – there were a purpose and planning involved in her movements. Finally, having had enough of his opponent just completely having escaped his perception, Kei-J weaved a handful of hand seals before pulling out a bunch of larger than the normal bunch shuriken from inside his cape, the shuriken were folded as a singular blade but. upon a trigger on them being pressed, they unfolded into a more familiar shape.

"Lightning Style: Minefield Trigger"! Kei-J shouted out as he flung the bunch of large shuriken at random locations around the arena, trying to base them at around each corner of the arena. As the shuriken landed on the floor, they fired out a powerful stream of lightning chakra upwards, the electric discharge around them must've been considerable as well.

After the rumbling lightning streams calmed down, there was nothing to be seen being damaged. Mana tried not to focus her eyes on the location of Erumo too much either, had she done so, an accidental glare at her direction could've betrayed the trapster's location and the magician was already on shaky grounds with Team Fir as it was.

"Hey, calm down, man"! A shout came from where Kei-J's team was standing. Mana could remember the voice, it was Roh-D, the large and broad shouldered teammate of Kei-J. "She's just hiding from you, calm down and start scanning your surroundings".

The overseer glared at the large genin assisting his friend verbally in irritation but he decided not to take any action and just let the fight play out. Kei-J nodded at his friend before breathing in and out and pulling out a little bar of steel from his ninja pouch, upon pressing a trigger on the bar, it extended into a steel staff. The steel must've been high-quality chakra conductive steel as the genin focused his chakra through it and soon crackling blue lightning sparks started running down the weapon as if it was being electrified.

It was an early stage of chakra imbuement into weapons, far surpassing the primary invisible stage but not yet honed and perfected to where the chakra clearly formed a visible weapon shaped coat of its signature shimmer around the object. Such a weapon could have easily busted through anything that was not using chakra imbuement and would have matched Audra steel in potency but not yet matching true chakra imbuement. A single perfectly imbued weapon would have cut through this staff like a kitchen knife cut through a cucumber.

With an energetic grunt, Kei-J thrust the staff vertically at the ground, sending electric ripples of sparking shockwaves all around the arena, missing not a single tile and not a single corner and shaking the entire structure. That would have done it, Mana could only wonder just how much chakra was used in such a stunt as it couldn't have been an easy sacrifice to make for seeing one's opponent. From what she could roughly estimate, Kei-J's signature was already missing a sizable chunk of the flaring star it once was.

The technique was fairly effective, however, as Erumo leaped into the air, the invisibility cloak she formed slipped off her shoulders and returned to its visible state as the generic Ninja Academy jutsu was canceled by the user, the jacket floated around weightlessly before settling down on the rocky floor of the arena. The cheerful young lady rubbed her nose in laughter before showing a "Peace" gesture at her opponent and taunting him with a more nasty gesture.

"That was a close call, but I've managed to complete my preparations", she smiled at her opponent first, before glaring back at Mana. The magician's eyebrows bent down turning her face sour as she just couldn't understand the purpose of that glare. Was Erumo just trying to psyche Mana? Why would she take the fight on hand so lightly?

Kei-J closed down his staff back into the chunk of steel it was before it was extended and pocketed it, then he unveiled his sleeve, revealing a sealing glyph on it and he activated the seal, unsealing a long twin bladed sword-staff before charging at his opponent. Mana was really tempted to yell something out at the girl who was just dauntingly staring back at her while standing in front of a charging opponent with her chest left completely exposed to an attack and her head turned away.

That was when Kei-J tripped over and fell face-flat onto the arena floor, smashing his head so loudly and painfully that most of the audience actually flinched from the sound and the unexpected nature of the fall. Only a secondary inspection revealed a thin string of steel wire being extended through the corners, a trap that went completely unnoticed and underappreciated before the opponent was completely laying flat on his face.

Erumo kneeled to touch another string wire and channel chakra through it, setting off another seal on the other side of the arena. A sealing glyph that lit up only once it was set off, remaining completely disguised and camouflaged with the floor it laid on before Erumo activated it. A massive steel ball with large bumps on the sides poofed in a cloud of smoke right above the center of the arena before the gravity did the rest of the work and the thing slammed onto the temporarily stunned and entrapped opponent.

Luckily for him, Kei-J managed to at least somewhat recover from having his face planted into the mat nose-first and dive out of the way, getting only a shockwave of the hundreds of tons weighing bumpy sphere throwing him away and testing the integrity of his joints and ligaments. The fall aside also earned him a couple of painful bumps and bruises but the boy managed to stop himself with his feet just in time before he approached dangerously close to the edge of the arena and risked a ring out.

"She's so cocky, she's gonna eat that arrogance eventually", Kiyomi angrily locked her hands around her chest. She must've gotten some nasty Uchiha vibes from this completely normal and unaffiliated with any ninja clans girl and she absolutely hated it.

"No, it's not cockiness, it's honors being paid", Mana muttered when she realized the fighting style of this young lady fully.

"Honors? To whom"? The Yamanaka heiress squinted at Mana like the magician had completely lost her mind over her recently afflicted sadness.

"To my father, this is a similar style to the one he used in combat. Entrapping his opponents and disabling them. She's not as good as my father used to be. If she had been – this fight would have already been over. She's a little bit of my father and me, a showoff and a trapster", Mana admitted while looking down. She wondered if her father knew what Mana did to earn the scorn of Team Fir and saw this girl honor his fighting style thusly, would he consider Erumo a better daughter than Mana turned out to be…

"So? She's fighting just like your father used to, what of it"? Kiyomi grunted as she raised her nose up.

"She's rubbing it into my face, it's a way to get back at me. She's trying to show me that I'm a disappointment to my village, him and that she can do what I was supposed to much better than I can. It's a dance of spite." Mana muttered out. Even if it was childish and silly, she could not believe how deeply the stab went. Maybe it was just a matter of poor timing, after all, she had just parted ways with a youth she genuinely had feelings for yesterday and just got a face full of what caused her to fail Mana's beloved not even five minutes ago.

Mana gave the overseer a brief glare, undoubtedly the fighting style didn't escape his mind either. Her father was sort of a B-tier sensation, a chuunin ranked average man with a memorable gimmick to the way he fought his enemies. He may not have been overly powerful but he sure as hell made his mark by being memorable. It was clear from the nostalgic smirk on the higher-ranking ninja's face that the sentiment and the tributes did not escape his sight. The same probably went with everyone else too.

The massive ball of solid steel poofed away in a cloud of smoke, as suddenly as it had appeared, returning to whatever sealing dimension it was temporarily called from. Kei-J began to slowly pick himself back up on his feet, after wiping the blood off of couple of bruises he had gathered, the genin picked his double bladed sword-staff and charged at his opponent again, throwing a pair of odd looking, ring with two blades attached at three sides, shuriken-like tools at her as a distraction.

A blade blurred in Erumo's hand, flashing with the almost silver-like colors as the young woman deflected two of the tools with careful swipes of her blades, avoiding the third one to the point where it only shallowly scratched her long head biceps, spilling a few droplets of blood. As the sword-staff wielding genin moved in, Erumo worked on her hand seals bravely. It was a bold call to not attempt to defend herself and instead work on hand seals. After weaving a pair of them, another seal activated firing off a piece of string from the ground where another one up in the air unsealed a massive rocky chunk that stuck itself inside the loop of wire and swung right at Kei-J's direction.

The stone smashed Kei-J straight into a wall outside the arena, completely bypassing the barrier and making the audience around gasp in shock. That was when the seemingly lifeless and crushed boy's body poofed in smoke and got substituted with Erumo's own jacket which the girl had slipped out of once she had leaped in the air. The jacket plummeted outside the arena, making retrieval of it and another attempt at hiding that same way rather complicated.

After a moment of catching his breath and realizing how close he was from getting eliminated, Kei-J glared aside, noticing that Erumo was making rude gestures his way and touching her tag scroll.

"Really got you in a pinch, didn't I"? She showed the young man her tongue before yanking on the tag scroll and unsealing her teammate for a quick tag out, now that her opponent was distracted. As the maroon flash cleared out, Stea graciously took her place by her teammate, giving the energetic young trapster complimentary glares.

"I assume you've setup your traps, support ninja"? Stea calmly and composedly inquired.

"Sure, I went and used out a pair of them though, got caught on the opposite side and needed to reach you", Erumo shyly rubbed her nose, feeling a bit embarrassed by her newbie mistake.

"That's just bad positioning", Stea politely smiled allowing her teammate to get sealed inside the tag scroll as she calmly looked at the briefly worn out and lightly injured opponent.

"Well then, are you going to try and beat me, or will I have to lead the waltz"? Stea taunted the young man who just grinded his teeth and jumped on his feet, before looking aside at his teammate and his female team mentor and stopping in his tracks.

"Ladies first", Kei-J managed to pull out a pleasant and confident smile, not having himself rush into another trap. Clearly, Stea couldn't use any of Erumo's traps, but her own ability, equally as fearsome, was still a complete mystery to Kei-J and so the young man resorted to calmly scoping the young woman's abilities out.

"Very well, I shall then move in", Stea closed her eyes as her black robe flashed and fluttered due to her lightning fast movements. The young woman moved in behind her opponent, throwing a pair of quick and precise kicks Kei-J's taijutsu prowess simply outclassed her completely. Mana's eyes widened both by how skilled Kei-J was at close range combat and by how bold Stea's approach was, given her lackluster hand-to-hand potential. The mysterious Getsugakure kunoichi was barely as good as Mana was at offensive taijutsu, which would've counted as a failing area in the handbooks of many aspiring ninja.

As swift kicks and sharp elbow strikes overwhelmed the rather improperly dressed for her manner of attack woman, she gurgled some nasty sounding sounds which made Mana even more confused – was she not augmenting her body to weaken at least some of the damage she took by this odd approach? Kei-J raised his twin bladed weapon above his head and spun it rapidly, blitzing with his blades in many angles and countless different altitude and varied strength and speed slashes. Even Mana would have found such variety difficult to evade unharmed.

The blade staff pierced through the black cloak of Stea like a hot knife through butter. Cutting the young woman apart to pieces in the process, or so it initially seemed by it only cut through a floating piece of clothing as the wearer of said attire had slipped out of it and moved back. In that way, efficiently disengaging from her incredibly bold offensive and leaving only her cumbersome and very puffy cloak to get shredded into small raggedy chunks of cloth.

"Why would the Getsugakure chick engage so hot-headedly if she sucks so badly at taijutsu, seems to me like she's asking to get cut", Kiyomi nodded firmly to herself, imagining herself scolding Stea as if the young woman was her student or something.

"I think that's the point", Mana lingered on that thought before looking very carefully at the young Getsugakure kunoichi who wiped the blood running down her lip and cracked eyebrow and felt her busted innards that kept on bleeding internally and must've caused quite a painful moving around experience. "I've never seen her true ability, by the time I arrived to observe Team Phobos battle, she had already dispatched of her opponent unfazed and challenged him to attack her, as if she wanted to get hurt. Then the third member of her team – Doma took the hit for her".

"Hmm? Sounds to me like just a very devoted teammate", Kiyomi observed before resuming her curious glare at the briefly slowed down pace of the battle in the arena.

"That's what I thought back then. Then I saw Doma's strange ability, somehow he empowered his own ninjutsu through the damage he took something called a Damage Seal. I wonder if Stea's ability isn't a similar one to that of her teammate's. Usually, most villages have common patterns amongst the abilities of their ninja: Kumogakure has more swordsmen, Sungakure has more puppeteers etc", Mana theorized after witnessing Kei-J charge at his opponent with his twirling sword-staff in hand, ready to cut up the real deal this time.

Stea gracefully moved aside from the first couple of combinations but she must've seen the problem instantly, it didn't take great skill in weaponry combat to see it – there were no blind spots in Kei-J's attacks to counterattack in. A staff or a sword-staff was a perfect weapon for the young man as it doubled down on his incredibly aggressive pressure-based style of combat. He is going to wear his less skilled opponent down and eventually he will either find an open spot for a finishing thrust, or a slash or create one.

The Getsugakure kunoichi gracefully sprung forward, trying to disengage but Mana noticed a string reeling device shining, as the lighting of the gym reflected off of the steel hidden under the bandages wrapped around Kei-J's wrists. The young man fired off a kunai on a steel string device that etched into the rocky floor and pulled on the wire, pulling himself in for a powerful jump kick. Stea grunted out in pain as the young man's boot dug deep into her ribs and his sword staff added a several of deep cuts at randomly cut spots all over her body. The force of the kick and the added sword-staff attack sent Stea rolling back, dangerously close to the edge of the arena and over the edge.

"Hey, hey"! Doma shouted out wildly from the other side of the arena as the woman in a tight black silk dress and plenty of bronze, copper and iron jewelry disappeared off the edge.

Normally, Mana would've counted this as a part of Stea's strategy, but now that even her own team got worried over the young lady's safety and further participation, even her own heart skipped a couple of beats. She didn't want to admit it but… She didn't want Stea to lose, in all honesty. The magician had no idea of the kind of person that the Getsugakure kunoichi really was but so far she stroke the impression of a kind and noble soul. Needless to mention, that the two shared their general distaste for fighting even if circumstances forced them into it so often, there was a sense of relatability to the kunoichi of the Moon.

"Wow! What a use of the Art of Tree Climbing"! Even the high-ranking overseer whistled out in surprise after seeing Stea's body straightened out like a board horizontally and completely over the edge, sticking to the arena side merely by the tip of her finger that was glowing blue, suggesting an intense flow of chakra at that point. With a gracious flick of her wrist and hand, Stea flipped back into the arena and dusted off her black dress.

"A nice attack. Shall we continue then"? She smiled.