A chakra signature that Mana was slowly beginning to get used to appeared nearby. It came as so much of a surprise to the practicing kunoichi that she became startled and her focus faded completely, making the crackling jolts of lightning that fed Lightning Release chakra to the lightning swords floating around Mana sever and the constructs themselves to dissolve rather violently, as if the capricious technique was offended to be mishandled this way.
"Do you feel this kind of training is really the priority right now?" Yushijin asked after walking out into the small clearing Mana was working her magic in. "Given how we will be working together for the nearest future, it might be useful for us four to train together."
"I'm sorry but… Mastering this jutsu is something I must do. It is more important than I am willing to let in on." Mana shook her head. It was frustrating that the three did not just leave her alone to work with the technique that was supposed to resolve matters with Guru Ayushi when the moment of the inevitable meeting came.
"Really? Is it more important than the objective of our mission? Are you willing to fail the mission, your team, the clients and the people that have been killed or hurt by the Snow Country tribe we're after just so you can spend more time getting more personal power? That doesn't sound like the Mana I know…" Yushijin stepped in closer. He looked as baffled as he was imposing. The fellow chuunin of Konoha wanted Mana training with the team and he was not bothered applying a little psychological pressure to get that.
Mana looked down. She had to hand it to the illusionary swordsman, his words did make her doubt herself for a moment. When only what he said and not what Mana was focusing for three entire years, what she was researching and preparing for, was in mind, his words seemed like iron truth. Problem was, he did not know the full picture. He thought that the only reason why Mana was working on this jutsu was to become stronger on her own. While it was about as controversial to her personal ideals, the purpose of this technique was completely different.
"It is more important. It's more important than any mission objective to me. You could say that, at the moment, for three whole years, it is the only thing that matters on such a scale to me." Mana replied while resuming her preparation pose for channeling the technique. It still took too long to set up. Even if she flawlessly executed the entire sequence of techniques in the plan to defeat Guru Ayushi, the immortal, the legendary ninja who lived to multiple retirements worth of age in a world where most died all too young, Supreme Magic Pierce, the key technique still took too long to prepare.
An irritating as it was painful blunt impact sent the magician stumbling forward with needles piercing her entire back from the upper neck to the lower back, almost paralyzing the magician completely for a couple of moments and stopping her breathing momentarily. It was only when Mana took the time to recover from the painful shock of the attack from behind and focused on resuming her normal breathing that air started to once again circulate through her body.
"I will not forgive you these words. I am the one on whose shoulders lies the responsibility to complete this mission, to bring all of you three back home and continue forging the reputation of my home village that my ancestors started ironing centuries ago. It is my responsibility as a leader to discipline you." Yushijin shouted out from a much more personal abyss inside his chest than Mana expected.
This was no matter of pride, no childish rivalry. This sentiment came from a place quite familiar to the magician – responsibility. It was perhaps of that same familiarity that this conflict hit so close to home and resonated this deeply within Mana. Normally it would have been next to impossible to shake the building being built upon the foundation most of the magician's career as a ninja in the making.
"I do not have the luxury to waste time fighting you, have you not understood yet that after I chose to focus on my own training instead of team training?" Mana replied, still rubbing the back of her neck where she was struck with the handle of Yushijin's sword, despite the rather impressive size of the blade, the young man drew and sheathed it back behind his back in seemingly an instant.
However, he attacked Mana from behind, while she was directing all of her focus and effort into activating and maintaining her jutsu. If he thought he could just bully her around like that and force the magician to train with the team, the leader of Team Fir had another thing coming.
He was fast, lightning-fast, Mana had to hand the young man that. When he leaped forward with a straight push kick, meant to send the magician down and keep chipping away at her pride until she caved in to his demands, "discipline" as he called it, he momentarily disappeared from Mana's eyes completely. But the lump of steel hanging from his back unbalanced him, it slowed him down whether Yushijin wanted to admit it or not. It was an easy matter for the magician to take a simple hop back and remove herself from the range of Yushijin's extended foot.
Mana did not reply nor did she counterattack despite the openings left by her opponent. With a strict and disappointed glare, she merely observed the further actions of the squad leader trying to discipline someone he may not have had the ability to lay hands on. A noble soul crushed under the weight of responsibility he placed on his own shoulders because of the way he saw the world, why was that sad image so familiar and, more importantly, so painful for Mana to see?
It was because the magician observed her opponent so carefully, knowing better than to underestimate someone like Yushijin in any capacity, that she found her follow-up move so surprising. The Konohagakure swordsman simply took to the air, swinging his sword down at Mana in an attempt to get mother gravity in on his attack as well. The obvious problems of this approach being the lack in speed because of the awkward trajectory and the complete removal of any chance to avoid a counterattack in mid-air and mid-swing.
Yushijin was no fool. Even when Mana did her best to not underestimate him, he still managed to surprise her. He knew exactly what the magician was doing by observing his moves and he, therefore, proceeded with a highly unpredictable and an impractical attack, one that would not assist the teammate he intended to discipline whatsoever in drawing a profile of Yushijin's fighting style.
Even so, dodging this attack was as easy as taking a leap aside. With a flow of soft movements, Mana hopped aside using nothing but the very ends of her feet to move her entire body. The perfect economy of movement as not a single unnecessary muscle was flexed in her entire body. Something was wrong… This felt wrong even before Mana felt the powerful influence of a foreign, chilling chakra flowing through her.
So… Yushijin managed to learn to use his Last Resort illusion without speaking now? He was not unlike Hanshin in the way that he devoted his entire time in polishing and perfecting a single technique that defined his entire fighting style, choosing to bring it to unimaginable heights instead of moving ahead and learning new tricks. While Mana admired such devotion, as an artist she could never have been that way.
With an outburst of chakra, Mana overpowered the illusion of her opponent and just in time – Yushijin was right in her face and his sheathed claymore was already looking to smash Mana's jaw and force her to submit to the orders she was given. Without stepping aside or even moving away, the magician avoided the sword strikes by simply bobbing and weaving her body around it. It was Yushijin who dashed back with a widely arced swing that was meant to prevent Mana from chasing him back, obviously, given how the magician lacked the aggression necessary for such pursuit, the swing only hit thin air.
"Don't tell me… You're training in the middle of my discipline session?" Yushijin asked. From his cold face, it was impossible to tell if he was excited or mad at the magician for just continuing her training while she was being attacked.
"I told you already, my training is more important than even this mission," Mana replied while taking charge for the first time. Her body blurred in motion, she was not overly skilled in close-range offensive combat but she had observed Yushijin's fighting style enough to where she could land a pair of quick palm strikes or maneuver her foot around his block to hook him with a pair of stiff kicks.
The damage she inflicted was nothing, but her leader, overburdened by the responsibility he himself was so eager to claim, failed to provide with the response that Mana needed. Overcome by frustration that her opponent did not quite play into her hands, the magician moved her free hands in to weave a bunch of hand seals while her legs browsed for openings in her opponent's block. Maybe she would not be this brave if her opponent's blade was unsheathed, as things were now, she was safe to extend and work-out her legs as much as needed.
"Fire Style: Dragon Claw!" Mana chanted out while her chest filled with hot air that set ablaze the moment she let it out to speak the name of her jutsu. While Yushijin's eyes betrayed his terror the moment he realized he found himself in front of a Fire Release ninjutsu up close, once he realized that the fire leaving Mana's respiratory tract was no wave or an explosive fireball but a weightless and motionless mass of blazes, he calmed somewhat.
It was false calm, however, as with a smack of her hand, fingers hooked like the claws of a tiger, Mana shaped the weightless mass of flames into three spikes of Fire Release chakra, concentrated enough to slash at them and hot enough to cauterize any wounds instantly and leave some nasty burns on anyone unfortunate enough to earn the ire of the user of the technique.
Somewhat halfway the claw-swiping motion, Mana realized that her attack would not hit – Yushijin set off his illusion again, freezing her in time, as far as the magician could perceive it. To her time seemed frozen, when in fact it was passing normally outside the effect of Yushijin's crushing illusion. The sword of the Konoha chuunin bounced around, smashing around the body of the young magician before mercilessly moving on. It was like Yushijin intended to break every bone in Mana's body for the act of minor, capricious disobedience she had shown.
Mana wasn't sure if Yushijin realized that he was hitting Mana's own illusionary clone. One that dispersed into a shower of flower petals upon being struck multiple times, enough to reveal the Flower Petal Sanctuary jutsu in play. Perhaps he did know it and the frustration of it all had gotten to the swordsman or perhaps he knew it and merely wanted to show off a bit… Either way, Yushijin left himself wide open by devoting so much of his violent intent towards the illusion.
Mana's true shape revealed itself as the petals whirled into a vortex, dancing around the emerging shape of the stage magician and revealing her in the fateful pose of a completed hand seal. Every flower petal still lingering in the air, even if they were illusionary, froze in time and place around Yushijin, covering almost the entire battlefield.
"Flower Petal Shuriken!" Mana chanted out as every single petal transformed into steel stars the size of a normal shuriken through a show of visual flicker of lights reflected off of them. Just as effortlessly the flower petals rushed at Yushijin all at the same time, intending to stress out his mind by having the young man experience the pain of tens of thousands of shuriken shredding him to chunks.
The shuriken faded away just as easily as they have manifested and as they have changed appearance before. It was as if there was a dome that was invisible yet very much perceivable to any chakra sensor that the shuriken could not pass. Yushijin was panting ever so slightly, dispelling a B-Rank illusion was not that easy, especially not right after casting multiple of your own in rapid succession. The sizes of their chakra signatures were beyond comparison. Mana could have continued this clash of illusions for hours the same way whereas Yushijin would most likely not desire the discipline session to continue on the illusionary battlefield for much longer.
"I'm still so far…" Mana sighed in disappointment. This was the beginning of the string she had planned to put away Guru Ayushi with. The very first link in the chain and it had already snapped, rusting with the fecal scent of failure. "In that case, may as well submit… It's not like I will become that much better overnight when it took me three years to fail this spectacularly."
"This… Isn't just about power, is it?" Yushijin looked surprised as he sheathed his longsword behind him.
"It's about the grim reality that if my dreaded as it is anticipated moment comes tomorrow, I will undoubtedly die." Mana sighed.
Yushijin looked baffled and unsure of what he should have offered in return after such a response. The chuunin looked down in what appeared to be shame before glancing back in the direction he came from, then back at the magician. Mana saw it – he was clearly hesitating in claiming what he had just won and starting the team training. He stood there crushed for a good handful of minutes before letting out a sigh and turning around.
"Let's go. We're wasting time standing around here." He ordered. Given how Mana herself stopped her rebellious behavior, Yushijin must have expected no further quarrels from her part. He found none, without answering in any meaningful way but that of her willing actions, Mana followed the chuunin back to the squad.
"What were you guys doing there? We were getting bored…" Kouta complained while eating the leftovers that nobody first hoped to finish. Everyone knew their food capacities and took food accordingly, and yet it seemed that Kouta continued to make food disappear through hunger fueled and aggravated by doing absolutely nothing. It was a unique paradox of nature.
"Since when are you so anxious to get into a fake fight?" Mana pacified her boyfriend with a simple question. Or, rather, one that appeared simple…
The changes that training with his father for years made the Juugo go through took Mana by surprise. She had met and hung out with the young man multiple times after returning from the Rabbit Caves and yet this was perhaps the first time that she noticed just how much he had changed from who she fell in love with.
And yet… Pacifying a Juugo seemed even easier than soothing the rather shy and polite young man that Kouta used to be when all he was looking for was some time with his father and a clear cut answer to the duality of his nature. All Mana had to do was mock his interest in fake-fighting. It still remained unclear if the changes in the nature of the young man were to Mana's liking or not.
Kouta grinned with a full mouth, looking a little embarrassed by being spoken to that way but excited nonetheless for what was ahead. Yushijin switched his focus from Mana to Kouta before sighing again and taking his sheathed sword off his back and placing it in front of him.
"Alright. First, we will need to see the synergy between each of us. I think the best way to start out would be to go with simple two-people combinations. Team Hokage seemed pretty tight to me, how deep is the teamwork in your squad, Mana?" Yushijin inquired.
Mana really had to ponder on that one. There were just so many factors in play and so many novelties and things to consider throughout the history of the Team Hokage. At some point two of its trio were not even included in the team, for the most part, Mana had a silent disagreement with its leader that prevented the team from blossoming to its full potential. All that the magician could do was shrug.
"Not all that impressive, honestly. We have multiple two-people combinations but we didn't invest time into anything more complex. We're usually on the same page though, we have roles that we serve in a fight and things work out best that way…" Mana did her best to reply with what information she could recall and what she had while at the same time being respectful to the team she used to be a part of and its honorable history.
"I see… Mastering the simplicity of two-people combinations instead of moving into the complex and uncomfortable for most territory of full-team combinations. It must be an effective strategy, given how time is against us as well, I'd say we're in luck. In one session we should figure out one or two good combinations." Yushijin nodded a pair of times, looking respectfully impressed. Mana found it odd how respectful the chuunin was to what vague intel she offered. Not unlike Kouta, it seemed that the concept of planning out and managing teamwork strategies excited Yushijin.
That was odd, from his appearance and the way that he carried himself, Mana would have always taken the swordsman for a lone wolf type.
"Instead of just talking about it, how about we fight it out?" Kouta suggested with flares in his eyes. "We'll get to see each other's skills that way much more naturally and easily, modesty and politeness will have no place in a sparring session!"
"Nobody will ever make the mistake of accusing you of being modest…" Yushijin stroke a smirk, although from his body language he appeared to agree with the proposition.
"Kouta has no reason to be modest – he is a member of a feared for their destructive power clan and he is smart and resourceful enough, not to skip out on how talented he is as well, to become a medical ninja." Mana tried standing up for the young man she felt affection for. It was much easier and felt better on her consciousness when she truly agreed with her own words.
"I think that serves as Mana volunteering to show off how incredibly she works together with Kouta." Erumo winked at the two while making a few quick and stealthy steps toward Yushijin's back.
"You two have worked together in a squad multiple times, not to mention your deep, personal connection. Truly it must serve as a motivator to develop incredible teamwork skills." Yushijin smirked.
"W-Wait just a second…" Mana tried rubbing herself out of the tight corner she placed herself in but Kouta yanked her by the hand and stepped forth with blazing enthusiasm and his fist firmly raised up to display his determination.
"You better believe it!" he declared. While staring at the back of her boyfriend's head with slight worry, Mana wondered if Kouta truly believed them to be excellent in working together or if he was just that itching to get into a brawl that he was willing to team up with just about anybody.
Author's Note: Anyway... Grammarly considers the word "efficient" to be an error and fixes the word to "effective" instead. I guess synonyms are now just plain wrong :D
Haven't done these in a while, even though I sort of promised to communicate a little bit more... That's one stone in my garden. There's been a whole lot of fighting lately in the story, some of it serious, some of it more playful. I know that most people hate reading fighting scenes since written word is not really the preferred medium to portray exciting fight scenes unless the writer is really talented and I have not yet been accused of that... That's another stone. It just so happens that writing fight scenes relax me because it is a very easy way for me to both have fun with my own story and develop characters in a more natural, more show-oriented way. Whenever I write fight scenes after a rough day at work I feel pretty relaxed because I know what the fight scene is supposed to accomplish and I know that I won't have to do a figurative backflip to accomplish it.
That's a cheap excuse, I know... Guess this stone breaks a window. There's a lot of fighting out ahead before things settle down for a while. In any case, thanks for sticking around!