"So, what exactly can we expect from this match?" Konohamaru turned to Udon while Temari and Fuyo walked out and took the stage. The enigmatic, dark-haired girl from Amegakure still stared a single card with a purple back before slipping it back into a deck inside her pouch.
"It's a mystery to be certain, examinee Temari has demonstrated great usage of Wind Release ninjutsu that she channels through her fan that she carries on her back. Not that much is known about examinee Fuyo, except for the fact that she is a sensor," Moegi answered instead of Udon.
"That's right, Moegi, I am aware of the fact that examinee Fuyo has her own deck of Ninja Info Cards, which makes it more than likely that she has knowledge of the abilities of examinee Temari in theory. It is a curious thing that she was the only one to get this far out of her entire squad, given that she serves as a sensor and more of a support and utility type ninja," Udon elaborated to Moegi's answer and added some on top.
"Let me show you a little trick, girly," Temari smirked, reaching back for her fan. The metallic frame of the weapon hit the ground with a weighty slam. The proctor froze and turned to Temari. His arms were just a few inches shy from declaring the beginning of the match.
"This fan has three moons on it. The more moons I reveal, the wider the fan is, the stronger my jutsu are. I'm gonna open them one by one, just to see how good you are. I can tell you that by the time you see the third moon, it's gonna be all over!" Temari raised the large frame and flipped it over her shoulders. At this point she was just showing off, she hadn't even opened the fan one bit yet.
"To be fair, I am well aware of how your fighting style works in theory. If theoretical knowledge was all that I found useful, I'd have withdrawn from the exam. My village values intelligence revealed through combat experience more than anything else," Fuyo pointed out and removed her own large package from her back, slamming a chunky wooden rod onto the floor and letting cloth expose a sharp, decorative top of the weapon that appeared to be shaped like a lance.
The proctor raised his arms up and dashed off. Fuyo did not even try taking the offensive, she raised her arm up, extending her middle and index fingers while she closed her eyes, focusing on her sensory abilities to keep track of the battlefield. Temari took off, swinging her closed fan like a claymore. Fuyo reacted to the sound of Temari's sandals kicking off the ground. Due to the luggage that the Sunagakure kunoichi was dragging behind her, the fan hampered Temari's speed enough for Fuyo to react in time.
The blonde took in a mouthful of irritating black smoke when Fuyo reached for her pouch and then flung her hand in an arcing direction. She had popped a smoke bomb and used a simple flinging motion to spread the booming cloud faster, prioritizing the direction more useful to Fuyo herself. The audience and the observers from the waiting room could still see Fuyo ducking under the swinging fan but the rest was left to the chaos that was submerged in smoke.
Temari slid out from the smoke, her fan was thrust into the dirt and left a wide ridge in her path. The young woman dragged her fist across her lip that was stained red and by the right side of her face where the mean bruise was. The Sunagakure ninja had taken quite a mean bump in there and due to the fact that she hadn't even opened up her fan yet, she was unable to blow the smoke away before the hit landed.
"Using the smoke in sync with your sensory abilities, huh? That's cute…" Temari filtered through a cocky smirk before opening up the first moon of her fan and swinging the massive object. The smoke stood no chance against even the simplest of swings from the wind-channeling weapon, there was no need for an actual Wind Release ninjutsu.
"Now that you're all out in the open and exposed like that, how 'bout this!?" Temari mocked her opponent again, flexing her imagined superiority over her by swinging the one-third open fan in a straightforward motion. Fuyo screamed out in pain as a handful of mean-looking lacerations opened up on the bare areas of her skin and cut-up parts of her cloak, exposing more areas for the wind to slice next.
The Amegakure kunoichi surrendered to the blowing might of the wind and rolled backward, clutching her lance-shaped weapon close to her side. Once she had rolled a few dashes further, Fuyo opened up her weapon, throwing the rags that covered it aside and revealing it to be a massive umbrella. It might not have proven to be sufficient enough defense against the slicing winds at close range but the potency of Temari's flexing gust of winds appeared to degrade further and Fuyo's weapon proved to be a valiant mean of defense then.
"Quite powerful, though cruel and rather blunt…" Fuyo declared while standing up on her feet. Despite a handful of cuts being open on her thigh and her shin, her forearms, and the sides of her chest, the Amegakure ninja did not wince or react to her injuries too much nor did she show trouble moving just yet. More than being a feat of prodigious pain tolerance, however, this was a betrayal of the fact that unless Temari put her back into it, her techniques slashed with something comparable to a mean paper cut.
"You've got some porridge in that noggin of yours, I'll hand you that. I guess you'd have to so that you can survive being a constant burden on your team…" Temari shrugged, still looking smug since her opponent hadn't provided her with a reason to acknowledge her yet.
"As it is the case with blunt ninja, they can't see the big picture until it is squeezing around their neck," Fuyo closed her eyes and flung her umbrella into the sky, while the young woman continued to weave hand seals, the umbrella rose higher and higher up, riding a pathway made out of faint traces of chakra rather than relying on great physical strength for it to ascend that high up.
"Getting rid of your only mean of defense was a mistake! Wind Scythe Jutsu!" Temari yelled out so that her voice overpowered the wind that she commanded. A potent gust of slashing winds left Temari's fan and continued to grow outward into a translucent, round blob of a raging gale.
The umbrella stopped in mid-air, the steel wire attached to the ends of each segment lit up blue while the device itself began spinning. Using that momentum and leaving only the strands of steel wire on one side of the umbrella glowing with chakra, Fuyo zipped up into the air, following her weapon and over the expanding gale that erupted into a single pillar of slashing winds after reaching the end of its range.
"Water Style: Sprinkling Drizzle!" Fuyo chanted after activating a different set of steel wires over her wrist, that interacting with a handful of compartments in the umbrella she used and set off the sprinklers at each angle of the umbrella's frame, creating a pelting rain from up above.
"That's no puny drizzle…" Temari covered up her eyes and face, what she took as a laughable attempt for an attack appeared to be an actually bothersome distraction as the drain washed away from up above with all the penetrative power that could drill through stone if it persevered long enough. "I'll blow it away nevertheless!"
Temari swung her fan with just one of her moons exposed still, cutting whirlwind raced cutting through the rain and slashing right at her opponent. Fuyo covered herself up, choosing to rather keep her sprinklers running the diversion while she cushioned the weakening blast of wind with her body. The Amegakure ninja flew vaulting backward like a ragdoll, a handful of crimson droplets mixed into the waterfall of the gloomier, aquatic variety that came from open lacerations on Fuyo's body.
Despite the mean hit she took, Fuyo completed her landing with on her feet, nimble as a cat and ripped her cloak off before throwing it aside seeing how it was all cut up and tattered with holes as if a tempestuous child had gone to town on it with a pair of scissors.
"Water Style: Drizzle Barrage!" Fuyo pressed her hands together and extended her left arm forward, the widespread coverage of the downfall that she had formed with her airborne umbrella turned into a focused stream of blade-sharp droplets that washed in a waving arc right at Temari.
"Don't make me laugh!" Temari smirked, waving her fan and stopping the drizzle halfway to her with a hefty blast of wind. Her vanity soon turned to ire when she realized that even when she blocked Fuyo's attempts at a more streamlined attack, the irritating diversion of the previous drizzle resumed unimpeded once this one focused wave was finished.
"I see… Potent long-range attacks that serve as staunch defense as well. You're a real juggernaut to anyone that's incapable of overpowering you with a hopeless difference in skill and ability. A frightening opponent to anyone of similar skill and an insurmountable wall to anyone who focuses on long-range techniques and diversions," Fuyo summed up, standing tall in front of her sneering opponent.
"So, what now? You gonna throw in the towel?" Temari wondered.
"I'm afraid not. I have only still seen the first of your moons. Even if someone like you is the absolute worst opponent for someone like me to face as you've got a valid counter for most things I can do, I cannot fail Lady Angel by bringing her anything less than a complete package of intelligence, you are, after all, the sister to the One-Tails Jinchuuriki, correct?" Fuyo asked.
"W-What?! How do you…?" Temari appeared to be thrown off balance for the first time and it was not because of something her opponent could do.
"Trivializing those that One-Tails holds dear to him is important to Lady Angel and the future of Amegakure. I can therefore not falter before hardship until I can obtain all the possible intelligence," Fuyo declared with an almost fanatical devotion burning in her eyes. "This was a task that Lady Angel entrusted to me personally."
"Tsk… You're freaking me out, I'm done fooling around!" Temari pushed her thumb across the edge of her fan, opening up the second moon of it. "Wind Scythe Jutsu!" she yelled out after swinging her fan. Despite visible packing much more of a wallop with the amount of wind that it blew, the tool also appeared to move much slower in mid-air, giving Fuyo an illusion of being able to defend against her opponent.
The violent turbulence fired off toward the Amegakure girl like a missile, enveloping her whole inside its violent outrage and ripping and tearing at her from the inside while she grunted and twitched at every cut that she suffered. This no longer looked like much of a fight and nobody had seen an intelligence-gathering venture that closed in to such proximity to being outright torture. Against her better judgment, Fuyo persevered Temari's attack and planted on the dirt, her arms shook while she pushed her cut-up body off the ground. Her dark hair, previously tied into bangs that covered half of her forehead, now were dirty and split into wild strands while they ran loose all over her head.
"Chakra is a potential weakness to explore. Each successive swing drains a little bit more, the more active moons, the more significant the dip…" Fuyo panted while chanting to herself her observations like a mantra that helped her deal with the pointless battle she went through.
"This is it, you psycho! Third moon!" Temari panted herself, revealing the third moon as she swung her fan, unleashing a whole array of violent gales from her fan. The multiple gusts enveloped the poor Amegakure girls like ravenous beasts, chomping and shredding her to bits, each hungry and vicious in its own right, looking to tear out a sizable chunk of its prey to gobble down all by itself.
Fuyo popped, revealing herself to be her drizzling umbrella from up above while the Amegakure ninja soared down from up above, having found a safe spot to move in and strike at her opponent from. Fuyo didn't need to elaborate on why her assault was deadly and on-point, Temari's arms were down and heavy after having swung her three-moon fan and she couldn't do anything but take the diving punch to her left, still unbruised jaw.
Temari stumbled back, letting go of her fan as it skid across the floor. A wet tack against the dirt though it was unclear as to which girl it belonged to for both of them were bleeding a fair bit. Temari from her cracked and swelling lip and busted jaw and Fuyo from most of her sliced-up body. The wounds had accumulated, she couldn't deliver a good enough punch to put her opponent down in the opening she had found and she knew all too well what was to follow.
Temari skid across the floor in an attempt to pick up her weapon but Fuyo dived after her opponent like a mindless beast, her eyes closed as she tracked the battle purely through her sensory and swung her fists filled to the brim with determination and devotion to her village. A few solid hits connected to Temari's face and body but the Sunagakure girl poofed away, replacing herself with her fan while she charged back at the location she substituted herself from a whole different direction.
A back-elbow strike halted Temari's advances. Fuyo was too wounded to put too much effort into her strikes, they all felt like mere pillow swings but at the very least they kept the Sunagakure blonde away from her frightful weapon. Temari's hair let loose, falling over her shoulders down while she cursed and embraced the violence that the finishing touches of this battle required of her. A blow to the gut, a solid cross to the jaw, and a soaring knee strike to the chest drove all air out from Temari's lungs.
"Your entire fighting style, even your taijutsu relies on you having your fan. That is perhaps the most glaring weakness that makes you pose no threat to Lady Angel and my more faithful peers…" Fuyo panted, despite having a complete advantage in close-distance, her face showed no hope for her victory. At this point, she was just typing the words with her fists though the novel she was crafting would stay unfinished and the words she weaved carried little to no meaning though a lot of emotional weight to those reading it in the audience and the locker rooms.
Fuyo moved in with an elbow strike but Temari vaulted back, flipping over her back and throwing a handful of shuriken and kunai at her opponent, having found an opening for such an attack. Fuyo fell to one knee, coughing up blood. She could feel the dozens of shuriken and kunai that hit her dead-on though she felt like she'd have rather not opened her eyes and seen them.
"I've got one for you too, princess, if you keep your eyes closed and just sense what your opponent is doing – you'll miss something that has no chakra signature at all…" Temari walked up to her crippled opponent and knocked her out with a chop to the side of her neck. The Sunagakure kunoichi caught Fuyo falling by her hair, tossing her forward and letting her fall on her back so that all the ninja tool wounds gaping at her front didn't get aggravated by a frontal fall.
"I see… I too am not immune to weakness…" Fuyo managed to force out an ironic smirk while lying on her back. The staff rushed in and surrounded both girls though Temari managed to wrestle those that attempted to help her by rubbing cotton soaked with ointment at her busted face.
"You're unbelievable…" Temari mumbled while following her opponent sprawled out on the stretcher on her way to the infirmary. "Sure, you've got talent, you've shown it all, you might even get promoted. What happens when you meet someone tough like me out on the field? Are you fine with you dying like this just to get a few observations?"
"Promotion was never my goal. I've already fulfilled my purpose, the only time I am not contempt with dying is right now because I must still deliver the information I have gathered to Lady Angel," Fuyo replied with a stoic expression, staring at a single, unremarkable point in the sky while the staff carried her away.
"Information, about Gaara, you mean?" Temari wondered. She fostered some nasty thoughts in that blunt head of hers though once she analyzed them and realized that it wouldn't be her Gaara that this brat would be harming she decided against lashing out at her while staff surrounded them from both sides. She was more useful to Gaara as a chuunin by his side than a criminal that prevented harm to someone else entirely.
"Gaara? Look at all these people, these ninja gathered here. Yes. I've seen them all, all of them are information that I will deliver to Lady Angel. Despite her name, Lady Angel is not immortal. She is just one, very exalted woman. I cannot grant her immortality befitting an angel but I can at least give her omniscience. Knowledge of all ninja that have lived in the past, that live around her at the moment and those that would stand in her way in the future." Fuyo didn't flinch or wince away from her stoic façade. It was just a façade though.
Nobody dreaming of a perfect future was ever this gloomy and damp about it.