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Chapter 59 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: A Fight for Legends!
🕑 Added 2024-07-17 00:15:44 +0000 UTCSakura gets to have fun, and then Neji has to.
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Her heart races, a powerful and enticing mixture of feral rage and hormonal excitement coursing through her veins like she imagines flows through Amy when she looks at Sasuke. Except she’s not staring at a brooding boy with questionable fashion sense and a justification for that fashion sense in the form of a missing family. She should probably take a class on that sometime so she can help him out, two birds with one stone since she’ll learn too.
She’s staring down a monster, and her sword is itching to actually be used. Even ignoring the sheer malice radiating from his gaze, this man works for someone that’s raising the dead and plans to sick that dead on innocent civilians. There’s no saying they haven’t already with this village, it’s possible some of the seemingly dead village’s vibe wasn’t from the missing nin at all, but from the actual living dead walking around killing everybody. There’s no excuse. This man needs to die, everyone with him needs to die, his boss needs to die, and when she’s done with him she’ll be that much closer to stopping a tragedy.
And she’s going to have fun doing it. It’s been so long since she’s really let her sword run wild, that was back in Wave when it hadn’t even been called Thirsty yet, let alone Hunger. That was before that whole Tenten incident - mostly her forgetting about her sword in Tenten’s hands for like two weeks while Tenten neglected it - so she’s been meaning to show it some love. She has to give it separation, and she can’t let it be her only weapon, but there’s no reason she can’t use it to have fun. Especially when her left shoulder is killing her, and a lighter weapon would be, well, significantly preferable to picking the hammer back up.
She’s done justifying it now, time to do that part where she kills this guy. She’s already internally fist pumping.
He steps off the edge of the roof onto the roof proper, and she lunges forward before he’s even landed, her sword raised high to strike him down. He effortlessly sidesteps the slash meant to cut him in two from above, and counters with a flurry of kicks that send her reeling backwards. He’s not using the weapon at his side for her, which is a bad sign, but then if he’s going to underestimate her like that, blocking kicks with her sword and cutting up his shoes is the least she can do. It’s during one of those kicks that she charges her sword with some of her blood, and lets it loose, shooting towards him mid strike. It’s not good enough for a fully charged swipe, not enough time, and she doesn’t get a full slash off so it’s not like the technique is all there, but it’s enough to cut right through his footwear and splatter her with blood.
Unfortunately, the man moves just right, like he’s made of lightning, so the cut’s only a little more than skin deep and most of the splatter is from her own attack, but it does cause him to jump back and discard his shoes, knowing now that one of them is destroyed, wearing the other would be a liability to his balance. “So you do have a trick or two.” He chides her, like he’s talking to a child.
She rolls her eyes, ignoring the man’s attempt at banter, before charging in again to try and catch him off guard. It doesn’t work, but this time she is met with a clang of steel, the clash of blades echoing into the sky and alerting both their allies to where they are. This’ll have to end quickly, she doesn’t believe for a second that her allies are more helpful than his are, there’s just that many of them on his side and so few on hers. Even if her allies are stronger, they’re preoccupied, so she’ll need to finish this herself. Her attacks are deflected and redirected, and his are easily dodged by just going with the flow of her weapon’s whims and her own battle instincts. He’s too fast for her traits to take over, which means he’s too fast for her to just overwhelm with mechanics too, but that doesn’t mean he’s fast enough to get a good hit on her. She’s never put into perspective her skills before, and she’s always assumed that her offensive abilities are greater than her defensive, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She’s left wastefully attacking and making him waste just as much energy doing the same. Or, maybe it’s that her offense is strong enough that he’s not able to go fully on the attack, and therefore she doesn’t need as strong a defense.
Whatever the case, she steps back mid strike to throw him off balance, and readies a set of water shuriken in an instant. She only takes a fraction of a second to aim before throwing them at his face, only to find him tilting impossibly backwards, proving his spine is just better than hers. That doesn’t mean much though, when she uses the opportunity to close the distance between them. She brings her hands down, trying to bisect him from his top to his feet with all the force she has. Their blades meet again, but he’s tilted backwards towards the roof, and she’s standing upright. Slashing at his legs probably would have been better, but she can regret her decision making later. She’s too focused on the kill, she’ll need to fix that.
Even though he’s stronger than her, even though he’s clearly more skilled than her, physics gives her a distinct advantage, and she’s happy to have something she learned in school for a test actually come up. He can’t overpower her like this, which is why she’s happy to see him smash back first into the roof hard enough to crack it in all directions. “Guh-” She doesn’t let up. She kicks his sword to the side, and climbs on top of him, bashing him in the face with the hilt of her blade. It’s not elegant, but the time it would take to flip the sword around would be more than enough time for him to turn this around on her. One smash, two smash, she goes for a third and is caught off guard when he manages to tilt his head to the side just in time for her to miss and embed her weapon partially into the broken roof. It’s just enough time off guard for a right hook of his to slam into her chin and knock her off of him, her only grace is that she manages to hold onto her weapon despite the way her head spins. It seems he abandoned his sword for a moment for mobility, maybe she should have done the same. She’ll have to take note of that for the next time she’s on top of a guy and punching down..
Either way, she doesn’t intend to befall the same fate he did, she rolls to the side and is on her feet well before he’s on her, and his fluid and graceful movements only manage to push her back instead of taking her out of the fight. Her chin stings, but most of her current damage is from the fireball and her own attack from earlier, if she can just keep it that way she’ll win this eventually.
Is what she’d like to say, but being pushed back is a lot more of a problem on a tiny roof like this. She finds herself at the edge of the building quickly, and without good footing it's only a matter of time until the sword he took the time to retrieve - part of why she had time to get up - is going through her.
Fear grips her heart, but she refuses to back down. She doesn’t have time to take a deep breath to strengthen her resolve, she has to strike with all her might and pour all her rage into each blow. The clash of steel and the sparks that come from it are almost blinding, but they don’t send her backwards, she just has to hold her ground-
She finds her sword clattering to the ground below her, sent off the edge of the building by a blow that… took her hand? She can’t see it, it’s missing, it’s just an arm and then, blood. The moment of confusion is met with not a single sympathy from her opponent, who’s raised sword comes crashing down towards her unprotected face. She tries to fall back, to go off the roof with her weapon and evade the strike intended to end her, but he’s much too fast. She’s not dumb enough to close her eyes and accept death, but that doesn’t change anything with his sword entering into her cheek and working its way through her quicker than it has any right to. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t have the time, she just accepts that it’s going to keep going through her like she’s made of hot butter.
That is, before a blur of tan appears, and the man attacking her is sent flying across the roof like a tin can. The sword currently in her face goes flying off to the side too, allowing her to not die horrifically. Many would call this very lucky, she’s beginning to wonder if she has plot armor.
Already falling off the roof, all she can do is kick her foot out and attach herself to the side of the building using wall walking. Frantically, she scurries for her pack with her free hand, scrambling around while she hears a clash of bodies and blades up above. “Come on, come on…” It’s hard with her left hand, she’s not that trained with her left hand and it shows. It’s something she’ll have to work on when she’s done here. Pulling out a can of First-Aid spray, she uncaps the lid with the best dexterity she can manage, only narrowly not dropping the thing, and gets spraying.
Her face first, it closes up instantly. She gets a little in her eye, but it doesn’t sting, thankfully. It has a mint flavor, and an odd texture to it that makes her skin feel tingly. She tries her hand next. “Awww,” and watches as it stumps over instead of giving her the hand back. Maybe if the hand was attached? She’ll have to reopen the wound down there and try it.
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“She’s under my protection for the length of this mission, you’ll fight me, cretin.” Neji’s stance is solid, and his attention is focused on the man. It’s hard to do that when Sakura’s doing insane stuff in the background of his Byakugan’s vision, she’s currently sawing at herself and he doesn’t even want to know why, but he knows better than to get distracted when the opponent that took her out is on his feet and staring him down stoically, like none of this matters.
“Is this the best Konoha can do?” The man asks, looking relatively unharmed despite the fight with Sakura, and Neji’s own powerful kick. It would have been better to get into position and use the drop to get a tap or two on his spine, he could have taken him out in one attack and ended the battle. But then, he would have watched Sakura die to do it. He somehow doubts that her healing cures split in half and dead, and none of them are good enough medics to keep her stabilized for the five hours she’d need to rest if her power truly works that way.
No, he needed to sacrifice his advantage to save the cute but stupid genin they stuck on him with no consideration for his time, and now he’s staring down a powerful opponent. “Don’t compare me to her, let me show you what I can do.” Bravado aside, Neji can’t help but admit it.
Sakura’s scary and got her ass kicked.
This fight’s going to suck.
Comments
Christopher Cummins
It's the only rational option.
Dopplerdee
Sakura deciding to try again by curring her stump open is very her.
