Naruto : Wind of Catastrophe

I grin. "Hell yes." I push off the railing, bouncing on the balls of my feet in anticipation. Time to earn that spot in the finals.

Sasuke grunts. "Took them long enough."

...

The three of us look over at Hatake before heading down, and find him with his face in his book. After a second the combined weight of our glares prompt him to peek over the top at us. "Yes?"

"Any advice before we head down?" I ask. "Something inspirational, maybe?" Neji and Lee got to fight with their sensei as a spiritual ally, damn it. You better not shaft us, Hatake.

"Oh, right!" He smiles, reaching out and ruffling my hair. "Good luck."

"You suck, sensei."

We walk down the steps and into the middle of the arena, which I realize is even bigger on the inside than it looks from up top. It's almost as big as training ground seven, forest and all. Looks like we'll have some room to work with, at least. Once the Konoha proctor has confirmed we're the right team, the samurai picks another slip of paper from his box.

"Versus Team 6 of Kiri, consisting of Takagi Hiro, Jumonji Genjo, and Handa Haru."

I roll my eyes. "Of course." Five full teams in the whole task, and we get matched up against the last one. Why am I not surprised.

The two shinobi of the team don't bother with the stairs, choosing to vault over the railing straight into the arena. They land in heavy crouches in front of us, one of them flexing the clawed gauntlet encasing their right arm, while the other stretches.

"Thought they'd never get to our fight," The one without the gauntlet drawls, and the other shinobi nods in agreement.

"Too bad we only got a bunch of brats," he laments. "How much you want to bet that kid in the orange isn't even eleven?"

I scowl. "Twelve, thanks."

The one without the gauntlet snickers. "Must have had some partner to get you through the first task, rookie."

"Can't you two be serious for once in your lives?" The kunoichi of the teams asks, walking down the steps at a sedate pace. "Just until we're done with our fight. It's only going to take a couple minutes."

"Hiro and I will be serious when we've got some serious opponents to fight," The shinobi with the gauntlet retorts. The kunoichi sighs, walking up beside them and completing the team.

The kunoichi herself, Haru, is dressed in a pair of skin tight black pants and a loose gray-blue shirt with thick white gauze wrapped around her midriff. She stands half a head taller than Sasuke, sporting clear blue eyes and head of long black hair. The knuckles of both her hands are wrapped up in bandages. Hand to hand specialist, then.

The shinobi without the gauntlet, Hiro, is over a head taller than Sasuke. He's got short, wild black hair, and dark green eyes. He's wearing baggy gray and blue camo pants along with a plain gray shirt and a dark gray vest.

The last shinobi, Genjo, is a few inches shorter than Hiro, but almost twice as thick. He's wearing the standard Kiri getup: Black pants and shirt, and some weird light blue striped material underneath that pokes out at the edge of his pants and sleeves. The gauntlet on his right arm shines in the artificial light illuminating the arena, big and pointy and dangerous. Where Taro's earth gauntlets had looked like a regular pair of hands, to the point that he could still form hand seals with them, this thing has serrated blades jutting out overtop each of the bulky genin's fingers.

I'll bet all the ramen in my second ramen cupboard that every single one of those blades are coated with poison, and I'll bet my third cupboard that it's fatal. None of those other bits of metal jutting out from the gauntlet at random look too inviting, either.

"You guys know the Clone jutsu, yeah?" Hiro asks, the cockiness just oozing from the grin on his face. "Your Academy must have taught you that much."

Alright prick, you asked for it. I breathe in deep through my nose, starting a loop in my throat. Beside me Sasuke's eyes narrow, but before he can form a comeback the Konoha proctor touches down in the middle of us.

"You all remember the rules?" He rasps, and we nod. "Alright then." He coughs, somehow projecting his voice throughout the stadium. "The eleventh and final match of the third task, between Team 7 of Konoha and Team 6 of Kiri-" He raises a hand up, and I tense, hands itching to form the serpent seal.

"Begin!"

As soon as his arm drops I slap my hands together, sliding back to brace myself, and let the loop go.

Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!

The jutsu howls into existence a split second later, crossing the gap between us and them and throwing Genjo clear off his feet. The bulky Kiri nin sails through the air and hits the far wall hard, though not enough to crack it. He lands on his feet, unsteady but still mobile. Saved by the sheer size of the arena and the long distance between where he got hit and the wall.

The other two manage to avoid the windy sucker punch altogether, both of them having darted off to the side as soon as the match started. Damn.

The Great Breakthrough dies down, and I take in a few quick pants, looking around. The tall, lanky shinobi, Hiro, is running along the edge of the arena with Sasuke hot on his heels, tossing back some kunai every time he gets close. Every now and again he runs through hand seals and tosses a water jutsu back at my teammate, but it's always cancelled out by a superior fire jutsu.

On the other side of the arena Sakura is playing the role of Hiro, and the Kiri kunoichi is her Sasuke. Haru hurls kunai after shuriken after kunai at my pink-haired teammate, doing her best to herd her into a close encounter where she'll no doubt thrash the long distance specialist that Sakura clearly is. My teammate, for her part, is having none of it, trading throwing knife for throwing knife with the other girl and keeping a constant distance.

And as I get my breathing level again and start over to them, I see her drag a finger across the stone wall of the arena while dodging another attack, leaving a black ink mark that Haru runs right past. Another barrier seal, eh? Let's do it.

Haru sees me about halfway through the descent of my jump, and dives into a somersault away from my drop kick. The resulting shockwave of wind chakra, though, hits her hard enough to throw her off balance before she can get back to her feet and keep chasing Sakura. I buffet her with another quick pressure burst, just to be safe.

"Rude," The Kiri nin huffs, facing me and sliding back into a wide, steady Taijutsu stance. I look over her shoulder, seeing Genjo shake off the shock from my jutsu throwing him into the wall. He turns his sights on Sakura and I open my mouth to shout a warning, but then I catch a glimpse of Sasuke flying through the air towards him and I'm swallowed up by my own fight.

Haru rails ferociously against me with a series of lightning fast punches and kicks that I identify as the Strong Fist in zero seconds flat. She slips a roundhouse kick through my guard and into my right shoulder, sending my stumbling to the side. Not just fast. Strong, too.

I prance back, dodging where I can and redirecting with pressure bursts when I can't. I consider pulling a kunai out, but decide that she's moving way too fast for such a short blade. Maybe if I still had my tanto.

"You're not half bad for a rookie," she compliments me between blows. "But you won't last much longer if all you do is dodge and take hits. Better step up!" And to prove her point she lashes out with a punch, which I slide back to dodge, and then runs through hand seals. I curse and lunge back towards her, but the second it takes me is long enough for her to get her jutsu off.

"Earth Release: Rising Pillars!"

Like when the Suna kunoichi from the first task did it, the ground beneath her feet bursts as earthen pillars shoot up at me. Also like the time when the Suna kunoichi from the first task did it, they hit me dead on.

My ribs explodes into agony, a hasty pressure burst of wind the only thing saving me from having my chest flat out caved in, and I'm sent soaring through the air. I go up and up and up, the angle the pillar hit me at throwing me almost vertical. Then I slam into something cold and hard, once again dulling the blow with a combination of a pressure burst and a current of wind blowing in the opposite direction to slow my flight, and bounce off the railing back down into the arena.

I see Haru racing over to meet me in my descent, and twist around, throwing a hand out and shoving chakra through it. A small gale erupts from my palm and sends me spinning up and away, buffeting her and forcing her to brace herself rather than pursue. I land in a crouch a ways off from her, wincing at the resulting prickle of pain in my leg. Looks like the day of sleep still didn't quite heal my stab up. Joy.

...

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