Naruto : Wind of Catastrophe

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.

...

I take hold of another strand of chakra, taking a quick glance around to see how my teammates are doing. Sasuke is locked in furious combat with Genjo, avoiding the larger genin's attacks with ease using his Sharingan and the regular old skill in Taijutsu he's been building against me for years.

Sakura is trading long range attacks with Hiro, the two of them on opposite ends of the arena. The Kiri nin hurls kunai and water bullets, and Sakura replies in kind with shuriken and kunai of her own. She's not using any exploding tags, though. Did she run out in the first task?

"Earth Release: Rising Pillars!" Haru calls again, and I curse, rolling out of the way. I manage to avoid the earthen pillars this time as they crash up through the ground, but only just. I'm really starting to hate that jutsu.

The Kiri kunoichi appears in front of me, getting up in my face with a wide haymaker. I duck under it, blocking with crossed forearms when she tries to knee me in the face, and then spin around. I throw a roundhouse at her that she knocks aside with contemptuous ease, and throw up a hasty block against that jab she throws at my solar plexus.

"Better," she says, smirking and pushing against my raised forearm. "Now all you have to do is hit me."

I nod. "Alright." I jerk my arm to the side, breaking the stalemate, and slap my hands into the serpent seal. I twist, lashing out with my right leg, and she hisses in alarm and tries to jump back. Not quite fast enough.

Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!

The loop of chakra at the tip of my foot lets loose, and the resulting breakthrough clips the kunoichi in her left shoulder and sends her bouncing across the stone floor. I let my leg drop once it's done, shaking it out and giving myself a mental pat on the back for making sure the leg I braced myself with was my good one this time.

I hear Hiro call out another water jutsu, much closer than last time, and spin around. He's about a dozen yards away from me, focused on my teammate on the other side of the arena. He spews a round of water bullets that rocket across the length of the arena in the blink of an eye, and I watch Sakura break off from making another one of those marks on the wall in order to dodge it.

Looks like it's time for a distraction.

To start, to gain his attention, I launch the remaining contents of my weapons pouch at the smug shinobi in a chaotic spray of razor sharp metal. He manages to juke out of the way of most of it, though a few graze him and one kunai lodges itself in his shoulder. The important part is that it forces him to cut off his jutsu. That's all I'm looking for.

He's tearing the kunai out of his shoulder when I appear in front of him, and there's no dodging the fist I slam into his face. He grunts in pain, clutching his nose with one hand and throwing my dislodged kunai back at me. I send it skittering away with a small burst of chakra and keep on throwing punches.

The key to the Dancing Fist is avoiding your opponent. Hatake has nailed that much into my head since he started teaching it to me. You need to be ready and willing to spend the entire fight not doing any attacking. Watching and waiting is the purpose of this fruity fighting style, and patience is key.

But once you do find that opening, it is your civil right to beat that motherfucker into the ground as fast as humanly possible.

Hiro gives more and more ground and takes more and more hits as I step into my rhythm, flowing from jabs to leg sweeps to roundhouses in one continuous motion. It isn't often that I get to put my kata to use, and even more unusual to do it outside of a training ground, but I've got the element of surprise on my side, along with the fact that my opponent is total garbage at hand to hand.

I hit him with a heavy haymaker that blows his block open wide, and knock him to the ground with a two-handed pressure burst. I glance around, searching for Haru, and find her on the defensive while Sasuke rains fire down upon her. I look past them, to the left, and see Sakura in retreat again, struggling to keep Genjo at a distance.

"Damn it, Sasuke," I growl, gathering chakra beneath my feet to make the jump between me and Sakura.

But before I can, my pink-haired teammate suddenly spins around mid-jump and tosses a kunai with a fluttering slip of paper attached to the ring at her pursuer. Genjo skids to a stop as soon as he sees the tag and crosses his arms over his chest, gauntlet facing out, and ducks his head.

The explosive note detonates, sending a shockwave across the arena strong enough to whip at my jacket, and a ball of fire obscures my vision of the hulking genin. It takes a second to clear, during which time Hiro performs a Body Replacement with a kunai several yards away from me, to my consternation.

Then the explosion settles, revealing Genjo, clothes seared and gauntlet shining red with heat, but otherwise fine. He didn't even get knocked over. What the hell.

Sakura doesn't seem to share my surprise. She doesn't even stop running. In fact, she leaps up and starts running on the wall itself, until she reaches a point just beneath where the Konoha proctor is crouched and slaps a hand on it.

Lines of shining blue light dance away from her hands, down the wall and across the floor and up the wall again, until her opponent is surrounded by them. And then a vibrant green dome pulses into existence, trapping him between the barrier and the stone wall of the arena.

Genjo regards the pulsating green barrier warily for a moment, then takes a step forward and slams his gauntlet into it. The sound of a gong being rung echoes from the barrier and the Kiri shinobi is sent stumbling back.

He scowls. "What the hell-"

He doesn't get any further, as the explosive notes scattered all around him choose that moment to light up and activate.

A series of deafening gongs fill the arena as the explosive notes go off one after another and the barrier repels every single one. Each gong is accompanied by a loud crack that's reflected in the cracks opening up along the barrier, and when the final tag goes off the barrier gives with one last, faint gong.

This time, when the smoke settles, Genjo isn't standing up.

"Son of a bitch!" Hiro curses, setting enraged sights on Sakura and running through hand seals. Oh no you don't!

I cover the distance he made between us with his Body Replacement in three quick hops and hit him with a full body tackle, sending both of us to the ground in a tangled heap. He snarls and kicks me in the stomach, hard. The kick throws me off him and knocks the wind straight out of me, and I hastily pull at the chakra in my core and send it up to my throat. The light, tingling energy knocks the wind back into me, and I sigh in relief.

I scramble to my feet, but instead of preparing another string of hand seals to hit me or Sakura with, the Kiri shinobi is holding a length of shinobi wire in his hand. He whips it around, but not at me or either of my teammates. Instead, he hits the various kunai lodged in the wall or sticking out of the floor.

The kunai, which just so happen to each have a small chime hanging from their rings.

I realize what's about to happen an instant before the sound of breathy chimes fill the air, and ice cold pressure digs into my ears.

"You need to get the fuck out of my face, rookie."

I send chakra racing through my ears and eject the Genjutsu. Then I whip around, towards where my teammates are fighting, just in time to see Sasuke get nailed by a roundhouse kick from Haru. Damn it, whatever that Genjutsu was must have thrown him off balance until his Sharingan could dispel it. Which means-

"Earth Release: Rising Pillar Entrapment!" Haru calls, turning to my pink-haired teammate as soon as she knocks Sasuke back. The earthen pillars tear out of the ground once more, but this time instead of just ramming into my teammate they wrap around her arms and legs, rooting her to the ground ever more than the Genjutsu was doing.

"Sakura!"

I blow past Hiro, all thoughts of retaliation gone from my mind at the sight of the Kiri kunoichi's jutsu, and race across the arena towards my teammate.

I hear the older shinobi laugh from behind me. "Too late! Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet!"

I clench my teeth, throwing more wind at my back and lunging forward. Haru doesn't even try to get in my way, instead moving to engage Sasuke again. I hit Sakura with my second tackle of the fight, tearing her out of the jutsu and throwing both of us to the floor. Her head hits the floor hard, and her half-lidded eyes fly open.

"Wha- Naruto?" She asks in confusion.

"Don't move."

Her eyes slide away from mine, looking at something over my shoulder, and the roar of rushing water hits my ears. I clasp my hands together over her head, leaning on my elbows and knees overtop of her. I have maybe four seconds to start and finish another loop before the jutsu hits us, and I've never done it faster than ten.

The wind coalesces over us in a spiral of chakra larger than any loop I've ever spun before, larger enough to cover my entire back. I clench my eyes shut and reach out to it, take hold of it, and will it.

Spin.

And somehow, it does.

The shadow of the water dragon falls over us, its roar deafening, and I open my eyes. "Wind Release," I whisper. "Great Breakthrough."

The dragon's snapping maw and my raging gale meet mere feet above us, and the thunderous boom that follows almost knocks me right off Sakura. Water hits us in a heavy shower, but the ferocity of the dragon itself isn't there. My breakthrough tears the dragon apart drop by drop, ripping the construct itself apart until all that's left to hit us is a harmless mass of water.

For a moment after my jutsu disperses the arena is silent. Sakura looks up at me in surprise, and I look down at her in relief. Then the moment is broken by the sound of bones breaking, and Haru cries out in pain.

I jump up off of Sakura and see Sasuke holding both of her arms behind her back, one leg planted against her back. He gives one last yank before dropping her, the sound of her bones breaking clashing with her choked scream.

Sasuke turns furious Sharingan eyes on Hiro, twin tomoe in each of them spinning so fast they look like solid black circles surrounding his pupils. "Naruto," he says, voice low. "Help me out." He brings his hands together. Horse, snake, ram, monkey, boar, horse, and tiger. "Fire Release: Great Fireball."

Red hot fire shoots out of his mouth in a stream that resembles a river more than it does a ball, racing across the arena towards the last Kiri nin standing. He quickly runs through another chain of hand seals, jumping back until he's pressed against the wall.

He shoots off more of those water bullets, and when the constructs hit Sasuke's river of fire, despite the difference in size, the two jutsu cancel each other out in a cloud of steam. Sasuke doesn't stop his jutsu, though. He keeps spitting more and more fire, and Hiro responds in kind. But despite the absurd volume of fire being breathed, the Kiri nin's water bullets are starting to win.

I step up next to my teammate and form the serpent seal one last time.

The loop shoots up my throat and out my mouth, and my Great Breakthrough barrels headlong into Sasuke's jutsu. That's when the elemental advantage fire has over wind comes into effect.

Sasuke's jutsu doubles in size in an instant, and then as the brunt of my jutsu continues feeding into the sea of fire it triples, becoming a gale of fire bigger than a grand elemental dragon. Hiro fires a dozen desperate water bullets in rapid succession, but they're all consumed. The joint jutsu bears down on him, and he disappears in a cloud of smoke, a kunai appearing in his place. The jutsu hits and the kunai is swallowed up by the heat, and I break off my jutsu and dash over to where he's reappeared.

The Kiri nin tries to run away, but several well placed kunai tagged with explosive notes force him back against the wall. He tries to fire off another bullet of water at me, but Sakura ends that train of thought once and for all with one final kunai that impales his right hand up to the hilt. He shouts in pain and anger and jerks forward.

I leap, grab his head in midair, and slam it back against the wall.

He crumples to the ground, dead to the world, and I whoop.

"Who's the rookie now, bitch?!"

...

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