Sparring? (P, NK)

Masaru had to admit, he was a bit surprised by the fact that she aimed at his landing point, and not at him while in the air. But then again, he had acted as if his puppet was a shield, and he could indeed use it as such, and he had planned to use it to block an attack if he was targeted in the air. Ayumi had probably guessed that much, so Masaru had to give her that the logical course of action would be to target his landing point. He also had to give her that that fist looked rather scary, and he would prefer not getting hit by it, if he could help it. He did not think that it would be a wise thing to use his puppet to block it either, as he did not know his powerful that technique was, and he might just as well give up if his puppet was destroyed.

However, he was still airborne and on his way to landing at the place where the fist was rushing towards, so he had to do something, and rather fast. He could not use the Substitution Technique while airborne, and he would prefer to keep his puppet a secret a little longer. Besides, he could not see how revealing the fact that he was a puppeteer would help him right now. On the other hand, he could actually use his puppet to get away from this. As he realized that, Masaru brought his still bandaged puppet down under his feet, as if it was a surfboard of some kind. That was actually an interesting thought, but not one for now. Nevertheless, he had not intended it to use it as a surfboard, but merely as a way to change his path in the air. As such, he landed a few meters away from where he would originally have landed, although the cost of this was his still bandaged puppet being sent flying away from Masaru.

The result of this was that Masaru landed about 8 meters from Ayumi, with the puppet forming some kind of triangle with the two of them, as it lay 7 meters from Masaru, and around 6 meters from Ayumi. And now it was time for a little… misdirection. Masaru looked over at the puppet, whose bandages had not taken damage from the fall, and made a face as if he was horrified by the prospect of being separated from whatever was inside the bandages. He threw a kunai, not at Ayumi, but rather to where she would have to run to if she wanted to get to the thing, as if he wanted to prevent her from getting there. After he had thrown it, he took another kunai in his hand, and began running towards the puppet. If he recalled correctly, and he was pretty sure that he did, then Ayumi was faster than him, so she would reach the puppet first, should she decide to go after it.

WC: 2311 (+502)

Ayumi was confident he would get hit by the water fist when Masaru did his mid-air trick with.. the bandaged thing again. But this time, he got seperated from it in the end and had a terrified look in his face. Ayumi's first instinct was to go after the shield but seeing him so frightened, she thought he might not expect a surprise here. She ran towards the middle of them, Masaru and his secret, the kunai he threw also indicated how he didn't want her to get close to that shield desperately. She decided to fool him by increasing her speed and creating an afterimage{jutsu} to his eyes. This way she could get a little close to the shield but then move quickly towards her, creating an afterimage that still looked to be running towards the shield.

After this, Ayumi would find herself in front of him and would attempt a punch to the abdomen followed by a knee to his chin to knock him down. Then she would press him to the ground and bring her kunai to his neck. If any of this were to fail, Ayumi would jump 10 meters back and throw 2 kunai to his knees in mid-air, she would land on the surface of the river. Lastly she would take her usual stance to wait for what he would do.

WC:1478

Masaru had been watching the afterimage, which he thought to be Ayumi herself, intently, as if he was preparing for something. However, that was cut short when the real Ayumi suddenly appeared in front of him, hitting him in the abdomen. With wide open eyes, he looked at her, shocked, briefly, before bending a bit forwards and holding his arms over his torso in reflex. Where had she come from?! Well, he would not figure that out right now, but he would definably be on the watch the rest of the fight. However, for now he had more pressing matters on his mind, such as the fact that she was about to hit him on the chin with her knee. As he was still a bit stunned due to the punch to the abdomen, he would not be able to block the attack with his arms. This was going to hurt.

However, he could not just stand silently and receive the kick. As he saw no real way to take advantage of the kick at the moment, he chose to take the hit, while quickly gathering some chakra in his feet, and making the chakra overflow a bit, in order to send him a bit into the air. Well, his gambit did not work, and he had to move onto something else now. With that in mind, he quickly made some chakra threads, and attached them to his puppet, which now sprung forth in all its glory from the bandages. It was wearing a white cloak which was rather similar to that Masaru himself wore, although it did covered neither its lower arms nor the gauntlets that the puppet had on its hands.

While Masaru was not able to make the puppet fight while in motion, he currently had no need to do just that. He just needed to bring the puppet close to the two of them. Masaru would land roughly 2 meters from where he had been hit by Ayumi’s knee. However, while he was in the air, the puppet would be closing the distance between itself and Ayumi, and when Masaru landed, he would have the puppet begin its offensive against Ayumi, hopefully giving him a bit of relief.

WC: 2683 (+372)

As Ayumi hit Masaru on the chin with her knee, she saw chakra threads coming out of his finger. So, this was his secret it was a puppet and god knew how close it was when Ayumi realized the chakra threads. Masaru just landed on the ground and would probably not be able to attack her and use the puppet effectively. She turned around to see a human-like puppet with "pawn" written on its chest and forehead. It was much taller, maybe 1 ft taller than Ayumi and was coming towards her.

She had two options, either to go for Masaru, especially his hands or arms to disable him from using the puppet, or destroying the puppet first and handling the puppeteer afterwards. She didn't have much time to handle Masaru right now and disabling him by cutting his hands or arms now would probably mean disabling him for a long time, Ayumi didn't want that to happen in a spar so she chose to fight against this "Pawn" for now.

Ayumi rolled to her right and then jumped further away from the puppet, if the distance were long enough for him not to interfere, she would now use Kirigakure no Jutsu, which should prove useful against a puppeteer, he would have to keep it near him at all times if he wants to actually see the puppet.

WC:1706

What, really? Masaru was slightly annoyed when he recognized the hand seals for the Mist Technique. This was what he had spent quite some time to try to make her do, and now she just did it when he revealed himself as a puppeteer? Well, it was the right counter to it, as he could not control his puppet well if he could not see it. He let her cast the technique, and brought his puppet close to him once more, smiling slightly. “Looks like I will not be able to use my puppet for very much right now.” He remarked, and pulled the hood from his cloak up over his head, as the mist began to thicken, making sure that Ayumi would see it.

After he had done that, he did the same thing for his puppet, which meant that they would be all but identical from a distance, or in situations of poor visibility. When he had done that, he wrapped himself in the bandages, and made the puppet hold him up, as if it was the puppeteer, and Masaru was the puppet. Masaru did, however, make sure that he had a bit of vision of his puppet and what was a bit around it. Meanwhile, he made the puppet move a bit towards the forest, but not into it. He wanted to see if he could bait Ayumi into a melee with his puppet, which was at the moment posing as Masaru himself.

WC: 2929 (+246)

Ayumi created a water clone and sent her to look around the area. She sat down to meditate and wait until her clone found Masaru or she heard a noise. The last "big fist" drained considerable chakra from her so resting would be a good idea for now. She started thinking about what Masaru can do for countering her jutsu.

He had to either keep his puppet close or bring it into the combat from far away, somewhere Ayumi can't see, when Ayumi engaged. She had to be careful if the puppet was not around, she couldn't see through the mist either. She also didn't know how strong he was using the puppet. Maybe he wasn't very skilled yet and she could actually take the puppet on in hand to hand combat. Ayumi then cleared her mind off any thoughts and focused herself to meditation with her eyes closed.

WC:1855

So far, Masaru had seen no traces of neither Ayumi, nor any techniques of her beside the Mist Technique. However, the mist would either eventually disappear or tear on her chakra reserves, so right now Masaru could afford to merely await her next move. However, merely waiting might mean that Ayumi would have some time to rest or to prepare a powerful technique, neither of which Masaru particularly desired. For that reason, he had his puppet run around, trying to find Ayumi.

However, the important thing was how he should look for her. Masaru had eventually settled on making his puppet move over to where he had last seen her, where she had performed the Mist Technique, and then making larger and larger circles. If it found Ayumi, the puppet would begin trying to hit her with the claws on its gauntlets, still with Masaru on its back, controlling the puppet and potentially guiding its blows against her.

WC: 3087 (+158)

Ayumi heard some noise coming, someone or something was coming towards her. She stood up and saw Masaru coming towards him, with his puppet bandaged on his back. But.. why did he put it back there, she already knew his secret now, he had no good reason to bandage it, put it back up there and get it down in combat again. Well, it was wise to get her clone back to the field, which had searched the wrong way.

She lowered the mist's density in front of her to realize it was actually the puppet and not Masaru, that meant.. Masaru was in the bandage? The puppet suddenly charged towards her to attack as she performed Kawarimi, a poof went off but Ayumi was still there afterwards. Actually, she performed it to swap her places with the water clone 5 meters behind herself. She would now test the puppet by fighting it with her clone. Her clone had half the attributes of Ayumi, so it would probably not stand a chance but it could be useful to see what the puppet is capable of. During her clone's fight Ayumi would circle behind him before the mist finally cleared up.

WC:2055

Masaru recognized the hand seals for the Substitution Technique, but... nothing seemed to happen. He even saw the poof which was normally a sign of the technique, but Ayumi did nevertheless not seem to change. He was sure that he had seen her perform the technique which would have to mean… Ah, of course. She had swapped herself with a clone. Wise move, as it got her away from the puppet. Well, he would have to get rid of the clone sooner or later, so he might as well try to get rid of it now. However, he still had to figure out if she had recognized that Masaru had swapped himself with a puppet.

Well, she had seen the puppet before Masaru had started this gambit, although it had not been a very clear sight, but he thought that it would be best to assume that she had seen the puppet’s metal gauntlets. These had also been visible to her just before she performed the substitution technique, as she had lowered the density of some of the mist, which had increased visibility a bit. She would most likely have recognized the metal gauntlets that the puppet was using, so she would most likely guess that it was really the puppet visible, and Masaru bandaged on its back.

As she had most likely seen through his gambit, he decided to drop it, as both his movement and visibility was rather limited while in that state. Well, he would most likely have a little time before Ayumi showed up, so he began making his puppet fight the clone Ayumi had left behind. He was, however, aware of the fast that he did not have his true opponent in sight. For that reason, he turned his head and glanced back as often as the fighting would allow, although his puppetry required most of his concentration.

WC: 3400 (+313)

Ayumi's clone gave a good fight against the puppet until "pawn" delivered a big hit to her stomach, making it disappear. Ayumi in the meantime was rested and ran behind her from a long range as she casted her B-rank jutsu. It took her 22 seals but it was ready by the time she got behind him, he did look to his back all the time but Ayumi's circle was big, 20 meters away from him so he wouldn't see until she showed herself.

When her clone vanished saying "It's over.", she yelled from behind with their vision clear now. "Suiton: Suiryuudan no Jutsu!", water extracted from the ground shaped a huge dragon head with red eyes and charged into Masaru with incredible speed. If he were to somehow block or dodge this, Ayumi would have little to no chakra left for rest of the fight, but she was confident this jutsu would finish the spar. She eagerly watched to see what Masaru would do as she sat down after using a lot of chakra.

WC:2228