Warmonger Exam Finals[Noboru vs Aroma vs Ikari]

Once the three seals of confrontation were formed, a pact had been made among the three ninja within the arena’s walls that from that moment on they would be ready to fight each other until a victor emerged from whatever was left laying on these hallowed grounds. A light breeze whispered through the beaten dirt as if confirming the willingness of the participants to engage, and not a moment after, the boy Kaito did not know sprung into action; Kaito’s Sharingan acted weirdly, for he was not entirely used it observing high paced motion yet, but the signs were clean: both the motions that took place and the handseals came clearly into the fold of Kaito’s sight. Kaito’s hands slid behind his back and into his weapon pouches, where he began to feel for his paper explosive tags and sticking them carefully to his shuriken with the adhesive backside, when a thick mist enveloped the lass that fought his deranged pupil. This caught him slightly by surprise as he had not seen her weave any handseals; he wasn’t sure either of these kids would’ve been mature enough to have mastered any jutsu in their arsenal, but he was clearly wrong. That’s when a forest sprouted from the ground when the young lad reached the middle of the arena: it travelled 25 meters, and Kaito bent his knees slightly should the need arise to retreat, but it never came, for the forest stopped sprouting 15 meters away from him. Though Kaito could not see it yet, Ikari would’ve tried to create a pathway through the middle of the forest, but would’ve been limited to manipulating the trees within a 5 meter radius, thus preventing him from making a pathway to the middle and effectively trapping himself in a forest of his own creation.

So thick was this forest that Kaito could not peer through it, and though the intention of the user was to keep tabs on Kaito and Aroma the forest had been admittedly created thick with trees ranging from one meter to five meters in diameter, and strategically placed so as to prevent dead sprints, meaning visibility into the middle of it was barred. As a great general had said in the past, “never interrupt an enemy while they are in the process of making mistakes”, and Kaito was not one to despise ancient wisdom. Instead, he activated his byakugan, small veins puffing up by the side of his temple as the byakugan started peering through the eyepatch and through both mist and forest to accompany the motions of his enemies, both of which had deprived themselves of seeing Kaito fully by virtue of their choices. Not that they’d have been able to notice the veins at this distance, but now the lad was completely blind and the lass could only see him as one big infrared mass.

It was time to make them pay dearly for their mistakes.

Immediately Kaito hurled a smoke bomb into the midst of the forest, circling it through the air. Because of the limitations imposed by the seal applied to him during this chunnin exam, he wouldn’t be able to throw it further than 40m, and as it circled through the air to make up for the forest whose height was not specified and thus just tall enough that Kaito would’ve been able to throw objects over it, it would fly 35 meters against the sun almost imperceptibly at a speed of 80 and land just close enough that a bubble of smoke 10 meters in diameter would cover Ikari and his clones: however, just as the smoke bomb was sent into the sky, it was followed by a barrage of shuriken wrapped in explosive tags; well, maybe not a barrage, there were four shuriken with a singular explosive tag into which Kaito had seeped his chakra so as to be able to detonate it. As the shuriken landed in a neat arc they would’ve created 4 explosions, one at a time, barred from sight from Ikari due to the current smoke bomb obfuscating his sight, but with 55 explosive power, not quite powerful enough to break the forest but close enough that it might scare some sense into Ikari.

As the last of the shuriken was thrown, and while Kaito carefully detonated each of the tags, he turned his attention to the lass in the mist, pulling his fist back as it gathered chakra and punching it towards her. Because she enclosed herself in a mist, and her eye perceived only body heat, it was unlikely she would be able to discern the motio, but that wouldn’t matter: what fear is there in a man punching the air? But because her eyes didn’t see Chakra, they wouldn’t have been able to perceive optically the Taijutsu Puncture Kaito had thrown in her direction, aiming at breaking her knee  and collapsing her to the floor. Pulling his hand back as the sphere travelled at a speed of 30, Kaito put his hands back together, preparing and energizing his body for a body flicker, which he would deploy at the next sign of trouble or opportunity.

CRACK.

The sickening sound of a bone breaking could be heard this far in the arena, and with it a yelp of pain. “Pause!” Having already formed the necessary handseal for a body flicker, Kaito’s energized body was able to move linearly towards the position of Aroma, thanks to the Byakugan which could easily pierce both mist and forest. When the Senju started mobilizing his clones, Kaito flickered next to the girl, and with precision applied a backhanded throat chop: the quick pressure on the nerve would overstimulate the senses, causing her to lose her senses and hopefully not experience the pain coming from the bone that protruded from her skin. His Sharingan observed the girl while the Byakugan kept tabs on the wooden threat: any movement he didn’t approve of would be met with interruption of action and appropriate reaction.

He lifted the girl up carefully, as best as he could given the situation, and made a quick run to the gate from where she had come from. All the while, his attention was focused on the boy in the woods: at the smallest indication of trouble, he would have no issue dropping the girl where they stood to preserve his own life or his participation in the contest. Closing in on the gate, he gently set her down, yelling “She needs medical attention, ASAP!”

He would turn around, drawing two kunai from his weapon pouches, and set on a jog, slowly at first but picking up speed until it was as fast as he could go, circling the arena by keeping close to the outer wall, and slowly inching himself closer to the center, both eyes now tracking any motion they could. If up until now no action had taken place out of the boy in the woods, Kaito would stop just about where he had begun, and call out to him. “Thank you for not interfering. I wouldn’t want someone getting permanent damage from this little charade. Let’s keep going.”

But then… he did nothing to resume. He stared down at the forest, his attention on the clone closest to him, but also on the original in the center, and the clone which had been close to Aroma. And yet, his body was set on relaxed violence, ready to act at the drop of a hat, waiting for the boy to stop hiding under the skirt of the forest he had created. All this, of course, considering he wouldn’t be interrupted, or else the timeline would be entirely different.

wc: 422

AP and stuff: