From there it was only a brief detour to the academy to hear that Joseibi had gone on to the Inuzuka compound for help in dealing with her cursed form before they were heading back up to the training grounds.
Kurenai was leading her own team down from the training grounds when they saw Ryoko and Naruto heading back up.
"This time, I'm winning for sure, Ryoko-chan," Naruto declared proudly.
"M..maybe, Uzumaki-san," the younger girl responded.
"Ryoko-chan," Hinata called out, moving forward a bit and looking from Ryoko towards Naruto and back again, eyes still flickering to Naruto fairly regularly. "Did Naruto-kun challenge you again?"
"That's right, Hinata-chan," Naruto said. "I have a new technique that will definitely give me the edge this time."
Hinata looked back toward Kurenai, who was watching the interchange, and her new student's blush, with interest.
"Is it all right to watch their match, Sensei?" she asked quietly.
"I think that'll be a good idea, actually," Kurenai said. "Would you mind if we all watch?"
Ryoko bit her lip and looked toward Naruto and the other ninjas.
"Why not?" Naruto said.
"Are you serious?" Kiba demanded. "What do we get out of watching a wimp like Naruto get beat up by a little kid with a toy sword?"
"Ano?" Ryoko said, looking to her sword.
"I'll bet I…" Kiba started to say.
"Whoa!" Naruto said. "Before you finish that, I've already got a match here."
"What was I about to say?" Kiba asked, confused.
"Well, Naruto is fine with it," Kurenai said. "Ryoko?"
"I…I am fine with h..having witnesses, Yuhi-sama," Ryoko said.
Shino sighed quietly, agreeing with Kiba though he wasn't going to voice his comments in the same way. Watching this fight felt a lot like it would be a waste of time. Still, it would be good to see what his other comrades were capable of.
"Then let's go," Kurenai said with a slight smile.
Naruto and Ryoko were soon staring across from each other across one of the training fields as two bored genin, a very intent young kunoichi and a curious jonin watched on.
Kiba shook his head as he looked at Ryoko, holding her bokken like an umbrella and standing like a nervous hostess to some posh party or another. Naruto, meanwhile, was standing across from her, arms crossed and that normal insufferable grin on his face.
On the other hand, watching Naruto get beat up by a girl one year younger than the rest of them, that would be a golden opportunity. Sitting somewhat closer to the fight, he watched Hinata quietly trigger her byakugan to watch the coming fight.
"Ready, Ryoko-chan?" Naruto asked.
"H..hai, Uzumaki-san," Ryoko said, bowing.
"Then let's get started!" the smirking blonde declared. "Multi-Kage Bunshin!"
Kiba and Shino's interest turned somewhat higher as several more Narutos joined the field. Even more, it was quickly apparent that all of the clones had actual physical substance.
"The hell? They're real?" Kiba said, standing up as the small horde of identical genin charged for Ryoko, standing there as if frozen in shock.
Kurenai reached a hand up to stop Kiba from moving forward.
"But she's gonna get creamed," he said.
"Pay attention," Kurenai said.
Kiba was about to protest when a bark from Akamaru caught his attention.
"What, she's petrified, she's so scared," he said before testing the air himself and, catching Ryoko's scent was surprised to find no trace of the fear-indicative body chemicals that normally permeated the girl's smell.
In fact, he thought he smelled endorphins.
Naruto's first clone came in with a clear leaping kick that left him wide open. Ryoko flinched aside with a startled shriek that Kiba now suspected was not so honest as normal. In the same moment, her flailing bokken snapped that clone in the back of the head, sending it dispersing into a puff of smoke.
Ryoko followed through that strike to "accidentally" smack another clone, which had an amusedly shocked expression moments before bursting into smoke. The third clone dodged as stumbled toward it, her bokken slashing inches away from the clone's nervous glance.
The black-haired martial artist furrowed her brow in confusion as she leaped away as the bulk of the attack reached her position. They followed her into the air, which was just as well.
Her leap coming to a peak, she started to drift back down to earth as one of the Naruto's reached her and kicked out. Ryoko's hand intercepted the kick, and in a moment she'd transferred both the dying momentum from that clone's leap and the force from its kick to impart another burst of aerial motion for her as the clone flopped toward the earth, lacking any inertia aside from gravity.
That clone burst into smoke as she used the stolen momentum to continue her leap further away from the opening into the trees which would split her opponent up into smaller groups.
Kurenai and the rest of Team 8 moved around, closer to the trees to try to keep track of the fight.
It wasn't long before the first group of clones found Ryoko behind a tree. She leaped only short moments before her position was covered in Narutos. She held off on squealing or asking for an apology, Naruto hadn't recently shown much response to constant use of the Haoto no Suzumebachi.
She'd started to use it sparingly against him.
In any case, the small group of Narutos already near her, followed her up into the air. Soon thereafter they were slamming into trunks around her as she through herself into the upper branches of the trees before anymore of Naruto's bodies could reach the sound of the fight.
When the leaves around her started exploding in Narutos before she saw even one at the scene of the fight below her, she let herself drop from her perch instead of counterattack. Giving herself time to figure out how Naruto had found her so quickly.
The first three clones that landed with her were dispersed as she pulled her bokken to her back and out of her way. The next wave forced her to focus entirely on the defensive as they pushed her back. As the flows of chi swirled about her, she could tell they were driving her into a trap of some sort.
Naruto smirked as the rest of the clones circled around behind Ryoko as he and the majority of his remaining clones pushed her backwards. Simply swarming Mizuki had been plenty, but it hadn't worked against Kakashi at all. Since he'd shown Ryoko the technique at the test this morning, he knew she'd have been ready for it.
It was just like when he would get chased around for one of his pranks. Eventually, they always got him somewhere he couldn't evade them.
Then Ryoko tripped ahead of him, falling backward, arms flailing forward. Naruto and the clones right in the path to overrun and trample Ryoko tried to halt their advance. Balance destroyed by the attempted halt, none of them were prepared when Ryoko's fall flowed seamlessly into a roll as her feet lashed outward, catching one of the Narutos solidly in the chest and flipping him over her.
That left Ryoko to come to her feet in the midst of several Narutos suffering a much less controlled loss of balance. The girl's bokken flashed one direction as she kicked in the other. Two clones dispersed as the Naruto she'd carried over her started to stand up and shake his head.
The Saotome moved forward to try to take out the main body, hoping it would disperse the remaining clones. She found herself intercepted by the small group of clones that Naruto had been trying to flank her with.
She quickly forced the direction of her chi downward into the earth and let it rebound against the force of the chi rising from the Earth. Rocketing upwards, she caught hold of one of the nearest tree to swing herself around and away from the fight.
Two of the remaining eight Narutos followed her, remembering what past attempts to engage the Saotome in the air had resulted in, but unwilling to lose her. The first of the scouts landed on a tree branch near the point Ryoko had twisted around the branch and followed headfirst into a bokken and dispersing.
The next tried to disarm her of her weapon, but made a slight error that left him focused too long on the attempt and open to a snap kick to the back of the head.
Ryoko leaped away, leaving the trees and back into clear view of the spectators, landing amidst a small ring of boulders that she could use to continue and split Naruto's advantage of numbers up.
The first clone ducked under her sword and performed a successful disarm, pointedly correcting the error that the earlier clone had made. An error that none of the current clones could have been present to see. Just like her hiding position was revealed without almost any trouble.
A suspicion was starting to form in the girl's mind and she started to test it.
Shino narrowed his eyes as he watched Ryoko slip into what were closer to rigid katas than fighting moves.
It opened her up in several places, and he wondered why she'd make such a decision after showing that she obviously knew how to fight. A Naruto, Shino couldn't tell if it was a clone or not, landed a blow through her less flexible defenses and was summarily dispersed as Ryoko turned to face one she could both hear and feel coming around a rock behind her.
Shino watched as the new clone, which had been out of visual range, responded to Ryoko the same way, striking the same opening, but narrowly avoiding being dispersed by the Saotome girl's first counter. Another clone was moving in behind her as she followed up the first counter with a third and the clone she was facing dispersed.
A swift side-step let the clone behind her past with an over-enthusiastic attack as she concentrated on finding a clone that hadn't been around to witness her exchange with the other two.
The insect-wrangler's eyes widened as he realized what Ryoko was testing.
Naruto was keeping the memory of every clone that was dispersed. Every time Ryoko completed the same technique against a clone, the next clone was better prepared for it.
Ryoko was moving around a rock, so Shino couldn't see the next exchange, but, judging from the burst of smoke, she'd tried out her theory again. The girl was soon back in Shino's sight however as she rolled over the boulder pursued by what looked like a renewed grouping of Naruto's clones.
A nod from the black-haired girl as she came to her feet, in the middle of the boulders again, and she slipped again into the more fluid mode of motion that came in battle rather than training.
Before, she'd still had a trend of using proven motions, instead, she simply followed the flow of chi shifting from her to the Narutos and back.
In essence, she stopped being sophisticated and moved simply into the basics.
There was a problem inherent in this too, however, as every one of the clones watched her motions and several suffered them. With each clone she dispersed, Naruto and the remaining clones were getting better as those observations spread through the remainder.
Observations that were being applied to what Naruto was weakest at, the basics.
It was only fractional, however. Probably Naruto himself wasn't even aware of it since the memories he was getting were only seconds or fractions of seconds in duration. However, those slow, fractional increases were being magnified by the numbers that Naruto was attacking her with.
She had to end the match soon. If she kept on the defensive as normal, she'd lose as the fight dragged onward.
Kurenai nodded as Ryoko shifted from her defensive stance into an offensive one, a change in attitude that noted the complete disappearance of her flinches and apologies as she simply started blowing through Naruto clones with a frightening ease until she was finally standing over Naruto, trying to catch her breath.
Slowly as Naruto came to, he looked up.
"Ah, man, I almost had you that time," he groaned.
"Y…you are getting stronger ve..very fast, Uzumaki-san," Ryoko said quietly as she stood up straight and then bowed to him with a quiet smile.
Quicker than she had these past two years.
She could self-train, but she still couldn't improve as quickly as she had with her father to run her training.
"Yeah," Naruto said. "And when I finally win, it'll be your turn to catch up with me."
Ryoko blinked at that.
"That was an excellent display," Kurenai said, nodding. "And I hope it gives my students a lesson of their own."
"How did you get skills like that?" Kiba asked, coming forward to look at both Naruto and Ryoko.
Shino remained back and thoughtfully went over what he'd seen, and forcing himself to admit that he'd underestimated both fighters.
Kurenai nodded to herself as processed the fight herself, hoping Kakashi wouldn't consider this stepping on his toes. Looking to Kiba and Shino, however, she realized the more important reason for having her team witness this fight had been taken in.
A reconnaissance team could never afford to underestimate anything. Hopefully they were coming to that conclusion even now.
"That was a very good match, Naruto-kun," Hinata said quietly, look lingering on Naruto until she turned to look toward Ryoko for a moment. "Oh, and Ryoko-chan."
Ryoko looked from Hinata to Naruto and back, noting Hinata's demeanor and flushed face. She remembered some instructions and discussions with her mother regarding men and woman, and this situation seemed to bare some similarity to some of her mother's scenarios.
"Ano…" Ryoko said, raising a hand toward Hinata.
"Okay," Kurenai declared, interrupting Ryoko before she could follow up on the guesses that were starting to move through her mind. "It's starting to get late in the day, and I bet your team has its first mission tomorrow just like mine. So let's get heading back toward home."
"Oh, I need to go to the home of Inuzuka-san," Ryoko said then, forgetting her guesses about Hinata's interests. "My sister is receiving some extra training from his family."
"Oh, the fox-kid is your sister?" Kiba said. "Has anyone told you she's annoying?"
Ryoko sighed.
"Imouto-chan," the girl said under her breath.
"Maybe next time," Shino noted. "Kiba can try his challenge to Ryoko?"
"Inuzuka-san challenged me?" Ryoko asked eagerly as Kiba froze and his eyes twitched.
"Uh, well, I started…" Kiba said, sweating nervously. "I think I'll have to get some extra training in first, though."
He wanted to know how to use the fang over fang technique before he tried to fight this girl.
"Oh.." Ryoko said, sounding disappointed. "I…I ap..apologize. I di..did not mean to press."
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:22)
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