"Damn it," Yoroi said as he glanced up toward the board. "I have some nobody."
Ryoko meanwhile was still trying to puzzle out why Sasuke's motions seemed familiar to here when Naruto reached out to tap her on the shoulder.
"Ano?" she responded, blinking at him.
"Your turn," he said, pointing up toward the electronic board that showed her name.
She looked up toward the board and a smile lit up over her face as she saw her name there.
"Wai!" she cried out before taking the stairs down at a quick pace but proper posture and step, carrying her bokken with her.
She came down to in front of Hayate with a bright and cheerful smile on her face and she turned toward the proctor and bowed deeply.
"Thank you, Gekko-sama!" she declared happily.
Hayate blinked in a bit of confusion at the enthusiastic attitude and glanced up toward Maito Gai suspiciously.
"Who's your jonin instructor?" he asked casually as Yoroi was making his way over.
"Jonin ins...oh, hai!" Ryoko said. "I am Ryoko Saotome, of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts and a member of Team 7 under Kakashi Hatake."
Hayate arched an eyebrow and glanced toward Kakashi in surprise.
"Okay, then," Hayate said. "I have no explanation."
"Ano?" Ryoko asked, blinking.
Yoroi reached the field then and took up position opposite of her.
"Let's get this over with," the man said in a bored tone as he looked down toward Ryoko.
"Hai," the black-haired girl said. "I sh..shall endeavor n..not to do too m..much damage."
Yoroi and Hayate blinked and the masked genin laughed viciously.
"You sound as if you think you will win, girl," he said with a snicker.
"I...I am a Saotome," Ryoko said, cocking her head as if that explained everything.
The Musk exchanged a look.
"Did she say..." Thyme started.
"Anything Goes?" Caper finished. "Not the Redeemed school?"
They shivered nervously.
"If Happosai's students are rising again," Thyme whispered. "Maybe we shouldn't be angering the Redeemed school? They're the only ones that can beat him."
"Not happening," Caper snapped angrily. "It's a fluke, she's nothing more than a lost student."
Kakashi sighed at Ryoko's display of enthusiasm knowing just exactly what it would...
"KAKASHI!!" Gai declared. "Finally, you have imparted to your students a respect for the Power of Youth and Hard Work. Could it be that you have finally seen the wisdom of this very truth?"
Kakashi sighed and shook his head.
"Why is that doormat of a girl so cheerful about getting into a fight with someone who has to be twice her age?" Ino asked.
"She's a violent doormat," Kiba noted, retaining a little anger of his own from his last conversation with Ryoko.
"She's not a doormat," Hinata protested. "She's very skilled and strong and..."
Hinata sighed.
"Sh...she may be a bit...slow to speak for her own interests, however," Hinata admitted finally.
She turned back to the fight and triggered her Byakugan quietly.
Noting this, Neji did likewise, curious to see what his cousin was watching.
Hayate declared the fight started and immediately Yoroi entered a ready stance while Ryoko merely continued to stand in her noble-girl's posture with her bokken held like an umbrella.
"Are you going to get ready girl?"
"Su..sumimasen," Ryoko said bowing.
In that instant, the man stepped forward reaching out with a glowing hand, trying to take advantage of the girl's apparent lack of attention. He found himself missing as the girl bowed too far and tumbled head over heels, the back of one leg slamming into Yoroi's stomach and carrying him down to the ground just before Ryoko pulled herself up to standing on top of him.
Her other foot slammed down into the man's face shortly before she gasped and pulled her hands to her face.
"Su...sumimasen," she declared. "I..I didn't mean...Oh! I..."
She stepped off of him then, jabbing another heel into the man's chest before stepping off.
Not before the man reached up to grab her foot and a jab of pain swept up through her, encouraging her to hasten her chi to the area to ease the pain and injury.
She stepped back cautiously back into her Utsuro Kamae, the Blank Form stance her father had taught her and Kodachi-sama was helping her to perfect. The stance of no stance where all signs of readiness were hidden in an everyday posture.
The relief came sooner than she expected. Then she felt a change in the flow of chi as her opponent came at her again, and she stepped aside to dodge.
A fraction of a moment too early.
"I've got you this time," Yoroi shouted as his hand gripped onto Ryoko's shoulder and the pain ripped through out from where he touched.
"Itai!" Ryoko gasped, rolling away along a line of yang that seemed almost visible to her.
Drawing upon that to ease and heal the damage the man's touch had done to her, she watched as he came in, outlined in an almost visible disturbance like heat waves.
She blinked several times as she focused entirely on dodging for the next few exchanges and then letting that glowing hand touch her again.
Neji frowned as the Saotome girl's strategy and performance both turned nonsensical.
In the beginning, with his Byakugan active, he'd seen that her apparent civilian's posture was entirely different when one looked at her muscles and chakra. In essence, her every muscle was primed to act at a moment's notice. It was a skill he'd seen in some jonin, but the level to which this girl practiced it was insane.
He clearly saw through her apparent nervousness and apologetic attitude as the psychological tricks they were based on the enthusiasm he saw in her through his eyes.
Now, however, she had inexplicably started letting her opponent drain away her chakra. The strength left her, tearing minute injuries as it did, and empowered her opponent.
Despite this, Ryoko while maintaining a frantic, worried appearance, was actually speeding up, and her minute injuries were healing as they came.
She was actually getting stronger each time the man drained her chakra.
It made no sense.
"Ahh, I see," Kakashi said to the side with a slight laugh.
Or perhaps it was merely one of the man's clones given that he'd just walked out with Sasuke in tow.
Neji looked toward his cousin to see if she was making any more sense out of this than he was, and then toward the copy-cat jonin. Apparently the man knew something he didn't.
Maybe something to do with the odd disturbance that fluctuated around Ryoko at the edge of his byakugan's frequency of vision.
"I don't get it," Naruto said. "What's going on?"
"Every time he touches Ryoko-chan," Hinata said. "She loses chakra. But it doesn't make sense, she's letting him do it, and it doesn't look like she's getting any weaker."
"Umm, Hinata-chan," Naruto said. "Doesn't Ryoko's chakra get in the way of her chi?"
Neji's eyes widened as soon as he heard the word and Gai turned around to stare at Naruto and then look out toward Ryoko.
"Chi?" Lee asked, confused.
"It's using the energy of changes and relationships," Gai explained. "The shift from one state to another. The motion and flow of energy through individuals and the world. Few have studied it and it is not well understood. Now I understand the presence of Kodachi-san and her assistant. They are this girl's tutors?"
"Hai, hai," Kakashi said, lifting up his headband to give his sharingan eye clearance.
The Musk stared down at Ryoko with a growing combination of unwise desire as she quietly encouraged the flows through her body to thicken and thicken, gathering up yin and yang into equally large rivers passing through her and confirming her bloodline as one of the Saotomes.
Yoroi sneered under his mask as the girl he was fighting pulled away each time. And each time he was only barely able to lay hold of her long enough to take a little chakra. He hadn't been able to land a solid blow yet and no matter how much chakra he built up from his thefts, she seemed to stay the same just barely slower.
Finally, she simply side-stepped his attack, not letting it touch her at all as she moved into a tip-toes looking into his face.
"Sumimasen," she said with no trace of a stutter than. "I have been impolite and holding back for an experiment."
"Nani?" Yoroi said, leaping back away from her where she stood in the same stance she'd started the fight with.
"I am Ryoko Saotome," Ryoko said. "Of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts and the Redeemed School of Martial Arts and of Konoha Team 7. I shall now fight you as a Saotome should."
Yoroi smirked arrogantly underneath his mask.
"Go ahead kid," Yoroi declared. "Do whatever you think you..."
And he was flying backwards into the wall.
As he struggled to his feet, the girl was standing where he had been, hand outstretched in the after stance of a graceful throw.
"Us..use what you have taken," she said, bringing her bokken back.
The chi around her was flowing in colors she had no words for. She could "see" as she breathed it in and felt it flow through her skin. She could see where the yin flowed and yang. She could see the intentions of her opponent as they formed.
Without her chakra in the way, her handicap was gone.
Yoroi came in at her, aiming to use his chakra draining touch, and she shifted her stance, moving her bokken in a way that was visibly clumsy to her now as it disrupted the chi flows around her.
Swinging it at the man that came in was an open invitation to be disarmed, and he took it, gripping the weapon harmlessly and tossing it across the field. His eyes followed it's motion briefly, and in that instant, Ryoko acted by shoving her palm into the man's side.
She twisted her arm to churn up the chi and so that, as her arm straightened, it flooded out in a torrent through her arm and into the target. The yin she thrust into him channeled right out into a flow of yang and ricocheted back through the man's body and into Ryoko's fist.
Yoroi stumbled out of position fully into a flow of yin that sought to come low to the ground and swirl through the shadows at the edge of the arena. Ryoko followed up, bringing a kick down and following that flow so that he bounced into the ground and followed the river of yin.
Ryoko pursued, action passing in fractions of seconds and she reached Yoroi as he stumbled into a shaft of warm light and air, moving from low to high as she entered the yang flow, she twisted her hands and punched outward, sending the man flying upward into the air following the direction that the energy wanted to go.
In an instant she was leaping upward herself to follow her enemy into the upper air, passing Yoroi up as she carried herself on a current of yang and then she came to the peak of her jump and twisted about to look at her opponent as she twisted her body about to let her yin flow out, as it desired, straight down toward the ground.
Feeling heavy for a brief moment, she slammed into Yoroi like a cannon shot and bore him down to the ground in an overenthusiastic rush.
At the last instant, she directed the chi out of her hand and through the enemy's body so that the vast majority of it carried straight into the rock, bypassing his vital organs and shattering the floor in a crater as she landed and also softening the landing for her and Yoroi.
Still, even the minimal energy she dispersed through Yoroi to knock him out wracked him painfully and he fell back unconscious.
Ryoko stood up and dusted herself off, breathing deeply and bowing to her unconscious opponent before looking over toward Hayate.
For once.
For once, she'd gotten to see what would be possible if she didn't have strong chakra.
"The winner is Ryoko Saotome," Hayate said, staring at Ryoko.
"WAI!" she declared loudly.
"Way to go Ryoko-Chan!" Naruto called out.
Aside from Ryoko's and Naruto's cheers, the arena was mostly silent.
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(Posted Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:18)
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