Shikamaru tsked as his name came up and shook his head.
"My turn now?" he said. "What a pain."
Asuma shook his head in amusement as Shikamaru sauntered down towards the arena where his opponent was waiting.
Zaku watched the lazy ninja meandering his way down to the match with a sense of irritation. After all their preparation, none of them had yet fought Sasuke. At this point the only way to get a chance at the Uchiha was to get into the finals.
Which looked like it would be a bit easy if his brat of an opponent were any indication. He looked on the half-lidded eyes and shuffling walk of his opponent in disdain as Shikamaru finally reached their position.
"I'm glad you didn't take your time," Hayate noted before giving an explanation of the rules.
Shikamaru shrugged and looked over at Zaku. He knew nothing about the man at all other than that he was from Otogakure. However, it was clear from his posture that he was an aggressive type. Prone to leaping in head first.
The Nara shadow user could simply grab him with the shadow possession off the bat, probably, but then he wouldn't have anything to do to finish guy off. Nope, he had to get the guy somewhere else in the arena.
There weren't many features in the arena to make use of. The crater that Saotome girl had made, the furrows that Kiba had dug. Neither of those were of much use in finishing a fight, plus using them to enhance his shadow was unnecessarily revealing for further fights.
And he reasoned that there would be further fights.
He could just forfeit, but that would be all sorts of other pain, especially with Ino in the back shouting about a "sixteen-hit combo". That was actually comfortingly familiar from the girl, who'd spent the last three days of waiting almost obsessively planning, practicing and ask him for advice on tactics.
She's started taking this far too seriously.
Of course, Asuma-sensei would be more than a little upset as well. And so he'd have two pains in the neck to live with if he tried to forfeit.
So, it was back to winning this fight.
"Tsk," he said shaking his head. "How irritating."
"That's my line," Zaku said. "All the important people have gone already and I'm stuck with a nobody like you."
Shikamaru arched an eyebrow at the man's phrasing. The last person to declare someone a "nobody" in this arena had been batted around like soccer ball by a slip of a twelve year old girl. Then that Musk had called Kiba a "pup" and...gotten batted around like a soccer ball.
He hoped that didn't mean people expected him to do something so strenuous as batting this guy around.
As soon as Hayate began the fight, predictably Zaku reacted right away.
"I'm going to put an end to this farce right now!" he declared, reaching out with his hands.
Shikamaru noted the holes in the other genin's palms and was moving even before the burst of wind clipped him and shoved him back towards the walls. Had it hit him full on, he would have been caught in the current and battered by both wind and stone. As it was, however, he was pushed out the edge and managed to right himself before striking the wall and then repel off of its surface back to the ground.
"Air blast," he thought. "That is troublesome."
His mind thought back to Temari's performance against Kin. The fan wielder had used the wind to disperse the girl's senbon across the arena uselessly. Even the one she'd managed to stick into a wall as an anchor for her bells hadn't proved very useful.
A blast of the wind from the fan had ruined the vertigo-inducing sound just shy of Temari flattening her.
Projectile weapons weren't going to be of much use, they'd just be blown away. It wasn't something he could easily turn against his opponent either, given that it was probably chakra driven and he could only control the muscles.
In any case, the guy was pointing at him again and Shikamaru had to move quickly, too quickly for his liking, to avoid being struck.
"Damn it," he muttered bitterly as he covered his head from the scattering of rock raised up by the air blast.
His eyes scanned around the various pieces of debris still in the arena.
"Is all you're going to do run?" Zaku asked arrogantly.
"Okay, there's a good piece," Shikamaru thought as he moved at the edge of his opponent's perceived range. "Why couldn't I have taken on somebody like Shino? I wouldn't have to be moving around so much then. Tsh, that would almost be like playing chess."
"You think that you're going to get away?" Zaku demanded, darting aside to come into an angle where Shikamaru was one point on the way to the closest wall.
Once again the blast of chakra laced air rushed outward and bore down on the lazy ninja, seeming to lift him up and slam him painfully into the wall.
Zaku smiled for all of a second before his body froze in position and the body of his opponent vanished in a buff of smoke to reveal a large hunk of stone cracked and shattering into several smaller pieces.
"Shadow Possession jutsu is a success," Shikamaru said almost immediately behind him.
Zaku tried to turn around and face his opponent, but his body wouldn't obey his will. And then his arm reached for his weapons pouch and drew out a kunai.
"Wh...what the hell?" he demanded as his arms rose up shakily.
And then Shikamaru's own arm slammed down with the kunai handle to the back of Zaku's skull and the Sound ninja crumpled into unconsciousness.
"Maybe I should practice my taijutsu a little bit more?" he wondered as he yawned. "Then maybe I can get that hit in without the possession jutsu? Tsh, that's almost more of a pain than it's worth."
"Winner," Hayate said as Shikamaru scratched the back of his head, clearly bored. "Shikamaru Nara."
Temari frowned as she took in the last fight, noting how the Konoha shinobi's shadow seemed to transmute at the end there, right before the sound ninja was locked into mirroring the Nara's actions.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:26)
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