Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter. Next three chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXX- MINATO NAMIKAZE
Three targets. They split up once they reached the building. From this close, it was clear that they were all on different floors. Mikoto's target was in the middle of the building. Kushina's chosen target was close to the ground floor, and Minato's was on the very top of the building. He ran along the building's surface, racing for the peak. When he reached it, he came to a stop, and was about to begin searching for an opening he could use to go into the metal building, only for the building to explode from within, disturbing his grip, and sending him flying off the building and into the unforgiving wind of Ame's skies.
He flopped around for a bit before he spread his hands and focused on his manipulation of the wind around him. His chakra control was key here as he was unable to form seals like this. The wind pushed against his form, slowing him down and killing most of his momentum. A blast of wind from one direction pushed him from the no man's land he hurled through into the surface of the building. He stuck to the side of the building and a second later, was forced to block a kick that threatened to take his head off.
Forearm held in front of him, he strained against his opponent's power and momentum, and then their eyes met. Hakari the Bloodborn, his brain supplied almost instantly. She looked like the picture from the Bingo book given life. The snarl on her scarred visage, the glint of cruelty in her eyes, and that chakra. Ice cold. It was her indeed. She twisted, foot returning to the building for a second before a knife hand replaced it.
Listening to his instincts, Minato twisted to the side to dodge an attack that did not reach him. But where her fingers stopped, ice began. The ice blade grew so quickly that one second it was flesh, and the next it was ice that reached past where his shoulder had once been. He turned the twist into a full spin that drew them even closer. His kunai was blocked by ice around her other fist.
She brought the arm with the knife to bear again, retreating half a step, and then sweeping outwards with said arm.
He jumped over it, falling down towards the ground for a few seconds before he pushed his arms out behind him. Two gusts of wind pushed him forwards and into his opponent. He hit her with all the force he could muster, and then they began to rise together, defying gravity because of the wind that pushed him from behind.
She wrestled with him as they shot upwards, her strength proving far greater than her frame suggested at first glance. She managed to remove his left arm from her shoulder and then punched him cleanly across the face. He could taste blood from that one as his head snapped to the side. But the grip of his right hand did not budge. He used it to pull himself even closer, burying his knee into her stomach. The improvised wind manipulation he had used to send them rocketing upwards ran its course then and there, and they began to fall again. Slower this time with how high they were. At least it felt so.
Her gaze met his, and she shoved her hands forwards. Two puffs of smoke marked him unsealing two fuuma shuriken from either of his shoulder pads. He used the first to block the icicles she sent his way. The second, he filled with wind release chakra before throwing it at her. Or rather, at where she was going to be since they were still falling. It should have been impossible for her to dodge since they were in the air with no surfaces to push against, but a sheet of ice formed beneath her feet and she pushed against it mere seconds before the shuriken would have torn her in half.
Another ice sheet to her side and she had managed to push herself against the surface of the building, sticking to it with a hand and foot. Minato pushed against the air, using his own wind release to send him into the side of the building. He swallowed a grunt at the impact before using his chakra to ensure that he stopped slipping off. She was a few hundred paces above him, and they started running at each other again.
This time, she formed an icy blade in each hand. He unsealed two kunai and the weapons ground against each other, creating a song of steel and ice when they met. She slashed out, he blocked and tried to twist in to get into her guard. She gave up the space easily, and thrust out at him. He leaned backwards, and then turned said lean into a full bend at the waist as the blade lengthened further. She brought it down, aiming to catch him on the wrong foot, but in that time he had already formed a rasengan in his grip.
It met the ice that had managed to stand against steel and the ice stood no chance. It shattered, torn to pieces by the whirling ball of destruction. He was standing straight again, and his opponent was doing the same. He had a still spinning rasengan in one hand while she held a blade in hers. Around them, the rain still fell. Their bodies were soaked, neither willing to waste precious chakra or attention on preventing the rain from reaching them.
"Minato Namikaze. You're as good as they say," she said.
"Maybe you should surrender then," he offered.
"Konoha will treat you well. You can be folded into the Ame leadership structure." She would be a good counterweight to Yaga. Keeping her around would limit his influence and increase Konoha's in the new village.
"And be the Butcher's dog? I'd rather die," she said, turning to the side and spitting. The wind and rain carried it down to the ground far beneath them. So much disgust. Not for the first time, Minato made note of it. There were a lot of things to admire about his Sensei's reign as Hokage. His ability to engender so much hatred in the other villages was not one of them. When it was his time, Minato would do better. He would strive to build the same love within Konoha that his Sensei enjoyed, but that did not mean it had to come with this same visceral hatred outside the village. He refused to believe it.
"As you wish," he told her, and readied himself for the next salvo. He had a good understanding of her power now. Strong, quick, skilled with her kekkei genkai, and showing few weaknesses. But few did not mean none. There was only one man in this world with no weaknesses in combat, and she was not him.
"If you want my head, boy, you have to come take it. Come and find out why they call me Bloodborn. When I deal with that fool Yaga and his army, it will be with your blood soaking me from head to toe," she snarled.
"The rain would wash that away pretty quickly, don't you think?" he joked. A joke she did not find funny at all. She ran down the building, thrusting her blade at him. Gravity, momentum, and initiative would be on her side. If he wielded a blade, he could not have blocked.
But the rasengan was a cut above. He met her charge, aiming the rasengan to take her sword and then the arm it was attached to. Her footwork saved her life. She varied her charge at the last second, and they both missed each other by the barest of margins. Behind him.
He pushed off against the building, abandoning the surface beneath his feet and turning around as he did so. Several icicles shot past where he had just been standing. Another blast of wind pushed him back to the building. He landed, knees bent to absorb the impact. She did not look all that disappointed to have had her attack fail.
She was already weaving seals and while he did not recognise them, he still prepared a jutsu of his own. Her affinities were water and wind. She could put them together to form ice. That he could not recognise the technique told him it was more likely an ice release jutsu. Water was weak to earth, and wind to fire. Ice was weak to neither, but if you could get fire hot enough...
This would be child's play for Mikoto, but he had learned a few tricks of his own.
They finished their seals at the same time.
"Ice release: Ice dragon"
"Toad secret art: unending toad oil barrage"
He spat out a torrent of toad oil that rushed straight at the woman. From the surface in front of her, the ice dragon rose. Only for it to be pushed back by the toad oil that stuck to it. Hakari dodged out of the way as the dragon was pushed back so it was several feet below them, and still being rocked back by the oil. Right at the end of the torrent, Minato changed his seal and ignited all the oil with a click of his teeth. The surface of the ice dragon, drenched with the oil, began to burn.
But that did not stop the dragon from coming. It flew upwards, coming straight for Minato. He back-pedalled, feet moving quick as they ever had as he ran backwards up the tower, climbing while keeping the ice dragon in his sights. It was melting from the toad oil enhanced fire release, but not as quickly as he would have liked.
It was shrinking as it melted, focusing on keeping its consistency rather than size. And as more of its bulk was lost, the chakra construct became even faster. By the time Minato had reached the top of the tower, it was almost on him. He focused and jumped backwards with all his strength behind the push against the tower. He was in the air for a few seconds before the dragon was upon him, and he used that time to form a rasengan in each hand.
Now the dragon was much smaller. Just a bit bigger than he was now where it had once been the size of a small building. The rasengans tore through the dragon's head, and body, sending flaming ice shards flying in all directions. Some scratched at his skin, creating small cuts that he ignored in favour of using wind release to push himself back into the building.
When he hit the building again, it was only seconds that he had before he was forced off to avoid a storm of icy senbon. Mid-air, he was forced to abandon his attempt to push himself back against the building in favour of creating a spiralling shield of wind around him to block two giant shuriken made of ice. They hit the wind and were sent flying off at speed in random directions, but he himself kept falling straight down.
He used a gust of wind against his shoulder to allow him to dodge out of the way of a torrent of water that would have turned his chest to sludge. He was only seconds away from passing her. She tried one final gambit, an icicle that just barely missed. As he passed her, he used a blast of wind to spin himself around so he was looking up at her rather than down at the ground. He sent a kunai at her, and then with a single seal, multiplied it to dozens.
Each one had a seal matrix written on it. He pushed himself to the ground even faster with wind release while using wind release on his back as a shield for the impact that was coming. But that impact was not the thing on his mind. A single handseal and...
Boom.
The force of the explosion pushed him straight into the ground, the rest of the journey there passing too quickly for him to even comprehend. The sky above was completely covered in smoke, and from what little he could see, a substantial part of the tower's east face had been blown off. There was a good chance he had actually killed his opponent with that one. But Sensei's advice kept him from letting his guard down.
'Unless you put your kunai in their neck and watch the life leave their eyes, never assume your opponent to be dead'. He chuckled at the imagery of Sensei saying that to the group of pre-teens that they were before pushing himself out of the crater that his landing had created. He rose to his feet and then jumped up to the level ground. The rain and winds of Ame meant the smoke that his explosion had created was cleared in a matter of seconds, and the damage to the tower was more readily apparent. Half of two whole floors had been exposed to the elements. The fact that the building was still standing was a small miracle. Note to self: don't spam the lightning release enhanced explosive tags anywhere that you want to keep stable. His opponent, or her corpse, nowhere to...
He turned and blocked an icy projectile with the back of his glove. Only a quick bit of enhancement with earth release...not on the level of something like the earth grudge fear, but close enough...kept said hand attached to his body, and just bleeding profusely rather than gone entirely.
She was standing there, looking little worse for wear, but in her eyes was an anger that had not been there before. He'd gotten to her.
"You share your Sensei's respect for other people's property," she said. He shrugged. What did he care? Ame was the enemy for now. He wasn't going to weep about damage done to one of their towers. Considering how they were constructed, it was probably going to be a pain to fix, but that wasn't his problem.
"Come teach me better manners then," he taunted, ignoring the bleeding on his hand and using that same hand to form a 'come hither' gesture.
And come she did.
She shot off the ground, moving even faster now that she did not have to worry about using chakra adhesion to maintain her place along the outer wall of a tower over a hundred feet in the air. But he was also faster without that limitation. He weaved out of the way of a knife hand—no ice this time—and then dodged a knee that sought to smash his sternum in, before flipping away from a roundhouse kick. He landed but she was upon him a second later.
This time, he struck first. His feet hit the wet ground for a second, but no longer, and his left snapped out in a Spartan kick. So committed to the charge, she had no chance of moving out of the way. An ice sheet formed right in front of her. His foot smashed through, but robbed of most of its momentum, it was a bruising attack rather than a breaking one. She spun backwards, head over heel before stopping her momentum feet away.
Her fingers touched the ground, causing the water that sat on the cobblestones to freeze. The ice began to spread, forcing Minato to jump backwards, and then backwards again to the side of one of the buildings on the street as the entire street was covered in ice.
"What's that supposed to achieve?" he asked with a smirk. The second she opened her mouth to respond, he pushed off from the wall. A kunai dropped into his hand from a seal on his sleeve and he tried his hardest to ram it straight into her neck. She twisted to the side just in time, the kunai only managing to get the outside of her neck with a scratch and as he passed, she grabbed his chest and brought his momentum to a halt. She flooded his body with chakra, overwhelming his own, and freezing him from the inside out.
The clone exploded in her grasp as he shot from the ground, breaking through the ice at her feet with a kunai aimed for underneath her head. She lurched backwards, avoiding the attack by the skin of her teeth. Still, he managed to twist as he flew past and landed a kick against the side of her head that forced it to twist one eighty degrees. Whatever victory he felt, died a quick death as the body turned to water, splashing against the icy ground.
She revealed herself across the alley, already at the end of a seal sequence as she held the horse sign.
"This one I learned from my mother before she died. Secret technique: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals," she intoned and ice mirrors rose all around them, rising high into the air, and then doubling up as they reached upwards at an angle. The dome formed in a matter of seconds, enclosing the both of them in the icy field of reflective surfaces. It gave their battleground an eerie feeling as every direction Minato looked in left him looking at either his reflection or some reflected version of the street. Freezing the ground earlier had been some set up for this technique, he realised. The ice that had been on the ground now gone entirely.
"Behold the secret ultimate technique of the Yuki clan. You will only be the second to force me to use this technique. When I return your head to your Sensei, I will tell him you fought well," she said, stepping back into the mirror. The surface of the one she stepped into bubbled for a second as she stepped in before it crystallised and then her image revealed itself on the other side.
Good of her to stay still, he thought, body flickering forwards and shoving a rasengan straight through the mirror. The rasengan whined and growled against the mirror but it felt like for the first time the rasengan had met a surface it could not penetrate. Any progress he made was reversed in a matter of seconds.
And then her form was visible in all the mirrors. He deactivated the rasengan, not one to waste chakra. Every jutsu had a weakness. He just had to find this one's.
"Do die quickly, Minato-san," she said, and then all versions of her were holding senbon in their grip. He flicked his eyes from reflection to reflection. Once she unleashed that attack, he would know which one was real for a moment and then he would attack it. A regular rasengan had failed but perhaps a wind release one.
When she tossed the senbon, they came from every single mirror, hundreds of senbon out for him at the same time.
A/N: How do we find the fight so far? Discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) for those interested. Next chapter comes on here on Sunday night/Monday morning (depending on your timezone). Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.