We come together like we always do at the start of our fights. I dash in low, my steps made long and wildly fast by the wind urging them along, and throw all my weight into a jab at his stomach. Sasuke's eyes bleed crimson, the twin tomoe in each eye blurring into motion as they track my every motion, and he avoids the strike with ease. He doesn't need the sharingan to make it through this little opening of ours, but I bet it doesn't hurt.
My teammate lashes out at me with a stiff-fingered strike, and I backhand it off to the side with a pressure burst of chakra. For a single frozen moment the two of us are off balance, and then we each lunge forward, slamming our hands together and interlocking our grips. I detonate the twin pressure bursts hugging the palms of my hands the moment our hands touch, and the force of my chakra prevents him from crushing my fingers with his own chakra-enhanced hold.
Wind blooms out from our locked hands in a flashy wave, blowing our hair back and whipping at our clothes. We jump back from one another on cue, pleasantries over with. I pull a pair of kunai from my weapons pouch, and Sasuke settles into a taijutsu stance that's just different enough from his usual for me to take notice.
Now for the fight. I grit my teeth, and if it weren't for the soothing wind coursing through my tenketsu, I'd be wound up tighter than an Akimichi on a diet. This is going to be a tense fight.
As if to agree with me, Sasuke pivots and leaps up onto one of the lower hanging branches of the bizarre stone trees littering the arena, making space between us. I rush after him, tossing my kunai and dismissing the anxiety from my mind. This is where you show your stuff, Uzumaki. No time for second guesses.
We race up through the trees, almost up to the lid of the arena walls, before Sasuke abruptly plants his feet against the smooth black stone of a trunk and hurtles back at me. He catches me mid-jump, and I'm forced to duck my head and throw myself to the side with a wave of wind. I throw an arm out and grab hold of one of the thinner branches nearby, swinging up onto it with just enough time to register Sasuke pushing off from another tree and coming at me again.
We meet some hundred feet in the air, and rail ferociously against each other. The branch we're fighting on is thin and I don't have the benefit of being able to stick to it with my chakra, and Sasuke's new eyes make it twice as hard to get the jump on him as before, but I manage.
He puts a flash kick in my gut, and I return the favor with a punch to his leg that tears his foot from the branch and puts him dangerously off balance. I follow it up with a pressure burst of wind that propels him off to a nearby branch, and he responds by whipping two fistfuls of kunai at me, all of them traveling at baffling angles in order to bounce off the trees and one another to hit me in a dozen unexpected places.
"Uchiha Sasuke drives Uzumaki Naruto into open air with a dazzling display of kenjutsu! How will he recover!?" The samurai announcing shouts, voice echoing throughout the stadium. I blink, twisting slightly in mid air and sweeping a hand out, driving the second volley of kunai away from me with a single gust and using the back draft to steer myself onto another branch. Is he seriously doing a play-by-play?
"It seems Uzumaki Naruto is more than just a gifted wind manipulator! What a maneuver!"
Guess so.
I look back to Sasuke and curse as I see him disappear down towards the bottom of the arena. Not this time, Uchiha. I crouch, placing a steadying hand upon the stone branch beneath me, and call two loops of wind chakra into being on the soles of my feet.
Wind Release: Breeze Step.
I explode off the branch, tearing down through the trees at dizzying speeds and doing my best not to squish myself against any of them. I catch a flash of navy blue and spin in midair, pumping more and more chakra into the loops on my feet and rocketing across the branches towards my opponent. Sasuke turns at the last moment and tosses a handful of shuriken at me, but I blow past them with my jutsu's speed and crush him against the trunk of a stone tree.
Or rather, I would have, if he hadn't flickered and faded from existence the moment I touched him. Bunshin.
I feel the heat on my back a split second before Jo chimes in. "A brilliant distraction! Uchiha Sasuke lets loose one of his clan's famous jutsu- his opponent has nowhere to go!"
Like hell I don't.
I slap my hands together once again, detonating another pair of loops in my feet, and tear off to the right, diving across the long distances between some of the widely spaced trees in my haste to get out of the danger zone. I lock onto Sasuke, already breaking off from his fire release and flitting through hand seals. His form shimmers for a moment, and then five of him dart away from my approach, all in different directions.
"Not a chance, Uchiha!" I bellow, propelling myself forward even faster, and set my chakra to spinning five different times.
Over the break between the third task and the finals, following my realization it didn't have to take more than a second or two to form my chakra loops as long as I had the proper drive, I'd thrown myself into practicing them on the move. Every second I shaved off preparing a loop was a second that Sasuke wouldn't have to escape in our looming match.
Now, I drive six loops into being on top of the two already howling away beneath my feet, and I bend them to my will with a single focused command- get those bunshin. Five individual loops scream to life along my forearms, and when my hands come together in the serpent seal, each loop is pointing at an Uchiha.
Wind Release: Multiple Great Breakthrough!
The roar of my technique overwhelms the noise of the crowd, and a moment later the force of it overwhelms me, driving me back into a nearby tree with its backlash. A moment before I can hit the unforgiving stone, I detonate the final loop of chakra, spinning along the small of my back, and clench my teeth against the pain of being crushed between my jutsu.
I manage to disperse the worst of both in the next moment as the momentum of both cancel one another out, and watch as my attack chases down each of my teammate's replicas and banishes them from existence. The original, on the far left, blurs forward in a shunshin just in time to avoid the worst of my jutsu.
I grin as it clips him anyway, sending him spinning off of his branch. I hurry to pursue.
"What incredible attacking power!"
I fall upon Sasuke just as he manages to regain his footing, and ram him in the gut with my shoulder, wrapping my arms tightly around him and detonating a pair of pressure bursts that knock the breath right out of him. We hurtle back towards the ground, the crowds screaming in anticipation at our sudden freefall, and sharp pains open up all over my shoulders and the back of my neck as Sasuke hits me with those damn jabs of his.
The desperation of the strikes amps up as the seconds tick by and we hurtle closer and closer to the ground, and the force of them increases accordingly. I snarl against the pain, adjusting my grip behind his back and forming the serpent seal.
The great breakthrough from behind my clenched teeth hits him point blank, tearing him from my hold and sending both of us shooting off in different directions. I grasp at the tenketsu running along my back and eject as much wind from them as possible, slowing my descent enough to hit the ground and roll backwards with the momentum, springing up to my feet and slapping my hands together yet again.
"Uzumaki Naruto has taken the offensive! What stunning elemental control!"
I fly across the earth and weave between trees, my focus narrowing down to a single raven-haired point. By the time I cross half the distance between us he's apparently decided to quit running, and falls into that not quite right taijutsu stance again. In the next breath I cover the remaining distance and plow into him with a punch covered by pressure wind bursts on each of my knuckles.
Sasuke ducks beneath the haymaker, sharingan eyes spinning, and jabs at my extended wrist. I spin, avoiding the strike by a hair, and pivot sharply with the help of a pressure burst on my left leg. He leans back at a painful looking angle, avoiding my high kick, and then wraps both hands around my ankle and swings me around with a grunt of effort, throwing me at a nearby tree.
I lash out and grab his collar a split second after he lets go of me, twisting my body and heaving at his with a wave of wind, and turn his toss against him. His head bounces off the tree with a sharp crack, but he pulls away before I can hit him with my follow up, and jabs me with a vicious kidney punch when I bounce off the tree myself.
It's weird using the Dancing Fist as an offensive style. I stumble back, wheezing from the painful blow, and force myself to spin away from the kick my teammate sends at my temple. My next instinct is to juke away from the lunge I can see in the sudden tenseness of his legs, and then make some space between us so that I can build up a great breakthrough-
But that's wrong. I can't fight like that, not this time.
Instead, I juke inside his lunging punch, finding myself inside his guard with an open palm strike rippling with pressure bursts aimed at his chest. He's too fast for me to connect, though, correcting his stance almost faster than I can track and batting my hand aside. He whips a kunai out of his weapons pouch and drives it towards my eyes, no doubt intent on forcing me back.
Instead I lower my forehead and let it glance off my headband, then rip my own kunai free and clash with his back swing. Have to stay on the offensive. Always on the offensive. If it's just close combat, I know I can beat him.
...
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