(6th of August, year 55 AK)
Yuta locked eyes with Hikari over the distance between them.
Then he walked slowly until he stood beside her sword that was lying on the ground.
Yuta smirked, and without breaking the eye contact he stretched his hand forward and kicked the sword up so his hand clasped the handle the next moment. He was paying attention to Hikari's possible sudden moves, ready to react if she were to flicker again, but she didn't move right away.
Yuta used all his strength and then some by boosting his muscles with chakra as he threw Hikari's sword to the side. The sword was thrown with a lot of strength, and it flew fast and soon it embedded itself deeply into the arena's wall.
He wasn't stupid enough to try using her own weapon against her, he didn't trained with this weapon, and she knows everything about it, besides, he isn't a close combat fighter to begin with, so he discarded her weapon without any hesitation, making it more difficult for her to pick it up again.
There was a lot of distance between them, but Yuta could swear that he saw as she furrowed her brows as he did that, and it had only multiplied his satisfaction.
She starts walking in Yuta's direction with an expression on her face that didn't promise him anything good.
Yuta briefly considered using Body Flicker to close the distance but quickly discarded the idea. With however brief the disorientation side effect of that jutsu was, it would be enough for her to make a move on him. And Hikari didn't use the Body Flicker either, likely because of the same reason, so for the next half a minute they just walked towards each other, eyes locked, stances full of readiness to act at any instant.
'Well, I did get rid of her sword, but I'm afraid she won't be much weaker without it still.' Yuta thought, 'She most likely won't attempt to retrieve it until the fight is over. Trying so for her would be like agreeing to a statement that she really needs her sword back to be able to beat me, and something like that is not in her character, she would rather try to win the fight without it in defiance, as if to say "I don't even need a sword to beat you".'
Soon both of them stood facing each other once again, Hikari wore annoyed frown and Yuta stood with calm and calculative look that further annoyed Hikari even more.
Yuta was about to say something, but he immediately noticed how Hikari lowered her stance just a tiny bit in response, ready to run at him at full speed again. He stopped himself from saying anything just yet, and Hikari also didn't run at him right away.
'Oh, she is serious now, I could tell, the tension in the air could be cut with a knife. She is ready to launch an all-out attack the moment I open my mouth.' Yuta thought as he looked at Hikari. Both of them were mentally preparing for another clash.
'This is the problem of fighting a team member, she knows too much about my moves, it's hard to catch her off guard...' Yuta mentally complained, 'And now she knows about my Shadow Mirage jutsu and the trick with layering one genjutsu on top of another while keeping it from being dispelled, it would be even harder from now on. No matter, I still have the advantage.'
Then Yuta, while keeping his facial muscles from moving, hummed through his nose, casting a genjutsu through the sound on Hikari.
Since Yuta didn't open his mouth for it, Hikari realized what happened a moment late as she immediately ran at Yuta while pulling out a kunai as soon as she heard the sound of him humming.
Soon Hikari saw how Yuta multiplied into seven copies that pulled out shurikens and thrown them at her before she was able to close the distance, forcing her to abandon her attack and to defend herself instead.
She dodged to the side, although there were too many shurikens to avoid all of them just like that, she quickly moved her kunai trying to deflect the rest.
After a moment Yuta was surprised, since in his understanding she shouldn't be able to avoid all of them like that, but she did, and after a moment Yuta realized how.
Hikari wasn't deflecting all shurikens with her kunai randomly, she moved her kunai to deflect one, and realizing that it was just an illusion she immediately started to ignore a few more that had a trajectory that would hit. And as soon as she deflected a one of the real shurikens, she immediately ignored all of the illusory ones and only deflected a few more real ones instead.
Only because of that was she able to defend herself, there wasn't enough time to dodge or deflect all of them and normally she would be hit if she were to try.
'She memorized each shuriken and each of my copies that it came from, so when she confirmed a shuriken being an illusion, she immediately knew that all other shurikens that came from the same copy of me are fake and ignored them. This is some impressive observation skills, as well as combat instincts... I need to finish this quickly, she learns to fight against me more efficiently by the second, this won't do.' Yuta analyzed.
As soon as Hikari deflected the last real shuriken, she turned and looked straight at the real Yuta, ignoring all his copies, as she gripped her kunai tighter and ran at him again. She wasn't even trying to dispel his genjutsu anymore.
'Well, I don't really like doing this, but it seems I do need some boost after all, huh...' Yuta thought briefly and then he channeled his Calm State.
The next instant his emotions and irritation he was feeling all this time were being washed away by the soothing and calming feeling, and his eyes lost all emotions and become unnaturally calm and focused, his posture adjusted and become more relaxed, just a bit.
Hikari's brows furrowed a bit more as she saw the sudden changes in Yuta as she continued closing the distance between them at the maximum speed she could.
Next instant Yuta hummed again, and even his hum was calm and emotionless somehow.
Then as Hikari continued running, she saw how the other six Yutas disappeared and the real Yuta had multiplied again into seven. This time Hikari didn't know which one was the real one anymore, but she was already very close to all of them and prepared for the direct clash anyway.
She swung her kunai at one Yuta and immediately followed up with a kick to another one, all two turned out to be illusions, but she had accounted for the possibility of not meeting any resistance with her moves so she didn't lose balance and instead quickly followed up with another attack on the third Yuta.
'She is fast, but she already made a mistake.' Yuta calmly thought as he slowly circled around Hikari, 'Did I really need to channel the Calm State for this? Doesn't matter, time to wrap this up.'
When he channeled the Calm Sate and was able to think with the unnaturally calm clarity, he immediately followed up with a simple but clever trick. He hummed, and his illusions disappeared and reappeared again, but that wasn't the result of him recasting his Shadow Mirage, he did all of that by controlling his still active Shadow Mirage genjutsu from before, tricking Hikari into believing that he did recast the same genjutsu again and nothing more.
But what happened back there is that Yuta used that opportunity to cast Shadow Cloak genjutsu on her instead, and hid himself completely from her perception. What she was fighting right now is nothing but his illusions, there was no real him among them. The amount of the illusory clones he could create is a variable he could adjust anytime, and although creating and controlling more than six was still quite hard and mentally taxing on him, so he only using up to six at a time so far, but there still no problem for him to push it a bit and create seven instead this time.
'And... check and mate.' Yuta thought as he closed the distance to Hikari from behind and was already extending his hand with a kunai in it while she was fighting his illusions, but next instant Yuta suddenly got kicked right in the chest by Hikari.
At the last moment he managed to soften the blow a bit by jumping backwards and concentrating his chakra around the point of impact, but still, the air was kicked out of his lungs and he flew backwards, the kick was still strong enough to almost crack his ribs.
'How?' Yuta's mind calmly analyzed the situation as he flew backwards after the kick, such was the advantage the Calm State provided, even being hit hard so suddenly and unexpectedly, with his vision spinning around him since he flew uncontrollably, he was still able to think calmly and rationally anyway.
'She shouldn't be able to notice my approach like that, while being in the middle of throwing one attack after another at my illusions. Is there some hidden flaw in my genjutsu that I didn't realize I had? No, not possible. Shisui was helping me to develop all of my genjutsu, there shouldn't be any major flaws in them that Hikari could exploit.'
'She was under two of my genjutsu at the same time, she saw and heard seven of my illusory clones at once, while my real body was hidden from her perception and recognition, she shouldn't be able to notice my approach no matter how I think about it. She could've realized that she was under my Shadow Cloak genjutsu as well, but that doesn't give away my position to her, it only tells her that I'm somewhere around...'
Yuta flexed his muscles and stabilized his falling just in time before he hit the ground, and after a couple of controlled rolls he quickly stood up and looked in Hikari's direction, noticing that she was already running at him at full speed, although there was still some time for him to react.
His chest hurt badly and he still unable to breathe in any air, but he was perfectly fine to act anyway even in such a state. By now he knew that channeling Calm State was the right decision, since the fight had suddenly escalated from 'somewhat difficult', to 'can I even win this?'.
'Was that kick being just a fluke? Could it be that she just kicked on instinct, just because of some instinctive feeling that something was off? No, I should assume that it wasn't a fluke and that she knew exactly where I was. The probability of it being just a lucky guess on her part is low, I should assume that she knows my real location at all times. But how could this be possible? No clue. I need more information...' Yuta thought as his calculating and calm gaze followed Hikari's every move.
--- AN ---
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