(5th of July, year 55 AK)
Yuta and his opponent, a kunoichi from Grass village, her name was previously announced as Keiko Sugiyama, both stood in the center of the arena, looking into each other's eyes. Keiko
Yuta and his opponent, a kunoichi from Grass village, her name was previously announced as Keiko Sugiyama, both stood in the center of the arena, looking into each other's eyes. Keiko looked at Yuta with resolute confidence, and Yuta's eyes showed nothing but calm and focus.
While the proctor didn't start the fight yet, Keiko said in a probing voice, "I saw the two other kids that fought before you, they are strong, but I could tell that you are nothing like them."
Although Keiko spoke those diminishing words, Yuta noticed that she didn't let her guard down even in the slightest, confirming his assumption that she was just trying to rile him up while she still didn't dare to underestimate him even in the slightest.
Yuta's mouth curved a little in a slight smile.
'Psychological warfare, I see, just a classic move before battle for a ninja. Two can play this game...' Yuta thought.
"You might be right." Yuta said with cold indifference in his tone, "Indeed, my two teammates might be better ninjas than I am. But what is it to you? Why would you care about the power dynamics inside my squad? The likes of you, no matter against which one of us you are standing, in our eyes you always will be just a weakling..."
'Hm, I wonder if that was a good enough response and if it would get to her...' Yuta thought, 'I'm not used to such things, I prefer to start the fight with a sneak attack and end it in just one decisive move, so this kind of pre-battle fights with words are not something I'm skilled at. But she had attacked my supposed lower strength compared to my teammates, so I instinctively went for the same thing as she did, for her strength compared to us...'
"You dare look down on me? You arrogant kid, you will regret this!" Keiko said coldly with a good amount of anger seeping into her voice.
Yuta demonstratively ignored her words as if he hadn't heard them at all, making Keiko even more angry.
"Okay, you know the rules. Ready?" the proctor asked, and glanced at Yuta and Keiko, and seeing no objections, he raised his hand and signaled, "Start!", as he jumped back.
Keiko and Yuta didn't move immediately and continued to stand for a while longer.
'Well, if she doesn't make a first move, I might use this time to make some preparations first...' Yuta thought.
"What, afraid to make a move?" Yuta asked coldly, but this wasn't just some words to rile her up further. As Yuta was saying that, he formed a Shadow Cloak genjutsu and cast it with the sound of his voice.
Although, he didn't want to go straight for the finishing blow just yet, so he carefully layered his genjutsu on Keiko's chakra network in a waiting and not immediately active state just yet, testing Keiko's chakra sensitivity and if she would be able to notice his still dormant genjutsu or not.
Yuta wasn't worried too much about Keiko noticing his genjutsu though, he estimated that the chances of such a thing happening was extremely low if not outright zero.
"What's the rash?" Keiko replied with a sneer, "I'm going to destroy you thoroughly. Even if the lethal blows and killing are prohibited, I still can make you wish you were dead!"
'What is she even talking about...' Yuta thought while standing unfazed by Keiko's verbal threats.
And that's when Keiko finally made her first move, while Yuta looked at her with a deadpan expression full of disappointment. Keiko pulled out a kunai and ran at him at full speed.
'Sigh, whatever, might as well stretch my muscles a bit before ending this...' Yuta thought and blocked the direct frontal attack with a kunai of his own.
The next moment Yuta almost regretted his reckless decision of allowing Keiko to close the distance so easily. As he put his own kunai in a reverse grip in front of him and blocked Keiko's kunai that came in a slash motion from above, he hastily had to pour a significant amount of chakra into his muscles to just withstand the blow and not to allow it to overwhelm him outright.
Yuta changed his stance a little after concluding that with Keiko's superior strength and reach he can't afford to take her head on. So after he blocked the initial attack directly, he started to intercept and guide Keiko's attacks more indirectly, dodging some of them, and just slightly altering the trajectories of her attacks when he couldn't dodge them with his own kunai, instead of using hard blocks like during the first exchange.
After that Yuta tried to attack Keiko himself, but soon he found out that with his lesser reach, strength and speed he couldn't establish any advantage in a direct taijutsu fight against her at all. All he was able to do was to continue fighting at just a slight disadvantage on the defensive while wasting a significant amount of chakra on enhancing his body to be able to match her to some degree.
After a few more exchanges of blows, dodges and soft blocks, Yuta at some point found himself being almost hit by Keiko's kick in the chest, and he was able to jump backwards just in time to avoid the kick, although barely.
'Well, enough of that... I wanted to stretch my muscles and to test myself in a taijutsu once again, well, mission accomplished, I guess... I had wasted about 10G out of 57G of my chakra on chakra enhanced moves and for the next couple days I will feel my muscles aching after all that extra strain that I had put on them, but whatever, still worth it to get some more experience and perspective...' Yuta thought while using the previous dodge to further increase the distance between him and Keiko as he jumped backwards once again as soon as his feet touched the ground.
"Oh, now you get scared and want to get away from me?" Keiko said mockingly, "As if that would be so easy..."
Keiko immediately pursued Yuta as she pulled a bunch of shurikens and thrown them at him.
'Not going to use any jutsu even now? I guess I might as well end this fight already, all my hopes were for nothing, she isn't showing anything interesting during this fight...' Yuta thought with a bit of disappointment as he moved his kunai and easily deflected the shurikens.
Yuta didn't notice anything off about the shurikens beforehand, but as his kunai collided with a bunch of shurikens and deflected them one by one in quick and precise movements, Yuta immediately noticed a strange flowery scent in the air as he inhaled.
'What is this?!' Yuta's senses went on the high alert immediately, as any sudden change, even such as the sudden unexpected scent, in most cases it was a signal that something is wrong, that some jutsu was probably being used, and Yuta had no idea what it does.
'The scent, it appeared after I deflected the shurikens, the shurikens must've brought it to me, are they being coated in it? Is it a poison of some sort? An airborne poison?' Yuta's mind quickly analyzed the situation, 'Am I already being affected by this poison?.'
Yuta glanced at one of the shurikens that landed not far away from his feet, 'It is wet!' Yuta noticed, 'It is indeed coated in some kind of liquid, a poison most likely. Is this poison has to get into my blood through a wound for it to work, or is it the kind that could affect me by just me inhaling some of its particles that were spread in the air after the collision?'
Yuta concentrated on his own feelings and monitored any changes inside his own body with full alertness. At the same time his left free hand dived into his pouch and pulled out a universal poison antidote pill, and Yuta immediately swallowed it. From the moment he deflected the shurikens to the moment he swallowed the pill, didn't even a full second had passed, as his mind was working at a high speed.
"Don't bother." Keiko said with gloat as she stopped her attack and stood still without a hurry, "This poison of mine is special. It's not something that a universal antidote could neutralize, and you are already affected by it..."
'Ah, as I thought then.' Yuta calmly concluded as he heard Keiko's words, 'But what exactly does her poison do? The universal antidote pills of the Leaf village are very thorough and potent, they neutralize a wide variety of lethal poisons and effects... And lethal blows are prohibited here, that naturally includes lethal poisons, so her poison is likely not lethal. Could I withstand its effects until the fight is over?'
Yuta's mind was working fast and calm, he wasn't panicking just because of some poison. His knowledge about poisons is not very extensive, but it was a big subject during his Academy studies, so he still knew a lot about poisons.
And the thing he was counting on right now, is that such poison that could affect a person from just some airborne particles like that, without the need to be delivered into his bloodstream through a wound, all Yuta's knowledge about poisons dictates that such a poison can't be very potent. And with rules and restrictions during the Chunin Exams, this poison can't be a lethal one either.
That means that he still didn't lose the match just yet, and that he still could win it. And even if he doesn't, the time-travel option was always available, so Yuta didn't panic even in the slightest.
Although just the thought of being possibly forced into a time-travel by this kunoichi had irritated Yuta quite a lot... He was underestimating her and all other participants up until now, so the idea of being defeated by one of them was quite unpleasant and irritating for Yuta.
"You are awfully calm for a kid that already as good as dead." Keiko said with a sneer, "Or is it just an act, a brave facade to disguise how terrified you are right now?"
Next instant Yuta felt how the effects of the poison finally surfaced. Yuta felt how his entire body was suddenly being assaulted by intense pain. All his pain receptors and nerves had screamed in pain all at once.
While Yuta remained standing, his brows furrowed and some sweat started to form on his face and his breathing hastened.
"Do you feel it yet? Soon you will be screaming in agony and wishing that you were dead! That what you get by looking down on me, you arrogant brat! I initially wanted to keep this poison for the finals, but now you are going to suffer from it because you dared to look down on me!" Keiko said loudly in dark satisfaction as she noticed Yuta's hastened breathing.
...
While Yuta stood still for a few more seconds while monitoring his physical state and feeling all of the intense pain further intensifying, he thought with bewilderment, 'Is that it? Just some pain? She hyped up her "special" poison so much just for that? I'm not some weak-minded Genin, you know, I'm not going to collapse from just some pain...'
Yuta was somewhat disappointed after experiencing the full effect of Keiko's poison on his body. The pain was intense, it was almost blinding, but he could still move and think somewhat rationally, it didn't incapacitate him, far from it. Although Yuta felt a strong sense of annoyance and irritation about that some wannabe-Chunin kunoichi dared to subject him to so much pain just like that.
What Yuta overlooked and didn't fully understood at that point, is that this amount of pain should've outright incapacitated any Chunin and even some of the less hardened Jonins.
The countless time-travels had diluted his sense of pain and other sensory feelings from his body to a great degree, making him feel like his whole ninja life is more like a videogame. He was used to ignore and outright dismiss pain and other unpleasant feelings like exhaustion, treating those more like a character stat values on the screen instead of something real.
He even experienced being killed a few times, and after coming back from such states after he was a mere moments before dying completely, as if nothing happened, that incidents had also warped his perception of the reality quite a lot, making him treat his physical body as something disposable and infinitely replenishable, further increasing his anomalous pain tolerance to the outright crazy degrees.
And by now, even extreme pain like this, it was just a background noise for Yuta. It was not like Yuta had trained to resist pain like other ninjas do.
It was more like his whole perception of reality had warped by the usage of the time-travel to a degree where any physical pain and even lethal injuries of his physical body was now perceived by Yuta as nothing more than a character stat values on the screen of a videogame he was playing.
He could restore the previous state of his physical body at any moment by the time-travel, and so the importance of pain had gradually become something insignificant in his mind over time.
As another ten seconds passed without Yuta showing anything else but some sweat and a somewhat hastened breathing, Keiko finally snapped from her gloating and her expression gradually changed into shock and disbelief as she shouted, "How can this be? How are you still standing?! You should be experiencing an unimaginable amount of pain right now!"
"It's just some pain, what so special about it?" Yuta replied coldly, "You intend to stand there forever? If so, then it's my turn to make a move..."
--- AN ---
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