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In the early hours of the meeting, when most people were yet to awaken, Takuma stretched and warmed up in a dirt training field. He expected to come to dislike them after the second assassination attempt on his life, but as it turned out, his loving, abusive relationship with the training facilities where he regularly busted his ass was overpowering.
A few metres from him, a hungover Anko had a curved back and hunched shoulders with her half-moon eyes glazed in lethargy, no doubt that she would be asleep within seconds of her lying on the ground beneath her feet.
They had gotten together to spar.
"Are you ready?"
And the one to referee their spar was Jōnin Kurenai Yuhi. At their level, having a referee was essential. There was an official statistic about shinobi deaths during spars without appropriate supervision.
"Uh-huh," Anko said, clearing her throat. She straightened her back and raised her hand behind her head to tie her hair with the elastic hair band around her waist.
Takuma nodded and pulled out his sword from its scabbard.
She eyed it momentarily. "Are you any good with that?"
"You can find out," he replied.
A lazy smirk grew on her lips. She gave a short nod to Kurenai, who warned both of them to get ready before chucking a kunai into the air between them. There was not a hint of hesitation between them as both rushed towards the other the moment the sharpened metal hit the ground.
Takuma was faster and readied his sword; he planned to overwhelm her from the moment of first contact and not let go. Anko brought her hand forward, and Kurenai's kunai shot up into her hand as though she had used the Hidden Sand's Magnetic Release bloodline limit. Only to immediately realise that it was a chakra string. She dipped into her weapons pouch with her other hand and flung several kunai above their heads. There was no time to think about the move as they clashed into contact. He stuck to his plan and slashed his sword with power. Anko's grip tightened around the kunai as their blades screeched against each other, only to have the kunai stripped from her hand.
He reset his position and sword to attack his unarmed opponent, but she snatched two kunai out of the air and continued her attack without giving him a chance to overturn the momentum. She stabbed them down at his shoulders, forcing him to block them with the flat of his blade. She stepped even closer to decrease the space available for him to swing his sword, but Takuma skipped back before she could stab him in the side with her kunai.
One of the kunai that were still in the air fell behind her, and she kicked it back up with her Achilles, all the while staring at him with her chin raised a hair.
It was entirely performative and thus completely unnecessary.
She was playing with him.
Before he could even get offended by it, she chucked both of her kunai at him. She didn't pull her hands back to gather force; instead, she flicked them with just her wrists, thus catching him by faint surprise. As he deflected them with his sword, she was already signing hand seals.
Two orbs of fire bloomed in her palms.
He instantly recognised the jutsu. It was among her favourites and a staple.
Fire Release: Twin Flame Whips
With a jerk of her arms, the orbs turned into fiery whips that instantly scorched the ground they touched.
He instantly stabbed his sword and weaved his own set of hand seals.
Yang Release: Fire Dragon Scales
Takuma's skin wriggled like a pit of worms, as though it would burst, before turning darker and drier until his skin had taken the appearance of aggressive reptilian scales resembling those of a dragon.
She grabbed the kunai in the air with a whip and swung it around, building speed and power, before throwing it at him. It was only a distraction as she rushed at him, and she was faster than before. By the time he side-stepped, she was already in range—or at least her whips were in range. One of them latched onto the sword, dousing him in the scorching heat. A toothy grin stretched across her face as she pulled. And to his surprise, his feet skid forward. He was
To his surprise, his feet skid forward, digging into the dirt as he tried to resist and keep his balance. This is ridiculous, he thought. He was the one doing all the training with weighted gear, so how was she this strong?
She swung her other whip that he deftly avoided while jerking the whip wrapped around his sword to pull her off balance before grabbing the second whip and pulling it with all of his power. Even if she was strong, he was stronger.
"Oh?" Anko uttered as she briefly went airborne. In that moment, the whip around the sword loosened.
Takuma zoomed forward, leaving behind a burst of dirt in his wake. Whips worked wonders at a distance, but the moment the enemy came in close, they lost all of their advantage. However, he knew that she already had a workaround to that limitation. Anko flicked her wrist, and the long, fiery whips disappeared into black smoke and reappeared in the form of a pair of riding whips. She spun in mid-air and hit the flat of his sword with both of her crops. A blast of hot, whistling fire swallowed him. He held his breath and forced his swing forward to throw her back.
He didn't pursue her and leapt back instead. The dragon scales were fuming with white smoke, and when he looked at the palm he had used to grab the whip, the scales had turned completely black, on the verge of crumbling.
A C-rank Fire Release ninjutsu had done this much damage against a jutsu handcrafted to be resistant to heat, when not long ago, she had used the same jutsu to train and temper Fire Dragon Scales during his preparation for learning the Shadow Clone Jutsu.
She had become absurdly strong in a short period of time.
Takuma gritted his teeth as he tossed his sword aside and weaved hand seals.
Water Release: Spirit Water Wave
He aimed the water globe forward and dumped the entire load of water bullets towards Anko, who had just recovered. The drowsiness was no longer visible in her eyes as she weaved hand seals—while the fires from the crops gathered and wrapped around her forearms—and slammed her hands onto the ground.
Earth Release: Ram Head
A curved wall with a figure of a ram's head on the outer surface slid up from the ground. Some bullets were blocked while others drilled through. He tried to look through the holes and caught sight of her clothes. He immediately sped forward while gathering chakra in his arms, when a gust of wind swept against him.
Anko shot up high into the sky, air propelling her upwards. She wove another set of hands and clasped them together. Her spine curved as air filled her diaphragm with air and chakra before spitting out the concoction that sparked into fire just outside her mouth.
A burning mass of fire descended upon him, covering his vision.
A B-rank ninjutsu?
No, this was still C-rank—just pushed to its furthest limits.
Takuma hastily weaved hand seals and pushed his hands into the ground,
Earth Release: Earthen Dome
The mass hit the dome and then spread out, dousing a large portion of the dirt field in a sea of fire. Inside the dome, Takuma felt the flames eat through the earth and the chakra that flowed through it until they stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief before immediately going into another set of hand seals for Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage to escape from beneath the dome because he knew that Anko would target him with the dome the moment he stepped out.
But just as he completed the hand seals, the dome was ripped open, and Anko, with a smile full of sadistic energy, grabbed him as he was already halfway sinking into the ground, pulled him out and threw him into the air before leaping after him with the fire around her forearms reformed into her weapons—a long whip and riding crop each.
Still stunned from having his jutsu interrupted halfway when he wasn't expecting it, Takuma was a heartbeat late to gather himself in the air. He rotated himself to face Anko, only to get hit by the long, fiery whip that wrapped around him and strapped his arms to his body, taking them out of the equation. She knew that Takuma's most powerful weapons were his two arms.
The already damaged dragon scales began to scorch under the whips. The heat began to penetrate his body and burn!
"Urgh!" Takuma gritted his teeth and pushed through. With his arms out, he gathered chakra into his leg—one strong, properly placed kick could be his ticket out of the situation.
But then Anko pulled on him with her whip as they were both mid-air, further closing in the distance between them, throwing off his calculations.
As they met in the air, Takuma let go of his conscious thoughts and pulled from the subconscious, letting his instincts guide him. He struck out at the same time as she did with her crop—but at the same time, Anko wrapped the remaining length of her whip around the incoming kick and pulled once again, throwing it off course. Instead of making contact with her body, it whiffed in the air.
The last thing Takuma saw was the crop made from compressed flames hitting his face and Anko's grinning face of pleasure behind it.
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"… What happened to her?" Takuma asked after waking up in a few minutes. He stared at Anko, who had found a patch of grass and weeds in the fringes of the dirt field and was resting there.
She was stronger and faster than he remembered when they had last sparred. Her ninjutsu had become abnormally stronger—if it was just Twin Flame Whips, he could've understood it because it was her favourite ninjutsu, but all of her jutsu felt like they were doped with steroids. And then she had shown ninjutsu from three different releases—he knew she could use Fire Release and Earth Release, but Wind Release had been a first, which itself wasn't surprising because he also, technically, knew ninjutsu from three releases—but the way she used them seemed far too natural.
He wanted to know how she had improved so much.
"She's going through a very important part of her journey as a kunoichi," Kurenai said. She sat on a boulder beside him and continued when he looked at her. "Her understanding of chakra is evolving. Everything you saw today is because of that."
"As in advanced chakra training?" he asked. Shape and nature manipulation would indeed answer how her ninjutsu had become so much stronger. She was pulling much more out of the chakra and the ninjutsu.
"You can say that, but it's more than that," Kurenai smiled in a way that said it was okay for him not to understand. "For us shinobi, everything we do is tied to chakra. All of our shinobi arts directly depend on chakra as the foundation. If your understanding of chakra develops, everything else is positively affected as well… What you're seeing from her is a rapid advancement in her understanding of that foundation."
It even affected her physique. Chakra enhanced physical strength and conditioning training. As the understanding of chakra increased, so did the benefits from physical training. It was among the reasons why weighted gear had fallen out of fashion—shinobi would rather focus on developing their understanding of chakra and then reap the benefits that came with it.
"Is she doing anything particular to get this evolution?" Takuma asked. He planned to ask Anko as well, but Kurenai was a jōnin, so she was bound to have some higher-level insight into the topic.
"Well, the biggest thing is that she's trying now," Kurenai smiled as she gazed at her friend. "I think you know it, but she hadn't really been trying for the longest time…" Takuma nodded. It was rare for Anko to talk about her past, but they had had a conversation about it. "But ever since she returned from the war, the fire that was extinguished was relit. It took some time, but she has managed to ditch years of bad habits—most of them…"
"She does like to party," Takuma chuckled.
Kurenai nodded with a sigh. "That girl is a genius. If she had never stopped, maybe…" she sighed again, "no, perhaps it wouldn't have made any difference… Anyway, this is the result of her talent meeting effort."
Takuma smiled. While he was a little frustrated that she had pulled away from him, even though he had been busting his ass to his limit, he was happy for her because he truly felt that she was happier than before.
"…I guess I just need to work harder," he sighed. "But you said it's an important point in her life. What did you mean by that?"
"Because it's special. Her understanding of chakra is reaching a level only a very few manage to attain," Kurenai smiled, proud of her friend. "There are many names for it—enlightenment, epiphany, awakening, bodhi—but to put it simply, her understanding of chakra is reaching that of a jōnin."
"Huh?"
"It's an evolution. If she's successful, she'll pass the biggest hurdle to becoming a jōnin."
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Author's Note: I'm traveling for a convention next week, which will eat into my writing time. So, I'll only be able to write 2 chapters—which I will be WITHHOLDING because I plan to release 5 chapters the week after because it'd read better together.
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The link is in the synopsis!