sunshineverse | At what point does poking the Hokage with pointy things become treason? [Closed]

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At what point does poking the Hokage with pointy things become treason? [Closed]

Who: Sakura Haruno and The Confusing Hokage
Where: Some training field not taken up by self-destructive ninja
When: July 4th, late morning
Notes: Sparring with the Hokage is probably its own special kind of punishment.

She'd spent some time the day and night before debating over whether she should show up at all. Even though it was clear by the time she left the Hokage office that his invitation wasn't expressly to knock her down from somewhere she wasn't, she didn't necessarily want to fail to meet an unreasonable expectation he had of her either.

She was also a little concerned over the talk of Jounin exams, given that she'd be obligated to prepare for those instead of doing...other...important things she would otherwise do (which mostly involved not whatever horrible genjutsu training Shisui would line up for her, or grueling kenjutsu programs Shirakumo-sensei would). Just not arriving would dissuade him of any ideas he had about that.

It was a distinct possibility she considered. But then, avoiding Pein just seemed to encourage him. If she just did her best and showed him her actual level of skill, it was probably a better deterrent than avoiding him completely.

...Besides that, there was the conversation she'd had with Shisui the night before. And...she couldn't think about that kind of thing before going to test her skills, but...if she didn't try her best at least this one time, she'd probably disappoint him. There weren't many people she cared all that much about disappointing, but he was one of those she did care about.

So. Keeping in mind the instructions on the note she'd received some time after the conversation with the Hokage (perhaps when he finally realized he hadn't given her any specific instructions on when and where), she made her way to the indicated training field slightly before the time he'd said to arrive.

Even if she arrived on time and he arrived early it would have been making the Hokage wait, so it seemed smarter to her to be there first. Opening up a day right after getting scolded for omitting information on reports by being rude was probably not the best idea.

In the end, it all made sense to her, even if she wondered whether she should have brought a weapon less sharp and potentially dangerous.

If he wanted to use some sort of training blade instead, then he could just bring them. He did, after all, have access to the entire armory of the village.

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She would have wanted to question how he thought she didn't take the Hokage seriously, but to do so would mean taking her concentration off of finding a way to land a hit on him (without allowing him to catch her unprepared) and shifting on to speaking instead. He was clearly able to do so, but that was merely an indication of the gap in their abilities.

Attacking from the ground was absolutely impractical while the target was moving through the trees, and so far it had taken much too long each time. A mud web--favored in tree movement--was useless if the target saw it form. If she had more time to set things up, she could use the trees against him. She could also try a counter strike now that he seemed to be advancing, but until he made a directly aggressive move for her to counter, it would be a dangerous gamble to try to guess what he did.

She sheathed her sword briefly, to allow better movement of her hands. Her best, strategically sound move, was to burn the extra chakra to build her own earth, rather than wait on existing earth to his level.

She leapt to another tree, this one not as far from him as she could have gone (maybe it would surprise him, mostly it should give him less time to react) and formed quick seals that...She would be more bothered showing, if the Uchiha were a true enemy and not her leader. Ordinarily, it was a jutsu used to summon an emergency shield or a grip like the one that exploded.

In this case, the 'arms' that erupted from her shoulders and lanced out at him (disconnecting halfway so that they could be propelled toward him rather than potentially snare her in place) ended in wickedly sharp spikes.

...So it was a technique much too deadly for an ordinary spar. But he'd brushed aside or dodged every other jutsu or move she'd made so far. Impaling him to death was extremely unlikely. Instead, it might actually force him to react, instead of dismissing it.

His eyes widened a little, and he cursed, immediately flying into seals as he realized what that jutsu had just turned into, which was not what he'd expected at all, definitely. Nothing seemed to happen immediately though, and he grabbed a pair of kunai, deflecting earth away with one as he threw himself to the side.

A moment later, he brought his fingers to his lips and waved it toward her, raining a cascade of fireballs toward her. His tone was breathless, and he was finally humming with a touch of adrenaline, alert. He was grinning. "I like it. Keep going."

She should probably feel pleased with herself that she'd apparently surprised him (and earned a counter attack, at that) but...that was still a difficult thing to do mid-spar. Maybe later.

Quickly, a thick shield of rock spread out from her upturned palm to deflect and protect against the rain of fire. It didn't help the heat from the fire, but being slightly singed by the heat was better than being burned by the fire, and there was no way she'd have found a safe branch in time.

Plus, it gave her some freedom to prepare another jutsu while hidden by the half-dome of rock. When the shield crumbled into pebbles, both of her hands were extended outward again (immediately adjusting her aim for where he actually was) and a spray of kunari-shaped stone shot upward at him from her hands (it wasn't that impressive, but they were designed to violently explode into sharp fragments of rock when they impacted anything, so there was that).

Nope. Clearly he was intent on playing the dodging game, dropping into the ground again and making a straight line right for her, not coming up as he tried to figure out where above him she was based on her last position before coming back up.

She was doing better now, actually coming at him with intent to harm, and that was exactly what he'd been trying to get her to do from the start.

She wasn't surprised he dodged her. In truth,she was confident if she actually succeeded at using her deadlier jutsu on him she'd end up in a prison cell, rather than in line for a promotion.

Unfortunately she was stuck, because he wasn't giving her the leeway to use her less deadly jutsu, and she couldn't exactly use genjutsu instead. Not only would it not work on someone like him, but that would give away the nature of her training with Shisui to the Hokage.

Him dropping to the ground was to her advantage, at least. She jumped backward off of the branch she'd been on, to increase the distance between them and so that she would land on the ground eventually, and flung a kunai down to the ground slightly ahead of him.

He could dodge it if he wanted to. When the kunai connected with the ground, the earth would explode outward, shredding apart in (what she felt was) an impressively large and deep fissure in every direction. The epicenter was from the kunai, and the edges were still jagged (if at least sheer), but...as a whole, the long distance version of that jutsu was much improved by using a kunai as a makeshift chakra blade like Sasuke had suggested.

An actual chakra blade would have been more effective, but she didn't see the point when the move was imperfect. Still, there was a chance she might catch him in the sudden sinkhole by surprise. If he did fall in it, she'd land on the ground only a moment or two later to seal the earth around him again.

If not she'd...deal with whatever he did instead. Yes.

Well, shit. That drew him up short, and he was glad she hadn't hit him since she couldn't see where he was. Still, that meant he had to go deeper instead of heading for the surface to avoid the damage, going for the treeline instead of trying to sense her out. It would be safer to come up out of the ground over there, and she could just wait while he considered how to get her back to using her blade.

If she could have seen him, or were she a sensory type and able to sense where in the ground he'd been, she could have aimed closer to him and perhaps gotten him to fall for the trap. Sadly, she'd only been able to guess at where he was (although perhaps 'guess' was too kind a word for the calculation that went into it, but it was the word she'd use for it nevertheless - she hadn't caught him in the trap, so it was hardly a correct one anyway).

It only took a moment's glance to know the trap had failed, which meant she'd abandoned her advantage of the trees for nothing, but she wasn't terribly concerned. She was an earth user, so if he was traveling underground somewhere (she couldn't be sure, but she didn't see him above ground anywhere, so she had to assume that for now) she could mitigate the damage and effectiveness of most of the techniques he could use from their respective positions.

So she stood in place for a few moments longer, scanning the area for any sign of him above ground and calculating whether it would be wise to start splitting the ground repeatedly until he surfaced (if they were in an open field she would, but with these trees it would be dangerous to both of them and also be doing damage she couldn't personally repair to Konoha's land). More importantly, what attack should she be prepared to counter or defend against?

And of her own, how would she actually land a single attack?

...She didn't actually have an answer for that one yet. Normally, she'd consider it an impossibility, the hokage being far beyond the level of a chuunin like herself, but in battle (as she'd come to consider it, as they were both using dangerous jutsu on each other) that was never an acceptable method of thought.

Her eventual decision was to leap back into the trees. It made little defensive difference, but it would increase the chances of her spotting him first...and dropping things on people was almost always more effective than simply throwing things at them.

He was hiding in the trees, and spotted her movement off to his right, edging around the tree to make sure she didn't see him. He didn't use Genjutsu to do it, just stealth, intent and focused as he used hands and knees to scale the tree, feeding enough chakra to climb and using the tree to keep her from seeing him, plastering his body against it as he worked out the best way to get to her without being spotted.

That had always been his best skill with ambush warfare, and he moved with careful stealth from three to tree, picking his way toward her, forgoing the use of his hands for seals as he got near enough to carefully move through one of the lone water jutsu he had the precision with to slam her with it from behind and hopefully knock her out of the tree.

She didn’t expect him to attack her from the trees. That made it impossible to properly dodge or parry his attack. She simply couldn't. This was some sort of spar, however, not a ninja game. Getting hit didn't necessarily mean she had to have lost.

Thus, while the water jutsu contacted, she didn’t simply fall. Most ninja were only so skilled at the body flicker tactic that they could only substitute one thing for another in the moment before impact, while the opponent was distracted. Substitution also tended to work best to make something not hit someone, too, in fairness. That didn't make it useless after contact, though.

The jutsu knocked her off of her feet as expected. Rather than fall to the ground though, she summoned a burst of speed and chakra, hastily leaving a chunk of rock as a substitution anchor (she had no time for anything else) and herself zipped into another tree.

She couldn't be sure where his attack had come from, and she was smarting from impact still. The 'falling' her would dispel in a moment or two like any substitution even if the hokage was ever fooled to start with. She didn't have time for any kind of well thought out counter attack, nor the focus to pick a good reaction jutsu. Instead she fell back on a more basic jutsu she rarely used.

There was no telling exactly where he'd was, so she struck with an area jutsu. Wind bullets. Shirakumo had wind affinity. She was never very good with wind, it being completely unrelated to earth. Most of Shirakumo's techniques she'd modified to earth instead. Basic wind jutsu, though, some of those she could do. And in this case, it was faster and easier than a rock spray from the trees. That and, even if the jutsu was weaker, it was something so rarely used by her (due to its weakness and her ineptitude with it) it might catch the one who read all of her combat reports off guard.

Edited 2014-09-26 07:02 (UTC)

Fuck. It was like having to deal with Naruto all over again. At least the kid had the courtesy of yelling his wind attacks half the time so he didn't end up having to dodge something he couldn't see without warning. Well, okay then. Fine.

He hid against the bark of the tree as he carefully sorted out how to handle this, then sent a Kagebunshin down into the ground to come at her from the other side with a Katon. That ought to help him get her out of the damn trees. Though if she stayed in them much longer he'd just have to come at her with a blade and work from there.

Sakura tended to do her best not to use jutsu she had to shout. If she did, they were usually diversions to distract people away from the actual threat. Or it was a genjutsu they already had no hope of escaping from. The point was: as a ninja she thought it was self-defeating to loudly inform her enemy of her movements.

The katon from the opposite side was something of a surprise, but just having been attacked from behind a moment ago, she reacted better to it, deploying a mud-net to deflect the flame from her directly. It didn't protect the tree, but if he was concerned about the trees he shouldn't be throwing around fire jutsu while amidst the trees.

She wasn't sure which of many techniques he was using to continue to attack from behind her, but she had no choice but to use the jutsu again. Air bullets, sooner or later she'd hit, and then she might be able to launch an offensive instead of defend again.

He crept up on her while she was fussing with the clone, then pulled a kunai and sprang at her, just slow enough she'd be able to defend or dodge instead of being stabbed.

Edited 2014-09-27 03:02 (UTC)

If he really wanted her to draw her sword again, he succeeded. While she was at first distracted by attacking his clone, a sound (or a shift in the air, she didn't dwell on it long enough to say) alerted her to his presence behind her, just soon enough for her to react.

She spun in place, swaying back only as much as necessary, and brought up her sword to block the kunai strike, rather than attempt to weave another jutsu in time. It was probably for the best he came at her from behind, rather than above or below though. Even at his necessary closeness, the time it took for her to turn and deflect his attack allowed her to remember to look down, at his chest rather than his bespectacled eyes. She'd like to think she had a chance of resisting the sharingan even if she made eye contact...but standing on a tree branch staring down a kunai was not the time for a practical test of that.

He laughed lowly at that and pressed the attack, springing into swift movement. He might not be Shisui, but he'd learned speed from handling a Hyuuga and sparring his sensei. He wasn't slow, not at all, but he didn't feed all that in, not just yet. No, at the moment he was pressing to see how fast she was and stepping up to stress it.

Was he under the impression she wasn’t quick? Her mentor might not have been the Yellow Flash, but both were renowned in their own way when it came to speed...and she also had an Inuzuka teammate. Lagging behind by being slow wasn't acceptable.

Practical sparring, without express intent to practice genjutsu or even any clear guidelines about what to expect from him, was somewhat more difficult than her usual spars. Matching him purely with kenjutsu was a possibility at this point...but difficult when she had to keep in mind not to slip and meet his gaze.

She turned to a technique her captain had inspired. It was more forceful with wind, but earth had its benefits too. She already ran chakra through the sword to lighten and strengthen it, so it was easy to change the shape to find it to a more visible sort of jutsu. From her hand and down along her blade, quickly hardening mud oozed out, curling around the kunai blade she'd just contacted with again. He could release the kunai and back away, or he could get swallowed up by swift-moving earth and turned into a statue. His choice, really.

He did neither, instead flipping another Kunai out and lunging over the blade to slash at her, using more of his speed. Inuzuka had nothing on Kyuuga speed, and it would be a mistake to think otherwise. Besides. Even his Hyuuga was nothing on someone whose speed was based on teleporting, and that was what he was up against. Shisui was another animal, and if the girl wanted to cripple herself by not paying attention and underestimating him, she was going to come away wounded.

Ordinarily, she'd staunchly support her sensei or her mentor on their speed verses a shinobi not known for his speed. She was neither of them and certainly not known for...anything, however, so which of the three was fastest was irrelevant: the Hokage was clearly quicker than her, and not because he was inherently better as Hokage. He just was faster than her.

He was too quick for her to block, but she was able to dodge...at the cost of throwing herself from the branch. Better to fight falling, or lose the high ground entirely, than take a kunai wound like that. She grit her teeth in frustration as she fell, blade held up defensively, shedding the captured kunai and waiting for another strike. If only he weren't Uchiha. He was faster, stronger, better skilled...but she could level the playing field, maybe even secure a quick and efficient victory, if only she could use her genjutsu.

Against a sharingan (unable to even attempt to use her anti-sharingan training) it was as pointless as trying to land a conventional hit on him.

It was so very frustrating.

...There must be something she could do, even if she was outmatched.

He didn't get why she wasn't fighting to her fullest, and it was irritating him. He pressed the attack more aggressively, following her down and checking himself shy of doing her serious harm to try and prompt her out of her overthinking.

And he could tell she was overthinking, one couldn't teammate Kakashi and not know the look of it. He et into a flurry of strikes with his weapons, making her defend.

They obviously had a breakdown in communication somehow. She'd come into the fight with the expectation that he'd be testing her skill with the blade, but instead she found an increasingly agitated Hokage demanding something of her that she couldn't give.

Whatever it was he wanted.

She caught the flurry of weapons with her own blade, quick and efficient, but she was stuck in a defensive posture. At the start of the fight, she'd expected it would be easier to counter his attacks than attempt to land an attack while he was waiting for it, but--nothing she did was landing. All she really had left was genjutsu and attacks that, even if she didn't hit him dead on, would seriously injure or kill.

He couldn't expect her to use those against him. It went against her nature to try to kill someone who was on her side.

Maybe, if she just...

If she could get him to be distracted or hold still or--

This close she could tell even through the goggles he didn't have his sharingan activated. (Not that she'd meant to look but--the angle made it impossible not to see in passing) Still, it did give her an idea. A bad idea, but something she was willing to try. As close as he was, it would be almost impossible to craft a counter jutsu in time to prevent it from happening at all.

Chakra flared along her blade once more in excess of what was required to reinforce the blade, but this time it wasn't in the format of a mud trap. Instead, she used it as an easy conduit, her blade, his blade, his chakra network. It would be much quicker than the mud attack, and allow her to activate at least a simple genjutsu--like infinite fall--without taking the time to make complex hand signs (which she didn't have time for) or attempting to get the distance that would allow her to form complex hand signs (which would allow him to prepare and resist)

It was a thing she learned from her mentor: genjutsu at its most basic was seizing control of your opponent's chakra network and manipulating ot to change their perception. At its simplest, only contact of chakra and chakra network was necessary to activate one. Complicated hand signs were for transferring chakra long distance, and for crafting complex genjutsu that knotted up chakra networks in specific and difficult to detect or escape manners.

She didn't need difficult though, just moments to attack--

His genjutsu may not be the absolute best skill he had, but he was someone who had a fairly tight reign on his chakra and noticed the second something went odd. He broke off, kicking her away as he swiftly sorted out what the feeling was and dismissed it.

"Impressive, but you're still thinking too much." It was a murmur, and he landed, on guard as he made sure she hadn't done anything that would stick before trying to segue back into attack.

Yes, well, she certainly had little hope of her genjutsu doing more than briefly stunning the Uchiha. Or any Uchiha, unless she used techniques that she couldn't freely use on any Uchiha not Shisui. A moment was all that she hoped for. It was essentially all she'd gotten.

Still, the moment of distraction combined with his own effort of separating them was something. Not enough for any sort of attack, but enough to replace herself with an illusion and flicker away without being observed. The illusion was nothing more than that--although she'd been studying earth clones since Sasuke had mentioned the concept of solid clones on the trip to Nadeshiko Island, they weren't something she could create that quickly, and thus the figure could do nothing but appear to defend and then vanish as soon as he contacted it.

She, on the other hand, fled through the trees as far as she could manage before he'd realize she was gone. In a situation such as this, distance between them was desirable.

"It's hard to gauge your sword skills when you avoid using them you know. Still, good job on the sealless jutsu." He settled into a defensive stance, waiting. "Come on then."

...She was not within earshot, which was good, because it prevented unkind thoughts about her hokage. Instead she was at a distance, setting traps, both explosive paper and jutsu-based, mud nets, earth pits, one which involved encasing him in mud and then baking it into rock, and several deadlier traps.

Swordfighting was all well and good, but he had scolded her for not taking the fight seriously. Traps--hastily made as they must be--were her best chance against an opponent of his greatly superior skill. If she could immobilize or injure him, she could use a more heavily sign-dependent jutsu, and if she could slow or distract him, she could strike with her sword...but attacking him head-on, his way, was not a winning strategy. As she had discovered.

She could set all the traps she liked... but he wasn't leaving the clearing to come trip into them. If she didn't come back out in timely manner he'd just have to call the fight. So, he waited.

Well, she wasn't actually planning on him coming after her (though it would have been convenient). Once she was finished setting things up, she returned to about where she remembered him to be.

The point was for him to see her, but not just...approaching, so she did try to do that stealthily, searching for where he was, and once spotting him, sending a hail of earth spikes down at him. She doubted they would contact, but the point was mostly to get him to attack her again, so she could lead him into traps anyway.

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