Chapitre 130: CH_4.30 (130)
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———
.
Enomoto rubbed the back of his neck as he stood in front of the door. He took a deep breath before entering the room to be greeted by the crowd gathered to watch one of the rare events in the Ring— the debut of a newcomer in the ninjutsu category. It wasn't every day when the Ring allowed one of their fighters to enter the ninjutsu category. A "regular" ninjutsu category fight was rare enough, but when a new fighter debuted in the arena, people with time, money, and influence on their hands used the fights as an excuse to socialize. He looked around the area, and as expected, he recognized everyone he laid his eyes on—old shinobi with too much time on their hands and younger ones looking to network for their benefit. Enomoto wondered how many of them had actually come to watch the fight.
It was universally known that Tsubura's sense of taste was horrible, but it seemed that even the Ring's boss knew better than to force it upon his important guests. Tasteful music filled the room at an appropriate simmer so that people could converse without shouting; gorgeous civilian men and women served alcohol and food and to entertain if the patrons desired. The décor was kept simple and spacious, with enough seating to maximize practicality and comfort without excessive gaudiness, which Tsubura was known for.
Enomoto picked up a glass from a waiter and sedately walked through the room to see who he should talk to first. There was some time before the fight, and he might as well make small talk with some people.
He listened for the conversations in groups and found the one he could slip into easily.
"I heard this Scars is quite young. How young are we talking?" said a middle-aged man Enomoto recognized from the Hidden Leaf Mining Division, the governance office which handled mining activities that came directly under the purview of the Hidden Leaf.
None in the group seemed to know the answer. Enomoto saw his chance and seamlessly stepped in.
"I believe he's younger than fifteen," said Enomoto, garnering the group's attention. "They say he was thirteen when he started, and it has been a year since he began, so fourteen would be a good guess, but the management might have fudged the numbers to put attention on his young age— thus, fifteen or less."
In truth, Takuma was twelve and a half when he began. Being that young, Tsubura had decided to keep Scars' age vague in case someone "above ground," as Tsubura put it so eloquently: "tried to bullshit my position away from me!" In truth, the whispers Tsubura had asked his team to spread were that Scars was anywhere from thirteen to fifteen as to put Scars as someone who had at least one year as shinobi under his belt and not some green-as-grass rookie who had been duped into joining the Ring.
"And who might you be?" asked the man.
Enomoto smiled and introduced himself. "Chunin Enomoto, iryo-nin from the Medical Training Division."
Enomoto saw interest rise in their eyes when they heard that he was an iryo-nin. He smiled and continued to make small talk with them as any iryo-nin would. Never had his decision to pursue iryo-jutsu when he was a new genin let him down.
"What more can you tell us about this Scars fellow?"
He took a moment to spin a tale. "Not much is known about Scars as he never joined a team," a smart move given Takuma wanted to keep him as anonymous as one could be, "but I've heard a few things about Scars…"
The group physically leaned closer to him. Many looked down on gossip, but it held a strong power over people. There were few who didn't like to hear gossip. No one wanted to miss out on something others knew; it made them feel they were involved. And when people heard something interesting, they would pass it along regardless if they knew it to be true or not in an attempt to make them seem interesting and in-the-know.
"… It has only been a year since Scars appeared in the Ring arena, and he's about to make his debut ninjutsu category," which was highly unusual; usually, it took several years of hard work to reach the stage, "and because of that, it's believed that he's from a great clan tasked with conquering the Ring as soon as possible— and from the looks of it, he's doing well."
If it were anywhere else, the charm would've been if Scars hadn't been from a clan, but in the Ring, which didn't see clan shinobi ever, a fighter from a clan held a certain charm to it. Moreover, almost everyone in the room belonged to shinobi clans or families; the story of a clan shinobi reaching Ring's pinnacle at record speed established a sense of superiority over non-clan shinobi. He was simply telling the people what they would like to hear while chuckling inwardly, knowing Takuma was as far from a clan shinobi as possible.
The false gossip had its intended effect. They continued to look interested and now were looking pleased.
"Which clan?" asked a kunoichi.
"Nara or Yamanaka," replied Enomoto. They looked confused and interested, so he continued. "There have been several complaints against Scars about his use of chakra augmentations, so it was speculated that he's close to Akimichi Tsubura…"
"The boss?"
"…Indeed. But one look at Scars will tell anyone with half a brain that the boy isn't an Akimichi. So, who else could have Tsubura overlook so many complaints but someone strongly allied with Akimichi? Thus, Nara or Yamanaka. Personally, I think it's a Yamanaka. A motivated Nara, if one exists, would turn their eyes somewhere other than the Ring."
The group laughed in response.
"It seems the fight is about to begin," Enomoto commented as everyone turned towards the arena below. "Let's get seated."
He enjoyed networking, but today, he had come to see Takuma. Now that they had deepened their 'friendship,' Enomoto was more invested in Takuma than before, not to mention every Scars victory meant a bit more money into his pocket. It was chump change, but that change did build up.
"Chunin Enomoto, would you like to engage in some friendly betting?"
Enomoto looked towards the group. It didn't happen often, but he was out-ranked by everyone in the group. He could clearly see in it in their eyes that they were trying to have some fun at his expense, who wasn't part of their group. He wanted to laugh. They were looking down at him. He felt something inside him bubble up, telling him to wipe those smirks off their faces. It wasn't a pleasant feeling because he knew he couldn't do so.
"Since you seem to think so highly of this Scars fellow, are you willing to set"
He turned to look at the arena below; there stood Takuma donning his mask. He might have been the one to recruit Takuma into the Ring and had kept a check on his performance through the year, but when it came to personally watching the fights, he hadn't seen many. Knowing the results was one thing, but knowing the fine details of how said fights progressed was another.
It wasn't wise, he thought to himself. If he lost the bet, he would be humiliated.
'I should politely refuse and say… that I do… not partake in betting. I should refuse…' But with every passing moment, the smirks felt more and more like mocking smiles.
"Of course, I'm more than willing," Enomoto smiled, keeping the smile on his face, "Let's spice things up, shall we?"
He wanted to see those smirks wiped off their faces.
———
.
Down in the arena, Takuma focused on his breathing with his eyes closed. Tsubura had come to see him when he was getting changed, and just the look of the blob of a man's face was enough to anger him. No matter what Masaaki said about Akimichi's greatness, he knew one of them was a spoiled piece of horribly gamy meat.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The arena was bigger, and the cage was higher. There was only one ninjutsu category arena in the Ring due to the rarity of such fights. According to Tsubura, Takuma would have to wait for at least a month before he got a chance to participate in another ninjutsu category fight— and that was only if Takuma gave him more 2v1 fights, which Takuma was more than happy to give him.
Takuma resumed focus on his breathing. He needed to focus on the current fight instead of thinking about the next one.
The arena wasn't the only different thing about the ninjutsu category. Takuma looked down at the gear he was wearing. Due to the involvement of ninjutsu, the fighters were allowed a set of gear of their preference approved by the Ring. Takuma had chosen what he usually wore during the day.
In the moment, the chainmail draped over his torso felt like an unbreakable armor. He felt powerful.
"Are you ready, sir?" the fight referee asked him.
Takuma looked at the man with a strange expression hidden behind his mask. 'Sir?' But he nodded, nevertheless. He hadn't been called that before. The respect in the man's voice felt strange and foreign. The last time he had felt something similar was the gratitude from the villagers he had saved from bandits in the Land of Frost.
He shook the thought off his head and turned towards his opponent.
Viper. A tall and skeleton-like woman with a slightly hunched back and inky black hair that flowed beneath her butt. Her armor was lighter than his, which told Takuma that she was more concerned with her speed than protection. He noted down the observation for later.
But the most striking thing about her was her mask. Unlike the flat mask that most Ring fighters wore (including Takuma,) Viper wore a mask that was in the shape of a snake with a surface texture mimicking a snake's scales. It was stylized to suit her. The mask reminded him of another stylized mask he had seen before. Slash Baron, the leader of the Troupe, a famous team in the Ring, wore a stylized mask.
When a fighter won their first ninjutsu category fight, they were rewarded with a stylized mask as a sign of prestige.
If Takuma won today, he would be awarded a mask of his own.
———
.
The person Takuma had thought of had come to watch Takuma's first ninjutsu fight. In a private booth reserved for prestigious Ring fighters, a handful of them, all wearing stylized masks, sat to spectate the fight.
Among them was Slash Baron, sitting in the front. The other ninjutsu category fighters had left the seats around him empty. Most of them were active fighters, which meant they were genin— and the few who had been promoted to chunin, too, didn't dare sit near Slash Baron.
They could feel it. Even though they all wore stylized masks showcasing their status, the man sitting in the front was far beyond what they could handle. Their instincts as shinobi honed by numerous fights in the Ring told them that if Slash Baron wanted, he could kill all of them combined without breaking a sweat.
Which was why none of them said a thing about the woman Slash Baron had bought along with him, even though it was reserved for ninjutsu-category fighters.
"I didn't think I would be hearing about him so soon," said Slash Baron to the woman beside him. "He has progressed much faster than you anticipated."
"Faster than I anticipated? You had a different opinion?" the masked woman shot back.
Slash Baron shrugged. "I hadn't thought about him since I last saw him. I charged you to keep an eye on him for a reason."
The woman clicked her tongue.
Slash Baron chuckled before turning his eyes back to the arena.
'He has changed,' thought Slash Baron as he observed Scars in the arena. The fight hadn't started, but he could already tell from how Scars held himself to the progress the young shinobi had made.
He understood that Tsubura wouldn't have allowed Scars if he didn't think the latter wasn't ready. It meant that Scars had indeed progressed enough that he had a chance to fight in the ninjutsu-category against opponents who would use ninjutsu to tear their opponents down.
Slash Baron looked to the woman at his side, ""So, what has he been doing outside the Ring… Sango?"
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———
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The link is in the synopsis!
Chapitre 131: CH_4.31 (131)
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón @
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The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
Takuma had a particular way of initiating combat. He preferred giving his opponents the first move unless he knew beforehand that it would put him at a disadvantage. There was much to learn from how a person opened a fight. But if his opponent didn't grab the initiative he offered, Takuma would generally go for the first strike.
He intended to do the same with Viper. After a long-drawn introduction (every ninjutsu category fight was accompanied with extra fanfare), the announcer stepped out, and the moment the bell rang, Takuma walked towards the center of the arena. Viper followed the same, and the distance between them narrowed. When the distance was appropriate, Takuma offered an invitation by opening himself, giving Viper an opportunity to attack. It was walking the line between tempting and taunting— which he found was the most effective to get someone to attack you.
Viper's stance changed. She upped her speed a level, but didn't jump on the opportunity as many would. She had accepted the initiative but at her own pace. Level-headed, Takuma added a label to the woman.
Takuma equipped a kunai each in his hand; simultaneously, senbon appeared between Viper's fingers, which she launched with zero-point delay. Instinct took over as Takuma as he jumped to the side to evade the long needles. Senbon were annoyingly difficult to dodge at close range— they were fast, their small size made them difficult to block without a shield, and they could easily slip through gaps in armor when used by an expert.
Takuma jumped to the side with a dodge roll. He didn't stop and initiated another roll. A wise decision as another volley of senbon struck the space he had vacated. Using the momentum, he kicked himself to his feet, twisted to face Viper, and threw the kunai at her. He was one beat slower than her as she released her senbon before he threw his kunai.
Takuma dodged the senbon he could and used his sturdy arm vambrace to intercept those he could not. The sharp needles dug punctured pinholes into the leather but couldn't break skin due to the thickness and the tight wrapping beneath it. He breathed a sigh as he pulled the needles out before reequipping kunai.
Viper had effortlessly dodged the kunai. She wouldn't have been here if she wasn't able to. She grabbed one of Takuma's thrown kunai and charged for him.
The two clashed. Viper used her open hand to grab onto one of Takuma's hands, but their other hands clashed with their kunai's sparking. Near constant movement during battle was beaten into every shinobi, but the fights in the cage came to a still as only their arms moved in blurred motions of thrusts, stabs, and parries, trying to stab the other.
Takuma let go of the kunai in his grabbed hand and gripped Viper's wrist, pulling her down. With the posture disrupted, Takuma pushed her kunai-bearing away before stabbing down for the shoulder.
It was in that exact moment where Viper contorted her body in an eerie fashion. She let herself fall, getting herself completely out of the kunai's route, making Takuma miss.
She dropped the kunai and grabbed Takuma's arm with both arms, and used the momentum to pull him to the ground.
Takuma knew what would happen before Viper's limbs slid around his body to put him into a hold. He couldn't let that happen. Before Viper could solidify her hold, Takuma made an awkward move he wasn't used to. He concentrated his chakra into his elbow and thrust it back in an augmented strike. The pointy elbow hit her on the top of her arm, making her grip loosen, allowing him to slip out.
He bit his lip behind his mask. Punches, palm strikes, kicks, he could do— knee strikes were doable if he was in perfect posture— but elbow strikes were yet to be added to his augmented repertoire.
The pain in his elbow spiked when he moved it. It was by no means out-of-commission, and he could tell the pain would subside eventually on its own, but the fights were usually short enough that he wouldn't feel any noticeable difference until after. It was an annoyance that had the potential to be the deciding factor in his loss, but Takuma wasn't worried about it— only that he had been injured so soon after the start.
'I need to change the momentum.' The short exchange was filled with information Takuma could use from now on.
Moreover, unlike him, Viper had been in ninjutsu-category fights.
Takuma raised his hand, ignoring the pain in his elbow, and began forming hand seals.
It was time to use his advantage known as the unknown.
———
.
In the VIP fighter booth, Slash Baron leaned forward in interest as Takuma weaved hand seals. "Oh, he's using it already? That's fast… I guess that's to be expected by a rookie like him."
From personal experience as a spectator and participant in ninjutsu-category fights (and numerous skirmishes on real battlefields,) shinobi were stringent with using ninjutsu. Chakra management was a very real and very important factor in attaining a victory— which was why shinobi had to play a very careful game of speculation on how and when to expend chakra so as to not run out of it before the opponent. Failure to do so was one of the leading causes of death on the battlefield.
"Isn't it fine? The fights here end up fairly quickly. They don't have to save up."
Slash Baron glanced at Sango. She was one of his several informants inside the Hidden Leaf. Sango was special due to her position and association. Not only was she an apprentice to Chunin Enomoto, who was a fairly big player in the drug business inside the Hidden Leaf, but she also worked in the Ring because of Enomoto's position.
Initially, he approached her and converted her so they could keep an eye on Enomoto as he began to make moves and waves, but her role had also expanded into being an observer inside the Ring. Slash Baron liked working with her. She was good at her job, had close to no bad habits or vices which interfered with her work, and their relationship as handler-and-informant was fairly straightforward, which spared them from tip-toeing around each other with the exhausting thoughts of being betrayed.
Moreover, she was a pretty damn good healer. If she weren't working under Enomoto, who only offered Ring professional exposure instead of hospitals, research facilities, or field missions as other iryo-nin teachers did, Sango would've been already close to being promoted to chunin. Despite that, from what he knew, her promotion was at most one year away.
The thought of her promotion made him sigh internally. Her promotion meant the end of their relationship as it would mean she would no longer apprentice under Enomoto and would also leave the Ring. Their deal was that in return for spying on Enomoto, they would pull strings and put her into a position of her preference after her promotion.
He had agreed, thinking that it would be a while until that day arrived, if ever, but who would've thought that she would come out as her own as an iryo-nin? After all, chunin iryo-nin were another grade of rare. In fact, if Slash Baron was still in his current place of occupation for the next few years, he was not against recommending her as a potential recruit for the division. That's how good he believed she was.
"Habits sneak when you're not paying attention," Slash Baron said as he observed the fight.
Arcs of lightning crackled out of Takuma's hands, accumulating in his palm before shooting toward Viper. 'That's pathetic,' he thought. It was too weak. If that was the best Takuma could do, he might as well stick to the style he used weapons-category.
He continued, "For Ring fighters, a majority of their combat experience comes from the Ring. Experience is good, but you have to be careful how it affects you." He looked up at the cage around the arena. "The size of the arena, the cage restricting the space, absence of armor, all of these things mold combat styles more than people realize they do. Real life is different. The ground isn't always so flat and even, spectators don't drown every other sound, and the opponents aren't always alone— once you get comfortable, those come biting back. Anyone who stays in Ring long enough participates in hundreds of fights without armor. Eventually, everyone realizes that due to the lack of any armor, being aggressive is the best practice, as one well-placed hit can change the direction of the fight and end it quickly. They forget that it's not like that in the field— they become reckless, and when that one momentum-changing hit doesn't pan out, they expose themselves to a deadly strike by a prepared enemy. It's surprisingly common how many people end up converting 'Ring fights are fairly short' to 'fights are fairly short.'"
Slash Baron felt a phantom pain a couple of inches below his heart. He momentarily closed his eyes as the memories of a cold enemy sword barely missed his heart. The injury had been soon healed, and any scar inside or out had been cleared away by a highly-skilled iryo-nin several years ago. The memory, however, remained in his mind as a scar that couldn't be erased.
He had fixed those bad habits. But he knew several who hadn't and had lost their lives. He didn't need to look back to bet good money that several of the 'top fighters' sitting behind him would show those same bad habits if they were made to fight.
"Ideally, a shinobi should have a usable amount of reserves left after an encounter to account for unexpected complications that may arise." He looked at Sango and could tell that she was no longer interested in what he was saying. All iryo-nin were like that.
———
.
"Looks like your pick is going to lose, Enomoto. Badly at that. And here I thought you were some sort of Ring expert."
Enomoto chuckled with a hearty smile. "We never know. The momentum can change until the very last moment." But inside, he was seething like bubbling oil.
He didn't need to peer between their words, whispers, and titters to realize he was perhaps the least influential person inside the group. Unlike their distinguished backgrounds, he came from a humble background of genin parents who retired as soon as possible and shifted into business.
They were probably thinking that they were better than him. These people knew nothing! He didn't have their privilege. He had to put in real work to reach his position. What did they know about the countless sleepless days and tired days he had put in. He had gotten his hands dirty to make connections they had been passed down without an iota of effort.
He was a hundred times better than all of these people!
He clenched his fist, digging his nails into the flesh to maintain his smile. Usually, he had no problem keeping his emotions deep down, but today they seemed overly enthusiastic to come out.
"We can always cancel the bet. It doesn't feel fair. I heard only one in ten rookies win their first fight in the ninjutsu category. How about it?"
Enomoto glanced, keeping his relaxed face plastered on his face. "Once a bet is sealed, it's rude to take it back. I… just can't help but side with the underdog, so even if Scars losses, I will take the loss graciously."
The man scoffed as if bored by Enomoto's reaction before turning away to watch the fight.
'Bullshit,' Enomoto jeered internally. He couldn't give two dirty shits about underdogs or favorites. He liked the winning side and only that. If someone with a winning history went into a slump, he would abandon them without hesitation. People were only good until they were useful.
He looked down at Takuma, who was shot a weak lightning bolt a third time, and for the third time, Viper dodged it effortlessly.
'He's so bad,' Enomoto's eyes turned coldee.
Takuma's performance wasn't inspiring confidence. What if he was like this at his job in the Police Force? What if his thing with Maiko Triad was luck, and he was going to give him crap results.
'If he can't do it properly with all the help I'm giving,' Enomoto looked down at Takuma.
Then he was going to the shitter.
.
———
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The link is in the synopsis!
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
200+ Classement
Power Stone 
109 Power
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