บท 75: Naruto : Chapter 75
While Sakura walked up to the competitor's box Ino and Hinata left it. Once Sakura arrived there she got compliments from her teammates.
"Good fight, Sakura, really clever strategy." Naruto praised.
"Yes, well done." Sasuke added.
"Thank you. I was surprised that it worked out this perfectly. I had feared he would be more careful after I took out his sense of smell, but it was really easy to send Akamaru sleeping." Sakura replied.
"He didn't expect you to improve that much over the month. You definitely learned a lot under Shizune." Naruto commented.
They then looked down to see the next fight. Ino and Hinata had made their way down and were now taking their positions.
"Who do you think will win?" Sakura asked.
"Hard to say. A few months ago I would have said Ino because Hinata had no confidence in herself. But since we started the cross-team challenges she broke out of her shell and her taijutsu is really nasty to deal with." Sasuke commented.
"In the pure skills department Hinata might have a few advantages. The Hyuga clan is known to produce good fighters but she needs to get close for that to work.
The Yamanaka clan has its mind jutsus and Ino took up studying poisons which allows her to keep her distance. I think Kurenai sensei also got some genjutsu into Hinata's repertoire. It will be interesting in any case." Naruto added.
...
Ino looked at Hinata. Had this been when they had graduated she knew she would have won against the timid girl. But now, after seven months the result wasn't sure. Hinata had gained massive confidence through training with her team.
And if she got too close to let Hinata hit her with her taijutsu that was it for her. The gentle fist was a devastating style. She needed to fight from the distance if she wanted to have a chance at winning this. So she decided to start off with some shuriken that were laced with sleeping drugs.
After Sakura's fight it was a bit boring but it was what she had in that area. Most of her techniques with poisons were still in development as building up the necessary resistances took time.
Next to that she had her clan techniques. But most of them were more suited for interrogation and spying than fighting a one-on-one battle. She was just glad that Asuma sensei had shown her two jutsus that she could use.
She was a fire element and while she hadn't done elemental manipulation training yet, she had learned two basic fire jutsus that didn't rely on proper elemental manipulation. Both were D-rank but they were useful. She really regretted her stupidity at the academy now.
Had she trained more like her dad had told her over and over again she would have bigger chakra reserves now. Not to mention her dieting. It had cost her. She knew that Hinata was the only girl of her class that hadn't dieted because she was simply too shy to pursue her love interest Naruto.
Ino threw her shuriken and watched how Hinata elegantly evaded them by shifting her body out of the way. That was another point which made fighting Hinata difficult. She was incredibly flexible and devilishly hard to hit. Ino went through handseals.
"Fire Style: Fire bullet." She called out and shot a middle sized fire ball from her mouth.
It was in no way as impressive as the ones she had seen Sasuke use at the academy but they didn't need to be that impressive. Hinata jumped to the side dodging the attack before racing towards her. Ino started a barrage of shuriken and kunai, which Hinata either dodged or deflected with a kunai in her right hand.
Ino retreated, knowing that if she got involved in a close-up taijutsu exchange Hinata could land vital hits. But this time she had used other shuriken. They had nearly invisible wire tied to them. Wire that would allow her next trick.
"Fire style: Flying sparks." She called out and shot a barrage of sparks from her mouth.
The wire was drenched in burn paste and therefore allowed Ino to trap Hinata in a net of fire. Well, at least that had been the plan.
"Water gentle fist style: Protection of the sixty four hands sphere." Hinata called out.
Hinata seemed to create a dome of water chakra around her by sending water saturated chakra beams around her. The burning wires that Ino had set up hissed and then went out with steam coming from them.
...
Hiashi Hyuga was looking at his oldest daughter with pride for a chance. She had worked tirelessly with the children of the clan on this jutsu.
First she had simply used her normal chakra for the protection. It had been an impressive feat already. Based on kaiten she had used the principle of surrounding herself with an impenetrable sphere. Her chakra beams as she called it had been formed to be sharp and thin.
A true precision technique that could be both attack and defence. She had finished that part around halfway through the training month. Then she had worked on integrating her water natured chakra into it and now he saw the result. The Yamanaka girl was trying to be smart in this fight but he was sure that Hinata would win.
...
Ino was shocked about Hinata's unique jutsu. She had never before seen anything like that. Then suddenly she felt herself be hit. How? Hinata was still defending against her fire.
"You're within my field of divination." She heard from close to her.
"No, how did you get this close?" Ino exclaimed trying to get away.
"Eight trigrams, thirty two hands." Hinata said and then the hits started raining on Ino. "Two hands, four hands, eight hands, sixteen hands, thirty two hands."
Ino felt lots of her chakra points being shut down. She fell to the ground, knowing that she had lost.
"How did you get close?" She asked.
"I used the steam the extinguishing of your fire net produced to prepare a genjutsu which let you believe that I was still defending while I closed the distance to land my final attack." Hinata answered.
"Winner of the second match: Hinata Hyuga." Hayate declared.
Hinata was shocked but very happy when she looked up into the stands and saw her father nod at her appreciatively.
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