;; the first snowfall (p)

[❥;; bexx]

She was still looking at Hitomi and was wondering what she wanted. Usually she didn't like people that got too close to her. People needed distance and for her to stand there beside her try to get conversation going was already a sin. But she waved it off, knowing that it didn't really matter what she thought. She was originally planning on reading the second mission in her mission logs and now she was instead facing a Konoha shinobi who thought she was also from Konoha. She guessed that she had enough time and energy to play the game since she didn't really belong to any village that was still thriving. As long as she didn't know her the snow village headband it was all good.

And now the girl was talking about her own training. She honestly was a relatively big talker, liking to talk and rarely listen. She just let her keep going until she had to take a breath again. She thought about interjecting a few sly comments in between just to catch the girl's reaction but she was going to be nice. Hitomi looked like someone she couldn't remember after all so she must not be that bad of a person. The only thing that's got cut out for her is the fact that she talked too much but it seemed that nowadays all girls were like that. She told her how she was having trouble with her own jutsus and that's why she had decided to come out here to the forest to train today.

That much she could sympathize with, maybe. She was trying to learn that A rank jutsu for a whole night now and hadn't gotten any further than she had when she first started. Learning jutsus wasn't all about hard work. Certain talent and skill was also needed. She was sure that she was going to be hearing a lot of her journeys in training which wasn't something she was greatly interested in. But it would be rude if she wanted to do so because she was supposedly this nice sweet girl that everyone liked.

And that was when she heard Hitomi ask her whether she wanted to train together. A spar? Honestly she wasn't really interested in a spar and Hitomi guessed from the way her eyes drifted to the pond that she didn't. Instead she thought of another to train together. They could train the same jutsu. That was going to be hard since they were supposedly not from the village. If she decided that she wanted to learn a jutsu that only could be learned by shinobi of konoha, her secret would be revealed. It was that simple.

So instead she said that she would spar with her. She couldn't have the chance of getting her secret revealed to a Konoha shinobi. Though she would probably have to give up some of her information if she decided to spar with her because she was going to be using Yukina Clan jutsus. She wondered if Hitomi even knew about the Yukina Clan or simply Yukigakure no Sato. She accepted the notion of the spar because she really wanted to get this over with. There was still a mission log that she wanted to read.

[❥;; bexx]

This was going to be an easy battle. She noticed that Hitomi was already stepping away from her. The forest was rather big which meant that they could practically be many feet away from each other to lengthen the distance for a good spar. She decided that staying on the ground was too boring. So she chose on the bigger trees and climbed to its first branch so that she was now looking down at her opponent. It was great that she was going to spar with someone but she told herself that she wasn't going to kill the girl. She wasn't out to kill.

Hitomi decided that she was going to stay on the ground. What fun was it? Maybe she was going to waste chakra to get up to the branch that she was standing on or maybe she was expecting her to come down. She wouldn't give her much time for thinking. Sparring was all about being quick. The quicker the movement, the better chance she had of winning. She was going to start nice and easy. Once the spar gained more momentum would the real show follow. She also didn't want to use jutsus so early in the game since it was like letting her opponent see through her.

So she drew out her katana from her cape and put the sheathe leaning against the trunk of the tree. She saw that this other girl had a whip and was uncoiling it as she drew out her sword. This was the second person she knew that used a whip. She would jump down from the branch. As she landed on the ground on one knee she would quickly charge forward, her katana raised. She was half expecting a whip lash attack to come from the girl. But none came.

Instead Hitomi stepped to the side and then raised her whip. She was very smart, catching the fact that she was right handed and that her left hand was weaker than her right. She also caught on that any attacks made to her left side would be best because she was so used to using her right side for battle. Her right side was her dominance and she was surprised that this girl was so quick on her feet. She lashed out her whip hoping to catch her arm or her shoulder.

But she was definitely quicker on that regard. She had already caught on that she had shifted to the left side. She had been following Hitomi with her eye even as she ran to her. So the left side attack was going to be nulled by simply stepping to the side, pivoting and then coming down in a turn-like matter so that her katana was ready to attack on Hitomi's left. She had underestimated her ability to be quick and also forgot that she could use the same tactics as she could.

[❥;; bexx]

But Hitomi was ready to defend herself against the katana attack. As she took a stab at her from the left, she jumped up and lashed out her whip for an upward attack. She hadn't expected that. Her katana was not made in such a way that it could defend an attack that was from the whip. She was going to have to think fast. She brought the sword at almost her above her head horizontally to hopefully use the metal to block the top of the whip. Instead the whip coiled around her blade. So she was going to try and disarm her of her weapon. That was certainly something!

If she remembered correctly, disarming her of her weapon wasn't the most effective way but it was something smart to do. It guaranteed that a person's body was out in the open without a weapon of an kind to defend themselves against. And that was especially true if the weapon was a long range one like the whip. She was sure that within seconds she was going to be forced to dodge with her own two feet the whip lash attacks that Hitomi would give her. She couldn't keep dodging without doing something. Noticing that her opponent hadn't quite moved from where she had been standing from before, she thought she had a chance.

But it would require the use of a jutsu. As she was disarmed from her weapon, she saw her katana flying and hitting one of the trees to their left. Now she didn't have a weapon but she had her hands, her secondary weapons. Hitomi hadn't used her chakra yet for any jutsus so if she was going to have to act the way she planned on acting, this attack was going to have to be done just yet. What she planned to do was to use shunshin so that she could travel behind Hitomi in lightning speed and then try to take her weapon from her.

There was no need for handseals to use shunshin since it was a Taijutsu. Instead all she needed was her chakra. And her chakra was helping her today because it was scattered enough within her body so that she could pretty much perform any jutsu at any moment and have her chakra push out at any chakra point. She powered her feet and broke into a chakra powered run, a small jutsu that she had learned from her guardian when she was still living in that small town. Hitomi must have noticed how incredibly fast her speed in her legs had become. Yes it was indeed shunshin.

And she used her own version of a powered run. This one was shunpo meaning that she was a Taijutsu master. Only Taijutsu masters were allowed the learning of shunpo instead of shunshin because they used their legs and muscles to power the run instead of their chakra. Shunpo was actually a little better than shunshin because it didn't need any chakra to power it so she could preserve her chakra use for any other jutsus instead of in shunshin. It was because of that reason that shunpo was harder to learn.

[❥;; bexx]

So they were literally just passing each other. Now that certainly wasn't something she was happy with since her plan wasn't going to work. But what she was going to do now was stop her shunshin before it reached the whole five meters and then turned her head around. Her right hand was already reaching inside her weapon pouch strapped to her right knee and pulling out two shuriken. She was aiming at Hitomi's right shoulder and threw the shuriken at her. But her attack wasn't quite done yet. She would charge forward. As soon as she got within range of her opponent she would reach into her weapon pouch again to pull out a kunai. The kunai would act as her temporary primary weapon since it was kind of like a dagger.

She was waiting for Hitomi to react first to her shuriken attack and then the close kunai attack. She was certain that even as a Taijutsu master, because she had chosen to use her whip as her primary source of attack, she had opened up the chance to go for short distance attacks which in and of itself was going to be hard to block or dodge unless she stopped using her whip and actually used a Taijutsu instead. That made her wonder what her Ninjutsu release specialty was since almost every Genin would find one release that they really liked. But for now she was going to focus on what kind of counter-attack Hitomi could come up with.

And she wouldn't be disappointed. She saw that Hitomi was indeed planning to give up on her use of the whip and instead just use her bare hands to counter her kunai attack. Because she had decided to make the kunai act as a sword, it gave Hitomi the opportunity to just grab onto her arm before she could actually attack with it. She was going to have do much more to get herself out of the situation. She had chosen to not move to catch her kunai attack that she had had to take the shuriken to her shoulder. She felt kinda bad for the girl. But she reminded herself that she was her opponent.

As soon as she felt the grip of her hand on her arm, she would turn her body towards Hitomi. She forgot that a person had two arms and two legs. Even if she couldn't possibly try to do something with her other arm because she was without a weapon, there were still her legs. She would try to jump up from where she was standing and then aim for an attack using her feet. She wasn't sure if it would be successful at all but she was hoping that it would be at least be able to allow her to release her arm. They still hadn't used jutsus against each other. This battle was going to be very long, she had a feeling.

But that approach wasn't fast enough. Hitomi had already pushed her kunai out of her hand and threw her away from her. Her strength was unbelievable and it wasn't something she was quite used to. She raised an eyebrow as she was thrown rather clumsily away from her opponent. It was great to see that she didn't have to get too personal to get her arm released but her kunai was now on the ground in front of Hitomi. She thought that maybe now was the time to use her jutsus.

[❥;; bexx]

But the problem now was which jutsu she was going to use. It was supposed to be a friendly spar and many of her offensive jutsus were rather deadly if they didn't have anything to block it or dodge it. What she had been thinking was the water needles jutsu which would shower approximately a hundred needles down on Hitomi. That was a B rank jutsu and she wondered if she was going to be able to stand hundreds of needles. Was she now being empathetic? That wasn't very good. Just because she wasn't going insane shouldn't mean that she should be the total opposite of that. She was still thinking when Hitomi was readying herself with her own jutsu.

And because she was so deep in thought, she totally missed it. She hadn't seen when Hitomi gathered her chakra, formed handseals and then released her chakra. She hadn't called the name of the jutsu. But those handseals--they were familiar. Too familiar. She readied herself for the attack and wasn't surprised when she saw that a fireball was coming straight at her. It was the Great Fireball jutsu. Where had she seen the use of this jutsu before? As the fireball was launched, she would shunshin to the side, successfully escaping it. But she was not going to attack. Instead she stopped the spar.

"Is your real name Hitomi?" She had to ask the girl standing in front of her. At first she raised an eyebrow out of surprised but then she shook her head. She waited for the girl to talk. She wanted to know her real name. But instead she was asked how she knew. She responded with a simple she took a guess. But that wasn't enough for her. But she did reply later on with her real name. "My name is Tomomi." She almost fell to her knees as she hard that name. The world was so small! But how did she become a Konoha shinobi? Her eyes widened as she looked at Tomomi not believing her ears.

"Do you not--recognize me?" Tomomi would study her very closely, searching her mind. Then it hit her like a lightning bolt. "Sayuri?" So it was the Tomomi that she knew! She was very excited and also alarmed at the same time. How did she end up in Konoha? She was a Yuki shinobi and should always be loyal to Yukigakure no Sato. How did she traverse all the way to this land and then affiliate with another village! That was preposterous! She couldn't believe that her friend would do something like that. It seemed as though her friend was expecting that and she carried on to explain why.

"My parents took me here and we gave up our Yuki headbands when we came in exchange for affiliating with Konoha and the Hokage. We didn't have a choice!" she looked sincere but Sayaka wasn't convinced. She didn't believe that the only way that was left after Yuki was destroyed was to affiliate with another village. Even if she hadn't lost all of her memory she wouldn't have gone to any of the great shinobi villages and haded her headband. That was treachery and she was a loyal Yuki nin.



{EXIT THREAD}

[Axcel]

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