The Sounds of Battle Part 2 – The Brute and the Master
Ryuu rushed in towards Argo, running quickly and silently, but at the same time with enough vigor to knock over anyone in his way. Argo ran with that same amount of vigor, but without even half of the coordination and speed. As opposed to meeting in the middle, they were closer to Argo’s starting location when they clashed.
But the battle was, nonetheless, quite astonishing.
Argo took the offensive immediately, jumping up when they neared each other and slamming his sword, both hands on it, downward to slam onto his opponent’s cranium. Ryuu, though, took advantage of the fact that Argo had jumped high enough to put himself several feet above the ground and slid down, going under his aggressor while putting his sword upwards, holding it with one hand horizontally so that as he slid below Argo, the two blades skid off of each other.
When he stood back up, Ryuu took advantage of the very momentum that made him keep running forward and prevented him from turning around by stabbing his large sword into the ground behind him, holding onto it with an iron grip, as he whipped himself around, both feet off of the floor and turning around in mid air, both legs sticking out in a kicking manner, a full 180 degrees.
The kick, aimed at Argo’s side, was nearly successful, but the large man landed a moment before Ryuu stabbed his sword into the ground, and then ducked low as he turned around, his large stature making his dodge quite a close call, his attacker’s legs going right over his head. As opposed to a direct attack, from his position Argo swiped his blade to hit Ryuu’s, dislodging it from the ground and putting Ryuu helplessly in the air, for little more than a few seconds, though. From the sleeve of arm that had not been wielding the sword, a normal-sized one-handed sword lunged outward, stabbing into the ground just as the other one did, and before Argo could take advantage of that, he flipped over, landing upright, two or three meters away from his opponent, who was now getting up.
“Not bad at all…” Ryuu complimented, “Perhaps you are worthy of being called a swordsman, perhaps even a fellow weapons master,” and then he laughed, “Though we still have a lot more fighting to do before we find that out, now don’t we.”
A large and seemingly annoyed Argo began charging towards Ryuu again, but in a moment, he was nowhere to be found, using his incredible speed to move away quickly, sheathing his large blade and retracting the smaller one back into a sleeve a moment before that, enough to be mistaken by one such as dimwitted as Argo as a teleportation technique. Suddenly, through the air, Argo could hear something whistling behind him, as he turned, he spotted a throwing knife that was coming straight for him. He leaned to the side almost immediately, making the knife just barely pass his head. And suddenly, more came towards him in rapid succession.
Ryuu seemed to almost appear and disappear instantly, sometimes standing on the either side of the canyon, sometimes in mid-air, he had even once stood on Argo’s chair, grabbing throwing knives from his belt and sending them zipping through the air towards his opponent, who was, just barely, dodging every one of them. In truth, Ryuu only had ten of these knives with him at all times, wearing them on his belt in two holsters that each could had five slots for them, though under his robe he had several kunai and shuriken stored as well, but the speed at which he would move to the ground and then back into the air to throw more of them made it seem as though he had an unlimited supply.
Argo wasn’t nearly as fast as Ryuu, as he both of them had discerned in the start of the battle, but Ryuu was faster than most people, perhaps one of the quickest in all of Akatsuki, save Tenzu, though Ryuu always insisted that he would be the faster of the two if it weren’t for the Uchiha’s Sharingnan, and their leader, and so that didn’t mean that Argo was necessarily a slow person. And indeed he wasn’t. His dodges were mostly comprised of quick leans and turns, each knife shooting an inch in front of him or behind him, or on his left or on his right, mixed with the occasional roll when more than one came down on him at once. Ryuu didn’t expect to get a single hit in with the knives, but that wasn’t his goal at all, besides simply tiring the brute, he knew that within a few more seconds his opponent would fall into a comfortable routine of dodges, Ryuu purposely throwing them so that they came towards him in the same, or very similar, directions at the same, or very similar, times that they had before. When he fell into that routine, the real attack would come. It was a common trick amongst swordsmen and weapon users—making your opponent get comfortable with a certain series of attacks, and then throwing in a surprise one.
If Argo been a novice to battle, it would have worked perfectly.
But when it came to higher-class ninja, the “ifs” were rarely ever true.
Throwing one last knife, Ryuu disappeared again, but when he reappeared, he was directly behind Argo, slamming one of the large swords on his back around Argo’s shoulder. But Argo was hardly a stranger to such common tactics, and had been ready for the surprise attack the entire time. His larger blade still out, he leaned forwards and held it so that it was positioned somewhat diagonally, over his shoulder, running from one side of him to the other but at the same time slightly going down his back. As soon as the two swords collided, though, Ryuu, taking advantage of the fact that Argo’s front was wide open for the time being, shifted his weight forward, pushing his blade down more so that he did a front flip over the other crouching swordsman. As he flipped over, he turned as well, aiming for a spinning kick to Argo’s face as he came to the ground, much like Rock Lee’s, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it Gai’s, “Leaf Hurricane” technique, but as opposed to a full spin or two, he only turned enough to put him facing Argo again, forcing him to kick his leg with more vigor to substitute for the momentum that would be gained by running and jumping before the spins and kicks.
It was the first successful hit of the battle.
Cleanly, Ryuu’s foot connected with Argo’s face, sending him tumbling to the far right side of the canyon, and then hitting it with a great thud. Reaver, on the sidelines, smiled wickedly, not exactly for the fact that Ryuu held the upper hand for now; he didn’t expect Ryuu to lose, but much more for the fact that with that hit, his turn had come even closer.
Ryuu watched, a slightly disappointed look on his face, as Argo got up, blood coating his mouth as he panted and coughed heavily, “Jeez, if you’re that banged up from one hit, I advise that you put me on the defensive quickly; you’ll probably end up dying next time.”
~
“The path splits in two here,” Tenzu observed, stating the obvious.
Kakashi looked for a moment; there was no way to discern which the main path was, or which the right path was for that matter, and which would lead to what was possibly a dead end. The main leading area simply split in two, each side going outwards in a different direction, as if the canyon was making the letter ‘Y.’ As far as he could see, there were no enemies—Kabuto likely left some of this area vacant to leave Kakashi with the very thoughts of which one they should go down that he was having now.He looked for a while longer, and when he was sure that there was no possible clue as to which way they should advance, he looked back to the main group, where the very person he had hoped to see was standing near the front, “Neji, can you see anything up ahead?”
Veins bulged from Neji’s eyes as his pupils seemed to vanish as he activated what the Hyuuga clan members were best known for—the illustrious Byakugan. He stared ahead for a moment, squinting his eyes, and then answered, “This path,” he started, pointing to the one on their right, “Goes on for about a mile, and then merges back with this one,” he said, pointing to the one on the left, “And from there they continue as a single path.”
Kakashi looked to the one on the left, “So this is the main path… then,” but then he looked back to the one on the right.
As if reading Kakashi’s thoughts, Tenzu stated, “More than most likely, he’s planning an ambush from that direction. When we fight down the main path, a smaller group will probably flank and attack from behind.”
“I know,” Kakashi replied, still staring down the path.
“But we probably shouldn’t send too many down there. We only have about thirty in the first place.”
“I know.”
“You could send one or two ninja down there, but you don’t want them to be too weak, or they’ll probably get finished off in a few seconds, but if they’re too prominent members of the group then you’d probably want them at your side for when we get to Kabuto.”
“I know, Tenzu. I know,” Kakashi said, in a slightly irritated tone as he turned to the Uchiha, who put his hands up innocently.
As Kakashi was still formulating a plan on how to overcome this, he heard an unexpected voice from behind, “I’ll go.”
He turned around to see a young boy with brown, spiked hair standing behind him, wearing quite odd clothes for a ninja, with an almost innocent, yet still determined, face. He was still very new to Konoha, though he was highly praised by Raiden, and did prove himself to be quite talented on a few test missions that Kakashi had sent him on to see if there had been any truth to that praise.
Kakashi raised an eyebrow curiously towards him, “Look… I know you’re pretty good and all but—”
“Kabuto’s not going to send a huge force down that valley, not likely anyway. If it’s meant to be an ambush, he’ll want a group small enough to be unnoticeable and quiet enough until the moment is right. The group will be about a hundred or two, that’s nothing compared to the size of the groups we’ve seen so far; I could handle that, easy,” Sora replied, impressing Kakashi slightly with that reasoning, “Besides, it’s like he said,” ‘he,’ indicating Tenzu, “No one too strong, no one too weak, someone in the middle. That means no Akatsuki members, I doubt you’d trust them to run off on their own anyway though, no offense,” Tenzu shrugged, he couldn’t exactly say that he wouldn’t try anything sneaky if he were allowed to go on his own; it was his nature, and then he went on, “and that leaves almost half of the ninja here out of it, maybe even more.”
Kakashi looked at him for a while longer, and then nodded slowly, offering a weak laugh as well, “Can’t say I disagree with any of that. Fine, but be careful. If things get too heated, then run. Come back here and go around or just leave the canyon altogether, just get away.”
“No promises about the whole running away deal, but I’ll be careful,” Sora replied, a wide, goofy smile on his face.
Kakashi looked at him warily, and then gestured toward the side path, “Go ahead before I realize what a huge mistake I’m probably making,” he said, and then watched Sora run enthusiastically down the path, he then looked back toward the rest of the group, “Alright, break time is over, the rest of you, follow me.”
~
They were trading offense and defense equally, now, going blow for blow, each attack being responded to with a seemingly flawless counter, and then followed by an attack that seemed as though it were impossible to dodge or block, but somehow it was always done. Though Ryuu still had the upper hand, if it weren’t only for the fact that he had yet to be hit fully by one of Argo’s attacks, then it was the fact that he seemed completely calm throughout the entire fight, completely at ease and unworried by anything Argo could possibly have to offer.
His opponent, on the other hand, seemed infuriated; his attacks leaning more and more closely to being done out of sheer rage and emotion, as opposed to, as all of Ryuu’s attacks were based on, logic and natural reflexes, along with a genuine swordsman’s instinct. It seemed to be only a matter of time before his rage would come to a boil and be the end of him.
Ryuu’s blade was now coated with his wind chakra, enhancing its cutting power tenfold, and so blocking attacks was now almost completely impossible for Argo for the time being. The small rapier that he held had already been cut in half only a moment after he pulled it out, and though he managed to get out of the way before a truly devastating hit was dealt, he did suffer a slight scratch on the side of his arm. Meanwhile, Argo was empty handed, having thrown his blade in some sort of desperate attack toward Ryuu, and now it was stuck in the side of the canyon, the side that would force Argo to get past Ryuu to get it. Although, the very fury that all of the bystanders were sure would be his downfall in this battle, did seem to give him the strength to make up for being empty-handed and making blocking his hits quite difficult for Ryuu.
Though not that difficult.
A powerful fist came in at Ryuu in a hooking motion towards his face, which he quickly responded to by snapping his hand upwards and grabbing Argo’s wrist, and then proceeding to use his other hand, still carrying the large, dark blade of his, to slam the hilt of his sword into his opponent’s exposed stomach. Bringing his other hand in, though, Argo, mustering all of the strength that he had, grabbed the end of the incoming hilt, cupping his hand over it and then letting it go while pushing himself back, yanking his arm away from Ryuu’s grasp.
He looked over to his large sword, lunged deeply in the canyon’s wall. He couldn’t simply run for it straight past Ryuu who was obviously quicker than him, so instead he made four consecutive hand seals, and then said, and this was the first time Ryuu had actually heard him say even a single a proper word in the entire fight, “Fire Style: Intense Pain,” his voice deep and almost inhuman.
A giant amount of fire burst from out of his mouth, and then formed itself into a giant fireball, heading straight towards Ryuu. Obviously, he was hoping that Ryuu would dodge to either the left or the right, the size of the fireball making it so that he would have to go pretty far in either direction, giving him a chance to make a dash for the sword. Ryuu guessed that he somehow had developed the jutsu enough to be able to control where it stopped so that he could stop it from hitting the canyon and possibly melting the blade, or making it far too hot to touch.
Ryuu didn’t exactly think of Argo as much more of a threat with his blade, and so he complied, jumping far out of the way, directly into the sky.
Argo made a quick run for his blade, diving forward to grab onto its handle and then yanked it out of the canyon’s wall. What he hadn’t thought of, though, is that when someone like Ryuu goes far enough to be completely out of sight, something dangerous is probably coming next.
As he was in the sky, the one sword that was in Ryuu’s hand seemed to duplicate itself to ten, all of them levitating around him in a circle around him. Ryuu then redirected himself in the air so that he was going down head first, his hands together in a single hand seal. He was suspended in the air for one moment, and within that moment, all of the blades moved around him, all of them pointing downwards. The way that they pointed, though, made it so that they all joined it was seemed to be like one giant tip of a drill right in front of Ryuu’s face, covering him completely, making it seem as though he was encased in some sort of giant drill with a circular opening only at the top. Wind chakra coated each of the sword, making the entire “drill” heavily shrouded with wind chakra; the cutting force of it was surely enough to go straight through the ground.
All of this happened within three seconds, about the same time that it took Argo to get his sword, and when Ryuu was done, he came down with one of the most deadly combos of strength and speed that his unfortunate target had ever seen. He came down quickly and harshly, making a giant crater. As he went down, he skidded on the side of the wall that Argo was near, ripping through it with ease and as he went down, it was as if he was digging through the side of it, a large rut was in the side of the gorge’s wall by the time he reached the ground.
Argo just barely dodged, diving and rolling at the same time far out of the way, now somewhere in the middle of the canyon, but he relaxed too soon, Ryuu came down again in the same exact fashion… no… faster even, and with even more vigor! Argo barely rolled out of the way with this one too.
It went on like that ten more times, until finally, Argo once again near the middle of the canyon, Ryuu’s speed and strength had increased so much that dodging or blocking were both impossible. When he slammed down, so much earth was blown away and there was such a giant, explosive impact that both Reaver and the leader of Akatsuki jumped back several times, each time with an extremely long leap, to get out of the way. The diameter of the entire crater formed had to be at least a hundred yards. Argo got hit with it full on, and Ryuu finally stopped his barrage, landing at the very edge of the crater, not panting at all, as if that hadn’t taken anything out of him at all, and only holding one of the swords now.
No one should have survived that.
Not full on anyway, but even getting hit with that indirectly would be crazy.
Dirt and rubble, and any other debris blown into the air by the attack, still fogged the vision of all of the bystanders as well as Ryuu, none could see Argo. But they did see something else.
A purple energy seemed to emanate from the wreckage. It wasn’t foggy like everything else; it seemed more like… chakra, or… some sort of aura. It radiated from the area, and spread widely. The fog slowly cleared as the purple energy slowly spread, and when it finally cleared, there stood an even larger version of Argo. Much larger.
His skin was completely browned now. He was breathing heavily, pulsing as he breathed. And each time he exhaled, he seemed to grow even larger. He was at least three times his normal size now, and counting. There was no sword in his hand, wasn’t like he needed it. It was the curse mark, surely. Ryuu should have expected this. And that would explain his increase in vigor. He probably couldn’t see that the curse marks first stage was active on account of all of the clothes that the man was wearing; it had probably been active for a while now. But now he was on the second stage, and deadlier than ever. The hat that he wore had fell off of his head by now, revealing ruffled, short, white hair, and he shrugged the overcoat off, leaving him wearing only a close-fitting black shirt and the dark pants that he had been wearing since the beginning, along with the large, black boots. His teeth were sharper now, drool running down the side of his face. He looked more bestial now, only in his face, really. He couldn’t really explain it, it wasn’t like his mouth turned into a doglike maw now or anything, but it Ryuu definitely thought that he looked more animal-like.
“Guess I shoulda saw that coming,” Ryuu mumbled to himself, “This is an Orochimaru wannabe after all. Alright, come on then.”
The drastically transformed, and still seeming to grow rapidly in size, Argo let out a loud roar, and then rushed towards his small opponent, swinging his arms wildly and running rapidly.
~
The area was like a giant arena. The path that Sora walked down dipped down, not as drastically as the last one, but still pretty drastically. Ahead, it sloped back upwards. He was standing now at a giant arena, two caves on either side of him, both of them probably made by Kabuto with his creatures inside of them.
That notion was confirmed when, from both caves, they began running out, surrounding him from either side. They seemed to almost spill out of the two openings; both of the caves must have been much larger than Sora thought. In a moment, they were all surrounding him, and he called his blade to his hand. It was now in a different form, though. As opposed to the form that he usually kept it in—what he called the Lionheart form, the silver blade with one spike going straight out and another poking out of its side—it was in a form that made it look like there was a meteor at the end of it, as opposed to a blade of a tip. The handle of the blade was a dark blue color, while the guard, on both sides, had a design on it meant to resemble flames. Most of the body of the blade was again that dark blue color, but as opposed to a sword tip, there was a small meteor, which seemed to transcend from being orange-yellow at the front to red at its tail, perhaps it was more like a comet actually, at the end. The end of the blade was rounded where the body of the meteor was, and it was accompanied by a tail that hung off of the blade and curved at the ends.
“Alright, come on!” he challenged aloud, bending his knees and holding his blade, he called it Meteora when it was in this form, with both hands.
They all did just that—rushing in at him from all directions like a giant tidal wave, stumbling over each other and converging on him within a moment. Sora chose one area to run straight for, making a dash straight ahead, and as soon as one of the beasts went for a quick slash at him, he jumped high up and over them all, landing on the side wall of the canyon, and then quickly jumping off of that to propel himself high into the sky. While there, he quickly went into a rapid series of downward slashes and strikes. With each slash, a giant meteor, or perhaps simply a meteor-like fireball, seemed to materialize from the sky above him, each one coming crashing down on different areas of the large group, exploding on impact and sending them flying high into the air and then crashing down hard onto the ground.
But as soon as the rubble blown into the sky from the meteors receded, there were, not exactly to the surprise of Sora, just as many creatures standing as there had been in the first place, standing on top of the bodies of their fallen comrades.
He was coming back to the ground now, and his blade changed appearance again as he was coming down. This form seemed heavier than the last one, a broader version, which seemed more like one of those pin tumbler lock keys. It was a dull gray in color, and near the base of the blade it was adorned with bandages wrapped around it. At the end of it there was a chain, attached to a small, circular, metal object. Sora called this version Fenrir.
As he came close to the ground, just as he was going to hit it with all of the beasts around him raring to get near him, he slammed it on the ground. It was like a giant wave of the earth going out in all directions around him. The ground waved upwards seeming to be as free-flowing as water itself at that moment, and bowled all of his enemies over, blasting them into the sky, or slamming them into the side of the canyon walls, in either case, ending their lives. Not only did this kill all of those that were around him at the moment, but it also seemingly cleared the bodies in the area, pushing them all to the side to make a sort of “perimeter of the fallen” around him.
Of course there were still plenty more though, and now as opposed to pushing out from all corners of the cave, they came out in what was almost a two single file lines, which made things much easier for Sora when he charged to one of those lines. Slashing wildly, he took down at least twelve of them to start. Suddenly, he knew that a spear was being thrown at him from behind, whether he had simply heard or saw it subconsciously or whether it was simply a sixth sense was beyond him, but without time to figure that out, he tilted his head to the side and then grabbed the spear, but as opposed to making it stop, he grabbed it so that it maintained its momentum but so that he could still redirect it, right into the chest of one of the brutes in front of him.
Yanking the spear out, making a loud gushing sound as it dislodged, Sora turned around quickly, and then ran a few steps forward to the line that had been coming to him from behind. It was almost heroic how he threw the spear. A perfectly lined throw, with a great amount of strength but still with an intense combination of speed and accuracy accompanying it. The spear went not only into, but through the head and skull of the first victim, and then went on to do the same to nine additional ones, and then lodged itself into the skull of the last, making for a total of eleven wonderfully conducted kills within a matter of seconds.
In one quick motion, Sora whipped around and smacked a lizard-like creature that was standing behind him with Fenrir, the heavy side of the blade slamming into it and sending it tumbling away. He quickly brought the blade back across, hitting yet another creature, a wolf-like one this time.
The battle went on like that for what seemed like hours. For every one that he killed, two more seemed to materialize from thin air to replace it. They were simply endless! Overwhelmingly abundant. Powerful? Not so much, they could each be killed in one hit at best, but Sora was tiring out quickly. One thing was for sure out of all of this; Kabuto had way too much time on his hands.
It was at least fifteen minutes before Sora saw that they’re numbers were dimming down, but he quickly caught something within the corner of his eye. Something that had quickly jumped over the canyon from one side to another. Sora slammed Fenrir heavily onto the ground, making another waving effect that gave him enough room, but apparently the group was done rushing out anyway, he could see them still standing around him in a circle, but they, like he, apparently saw the figure up in the sky, and were all staring up to try and see what it had been.
And then one by one, the creatures started to fall. As if some sort of a plague had suddenly come over them, taking each of them down from within. It was unnoticeable at first, just a few going down, and then they went down in twos, and then in threes, and soon enough, by the dozens they were falling, blood gushing out from all directions. A blue mist seemed to emanate from their area, as if wherever this person… or this thing, moved, the blue, chilling mist moved with him.
Soon enough, there were none left, and Sora stood there, dumbfounded, staring straight ahead at the dead bodies in front of him.
“I didn’t recognize you at first…” a voice suddenly said behind him. Sora recognized the voice… it was a lot deeper than it had been when he last heard it, but nonetheless, he could never forget the voice, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Sora?”
Sora turned around, and sure enough, there he was, standing in front of him, staring at him with a smug grin and holding a sword loosely in his hand, “Riku…”
