I was bored. Ignore the errors and typoes. This was done on the spot.
---
Silence. It hung in the moisture heavy air like a heavy curtain, with not even the sounds of the forest interrupting. It was as if even the trees were holding their breath.
And it did little against the rising nervous tension.
The waiting was worst, to her anyway. Battle itself, even a losing one, with emotions riding the adrenal high, was preferable.
She ran through a short meditation excercise, which let at least some of the tension melt away into an alert preparedness, but the cold sweat on the back of her neck and ...
... very carefully, and taking great pains not to tense or startle, she stuck the tip of her tongue out to taste the air, and noting the small cloud of fog as she breathed out ...
And _then_ she moved, leaping forward and down off the treebranch she'd been perched on, through the barely visible freeze of the modified basic Kirigakure.
The faint *thunkthunkthunk* of senbon needles piercing into wood only spurred her to move faster. She contorted her body into a spin, lashing out with one arm.
The voluminous sleeves of her tiger-striped waistcoat billowed as one discharged a length of chain, terminating in a sickle. Its short, curved blade bit deeply into a tree behind and to the side of the one she'd been perched on, yanking her away from her pervious trajectory just in time to get her out of the way of another flurry of senbon.
She brought her legs around, arresting what would have been a potentially painful impact against another tree, and slamming a sickle that had sprung into her _other_ hand from the appropriate sleeve into the wood.
Tension. It was up again, and there was no more sound audible, other than her breath and the blood thudding its way through her temples.
Her eyes scanned the tree-line, not neccessarily limiting their search area to the line above her previous perch, despite the fact that this was where the angle of the senbon's flight paths indicated her assailant had struck from.
After all, it was basic tactics for snipers to move after pretty much every unsuccessfull attack.
She heard no movement, though ...
Alright, so maybe her opponent was trying to play with her mind and _hadn't_ moved ...
There _was_ a sound, though, on the edge of her consciousness ... nagging to be noticed.
The gentle lapping of barely disturbed water.
From below, where a small pond into which the roots of that particular tree dipped sat.
A whistling, just as the extended chain the sickle of which was buried into the tree a ways off shuddered with impact and weight, a slender form clad in hues of dark blue intermingled with dark green having landed on said chain.
*Speed!* her instincts screamed at her, and she shrugged and twisted the appropriate shoulder in just the right way, causing the straps of one of her chain launchers/winches to come undone with a snap, and the device to come shooting out of her sleeve. The other released its lock on the chain as her hand let go of its sickle, leaving her to drop down as a trio of kunai shot through where her head had been not a moment ago, and slammed into the tree beside where the sickle was lodged.
She momentarily spied the blue-and-green suited kunoichi, swinging towards some possible point of rebound on her own discarded chain, and flung a spread of manriki along the expected path of the swing. Not that she expected the 11inch long throwing chains would hit, but they'd possibly slow her opponent down just a bit.
Her eyes widened when she remembered she was heading down ... towards the _pond_ ...
... which erupted as yet another kunoichi, this one in a sleek black bodysuit, launched herself upwards from between the submerged tree-roots, propelling herself upwards along the treetrunk by virtue of her shuko adorned hands.
They met with a clash, hastily drawn manriki manaing to turn aside a handclaw assisted palmstrike, before the explosion notes on the three kunai stuck in the tree around the sickle above obliterated a hefty chunk of bark and wood.
Thereby letting the sickle fall away, the chain slacken, and its wielder, already unbalanced by the bodysuit clad kunoichi, plummet and hit the surface of the pond.
Which was promptly hit by a raiton from the still airborne kunoichi.
"Gotcha!" Hoshigaki Mako cried, landing lightly at the edge of the pond, grinning in a way that had her look even more like a shark than she already did thanks to her heritage.
The weighted chain that shot from the water, slammed into her stomach with enough force to make her keel over, gasping, was not expected.
A bedraggled, somewhat frazzled blonde kunoichi dragged herself from the pond, trying to get back on her feet ... then froze.
It was the faintest of touches, but she knew the feeling of a point of a senbon needle at the nape of her neck well enough by now ...
"Sorry, Mina-chan. You lose this one," Mizuno Ami, Mist genin and medic-nin in training, said.
---
*snip*
Training session ... *sweatdrops* I just wrote a Naruto-fic segment. Vey.
Ahem.
I'm imagining Mina in a black/rust colored bodystocking, long sleeved, but only down to just above the knees. Kneepads (armored). Low heeled ankle boots. Loose waistcoat/short kimono w/wide sleeves with twin chain launchers/winches - something like what I remember those two Mist nin at the beginning of the Wave country arc having - with a variety of attachments (a weight at the end, a sickle/kama, a short double edged blade, etc.). For thrown weapons, she uses kunai and manriki.
The waistcoat/kimono thingy is tiger-striped orange.
The 'lotsandlotsofweapons' thing I have her pulling can be attributed to a Blade of the Immortal OD on my part.
Mako - go with the bodysuit/wetsuit, then, and a variety of garments to wear over that. Shades of green. For some reason, I see her with a collapsible Yari.
Ami - actually, I was thinking more along the lines of an outfit resembling Katsu's plain functionality-over-looks fatigues, only trimmed with shades of blue and (less so) green over the plain grey. Maybe with either shorts or a short sleeved vest.
... right.
-Griever
who is trying very hard to concentrate on MS ... and not start writing a Katsu/Zabuza Chuunin exam meeting. Really.
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
---
Silence. It hung in the moisture heavy air like a heavy curtain, with not even the sounds of the forest interrupting. It was as if even the trees were holding their breath.
And it did little against the rising nervous tension.
The waiting was worst, to her anyway. Battle itself, even a losing one, with emotions riding the adrenal high, was preferable.
She ran through a short meditation excercise, which let at least some of the tension melt away into an alert preparedness, but the cold sweat on the back of her neck and ...
... very carefully, and taking great pains not to tense or startle, she stuck the tip of her tongue out to taste the air, and noting the small cloud of fog as she breathed out ...
And _then_ she moved, leaping forward and down off the treebranch she'd been perched on, through the barely visible freeze of the modified basic Kirigakure.
The faint *thunkthunkthunk* of senbon needles piercing into wood only spurred her to move faster. She contorted her body into a spin, lashing out with one arm.
The voluminous sleeves of her tiger-striped waistcoat billowed as one discharged a length of chain, terminating in a sickle. Its short, curved blade bit deeply into a tree behind and to the side of the one she'd been perched on, yanking her away from her pervious trajectory just in time to get her out of the way of another flurry of senbon.
She brought her legs around, arresting what would have been a potentially painful impact against another tree, and slamming a sickle that had sprung into her _other_ hand from the appropriate sleeve into the wood.
Tension. It was up again, and there was no more sound audible, other than her breath and the blood thudding its way through her temples.
Her eyes scanned the tree-line, not neccessarily limiting their search area to the line above her previous perch, despite the fact that this was where the angle of the senbon's flight paths indicated her assailant had struck from.
After all, it was basic tactics for snipers to move after pretty much every unsuccessfull attack.
She heard no movement, though ...
Alright, so maybe her opponent was trying to play with her mind and _hadn't_ moved ...
There _was_ a sound, though, on the edge of her consciousness ... nagging to be noticed.
The gentle lapping of barely disturbed water.
From below, where a small pond into which the roots of that particular tree dipped sat.
A whistling, just as the extended chain the sickle of which was buried into the tree a ways off shuddered with impact and weight, a slender form clad in hues of dark blue intermingled with dark green having landed on said chain.
*Speed!* her instincts screamed at her, and she shrugged and twisted the appropriate shoulder in just the right way, causing the straps of one of her chain launchers/winches to come undone with a snap, and the device to come shooting out of her sleeve. The other released its lock on the chain as her hand let go of its sickle, leaving her to drop down as a trio of kunai shot through where her head had been not a moment ago, and slammed into the tree beside where the sickle was lodged.
She momentarily spied the blue-and-green suited kunoichi, swinging towards some possible point of rebound on her own discarded chain, and flung a spread of manriki along the expected path of the swing. Not that she expected the 11inch long throwing chains would hit, but they'd possibly slow her opponent down just a bit.
Her eyes widened when she remembered she was heading down ... towards the _pond_ ...
... which erupted as yet another kunoichi, this one in a sleek black bodysuit, launched herself upwards from between the submerged tree-roots, propelling herself upwards along the treetrunk by virtue of her shuko adorned hands.
They met with a clash, hastily drawn manriki manaing to turn aside a handclaw assisted palmstrike, before the explosion notes on the three kunai stuck in the tree around the sickle above obliterated a hefty chunk of bark and wood.
Thereby letting the sickle fall away, the chain slacken, and its wielder, already unbalanced by the bodysuit clad kunoichi, plummet and hit the surface of the pond.
Which was promptly hit by a raiton from the still airborne kunoichi.
"Gotcha!" Hoshigaki Mako cried, landing lightly at the edge of the pond, grinning in a way that had her look even more like a shark than she already did thanks to her heritage.
The weighted chain that shot from the water, slammed into her stomach with enough force to make her keel over, gasping, was not expected.
A bedraggled, somewhat frazzled blonde kunoichi dragged herself from the pond, trying to get back on her feet ... then froze.
It was the faintest of touches, but she knew the feeling of a point of a senbon needle at the nape of her neck well enough by now ...
"Sorry, Mina-chan. You lose this one," Mizuno Ami, Mist genin and medic-nin in training, said.
---
*snip*
Training session ... *sweatdrops* I just wrote a Naruto-fic segment. Vey.
Ahem.
I'm imagining Mina in a black/rust colored bodystocking, long sleeved, but only down to just above the knees. Kneepads (armored). Low heeled ankle boots. Loose waistcoat/short kimono w/wide sleeves with twin chain launchers/winches - something like what I remember those two Mist nin at the beginning of the Wave country arc having - with a variety of attachments (a weight at the end, a sickle/kama, a short double edged blade, etc.). For thrown weapons, she uses kunai and manriki.
The waistcoat/kimono thingy is tiger-striped orange.
The 'lotsandlotsofweapons' thing I have her pulling can be attributed to a Blade of the Immortal OD on my part.
Mako - go with the bodysuit/wetsuit, then, and a variety of garments to wear over that. Shades of green. For some reason, I see her with a collapsible Yari.
Ami - actually, I was thinking more along the lines of an outfit resembling Katsu's plain functionality-over-looks fatigues, only trimmed with shades of blue and (less so) green over the plain grey. Maybe with either shorts or a short sleeved vest.
... right.
-Griever
who is trying very hard to concentrate on MS ... and not start writing a Katsu/Zabuza Chuunin exam meeting. Really.
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm