The weird thing is, Tetsuki thinks–ducking under a blind flail and returning with a punch to someone’s nose, cartilage crunching under her fist–she doesn’t like taijutsu.
Sure, she can learn and perform kata well enough and, more often than not, she does win her spars during class… which would imply she’s decent at taijutsu.
But that’s only as compared to her fellow students.
As this particular situation can attest to–a camper grabs at her sleeve, how quaint, she grips their arm and tosses them over her shoulder–the majority of her classmates aren’t exactly impressive.
Naruto Uzumaki laughs and blows a raspberry and she whistles in response, their established back and forth to keep track of each other in the smoke. From the sound of it, he’s a little bit northwest of her and has gotten an armband. She thinks maybe the laughter is genuine, so at least he’s enjoying himself, but she’s also been hearing some grunts of pain from him. No doubt someone’s gotten a couple lucky hits on him, better make this quick:
She crouches down and pats at her fallen opponent, delivering a knock out blow beforehand just to make sure–there, in a pocket, metal body temperature, the now familiar feel of a token. They can check the color later.
She whistles again and clicks her tongue–one token down, one more to go.
Someone gets a hand in her hair and yanks. She stumbles, one arm barely catching her fall, this close she can actually see a vague outline of the other person. Hell, she can see the blue of his sandals.
Komadori, that sensible son of a bitch.
“You’re not Atsushi,” he says, somewhat redundantly. Her henge is still up, but her hair is far longer than her disguise.
“I’m not?” she asks in Atsushi’s voice–or a close enough approximation as she could make with what little of it she heard when they ambushed him earlier–an attempt to baffle him before punching hard at the side of his knee.
It’s not enough to dislocate his kneecap, unfortunately, but it does surprise him enough to make him let go of her hair, allowing her to scramble back to her feet.
He’s not so taken off guard that she can just disappear back into the cover of the smoke–they maybe only have another thirty seconds before it disperses into uselessness–and he attacks her immediately.
She barely dodges a kick and gets a punch to the jaw for her efforts. Frustratingly she recalls that this particular classmate is one of the few who consistently beat her in spars.
Gods damn this sensible son of a bitch.
JackSGreyson Says 