[ AOI SETSUNA ]
I didn't give him a single second to recover his breath. Lunging forward, I thrust my spear hand straight at Jinichi's throat, but he snapped his head back, letting the strike miss by millimeters. Without breaking momentum, I rotated on my heel, driving a fierce elbow toward his jaw, which he managed to cross his forearms and absorb with a heavy grunt. Capitalizing on his defensive position, I lashed out with a quick side kick to his ribs; he caught my heel with his palm, using my own force to pivot and drive a straight punch directly toward my face. I yanked my head down just in time, feeling the wind of his knuckles graze my hair, before we both leaped backward to reset our footing, our boots scraping deeply into the dirt.
The break lasted less than a heartbeat before we crashed together again in a blur of motion. I dropped low, sweeping my leg to take his ankles, but Jinichi anticipated the move, leaping cleanly over my shin and coming down with a heavy axe kick aimed at my shoulder. I threw my arms up in a frantic cross-guard, the sheer weight of his descent forcing me down to one knee as the impact rattled through my collarbones. Grimacing against the pain, I exploded upward from the ground, driving a dual-palm strike right into his chest to force him off me. He stumbled back three paces, coughing hard, while I spun out of his immediate range, my muscles screaming from the sudden burst of exertion.
Determined to break his rhythm, I aggressively pressed the third exchange, throwing a rapid combination of lightning-fast jabs to mask a heavy roundhouse kick. Jinichi parried the first two strikes with rigid, precise karate blocks, but the velocity of my follow-up roundhouse forced him to catch the impact cleanly on his ribs with a sickening thud. He didn't drop; instead, he gritted his teeth and used his trapped side to pin my leg against his torso while launching a brutal bicep strike to dislodge my balance. I tore my leg free by twisting my hips mid-air, landing awkwardly on my side before scrambling into a backward roll to finally create a clean three meters of distance between us.
I stood up slowly, my breath coming in ragged, painful wheezes as I locked my eyes back onto him. My forearms throbbed with a burning ache from blocking his heavy, rigid strikes, and my lungs felt like they were on fire. I could see it in his eyes now—he was tired. His usually indifferent shoulders slumped lower than before, his chest heaving violently as he tried to stabilize his breathing, and a fresh trail of sweat cut through the dust on his cheek. But I was running on empty too, and the intense ache in my muscles told me that my body wouldn't survive another prolonged, high-speed brawl.
This fight couldn't keep going on any longer; the longer it drags out, the harder it gets to find a winning opening against his instincts. I had to finish this right now, with one final, absolute strike that he wouldn't have the strength to block. Gathering the absolute last drop of my stamina, I poured the energy into my calves and lunged forward with everything I had left, transforming my entire body into a desperate, blinding spear aimed directly at his exposed collarbone.
[ JINICHI WATARU ]
She was coming at me with everything she had left. It was a beautiful, desperate attack.
But she thought I was completely out of options. She thought my linear karate style was all I had.
'Oh sweet summer child.'
As her spear hand cut through the air, inches from my neck, I didn't try to block it. I didn't try to step back. Instead, I let my weight drop completely onto my left heel and twisted my torso violently inward. Her fingertips grazed the fabric of my collar as I pivoted smoothly past her line of fire.
My body didn't stop moving. The momentum of the pivot carried me into a rapid, fluid rotation.
'Spinjutsu'
It wasn't a ninjutsu. It wasn't flashy chakra manipulation. It was a lost, ancient taijutsu art that utilized continuous centrifugal force to generate devastating velocity. To the crowd, I probably looked like a sudden, blurring top.
Because I was spinning with her forward momentum instead of fighting against it, my speed instantly doubled. Aoi's eyes widened in sheer terror as she realized she had thrust herself right into a human whirlpool. She was completely overextended, unable to stop her own trajectory.
As I completed the first full revolution, the rotational force completely re-centered my gravity. My right leg whipped around, tracing a low, lethal arc just millimetres above the dirt.
The low sweep didn't just hit her ankles—it caught her with the combined force of my spin and her own reckless sprint.
[CRACK]
The impact was brutal. Aoi's feet were violently swept out from under her, flipping her horizontally into the air. Before her body could even crash onto the dirt, the momentum of my second spin allowed me to rise, driving a powerful back-fist directly into her exposed shoulder.
The blunt force launched her like a stone skipping across water. She skidded wildly across the chalk line,
Iruka sensei had already left his position,
catching hers before she had fully started tumbling across the training grounds
Silence descended on the training grounds once more. I stopped spinning, exhaling a long, slow breath as I stood tall, my arms dropping lazily back to my sides.
" Sorry Aoi, the moves not perfect yet so I'm sure the hit must have hurt" I said.
before falling backwards and passing out.
...…
...….
.....
I woke up to the smell of antiseptic and drugs, blinking a bit, I tried to pry myself off the bed.
"Ack! Shit!"
'Does every kid hit like a truck these days!!'
the bruises on my body were a testament of the difficulty of the spar that was just fought.
"Ah, good. You're finally awake," a calm, gentle voice called out from the side of the room.
I turned my head toward the sound, grimacing as the movement pulled on the tight muscles in my neck. Sitting in a chair beside my cot was Iruka-sensei. He had his clipboard resting on his lap, but his focus was entirely on me. His expression was a mix of immense relief and lingering bewilderment.
"Take it easy, Jinichi," Iruka said, standing up to adjust the IV drip near the bed. "You suffered some severe bruising on your ribs and a mild concussion from the sheer exhaustion of that final move. Medical ninjutsu patched up the worst of it, but your body still needs rest."
I collapsed back onto the pillow, staring up at the white ceiling. The fog in my brain was slowly clearing, bringing the final moments of the match rushing back. Right. Spinjutsu. I had pushed my physical limits past the red line just to pull off those two rotations. No wonder my body decided to shut down the moment the adrenaline wore off.
"Iruka-sensei..." I mumbled, my throat feeling like it was coated in sandpaper. "Who... who won?"
A faint, amused smile tugged at the corner of Iruka's mouth. He tapped the clipboard with his pen. "Technically, you did. You managed to knock Aoi cleanly out of the boundaries before you collapsed inside the ring. I caught her before she took any further damage, but your victory is official."
He paused, his smile fading into a serious, searching glare. He stepped closer to the edge of the bed, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Now, care to explain what that was?" Iruka asked, his tone dropping into the strict demand of an Academy instructor.
"That wasn't any standard Academy Taijutsu. The way you redirected her attack, the continuous rotations... Where did you learn a high-level style like that, Jinichi?"
'Shitt....'