Naruto: Tales of Ashihara

Chapter 15 - Against the Yamabushi

Suiton – Suiningyodan

She spits water from her mouth to the ground. The water immediately shapes into a mermaid that heads to Naomi. But before the mermaid can completely leave the ground, the water puddle freezes and the mermaid too. Naomi steps to the frozen ice mermaid and strongly hits it with her leg. The statue breaks in half and the detached piece flies toward Tokiwa who jumps over it. Naomi poses her hand on the ground.

Hyoton – Hyowana

Where Tokiwa is about to land, an ice circle forms and captures her leg as soon as she touches it. Now unable to move, she sees the ice crawling up her leg as Naomi slowly walks toward her with a smile on her face.

"Guess I'm just better than you." she says to provoke the one she's about to kill.

Tokiwa, not yet resolved to lose, joins her hands to make the monkey hand seal. Naomi who wants to finish this right now jumps toward her with an icicle emerging from her hand, but isn't fast enough.

Ningyo no Uta

Seeing her adversary quickly come to her, Tokiwa screams "Please Stop!" while still holding the hand seal. At these words, Naomi stops straight with the icicle pointing at Tokiwa's chest. The voice she just heard was so, soothing, gentle and pleasant to hear. She's dazed and confused. She feels totally crushed, manipulated. She can't even move her eyes around anymore, and sees everything go dark and blurry in front of her. Last thing she sees is Tokiwa who grabs the ice spike that's handed to her and breaks it to use it herself.

She's under a spell. Naomi concentrates to evade this numb feeling and break out of its influence, like she would break out of a genjutsu. Out of pure will, she manages to slightly move her foot forward for it to make contact with the ice trap that blocks Tokiwa's leg. This way, she pushes the trap to grow faster on her enemy's body. The ice reaches and freezes Tokiwa's arms before she has the time to use the icicle to stab and kill Naomi.

Tokiwa just gives a surprised look as she sees the mercenary woman break out of the mermaid song's grip. Naomi looks at her opponent straight in the eyes and steps back. She's glad that she escaped this but is also frightened by the ease of use of this jutsu. Tsubai, who was stressed by the close confrontation that was happening under his eyes, stood up and got a bit closer in order to intervene if needed. He slowly walks to get closer to them. Considering Tokiwa's current position, he estimates that the fight is over.

Suddenly the ice dome breaks under a rain of feathers. Tsubai, Naomi and Tokiwa look up to see the shattered ice pieces and blades fall on them.

Yawarakai – Issen

Daisuke uses the same move as earlier in front of the wall and slices through the air. All the sharp objects falling on his allies are broken by the shock wave and pushed away. Tsubai and Naomi still hold their forearms up to cover their faces from the potential harm. Tokiwa, unable to move just hopes for something to save her from this lethal rain. After making sure his friends were safe, Daisuke looks back at the flying foe and reacts quick to dodge another feather rain aimed at him. He flips back several times to get out of range with ease,... suspicious ease.

He doesn't realize he did exactly what Moritaka wanted. By dodging like this he only helped his enemy to get him away of his friends. Moritaka then turns to the three people who were blocked in the dome earlier and closes his wings around him.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" screams Tokiwa to her ally, not sure if he realized that she's there.

"Taking care of them." calmly answers Moritaka.

He then violently redeploys his wings to shoot a much larger wave of feathers to them. Daisuke is too far away and the blades are too many for him to stop them like earlier. Tokiwa can't move and just looks at death coming from a supposed ally's hand. The rain is too large for Naomi to do anything either.