Starring:
Date: June 17, 2014
Summary:
While training, Michiko, Sado, and Ryouji get attacked by a giant killer mutant bunny.
Poster's note: foul language filtered in obvious places.
"Bunny Attack!"
In the forested mountains outside of Kumogakure, roughly 30min travel away at half-speed
Thanks to a recent loss at the hands of Tobei, Michiko is more determined than ever to train. It's true she was already worn out from wall-walking before the spar, but the fact that she was defeated by the Saito gave her a strong sense of frustration. It's mid-day and a bit foggy thanks to all of the rain recently, and Michiko has invited Ryouji to train with her out in the mountains. Not horribly far from the village, but it's enough where there's little to no people around. Ryouji would likely find her stretching and warming up for the upcoming training session.
For training every day by himself, to have someone ask Ryouji to join them to train is a treat indeed. And of all people, it's Michiko! He walks along the trail, his hands linked behind his back. Ryouji reaches the meeting place and lifts a hand in greeting, "Hey Michiko-chan. Ready to train? This will be fun." He grins and rubs his hands together.
Michiko waves cheerfully. "Hey, Ryouji-kun. How're you? Definitely ready to train, at least." She pulls a training dummy from out behind a nearby rock. "There we go… Just in case there's something you want to try. It's fire proof and lightning proof, so you don't have to go easy on it!" She grins slightly. "I got beat up in my last spar with Tobei-san, so I'm trying to get stronger in that department. He keeps avoiding my firebolts like Hiei-san did during the four on one spar."
Ryouji nods and rests his hands easily on the hilts of his swords. "When you say you got beat in your spar, what were you lacking?" he asks, "I'm sure it wasn't ninjutsu. You're better with that than I am." He walks over to the training dummy and pokes a finger at it. "I think if he keeps dodging your fire jutsu, you'll have to get faster. Hitting a stationary target though, that's easy. You're raction time needs to go up."
Michiko sighs. "I've been working a lot on my Taijutsu to make up for it. My speed is actually pretty good, though not nearly close to your blur. The problem, I think, was that I was already tired from training and bad luck. Wall-walking took a lot out of me, so that'd be a stamina thing, I believe?" She shrugs and sets about to sending some warmup kicks at the dummy.
Ryouji watches the kicks and nods, "It's something I had to learn too, you can't spar with someone at a fraction of your strength. You'll only end up hurting yourself. Speaking of which, you're ok to do it now, right?" He unhooks his backpack and sets it down with a thud. Whatever is in there is heavy. Then shakes his head letting his hair grow out quickly down to mid back. "Hiei-sensei has us carrying rock packs. It's blunt, but it works for our strength, speed, and stamina." He nudges the pack with his foot, "Want to try it?"
Michiko eyes the large pack. "No, it's very difficult if you're not at your best. At least it was only a spar and I wasn't in the middle of a mission. That would have meant my death, I'm sure." She gives the backpack a light kick to see just how heavy it may be. "I think we may need to lighten that load, Ryouji-kun. I'm not as strong as you are when it comes to this kind of thing, sadly."
Ryouji smiles, "Of course, but the idea is the same." He kneels down and undoes the top of the pack. He pulls out several iron bars, dropping them onto the ground. He lightens the pack up by a third, easily carried by someone who's less than a four stength and a bit harder by someone who's a three.
While invited on this training camp, Sado had some errands to do for his father before he could head out, thus making him late to arrive. He does make it to the agreed upon spot, though, arriving stylishly late and spotting the duo he was invited to join up with. He waves and jogs over to them, wondering what was up or what kind of trouble they were going to get into this time.
Michiko watches as Ryouji starts to lighten the pack, staring at the Reizei like he was mad. For all she knew, he wasn't, but that amount of weight looked rather crushing to the girl. "Well, it looks doable at least…" she mutters to herself, stooping to pick up the pack. It's lighter than she expected, but still on the heavy side of things. Sado comes into view and it's all she can do to give him a slight bow without toppling over. "Sado-kun, it's nice to see you. I hope you're doing well?" she wonders.
Ryouji nods, grinning at her as she puts on the pack. "That's the spirit." he says before seeing Sado. "Hey Sado-kun. Welcome! Pick up a rock and get training!" He giggles and says, "If only one of us had earth jutsu, we could pull bigger rocks out of the ground for training." He hears something odd that he can't quite put his finger on near Sado. He tilts his head and starts walking towards him and says, "Sado-kun? Do you hear that?" He points off to the side of him.
"I see you are training hard, Michiko-chan." Sado says with a chuckle as he sees Ryouji taking out some iron bars from her pack. "Buffing up, soon you will be able to take any hit." he assures her with a nod. On his way to the group, Sado had passed by what looked like rather large animal tracks in the area, but to him it didn't seem out of the ordinary, as bears and mountain lions usually frequent the area. "Passed by some tracks on the way over. Seems we might have a bear or lion around, so while training keep your eyes and ears alert." he mentions to the duo, for safety reasons more than anything. As per Ryouji's request, Sado looks around for a rock before he is alerted to something by Ryouji. "Huh?" he says, looking to where Ryouji points.
"Ryouji-kun, I feel like you don't know me at all!" Michiko pouts. "I can use some earth Jutsu if you really want to get larger rocks." Michiko hefts the pack on her shoulders to get a better grip, tilting her head slightly at the mention of a strange noise. "Another bear or lion? I feel like we have a zoo going wild… Kumogakure should hire a good animal tamer soon." With a frown, she starts to focus some chakra just to be on the safe side.
In the direction Ryouji is pointing in, there's a rustle of trees that is not hard to miss. A distance away, there is a brownish-grey color that stands out from the red-orange in the trees.
Ryouji says almost pleading, "I'm sorry sorry sorry! I didn't think you could do that! Fire, yes…but earth? Oh neat. Ok…" he flexes and rotates his arm, "…bring on the rocks!" He doesn't notice anything more. "So, have that pack on a few days, you should be good, Michiko-chan." Ryouji says with a nod.
Sado spots the rustling of the trees, making a point to investigate without actually leaping into the bushes. He finds a nearby boulder, using that powerful training he had been working on for good as he lifts the thing that was easily twice the size of him up over his head and somewhat shotputs it into the bushes that were shaking moments ago while the rest of the ninja trio talked.
The rustling continues in the trees, and Michiko can't shake the feeling that something bad might happen. She squints a bit, frowning as she spots something. "Ah… Ryouji-kun… Sado-kun… I don't think bears are a grey-brown in color, usually… Nor are mountain lions," she comments with a slight tilt of her head. She watches Sado's boulder sail overhead, and it lands a bit short of whatever it is in the bushes, alerting it to the three genin.
From the trees bursts out a large rabbit, but it's only just recognizable as such. It has the usual buck teeth that are sharpened to a scary-looking point and large floppy brown ears that easily weigh Michiko's current pack-load. It's also got glowing red eyes and some nasty-looking drool coming from its mouth. With a loud roar, it heads over to the nearest genin (Sado) and tries to kick him with its powerful hind legs.
Michiko jumps back slightly when the rabbit appears, the pack sliding off her shoulders. "Ear, what the heck is that thing?" she gasps out. She watches as it moves towards Sado, calling out, "Sado-kun, look out! It's heading your way!"
Ryouji steps back, seeing a giant rabbit attacking sado. "Wow, look at the size of it!" he says…smiling? He pumps his fist, "Take it down Sado-kun! I call a foot!" He let's Sado handle it for now since he's not sure how powerful the rabbit is.
"The Easter Bunny from Hell!" Sado calls out as the large rabbit bursts from the trees and goes to attack Sado. Sado spins himself around and lashes out with a powerful kick to meet head on with the rabbits large foot, nullifying all the forward momentum behind the rabbit's attack and sending some of his own back into the leg of the rabbit. "Now I've seen everything." he says as he starts getting into the mood for a fight with this thing, hopping from side to side, throwing out some shadow punches to warm up as he eyes this insanely large rabbit.
The rabbit uses Sado's powerful kick to bounce right off and away, landing after an acrobatic backflip a distance from the three genin. It screeches something, obviously unhappy and maybe a bit hungrily? Then it charges again, using its floppy ears to attack all three of them at once! The ears are extremely heavy and whip around much like a helicopter blade would (though not as slicing).
Michiko ends up getting hit by the bunny's ears, causing her to go flying back into a tree and she goes *poof*. Yay, clones! The genin managed to move away at the last second, forming a few handseals to launch fire at the rabbit. "This is hardly a good Easter present, Sado-kun! But nice kick!" she yells out.
Ryouji leaps backward as the rabbit's ears slice out at him. "Hey, he took my technique!" He frowns and skids to a stop tucking his fists at his side. He surges his chakra farther than he's used to as his fists glow blue. He condenses the chakra swirling around his hands into disks at his plams. At the same time his hair begins to squirm and take on a life of its own as strands begin to rise up and rear back as if to strike. He takes his now glowing hands and pulls them back over his head to guide them, then points his palms out. Two brillant blue beams shoot out as spikes of hair lance outward following the same path to the rabbit fire out in a white streak. Strands of blue and white lance out at the rabbit as Ryouji says, "Die!"
Hopping around in place and getting warmed up allowed Sado the first strike against the rabbit, but it also made him the first target. As the rabbit begins to spin its ears around, Sado vanishes from sight, similar to when he uses his phase dodge, but this was a sheer feat of body strength and speed after all that training lately. Sado would appear on the other side of the rabbit after having attacked and sent back the powerful momentum the rabbit had used to swing its ears with his sheer force of speed..
The rabbit screeches in pain as one of Michiko's firebolts hit it, causing its fur to be ignited. It hops up extremely high to try and get the flames out, not that it does anything. The high altitude causes the flames to sputter out, much to the bunny's happiness. The hop was so high, though, that Ryouji's hair attack and initial chakra lance fail to reach it. Gravity does its work, though, and the rabbit comes down into the second chakra lance, another scream coming forth. Its floppy ears are pummeled easily by Sado, giving it a pretty big bruise at this point.
The rabbit takes a moment to recover, but now it's a bit more wary of its prey. It stares at them with big eyes and hisses at the genin, sending out gooey spit at all of them. The saliva is so sticky that it would seem to halt their movements.
Michiko watches the rabbit take massive amounts of damage and it's still not down for the count. It even manages to spit out this gooey-looking spit that she would rather not touch with a thirty nine and a half foot pole. A quick couple seals and the earth shoots up to block the spit. "Ew… Okay, that's gross…" she comments, slipping out of the barrier to attack the rabbit with some more fire.
Ryouji decides the best defense is a good offense. So he charges forward and calls out, "Michiko, need a boost!" He runs in front of Michiko after seeing her doing the hand signs. He steps on the chunk of earth shooting up and now that he's launching into the air he's out of the angle of attack of the spit. "Yeeeeaaaah!" and lands on the rabbit while drawing out his white and blue blades to hack and slash at the rabbit's back. "Going for the ears!"
Sado gets caught off guard and slimed like an adult in a Nickelodeon kids show. "Ewwwwwww." he says as he holds his hands up dripping in goo. "That's so nasty." he remarks, cringing in disgust as he waddles over to the nearby tree to try to scrape it off.
The Mutant Bunny dodges most of the attack launched at it, but ends up burned by Michiko again. It screams loudly, almost painfully, and starts hopping about frantically. Noticing Sado is still covered in its icky spit, it makes its way over to the small boy and chomps down on him with its sharp teeth. Ryouji on its back makes it flail a bit, ears whipping about to defend it from the hack n' slash going on.
Michiko gives a little inner cheer when the rabbit's attacks aren't aimed at her. But poor Sado seems to be getting the short end of the stick. And with Ryouji perched on top of the beast, she doesn't wanna burn her teammate. The handseals change and mud instead of fire launches out at the rabbit, only making a certain Reizei get muddy if he gets caught in the crossfire. "Stupid rabbit. Whose idea of a joke is this??"
Ryouji frowns a little as he hates to do this. But, this bunny is going down. He cranks up his chakra for a second as his arms go into a blurred state. He does a point blank tripple slice with his swords, the same speed he would do moving with a flash strike to the back of the rabbit's head.
Sado is busy scraping his goo off on the tree when the light of day is overshadowed by the large rabbit coming up behind him, goo dripping from his mouth like saliva onto Sado's shoulder. Sado looks up in time to see the rabbit's teeth coming for him, having freed his legs first thing in order to move if needed. In a crackle of electricity, Sado is gone from the tree, perhaps giving the rabbit a good taste of bark. Appearing behind the rabbit, he sends his fists at its body, precise strikes not meant to inflict outward damage, but severe internal damage and spasms from the lightning.
The rabbit ends up engulfed in mud this time, which admittedly makes the burns feel better. There's still a nuisance on its head, though, and the bunny rolls around and ends up rolling ontop of Ryouji, unless he gets away! It's screeching is still extremely painful, kicking up a notch even as it starts to weaken. Then Sado's attacks do it in, and the bunny lets out a final scream (it really is an awful sound) before shuddering into a limp form
Michiko lets out a relieved sigh as the rabbit finally goes down, looking around to make sure everyone is okay. "Sado-kun, are you alright? You too, Ryouji-kun." She goes over to the rabbit's body and gives it a kick to make sure it's down. Satisfied when it doesn't move, she looks over to the other boys. "I think we should report this… It doesn't seem at all natural…"
Ryouji hops up on his feet as he feels the rabbit begin to go into a death roll. He does a quick hop and disappears for a second before reappearing on the ground with a slight blur effect. He shuts down the blur just as quickly and says, "I'm ok, the thing never touched me. It's a good idea. But first." He walks over drawing a basic sword, "I'm taking samples." He cuts off its two front feet. "One for the sample, one for a trophy. Imagine how much luck a giant rabbits foot would bring?"
Sado nods his head to Michiko, giving her a thumbs up. He then gets a big grin on his lips and walks over to Ryouji to give him a nice, big, gooey hug, or at least try his hardest to get one off, spreading and, by proxy, removing some of the goo left over on his clothing. "We did it Ryouji-kuunnn" he says with arms outstretched.
Michiko laughs a bit at Ryouji, but nods. "I'm sure it will bring a great deal of luck. Just be sure to clean it off, Ryouji-kun." She moves off to the side as Sado goes in for a hug and lights the dead rabbit on fire so it no longer exists. It can't be good for the wild like that. The flames burn until the rabbit is gone, and the smell of burnt fur and cooked meat fill the air. "We should go back to the village, then!" As she turns away, something catches her eye, but it's gone before she can call out to the others. With a frown and a shrug, she grabs Ryouji's pack and hefts it onto her shoulders. It was a training exercise, after all!
Ryouji backs up with the two paws as Michiko lights up the rest. "It's too bad we can't drag the rest back. I'm sure the medical nin would want to look at it. At least they got samples though." He pulls off his shirt and wraps up the paws in it, so no blood leaks out. Who knows if it's toxic. "We should probably head back and report this then." he says, standing back up and tucking the paws under his arm. He blinks at Sado coming towards him and says, "Wait wait…no noooooo!" and he's gooed. It wouldn't have been so bad if he was fully clothed. But without a shirt..it's just ewwww. He looks at the strands and is speachless for a moment. Then his chin begins to quiver. "You….it…stinks….oh fluff…" and starts wiping it off, but only makes it spread more.
If Sado's slime wasn't smelly enough, the smell of burning hare only added to the moment. "Bahaha join the club." Sado says to Ryouji. Sado catches something out of the corner of his eye but by the time he looks it is gone. Figuring he was just seeing something so it wasn't worth bringing up, he turns to Michiko, still a bit of goo on him, and grins. Since she had Ryouji's backpack on, he figured what better way to train her than chase her with the threat of getting gooed! "Michikoooo-channnn" he says as he starts in a slow jog towards her to show his intent, arms out in a goofy way.
Michiko blinks and eyes Sado, then yelps and dashes off, though the backpack slows her down. "Stay right there, Sado-kuuuuuuun!!!" she shouts out, dashing away as fast as she can.
