Four Featherless Bipeds (Saya)

While the freshly summoned butterfly certainly was roaring to prove himself to his summoner, he was by no means being reckless. He had no idea what this girl was capable of, and that would mean he would have to be fast. Forming his ‘hand seals’ at 80 speed as his antennae twitched, a blustery gale would form above his frame as he accelerates to 100 speed towards the girl. He could reach her, he really could! Just a few meters more-

“Oscuro, dodge it!” Kikuko would warn him from behind. Gosh, those tree roots didn’t look like they were playing around at all. And how fast they were moving as well! At 100 speed he would once again form the ‘hand seals’ of the next technique- that of the Hare, the Dragon, the Boar. With a flap of his wings he would push himself upwards at 30 speed, allowing him to just barely escape the clutches of the roots. These winds would fill a 10m cube in front of him at 30 speed and power, blowing away those caught within the range with a gust of strong wind.

While Oscuro was using Tailwind, Kikuko would already be preparing her next technique. Saya and Ai were fast, prodigiously fast. Frankly, there was a petty part of her that was a little jealous. How did she do it? Was it just training? Maybe techniques, or jutsu? She didn’t know, but that meant that she would be difficult to pin down for any sort of combat. Still, the fact that she was rooting herself in place with that strange tree ability gave her an opening. She could do this! She really could! Forming the seals of the Ox, Boar, Dog, Bird, and Tiger at 50 speed, she would once again place her right hand firmly upon the ground. “Summoning: Iron Maiden!”

Flowing her chakra into the seal network that would spread beneath her hand, she would designate Ai’s current position 10 meters away as the epicenter of the technique. On Ai’s left and right sides two halves of a ‘coffin’ would rise at 80 speed- each in the shape of half of a turquoise butterfly with wings outstretched. These coffin pieces would each be five meters tall and three meters wide, although notably lacking any sort of nasty implements within whatsoever. Had Kikuko purposely removed them, out of fear of hurting her friends?

“Release!” With a shout, she would form the Seal of Confrontation at 50 speed. The sound of chains snapping would be heard as each side of the coffin would be wrapped in chains, pulling themselves together at 80 speed. If unimpeded, it would trap her opponent within the coffin, keeping her decidedly unharmed albeit in the dark.

======

Kikuko's AP:
Summoning: Oscuro [20ap]
Summoning: Iron Maiden [30ap]

[985/1110AP remains]

Oscuro's AP:


Sudden Takeoff [20]
Tailwind [20]

Current AP [210/250]

[457]
[2504]

As the butterfly began to speed up, Ai continued to push her attack. The ground in an entire ten meter radius began to shift and rip as her technique continued. One meter before Kikuko three great tree roots shot out from the ground, tearing the earth between themselves and the girl as they moved to surround her with only a foot distance between them. THe circle that protected Ai continued to grow, ten tree trunks shooting out from the top portion of the circle. As the gust of wind was released the great canopies of the trees soaked the blast of air, putting themselves between Ai and the butterfly as the cut the sky into quadrents. When they finished growing, they would have split the aerial battlefield into quadrents with five meters between them, ensuring that while there was movable space for the summon, their fifty foot length would not allow movement in a direction that would get him to where the puppet stood.

Even as she put obstacles in the butterfly's path the technique targeted the summoner. The two outter roots circled around where Kiku was standing, growing a great tree every five meters of their length. THe final moved directly towards the girl, seeking to grasp her tightly and ensure the puppets win. If allowed, and Kiku didn't move from the area, the two outter roots would raise a wall of trees that completely surrounded her, cutting off both vision and pathing. all of this happening with a speed of eighty.

(TWC 1904)

The counter was.... annoying to say the least. In response to the power of her mokuton Kiku had summoned a giant wall. As she watched Saya let out a short gasp at the sheer magnitude of the summoning her friend had created, but Ai simply lifted a hand. She had an answer. What she didn't know, was that there was a summoning seal coming towards her at a fairly high speed. Thankfully that wouldn't matter. She slid through the opening underneath one of the roots that had protected her, and as she did her hands flew through hand seals at a speed of ninety three. Before Kiku's second technique could be cast, she'd finished the first set, Horse. Tiger. Snake. She clapped her hands together as her sister copied the movements and summoned a mass of chakra. This would be a new addition to her technique list that could throw her opponent off.

Kiku had yet to see her use earth style. There was the one singlular jutsu when they were performing a mission, but it wasn't exactly something she brought out often. It was surprisingly good at dealing with very large things that needed stable ground though. She'd be two seals into the second technique before Kiku finished the attack she'd meant to finish the fight. Snake. Hare. the two girl's hands flew in unison to prepare a counter attack. Boar. Ox. Half tiger. Still on the ground she pressed a free hand to the earth, pushing off to lift herself back to her feet and try to end the battle quickly. She'd intended this to be a teaching lesson, but as their blood quickened in their veins Ai was excited to test the limits of this girl's technique. THe ground in a twenty meter diameter in front of her began to shift violently. The entire field moved and the earth cracked in the area before her. Tearing earth palm. A technique meant to trap an opponent and slow their movement would turn the summoning wall into her own deadly weapon--well. Deadly if she were seriously trying to harm the girl. As the earth rose and lowered two things would happen.

First the large wall would begin to rock, her control over doton forcing it off balance and sending it falling backwards to where Kiku stood. Second the seal intended to do harm to Ai would never be noticed. The shifting earth cracked and crumbled, drawing both the girl and the seal down into the ground with a power of one hundred and thirty that was enough to crush the seal as it drew anyone in the radius downward to capture their legs. Before she'd gotten low enough in the earth to actualy be caused harm however the rumbling would stop, giving her a chance to react to the rashimon falling towards her. The puppet, now floating about a foot from the ground rushed towards the falling structure.

If she failed to stop the Rashimon, she would watch it threaten to crush her into the very earth which had tried to swallow her, but find that four foo dog head statues split from the now still earth about a meter on each side of her, catching the summon and holding it until she could get out.

(TWC 1451 jutsu used: ninjutsu amplifier on tearing earth turning palm

One, two, three four, five beats. The speed of their battle was blinding to Kikuko, and her struggles to remain afloat in the face of Ai’s overwhelming power wouldn’t be enough if she was truly this strong. She wouldn’t beat her in a contest of raw power. In fact, it was simply impossible. She had no idea that it was this possible to be this strong in the world of shinobi so quickly. She had underestimated Saya and her siblings, she realized.


She would need to be crafty. Need to be clever. Dangerous, maybe even on the border of recklessness. Still, victory was not impossible. She was so close. She just had to grasp it. Breaking off from the second technique as she felt the earth begin to quake, she would form the seal of the Ram before rushing up the Rashomon wall at a break-neck speed of 150, feeling her heart leap into her chest as she reached heights of velocity she had never attempted before. Reaching the top of the summon construct just as it threatened to topple fully upon the ground, she would pull out her last trump card. Her friend and comrade, despite his griping. Please, let him be around. If he wasn’t she wasn’t sure what she would do.


“Summoning Jutsu!” Clipping one of the Rashomon horns for a surface to place her matrix upon, Kikuko would fall twenty meters shortly while obscured in smoke. After this the smoke would clear- revealing a butterfly whose size defied description. Twenty five meters across, five meters tall, and ten meters long, there was no way such a creature could normally exist in nature- its very wingbeats blowing up considerable winds as it would stabilize itself in the air.


“Little Kikuko. Why do you call me at this time? Don’t you know that I have my own affairs to attend to?” Principe the Black Prince would ask his summoner. Upon the successful summoning, Kikuko would be riding atop his head- catching her breath after the frankly harrowing experience. Oscuro would also have joined her on his back, having flown at 100 speed to their current location.


“I’ll explain later, Junior. I need your help right now!”

This, decidedly, was not the correct thing to say to the butterfly. “I told you I’m not a Junior!” With an angry flap of his wings, he would batter everything below him in a 10 meter cube with fierce winds at 50 speed and power, blowing away anybody with a lower strength stat unless they had some method to remain still. As for the three on Kikuko’s side, the technique would force them upwards at 50 speed until Principe would hover around the 45 meter height mark, looking down upon the ruined battlefield with an imperious expression. Well, perhaps it was imperious. It’s hard to understand butterfly faces.


======


Kikuko AP:
Body Flicker: 7AP
Summoning: Principe [40ap]
Summoning: Oscuro [20ap]
Surface Walking [4ap]



Total: [842/1110]


Oscuro AP:


Tailwind [20ap]
Total AP: [170/250]

Principe AP:

Sudden Takeoff (A-Rank) [40]
Total AP: [460/500]


[476]
[3388]

Kiku's new actions caused some....interesting challenges. The rumbling earth ceased as the rashamon wall began to fall away from Ai. That was one problem solved but now there was another. Glancing upward she pulled backwards towards the safety of the wood style latticework she'd surrounded herself in earlier. Heres the problem. Her opponent was 45 meters up in the air flying on a giant butterfly well out of her reach. Ai was all the way on the ground surrounded by large systems of roots and the bases of trees. While that made combat dificult for both it wasn't exactly a problem as much as a hinderance. the PROBLEM as Ai saw it, however, was that combat at current would be impossible. She wasn't going to climb the roots to get up to that height, and the butterfly was effectively trapped. What Kiku seemed to have forgotten as the large wall cut her off from the other side of the battlefield, was that the area where they fought was still cut into ten meter quadrants by the 50 meter tall trees she'd summoned earlier. As she floated down to the 45 meter radius she'd find herself well and truely engulfed on several sides by the leaved canopy of the trees that had ensured no ability for the first summon to move.

This could be seen as a win, she thought, but instead she'd give the butterfly time to get itself untangled from the treetops it had been coerced into flying directly down into. That left them at a stalemate once again. The butterfly could fly above the fifty meter mark and move freely, but it didn't seem like either ninja had the ability to effectively fight at that range. She had an option or two that could maybe hit that range, but it was unreliable so Ai would do the next best thing. Moving back towards the protection of her root circle she'd hop over one of the roots at chest level and slip back into the center of her bubble, keeping her eyes on the pair high up above her. From here she'd wait to see what new plan of attack Kiku would come up with now that she was fully aware that Nativity of a world of trees made use of the large summon quite impossible at the range they needed to be in to fight.

"I won't lie, the flying thing is kind of a pain to deal with. Hopefully, we'll have aerial ability soon though. " Almost as if she'd timed it perfectly, The coach puppet could be seen walking into the training facility holding an almost comically large box with the doll maker's insignia on the front. It seems Ita had visited to let them know that her new puppet was finally finished and put together. It wouldn't do them much good now, considering it was Ai fighting and to suggest that their student might compete against a higher level puppet in the middle of a battle against Saya's favorite A rank would be rediculous, however it was nice to know that he hadn't gotten himself lost.

(TWC 1971)

WIth confirmation that the spar was over Ai would raise a hand to show she understood. Now comes the hard part. She'd basically destroyed this area of the training facility, but that wasn't a problem. Saya had a technique to make that an easy fix. The problem came in how exactly she planned to get rid of all this folliage so they could repair the floor. As Kiku dismissed her summons, coming down to ground level so they could talk about what each had learned, she glanced back at her sister visibly confused about the answer. "So... Uh. Aya. Now that we've done all this how... How are we going to fix it?"

"Oh. EASY! The same way we're gonna fix the floor. Watch!" She formed the seals quickly, Hare. Boar. Unity. Hare. Dragon. As she poured chakra into the jutsu the roots pulled backwards, sinking down towards the earth. With the power of her humble carpenter's livelihood built with love and dedication they would watch as the plant life that had once been used to threaten violence crawled towards the broken floor and began to spread itself. The rounded roots and vibrant trees flattened against the earth in place of the once pristine training floor, and every four inches pristine lines cut through the structures to make wood grained flooring. It would take her some time, but everything was coming along as planned.

"Ninjutsu is an incredibly powerful tool but my sister and I happen to have potent blood. Most of the techniques you saw were fundamentals we gained while preparing to unlock the power of Mokuton. Wood style. It allows manipulation of quite a bit of various plant life but mostly wooden structures or trees. You kept up pretty well though. You forced me into a draw with your flying ability. It would have taken me a bit longer to even think about being able to use a jutsu with the range of the nativity of a world of trees that forced distance between us again and everything else I can use doesn't really cover enough distance for me to have been able to put more pressure on you. Next time though, I'll definitely defeat you!" She smiled softly as she analyzed the combat. While it was true that Ai had the upper hand, and were they going all out probably would have pressured out a win, She was more than impressed that her attacks were defended against so efficiently. With the height advantage and speed at which the girl's butterflies moved she couldn't say for sure she would have been able to do more then defend herself were they not in an enclosed room.

"You did so great! Ai tried real hard but honestly if we weren't inside there would have been nothing she could do to deal with your aerial combat! That's kind of a weakness of our techniques. In close to mid range we have a crazy amount of power, and if you were on the ground theres a jutsu I have that ends combat pretty quickly, but once you take to the air We're at a super disadvantage. I'm jealous I didn't think of that weakness! I've got some planning to do when I start training new jutsu." Saya confirmed what Ai thought, and offered congratulations on their draw.

(TWC 2526)

While it wouldn't be surprising that their spar would give both of them new ideas in what they needed in order to defend themselves, the excitement on saya's face was all too obvious. She wiggled back and forth for sevearl moments as she listened to Kiku talk before she couldn't hold it in any longer.


"Oh oh oh What ideas!!! I have new ideas too! like uh. A wooden bullets jutsu maybe. Or like. Wings. or something? " She knew that she needed something to be able to fight at long range, but her experience in creation had been mostly her ideas molded by her teachers, or techniques they'd learned about earlier in life taught by pinochio. This left her struggling with how to actually deal with the situation.

"Um. Aya dear, You actually are in the process of finding a solution to that remember? The freyja puppet's cloak of falcon feathers will give you aerial ability, though she isn't quite sturdy enough to carry you into the air with her. Honestly I believe some wood style techniques that can be cast from the body would probably solve the problem though. Imagine if you could use nativity of a world of trees or something similar from your own body. Then you'd just need to find a way to get yourself into that higher position and you're golden. " Ai would let her sister stew in new ideas that pinochio would inevitably shoot down for various reasons as she continued the conversation with Kiku. "Your allies are as much a tool in combat at your weapons. Look at your summons not as having to fight for you, but as ability that you possess in order to protect yourself. That said I think you would probably do well with either something that can be fired from a great distance or a manipulation technique that activates on the ground despite where you are. Can't say I've heard of that being a possibility though. I believe even with Nativity of a world of trees we must start the jutsu within a certain distance of ourselves. It may also be more useful to fight lower to the ground. You can still take advantage of vertical momentum to fight at a dimension your opponent may not be able to, but not be too far away that you can't still compete in combat. "

Saya had been wierdly quiet up till now. Her mind spun with all of the ideas for new techniques which flew past her eyes at blinding speed until they combined together into one not so useful amalgamation. Then she simply blinked and came back to the present.

"It was helpful for us too! I enjoy a good spar from time to time. It's really exciting." As the three spoke, her jutsu continued its work. Most of the mokuton trees had already been consumed by her carpentry technique, but a large root continued to meld into the floor, creating a beautiful hard wood flooring to replace what she'd destroyed.

(TWC 3028)