The proctor swiftly declared the next match, calling Ino and Hinata into the arena. The two of them stopped talking and exchanged a quick glance… before they silently disappeared from their positions, startling the other contestants who didn’t even get a glimpse of them moving.

By the time they whipped their heads back to the arena, the two girls were standing in the pre-arranged starting positions, silently staring at each other with blank, serious expressions. Only their eyes betrayed the eagerness they both felt.

Ino was lightly gripping her sword that appeared in her hand out of nowhere, no smoke or chakra fluctuation at all. While Hinata was simpler, not holding any obvious weapon, her hands hidden in her long sleeves. She looked like a gentle, noble girl having leisure time.

Neither intended to hold back.

… Sort of.

They have discussed this fight at length at home. With the upcoming invasion, they had almost decided to simply forfeit, saving their strength for the real fight.

After all, these Chunin Exams were not really all that important to them.

The problem was… they knew these Exams were going to happen for almost a year now. They knew they were going to clash here. And they even made a promise to hide their prowess until then.

This was supposed to be the time when they finally stopped hiding. The time when they could proudly display their progress, and beat each other up in front of an audience!

They trained hard for it. They never revealed all their tricks during their spars with each other because of this. They created their own techniques and strategies based on what they knew of each other’s prowess.

They had put hundreds, thousands of hours of effort, and they were supposed to give it all up because some uppity fool from Suna, and some snake-faced pedophile from Oto wanted to stage an invasion of Konoha due to their inferiority complexes and incompetence?

Fuck that!

Fuck them!

Fuck this!

They shared that sentiment with Ren. Calmly. Patiently. Very reasonably.

No. They were not whining. Well, Hinata would say that Ino was most definitely whining like a child who was refused her most desired candy.

No. They were not throwing a pity party. Well, Ino would say that Hinata most definitely had that, ‘oh, woe is me. Pity me’ air around her when they talked about this issue.

No. They were not throwing a tantrum. Ren could confirm it. Except, he had to actually live through the experience of these two females pouring all their complaints on the poor him, and his mother, from a different life, always taught him that lying was bad, so…

Ahem.

After a very… level-headed debate, followed by a whole lot of cuddling and comforting by Ren, they came to a simple solution.

They were going to fight anyway.

But it wouldn’t be smart to show all their cards right before the invasion started. Ren didn’t want them to fight anybody even remotely S-ranked, but he was a realist and knew it might happen. The butterfly effects were clearly brutal to him so far.

Hence, they agreed that Hinata was going to refrain from using any sort of Lightning Release while Ino was going to hold back her Yamanaka techniques. These were the two specializations each of the two girls was most proficient in.

Ren was trying to put them in a situation where, ‘Oh, you thought that was it? You haven’t even seen my final form yet!’ was fully applicable for them once the invasion started. For their own safety.

What could he say? He was worried for them.

This might not seem fair. Restricting all techniques from Hinata’s main elemental affinity, the only elemental affinity she really focused on during her training, seemed beyond harsh.

But it evened out. Hinata might have attained a massive resistance to Ino’s mental attacks and could no-sell her Yin clones during their joint training and spars with deceptive ease. She could shrug off the attempts at possession, too, without even flinching.

But resistance or not, fighting somebody who can relentlessly batter your mind with unceasing, staggering mental attacks one after another was never pleasant.

She had won all of the spars between herself and Ino so far. But once Ino got a better handle on her Yamanaka techniques? There was not one battle where Hinata came out of fighting the vicious blonde bimbo without a raging, pounding headache and deep desire to simply lie down, curl into a ball, and fall asleep while whimpering.

Having Ino’s mental techniques restricted was a huge relief for her. So, she accepted the terms even if it meant her strongest techniques may as well have been deleted out of existence for this match.

“Proctor-san, please start the match. We are not going to banter.” Hinata demurely said, causing the proctor to raise his eyebrow at her before he turned toward Ino, who nodded in agreement.

Shrugging in an ‘Eh, whatever. Not my problem,’ kind of way, he walked in between them and raised his arm.

Since there was no verbal show for the audience, they might as well just get to the blood sport itself.

“The match begins!”

The last syllable barely left his mouth, and Ino dashed toward Hinata while Hinata started off by instantly throwing ten needles at her, almost nailing the proctor, who just barely managed to jump out of the way, stumbling in the process.

Halfway through her dash, the flying needles and Ino met. In a masterful show of acrobatics, Ino jumped and rolled in the air over most of them, deflecting three that would hit her anyway with her sword in one fluid motion.

Landing on her feet, Ino’s knees buckled in preparation to propel her forward again and continue her dash, only to find twenty more needles almost upon her.

Her pupils constricted as she realized this was Hinata’s Shadow Needle technique, where she hid the next volley of needles in the shadows of the previously thrown one.

Ino’s footing shifted, and she was about to get more space by jumping back, only for the needles she had jumped over to abruptly change their trajectory and come back at her from behind.

From the corner of her eye, Ino noticed thin, barely visible chakra threads going around her and realized they were connecting with the fingers of Hinata’s left hand.

The needles were coming at her from all sides, even the three previously deflected ones were now falling at her from above, covering that escape route.

Clicking her tongue, Ino decided to show off early. The pointing and middle fingers of her free hand straightened into a hand seal.

Just as the needles were about to land, a sudden blast of highly pressurized air burst out of the surface of her body, pushing everything away from her and deflecting the flying needles at high speed just as they were going to…

A several dozen loud booming sounds resounded in the arena, all eventually molding into one roaring explosion as the exploding seals on the deflected needles went off, causing the ensuing shockwaves to make a few unbound strands of her hair sway despite the last remnants of her highly pressurized wind shield still partly covering her.

Ino’s eye twitched. Something she knew Hinata could see even through Ino being visually covered by the explosions.

If she weren’t fighting a Hyuga, she would have tried to use that visual cover and instantly pressed her attack. Alas, Hinata had Byakugan, so that strategy was way less effective.

Instead, Ino smirked and straightened as the explosions slowly cleared up.

The Yamanaka techniques might be restricted, but basic psychology was not.

Seeing Hinata’s eyes narrowed in displeasure at what was a clear imitation of her original technique, Heavenly Wall, done with wind chakra instead, Ino proudly raised her nose up in the air.

“Heh. You didn’t think you were the only one with an ultimate defense technique, did you?” She gave Hinata a provocative grin.

She had raised her nose so far up in the air that her eyes left Hinata, something that made the Hyuga girl mightily pissed off because, as a ninja, she should have attacked the second her opponent’s attention was no longer on her.

The judges and experienced ninjas were going to notice this. And her inaction would be noted against her.

But she couldn’t attack. Ino was an extremely good sensor ninja. Her eyes were not that important to her during a fight.

Hinata’s lips twitched. The bimbo… she was clearly baiting her.

One breath after Ino’s question passed, and she abruptly flew into a whirlwind of action, going from zero to a hundred in a second as she dashed again toward Hinata.

Any experienced ninja knew the best way to utilize trash talk was to say something that could impact their opponent, wait a moment for them to register the words, and attack while their mind was still distracted processing them.

Unfortunately, Hinata knew this, too.

Another needle flying directly at her interrupted Ino’s dash. Feeling the chakra imbued in that needle, Ino determined that this one was primed to explode quickly, and she wouldn’t have enough time to deflect it or jump over it.

Inwardly groaning, Ino opted to evade to the side and reinforced her body with the chakra just as the needle came near her previous position and exploded.

The resulting shockwave hit Ino, and she rode it, using it to push herself forward, only for another exploding needle already come at her. And another. And another.

Hinata was throwing them one after another, not all aimed directly at Ino. Many of them were thrown to cut off her escape routes. But Ino was quick on her feet, and since there were no needles behind her, she reluctantly retreated that way, only increasing her distance from Hinata.

‘Freaking long-range specialist.’ Ino cursed in her mind as she evaded the unceasing onslaught of explosions followed by small, metallic shrapnel from broken needles.

The speed at which Hinata was throwing and Ino was evading caused the audience to quickly go silent, staring in horror at the abruptly erupting orange, fiery balls and the two girls whose movements were a blur to a vast majority of the spectators.

Realizing that she could not get closer without using her wind techniques, Ino pouted.

She wanted to flex on Hinata, dammit!

With an unhappy sigh, her sword shimmered as it was sheathed in a highly concentrated coating of extremely sharp wind chakra. Ino stopped running.

Slashing at the closest needle that neared her, just as it exploded, Ino bisected the explosion, pushing it and the shockwave away from her body as she dashed forward, this time with a determined expression, no longer playing around.

Needle after needle, explosion after explosion came at her. Hinata no longer threw needles to cut off her escape routes. She now simply peppered Ino directly, changing the explosion timings, aiming at feet, hands, and hips, throwing at spots that were very awkward to defend with a sword while also retreating back to not make closing the distance easy.

But Ino simply and fluidly cut through every explosion and deflected all needles that were primed to explode too late, her sword not stopping even for a moment as she rushed straight at Hinata.

The first fifteen seconds of the match were over.

Half of the ground of the arena was littered with small craters and cracks due to Hinata’s high-speed exploding needles that made even some experienced Jonin in the audience have cold sweat because they were sure they would have been killed by now if they were in Ino’s place.

And Ino finally closed the distance between her and Hinata.

Triumphantly swinging her sword, the audience collectively held their breath as the long-range specialist had clearly nowhere to run now!

Only for a faint, blue covering of chakra to appear around Hinata’s dainty hand, and with a loud thump, Ino’s chakra-coated blade was stopped by Hinata’s finger.

Ino’s eyes bulged out in disbelief, her jaw slightly dropping.

Hinata gently smiled with amusement written in her eyes.

Pulsing more chakra out of the tenketsu on her hand, Hinata pushed the wind-coated blade back, forcefully deflecting it to the side and causing the shocked Ino to take a step back.

“Heh.” Hinata slowly chuckled, raising her eyebrow at Ino with an innocent smile, “You didn’t think I wouldn’t improve my ultimate defense technique, did you?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep