صلاة يعبيص

Neo found himself playing monkey-in the middle to three versions of the tall man, who he supposed was the Raikage, though he was really left guessing. He needed a way out of this situation, and fast! He was now soaked to the bone and miserable thanks to the puddles he popped through on his way out of the ground, but he still had his trick to play.

Neo quickly assessed the situation thinking on what jutsu would have the best oomph. Three at once. Maybe that one...?

He had a jutsu that he hadn't yet used but... would it, no could it work? Things had a funny way of not going as planned. Jumping out from the middle of the grouping toward one side, Neo ran through the hand signs. He knew his current aim, if nothing else it would provide a decent distraction. He was planning on distracting the two that were closest to him and tossing his trick at the one farther while he was looking at the 'explosion' of earth.

Neo released his jutsu, Earth Release: Landslide, between the two men that were immediately closest to him. He then reached into his pocket, it fell around something circular and soft. Not too soft that it was rotten but not so hard as to caught any pain. He'd been toting this thing around all day, looking for his victim, and now he had him in his sights!

Neo lobbed the tomato as hard and fast as he could at the man farthest from him. He had tied an explosive tag to the little bit of the vine that remained earlier. So that when it blew, there would be tomato everywhere. All the fruit needed to do was get in the vicinity.

Did I get him?!

Chakra Count: 18/32

It was awkward how intense the battle was coming just from a few minutes into it. Kuroi assumed that this would just be a sparring session, well more like a training session, between the two Genin and the Raikage, but it seemed like it had just turned into like a spar of some sort. He wondered what brought this on, and after taking a few seconds to think about it he came to the conclusion that it was probably his fault in the first place that they were conversing with their fist instead of their words. Nice job, Kuroi. Well since they were already fighting, they might as well continue the fight, right? One thing though, the actual Kuroi didn't feel like getting involved in this just yet so he would leave it up to the clones for now.

When the kunais were recoiled by the shurikens, they had ended up landing in front of the clones which had allowed them to pick them back up on their way back at the Shinja. Picking up the kunai, they continued the assault each one of the clones slashing at the neck of what would be the real Shinja. Luckily they were capable of avoiding whatever attacked was used by Neo, and they stayed clear of whatever was being thrown by the small boy. Kuroi, the real Kuroi, had tilted his head at an angle noticing what was being thrown. He then mumbled, "Is that a... tomato?" The distance he was from them, and how low his voice was at the time, had made it impossible for either of the other Shinobi to hear it. He was questioning the motive of this fight now, but he would leave that to himself.

OOC: Sorry for the delay. I also took some liberties due to lack of detail. If you are dissatisfied or troubled by the details in the following post, talk to me on the box or drop me a PM and we'll talk it out.

There wasn't much he could do, to be perfectly honest.

His clones intercepted the two clones of Kuroi. Yes, intercept. You see, though that Doton just used by Neo was out of nowhere and did quite a number to the earth, the epicenter of the jutsu was at the user's location, which meant the worst of it would just be suffered by the clone directly in front of Neo and directly behind him. Not the other two who were a bit forward and had just gained a plume of dust to act as their cover.

Not that they would need it, you see. Instead they march forward, standing in the way of the two Kuroi's and make use of their weapons' lengths to swing at the clones of the genin. If the clones did not halt their progress, they would have been cut done and forced back into becoming water. If the clones did halt, they either had to move any direction but forward to avoid the attack. If they attempted to block, then they would find their kunais split due to the edge of the Bloodscythe being a finely tempered and honed one and possibly the sword would cut them, too. Both doppelgangers of the Raikage, taking advantage of the forward motion of all clones involved, swung upwards with their swords expecting the clones of Kuroi to more or less have difficulty in stopping their forward momentum and if they continued charge, the Bloodscyteh would dig into their abdomens and rip upward through the chests. Given that the Raikages and Genin were charging forward, their movement speeds would be enough so that this simple swing would burrow deep into the chest cavity of the Kuroi clones, insuring they'd be dispersed if they failed to avoid the strike.

Given that the two clones seem to be edging outward to avoid the aftermath of Neo's earth release technique, and both Raikage's backs were directed mostly to each other (the center gap between them). The one on the left (of Jaakuna's POV if he had a clear sight of this) held the sword in his right and swung diagonally towards the direction he was facing, while the other did the opposite. In essence, they were capitalizing on the maximum length of their blades to try to inflict any damage on the Kuroi clones. That was the fundamental limitation of Water Clones: Only a slight amount of damage was needed to cause them to revert back into water.

But let's not focus on that unresolved situation.

Instead, let's bring our focus back to the three Jaakunas and Neo. That earth release technique certainly caught the Raikage by surprise, since he was completely unaware of whatever techniques these two had, which only made the fight more entertaining for him. His two clones, fortunately, were not BOTH disabled thanks to the advantage he had of Rain Tiger at Will. Namely, the one behind Neo was able to move back quickly enough to avoid getting in the way as the landslide carried on, shot out in a straight line. The one in the front? Not so lucky. He was too close to Neo that the initial stage of the Doton ninjutsu took him out and force him to return to water. After that, the landslide technique would carry on for a bit longer unchecked due to Neo now trying to throw something at him. Something ... small. And with what appeared to be a string and paper attached to it.

The landslide would carry on past the back-clone of Jaakuna who jumped to the side. The two clones of Jaakuna and the two clones of Kuroi up ahead were far off to the sides to avoid getting hit anyway. And so the raging wave of unsettled earth was charging away and if it continued, it would reach the real Kuroi's position.

Back to the spherical object which was now drawing closer. A shiny red thing with a green top, and most definitely a piece of paper attached to the end of it via string. In other words a tomato with a paper bomb. Now, at this moment, the paper bomb had the slightest hint of flames and was presently too far away from him to swat but too close to just say ... 'dodge.' After all, he didn't want to get splattered with tomato sauce (since he liked keeping his clothes clean, mind, not for any other reasons). So what does he do? He pauses a moment ... and then opens his mouth. And lo, bursting forth from within, a ball of kneaded chakra was then elemental transformed into a spherical blast of water that was shot forward with the speed of a lethal projectile. It essentially blasted through the tomato and left chunky salsa sitting on the ground (or now contained super chunky salsa inside of the water 'bullet') and the water's force not only put out the flame on the explosive note but shredded the soaked thing into quite a few pieces as it soared, aimed directly at Neo's chest.

Now that was a miscalculation on his part. He had intended to hit the tomato, but not aim this dangerous Suiton at the Genin, since the impact (although smaller than it could have been due to the urgency of his situation) would be similar to the stopping power of a moderate sized bullet (in another world, such as ours as opposed to Naruto) ... and given that amount of force traveling in the projectile which was big enough to be a decent third of Neo's head, well. Let's just say the end results wouldn't be pretty (not gore-laden, thank goodness, since the distance between them meant it wouldn't hit with full force) and there'd be bruises at least if not broken bones.

'And yet. I'm not sorry.'

-1C (Rain Tiger), -1E(Water Gunshot)

Neo was disappointed that his prank didn't work. But! No time for disappointment, Neo now had some sort of bullet of water heading straight for him. He had a split second decision to make, dodge and minimize the damage since he couldn't dodge it completely or risk a jutsu to try and defend. Either way Neo figured he was gunna get hit, the most he could do was try and minimize it, so to save chakra, Neo chose to dodge.

Bracing himself, Neo stepped to the left, protecting his stronger side. He felt a pain in his right shoulder and everything seemed to slow down for him. He was pretty sure he heard something snap, though at the time he wasn't quite sure what it was. He was fairly sure he hit the ground twice, though he wasn't sure. Next thing he knew he was stunned face first in the mud.

...Ow...that's definitely the Raikage... He lifted his head and carefully staggered up to his feet. As he did so, he jarred his right shoulder and flinched at the pain emanating from his shoulder. Judging from the area he had to guess that snap he heard was his collar bone. He experimented by moving the fingers on his right hand, they still worked. Good. That meant that the bullet didn't hit any nerves.

If this was a real fight he knew he'd be signing his death warrant, at the mercy of his opponent. As it was, he couldn't lift his arm much or risk permanent damage, something he'd like to avoid.

But.... He figured he could still make hand signs, not very well granted but it was something. ...And he would rather avoid close combat if he had the choice. He carefully brought his right hand to waist level and released a simple jutsu. It was a new way to use a common D-ranked jutsu, that he would sometimes use on his twin.

He figured this was a good place as any to try it out. Neo ran through the hand signs and released the minimum amount of chakra. Aiming for which ever version of the man that was closest to him he opened a tunnel beneath his feet.

((OOC: I don't care if it's a clone or the real, Neo's a bit stunned at the moment anyway, don't think he'd care either.))