[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/zVH1sVU.png[/img]

[COLOR=black][sup][b][img]https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/naruto/images/d/de/Konohagakure_Symbol.svg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/18?cb=20090830222821[/img]    Konohagakure no Sato | Chunin-going-on-Jonin | Edgelord Supreme[/b][/sup][/COLOR][/center][hr][INDENT][sup][COLOR=black][b]TIME:[/b] [i]Present Day - Morning[/i] | [b]LOCATION:[/b] [i]Konohagakure - Exam Stadium/Fire Challenge Room[/i] | [b]INTERACTION:[/b] [i][@Spanner], [@Project], [@j8cob] (Team) [@Reflection], [@Altered Tundra] (Targets) [@yoshua171][/i][/COLOR][/sup][/INDENT]

[i]“Shizuka,”[/i] Sakana repeated after Kurin. [i]“Kiku.”[/i] Those would be important names to remember, in case he'd ever have to work with them. Apparently, they turned on their heels and ran at the first opportunity, leaving behind them team. And with the scrolls, even. [i]“I have to wonder how you let that happen, since you're not wounded at all.”[/i] It was peculiar and slightly suspicious, so Sakana had no quarrel with leaving him to Usagi. Better to clean him up than to simply ignore him. In fact, he almost opted to help her, and was about to perform Hien, to make his two knives even more dangerous. But something came in the way - something unexpected that he expected would halt Usagi just as well as it halted Sakana. 

In the flash of an instant, things happened, and Sakana's eyes visibly moved left to right, his discernible and obvious yellow pupils in the black eyes being all but subtle. His mind worked quickly, analyzing what had happened, and then spotting the chains coming from behind - Kamui, no doubt - and towards a tree. He didn't waste a moment, making his conclusions quickly with the assumption that Kamui would not act without reason. Reason being for that was that Sakana could only presume that Kamui was expert at his job of being a sensory nin. In the flash of an instant, Sakana sheathed his two knives and performed a series of handseals, inhaling deeply in the process. [i]“Katon: Gōka Mekkyaku!”[/i] he proclaimed before exhaling, spewing forth a highly condensed stream of fire from his mouth towards the tree that the chains had moved towards.

Although he was only using a limited amount of chakra, it should be clear that Sakana was not playing games at that moment. The limited amount of chakra, however, [i]did[/i] mean that the attack was not as powerful as it could have been had he maxed out the chakra input. Rather, the fire connected with the tree and lit it on fire near instantaneously, as the fire spread in a wide angle as was customary for great fire annihilation. There was room for escape, surely, but with the way the fire spread, simply moving to a different tree would not cover the escape this time, because they too would be scorched and lit ablaze soon enough.

When Sakana was convinced that it had been enough, he released the final handseal and returned to a ready position, facing towards Kurin as the fire continued to burn in the direction that Koutaku had been in. [i]“I guess your teammate returned, after all. We could've been reasonable. Instead you tried to double cross us.”[/i] Now, it should be realized, that there was no way for Sakana to know that the person he had just attacked was in fact not Jaakuna, nor Kiku, nor Shizuka. He simply was lead to assume that it was just another teammate of this guy. 

With the fire raging in the forest, it also meant that a pillar of smoke would soon rise up above them, almost like an invitation card for the other teams that said 'come get us here'. They'd have to act fast if they were to avoid that trouble. It seemed that, in the midst of combat, the sound of the explosion in the distance towards Konohagakure were less obvious than to those in more silent areas of the forest.