The place they found themselves was a gap in the trees, an opening large enough to give them room to maneuver. Kotetsu was at the edge of it, close enough to see all of the enemies. Eiji, the one with the back flips gave him a look, the kind that said “I bet I can take you”. Kotetsu shook his head and clenched his fists tight, not raising them yet, that would be giving Eiji too much acknowledgement. If he could win the mental game and get Eiji to stop thinking straight before the first blow was even thrown, it’d be that much easier. Eiji answered with a back flip that landed him in the exact same spot as before, just a way of showing off, not even threatening enough to qualify as a real feint. Kotetsu kept his feet planted and raised one hand towards Eiji, keeping a bend in it to let him strike quickly if he needed to.

    Eiji really liked cartwheels, almost as much as he liked backflips. He did a one-handed one, then a no-handed one as he circled a permeter around Kotestu, getting a little closer with each jump. The Eiji passed by a tree and the aerial kicks started. First he kicked off a tree to launch himself closer to Kotetsu, then he punctuated his flight with more flourishes and little strikes in each direction around him, hacking down tree limbs from the canopy with each one. Eiji came at Kotetsu like a buzzsaw, with fast rotation on an overhead kick. Kotetsu’s outstretch hand parried the blow and then Eiji landed on the ground with a roll, where he let loose with more spinning kicks. He shifted between using his hands, his feet, even his heads as the base during his kicking combo, looking like a top spinning out of control and his reflective gear glimmering like a disco ball. None of them landed because Kotetsu stuck to the fundamentals of his footwork and controlled the distance, keeping each one just out of range.
 
    Now Eiji was frustrated and jumped to his feet with a one-handed spinning maneuver. He feinted a kick and launched a jumping punch which bounced of Kotetsu’s blocking hands, then followed with a spinning backfist that Kotetsu caught.

They traded hands, parrying and catching blows until Eiji got both on Kotetu’s wrist and went for a wristlock, which was so poorly applied it amused Kotetsu to see where that would go. Eiji held it for a moment, trying to wrench it in a way that wouldn’t have worked even if someone didn’t have bones as strong as Kotetsu’s. To add some flavor to his escape, Kotetsu did a forward flip to break out of it, landing face to face with Eiji, who stood there dumbstruck. [url=https://imgur.com/Fhrbjgd]Kotetsu blasted him with an elbow to the face.[/url]
 
    When the elbow hit Kotetsu felt Eiji’s head rotate much further than he was used to after hitting someone with that kind of blow. With his concentration he saw the ninja’s face distort like a puddle of water some just stepped in, waves going up and down. Eiji’s legs had all the strength of deflated balloons and the sound he made upon hitting the ground was a deep thud. Kotetsu might allow himself a little smirk after a victory, this time he was surprised at how it went. He poked Eiji’s uncocnsious body with his foot; the way he went down made Kotetsu wonder if he had killed him. Still not satisfied, Kotetsu bent down low enough to grab an arm and check his pulse, not getting too low to avoid leaving himself vulnerable. After that he was convinced Eiji would live through this, and hopefully work on developing a more balanced skillset in the future.