Kushina jumped back, throwing the seal paper in front of her and with a short pulse of chakra activated it. At the same moment, a bolt of lightning slammed into the resulting kekkai, and the red-haired kunoichi was forced to shift to the side to dodge the slashing wave of chakra launched by the swordsman who was still trying to get close to her partners on the right a second ago.
Whipping chakra chains with many sharp spikes to ward off the tall dark-skinned guy shrouded in a cover of lightning, Uzumaki gritted her teeth furiously and tried to start folding her hand seals for attacking techniques, but the enemies who were closely monitoring the situation immediately bypassed her and aimed at her partners, forcing her to interrupt and reactivating her chains to defend.
Almost roaring with rage, Kushina threw a pair of kunai with kibakufudas (explosive seals) taped to the handles and detonated them in flight, realizing that the shinobi would only get minor scratches from the iron shards by leaving the target zone beforehand, but it would make him hesitate to use the jutsu for a while. Except his partners were ready for it, simultaneously charging in from different directions and not giving him a second's respite.
Individually, the genin of Kumogakure no Sato were inferior to Kushina in every way, and the three of them would have made him work harder to destroy her, but as much as the red-haired beauty was superior to them, they were also better than Hiroshi and Oda, the common folk who could do little against the well-trained clan kids. This made them constantly distracted in their defense and deprived them of maneuverability.
The Kumovians, demonstrating excellent training and teamwork, slowly but steadily pressed Konohovians, purposefully exhausting the strongest fighter of the opposing trio and not allowing them to attack at all, which drove the already temperamental Uzumaki to a frenzy. She had already tried to put her partners in a barrier and quickly deal with the overly clever enemies, but they repeatedly thwarted her attempts, realizing the danger of such a thing.
And at first everything had started out so well!
Despite Minato's annoyance, Kushina had managed to get rid of the blond while getting the bracelets, and had not met him since the beginning of the second stage, dragging the team to the center of the Forest of Death and destroying the not-so-smart animals that decided to get at the owner of a colossal amount of chakra.
Then, they ran into Suna's weak team, easily obtaining second bracelets for each of them, and were on their way to the tower that Mito Ba-chan had mapped out in advance, when not far from the river, they had the misfortune to run into Cloud's team. Cloud's overly knowledgeable team, familiar with the effects of most of the simple fuin available to the Konohovans, as well as demonstrating appropriate tactics that neutralized the advantage of using them.
Chaining off several kunai and immediately slashing at the swordsman on the turn, Kushina tried to reach him from both sides, but only succeeded in powerlessly ripping up the turf in front of the genin who immediately backed up.
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