Scenario C was the one Haruto had hoped to avoid. Ideally, Plan A would've worked.
C required too much luck and far too much risk. A solid plan—just the worst situation to need it.
Which is why they all made preparations for it, because the worse it was for them, the more likely it was that the enemy would push it in that direction.
And it had indeed happened, the enemy appeared, taking a moment to taunt them, which did allow them to identify them properly.
A small mercy, but it was something indeed. It allowed them to know what they were dealing with.
From clues, he judged his opponent to be Tsurugi Shoma, and he didn't like it. which was no surprise given that he was someone handpicked to fight against him.
When the mood shifted, the greetings came to an end with a wave of bloodlust, and he jumped back.
His sandals skimmed across the lake's shallow edge—thin water lapping at his feet, barely covering the muddy lakebed below. Good. He had both elements available here. Water and Earth.
Haruto's opponent didn't yell or curse. He simply moved—straight at him.
Tsurugi Shoma. A name pulled from old Bingo Book notes and Yuki's observations. Taijutsu brawler. Wind chakra reinforcement. Knuckle blades. Rumored to punch clean through earth walls. No ranged jutsu. No subtlety. All power.
If he got in close, it was over.
Haruto clenched his jaw. No second chances.
Haruto slammed his palms into the lakebed. "Doton: Doryūheki!"
The earth rumbled beneath the surface, and a solid wall surged upward just in time to catch the impact.
Boom.
The wall cracked—spiderweb fractures forming from a single fist. Water splashed, stone chips flying past Haruto's face. Not broken yet. But close.
He flickered away, reappearing a dozen meters back, already forming seals.
"Suiton: Suijinheki!"
But this time, the water didn't rise vertically. Instead, he reshaped it into a cresting horizontal wave, the chakra-infused current slamming across the lake like a shield in motion. It met Shoma's charge mid-step and sent him sliding off-line, soaking his legs, throwing off his momentum.
That gave Haruto another heartbeat.
He dropped low, forcing chakra into the ground. "Doton: Retsudo Tenshō."
The earth beneath Shoma liquified, the terrain shifting into a sucking whirlpool of wet stone and mud. A perfect trap—if only for a second.
Shoma reacted fast—too fast. He launched into a twisting leap, letting the terrain collapse behind him as he spiraled over it, one blade-draped fist already cocked back mid-air.
Haruto vanished again, using substitution to reappear in the misted shadow of a tree-stump jutting from the lake.
No hits. Not one.
He reached into his belt pouch, retrieved an explosive tag, and pressed it flat against a nearby rock before sending it skimming low along the water. A feint. A warning. Something to make Shoma slow down.
It didn't.
The Suna brawler came bursting out of the mist with a war cry and a backhand swing that cut through a mud clone Haruto had left behind.
Shoma was a Suna shinobi, yet in some aspects, he felt more like an Iwa one. He used a ninjutsu that gave him a steel body, making him as hard to take down as an Iwa or Kumo elite.
It was this ninjutsu that allowed him just to power through and keep moving, making it hard to harm him without a direct hit. The explosive tags hidden in traps did little if they didn't go off close enough.
Add in his mastery of Wind to blast tags and traps away from him before they exploded, and Haruto had only a tough fight on his hands.
Yet, he knew this; he had prepared himself for this, so he breathed in deeply, his hands making hand signs after hand signs, his chakra burning without holding back.
He couldn't allow himself to hold back, he needed to keep him away, needed him busy.
He kept Shoma just out of reach. He raised walls—sometimes real, sometimes fake. He flooded ground, curled water into whirlpools, slowed him with eddies and slick surfaces.
He made the field work for him.
But it wasn't enough.
Crash.
Another wall shattered under a punch. Stone sprayed in all directions.
If that hits me directly… I don't get a second try.
Haruto's back hit water again as he slid further toward the deeper middle of the lake. Less earth here. More water.
Thankfully, he was well prepared.
Another substitution. Another water clone. Another spiral wave to knock Shoma off-balance. And Haruto was back in the shallow parts of the lake, stones and rocks peeking through the water, together with reeds.
And in all of that, countless hidden explosive tags.
Shoma wasted no time in finding him and charging right at him again. Haruto willed a wall of earth and a wave of water to rise and meet the charging shinobi. Though both barely slowed him down, as the wall exploded.
Still, even those small moments were what kept him in the fight. The moments where vision was blocked, allowing him to change places with a clone. And buy another moment to raise another distraction and another defence.
He raised both hands and twisted, "Suiton: Harō no Yaiba!" — a wave came in from the left, but not just as a wall—angled, curling like a battering ram, designed to sweep Shoma's feet out.
Shoma took it. Full-body. And stayed upright.
He skidded back, boots gouging the lakebed, his knuckle blades digging small divots into the mud to anchor himself.
And he grinned.
He didn't even flinch.
Their fight wasn't a dance, not like how Yuki fought, no, this was a mad, unstoppable bull charging through everything that stood in its path. And he, was the one the bull was charging at.
There was no elegance in this, only pure raw power and desperation.
Jump by jump, charge by charge, he was slowly pushed out of the lake and into the wet marshy forests around it. Not that it bothered him, there was plenty of water for him to use, plenty of earth.
Furthermore, he had rigged the forest in his favor. In fact, the forest was better than the open water. But he couldn't appear too eager to go in.
But that might make his opponent hesitate, and if that happened, he might go for someone else instead.
If he were to join any of the other battles, team up against one of the others, they would be doomed. So while he did want to team up with the others, he also couldn't afford it, it would be far too dangerous.
They all needed to keep their opponent busy, risky, dangerous, but necessary.
But now that he was pushed into the forest, it was fine. In fact, it was perfect.
In here, he could dodge between trees, hide behind them, jump up onto them to evade a charge. It was still dangerous, but with tags hidden around the place. he could do so much more now.
The trees weren't thick, but they were enough. Narrow trunks. Low branches. Uneven footing. All of it slowed Shoma just slightly—enough for Haruto to slip behind cover, vanish into mist, and reappear a few meters away, already forming hand seals for his next move.
Another wall. Another splash. Another explosion.
One missed step, and Shoma would step right into the blast radius of a buried tag.
But the bastard wasn't missing.
Haruto gritted his teeth as a trunk exploded to his left, bark flying past his cheek like shrapnel. A second later, a knuckle blade embedded itself in the bark behind where he'd stood.
Close.
Too close.
He turned, body flickered twice, then used a water clone to break line of sight. Another explosive tag on a tree branch. A delay fuse. Not for damage—just a smokescreen. Buy time. Always buying time.
He ducked under a low limb and rolled into a shallow stream, pressed his palm against the muddy bottom, and whispered, "Doton: Moguragakure."
His body melted into the earth.
Below the surface, it was quiet. Safe. Damp soil and distant thunder.
He couldn't stay long—it drained chakra fast—but it bought him seconds to breathe. Seconds to think.
Up above, he felt the impact tremors. Shoma was hunting. Stomping through underbrush. Chasing shadows.
Haruto surfaced silently behind a half-rotted log and reset his footing. His chest heaved. His legs ached. His chakra flow buzzed unsteadily—but he wasn't done yet.
Not even close.
This wasn't about winning.
It was about surviving.
He raised his hand and silently activated a prepared chain of tags strung through the undergrowth—a trip-line net of explosions. He doubted they would be able to kill this madman, but if nothing else, it might hurt him a little, and if not that, blind and deafen him.
They went off with overlapping thunderclaps.
Leaves burst into flames. Smoke bloomed across the clearing. And somewhere in the middle of it all, Shoma roared.
Haruto didn't wait. He dropped another clone and shot left, climbing into the trees, putting height between them. He landed on a thick branch, water slick beneath his sandals, and pressed another tag to the bark.
He had resupplied to have enough tags for months of use, plus what they had looted, he had many, but he also used them fast in this fight.
He didn't regret it. If anything, he would gladly use every single one if it meant coming out of this fight alive.
Haruto crouched low against the branch, fingers pressed to the wood, breath fogging faintly in the cool, smoke-thickened air. His lungs burned. His heart thudded. But he had space—just for a moment.
Below, Shoma stalked through the haze like a wounded predator. His knuckle blades gleamed through the smoke, faint arcs of wind-chakra shimmering at their edges, carving through undergrowth like a machete through silk.
The man hadn't slowed. If anything, he seemed invigorated by the chaos.
He wasn't as sadistic as others on his team, but Haruto would bet he liked the thrill of the hunt, of smashing defences and hope as one.
Haruto dropped from the branch, hit the ground, and slammed his palms into the soil. "Doton: Doryūheki!"
The wall surged up again, angled this time—not for defense, but to redirect Shoma's momentum into one of the denser groves nearby. It worked. Not perfectly, but enough. Shoma shifted mid-step and tore through a thinner section of underbrush—and triggered the tag.
A deafening blast erupted behind him, bright and concussive. Shoma vanished into smoke and dirt.
Haruto didn't wait.
He raised a sheet of water in a sweeping arc, sliding across it with chakra-threaded sandals. A practiced movement—part evasion, part glide. It felt good to move with purpose again, not just to react.
A second wave followed, more shallow, dragging branches and bark like debris. "Suiton: Nami Tate." He didn't expect it to hit. He just wanted the noise, the confusion, the rhythm.
It came together—briefly.
A fake wall here, a mud clone there. One trap to trip. One root to slip. He wasn't winning, not by a long shot, but he was surviving with style now, slipping back into the habits drilled into him since his academy days.
He caught sight of Shoma again—mud caked along his left arm, a burn seared into the edge of his vest. Still grinning. Still moving.
Haruto's hands flashed through more seals—"Suiton: Mizurappa!"—a high-pressure jet of water lanced toward Shoma's face, forcing him to shield with a forearm. Haruto used the cover to slide away once more.
But the chakra cost was mounting.
He couldn't keep this up forever.
He knew it, and Shoma knew it too. If nothing changed, it was only a matter of time before he was left unable to fight, and Shoma wasn't about to give him the time he needed to rest.
Which meant, life or death, it depended on how long he could hold out, and on whatever Yuki and Koji could win fast enough.