tampered | It's go time

Kimimaro knew better than to engage in verbal sparring with this opponent. Instead, he pulled a length of sharpened bone from his shoulder and used the momentum of his entrance to make one quick strike at the homunculus' neck.

Just in case the fool managed to duck under the attack, Kimimaro kept his knee up, ready to slam into any chin or chest that put itself in his way. Beneath the pale skin covering his legs, bone rippled, ready to pierce through if he needed the extra defense.

Greed allowed the spike to penetrate his neck, drawing his opponent in. He ignored the pain to lash out with a forearm, aiming to smash his fist into the side of the boy's head.

"Come on...little...punk!" he choked out, gripping the bone and turning his body as he swung, trying to pull him off balance.

'Still talks when his throat's cut,' Kimimaro thought in disgust, seeing the fist come towards him and ducking his head down, letting his shoulder take the blow.

When Greed pulled on the bone stuck in his neck, Kimimaro released his hold on it immediately, making a quick leap up and over the homunculus and landing behind him.

Since the landing was already pulling him into a crouched position, he let the movement carry him down and aimed a swipe at the back of Greed's calves with bone-sharpened fingernails.

Sensing his opponent making a move, he dashed forward, stumbling on his shoes and falling over. He tumbled to the ground and rolled, then jumped to his feet again.

"Like I'm gonna' let ya' stay behind me? Try again," he snarled, cracking his knuckles, "Let's do this."

He rushed forward, forming gauntlets over his arms and letting loose with a series of wild strikes and roundhouse kicks.

Kimimaro dodged the blows when he could--he had the advantage of speed--and tried to deflect them when he couldn't. He caught a few heavy hits on his arms, letting the bone inside thicken to a harder shield beneath his skin in order to reduce part of the impact.

They hurt like hell anyway, and Kimimaro found himself stepping back out of range in order to reassess his strategy.

Greed slammed his foot into the earth and flung it up, putting an obscuring cloud of dirt between them. He struck through the mass, trying to catch him by surprise.

"Ha ha! Come on, Kimmy! Or did ya' just do this because ya' wanted to be close to me again?"

Kimimaro sneered and bent his spine back so that Greed's punch brushed harmlessly over the fabric of his tunic, snapping back up to deliver a series of kicks at the shadow behind the dust and dirt.

As if he wouldn't be able to detect a strike through a cover as weak as that.

"I can still sense you, even if I cannot see you homunculus," he chided, more insulted by the thought that such a cheap trick might work against a shinobi of his caliber than by Greed's foul insinuations.

The blow dinged harmlessly off his shield as he raised it over his chest in anticipation. He stepped back several meters and took a defensive stance.

"You seemed faster last time," he said, remaining fixed, "You gettin' slow?"

Kimimaro's eyes narrowed and he relaxed his stance, letting a bit of the curse seal's power well up and flow through him. Immediately he felt his strength increase: enough that he could start his first dance.

Extending another bone sword from his arm, he drove at the other man with a flurry of strikes aimed for the eyes, the heart, the brain (if Greed had one, which Kimimaro seriously doubted) and the throat.

He show him fast.

Greed parried as much as he could, but couldn't really do much about the rapid strikes piercing his flesh.

"Ah! Damn it!" he yelled, stumbling back and falling onto the ground, "You little bastard!"

He dashed for him, letting loose with a high, wide arcing kick.

"Idiot."

Kimimaro saw the kick and leaned forward into it, letting the blade fall before him, hoping to separate the limb from its owner in one smooth slice.

The leg came off cleanly, causing a yelp of surprise from Greed as he teetered and stumbled, trying to regain his balance as his leg regenerated itself.

"You fucker!" he yelled, hopping backwards quickly, willing his leg to heal faster, "I'll get you for this!"

Ruthlessly, having learned his lesson during their last fight about not letting Greed have time to regenerate his limbs, Kimimaro struck again, this time at Greed's head.

"Just try," he hissed at he pushed the blade forward, all his anger and humiliation rising to the surface as he looked at the homunculus before him.

Greed smashed the blade, shattering it, then leapt high. He sailed just high enough to finish his regeneration, touching down to retake his stance.

"You're fast, pal," he spat, "But no Wrath."

Surprised by the shattering of the bone sword, Kimimaro stumbled back a ways, the seal's power now a burning itch in his chest right where his heart should have been beating.

He rubbed at it absently as he considered his next move.

"Wrath?" he asked, wondering if he could distract Greed into talking.

Greed's armor began to slide over the rest of his body as he spoke, his eyes glowing a bright crimson.

"The only being who I've ever been scared of. He was the fastest, most devastating fighter I've ever seen. Much better than you."

Kimimaro glowered at the insult to his skill, letting the curse seal spread across his skin in lines that burned red, then blackened.

"You do not know what you are dealing with, homunculus."

With a snarl, the younger man raised his hand and let the bones from his fingertips push out from the skin and sharpen into bullet-like pellets. Then he sent them flying towards Greed's face.

Greed ducked quickly under the blow and dashed forward, rising up once he got within range, to deliver an uppercut.

"I've already dealt with ninjas. You're all the same. Still homo sapiens with egos you don't deserve!"

"Who are you to talk about e-"

But that's as far as Kimimaro got before the punch clipped him on the chin, snapping his neck back. Immediately, his automatic defense to close-range attacks kicked in: bones erupting from his chest, back, and arms, curving outwards, hoping to impale and hold as well as catch any weapons or fists headed for his body.

The bones collided and scraped against his armored flesh, stopping Greed's forward motion for a moment.

"Great, you've entrapped me for a second. The question is, NOW what?"

It was a good question. Unfortunately, Greed's proximity was making it difficult for Kimimaro to concentrate on anything except the unwelcome memory of hands and lips and breath on his skin.

Rage made him frantic and careless in his attack as he drew daggers from his wrist bones and tried uselessly to break through the shield covering Greed's face.

Beneath the seal on his chest, his lungs started to slowly fill with blood.

One of the facial strikes slipped inward, sliding along his cheek to embed itself deep into Greed's eye-socket. He stumbled backward with a grunt of pain, yanking the dagger out and tossing it to the ground.

"Ow! My fuckin' eye!" he snarled, the socket quickly reforming, "Sneaky little creep. You're really startin' to get me pissed off!"

He stalked toward Kimimaro again, cracking his knuckles.

"Or maybe you're just tryin' to get me interested in ya' again? If ya' wanted to get me in bed again, ya' just had to ask."

Snarling, Kimimaro shifted back from Greed's approach even as his training screamed at him to use the close combat to his advantage.

The satisfaction of piercing through the eye, the wet slide of bone through the socket and the sound it made, left fairly quickly when he realized that such an injury would not slow his opponent enough to make a more devastating strike.

"You will never touch me again!"

He exploded from his standing position, clearing the distance in a moment and trying to grab his waist for a hip toss.

"I get to DIFFER. Greed does whatever the hell he wants! Don't ever tell me what to do! I hate that!"

Greed's lunge brought his hands within an inch of Kimimaro's waist before the nin made his own explosive movement, twisting down and then pushing his hands against the ground to flip gracefully over the homunculus' head.

"You cannot even catch me, trash," he hissed, even as he sprang a few more feet away from the rampaging man. "I will tell you exactly what to do. DIE."

Greed spun on his heel and took off after the pale-faced boy.

"Come here and face me!" he yelled, pulling a hefty rock up from the ground, "I...SAID...STOP!"

He hurled the old stone through the air, aiming for his opponent.

Kimimaro dodged the rock easily. He had successfully parried the blows of an intoxicated Rock Lee once. The rock, at a fraction of that speed, was not going to pose a problem.

For the first time since the fight began, a smirk twitched at the corners of Kimimaro's mouth. He taunted.

"I enjoy watching you flounder around so slowly. Why would I cease my amusement now?"

Greed stopped moving at that. He growled like beast for a moment, a deep, guttural sound that Kimimaro would be able to feel through the ground. Then he was silent, eyes closed as if focusing on something.

"Heh heh heh..." he started, mouth widening, "Your lungs, Kimmy. You won't be movin' at that speed forever. I can hear the labor in your respiration. This fight is already over."

Kimimaro let his skin darken and the long, lizard-like tail extend from his spine in the final form of the curse seal.

"It's not over until I say it's over!" he yelled, spitting blood on the ground as he said it.

His hand went up to catch at the length of spinal cord now emerging from behind his neck and he pulled, extending the whip of the Tessenka no Mai towards Greed's body.

"It won't be over until I KILL YOU."

"The problem is KEEPIN' ME DEAD!" he yelled, charging forward, "I'm sick of pulling punches on you!"

He went straight for Kimimaro, aiming to throw a straight jab right into his stomach.

Kimimaro didn't bother to dodge, although he braced himself for the blow. He needed Greed on the ground anyway for this, the last push of chakra he could wring from the seal before the thickness in his chest choked him and made him unable to fight.

As he double over Greed's fist in his stomach, huge spikes of bone ripped through the ground at their feet, the blade-sharp tusks erupting from the earth in a forest of white.

The spikes that pierced his own body were just a pinprick compared to the burn of the seal, and Kimimaro had to close his eyes against the pain for just a moment.

When he opened them, he hoped to find a very impaled homunculus bleeding before him.

The bony forest rising from beneath him caught him by surprise, striking his armored body and lifting him off the ground, suspending him there in confusion, the bones having collided with and grown around his body.

"What...what the hell is this?!"

He gradually started to claw and smash his way through the white forest restraining him, growing more frustrated with each stalk.

"Stop with the damned games! What the hell kind of attack is this?!"

'Sawarabi no Mai,' Kimimaro said. Or tried to say, except it came out as a wet cough.

It hadn't worked as he'd hoped and now he had no chakra left. The bones were keeping him upright, propping him into a standing position, but he couldn't move.

Just like before. Why did this illness stay with him, even after death? Was God punishing him?

Disappointment closed his eyes again, even as the hard crunch of Greed breaking through the bones invaded his ears.

Greed heard the labored cough as he made his way to Kimimaro. He cleared the last barrier and grabbed Kimimaro by the collar, ready to deliver the next blow...But he stopped. He still couldn't do it. He couldn't attack someone who was already in this state.

"I'm way too fuckin' nice," he said, gradually shifting out of his armored form and snapping the supports under the boy, picking him up.

"Shit. Now I have to fix this. What the hell am I supposed to do? Yo, you awake?"

He was awake enough to know that he didn't want to be in those arms again. It had been humiliating enough to let that happen the first time. And now, to be carried like a child with no curse as an excuse...

Kimimaro struggled against the hold, and then coughed again as the strain of movement made his chest heave.

With a quick hop-step, he ascended one stalk of white and started hopping carefully along the tops of the bones. After traversing the great mass, he stepped back to the ground and carried him back to the city.

"I really hope you learn a lesson this time..." he said, stepping up to Tayuya's door and placing the pale shinobi on the floor there. He knocked on her door and ran off quickly.

((That's a good stopping point.))

It's go time

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