Once More by ItsHardToFindAPenName

Chapter 42: Confrontation, Part 3

The two shinobi danced around each other in a flurry of taijutsu.

Kakashi launched punches after punches, kicks after kicks at the enemy in front of him. He was sure that in the Kamui dimension, there was no way the masked man could abuse the technique to slip past attacks as Naruto had told him about. That was why the cyclops decided to bring the fight into this dimension at the beginning; if the man really was Obito, he might be able to gain some advantages fighting with skills alone. After all, he had trained himself relentlessly for this day to come.

However, he quickly realized that he had overestimated himself a little bit too much.

If Kakashi himself was like a typhoon, then the masked man in front of him was like an earthquake. His hits were not in any proper forms or styles, but each of them contained the power of a battering ram. It was just like fighting a less skilled Tsunade. No matter how skilled Kakashi was, letting himself get hit by one of those punches and kicks would hurt quite a lot.

This was a battle of skill versus strength.

Blows after blows, the two shinobi clashed against each other again and again, with each blow faster than the one right before it.

Then, after their fists collided in a particularly nasty blow, the two finally separated. Both of them were a little bit out of breath.

Then the masked man started going through hand seals. With his Sharingan revealed, Kakashi immediately realized the Tiger seals which made up a large part of the string of seals, which signified a very powerful Fire ninjutsu. He immediately went through his own string of hand seals for a Water ninjutsu.

"Fire Style: Infernal Flame!"

"Water Style: Tsunami Break!"

Tsunami Break was an A-ranked water ninjutsu, which usually wasn't able to match the power of an S-ranked one like Infernal Flame. However, with Kakashi's precise chakra control and the elemental advantage it provided, the Copy Ninja was able to deal with the opposing jutsu without losing too much energy.

How the two shinobi managed to spit out those two jutsus from their mouths even though they were hidden under the two masks was a different matter.

After the two jutsus died down, the two combatants once again faced each other, Sharingan bearing into Sharingan.

"You really have lived up to that 'Kakashi of the Sharingan' moniker that people give you, Kakashi," Tobi remarked with the same impassive voice. "I guess it's time to switch to something else."

He unraveled something he was holding on his back. It was a very large non-folding fan. Kakashi wasn't that unfamiliar with this type of weapon; he had seen a lot of shinobi wielding similar things, such as Temari of the Sand, who wielded a fan of herself, but there is only one clan in history who wielded this particular type of fan in battle, which is the Uchiha Clan.

"Switching to weapon, huh..."

The Konoha jonin drew his own weapon, the White Light Chakra Saber. Even though the light in the Kamui dimension was dim, the blade of the sword was still gleaming brightly.

"Let's see how good you are with that."

Naruto groaned and cracked open his eyes.

The first thing he realized was that he was looking at a wooden ceiling. There were cracks and holes everywhere on it, but it still served the purpose of hiding the people inside from bad weather quite properly. And his surrounding was shaking back and forth gently.

Only then did he realize that he was back on the Byakuren, and the ship was now moving in a steady speed.

He pushed himself up by his arm and sat up. His body felt so empty, so tired, as if he had just ran twenty kilometers without stopping. He wasn't in his room the other night, either, because this room has a window which looks outside, where he could see the bright blue sky, which signified it was some time in the afternoon.