[Gima Taro]

If pain was nothing to her, it was keeping him moving. It hurt. Every punch. Every bite. Every slap. Every scratch. But for everything Sadako was throwing at him, he was throwing right back at them that and a bit more. Blood of both persons were splashing across the floor, and between the water and the sand and the cushy floor, this was an absolute brawl.

By the end of it though, while she was still on top of him, he was not dead. Or unconscious. His breathing was ragged, his blood was everywhere, and by god he barely looked like the Ninja he started as, but he was still conscious, fighting, and staring up at Sadako with pure fire in his eyes.

"Is that... It?" He snarled, barely legible through his mouth as he prepared another punch to her face, one hand wrapped around her neck, choking it, but not quite to a degree one could say was going to be dangerous... And the way he said it? It didn't sound like a taunt. It almost sounded like a question- If they were done. Even Taro knew the two of them were just... Extending their future hospital stay here, but...

"I can keep this up... All night..." He spit up ome blood, dripping off his right lip as he glared up at her, defiance in his eyes. Even with all odds against him- With every bit of blood being lost from his body and his own organs starting to struggle to keep up with the stress the muscles needed- He was still ready to fight.

That's what made Taro who he was. That's what made him such a dangerous fighter. He may not have had a ton of skills, he may not have had a ton of prowess, but he had a level of determination and tenacity that easily rivaled that of insanity.

"...I think." He let out a laugh, almost. He was having fun with this, to be fair.

[takeda sadako]

KILLING YOUR IDOLS IS A CHORE

Copper flooded her mouth, crimson trickling from the corner of her lips and down her chin, drip drip dripping in a steady metronome to the hard cold floor below. Sadako wheezed, her breathing strained through Taro’s hand around her throat, a nasty bruise beginning to bloom around her right eye, welts and scratches littering her limbs, her back, her chest and stomach. The sharp joint of her knee dug into Taro’s sternum; her other leg was kicked out at a weird angle, her ankle sprained, knee twisted in the wrong direction. Taro spat blood and snarled is that it?, and the yellow aura completely overtook her, all that careful control vanished with a single provocation. She caught his punch, gripping his wrist so tightly that she thought his bones might shatter, and she leaned forward into the hand that was choking her, cutting off her airflow but letting her meet him eye-to-eye. His hand was all that separated their faces; Sadako’s teeth were bared, her nostrils flaring. She wanted to hurt him. Dig her fingers into his eyes, rip his teeth out, make him cry. Push her hand into his chest and gently shatter his ribs. She wanted him to give up, roll over, bare his throat. He laughed, kind of. Yellow chakra wisped away like smoke on the wind, all of her anger dissipating in an instant. She was, very suddenly, exhausted. Sadako let go of Taro’s wrist and wrenched his own hand away from her throat, pausing for just a second—an eternity—too long before she rolled over onto her back, flat on the floor, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. She was distantly aware of the pain wracking through her body, but she elected to ignore it, throwing one arm over her eyes to block out the light overhead. Still shirtless, but she didn’t care—it was hot and muggy with sweat and blood, and she had great abs. He could look if he wanted. "You’re insane,” she said hoarsely, once she could speak. "I’m taking your sorry ass to the hospital.” Once she could pick herself up off the floor, anyway.

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[Gima Taro]

His wrist was fractured, for sure. She'd really, really fucked him up there. Then again, he was all sorts of fucked up in general- Both of them were. Someone walking in would wonder if they'd just stepped into a murder scene. But even with all that pain, even with all that blood spat onto the floor, Taro was still foaming a bit of blood and pressing against her body.

He probably had some chipped ribs. A few minor damages to his organs. A good deal of blood loss (Though not enough to kill him... Yet.), and a load of other things going wrong in his body. When she snarled at him, when she looked at him with that absolute look of rage... That was what he wanted. At a deeper level, this was still training. And by god, this was the best damn training partner he'd had in ages. Someone who actually pushed him to the edge.

Some Shinobi got by through softer forms of training, but at his core, Taro found the best teacher to be pain. If he wasn't a shattered mess by the end of a match, he didn't get enough out of it. But right now, between the two of them?

They'd created a certain level of training that some could only dream of. Mere steps away from outright murdering eachother, they had a primal sort of connection that kept them together. And for that, well...

"Fuck you. You're worse." He coughed a bit, looking down at the blood on the floor, as he pulled a small pill out from his waist pouch. Splitting it in half, he took half down himself, before looking over at her, slowly winding over, and sticking the other half right into her mouth.

"Swallow it." He growled, even if he had to force it down her throat, even if he got bit. Because one way or another, it was going down. And once it did?

Any light headedness from losing so much blood would seem to diminish, before falling away. She was back to full- The blood pill restoring both of them. They wouldn't die here on the floor at least, as he looked over at her.

"You? Take me? Your legs look like someone smashed a pretzel." He grimaced, sitting up a bit, as painful as that was, and leaning back against one of the pillars.

[takeda sadako]

KILLING YOUR IDOLS IS A CHORE

"Fuck you,” Sadako spat back, though there was no real heat behind the words—too tired. With her arm flung over her eyes, she didn’t see him coming with the blood pill, couldn’t react fast enough when he shoved it into her mouth. She choked, gagged, bit down on his fingers until her teeth met bone; but she swallowed the pill despite her best efforts to the contrary. "Fuck you,” she said again, more petulantly this time, as she realized that it was, in fact, a blood pill, and was, in fact, helping some of the wooziness and exhaustion that flooded her limbs seep out of her second by second. Sadako sat up, cracked her neck, sighed with some small relief as she felt her bones pop and settle. Her mind was smooth, blank, a pure zen state that she only reached after a solid training session. Few laps around the village at a dead sprint kind of meditative haze, bone-deep peace at the cost of a laundry list of injuries and the last of her dignity. She pulled herself over to Taro, swinging a leg over to sit on his thighs, and gripped his chin between her forefinger and thumb, examining his broken jaw this way and that—admiring her handiwork, grinning blood-drunk and satisfied. "Fix your fuckin’ face,” she said, and she kissed him. Lacking experience, tapped out on finesse, she just smashed their lips together in a sloppy estimation of what she thought kissing might feel like based on how it looked from the outside, coppery and slick with blood. Exhausted, yes; out of her mind, absolutely; but this was the first time in her recent memory that she’d gotten in a scrap with someone and gone as hard as she could and hadn’t felt guilty about it after, or humiliated from having her ass kicked. For once in her life she was relaxed, heady with adrenaline and dopamine and attraction, and she was going to chase that feeling as far as Taro would let her take it. [fin.]

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