The incoming attack was aptly disarmed by Sakana, whose knives shimmered as they reflected the dull sun bursting momentarily through the rainy clouds. With the flash came the clang as his knife stopped the blade, but there was still the lurking danger of an incoming shinobi who had been preparing some jutsu. For a moment Sakana felt the rush of adrenaline surge before it made way for the realization that an almost whistling sound was now audible, coming from the hill behind. The Kusagakure shinobi that had been preparing the jutsu was now forced back, noticing the arrow coming in before Tatsuya even made his appearance. Obviously, the team of genin had underestimated the awareness of the two jonin - even something like a shuriken made a noise and could be dodged by a jonin. Then Tatsuya burst up, but his attack would be easily deflected, as the jonin simply jumped back even further.
Then came the secondary attack -- this time with real explosive tags. Paired with Tsubasa's shuriken thrown in his general direction, this would be a sure hit. Wouldn't it?
As the explosive tags went off, it was clear the shinobi had been caught in the blast -- in fact, he was basically standing right on the tags. Despite this, the shuriken that flew into the large cloud of debris and dust would be deflected, though it was unclear how. They simply flew back out of the cloud.
Rather than be worried about his companion, the jonin that was in a clinch with Sakana simply grinned at the young jonin, whose face was stern and serious. Then, the jonin jumped back, leaving Sakana standing near the cart with his team a short distance away from him.
The jonin caught in the cloud of dust slid backwards then, joining up with his companion. He definitely got hit by the explosive tags - but he had made no attempt to dodge them. The watchful eye would've noticed that he even stepped closer to them despite clearly seeing them. Smoke rose from his body, and a heavy burn mark was visible on his right eye that had not been there before. He
had been hit and even took damage from it, but if the genin thought that a simple thing like an explosive tag would be enough to clear the job, they would be sorely mistaken.
The lead jonin, the one that had been fighting Sakana, dropped his fighting stance and gently pushed his katana into the soil, before crossing his arms.
“I see. It was a ruse. You're not border-guards at all. You're just a sensei with a team of three useless genin. And you planned to take out my friend here in one go... then you could take me out. It's a good plan.. in theory.” The analysis was more or less a hundred percent correct, but the rather rag-tag execution of this plan made it all fall apart. It made sense -- they'd done no practice, no training, no synergized battle organization. They went into the fight, academy-style, and just did their best while trying to support each other. It's a shame that the real world didn't work like that.
Sakana glanced over at his three genin, who would no doubt be standing together. Now that the enemy had seen through the plan, there was no way they were winning this. His eyes trailed back to the two jonin in front of them, and as he looked at them, he realized they were severely outmatched. Fighting them on his own would be a hard fight, but not impossible, but if he had to watch these three genin at the same time, his attention would have to be too divided to properly do it.
The best bet here was to fall back, but the trader was still trying to get his carriage turned around, egging on an uncooperative donkey to keep moving. Leaving now meant the man would surely die. Though Sakana felt no real duty to help the man, he had to admit that leaving now would make this all useless. Besides.. he'd felt compelled to move earlier, so clearly the Sage had intended for him to. This was his fate. Perhaps his fate was to die here?
The jonin with his katana in the earth would suddenly for handseals, before leaning back and then moving his head forwards, exhaling a large fireball just like Sakana had done earlier. But, rather than aimed at him, the fireball was rushing towards his students. Relying on them to take care of the danger themselves was simply put not done, and so Sakana had no choice other than body-flicker to right in front of them, being forced to expend even more chakra simply to help his students. As he appeared, he rapidly formed handseals, before planting his two outstretched hands into the earth.
“Doton! Earth Shelter!” he proclaimed, and within a few seconds two slabs of earth came out of the ground, forming a round, half-shelter around them, leaving the back open.
As the fireball impacted on the earthen shelter, the fire extended all the way behind them, simply arching over the earthen shelter. The lick of the heat would be all they could feel, luckily, as the actual flames came nowhere near them. But there was not much time to ponder that fact.
“Jump back, now!” Sakana ordered, and where as his previous orders had been somewhat lacking in authoritative intonation, sounding more like a man that didn't really care, this time he was stern, and it would take some serious balls to stand up to him this time.
If it wasn't clear
why they were moving back, the incoming footsteps paired with a screeching sound made it overly clear. Someone was using a raiton technique, and if his ears were correct, then the technique was the famous raikiri. Without a sharingan, that was a big risk, but if it hit it's target, it was one of the most devastating techniques possible, capable of ripping out entire pieces of a body.
The fireball had been merely a cover to set up the technique, no doubt used by the other man. With such a strong technique coming in, the genin would most likely expect their sensei to step back and evade the attack, but rather than doing that, Sakana simply stepped up from his crouched position, and stepped
towards the incoming attack, which would no doubt come
through the earthen shelter. Raiton was strong versus doton, after all. When the footsteps came awfully close, and the screeching of the raikiri burst through the earthen shelter, Sakana proclaimed his next technique.
“Ura Shishō Fūin!” Despite the relative obscurity of this sealing technique, the man performing the raikiri seemed to realize what it was, and his hand charged with electricity stopped mere inches from Sakana's chest. Had his hand reached any further, the seal would've activated with Sakana's death, likely killing him in the process. With the smoke from the previous fireball jutsu clearing up a little, Sakana could clearly see the face of the man in front of him, whose expression no longer had the arrogant and confident features from before, and instead, simply seemed unenthused by Sakana's sealing technique. Sakana, on the other hand, looked serious as ever.
With a fast movement, Sakana reached out and grabbed the man's arm, who's hand was still charged with raikiri, though it was fading at that point. Holding him in place, his team could hopefully capitalize.
“Team 7! Go!” he yelled at his students, and if they had recognized the opportunity, could capitalize to deal with this threat -- hopefully for good.