Today was the second part of the semi finals, and the crowd was especially ecstatic for today. The black box which served as the new arena had its insides transformed into a giant forest. The trees were much bigger than normal, and its roots even extended above the earth.
Ito and Yoko both entered it, and were now confronting one another.
"What's wrong? You don't look like your usual self?"
Ito was face battle hardened and serious.
After seeing what happened to Shido, he had fully locked in and trained non stop. He took a unique fighting stance, which was much different form before. When he did, the air around him changed.
"Why so serious? This is all just one big game?"
"My friend hasn't woken up since yesterday. For now, let me just take my anger out on you."
He suddenly flash stepped towards him which surprised Yoko. His flash was even faster than hers. She tried to block his punch, but the attack was too heavy for her and it sent her flying back into a tree.
Ito reeled back another punch, but this time aimed at her head. Yoko dodged the attack instead. The force from the punch was enough to break the tree in half.
"You really tried to kill me with that, didn't you?"
"Shut up and fight back."
Meanwhile in the Teachers barracks
"Your prized student is getting her ass kicked"
All the teachers were making fun Instructor Ryu. He had bet that Yoko was going to win as someone he had trained personally, but that appeared to be a far away dream.
"Laugh at me all you want. She hasn't shown her true strengths yet."
Yoko attempted to side kick Ito, which connected but did almost no damage.
"He's as hard as a rock?"
Ito caught her leg and was about to deal a devastating blow, so to counter attack, Yoko threw her Zanpakutō at him. Ito had no choice but to let Yoko go, and then he flash stepped away from her.
"Have you been trying to kill me this entire time? I thought you went easy on women?"
"Shut up! My friend isn't waking up because of you 3rd years! At the very least, I won't let you win that easily!"
Yoko, realizing that Ito was truly taking the fight seriously, she took an offensive stance.
Ryu instantly recognized what she was going to do, and began to laugh too himself.
"BARE WITNESS! MY STUDENT IS ABOUT TO WIN!"
A couple hundred years ago, when Instructor Ryu was still a student at Shino Academy, he fell in love with a girl.
Unfortunately, that girl not only had ZERO interest in him, but she was also apart of one of the 5 great noble families at the time.
Despite that, Ryu chased after her everyday.
The talent gap between them was immense, if Ryu trained for 10 days, the girl would catch up to him in one. Once the two graduated, they both took similar paths in the stealth corps.
However the girl was destined to be a leader, and Ryu... not so much. Ryu witnessed the girls greatest technique, Shunkō. A technique which Ryu managed to copy, but even then, he still never caught her attention.
And then finally, one day Instructor Ryu had enough of it.
"I love you! Lady Yoruichi!"
She looked at him with only a sense of cringe in her eyes. She tried her best not to break his heart, and instead gave some advice to him.
"Did you really come all this way into the stealth force just to tell me that? Instead of following others, why don't you chose your own path?"
The next day, Yoruichi disappeared.
Ryu was greatly saddened by this, but instead of looking for her, he took her advice to heart.
He stopped using Shunkō and started to develop his own techniques, and along the way he wanted to try teach this technique to others at the Shino Academy.
"Shunkō... its a technique that combines Hakuda and Kido. What she's about to perform is an off shoot of that technique. Instead it combines Hakuda and Zanjutsu!"
She stretched out her arm and from it, pumped Kido into it. But unlike Shunkō, she did not release it, but kept folding and refining it into a specific shape. The longer she did it, the more the shape became clear.
It was a sword.
"Wareme!"
Ito could feel it, whatever she was about to do next, was defiantly going to cut his head off.
He ducked down and tried to dodge it, and although he couldn't see it, something just flew over his head.
All the trees behind him were immediately cleaved in half. Although he didn't notice it, a part of his cheek was cut as well.
The recoil from the attack caused Yoko's left arm to become unusable, however this was a fact which Ito didn't notice.
"I was planning on ending this with that attack. If this was my master, he would've used it 100's of times over."
Ito fearing that power tried to run away and think up a new strategy, but the second he turned his back, he had lost the fight.
He felt a sword thrust through his chest when no blade appeared. Yoko had used the technique with her right arm this time in a thrusting motion.
So that he wouldn't die, Yoko weakened the technique to only blow a golf ball sized hole through one of his lungs. If it was up to her though, she would've probably killed him.
Ito collapsed as blood leaked from his chest and mouth. He was suffocating on his own blood, but the squad 4 medics were able to get to him in time.
The fight ended in Yoko's victory.
After this battle, some concerns spread amongst the crowd. Rumours about Shido being in a coma, and Ito's brutal defeat spread like wild fire, and as a result, people were questioning if 1st years should really be allowed to continue fighting.
As Ito was being carried on a stretcher, he looked up towards the sun before passing out.
"Big bro... why did I lose?"
He felt the voice of his elder brother ring through his mind.
"Back then, we made a promise. As long we kept climbing, as long as we kept worshipping women... we would never lose. But today you broke that principle. When you attacked Aikao, she was faking her possession of the divine artifacts, so you attacked her. But Yoko had done no such thing. You attacked her out of rage for your fallen comrades. You were taking your anger out on an innocent. That is why you lost."