>>5787059>>5787065>>5787077>>5787078>>5787099>>5787140"Naoki, do you want to partner up?"
He's standing there in the back, staring at the fuma shuriken (A giant shuriken the size of a manhole cover.) that's been laid out for the class to use. He doesn't seem to notice you.
"Naoki?"
"Huh? What? Oh. Yeah. That's fine."
"I'll get your weapons for you. You wanted the fuma shuriken right?"
"NO! I mean... No. Regular are fine for me." He says, with a look of total panic. You can visibly see a bead of sweat forming on the side of his forehead.
"... Okay."
You collect several kunai and shuriken from one of the boxes laid out at the disposal of your cohort and take your place standing in one front of one of the targets. Naoki sheepishly joins you eventually.
"... You first, Otomo."
You've been training for this off-and-on for the last week, so you're pretty confident in your ability to at least do alright. You toss a kunai. It impacts the target. Not in the bullseye, but in the outermost middle ring. Another. Innermost middle ring. Again, and you put your third into the outermost ring. You were three for three, and you look to Juro-Sensei for a sign of his approval. He gives you a smug nod, looking pleased with himself.
You pause for a moment to take a look at how the others are doing. Junpei teamed up with Masami, and he's absolutely killing it. It hardly even looks like he's throwing his senbon, they're just appearing in the target after his hands blur. They're not hitting with extreme force, but utter precision. He's also capable of pretty easily throwing three at a time with one hand, six if he uses both of us hands at the same time (Which he does.) and as he steadily empties an entire box of them you realize that he's been drawing the shape of a rabbit better than you could with a pen and a piece of paper. You can't help but imagine what it would feel like to just have like 6 of those sprout out of the side of your neck before you could even register what had happened. It occurs to you that, so far, Junpei and Naoki are the two classmates you have that could pretty easily just outright kill you if they wanted to at any moment. It's hard not to feel obviated, like you're separated by some vast from them. But at least Junpei was apparently terrible at taijutsu. Masami's face was white as a sheet at first, but eventually she starts looking angry and has the gall to critique Junpei's form.
At the other team, Shizuka the Noodle Girl is throwing shuriken. They're impacting less accurately than your shots, but she's doing this *thing* with her wrist that's making them fly in really unpredictable arcs. Unlike Junpei she's talking while doing it, apparently explaining the different scenarios that go into whether or not you want beef, chicken, pork, or shrimp in your ramen bowl. Katsuro is just nodding along with vague noises of approval while trying to interject and ask if Shizuka has any smart sisters she'd be willing to introduce him to.
