>>5906443>>5906451>>5906465>>5906473>>5906480>>5906529>WoF Spent. You have 2.Here she comes. Yuzuki had given in to impatience, but that didn’t mean she would be dysfunctional. Even if she were angry she’s still not the kind of person to just rush in without a high level of confidence in her plan.
That meant you couldn’t just blast through this problem like a brutal thug either.
You leap back and away from Yuzuki, quickly forming the hand signs for the wind bullet before blowing a sharp gust of wind out of your mouth and into the dry sand near your feet. By the time you land there’s a mist of particulates disguising your location, which gives you all the time you need to use the clone jutsu.
Two Naoki’s pop into existence near you. They all face you with a stoic, yet faintly pissed glare, as if waiting for orders and very annoyed that you’re taking so long. Of course, they wouldn’t ever receive orders because they’re literally phantasm’s of your own mind. After that brief moment of hesitation they coordinate themselves and they’re launching into action.
An epiphany strikes you as your clones jump into action: It would be ‘very’ easy to give away which clones are fake if you’re not careful. If a clone moved through the sand cloud you just created it would be spotted instantly by an intelligent person due to the fact that it wouldn’t disturb the air, passing through the cloud like a phantom, untouched.
By the same token, if your real body moved through the cloud or even touched it you would also be outed instantly for the exact same reason.
Lastly, there’s a mental problem so common amongst shinobi and humans in general that you’re taught to exploit it early on in the academy: People prefer symmetry. Usually, if one clone goes left and the other goes right, then the one who goes down the center is real. All things being equal, the non-clone is usually going to be either the one that is the most directly aggressive or the least. Very seldomly is the real body the one that’s standing just out of arm’s reach menacingly trying to distract an opponent by offering an easy target.
Not only do attackers tend to prefer being the obvious outlier no matter what, but the average defender in this scenario tends to attack the obvious outlier first as well. In a fast-paced combat encounter most people couldn’t be like you and have a quite long mental process happen in a split second; they simply reacted, and the wrong instinct at the wrong time could be as lethal as a knife to the heart.
One Naoki clone jumps directly up and over the cloud, menacingly holding a kunai.
The other darts left around the cloud, circling like a wolf.
You do the same but from the right, catching sight of Yuzuki. She sees you too. All three of you. But of course, she’s going to take out the outlier first.
