(December, year 54 AK)
Yuta looked at Maki some distance in front of him, all injured and battered, but none of her injuries were serious, and now she was furious and seems like she was about to attack Yuta with all that she has.
'She is probably already wasted at least half of her chakra, if I just could push her a bit more, she would exhaust herself soon enough.' Yuta thought as he prepared to dodge her ninjutsu one more time.
Maki completed the quick series of hand seals and slammed her hands on the ground with hatred.
Next moment Yuta saw how a bunch of stone spears all around him are shooting at him from all directions from the ground.
'Interesting ninjutsu you have there...' Yuta thought as he quickly formed a single hand seal and flickered away, escaping the deadly trap just in time.
But as Yuta reappeared in the distance, as he was trying to quickly shake off the brief disorientation of the Body Flicker jutsu, he sensed with some flicker of fear that the chakra flare from Maki's direction after she used the previous ninjutsu wasn't the only one, and there was another chakra flare right after the first one.
Yuta quickly understood that Maki used another ninjutsu right after the first one.
Yuta formed a hand seal for the Body Flicker jutsu again, pushed his chakra, but in his current state of disorientation, he can't use it right away, he can't activate the jutsu while he wasn't able to regain his spatial awareness and wasn't standing firmly on the ground, so he waited for the moment when the brief disorientation, that lasts only for a second after the use of the jutsu, fades.
But, as his disorientation faded and as he was just about to activate his Body Flicker jutsu once more, Yuta saw how a stone spike was already piercing his chest, tearing apart his flesh, he was just a moment too late...
"Ghuh..." Yuta coughed a mouthful of blood as he looked at his pierced chest with surprise in his eyes, 'She got me, huh...' He thought, as he pushed back the shocking and overwhelming pain that he felt at the moment, like if he just swatting away a noisy pop-up window from his monitor, not paying any mind to it at all, and looked up and saw Maki's crazed and triumphant smile.
'Not bad... I was careless...' Yuta thought with his fading away consciousness, 'But you are celebrating your victory a bit too soon, girl...' Yuta thought and smiled, while using the last bits of his strength and consciousness, he activated the time-travel at the last moment before dying completely...
...
The next moment Yuta was observing the entrance area of the mansion from the mansion's roof, it was evening, he was in the middle of his shift of watching over the mansion's entrance area, it was the evening before the night of the attack.
Yuta continued to calmly watch over the area as if nothing had happened, but inside he wasn't as calm. He felt a mix of all sorts of emotions as he was analyzing what happened back there.
Yuta felt a bit of fear and shock after being killed like that when he was already certain about his quick victory over that girl and already was thinking about how he would deal with the Jonin afterwards. But getting killed like that so suddenly, it was a reality check, or rather the reality had slapped him hard in the face, and Yuta wasn't happy about that at all.
He also felt frustration and annoyance over what happened, since it tells him that he was too careless and overconfident.
'That girl, Maki was her name? She studied my moves, and in the end, when she finished calculating my timings, she used two ninjutsu in quick succession and got me in the end...'
'During the fight, I used Body Flicker to dodge her first attack when she shattered her stone wall and used it's pieces for offense, then I used Body Flicker again to get away from her underground sneak attack, and then I used it for the third time to dodge her another attack after the explosion, apparently, that was enough for her to calculate and predict my next moves and to trap me with her two ninjutsus used in quick succession, one after another...'
'I had underestimated her...' Yuta thought, 'She either not as bloodthirsty and full of hatred as she looks, or she is just that good at quick thinking during combat. Either way, fighting someone good like her without using my strongest skill – genjutsu was a bad idea from the start. She observed my moves, calculated my timings and limitations with Body Flicker jutsu, predicted my next moves and successfully executed the plan to trap me at the precise moment when I won't be able to get away...'
'It's a first time I was defeated and killed in battle, huh... Obito doesn't count, there isn't any battle back then. And that last Mist ninja doesn't count either, Hikari killed him before he could kill me.' Yuta thought as he sighed.
'Shisui was supposed to watch over us during that battle, but I guess he was watching over Itachi's battle against the enemy Jonin. Well, I can't blame him for that, I could only blame myself for getting careless. At all odds I should've be able to win that fight, Shisui couldn't predict that I would decide to be stupid and won't use my genjutsu at all, getting greedy and planning to hold it for the Jonin instead to catch him off guard...'
'I wonder how all those countless novel protagonists were able to go through many life-and-death situations without getting killed... They always either have some kind of trump card just for the current situation, or some sudden and lucky turn of events saving them just in time... While in reality, just one tiny moment of carelessness, a moment of bad luck, or a tiny mistake - is all it takes to get you killed...'
'Well, I'm the one to talk about unfairness of novel protagonists... I'm literally having the ultimate cheat ability that able to reset the whole timeline if something happens not according to my will... That girl killed me? No thank you, I don't like that, let's rewrite the entire timeline and try again...' Yuta chuckled a little over his own joke.
'I almost pity that girl...' Yuta thought, 'She probably trained her whole life, and she is good at it too, give her another year or two and she might become a full-fledged Jonin. And now she has to face me in battle. She might defeat me a thousand times over in a thousand separate timelines, but when she loses once, and I mean "when" and not "if", she will lose and die for good, and that timeline will become the main and only one in this world, and I will move forward...'
...
'Well, too bad. I don't have either strength nor will to spare or save other people when it could endanger me or my own people. Especially if the people in question are those that attack me or just have a misfortune of ending up on the other side of the fence... Hashirama was able to be kind and to spare his enemies only because he was the strongest person in the world, I don't have such luxury, so no point to even think about that and to feel pity for my enemies...'
'My enemy is my enemy, I should only think how to eliminate them, not to pity them. I shouldn't overthink things and make it more complicated than it should be...'
'I'm not even sure if the people of this world, that was somehow recreated from the fictional story from my previous life, are even real people. All of them could be just an illusion or something for all I know...'
'Who am I trying to convince here? It's only me and my thoughts here, I'm already treating the people of this world like real people. They talk like real people, live lives like real people, have their own thoughts and feelings... If something looks like a duck, it is most likely a duck, and all that...'
'And if it's stands in my way and tries to kill me, then it's an enemy, and I should kill enemies before they kill me, it's as simple as that...'
Yuta sighed and looked over the land, that was covered in grass, with some nice-looking trees here and there, the front yard of the mansion looked nice and peaceful, it was hard for Yuta to compare what he sees now with what he saw during the fight in the middle of the night, when the ground become torn up and ruined.
'Well then, let's prepare some nasty surprise for those Stone ninjas...' Yuta thought as he stood up and flickered to the front yard of the mansion and looked around, trying to remember the exact position where the four Stone ninjas stood when he got there in his memories, 'It would be a waste if I don't use this knowledge to my advantage... Although it would be hard to explain afterwards how I knew where to set up a trap, but it should be fine, probably. It's only me and my teammates here, no one will know...'
--- AN ---
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