The explosion was unexpected. At least it didn't actually destroy the mist though, it just spread the mist out, a lot. The mist had spread so that it was more or less useless to use as cover, expect for perhaps the patches in the shadows of the arena's walls. Though, with his tell-tell hair he doubted she'd have trouble picking him out. The mist was all about the arena in odd little patches. Some were small, others were big. The small patches were the most dense whilst the larger patches were the thinnest. Yep, his mist was useless right about now.

“Nngh…” winced Gaeul as he tumbled out of the tree and onto the ground—thankfully away from his makibishi seeing as he was higher up in the tree and didn’t suffer from the full impact of the exploding tag-bound kunai. That wasn’t to say he had escaped uninjured though. He had several rifts in his clothes now, and he was sure that were splinters about in his skin too, but he couldn’t quite tell for sure. All he knew was that he had had the wind knocked out him and his body was sore all over. Now, the impact from Hana’s weapons hadn’t hurt him initially (he felt sorry for the Bunshin though, even if it really couldn’t feel anything), it was the falling-out-of-the-tree-and-landing-on-the-ground part. He had managed to get into a crude sort of rollout, but that hadn’t saved him from all the thwacking the tree branches did.

And just as soon as he had been able to gather his senses and start to get to his feet, she used some kind of jutsu on him that forced him to drop dead and roll over before he could (painfully) jump to his feet only to get blinded by something. He hadn’t thought there was enough light to emit something that blinding, but he was wrong. He could still hear though. And what he heard was her footsteps fast approaching him. He had to think fast. Moving back meant he’d be trapped to the wall—something he didn’t quite want. So where? To the side? He couldn’t really see and he knew his makibishi were still in play somewhere to his left. The right then? More trees. So what? Forward? Hell no.

Up.

The corners of his lips raised up in a grin as he utilized one of this techniques. Jumping up, his feet easily found the all too familiar disk of ice and he continued moving higher up, over Hana’s reach in the nick of time. Looks like working for Ming paid off. He had just remembered how he had dodged the crowds while running deliveries for Ming and implanted it without much thought.

Gaeul stood, seemingly on nothing, high up in the air, at least two and half meters while he caught his breath and though on his feet. The girl was pretty fast on her feet and good at fighting, maybe she really was that Genin trained by the Hokage himself. So far she had shown she was fairly good with projectiles and kept moving in with her sword. She had yet to actually use another direct attack him. She was focused on distracting him or keeping him busy so she could move in with her sword. So… if he could deflect that somehow, he supposed he’d have a better chance since some of this techniques required time, set up, or cover to be fully useful.

Truth be told, he had an idea in mind, he just wasn’t sure if he wanted to use up that much chakra or stamina yet. Ah, what the hell, why not? Going for it, he threw down a score of his own metallic senbon. The first wave essentially being little more than normal senbon to cover him whilst he attached exploding pouches on a few of the remaining senbon before letting them cascade down on the arena below mixed in with regular senbon and some of his own icy senbon.

He hoped she’d be caught off guard, or at least not be able to dodge all of them. He might not be a specialist with weaponry or projectiles, but he knew enough of the basics so that he wouldn’t entirely miss. The odds of her dodging all of the senbon were low really (since senbon were usually harder to see anyway, due to their size and make), and some of them even had exploding pouches on them, so even if she dodged them, seconds later they’d go off (hopefully with her still nearby).

The pouches were small in of themselves, so he found it hard to believe she’d be able to see them from a distance and most ninja he knew of didn’t really use pouches they preferred the tags so there was that chance that she’d never even fought against someone who used pouches to begin with (or maybe even seen them).

Then of course, there were his ice senbon. They wouldn’t cause as much damage as regular senbon, but they were made out of the Yuki Clan’s hyouton ability and be even more difficult to see, given there was faint sunlight and a slight fog still (with some small patches of mist still about). And if they landed, well, hopefully she wouldn’t notice the prickling sensation of cold too soon or think nothing of it. If the senbon stayed in long enough it might actually be able to numb her body some (depending on where it landed of course).

Technically speaking, he could keep up the rain of senbon for awhile, but he only had 25 exploding pouches and he was only willing to use five of his exploding tags. She’d figure out there were explosives soon enough—it was only a matter of being able to detect which senbon were the most deadly. But he hoped that by that time he’d recovered enough to actually face her other than well, projectiles. He really wasn’t much of a close combat kind of guy. Gaeul considered himself to be a support type ninja really, or maybe a long ranged fighter. Then again, he’d never really fought anyone so…

In between the waves he’d apply some of his healing salve onto his wounds. It stung, but it helped ease the pain after a few seconds passed. He’d smell lightly of herbs for awhile—at least until his body’s natural scent took over again when the herbs’ scent faded seeing as it was only a light layer of the salve on top of the visible wounds he could see and reach without giving himself away too much.

By the last of the fourth wave (being composed of ice senbon and explosives instead of the previous metal/ice/explosives or metal/explosives or metal), he had already begun to let chakra reach his senses and was ready to release a flash bomb that should change things to his favor—whether the girl dodged the senbon or not.

After the flash bomb went off, his technique should kick in and he could move in with a direct attack that would hopefully work...

"Jutsu Utilized":

[OOC: Ne... sorry it took me so long...? >.<'']