Naruto considered his opponent carefully as he waited for the match to begin. 'Sakura is going to use her undōryō henkan no jutsu if I get too close. Those poisoned makibishi sounded horrible too. Hm... momentum transformation... that probably requires momentum. Yes, that might work,' he thought to himself, finishing with a nod.
As Hayate shouted, "Begin!" he flashed Sakura-san a smile. She clapped her hands together as he formed a ram seal, and as she began running towards him several kage bunshin formed around him.
He hopped back a bit and formed a second wave as she plowed into the first set. His clones made no aggressive moves, only blocking and trying to soak up as much of her momentum as possible. 'I wonder if she realizes what I'm doing?' he wondered to himself. 'Momentum transformation requires momentum to work, which is why she ran at me. Each time she hits a clone and the clone doesn't hit or push back it absorbs some of her momentum.'
oOo;
Sakura tried not to grind her teeth as she realized what Naruto was doing. 'I got overconfident and of course Naruto saw the weakness of my technique probably as soon as I used it in his presence. He shouldn't be this smart, it isn't fair!' she thought with an internal whine.
She dispelled two more of his clones as he made a third and then a fourth wave, and then glared at him as he made a fifth wave. As he grinned and they spread out in a circle around her, she tossed her poisoned makibishi on the ground around her.
'Take that, Naruto!' she thought with a bit of satisfaction. She couldn't keep a challenging grin from appearing on her face.
oOo;
'And that's it. I had been worried that she would throw one of those at me, but now...,' he smirked back at her as one of his clones carefully picked up one of the makibishi and tossed it near her.
Her eyes widened as another clone picked up a second one and said, "We don't have to miss, you know."
He felt bad for her. She obviously hadn't been expecting him to use her own trap against her, and she still hadn't thought of the most important source of momentum she had available.
She closed her eyes, sighed, then with a bitter smile she called out, "Proctor, I forfeit."
Hayate called out, "Winner, Uzumaki Naruto by forfeit!"
As his clones helped her gather up the makibishi, he stepped closer to her and whispered, "Sakura-san, how much momentum do you get from gravity?"
Her utterly surprised expression turned slowly into a brilliant smile, and she nodded in return.
oOo;
Sasuke watched as Naruto won yet again in the least flashy possible manner. 'He obviously saw something that I didn't, she didn't really even get a chance to use that horrible jutsu on him.' he thought. 'The annoying thing is that he did it without even bragging, and whatever he said to her at the end got her smiling like she'd won instead of losing.'
oOo;
Hyuuga Hinata passed Naruto-kun on her way down to the arena and he called out to her, "Good luck, Hinata-chan!" She couldn't help but smile in return.
Her opponent this time was a genjutsu user, Mubi. 'It's unfortunate that he got this far simply to come up against my byakugan. Although to be fair Tsuchi Kin beat him before she started bragging.'
As Hayate started the match, she began her Senbon Concentration. Mubi immediately called out, "Oboro Bunshin no Jutsu" and the area around her filled with clones. 'Clones without tenketsu,' she noted to herself.
Envisioning a greatly-expanded eight trigrams seal, she called out, "You are within the field of my divination! Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Senbon!"
oOo;
Hyuuga Hiashi sat back feeling stunned. 'There it is, the true proof of ranged Gentle Fist. How has she been able to hide this from me? Where did she learn it?'
The elders around him seemed similarly stunned, and Hanabi was leaning forward staring at her sister in almost admiration. From the branch house's bench, however, Neji was muttering his disapproval.
oOo;
As the senbon disabled the tenketsu she frowned to herself. Three had missed their targets, though one of those had hit a nearby supplemental tenketsu that had almost as great an effect as the one she had targeted. 'I need more throwing practise,' she noted.
Mubi fell to the ground, unable to stand. She stalked towards him, and as he started to speak, she struck.
"Proctor, I for..." he slumped to the ground, unconscious from the final Gentle Fist strike.
"Winner by knockout, Hyuuga Hinata!" Hayate called out.
oOo;
"Uchiha Sasuke versus Akado Yoroi, begin!" yelled Hayate.
'He beat Nara Shikamaru by draining his chakra in his last match. I'll have to be careful not to let him touch me very much,' Sasuke thought as he activated his sharingan.
He watched Akado come towards him slowly, almost lazily in the sight of his sharingan. 'Kakashi-sensei's speed training really helped, this trash is nowhere fast enough to beat me,' he thought. As he came within range, Sasuke spun into a full-circle reverse roundhouse kick and readied a Great Fireball while his back was to the enemy. As expected, his kick was evaded, and as Akado reached out to drain his chakra Sasuke released the fireball into his enemy's unsuspecting face.
He watched as Akado sprawled backwards in the new crater, clothing smoking, and then jumped forward with an axe stomp to Akado's stomach.
As Hayate called the match he turned away in contempt. 'He was hardly worth my time,' he thought with disgust.
oOo;
"The three tier three matches will be as follows: firstly Hyuuga Hinata versus Uzumaki Naruto, secondly Uchiha Sasuke versus Hyuuga Hinata, and lastly Uchiha Sasuke versus Uzumaki Naruto," Hayate addressed the stadium. "There will be another fifteen-minute break before the tier three matches begin."
Naruto noted with a little irritation that not once throughout the entire test had he been announced first. Even against ninja from other villages he was still announced second. 'I'm almost certain that if it were possible to announce me winning like that that Hayate would do that too. More intolerance, don't they know that I'm supposed to be protecting them by holding the nine-tails? That I and Minato thought that I.. um, Naruto would be a hero? That he should have been a hero? That they might have forced him to become the demon they treated him as?' he thought resignedly.
'I wanted to be the Hokage, even in my new life Naruto wanted to be the Hokage, but do they really deserve to have me lead them? Maybe I've sacrificed too much of my life, in both lives, already,' he thought. 'I'll have to think about this after the test is over, especially if I don't get promoted. I don't know how much I want to continue to deal with this body, and if I stay I'll have to deal with it daily.' He sighed to himself. 'I really hate feeling like this, I feel like I'm betraying my son.'
oOo;
Fifteen minutes later, Naruto found himself facing Hinata-chan. Bowing to each other, they both drew their swords and began Sword Concentration.
"Hyuuga Hinata versus Uzumaki Naruto, begin!" shouted Hayate.
They clashed together, a spinning maelstrom against an implacable wall. They had been training together for two weeks that due to the kage bunshin stretched into months, and they each knew the counters to the others' moves. Hinata's sword style was akin to her Gentle Fist style, mostly stationary and defensive, while Naruto's style was of the whirlpool, always spinning and twisting around. His stance was lower than hers, as the reverse grip he used favored lower strikes.
They each probed the defenses of the other and found themselves lost in the pleasure of training together again, smiles growing on their faces and brightening with each foiled feint, each blocked swing, each slipped thrust.
oOo;
Cat watched the sword match with eyes narrowed behind her mask. 'I.. I know that style!' she thought with shock. 'I remember seeing it when I went into the Academy. And the one that used it was named... Uzumaki Kushina! Is it coincidence that Uzumaki Naruto knows it now? Is it...,' and here her thoughts faltered a bit as she looked at the Yondaime's face carved into mountain above. 'Is it coincidence that he looks just like Kushina's husband? No... how can this be? I've watched as people have treated him like trash, while they spit on him and overcharged him, and I've stood back and never said a word! What have I done? What have we done?'
As the sword-match continued, her resolve hardened. 'This is unacceptable. Things will change!' she vowed.
Unbeknownst to her several other people were having similar thoughts. There weren't many, but some few ninja recognized that sword style.
oOo;
With just a glance they agreed to move the power level up a bit. Breaking away from each other, they each summoned several kage bunshin. 'Naruto-kun has summoned more than me again,' Hinata noted with a small frown. 'I can fix that!'
She and her three clones stood back-to-back in a fluid, practiced move as Naruto and his clones all jumped back. With a single choral intonation, four voices called out, "Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Senbon!"
There was no area safe from her senbon, and his clones melted away.
oOo;
Hyuuga Hanabi watched her sister and Naruto in awe. Both of them had swords like huge tenketsu, and both of them were really, really good with them. And both of them knew a solid clone technique, even the clones had chakra and tenketsu!
She glared at her father as a thought occurred to her. "Otou-sama, why have I not been taught like Hinata-sama has been? When were you going to show me how to do that?" she asked.
Her glare sharpened as her father shifted uncomfortably and the elders looked away.
oOo;
Naruto grinned at Hinata-chan as he summoned more clones, each of them quickly closing in and engaging her clones in swordplay before she could throw her senbon again. The crowd and the stadium had long ago melted away from their awareness, each was now concentrated fully on the other as they had been for months of the eternal summer day.
Ignoring his clones and their respective melees for the moment, he spun forward and Hinata-chan slapped his slash into the ground with the tip of her own blade. He caught her return strike on the guard of his sword, and when she flicked a senbon at him with her off hand he quickly pulsed his chakra to reopen the tenketsu she had closed.
The memories from his three clones being popped by similar off hand senbon strikes floated in his awareness and a quick look around verified that he was in the process of being surrounded. With another whirl he pumped more chakra into his blade, letting it leak out in a spray around him. The chakra didn't do anything at all to Hinata-chan, but it was enough to disrupt and dispel her clones. In return he got several senbon in his back even as she backed away from him.
oOo;
Hinata watched as Naruto-kun disrupted her clones with a wave of unformed chakra, flicking senbon into his back when he turned away from her during his spin. 'Any other opponent would be completely disabled by those tenketsu being closed, except perhaps that Sabaku no Gaara,' she thought. 'Against Naruto-kun all I can do is wear myself out. He can counter everything I can do and he already knows all my tricks.' With an internal giggle she thought, 'No, to be more honest he doesn't just know them, he helped me teach myself everything I know now except the original Gentle Fist. I owe him everything else.'
A quick scan of her clan's section of the bleachers revealed Neji-kun glaring at her, Hanabi-chan glaring at her father, and several of the elders and most of the rest of the clan looking at her with varying amounts of shock. 'It looks like this fight accomplished what we wanted it to. I can't win against Naruto-kun, so it's best to stop now so that I'm not worn out for my next match,' she thought. With a somewhat-apologetic glance at Naruto-kun, she lowered her guard and stepped away from him, and he nodded to her as he also disengaged.
"Proctor, I forfeit," she said to Hayate in a confident voice.
Hayate looked at her and then at Naruto-kun, and then announced with a frown, "Winner, Uzumaki Naruto by forfeit!"
oOo;
Uchiha Sasuke frowned to himself. 'I can say for certain that Naruto isn't dead-last anymore. That sword style he's picked up is deadly-looking and he's a lot better at it than just a month of study from scrolls would suggest. He's not loud, obnoxious, or disrespectful anymore. He beat both Sakura and Hinata without really hurting them. He even countered that abomination of a jutsu that Sakura used!' he thought with a mixture of satisfaction and disgruntlement.
He made his way down to the stadium floor when his next match was announced. Hyuuga Hinata was waiting for him, her sword sheathed and her byakugan active. As the proctor began the match he activated his own sharingan, and caught a flicker in the air just before his left hand was pierced by a senbon. It immediately went lax with a dull ache.
'That was stupid of me,' he snarled to himself. 'I should have had my sharingan active before the match started, I would have been able to see and avoid that! She's clever to disable my hand, now I can't form any hand seals.'
He almost lazily avoided the next three senbon she sent his way while he closed the distance to her. His return volley of kunai was avoided equally easily, and he had to acknowledge to himself that her byakugan wasn't completely useless. 'Going up against a Hyuuga in taijutsu is suicide, but she almost certainly has more senbon than I have kunai and waiting for her to score a hit is just as bad or worse,' he thought. 'I can't let myself be hit again.'
oOo;
Hinata hid a smirk as Sasuke approached her. 'That lucky shot at the beginning of the match has won it for me, I think. Waiting until the match had actually started to invoke his sharingan was a little shortsighted of him. Without hand seals he won't be able to use his fire jutsu on me, and that means that I'm more effective at range than he is,' she diverted her attention as she dodged a couple of kunai. 'Okay, he's not totally ineffective at range. But now he's too close, and he'll never know what hit him!'
She formed her hand seals, calling forth two kage bunshin. One appeared next to her, the other behind Sasuke. Her chakra reserves were low, but the only chakra-intensive jutsu she knew was the kage bunshin, so she wasn't worried. Her Sword Concentration and Senbon Concentration took almost no chakra to use, they were primarily control-intensive.
Taking another double-handful of senbon, she and the clone next to her called out, "Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Senbon!" As he twisted and dodged the senbon, the clone behind him released her senbon silently and singly, aiming at his legs and especially the tenketsu in his ankles.
oOo;
He gladly soaked up the kage bunshin jutsu when she displayed it to his sharingan. Her senbon techniques were a little interesting but after everything were just multiple-projectile throws. The important part was the precision her chakra sight gave her, and just like the Gentle Fist he found his eyes unable to really copy her new technique.
Avoiding two waves of two senbon was easy, but avoiding the following waves of four, eight, and sixteen senbon respectively was much more difficult. That they were coming from two distinct angles didn't make it any easier, but his sharingan was able to track every incoming projectile and he managed to slip past them all.
The pain and numbness in his right ankle just as he was putting all his weight on that foot was unexpected and unwelcome. As his leg failed under him, a quick glance behind him showed another of her clones. 'She must've summoned more than one of them when she summoned the first in front of me. I didn't realize that she had so much control over where they appeared,' he thought as he collapsed.
With no seals and no mobility, he was forced into a decision that rankled even as he made it. "Proctor, I yield," he said disgustedly.
"Winner, Hyuuga Hinata by forfeit!" announced Hayate.
He was somewhat grateful when she came up to him after the match was called and reversed the points she had closed.
oOo;
Naruto gave Hinata-chan a congratulatory smile as she bounced happily off the field. Her return smile did things to him that he resolutely put out of his attention. He made his way down past her to the stadium floor.
'Sasuke-kun really deserves to win one of these matches,' he thought as he descended. 'I've already won one, as has Hinata-chan, so it's only fair. Besides, none of the abilities I've shown or that I dare to show at this point could really defeat his fire jutsu. I'm pretty certain that the Hokage would have a heart attack if I used my chakra chains, or my barrier, or my chain seals, or really anything at all besides what I've already shown. It's probably best if I don't let Sasuke-kun know that I have anything hidden in reserve, though. He wouldn't take it well, not from the 'dead-last' of the Academy.'
With his strategy firmly in mind, Naruto affixed a smirk to his face and waited for the proctor to start the final match.
oOo;
Uchiha Sasuke waited impatiently for the proctor to call the start of the match. He'd learned his lesson, his sharingan was already activated and whirling away as he observed Naruto.
"Final match, Uchiha Sasuke versus Uzumaki Naruto. Begin!" announced Hayate.
Sasuke settled into a basic tiger stance and with several quickly formed seals and a muttered "hibana no haaku" channeled lightning chakra into his hands. 'Sure, it's not the chidori, but sparking hands have almost none of the disadvantages that the chidori has. It will be strong enough to disrupt Naruto's clones with the slightest touch and that will be good enough for now,' he thought as he watched Naruto form several clones in response. They spread out as they approached him and as they came into optimal range he sprang forward into a mix of the first and third claw forms.
As he disrupted the clones he noted, 'I'm faster than he is. Good. Kakashi-sensei was right, speed really is everything during a fight.' Spinning into a high reverse crescent kick he formed more seals as yet another of Naruto's clones dispersed. "Katon: endan," he said quietly, then fired the flame bullet at Naruto himself. His eyes narrowed as he saw Naruto watch the bullet coming towards him with no stress, no tensing of muscles, and only after a clone had already jumped into the way did Naruto move to avoid the already-blocked attack. 'I don't think anyone else would have, could have noticed that. Can he communicate with his clones silently?' he thought.
Deciding to test his hypothesis, he fired several more flame bullets as Naruto retreated towards the nearby lightly-wooded area. Each time he did, one of Naruto's clones would intercept and only then would Naruto himself dodge. 'There were no hand signals, no glances, in two cases there wasn't even line-of-sight!' he thought incredulously. 'So why is he pretending to dodge when he knows that there isn't any danger beforehand? Why does it seem like every time I really look at Naruto recently I'm surprised?'
Channeling more chakra, he formed the handsigns and torched the tree Naruto had dodged behind with a whispered, "Katon: goukyakuu." This time Naruto actually did dodge with intent.
"What's the matter, Naruto?" he called tauntingly to the blonde. "Can't you do anything besides dodge and run away?"
"It's better than getting zapped and fried!" Naruto called back from behind another tree. He dodged away again when Sasuke torched it as well.
Sasuke frowned as a thought occurred to him. 'It was a taunt, but it's still true. All he's done so far is make clones and dodge. Is he waiting for me to run out of chakra? That must be it, he won't run out from just a few clones, I've seen him make hundreds of the things before! I'm going to have to pin him down to beat him.'
oOo;
Sakura watched eagerly as Sasuke-kun displayed his prowess against Naruto. Each time a clone fell the crowd cheered, and the two torched trees had each earned their own roar of approval. 'At this rate there's no way Sasuke-kun can't win!' she thought excitedly. Then the guilt surfaced, and she thought ashamedly, 'Not that I want Naruto to lose. I don't! Really! (I do!) I just want Sasuke-kun to win more than Naruto.'
The crowd's applause drew her attention back to the fight below, and Inner Sakura's declaration was forgotten.
oOo;
Sasuke reapplied his sparking hands jutsu, and then rushed at Naruto. The clones that got in his way were disrupted without slowing him down in the slightest, and he was within melee range within seconds.
Tiger style taijutsu was his favorite out of all the styles that Kakashi-sensei had shown him. His grin was wide, and he could almost imagine having a tiger's teeth as he settled himself into the form's mindset. He leapt at Naruto with both hands outstretched in claw form seven, leading with a swift kick and then swiping with both lightning chakra-enhanced hands. Naruto dodged the kick with a spinning motion, but Sasuke caught him with the edge of one of his hands and Naruto spasmed as the lightning chakra shocked him.
Sasuke swept into claw form three as Naruto shakily summoned more clones with a seal, and when Sasuke hit him again he flickered and then was disrupted. 'A clone? No, not until just before I hit him. One of his clones substituted with him, and it managed to substitute itself into exactly the same position, with exactly the same expression! When did he get smart? This is getting ridiculous,' he thought as he looked for the real Naruto.
The clones all looked exactly the same, just like always. With a small internal sigh, he began disrupting them systematically. Twice more he caught the telltale flicker as one of Naruto's clones replaced him just before a strike. The last time both were in his field of view, and he saw that not only was the clone substituted into Naruto's exact position, but that Naruto was also substituted into the clone's exact position. His eyes didn't catch any special technique, just a sealless version of the basic substitution technique.
'So it isn't even a particularly special technique... it must all be chakra control, but he used to have the worst control of Team 7. Now he's doing things that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do. How did he get so good so quickly? I could use my sharingan to copy his kenjutsu, but I couldn't have learned it that way from a scroll, and the sharingan does nothing to help my control. Whatever learning technique he has is something I've never heard of before,' he thought. 'Maybe he has some kind of chakra control bloodline limit?'
When he finally caught Naruto with another hand strike Naruto called to the proctor, "Proctor, I forfeit."
Sasuke was surprised at the quickly-hidden glee the proctor showed to his sharingan as he announced, "Winner by forfeit, Uchiha Sasuke!" The loud roaring of the crowd surprised him further still.
oOo;
Hatake Kakashi heard a loud roar from the stadium in the distance and looked away from the memorial stone and thought, 'Ah, it must be Sasuke-kun's match. I should go show my support for my precious soon-to-be-chuunin.' With that thought in mind, he activated a shunshin.
When he arrived at the stadium there was nobody fighting. The citizens of Konoha were in the process of leaving, and when he caught up to Gai and asked him about the matches all he got was a cold glare that was totally unlike anything he'd ever experienced from the man before.