Chapter 6

Juugo dropped into a standard taijutsu stance and waited for his opponent to attack. Asuma brandished his trench knives ang got into his stance. The proctor looked towards both of them and lifted his hand, after a second he gave the signal for the fight to begin and jumped away.

Asuma was the one to attack first, he charged forward and channeled wind chakra to his knives to make them deadlier. Juugo prepared himself and barely dodged Asuma˙s attack by stepping to the side. Asuma continued swinging in wide arcs towards Juugo˙s head and limbs, he knew that he stood little chance against a demon container so he had to finish this fast. Unfortunately for him Juugo was specialised in close combat and managed to mostly dodge all the attacks earning only a few scrapes and shallow cuts.

So far Juugo was testing Asuma trying to see how fast and strong he was,

`It looks like I˙ll have to use it...´ he thought as he released a chakra burst from his body to confuse Asuma and kicked him in the stomach making him fly back good 30 feet (10 meters).

The crowd was cheering, they haven˙t seen such physical strenght in their lives, and even shinobi were surpried when they noticed that Juugo only needed some breathing space, his attack was only a distraction.

Juugo placed his hands in the boar seal and channeled his chakra to the large seal array on his back. His cursed seal spred across his entire body and over the black marks spread a set of white marks similar to the spider-web.

At the sight of the cursed seal Asuma tensed, sure, he wasn˙t fighting against a demon, but he saw what can a cursed seal do, he saw Sasuke˙s memories.

Sasuke was shocked, down in the arena was a man with a cursed seal much more powerful than his ever was, he could sense that much.

Juugo was the one to charge forward this time, and Asuma was having trouble keeping up with the attacks, Juugo would miss him and punch the ground wich created huge craters equal to Tsunade˙s. That alone made the crowd stare in awe, and the shinobi were watching Asuma getting beaten up mercilessly.

`Damn! I˙ll have to attack him with everything I have...´ Asuma thought before jumping as far away as he could and using all his power to make the blades in his hands sharper, he also channeled some chakra to his leg muscles to increase his speed.

Juugo saw what the man was trying to do and pointed his right hand towards the sky and released the white seals from his entire right arm. The arm transformed into a disfigured, muscled, dark-skinned... thing that just reeked of evil. He brought his arm down and returned to his stance, waiting for Asuma to strike.

Asuma saw what Juugo has done to his arm and for a brief moment he thought about changing his plan, but in the end he decided that it was now or never. He charged with the speed witch rivaled Guy˙s.

When he was a few meters away from Juugo he increased his speed even more and went under Juugo˙s punch. He managed to make a few deep slashes across Juugo˙s chest, making him bleed heavily.

When juugo tried to grab the smaller man in front of him, Asuma ducked low, and when Juugo˙s hands were above him he made his move, he almostcut of Juugo˙s arm when he used all his force to cut through most of Juugo˙s shoulder, making the larger man cry out in pain with blood spraying the dirt and sand under them.

Juugo glanced at his leader high in the kage booth and recieved a short nod, that was all he needed. He channeled a small ammount of chakra to a special seal on his stomach and fell on his knees feeling no more pain, his wounds closing, his conciousness leaving him.

"He won˙t be getting up for at least another half hour" said The Red Fox to noone in particular, loud enough to only be heard by the few people in the kage booth.

The proctor checked Juugo and called the match,

"Winner, Sarutobi Asuma!" the crowd cheered after seeing such an interesting fight and the shinobi had mixed thoughts about the match,

`He went a little too far for a "friendly match"...´ were the thoughts of those who havent seen what can a cursed seal do. The rest were glad that Juugo didn˙t go on a killing spree, while some of the more observant shinobi were wondering how he managed to stay so calm under the influence of the seal.

After the arena was cleaned up by a few Suna Doton users next two competitors came in the arena.

Kurenai stood on one side of the arena and her mysteryous opponent stood on the other side.

"I am the three-tailed follower of The Red Fox, He rescued me from a terrible future of being controlled. He has helped me in taming my inner demon..." said the mysterious woman.

`What? No way, she can˙t be a container, the last guy wasn˙t... but he wasn˙t that far either...´ Kurenai thought, already thinking about her arsenal of genjutsu and which one would be most effective in the bright sun.

The cloak flew to the wall of the stadium revealing a woman shorter and a bit younger than Kurenai, with long brown hair loosely tied. She wore standard shinobi outfit in light blue, and held her Gunbai-Dansen in her left arm. She lifted her right hand and removed her mask, throwing it on the cloak next to the wall. Her face was something which made most of the senior Konoha jounin and the council gasp. Kurenai was the firs to collect herself,

"Y-Yakumo...?" she asked the question which was on everyone˙s mind.

"Yes Kurenai-sensei, it˙s me. It˙s been a long time since we have seen each other." Yakumo answered in a sweet tone holding no evil or hidden intentions wich almost made Kurenai cry.

"I hope you did not forget something important, I was the one who asked for you to be my opponent." Yakumo said, her expression turning serious.

`Controlling her inner demon... this will not be easy.´ Kurenai thought and dropped to her loose taijutsu stance, drawing a kunai to defend herself from the metal fan in Yakumo˙s hands.

The proctor looked at both of them and after concluding that they are ready, started the match.

Yakumo was the one to start. Noone expected her to throw her Gunbai-Dansen high into the air and start sealing with the speed and precision of the most experienced ANBU. Kurenai started sealin as well, even though Yakumo started first, they finished their tehniques at the same time since Yakumo˙s had four times more hand seals.

"Magen: Jubaku Satsu!" Kurenai called her usuall tehnique and she was about to capture Yakumo in it when she heard her calling her own tehnique.

"Kokuangyou no jutsu!" Yakumo called out and complete darkness enveloped Kurenai making her unable to see anything but herself. She heard the Gunbai-Dansen being caught by a hand and decided that she needed to get out of the darkness. She started sealing to use her new tehnique for breaking a genjutsu and after 4 seals she succeeded.

"Koppamijin Uso no jutsu!"

What she saw next was not what she expected. The entire arena was on fire, she couln˙t see anyone, only fire was there.

She started sealing again and once again used the same tehnique for breaking a genjutsu.

"Koppamijin Uso no jutsu!"

She foundherself on her knees, her hands tied up with ninja wire behind her back. She tried standing up but pain in her legs brought her back down.

`Why do my legs hurt, I didn˙t even move from here and i don˙t remember being hit.´ she thought.

"Please don˙t try to move, you will only make it worse for yourself." Yakumo said in her neutral tone.

"What happened?" Kurenai asked the question that was on her mind.

"I placed you under 4 different genjutsu at the same time, that tehnuiqe you used was enough to break 2 of them each time you used it. You should give up, that wire is made of chakra absorbing material, it will drain you slowly until you can no longer stay councious."

Kurenai thought about her options, she would probably be able to get out of the wire˙s, but she probably had a few cracked bones and going further would be useless.

"Proctor, I give up." She said and Yakumo removed the wires and returned them to her pouch. She slowly left to the room which the non-Konoha competitors were given. Kurenai, after she was able to walk again, left after her, she needed to talk to Yakumo, she was worried for the past two years since Yakumo disappeared from her "prison". She wanted to beg for forgivness, for not taking better care of her, for not standing up for her, she didn˙t expect much, but she had to try.

She caught up with Yakumo at the entrance to the room.

"What do you want to ask Kurenai-sensei?" Yakumo asked before Kurenai could say anything.

"I want to know, if it˙s possible for you to ever forgive me, I know I could have been a much better sensei to you but..." she stopped when she felt something around her neck, when she opened her eyes she could see that Yakumo was hugging her.

"Don˙t, please, you were more than a sensei to me, I have forgiven you a long time ago once I got the monster under control." she broke the hug and looked back to see Kurenai crying.

"Yakumo-chan, is this woman bothering you?" asked a voice behind Yakumo. When Kurenai looked she saw a man slightly taller than Yakumo, with a 2-tailed mask and a cloak.

"No, these are tears of joy Menma-kun. Kurenai-sensei, you should probably head back to not make your friends worry." Yakumo said and Kurenai hugged her once again,

"I hope we can find some time to get together..." Kurenai said and left the room.

The next fight was between Guy and the 8-tailed Red Fox. They were both standing in the middle of the arena and the crowd was waiting for them to start since the last match didn˙t prove very entertaining.

"I am the eight-tailed follower of The Red Fox, He rescued me from a terrible future of being controlled. He has helped me in taming my inner demon..."

`So you too? I will show you the power of youth!" Guy said in his usuall loud manner.

Guy˙s opponent took of his cloak to reveal a completely black shinobi outfit with no skin showing. He had two wakizashi on his lower back, and a ninja Sai dagger on his left thigh. Black gloves, black closed shinobi sandals with black pants. His kunai holster was sewn into his pants and his equip Only things that weren˙t black were his slightly pale skin, his leather belts, one on his waist, holding his pants, and the second in the most peculiar place, his right shoulder. The second belt was going around his shoulder making it look like the entire sleeve could be detached. He had brown hair and dark brown eyes which fitted his stoic expression perfectly.

"My name is Keigai"

(A/N: link to the drawing of Keigai is at the end of the fic (drawing made by mattwislon83 on dA))

The proctor started the match after looking at both of the competitors and concluding that they had nothing to say.

Keigai was the first to make a move, he took out a pair of kunai with unseen speed and threw them at Guy. Guy dodged the kunai easily but he had slight problem with the bunch of shuriken that came out of nowhere. He still didn˙t have a scratch on him but he was growing a bit worried by the speed Keigai was showing.

Keigai still hasn˙t moved from his spot, it gave him great view of most of the arena so he just stood there. Now he knew how fast Guy can get with his weights on, he had to get him to take the weights off.

While he was thinking Guy charged forward in his standard move,

"Konoha Senpuu!"

Keigai ducked under the whirlwind kick and continued dodging and blocking the furious attacks occasionally giving his own punches and kicks.

Guy was obviously leading in the taijutsu, even though it was by just a little, he still hadn˙t landed a good hit, but neither has Keigai.

Guy jumped back and while in the air, undid his leg weights which fell to the ground with a large explosion.

Keigai gripped his Sai dagger defensively, so that the blade was goin along his forearm and dropped into a low stance, prepared to defend himself.

Guy charged again, only this time with more speed and power. Keigai would have lost his head if he hadn˙t ducked, he noticed the reason for that,

`He must have noticed that I was calculating his power... but to open two gates just to gain an advantage... he is a strong and cunning opponent.´

Keigai kept dodging and blocking as best as he could, with an occasionall slash with the blade in his hand, he manged to keep Guy at a distance.

He switched his Sai with a pair of wakizashi as soon as he had the chance to,

`I can˙t place him in a genjutsu with so much chakra flying around, taijutsu is a definite no, he˙s too fast for ninjutsu, I guess I˙ll have to use fuuinjutsu...´

He started jumping around Guy, making slashes at the ground. This lasted for another couple of minutes, when he suddenly jumped outside of the circle of cracks and slashes he made. Guy was in the middle of the circle at the time and he had only enough time to turn around to face his enemy.

"Fuuin: Juushin Gekizou!" at the name of the tehnique most of the slashes started glowing brightly.

Guy was frozen in place, It felt like the earth wanted to swallow him, he had already formed a small crater under him by simply standing still and it was expanding!

"You can still give up." Keigai said in a calm tone.

Guy was being silent, he was in fact trying to think of a way to break this seal, but there was only one way to do that, and he was reluctant to carry through with it.

Keigai, seeing that his opponent is keeping silent, took out a handfull of shuriken and amied one at Guy˙s head.

Guy didn˙t see this as he was in his own world, and the crowd was cheering at the intensive battle.

With a flick of a wrist, shuriken flew towards Guy˙s head and once it entered the area above the seal it fell almost straight down.

Second shuriken was thrown, this one had more strenght behind it and it was aimed higher. But still, it hit only dirt under Guy˙s feet.

Guy made his decision, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Third gate was open, this made Keigai stop with the next shuriken and start thinking.

`He˙ll try to brak from the seal and smash me into that wall behind me, probably at the seventh gate, I˙ll need a stronger defence. I guess it can˙t be helped, I˙ll probably lose this one...´

Keigai took his Sai and slammed it through his left palm making the blood spray across the sand.

He made several seals and named his tehnique just as Guy broke free and litterally flew towards Keigai,

"Kuchiyose: Rashomon!" Keigai named his tehnique and a giant demonic gate came from the earth in front of him making a lot of dust rise. Next sound that was heard was a great explosion which meant that Guy hit the gate the dust settled a giant crater could be seen with Keigai in the center lying barely conciouss and Guy in front of him on his knees with both wakizashi deeply embeded in his body. One was in his right shoulder and the other was through his left leg. Despite the bad wounds he got up to his feet and signaled to the proctor to call the match.

After Keigai said that he can˙t fight anymore, Guy was the winner. After a few steps Guy crashed to the ground and the medic˙s rushed in.

It took a while for the crowd to calm down from seeing such an exciting fight while the doton users had more work to do with repairs.

Kakashi walked out to the middle arena lazily and stood close to the proctor. His opponent jumped to the other side and stood there.

"Let me guess, you also had help with controlling the "inner demon", am I right?" Kakashi started frist.

"How did you know?" the woman said in fake dissapointment.

"Well anyway..." she said and stuck her two naginata˙s in the ground aas sheremoved her cloak to reveal a young woman with a beautiful figure and the most peculiar choice of clothing.

She was wearing red shinobi sandals with a shin guard on her left leg, white fingerless gloves with forearm guard on her right arm. She had a sleeveless top and a short skirt, both were in two colors, left was completely black with small white star-like pieces of glitter, while the right side was golden, also with a lot of glitter. The black side of her skirt was torn into neat ribbons. She had a big obi belt which was colored in all possible colors and tied in a big bow behind her back.

Her blond hair was truly a sight to behold, she clearly took good care of it since it was almost as shiny as her clothes, and the fact that her hair was in a long ponytail which almost touched the ground showed that she liked her hair too much to cut it. Her eyes were also alluring, you don˙t see dark purple eyes every day.

She also had paper seals all over her hair. That alone took Kakashi˙s attention,

`She˙s hiding something in her hair, maybe some kind of a chakra reserves...´

She took off her mask to show a beautiful face with a matching smile,

"My name is Niji, nice to meet you." she said in a sweet tone, acting like she was a young girl.

"What are you hiding in your hair, those seals are quite powerful." Kakashi asked before the fight began.

"Well..." she turned a little to give him a better view of her behind and a huge bow on her lower back, "I wouldn˙t mind if someone as cute as you would `unwrap´ my secrets..." she let the sentence hang and gave Kakashi a hungry look, biting her lip.

(A/N: There is a drawing of this character on dA by MichellexNaruto4eva, link is at the end of the text.)

"That poor man..." Naruto commented to himself, just loud enough to be heard by the Kage˙s close to him.

Kakashi actually blushed, at the woman˙s forwardness and unfortunately for him she noticed it.

"Oh, did I just make you blush? How naughty of me, `someone´ will have to punish me later..." she said in a seductive tone, biting her finger and making Kakashi blush even more.

He got himself together and dropped into his stance, drawing the Hatake family tanto from it˙s sheath on his back.

Niji sighed, disappointedfor not being able to play more, and grabbed her naginata from the ground,

"Shikai!" she called, but nothing happened, she simply dropped to her stance, pointing both polearms at her opponent, one from above her head, and the other from her side.

(A/N: Some of you may connect this to Bleach, but there will NOT be any sort of zanpakutoh in this story, Shikai means "first release" or "primary release" so I just used it in here.)

The proctor started the match an jumped away from the competitors leaving a staring contest behind him.

Kakashi already had his sharingan revealed and couldn˙t lose precious chakra so he charged forward.

He started attacking with short kicks and fast slashes, however, all of his attacks were deflected or dodged, but what irritated him most was the constant smile Niji had on her face.

After a few minutes of fighting it was visible that the older shinobi is more experienced since Niji already had a few scrapes and cuts, but nothing serious.

She jumped away from him and spread her hands from her body. Kakashi was prepared to analyze any jutsu she would throw at him and counter it, however she slammed the bare ends of her naginata into each other making them connect into one long two-sided naginata

"Nikai!" she charged forward twirling her long spear above her head menacingly. Kakashi was surprised to say the least, mostly because Niji was laughing. It wasn˙t a laugh of someone crazy, she was really having fun fighting him.

He had more trouble fighting her now since he couldn˙t get in close enough for a hit. She was spinning her spear so fast that he was forced to jump back all the time, despite that, he was still uninjured.

After analyzing the lenght of the spear he concluded that it was too long to act as a shield if he were to attack from more angles at the same time.

He jumped back and made a single hand seal which reminded him greatly of Naruto.

After the smoke cleared two Kakashi˙s could be seen, both making the same hand seals.

"Ooooh! Is the other one anatomicaly correct?" Niji asked not even trying to supress her happines. Kakashi didn˙t hear her, he concentrated on those three simple seals.

"Chidori!" the shadow clone and the original Kakashi yelled together and charged at Niji.

Halfway there, the clone jumped high up and aimed for Niji. Kakashi didn˙t use a lot of chakra in his attack and that was visible, he only wanted to knock her out.

Niji decide that the airborne Kakashi was the first to go,

`He is so convinced that this plan of his will work, well I can`t really blame him since he doesn˙t know about my abilities...´

Niji grabbed her long spear by one end right above the blade and swung. The clone was dispatched in a horizontal slash but the real Kakashi was still on the ground and coming closer. To use her momentum, Niji continued to move along her entire body with the swing and lowered the swing to hit the second Kakashi even though he was already too close to her to get slashed.

Kakashi was getting closer, only a little bit further and he would make contact. He saw the spear coming from the side and calculated that he was definitely going to get hit by the wooden part of the spear, but he could duck under that once it got closer. What he didn˙t expect was to hear cracking noises coming from the spear itself.

The spear broke into three equal pices connected with a few inches of chain, Niji was holding the first part of the spear while the other two somehow sped up. Before he knew it, Kakashi was in danger of losing his head to the blade which flew from befind him to his right shoulder. He swung his arm and deflected the blade with his chidori, but he now had no weapon to attack Niji with so he had to retreat.

"Sankai." Niji calmly said while grabbing the middle part of the spear and spining the other two parts around her in a graceful manner.

Kakashi was growing annoyed, he should have been able to finish this match already, he was low on chakra for having to calculate so many possible counter-moves. He decided that he needed to finish this soon and thought of a simple plan.

He threw a simple smoke bomb st his feet to hide his actions from Niji.

Niji smiled even wider after she saw through his plan, he would attack her from behind after flying out of the earth. She was ready to turn around and block his attack which would bring him close to her.

Kakashi was relieved when he jumped out of the ground, she already changed her stance to meet him on the other side while he planned all along to come from the front.

She wasn˙t expecting him to jump out directly in front of her, so she couldn˙t do much except try to dodge the best she could. Only thing that she lost in that attack was a few strands of her hair.

"Baka, he˙s lucky if he survives this fight..." Naruto once again commented to himself.

She jumped away from him and looked in horror at the few golden hairs on the ground.

Kakashi was watching carefully since this was the first time he saw her face showing anything but happiness.

"M-My hair...my beautiful hair..." Niji silently said almost with tears in her eyes.

"This will not end well, you should probably take cover." Naruto said to everyone in the kage booth.

Niji˙s expression turned from extremely sad to extremely angry. In a fraction of a second all of the protective seals on her hair were burned to ashes and her ponytail undid itself making her hair fly around as it had a mind of it˙s own. Her chakra went wild, one moment it was calm like her, the next moment it began spiking and jumping all over the place.

Few civilians in the crowd passed out from the killing intent and chakra pressure, the rest were stuck to their seats being unable to move, and a few of them even had trouble breathing normally.

Niji grabbed her spear with both hands and unlocked it˙s next form,

"Yonkai!" as she yelled all the wood on the spear cracked and fell to the ground, she was now left with two blades connected by a long chain.

Kakashi was now getting really worried, she obviously had a lot more chakra and that new weapon looked really dangerous.

She charged withouth thinking, Kakashi could only try to dodge the dangerous blades as the swung around Niji. In the first few seconds he earned several cuts, none of them dangerous but still they hurt. He tried jumping away from her to hit her with a ninjutsu, but she was slightly faster than him and he could see that she wasn˙t giving it her all. Another few cuts later Niji was getting annoyed by not being able to chop up the man who harmed her hair.

"Gokai!" that was definitely the last thing Kakashi wanted to hear, the blades suddenly caught on fire leaving flaming trails behind them.

Kakashi was now getting cut up and burned heavily without even trying to hit his opponent, she was just too strong and too fast for him.

Niji got her chance and kicked him in the stomach so hard he was lifted into air, she then swung her weapon at him wrapping the chain around his neck burning his clothes and mask. She pulled him towards herself and when he was close enough kicked him again so hard he flew into the arena wall.

Her weapon was already by her side and she took out a few seals prom her pouch and placed them over her hair which made the chakra and killing intent recede.

The medics came in and carried Kakashi out, proctor called the match, and Niji blew a kiss towards The Red Fox like nothing happened. Hinata contained her killing intent since she was watching the fight with other members of Konoha 11.

"Well it would seem that we have a deciding fight ahead of us Senju-hime" said The Red Fox.

"It would seem so." Tsunad finished, and went to get ready for the fight which will decide who"won" since both sides had two victory˙s and two defeats.

It took half an hour to prepare the Arena for the last fight, and to say that the crowd was excited would be a big understatement. Everyone was on edge from the last fight and the chakra bursts from Niji.

The competitors stepped into the arena and stood opposing each other,

"Once I win I will leave Konoha alone for good, it will be just another village to me and I will have no ties to it and I will move on, I want everyone her to be the witness of that!" The Red Fox yelled. "Konoha has seen that they have wronged Naruto and the regret it, they have suffered enough." he continued looking at the confirming reactions of the people.

"How do you know so much about him?" Tsunade voiced the question which was on the mind of everyone from Konoha.

"I know this much about him because, he spent his dying moments in my arms, telling me of his life." The Red Fox lied, making sure that he was heard in the entire arena.

His lie caused various reactions, a few people commended him for his quest to bring Naruto honor in death, Sasuke started falling into a depression knowing that he made Naruto suffer more than he thought, Kakashi was devastated when he heard that Naruto may have been alive today if he hadn˙t left him. Gaara and his siblings were impressed by the acting Naruto can do, and Shikamaru was still thinking about Naruto leaving Konoha alone.

Tsunade was shocked, this man was with Naruto in his last moments, after the initial shock she asked, with tears in her eyes,

"Did he suffer?"

"No, my medical jutsu was weak at that time so I could only remove the pain and delay death for a few hours, but the Shinigami claimed his seal back." he answered sadly, his tone almost making Shikamaru question if this man was really Naruto since he was such a good actor.

"What if you lose?" Tsunade asked, happy that atleast Naruto didn˙t suffer in his last moments.

"I will then show you where he is buried." He answered silently making sure that she was the only one who heard him.

A/N: Well that˙s it, the next one should be in about a week or two, I˙ll be postin polls on about the pairings and other details, I˙m also thinking about making the chapter after the fight a flashback chapter, with more info about what happened during the timeskips.

OC˙s

Keigai (meaning of the name – mere skeleton, just a skeleton)

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Niji (meaning of the name – rainbow) on the pic, she doesn˙t have her hair in a ponytail, and her weapons aren˙t visible

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