This is not going well, Naruto thought as he managed to right himself and land safely from the blast of wind that had flung him away from his teammates. It would have been child's play for him to cancel out the jutsu used against him, but the blonde admitted to himself that he had been caught flatfooted by the attack. A giant snake reared up behind the blonde, but he sliced it in half with a blade of air that he formed with an absentminded wave of his hand.
The wind jutsu had left a path, but it wasn't a straight one for some strange reason Naruto couldn't fathom. It's almost like whoever did it wanted to keep me away for as long as possible, he mused as he wrapped himself in his wind and launched into the air. Ever since he had renewed his family's contract, Naruto had been discovering new uses for his power even as he noticed their strength increase. He'd even noticed that he no longer required hand seals to do things with wind, almost as if he was using a different power source than chakra.
After about an hour, Naruto hovered to a stop and looked around. Somehow he'd wound up exactly where he'd landed when he'd set down from the jutsu. That's really weird, he thought. I should have made some progress, unless…crap, I'm caught in a genjutsu! The blonde gathered his chakra and formed the ram seal before releasing the energy with a shout of "Kai!" The air practically rippled as energy exploded outwards from Naruto, disrupting the fragile weave of chakra that the genjutsu created. Haku had spent some time trying to teach him how to identify and counter the various types of genjutsu that were in common use, but all subtle methods of dispelling were useless to him. Naruto had to use the brute force technique, causing massive disruption to any delicate chakra manipulation in the area.
Three shocked Ame-nin stood on tree branches near the blonde as his eyes narrowed. "I don't have time for this," he growled as the wind began spinning around him and blades of cutting air lashed out. Two of the Ame-nin managed to get away unharmed, but the blonde caught one of them with a glancing blow that sent him crashing to the ground. Naruto felt nothing but disgust at the two ninja for abandoning their comrade, but lowered himself to the ground near the downed shinobi.
"I want to know how you found me so quickly," Naruto snarled, causing the Ame-nin to blanch and stutter incomprehensibly.
"The Kusa-nin…he said that you would land here," the Ame-nin managed to choke out under the intense killing intent that the blonde was pumping out. "He said to delay you…if we couldn't beat you and take your scroll."
"So it was a conspiracy," Naruto said thoughtfully. "Why would they want just me held up? That would still leave Sakura…and Sasuke. Crap! Someone must have snuck in to go after the last Uchiha for his bloodline." The blonde looked down at his captive and wasn't surprised to see that the Ame-nin had passed out from a combination of fear and blood loss. He put a basic pressure bandage on the downed shinobi to keep him from dying before his teammates returned for him.
Naruto wrapped the wind around himself again and took to the air, trying to get oriented and failing. Apparently I was going in the wrong direction once I hit that genjutsu and they must have led me further away, he thought morosely. Nothing for it except to keep searching. I should be able to find signs of them eventually.
Naruto searched for hours, cursing silently as he felt several powerful flares of chakra lead him into dead ends as he found the remains of various fights. Night was falling when he caught sight of Rock Lee's jumpsuit dashing through the trees. Curious and lacking a better lead on his teammates the blonde swerved off to follow the oddball genin, feeling glad that he did when he saw Lee defending Sakura against the Oto-nin team. He held back as the green-clad genin fought against the leader of the team, a bandage-wrapped Oto-nin calling himself Dosu.
Naruto whistled in admiration as Lee's Omote Renge plowed the Oto-nin into the earth, but caught the blast of wind released by one of the other Oto-nin that caused the earth to erupt and form a cushion to lessen the impact. Dosu swung at Lee causing that same shiver in the air that Naruto had felt during his attack on Kabuto before the first exam. Lee staggered back like a drunk as Dosu began to brag about the power of his sound amplifier, while the kunoichi of the Oto-nin team grabbed Sakura and began ridiculing her for her obviously caring more for her appearance than for her skills. This was more than enough for the blonde, who sent a massive blast of wind into the small clearing causing lots of loose dirt to fly up into the air to obscure his arrival.
"What the hell did you do, Zaku," Dosu cursed as he coughed from the dust.
"It wasn't me," the other Oto-nin protested. "My Zankuuha doesn't work like this…"
"No, this was caused by me," Naruto stated loudly as he noticed the female Oto-nin lose her grip on Sakura as the pink-haired girl slipped a kunai through her hair. "And you really shouldn't be messing around with my teammates." He formed a dense ball of wind in his hand and tossed it with a negligent motion at the Oto kunoichi, who barely had time to let out a startled gasp before it impacted in her stomach and barreled her into a nearby tree. There was a loud thump from the collision and she slumped to the ground bonelessly and didn't move.
"Naruto where the hell have you been," Sakura half yelled, half sobbed.
"Hehe, sorry," the blonde apologized sheepishly, "but I got a little lost and stuck in a genjutsu trap for a while. Where's Sasuke?"
"It was terrible," Sakura cried, tears streaming down his face. "That weird Kusa-nin who called himself Orochimaru did something to him and now he won't wake up!"
"So that's why they tried to keep me away," Naruto mused, missing the growing irritation of the two remaining Oto-nin.
"You won't stop us from killing the Uchiha, bastard," the one called Zaku yelled. Naruto could feel a sudden change in air pressure from him as he raised one of his arms to point palm first at the blonde. "Zankuuha!"
The torrent of wind bore down on Naruto as Sakura shrieked out a warning. The blonde gesture casually and the blast split around him like it had hit a wedge in the air. Before Naruto could chastise the Oto-nin properly, an evil and malicious chakra laden with heavy killing intent filled the clearing. He turned to see Sasuke standing next to a hollow tree with glowing purple marks covering half his face and neck and trailing down his left arm.
"Who did this to you, Sakura," the Uchiha asked in an echoing dead tone. He was obviously upset over the damage the girl had taken before Naruto had intervened.
"That was us, you gay little pretty boy," Zaku yelled out, trying to hide his fear under false bravado.
"You will pay for that," Sasuke promised as he walked towards the Oto-nin, the glowing marks pulsing in time with his steps. The other shinobi sneered at the Uchiha and let out another blast of wind, which missed as Sasuke moved behind him at a very high speed. He grabbed Zaku's arms and twisted them back painfully saying, "You're very proud of these arms, aren't you? Let's change that."
The Uchiha twisted the trapped Oto-nin's arms even further, causing Zaku to cry out in agony as there was an audible snap and crack from his now abused arms. Sakura cringed at eh noise and threw herself at Sasuke, wrapping her arms around him to try and stop him as she cried out, "Please, Sasuke-kun, stop! There's no need to do something like this!" The broody genin froze, letting the Oto-nin collapse to the ground and shivered as if he were fighting an internal battle. The strange glowing marks flickered and died out as the receded back towards his neck, showing Naruto that something very wrong was going on.
"Look," Dosu said nervously, glancing at his crippled teammate and the unconscious one and coming to a decision. "We'll give you our scroll if you'll let me just take my teammates and go." At Naruto's nod, the heavily bandaged genin pulled the scroll out of his backpack and set it on the ground before walking over to his fallen teammate and picking her up. Slinging her over his shoulder, he turned to Zaku and said, "Let's get out of here." The Oto-nin scowled, but complied.
Once the other team was gone, Naruto let out a sigh of relief and said loudly, "All right, you guys can come out now." Sakura and Sasuke gave him a startled look, but said nothing when Team Ten walked out of the bushes looking rather sheepish. "And you guys too," Naruto added, looking up into the trees. Everyone looked surprised when a Hyuuga and a cute girl with her hair in buns dropped to the ground.
"How long have you known we were there," the Hyuuga asked crossly, glaring at the blonde.
"Since the moment you showed up," the whiskered genin replied with a smirk. "I was just curious as to why you're here."
"We're just here to pick up our idiot of a teammate," the girl said with an exasperated look at the spandex-clad genin who was finally getting back to his feet. "Honestly, Lee, I can't believe that you got involved in someone else's fight when we haven't even gotten our scroll yet." She slipped his arm over her shoulder and helped him stand completely upright.
"We should go," the Hyuuga said shortly, leaping back up into the trees. The girl gave everyone an apologetic smile before she and Lee jumped off into the foliage after their teammate.
"Damn, Sasuke, he's got as big a stick up his ass as you do," Naruto commented as he turned his attention to Team Ten, where Ino looked fit to be tied at his insulting of Sasuke. "And I hope that you guys were planning on helping if things went bad, otherwise I'd have to kick your ass, Shikamaru."
"Meh, you get more troublesome every time I see you, Naruto," the lazy genin replied, "but yeah, we were going to step in and help until you showed up. Since you guys had things under control, I figured there was no reason to tip our hands." Meanwhile, Ino had moved over and after a horrified exclamation over Sakura's hair was now trimming the other kunoichi's hair into something more presentable. "How'd you know we were there anyway?"
"That would be telling," Naruto replied with a smile that turned into a frown. "You'd better watch out for the mummy guy. That thing on his arm does something with sound waves; that's what screwed up geji-mayu's balance so badly. It probably ruptured his eardrums."
"Thanks," Shikamaru said with an odd look at the blonde. "Why are you warning us? They're not likely to make it to the next round with how screwed up they were when they left."
"Don't count them out," Naruto warned, eyeing his teammates with a calculating glance. "After all, no one's going to come out of this round unscathed. Hey, bastard, you going to puke all over the ground or are you going to help me and Sakura get the scroll we need?" A string of profanity from the Uchiha was answer enough for the blonde, who chuckled as the grouped together and the two teams went their own separate ways.
Naruto felt frustrates as the trio moved through the forest towards the tower, since neither Sasuke or Sakura would tell him what had happened during his absence. The pink-haired kunoichi kept shooting worried looks at the Uchiha, who seemed to have trouble channeling chakra without some kind of painful reaction. At least they listened to my suggestion to move close to the tower to hunt for the scroll we need, the blonde thought. He'd reasoned that there would be some of the more experienced and sadistic genin collecting scrolls and eliminating the competition near the tower. It might be a tougher fight, but there'd be a better chance that whoever they fought would have the scroll they needed. Sakura had wanted to set up a camp and rest for a day or so, but both of the boys had voted her down since they could rest after they got to the tower.
A large insect caught the blonde's eye and he impaled it with a kunai in a fit of pique. While it wasn't the insect's fault that Naruto was frustrated, it did make him feel a little better. It raised an alarm bell several minutes later when he spotted the impaled insect on a tree up ahead. Naruto came to a halt on a tree branch, looking around carefully as Sasuke and Sakura stopped nearby.
"What's wrong, dobe," the Uchiha growled. "We still have a lot of ground to cover."
"We're caught in a genjutsu," Naruto answered shortly as he cast out with his wind, feeling the fragile threads of the illusion and trying to locate the ninja who must have created it. A smile grew on his lips as he found all three of them clustered on a single tree branch, watching his team run in circles. "Think you can handle a Housenka no jutsu, bastard?"
"Of course," the Uchiha scowled, "but not without knowing where they are."
"I'm going to break the genjutsu," Naruto said quietly. "They're forty-five degrees to your left. Start the jutsu facing away from them and try to catch them by surprise. Sakura, loose a volley of kunai after the Housenka no jutsu in a spread pattern above the fire ball. Use any explosive tags you've got left. Everyone got it?" Sakura nodded and slipped her hand into her weapon pouch, no doubt attaching the tags to the kunai by touch alone. Sasuke glowered at him, but began making the hand seals for his katon jutsu while Naruto flexed the wind he had stretched out, snapping the genjutsu like a spider web.
"Katon: Housenka no jutsu!" Sasuke spun around as he completed the last seal, spitting a giant fireball that grew even larger as Naruto fed air into it. Sakura unleashed a double volley of kunai trailing explosive tags, actually targeting above and below the katon jutsu. Naruto felt stupid for not thinking of that angle and was glad Sakura had managed to pick up on it on her own.
A loud explosion rocked the area of the forest as the katon jutsu and exploding tags reached their destination. Three bodies dropped to the ground, but in a fit of caution Naruto waited until the smoke cleared and reached out with his wind again. Once he was satisfied that they'd gotten them, the blonde nodded to his teammates. Sakura leapt down and rifled through the bodies for a moment before coming up with a slightly singed scroll.
"Looks like that's the one we need," Naruto crowed. "Let's get the hell out of here before someone else comes to see what caused the explosion." The other two nodded and Team Seven moved off at their best current pace towards the tower, hoping to sleep in a bed that night.
The path to the Tower was clear, leaving Naruto to guess that the ninja they'd defeated had managed to claim a rather large section for their hunting ground. A guard at the door to the Tower told them to pick any of the empty rooms on the first floor and take their scrolls there. Empty was the right way to describe the room Team Seven found themselves in, except for a wall hanging with a riddle on it that had Naruto completely stumped.
"Maybe we should open the scrolls," Sakura suggested after analyzing the riddle on the wall. "I know that they told us not to open them, but the kanji for Heaven and Earth fill in the blanks on the riddle." Naruto shrugged and looked over at Sasuke, who nodded his acquiescence. Sakura took the scrolls out of her pouch, broke the seals and began to unroll them when they started to smoke. All three genin jumped back, reaching for their weapons as the cloud dissipated to reveal a familiar figure.
"Iruka-sensei, is that you," Naruto asked dumbfounded.
"So those were summoning scrolls," Sasuke murmured at the same time.
"Congratulations, you three, on completing the Second Exam successfully," the scarred chuunin said cheerfully. "This test was to mark your ability to carry sensitive information, keep it safe from enemies and to not give in to the temptation to take a peek. Chuunin are often assigned much more difficult missions and will act as leaders for genin squads on lower ranked missions. There's a whole speech that I'm supposed to give, but I have a feeling that Naruto would just fall asleep like he did back in the Academy."
"Hey, I wasn't that bad," Naruto protested.
"Yes, you were," Sakura, Sasuke and Iruka said in unison before breaking out in a laugh at the pouting expression on the blonde's face.
"You have two more days before the Second Exam is officially over," Iruka continued with a smile. "Take the time to rest up and eat in the cafeteria. There are rooms marked with village and team numbers for every potential team to make it this far, so take it easy and you'll gather in two days time in the big arena on the top floor."
"Ne, Iruka-sensei," Naruto asked, "have any other teams shown up yet?"
"Teams Eight and Ten from Konoha have made it in," the chuunin replied, "and the team from Suna as well. Team Eight almost set a new speed record for the exam."
"Cool, that means Temai-chan is here," Naruto said excitedly. "Now the only question is how to get her away from her brothers…"
"I swear that if you don't stop giggling at your porn, Kankarou, that I'm going to burn every piece of it and your puppets for good measure," Temari growled as she glared at her brother.
"Honestly, you need to lighten up, Temari," Kankarou replied without looking up from his book. "Gaara's locked himself up in his part of the room and said not to disturb him until the Second Exam is over. Why don't you go and find someone to take your frustrations out on other than me? I want to enjoy my brief moment of piece from Gaara's mood swings. I swear that boy's worse than you are when you're on the rag…"
Kankarou's comment was cut short as Temari brought her war fan down on top of his head with a loud clang from the metal edges. As her brother slumped into unconsciousness, the kunoichi stalked out of the room in a huff. Who does he think he is to make a comment like that, she seethed. Just because he's my brother doesn't mean that I have to put up with him making PMS jokes…
Several minutes later found Temari lounging on a balcony overlooking the Forest of Death. A part of her was in awe of seeing green everywhere she looked, but overlaying that was a certain amount of scorn for those who'd lived such an easy life here without having to learn how to survive the harsh realities of the desert. Still, the sunset over the forest made the leaves glow with brilliant colors, despite the huge creatures that lived there and the desperate battles no doubt still taking place.
"Over here, you say," she heard a familiar voice sat as the sound of footsteps from inside the tower became audible. Temari all but groaned when a blonde head over an orange jumpsuit became visible. This guy certainly is persistent, she thought, but who was he talking to?
"Oi, Temari-chan," the boy, Naruto if she recalled correctly, called out as he joined her on the balcony. "Boy, you sure are hard to find!"
"Maybe that's because I wanted some time alone," Temari replied sarcastically.
"Nah," the other blonde said dismissively, which rankled a little. Who did he think he was to pretend he knew her so well? "You're not one of those broody types. You just like a little peace and quiet once in a while, but on the whole you're much happier when you're around people."
Temari just stared at the younger boy, slack-jawed. No one had ever been able to get such an accurate read on her since she was a little girl. "How the hell would you know that," she demanded angrily, feeling oddly vulnerable for some reason.
"I'm pretty good at reading people," Naruto replied with a smirk as he leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're a lot like me, Temari-chan, but what I can't figure out is why you have to hide it…."
"A psychotic brother who routinely threatens to kill me," Temari offered bitterly, "or perhaps the fact that our father is the Kazekage and a pretty worthless excuse for a human being…" The dark blonde slapped her hand over her mouth as she suddenly realized what she was saying.
"Hmm, I thought so," Naruto said as he closed his eyes and nodded sagely. "You've never had anyone treat you like a real person before, have you? Everyone tiptoes around you out of fear of your family, leaving you all alone when you just want to be accepted for who you are."
"How…" Temari stuttered. How can he know this? There's no way anyone could know how I feel anymore. Not since I learned to control my emotions and facial reactions. It's not like he could have read a spy report on me either, since he's only a genin…
"I told you, Temari-chan," Naruto tsked, "that we're more alike than you'd ever believe, but that's not the only reason I know that. I had a little help you see…"
"I knew it," Temari smirked. "So you have someone stalking me? Did you break into the Hokage's office and read his files? Did you bribe Kankarou with porn for information on me?"
"Porn?" Naruto blinked in surprise before continuing, "No, it was nothing like that. I told you before, but you just thought I was crazy when I said that the kaze no seirei like you."
"That's because there's no such thing," Temari snapped. "All that mystical mumbo-jumbo is bunk and you're a fool for believing it!"
"That's mean, Temari-chan," Naruto whined, "especially since I came up with a way for you to see them." The blonde pulled a kunai out of his weapon pouch and cut a deep slash across his palm. Blood welled up think and red as he held out the hand to the kunoichi. "Just rub this under you eyes. It'll only work for a little while, I think, but they told me the blood of the Contractor has a lot of special properties."
Temari gave the boy a steady look, but her curiosity won out over her caution and she daubed a finger in the blood pooled in his hand. The kunoichi spread the blood sparingly under her eyes, letting out a hiss as her eyes began to sting a little. Her vision blurred slightly, but when it cleared she could see motes of blue light flitting about all over the place. Her mouth dropped open in disbelief and her hands came together to form a seal as she said, "Kai," in an attempt to dispel whatever genjutsu that she was caught in.
"It's all real, Temari-chan," Naruto reassured the wide-eyed girl as he gestured at the swirling blue lights around the both of them. "There's a lot of them here right now because they like hanging around me, but there's always some around anyone who uses futon jutsu. That's part of what drew me to you, Temari-chan, since you have more kaze no seirei around you than the other futon specialists I've met and they seem really happy. You must really love the futon that you use for them to have that kind of reaction."
Temari knew that she must resemble a fish with the way her mouth was opening and closing. The dancing lights were beautiful, but they were also completely unrestrained and joyous. She could the big grin on Naruto's face and couldn't help but flush as she realized that she owed him an apology for questioning his sanity. Even though he was a dead man walking. Gaara would turn that cheerful grin into a frozen rictus of pain and terror and there was nothing the kunoichi could do about it.
"Well, I'll leave you to enjoy the sight," Naruto said with a cheesy grin. "I'll see you in two days at the end of the Second Exam. Oh, and don't worry too much about panda-san. If he tries to come after me again, I'll spank him and send him home crying." With that the blonde turned and left, making Temari really wonder what was going on behind those brilliant blue eyes.
Naruto practically bounced in place as he stood in a line with the other genin who'd finished the Second Exam successfully. In the end, seven teams had made it through the Forest of Death and retrieved both scrolls. Five of them were teams from Konoha, the Suna team was here, and surprisingly the Oto team stood in front of the Hokage as he rose from his chair to address the gathered genin.
"Congratulations to all of you who made it this far," the Sandaime said in a dignified tone. "There's one more task ahead of you before the Third Exam…"
"Pardon me, Hokage-sama," a sickly looking ninja interrupted," but you since I'm the referee, then I should explain the situation." The Sandaime nodded and sat back down. "My name is Gekkou Hayate and before we move on to the Third Exam, which will be a series of one on one matches, we need to have a series of preliminary matches."
"What," one of the other genin exclaimed. "Why do we have to do preliminary matches? We all passed the Second Exam, didn't we?"
"Too many people passed the Second Exam," the man replied. "Many highly placed and powerful men will be attending the Third Exam and we cannot afford to have it run too long, since these men will be deciding which villages to send their contracts to. So we'll have a round of preliminary matches to cut the numbers in half. Now before we begin, does anyone want to withdraw?"
"I do," Kabuto said with an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid the I don't have enough chakra to continue."
"Very well," the sickly ninja replied and nodded to one of his assistants as the silver haired genin left the room. A board lit up on the wall behind the referee. "The board behind me will randomly select the opponents for all ten matches so that there will be no accusations of favoritism." The genin vacated the floor to join their jounin-sensei on the balcony along the outside of the area designated as the arena. Naruto noticed that Sasuke was holding his neck and wincing in pain every so often while Sakura shot him worried looks.
Is there something still wrong with the bastard, Naruto wondered as he remembered the incident in the forest and the strange marks that had spread across his skin with the feel of an incredibly evil and vile chakra. Come to think of it, neither he nor Sakura ever told me what happened during the time we were separated.
"First match," the referee called out after a cough. The board's lights swirled and revealed two names. "Akado Yoroi and Uchiha Sasuke." The broody genin grunted and made his way down to the floor while Naruto sidled over to talk to Kakashi.
"Ne, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto started, "there's something weird going on with Sasuke. Back in the forest, he had these weird glowing purple marks growing across his skin…"
"Don't worry about it," the jounin replied, his attention focused on the match below as the Uchiha desperately tried to avoid the chakra draining jutsu that Yoroi was using. "Hayate-san knows to stop the match if anything gets out of control, but we arranged for Sasuke to have the first match in order to take care of any problems as soon as possible."
"So much for random matches," the blonde snorted as he looked down to see Sasuke pound the other genin into the ground with a taijutsu combo that looked suspiciously familiar. "That bastard," Naruto groaned as he realized what had happened. "I can't believe that he had the gall to copy Lee's taijutsu."
"that's what Uchiha do," Kakashi said blandly. "They take whatever they can use their Sharingan to copy from their strong opponents and incorporate it into their fighting style. That's why their clan was viewed as so powerful."
"And that's how you made your name too; isn't it, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto asked pointedly. "You have a Sharingan eye too, so that's where a lot of your jutsu came from, right?"
"Yes," the jounin answered with a sigh, "but I don't copy from other Konoha shinobi, only from enemies. Unless the Konoha-nin gives me permission, that it is. Looks like I'll have to talk to Sasuke about the ethics of using his Sharingan on comrades. Gai looks fit to be tied." The one eyed shinobi nodded over at a man who looked like an older version of Rock Lee. Naruto shuddered at the sight and had to forcibly tear his eyes away from the giant caterpillar-like eyebrows.
Most of the matches were pretty tame, in Naruto's opinion. Shino using his bugs to make that Zaku guy's arms explode was both gross and cool, while Shikamaru easily manipulated Kin, the third Oto-nin, into a position where he knocked her out without a great deal of effort. Chouji put up a valiant fight against the last Oto-nin, Dosu, but he was too slow and the mummy-like genin showed that his sound waves could travel though the fat and affect the Akimichi despite the earplugs he wore.
Sakura and Ino's fight scared Naruto a little, more because of it's sheer psychological viciousness than for any skills displayed. Girls fighting are scary, the blonde thought with a shudder as Hayate declared a double knockout after Sakura managed to break the hold Ino's possession jutsu had on her. Kankarou fought against a Konoha-nin that Naruto didn't recognize named Tsurugi Misumi, who had an ability to unlock all of his joints and control his limbs with chakra like they were made of rubber. He entangled the Suna-nin, sure of victory, until the real Kankarou burst out of a bundle of bandages that had been set on the floor at the beginning of the match. He revealed that Misumi was fighting a war puppet and proceeded to severely injure the flabbergasted shinobi with weapons hidden in the puppet before Hayate called the match.
When Temari's name came up, Naruto couldn't repress a cheer, despite the odd looks he was receiving from the others observing the matches. It didn't matter to the blonde, who was looking forward to finally seeing what the girl he liked was capable of doing.
"You really should just give up now," Temari told the other girl, Tenten. She was one of the pair that had picked up Lee after the fight with the Oto-nin in the forest. "You're a weapons specialist, right? That shows that you don't stand a chance now, so you might as well save yourself the embarrassment."
"Come on, like I'd give up that easily," Tenten shot back angrily as he pulled out a handful of kunai.
"Fine," Temari sighed as she pulled out her battle fan ad opened it slightly to show some of the pattern painted on the weapon. "One moon should be enough to defeat you."
"Come on, Temari-chan," Naruto yelled. "Kick her ass!"
"Naruto-kun, you should not cheer on a foreign shinobi like that," Lee scolded as he walked up beside the blonde.
"But Temari-chan only has her asshole brothers here and they're not rooting for her," Naruto complained, "and Tenten has you and your sensei to cheer her on…"
"Yosh," Lee said, a strange fire lighting in his eyes. "You are a good man, Naruto-kun, to have realized that the desert flower has no one to fan the flames of her youthfulness while Tenten has both me and Gai-sensei!"
"Umm, right," Naruto replied hesitantly before turning back to cheer for Temari while the spandex-clad genin cheered for his teammate. Both of the girls below looked more than slightly embarrassed but didn't delay when the referee told them to begin.
Tenten released several barrages of kunai at the Suna kunoichi, who deflected them with a wave of her fan and calling out, "Kamaitachi!" This repeated itself for several minutes until the bun-haired girl pulled a pair of scrolls from her belt and smeared blood on them. She leapt into the air and unfurled them to release a veritable hail of projectiles at the Suna-nin, who deflected them with another wave of her fan.
"Is that all you've got," Temari asked condescendingly. "This is why I said that you weren't a match for me, odango-atama." Tenten just smiled eerily and brought her hands up in a sharp motion and twisted them in a complicated pattern. All the weapons across the arena lifted from the ground and flew at the Suna-nin, propelled by the very fine and nearly invisible wire attached to all of them.
"So, you do have some tricks up your sleeves," Temari smirked as she opened her fan further to reveal a second painted moon. "Daikamaitachi!" Gale force winds leapt from her fan and blew the weapons away, sending Tenten smashing into the wall where she slid down to floor slowly. Temari held her fan up for a moment, considering another attack until she looked up at Naruto, then snapped it shut as Hayate declared her the victor.
The next fight, after they cleared away all of the weapons, was between Hyuuga Neji and Hyuuga Hinata. As the two genin faced off, Naruto could feel a terrible cold lump growing in his gut. This isn't going to end well, the blonde thought as he watched the two Hyuuga exchange blows. He winced at every strike that got through Hinata's guard, remembering the few times he'd run afoul of a Hyuuga as a child. Their chakra infused strikes did significantly more damage than was let on by the fluid, almost dance-like nature of their taijutsu style. Even if he didn't know Hinata very well due to her terminal shyness, Naruto didn't want anything bad to happen to her. He cheered her on, to not give in to the bullying of the boy she acknowledged as a cousin. The blonde was worried, though, by the lack of emotion on the older Hyuuga's face.
When the final blow was struck and sent Hinata to the ground for the final time, convulsing and spitting up blood, Naruto began to move. Neji had approached for a finishing strike, but found himself restrained by all of the Konoha jounin-sensei and the referee.
"Naruto," Hayate said as he helped to hold the Hyuuga back while ranting about the favorable treatment being given the Main House, "go back upstairs. If you get involved, I'll have to disqualify you." The blonde glanced over at Hinata, who was being loaded onto a stretcher by a couple of medical ninja, before bending down and coating his hand in the girl's blood.
"Neji," Naruto growled, "I don't know what your problem is, but Hinata didn't deserve what you did to her. I promise you that I'll beat an apology out of you, even if I have to break all of your bones in the process." He ran the blood smeared fingers across his face as a promise while the Hyuuga just sneered at the blonde.
The next match was Inuzuka Kiba versus Rock Lee and it was probably one of the greatest taijutsu battles that Naruto had ever seen. Lee was definitely faster and stronger than Kiba, but the Inuzuka's use of the Jyuujin no bunshin no jutsu let Akamaru be an effective third combatant. When Kiba started using the Tsuuga, the famed whirling fang technique of his clan, Lee was given permission by Gai to remove his weights. The battle took on a whole other stage then, as the three of them moved faster than the eye could easily follow.
Lee sensed that he had leveled the playing field, rather than tipping it in his favor, and began to do something that astonished everyone who knew about the genin's inability to mold chakra. He began releasing the Heavenly Gates. Two of them were more than enough to secure a win over Kiba, which the Inuzuka took with his usual poor grace. Kakashi had moved over to stand by Gai during the fight and looked disturbed as the other jounin confirmed that he'd taught Lee how to do that.
"Lee has enough of a handicap," Gai stated, "by being unable to mold chakra due to hi underdeveloped chakra coils. This gives him a trump card where pure skill could not take him. Besides, it was necessary in order for him to learn Omote Renge."
"So you taught him those dangerous maneuvers as well," the one-eyed jounin asked flatly.
"What I teach my students is not your concern, my eternal rival," Gai replied in an equally flat tone.
"Ahem," Hayate coughed down on the arena floor. "We will now have our tenth and final match. Uzumaki Naruto versus Sabaku no Gaara."