Project Naruto: Shinobi X.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto world or characters. Those are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. The challenge I answer here is from devilzxknight86, with all due credit for the basic concept. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then it's a party!
Fourteenth Seal: Contend.
Ino sat in the stands with her parents, gazing out at the assembled hopefuls and listening to the gossip below. Two weeks ago, her father had asked her permission to examine certain memories, so that he had the context for the actions she'd taken. Puzzled, she'd 'hitch-hiked' with him as he plunged into her mind, and looked closely at everything she'd ever done or said... to Naruto. She'd wondered why, as she saw the past rise up once more, and seen exactly what she'd done, how she'd slapped down any attempt at friendship by this dirty, badly clad orphan... what ninja wears orange unless they're a fool or decoy? She'd seen the other kids do worse than taunt, she'd seen the bruised and battered Naruto, and once she'd even witnessed the beating he took because he wouldn't give that bully from the basic school his real name, instead calling him Hajime, under the logic "Well, you're always starting fights..."
She was not proud of her past self, nor was she looking forward to the lecture she was certain that she'd receive from her father... one she felt she actually deserved, and what teenage girl ever thinks that? Then her father found something she'd suppressed, an almost forgotten memory from years ago. She'd found a really badly beaten Naruto in the park, where he'd been left by whoever beat him, with a welt on his forehead from an adult's hand, as that Hyuuga girl, Hinata was dragged away by an insensitive carer (if such an oxymoron could exist). The bullies had left, laughing, and she'd wanted to avoid the boy... but she'd heard his belly growl loudly.
One rice-ball. One single, solitary morsel, that she'd been saving as a treat for herself for the walk home. Yet when she saw this boy, having heard the Hyuuga girl's words, she left it for him instead, not understanding why. She wasn't sure why even now, years after the event. So she retreated from her own mind, and opened her eyes. Her father's sudden embrace was shocking, she was expecting a lecture, deserved one in her own eyes, yet for some reason, that one memory, that single riceball, had affected her normally cheerfully stoic father, like this? She had barely made out his voice as he spoke.
"I have seen Naruto's side of these events, too," he'd whispered. "I'm not happy with your behaviour. But that riceball... he never knew who left it for him, but he remembered it. You didn't give it to him to get anything, there was no possible gain for you. You left it because it was the right thing to do. That makes me proud of you."
The stands rang with the noise of the crowd, and she pushed her introspection away to watch her former class-mates perform.
In the arena, a good twenty feet below the stands, the sickly proctor stood side by side with his assistants, a woman with long purple hair and a man with a long grass stem in his mouth. All three wore swords, and Gekkou Hayate stepped forward holding out the sheet that had the match-ups arrayed on it. "Take a quick look at this," he said, "and refresh your memory on who your first fight is against. Those of you not in the first match are to go up the stairs behind that door," here he pointed to a doorway in the walls of the stadium, "to the waiting area for the contestants."
As the participants not fighting moved quickly from the field, Hiruzen looked over to the Kazekage on the next throne over. At least, he thought it was the Kazekage... he couldn't be certain with that veil over the man's face, and he himself had never met the man... so why did he seem so familiar? "Your son is in the first match, I see," He said, attempting to draw the man into conversation.
"That is not my son," the Kazekage said in an indistinct voice. "I do pity the Iwa boy's bad luck." Quietly and furiously, the man behind the mask had other thoughts. "I hope that Gaara's bloodthirst doesn't go too far, that could ruin the whole plan..."
1. Sabaku no Gaara vs 2. Tamaishi Tobu.
Tobu knew what he was getting into in this match, he'd seen the reports of aftermaths where Gaara had been involved against Iwa ninja. They weren't pretty. Still, he felt he was tougher and stronger than most, he should have a chance, particularly with his facility with earth jutsu. As he took his stance, the one called Gaara simply stood there, his arms crossed. The hail of stones from Tobu's first jutsu, intended to test the waters, so to speak, were slapped aside contemptuously by tendrils of sand that sprang up from the ground, sand that was even now slowly pouring from the gourd on the other boy's back.
Gaara was measuring the heavily muscled young man in the white outfit. The rocks were mildly interesting, and the wave of dirt that he shockwaved towards Gaara stopped dead when it hit a counter-wave of sand. This was boring, and mother cried out for blood...
Tobu stepped up, right at the edge of Gaara's sand, his hands flickering through an array of hand-seals before he plunged them into the sand. "Doton: Terrain Domination!" he cried out as he unleashed the chakra to make this sand answer to his will instead of his foe's... It came as a great surprise, therefore as the sand did not release his hands when he tried to stand, but instead held him firm, beginning to spiral up his arms and cover him as Gaara finally lifted one hand towards him.
"Sand Coffin," came the harsh whisper, and Tobu's heart dropped in his chest. He could guess what came next, and the last thing he saw was his friend Koshi, in the stands screaming Tobu's name, as the sand covered his face. "Sand Burial!"
As the sand covering the larger genin turned red with a terrible sound, Gaara sighed with an expression suspiciously like relief, and Temari relaxed a little. The plan was still good, Gaara had just taken the edge off his bloodlust, and it wasn't like Iwa could hate him any more.
Otome watched what was left of her team-mate drip slowly through the sand, and as Gaara pulled the blood-soaked sand back to his gourd, releasing the crushed and ruined thing that had once been Tobu, a young man filled with laughter and knowledge, she wondered why she still couldn't cry. She could sorrow, she could mourn, but no tears ever came. Recalling the match-ups, she quirked one corner of her mouth upward, while her brow settled in a grim demeanour. She simply had to win her next match, and she could drag her friend's equivalent value from this Gaara's flesh...
3. Uzumaki Naruto vs 4. Dairiseki Otome.
Otome walked slowly to the centre of the field, taking up her stance and freezing in place. Today's events were such that Tou-san, Ishiguma-sensei, had provided her with a new outfit, one in a flattering blue, with leggings and sleeveless jacket. The Kanji for 'bear' written in black on her back loudly proclaimed his pride for her. Her sensei, her father, watched from the stands high above, smiled, and turned to regard the poor fool who'd been pitted against her. As the young genin stepped from the shadows of the doorway he froze. It couldn't be, he was too young and the man who'd taken his eye was dead for at least thirteen years now... It struck him that this must be the son of that man, the Legacy of the Yondaime Hokage, the Yellow Flash.
Naruto had deliberately chosen his outfit for today with care, and some advice from his Hinata-hime. The pants and jacket were, as always, orange, but striped across the legs and arms in black. He wore a coat, like he remembered from that echo of his father, seen so long ago, almost four years now, but this coat was black, with orange flames about the hem, and the lack of sleeves revealed his jacket's crests, the white spiral on his left shoulder and the red spiral on his right. Beneath the coat, seen occasionally as it snapped and billowed around him, the character for Fukutsu, or Fortitude, was prominently displayed in midnight blue over his heart. From a strap across his chest, a large scroll nestled on his back. All three members of Team Eight had one, and each was different. His and Hinata's looked new.
He took his own stance, feet wide, body low, arms forward with the backs of his fists toward the ground and about level with his shoulders, and waited, an almost feral grin of anticipation on his face. This should be interesting...
"Hajime!" called Hayate, and the fight began, Otome moving towards Naruto in a veritable maelstrom of fists, feet, elbows and knees, a blizzard of strikes that he was hard put to fend off. Yet he did. A strike that should have taken off his head slid along his jaw with no real contact, a knee to his ribs instead fell short as he moved. Then she saw it, a fraction of a second with an opening as she spun around his arms, pushing his fists in that direction and drove her elbow into his neck at the base of the skull with truly punishing force, hearing a metallic ratcheting noise as her opponent cartwheeled over to crash down on his back... and disappear in a puff of white smoke.
She snarled, but she was impressed. She'd just given him a crash-course in her fighting style, at minimal cost, and now he knew about the deceptively vicious reverse-elbow. To make things even more interesting, her elbow was throbbing, he was... "Wait, my elbow is throbbing? But I never feel anything..."
Her eyes unwillingly drifted to her arm as she worked her stony fingers about the joint. She could feel the pressure she was causing, but little more, until she brushed against the point of impact. The sudden sensation had her hissing, a sharp, indrawn breath. That... actually hurt. Whatever he was made of, this fight was now something she could really enjoy. This boy could make her feel... if she could find him.
There he was, on that branch, the one that bowed a little in a manner she found familiar, a hint that the person on the branch was far heavier than they looked. As she watched, he bit his thumb and reached inside his jacket to swipe at something on his chest. "Fuinjutsu: Go Juryoku Fuji: Release!" he called out. And stepped from the branch, which snapped upwards to the nearly vertical once relieved of its burden. As he hit the ground, she was already in motion, her barrage of attacks overwhelming in number... for anyone else.
Naruto felt much lighter with the Five Gravity Seal released, although according to Shinshi, this being one of the two seals the Gentleman Tiger had managed to teach him and Hinata, the other being far less practical in combat, all he had to do was wipe off the blood and run chakra through the seal once more to restore it. As the Iwa kunoichi came in, he saw the pattern his shadow clone had been hard pressed against, and countered it, hammering each of her strikes with a striking surface of his own, plated with bonemetal. She was feeling those, they were hurting her, he could tell... so why was she smelling ever more eager for this fight?
Ishiguma Daikenshi watched from the stands. Were it not for the reserve the Stone Bear style had inculcated in him, he would have been beside himself, without using any bunshin techniques. His daughter was having the fight of her life down there, and feeling it, the pain was obvious in her face. The fact that she was feeling it had him worried. Having found pain, would she seek out more? Or would she seek out other feelings? All he could do was be there, and pray...
Breaking away as Naruto struck a counter-blow at the moment she spun for the reverse-elbow, driving her to one knee which she turned into a roll as she tumbled forwards to reach a standing position, and spinning to face her foe, she saw him charging towards her, and channelled chakra into her body for the Stone Bear techniques Ishiguma had drilled her in. The first stage was easy, to her anyway, the hardened body of Stone Bear, the second was less so, pouring the chakra through the muscles instead of the chakra coils. To anyone who hadn't mastered the first step, this could tear their muscles from the very bones, but if you had, you instead increased your strength immensely with the Iron Bear. She absently tore a nearby tree from the ground and swung it at her blue-eyed foe...
When Naruto saw her tear the tree from the ground like she was picking a daisy, he hesitated, just a fraction of a second, but she swung the tree at him and he had a split-second to counter...
As his claws shot out of his forearms, he was already channelling wind chakra into them, and he struck at the tree, screaming out "Kaze no Tsume! Claws of the Wind!" as he did. The results were two-fold, both halting the tree's swing and severing the upper half from the trunk, sending it crashing to the ground, even as the crowd began to roar with applause at the fight unfolding here. Raising his arms before him, crossed over his chest, Naruto grinned at his opponent, who was debating whether or not her current techniques were good enough. Channelling lightning chakra into the claws at the same time as his wind chakra was a little tricky, but the hum that started to emerge from them as the girl's eyes widened was... ominous. She released a storage scroll at her hip and caught the zanbatou, the Horse-killing sword, that emerged. Raising it with both hands, she shouted, a wordless yell of challenge, and charged.
To Naruto, it was close to slow motion, as he swept his claws to cross, intercepting her descending sword, designed to cleave through a horse in a single blow, armoured or not, in a manner similar to the way he'd done against Zabuza. This time, though, he knew what he was doing, and how, thanks to Shinshi-san, and wasn't about to pass out. He roared "Arashi no Tsume!" and the hum of his claws intensified, and the Kumo ninja stared as they recognised the sound of raiton pouring through a blade as Naruto's claws sliced through the tempered steel with all the resistance of water, and hammering his forehead against the Iwa girl's hitai-ate, driving her from her feet, before releasing his grip on his chakra and sheathing his claws.
Ishiguma landed in the arena, staring down at his unconscious daughter . This Uzumaki... (Didn't the Flash have that redhead girlfriend with that name? This was making more and more sense.). He gathered his child and student up, her soft flesh dimpling... The Stone Bear of Iwa paused. Otome's skin was now soft and pink, and he glanced up at the boy... no, the ninja... who'd given her the fight of her life, who shrugged. Wondering at the miracle, he decided to speak with Koshi... Iwa would not learn of this young man through them.
Naruto returned to the participants' seats, claiming the one next to Hinata, as he redid his gravity seal. He answered Hinata's questioning look with a smile. "That style had almost no openings," he explained, "and I didn't think anyone made of stone could be that fast. It was constant offense... I wonder if Lee could use it?"
The announcement of the next match drew their attention back to the stadium floor.
5. Sabaku no Temari vs 6. Ginkumo Kura.
Kura had, like so many others, been somewhat gobsmacked by the fight between the two previous genin. He didn't let it overwhelm him though, just gave his thanks that he hadn't been the unlucky number four. As he skated down the wall on his chakra, a skill he'd discovered himself from the tree climbing exercise (it was a simple matter of 'cycling' the chakra, letting it pull you along, and what he did now was a slightly reversed version, with his chakra used to slow his descent), his mind raced on five different paths. The first part, the quietest, was analysing the previous battle. The second, a little louder, was running through the known tactics of his opponent and possible counters. A wind-user was seriously challenging, she could deflect his weapons virtually at will, and was good at maintaining mid- to long-range distances. Third, he was pondering over a mystery that had come to light very recently. Occasionally, they 'lost' their sensei. He would disappear, and be gone for a few hours. Was Sagi-sensei's loyalty to Kumo as solid as the Raikage believed, or was he being recruited by Konoha? Fourth, Kura was pondering his, and his 'sister's' origins. None of them really looked the part, and there were no other owl-partnered clans in Kaminari no Kuni... should they be as loyal, considering the suicide mission that the Raikage had given them (Kidnap a main branch Hyuuga? They'd heard horror stories of what had happened the last time... they'd gotten a body to study, but someone from Konoha had been... generous, and also given them some free explosive seals on the body as well...), as Kumo seemed to believe? He doubted it, they were seen as worthless and expendable, it seemed.
It was his fifth train of thought though, that was most prominent in his awareness. Did he want to win? If he won against this Temari, he'd have proven his strategies, yes, but the girl herself seemed somewhat distracted, and only truly relaxed once her brother had killed someone. He would also then have to fight this Uzumaki, and if the name wasn't enough of a warning to leave him be, his performance against Iwa's Marble Maiden was.
He found himself in his customary pose, balanced on one foot on a kunai, facing the Suna kunoichi who held her fan over one shoulder. But the perfect strategy was right there in front of him, with a vast number of contingencies and an insane amount of flexibility. He just hoped he had the means to pull this off.
Temari moved as soon as the Kumo genin did, her fan deflecting his kunai away while it remained closed, then swung open to sever the trailing wire with the chakra sharpened edge. "You won't catch me like that," she boasted, as she returned the favour with a blast of wind that hammered where Kura had been seconds earlier, the young man having slid away on the wire standing taut between the kunai he'd stood on, and another he'd thrown while she deflected the one aimed at her. A quick glance around, revealed the kunai, and numerous connecting wires, all around, although being tight-stretched between the arrayed kunai, she didn't believe they could be used to trap her. That odd trick he used to slide along the wires could get annoying, though, and she grabbed one of the kunai to disrupt the web of wires...
A blinding light and deafening crack later and she was lying against the stadium wall, twitching as she fought to stand. A calm voice spoke next to her, level, but amused. "What do you think of my jutsu?" Kura asked the Suna kunoichi. "I call it my Lightning Step technique. It gives me mobility, and I get to defend myself from anyone fool enough to touch the web. It's going to take a while for your nervous system to realign, so..." He reached out with a red marker and drew a line across her throat. "I win, I guess. Don't feel too bad. It's just the luck of the draw."
In the Kage's box, the 'Kazekage' didn't even twitch. "Another failed tool," he murmured. Was this 'alliance' really worth it? Perhaps if he got the Ichibi another way? No, it was too late to change the plan now. He'd just have to hope that Kabuto could get that Uchiha for him in the confusion...
7. Aburame Shino vs 8. Nusuma Fukuro.
The Aburame seats were filled. The men and women of the clan had gathered to show their support of their young representative, and so sat clustered around his parents and his young sister, too young for her first colony. Shibi and Hotaru kept their eyes on their son, the first male Aburame in generations to be permitted to sign the Mantis Ridge summoning contract.
Shino, for his part, didn't seem bothered by the surveillance of his performance. His coat had been replaced, a longer, better cut one had been given to him, and the staff he'd once used replaced with some new weapons that the Kamakiri-Koseki herself had taught him to use. Between the greatcoat, his sunglasses and his Aburame reserve, it was nearly impossible to tell what he was thinking. The scroll across his back didn't detract from, but rather accented, the image he now gave.
Fukuro looked at him as she performed the same merger trick she had used at the preliminaries, and as the two owl-girls launched into the sky, Shino sighed. He thrust his hands forward, and his new weapons sprang from his sleeves to his hands, the Nijuten Kamakiri. Tenten drooled a little when she saw them, the folded steel elegant in its unmarked simplicity. The blades were similar to those of katanas, but they curved forwards from the hilt, and were only sharp on that inside edge. The blades suddenly turned a dull grey as they were surrounded by stone, and it was quickly obvious that Shino was pouring Earth chakra into them, as his kikaichu colonies spread out in a cloud, crackling as lightning sprang from bug to bug, and Shino took a stance and froze. The blades of his swords were angled down, edge in, with his hands at shoulder height, and his elbows level with his ribs. His feet were wide-set and firmly planted, and his eyes were closed... Shirohime and Fukuro circled silently as Shino waited... and waited... and waited, expressing nigh-infinite patience as he stood there.
Fukuro continued to circle. At first glance she'd thought Shino's stance to be full of openings, but Shirohime apparently felt differently, so the part-avian kunoichi had stepped back, so to speak, and begun a more detailed scrutiny... one that chilled her. He wasn't using his ears to sense his surroundings... somehow he was using that cloud of insects. Well, there was something she could do about that! Signalling her partner, she began to climb, and she started her swoop at the same instant that Shirohime used her wings to start the Fuuton: Great Breakthrough. As the gust of wind forced a wide swath through the cloud of beetles, she was already moving fast, and her silent wings gave her the edge in an area devoid of insects... so why was he moving?... the spark that flickered across in front of her was the last clue. His Kikaichu weren't there to detect anything, they were a decoy from the real detection method, the spark net he'd set them to build, so he could spot when she attacked... mentally, she kicked herself for spending more time drooling over her last opponent than training to meet this one. As the stone-covered blades hit, she was driven from consciousness and the match was done.
Polite applause from the Hyuuga and Aburame seats surprised many, but Shino merely smiled behind his high collar as he put away his swords.
9. Hyuuga Hinata vs 10. Hyuuga Neji.
As Neji strode to the centre of the stadium, his cousin trailing in his wake, as she was fated to do, a niggling moment of doubt surfaced. She had gotten this far after all, and that thought could not and would not be dismissed so easily. Nor could the thought of what she had managed in the preliminaries. Her corrupted version of the Gentle Fist had taken down another ninja, but surely the pure version would triumph...wouldn't it? He ran his Byakugan across his cousin, taking in her leggings, shirt, and that dratted jacket she prized like a blasted engagement ring. As he took the stance that was so familiar, the unstoppable Gentle Fist, he smirked. He could do this.
Hinata stared at her cousin, trying hard to resist the fear that was there inside her. She'd never beaten Hanabi before, her self-doubt kept saying, so how could she beat Neji? Another voice, that sounded a lot like her Naru-kun's, was screaming encouragement at her, though, pushing her forwards to show all that she could do. "But I have to fight Neji-nii-san... what if I can't beat him?"
There was a pause as if not even her inner voice could answer that, and then she heard her Naru-kun whisper softly. "Then you learn from it, pick yourself up and try again... isn't that part of our nindo?"
The Hyuuga stands were silent. The elders of course supported Neji's traditional style over Hinata's new one, but Hiashi had seen something there that they'd missed. The Gentle Fist was a rigid, defined and codified style that relied on a particular set of manoeuvres, where the Gentle Storm seemed to adapt to the defences raised against it, constantly changing.
As Hayate called "Hajime!", Neji struck first, but with words rather than blows.
"Fate has decreed you lose today," he said, firmly, "and I am just its instrument to put you in your place. After all, how can you win? You have been weak so long, and just because some loser decided to take advantage of your naïve and soft-hearted nature, you run to his side and call it victory. You are weak still, and he is a monster to do this."
As Neji began, at first Hinata felt he was right, and if he'd stuck to insulting her, it could have ended differently, as Hinata had been conditioned to believe that she could not defeat her family. But when his target drifted to Naruto... Hinata quietly bit her thumb and reached inside her jacket, swiping as she murmured a release similar to Naruto's: "Fuinjutsu: San Juryoku Fuji: Release."
As Neji called her beloved Naru-kun a monster, she disappeared from sight only to reappear behind him, striking for his tenketsu...
"Kaiten!" he yelled, performing the rotation defence that surprised almost everyone present, as it was considered an exclusively Main House skill. Tenten's whoop of joy and triumph informed Hiashi that the pair's periods of absence had not been for typical teenage reasons...
As Neji slowed, a spiralling circle of disturbed ground around him, Hinata was there, just beyond it, unhurt, and 'rushed' in again, resulting in a second Kaiten, before Neji noticed something... both times, she had not channelled her chakra to her hands. Now she did, melding wind and water and...lightning? That wasn't good...
She was there, right in front of him, as he entered the famous Gentle Fist attack, taking it further that anyone knew he could. "Eight Trigrams, 128 palms!" He struck with incredible precision and speed, but wherever he 'hit' she wasn't there, always just a fraction beyond his reach. "Neji-san," she said as his furious assault ceased, for the first time since she'd met him dropping the nii- from his honorific... which actually frightened him a little... "you talk too much."
Her response to him was brutal, swift and merciless... When he struck for her tenketsu again, she met the strike with her own, catching his fingers on her palm. "Gentle Storm: Chakra Shockwave!" As her power rippled up his arm, the wind element ravaging his chakra coils along the path the water element created, and the lightning element dancing along his nerves in its wake, his entire arm simply failed him. There was no control, no style or discipline, no grace, as it simply dropped, useless, to his side, pulling him a fraction off-balance, and her second strike hit his opposite leg, carrying him to the floor. Struggling, he went to re-open his tenketsu with his other hand, but Hinata had it in her grip.
"I wouldn't," she said, firmly but gently. "You need to see Tsunade-sama to deal with this damage, trying to re-open them without mending the chakra coils would give you limited use, but then it would burn those coils out for good." Neji went white. "If you hadn't insulted Naruto-kun," the Hyuuga girl went on as the medics approached and Hayate declared the winner, "you might have beaten me. But you did. He isn't a monster, nii-san. He freed you, and the rest of the Branch House, and you still see something he isn't. He has suffered, but he took strength from it and flew. You chose to be a bird, huddled in a cage that had no door, too scared to fly. Maybe now we can throw away the cage."