Chapter 29- Of unexpected realisations

So, don't know what the hell I'm doing, but surprise! Yes, I am lying in the dark (my parents think I'm in bed) writing out chapter 29. At 11 at night. Even though I spent the last 4 hours sorting out my tech homework, I felt that since I have so many dedicated readers (Yay! Fan-hug for everyone!) they deserved an update.. And so, here I am. The things I do for you guys…

Enjoy! It might be a while until the next one (which has the fight in it!)


Naruto stood in the arena, alone.

She could see Gaara and Fu, standing together off to the side of the stadium, and whilst Gaara was being his normal stoic self, the blonde could actually hear Fu's shouting from a fair distance away. Fu had never quite got the concept of 'silence' or 'quiet'; both were very alien things.

It was almost as alien for Fu to be quiet as it was for Kakashi to be on time. But why had he passed that habit of being late onto Sasuke?

"Uchiha Sasuke, please come down to the arena," Genma called out, reading off of his tournament schedule that the missing opponent was indeed Sasuke.

Naruto rolled her eyes as no brooding emo appeared.

"Uchiha Sasuke? You have one minute before disqualification," the proctor added, looking around for the missing boy.

Loud boos erupted from the crowd of spectators at this announcement; everyone wanted to see what the talented Uchiha boy could do.

Up in the box Sarutobi groaned, rubbing his forehead in frustration, and signalled for Genma to start the second match instead, and postpone Sasuke's until the end.

Genma nodded in return, and once the two minutes were up he lazily shouted out

"Uchiha Sasuke will fight Uzumaki Naruto after the first round of battles are fought. Instead, can we please have Sabaku no Temari and Nara Shikamaru in the arena,"

"But-!" Naruto yelled in outrage (she at least wanted to fight Temari then) but Genma frowned, and waved her off the pitch.

She scowled in a decent imitation of Sasuke's frown as she stomped off to the stands to wait with Gaara, and Temari smirked teasingly as she flew into the arena on her fan. Shikamaru muttered a quiet "mendokuse" as Ino screamed encouragements in his ear, and then pushed him down the stairs to the actual arena.

"And… HAJIME!"


Three hours later, Shikamaru yawned in his seat. It had been a long and fairly boring match, as he had had to wait until the shadows grew long enough for him to do anything, and the only thing that had stopped him from forfeiting was that every time he looked over to the seats, Neji had been watching avidly.

Watching him.

Shikamaru had felt a thrill as he felt the eyes on him, and so he moved faster, languidly dancing away from all of the razor sharp gusts of wind instead of his usual tactics that he would have otherwise employed- hide behind one of those useful trees. What else were they there for?

But with every whisper of 'Kagemane no jutsu', with every moment spent in the sole attention of his crush, he had actually enjoyed the fight, and so when it ended, he didn't give up and instead whacked Temari's head against the floor (there were some benefits of her being taller than him) so that he would go through and fight Neji later on.

He grinned suddenly, shocking Ino and Chouji, in anticipation of the fight. It would be… fun.


(A/N Running out of things to put in this chapter (fight is still next chapter) so have some random, non-plot, completely unrelated ShikaNeji stuff)

Whilst Shikamaru was fighting, Neji had indeed been watching him.

At first it had been simply to see how a genius like Shikamaru fought, and then as the fight went on, the Hyuuga had found that he actually enjoyed watching the other fight; all graceful and lithe like a dancer but more than holding his own.

In fact, Neji had somehow ended up watching him for all three and a bit hours of his fight, and only realised what he was doing when the match ended and he sat up again.

The boy had blushed and quickly checked that no-one was watching him, only to find Hanabi seated along the row with her eyes focused on him, and a teasing eyebrow raised.

Neji flushed slightly, and turned up his nose away from his irritating cousin who was of the main family. That was not appropriate; a main branch member should not tease him because he couldn't fight back.

Besides, what was the eyebrow even supposed to imply?


Gaara's match against Fu had been next, and although it had been rather lacking in jutsus, it had been in no way lacking entertainment. The two of them had used basic taijutsu, a large amount of sand (Gaara), many insects (Fu) and a great deal of flying had taken place before the match was over.

Both of them had very successfully evaded the other's attacks for a good twenty minutes, and Gaara had won by a hair when Fu avoided the first three sand senbons he sent, and missed the fourth senbon that had hit her leg from behind. Normally that wasn't an issue, but he had coated the senbons in a paralysis poison that had immediately acted against Fu.

In fact, since poisons normally had such little effect on jinchuriki, Gaara had been forced to use a fatal poison (not that he told Naruto or any of her friends this- she would be outraged that he'd put Fu knowingly in a situation that could potentially kill her) which had acted the same way as a paralysis potion would on anyone else.

But as such, it had come to Katsu and Neji's match.

The first five minutes had been boringly docile; they stood in place and watched each other for movements, only sending out the occasional testing attack. It was only after Katsu's fifth senbon landed behind Neji that they blurred into action.

As it turned out, Katsu was stupidly talented with fire, but not the best at taijutsu. This had left him at a severe disadvantage against Neji due to the fact that the Hyuuga fought solely with taijutsu, and had eventually lost him the match.


So now it was technically Naruto and Sasuke's match (again) but the teme still wasn't here.

What to do? (A/N That is a very good question… anyone have any bright ideas? Much appreciated ;-) U can go back to the story now)


So, lacking an opponent that had 15 minutes to show up or get disqualified, Naruto was sitting on the edge of the stands and swinging her legs hard into the metal that was underneath the seat.

She was bored.

"Hey kit? I think that you might want to pay a bit more attention…" Kyuubi suddenly piped up.

"Kyuu-chan! You're alive! You haven't spoken to me in a while," Naruto cheered, questioning her friend.

"Attention!" the fox snapped back, and Naruto dropped her head at the sharp tone.

"Sorry Kyuubi," she answered, scanning her surroundings surreptitiously.

Nothing to the east, nothing to the north, nothing to the west, nothing to- wait. She sent her chakra sensors west again, checking a bit more thoroughly, and found something unexpected.

"Kyuu-chan! That's- that's-"


Meanwhile, over on the top of a mountain, Sasuke stood next to Kakashi, looking out at the view. He was wearing new ninja clothes (his normal blue shirt with the crest on it, new black gloves to help his taijutsu and hand seal accuracy, grey trousers that were both flexible, comfortable and tough and well-secured sandals).

The exams had started a good 5 hours ago, but Kakashi had assured him that the others would wait for their prodigy child, and stayed out here practicing with him.

Over the month Kakashi-sensei had taught him loads of jutsus, tips and tricks, and now Sasuke was certain that if he found Itachi, he wouldn't just be standing there helpless.

He would attack him, and hit him. Itachi was going to pay.


Got to love the random Neji stuff. He's so cool. J I like… even though I adore ShikaTema, I couldn't help it…