(A/N) The Prelims! For the record, I'm sorry for only doing half of them then abandoning you for a month. This is head hopping a little bit, from person to person fighting in the matches. It is intentional, I assure you, and is so I don't weasel my way out of describing the fights. This is fight practice. Except Naruto vs Lee. I do not wanna do that one. I am not going there.
Neji stood proudly, passively noting the nations of those who'd passed. Four Konoha teams, including the entirety of the Rookie Nine, one Suna team, three Uzushio teams, and a single Kiri team with what looked like a seven swordsman on it. He recognized the sensei as Ao, who'd stolen a main branch Hyuuga's eye, and still had it under the eyepatch.
And would you look at that, he was up against one of the genin under that bloodline stealing bastard of a man. He wouldn't feel bad taking out a few frustrations on the other genin. He didn't look like all that much anyway.
"It is your fate to loose this match," Neji droned, fully ready to just pull his usual fate spiel and beat him into next week.
"We'll see about that!" The other genin, Neji'd forgotten his name already, pulled out two swords. Neji scoffed. He was more then fast enough to avoid the swords.
They charged at each other. From long experience dealing with Tenten and all of her sharp pointy things, Neji dodged the sword strokes easily, taking his time when dealing out damage of his own, landing hits first on the tenketsu points in the center of the other genin's body, then onto the outer points, along the arms and legs.
He would make an example of this genin, not to mess with the Hyuuga clan.
With one final hit on the torso of the other genin, he was down. Neji stood over the other genins unconscious body proudly as his win was announced. He won. As was expected.
Choji was fairly nervous about fighting the genin from Suna, he didn't know what he could do or what his skills were, but he supposed he'd go into most fights not knowing his opponent, or at least not very well in the cases he did recognize his opponent.
The girls on his team, Hinata and Ino gave him a thumbs up, which he returned as he walked down.
Choji, upon hearing the start, from the proctor, took a deep breath, and blew up, then rolled forward quickly.
He crashed over the other genin, suffering only a small scratch to his torso.
"You destroyed my puppet!" The other genin rose from the splinters, looking quite offended.
"Don't make it so easily breakable," Choji said quickly before anxiety got the better of him. He wanted to die in a small hole as soon as he finished saying it.
If possible, the other genin looked even more offended.
Choji rolled towards him again, barely missing him. He could feel the world spinning slightly, although brushed it off as dizziness from using the jutsu. It'd happened before. He'd just have to work past it.
He barreled at the genin a few more times, missing him each time. He stumbled after the final one, the world spinning.
He crashed to the floor, unconscious.
Miyo was somewhat vaguely aware of the existence of the timid Hyuuga heir, Uzushio knew of the Hyuuga incident that had happened so long ago, although she wasn't particularly afraid of her. It was a bad matchup for the Hyuuga, mostly because Miyo was an Akai Arashi and specialized mostly in long distance jutsu. As long as she was smart and didn't get into close range, she'd be fine.
Even then, Miyo was fairly sure she could hold her own against the Hyuuga heiress.
"You got this Miyo!" Jinbei said, waving their arm.
She waved back as she hopped over the railing, too excited to bother with such thing as stairs.
She faced down the other girl, standing tall and bringing her hands up to be ready for anything.
The proctor called them to start, and Miyo started weaving the hand signs for a waterwall as the girl came for her. It went up just in time to intercept Hinata's first strike while Miyo leaped back.
Miyo wove hand signs for water bullets, spitting them out then following up with a quick wind Jutsu to speed them up and throw Hinata off balance. A good section of her water jutsu from here on out would require less chakra, due to the water around the arena.
Hinata was now walking on water, and Miyo grinned from her spot on the wall. Looked like she didn't have to worry about drowning her.
Hinata tried to race for her again, but Miyo now had the advantage. She pushed some chakra into her legs and leaped for the ceiling. She grabbed one of the beams, hanging from it by one hand and weaving some one handed seals with the other.
She heard brief impressed murmures, then started shooting more water bullets down at Hinata. It was unfortunately the only jutsu she had down with one handed seals.
Hinata dodged most of them, but Miyo could tell she was starting to tire.
Miyo fired off a few more, then swung up onto the top of the beam when Hinata paused to catch her breath. She wove hand seals for a water dragon, hoping beyond hope she had enough time to finish them all. She was working on getting it down below 44 seals, but it was very slow going. So she still had to do all 44 hand seals.
Somehow, she completed the sequence, and the dragon rose from the water already on the floor, stealing some more of her chakra to make extra as well.
Hinata attempted to dodge, although it didn't work as the dragon smashed her against a wall then dissipated, leaving her unconscious. Miyo dropped down to the floor, landing easily on the few inches of water.
"Miyo has won," the proctor said as medic nin carted Hinata away on stretchers.
Naruto glanced over as he and Lee were carted out on stretchers. He carefully extended a hand, and Lee bumped it with a tired smile. "Next time, Naruto-san. Next time."
Naruto nodded firmly. Next time indeed. One of them would win, and he intended for it to be him.
After the showing the first Uzu genin had made, Ino wasn't the most optimistic about her chances. She'd heard about Eidoko from Naruto's team of course, the entire so called Rookie 9 had, knew she probably had a similar skillset to Miyo, the genin that had gone earlier. Hinata had been very firmly defeated by her, and Ino wasn't a fighter like Hinata was.
On the other hand, Eidoko was very optimistic of her chances. "No offense Naruto, but I'm pretty sure I have this one in the bag."
"You're an Uzushio genin," Shisui said, smirking. "And one of mine at that. I would hope you do. Cause if you don't that's an insult to my teaching skills. And everyone else who taught you. Or a compliment to her teachers I guess, but I haven't been keeping up with Konoha teaching methods."
"Of course you haven't," Umi said, patting his arm. "You're dead."
"Are you ever going to stop teasing me about that?" Shisui asked rhetorically.
"Nope!" Eidoko chirped, jumping over the railing. "Never ever!"
Shisui huffed mock annoyed. "Rude. I thought you were nice genin."
"You're the one who trained us," Yunikon pointed out casually, probably hiding a smirk behind his hand. He sounded like he was.
Eidoko chose to ignore her sensei and teammate, and focused on her opponent. A Yamanaka. Couldn't stay still for long enough for the Yamanaka to complete her family jutsu. It'd be bad if she did.
So Eidoko played avoidance, leaping onto the walls and ceiling to avoid the Yamanaka. She couldn't do one handed seals yet, Miyo was a few months older than her and more advanced. She was close though.
She settled for blowing Ino around a bunch, then hopping behind her to knock her out herself. She was more wind inclined anyway.
Gaara shunshined to the floor, ignoring the water residue from the previous battles. He stood on top of the good two inches, watching his opponent stand in the water instead of on top. Their loss.
His sand flowed from his gourd, and raced for the leaf nin standing opposite him. He would catch the nin, and he would crush him.
...He couldn't move. Gaara didn't like this.
"I forfeit. He'd kill me the second I released him," the leaf nin said, raising his hands. Gaara growled, but was restrained by the match being over. Someone would die at his hand. He promised mother she would have her blood.
(A/N) And that is the first half of the preliminary fights! It will be November in a little bit, so I will not be posting during the month. Don't worry though! I'll recontinue posting in December. Choji got poisoned, for those who didn't catch that. And yes, I skipped Lee and Naruto's fight. Didn't need to deal with that much enthusiastic yelling/signing. Also it was kinda long already. (Can you tell i wrote those fights out of the order they're in right now?)