Hey!
So, after a week, I'm back. I'd like to answer to a couple of anonymous reviews I received (as the ones that I can answer in pm are answered there), so if you want you can skip this and go right at the chapter, so, enjoy!
"well that's entirely up to you you want to commit.. I'm going to let you know that support is constructive criticism.. just because you don't like it does not make it any less true"
I think that from the start I've actually been asking for advice (constructive criticism), so no, it's not that I don't like it, it is that most of what I receive are anonymous and destructive reviews from people that only insult the fanfic, so yeah, it affects me as I'm not used to it.
"This is just a Copy and paste. there is nothing unique about this crossover"
So, my problem with this type of reviews is that they just insult and say something, but they don't say WHY or WHAT they think could improve, now, that there's nothing original? I mean, I have read very little Naruto fanfics, so maybe I've used things and concepts someone else has and I don't really know. Whatever, maybe I haven't really done that and he's just talking shit for fun, but anyways, I'll try to ignore this comments from now on and I hope support becomes more visible, and sorry if I am annoying and all but yeah.
Anyway, that was it, so here's the chapter, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ nor do I own Naruto, all the credits go to Akira Toriyama (DB, DBZ, DBS).
"I wonder who's going next." Naruto said, turning to Kakashi, who shrugged in response. He was the only member of his team that hadn't fought up to that point, which made him quite disappointed as he was really excited to show to everyone that he wasn't as weak as everyone thought he was. Even with his excitement to fight, he still remained concerned for the bad state, mentally for Sasuke and physically for Sakura, his teammates had left the arena in, and the fact that despite her damage Sakura had decided to stay there just worsened this concern.
"Maybe you'll finally fight, Naruto." Sakura replied, smiling at her teammate as she was sitting behind the railing of the platform they were standing on.
Kakashi just remained expectant of what was to happen, already determined to train Sasuke and try to prevent many things he already saw coming with the influence of Orochimaru in the life of the young Uchiha. As for Sakura, he was as concerned for her as he could be taking in mind the little time he had spent with the girl and how irritating she could turn out to be.
Close to them, team 10 were also expectant for Chouji's match as he was the one he was missing. Everyone except Gohan, that is, as he had remained concentrated in the redhead genin from another village that had just obliterated the one that had surprised everyone due to having what he had read to be powerful Dojutsus. He was also surprised, given that his Ki increased a quite considerable amount once he activated the Sharingan, surpassing by far the level managed by ninja of his level.
"I hope Chouji doesn't suffer what that other guy did." the half-saiyan said, mainly to himself, but he also wanted the rest to hear him.
Ino noticed this, thinking that it was cute that he cared so much for people, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, I don't really think they'll let anyone else die in the preliminaries."
Gohan turned to her, giving her a concerned expression. "Someone actually died today, remember?" his teammate's answer was cut out by the referee's voice, who coughed to get everyone's attention.
"The preliminaries are getting closer to an end," Hayate said with his typical tired and indifferent tone, "the next match will be between Naruto Uzumaki and Dosu Kinuta."
"Let's go!" Naruto yelled victorious, raising his fist up, jumping to the arena from the platform after this, emulating what Lee had done before. After he fell down, he figured it was a bad idea, rubbing his butt after it had hit the floor.
Kakashi facepalmed as everyone else just laughed or cringed at such a stupid thing to do.
Dosu, the opponent Naruto was to fight against in the match, laughed at him as he arrived at his place in the arena. "This seems to be an easy win for me, huh?"
"You shouldn't be so sure about that." Naruto had his determination painted in his face, getting in his fighting stance as he spoke.
"Go!" Hayate said, marking the start of the blonde's attack.
Naruto approached his opponent with the intentions of landing a punch in his stomach, but he was thrown away by a sound wave so strong that forced him to go away. The masked genin from the Sound took this as the confirmation of his advantage. In response, the blonde genin grabbed a handful of shuriken in each one of his hands, throwing them at the masked shinobi.
"That's such a simple and predictable thing to do," Dosu said in a mocking way, "I don't get why you keep doing it." He deflected the shurikens with another sound wave, which Naruto used to find out where they were coming from.
"So, it's your arm..."
Naruto had already moved away as the shurikens landed in the floor, surprising Dosu as he expected the blonde boy to be incompetent. Dosu's eyes widened as much as they could as the same blonde kid that had just fallen down on his butt created what seemed to be, at least, 20 shadow clones. Each Naruto, including the original one, ran in different directions all around Dosu, who was just overwhelmed by the great amount of clones. Each Naruto threw another handful of shurikens, which forces Dosu to use both his arms to deflect the ones that came directly at him. Suddenly, three Naruto's exchanged places with the shurikens, which took the Sound-nin by surprise. The trio of Naruto's kicked the genin's face while still being in air, which caused the opponent to throw two powerful sound waves from both his arms as a reflex, then falling down unconscious, victim of the powerful triple kick he had received.
One of the clones exploded in a cloud of smoke as the sound wave hit it, while the other Naruto hit by a sound wave was the original one, causing him to fall down with a severe damage in his ears, the left one being covered by blood. Naruto stood up as he checked on his ear with his hand, confirming that he was bleeding from his ears. Sakura tried to stand up as she saw her teammate injured, but Kakashi prevented her from doing it, shaking his head in disapproval. He still understood the girl's concern and went to check on Naruto himself.
"As Dosu Kinuta appears to have been knocked out, Naruto Uzumaki is the winner of the fight!" Hayate announced as he raised his right arm and pointed to the blonde genin.
Kakashi was already in the arena when Naruto started celebrating, which prevented the kid from noticing Kakashi. "You shouldn't be so happy, Naruto," the silver-haired ninja said, his voice as soft and indifferent as always. The kid continued celebrating and yelling how great of a shinobi he was, apparently ignoring the Jounin and annoying him in the process. "NARUTO!" This time, Kakashi had yelled as he was almost next to the kid, finally gaining his attention.
"Oh, Kakashi-sensei, hey." Naruto said with a nervous smile noticing the fury in his master's only visible eye.
"Why do you ignore me?" Kakashi said with an angry and annoyed tone.
"Huh? Were you calling me? I could swear I didn't hear anything." Naruto said as he rubbed his chin while thinking.
It was then when Kakashi acknowledged the severe bleeding in the kid's ear, which led him to a quite concerning conclusion. "Wait a minute, let me try something." Kakashi placed his two hands in each side of the kid's head, leaving his right hand next to the kid's left ear and his left hand next to the kid's right ear. He snapped the fingers of his left hand first. "Can you hear it?" Naruto nodded in response to this. Kakashi then snapped the fingers of his right hand, asking the same question as before.
Naruto quickly placed his hand in his damaged ear in response to the pain inflicted by the beeping sound in his ear. Kakashi did not require anything more to confirm his theory.
"Naruto, your eardrum has been damaged by the attack of that guy, you need to go to the nursery immediately." The silver-haired jounin said with a serious tone in his voice.
"But I want to watch the rest of the games!" Naruto replied as he still covered his bleeding ear with his hand.
"Well, if you want to lose your hearing, then go ahead." Kakashi replied with a now authoritarian voice. He turned back and pointed to Sakura, who was still sitting down. "You too! Guy, take her here, please."
Guy quickly grabbed the girl and jumped from the platform while carrying her in his arms, making her scream out of the fear caused by the sudden move. The man wearing the green spandex gave the girl to Kakashi, who then proceeded to take both of his students to the nursery.
"I hope he gets better..." Hinata softly said, making Kiba jealous of her concern for Naruto.
"He will, he will." Kiba replied as he tried to calm the girl down.
Gohan was concerned for Naruto, of course he was, how wouldn't he feel like that when this is just supposed to be a test and not a real battlefield? All he could do for now was just wait, thinking that maybe having taken some time to learn some healing magic from Dende wouldn't have been such a bad idea.
"The next match will be between Son Gohan and Zaku Abumi," Hayate announced, "please come down to the arena to continue with the last two matches."
"Good luck!" Ino kindly said as she gave a palm in the saiyan's back.
"Don't lose." Shikamaru said, getting a laugh and nod from the saiyan.
As Gohan jumped to the arena, his landing creating a crater, he found that his opponent had both of his arms were bandaged and probably even broken. This was already enough to take away Gohan's desire to even try to fight, but he figured that at that point he was forced to do it. His muscles were the cause of the intimidation Zaku felt from the saiyan, who just trembled as he waited for his inevitable defeat. This gesture just eradicated any possibility of Gohan following the tournament, he just couldn't fight against someone that is injured to the point that he cannot defend himself.
"Fight!" Hayate yelled.
Zaku, hiding his fear, took one of his arms out and pointed it towards Gohan. "Surrender or I shall kill you." Even himself was surprised when his voice didn't crack while talking.
Gohan emulated fear in his face, raising his hands in the process. "Alright, alright, I surrender."
Shikamaru's jaw dropped down directly to the floor as his teammate had just done what he asked him a minute ago not to do. Next to him, the also shocked Ino and Chouji, who almost choked with one of his chips, stood with their eyes totally widened. Behind them, Asuma's cigarette dropped from his now opened mouth, a drop of sweat sliding down his forehead.
Zaku sighed as soon as he heard those words come out of the saiyan's mouth, snapping Hayate out of his confusion. "Uh, Zaku Abumi is the winner, then," the sick-looking jounin said, "I was so sure that Gohan would win..." He whispered to himself.
Gohan was quick to go back to his place in the platform, apparently not minding the fact that he surrendered, which kind of annoyed Shikamaru. He was received by confused glances, from team Guy, from team 8, from team 5 and from his own team. Although the only glance he minded, outside from his teammates', was Shiho's, which confirmed him the fact that even people like Shiho thought of surrendering, even when justified by such thing as the battle being unfair, was a weird and even bad thing.
"Why did you surrender?" Shikamaru, totally confused, approached him to make the question.
"I mean, why wouldn't I?" Gohan answered, embracing the vision of life his friends and family had taught him. "I can't fight against someone whose arms are broken..."
Chouji stopped eating his chips to join the discussion. "But what about the exams? You just lost the opportunity of becoming a Chunin!"
The saiyan's answer was cut by the blonde girl, who also intervened. "I was sure you would become a Chunin easily, I just don't get why you would do something as surrendering when you clearly had an easy win!"
"Well, I don't care about becoming a Chunin, then!" Gohan said with a strong voice. "Not if that's what being a Chunin means."
Asuma remained silent, lighting another one of his cigarettes and laying on the wall behind him.
"Didn't you already know what becoming a shinobi even meant, in the first place?" Shikamaru replied.
The saiyan turned his glance to the Nara, whose expression only denoted confusion and a chance of annoyance. He had never thought of it, actually, that he had been so dedicated to finding a way to go back home that he took decisions to become something he was ignorant of just to get some money. He had never thought of the moral disagreements he would have with such a position, and yet he never thought of taking that on count and directly accepted it. Fortunately for him, though, Hayate announced what would be the last match of the preliminaries.
"Chouji Akimichi and Kiba Inuzuka!" The jounin announced, coughing after doing so. "Please come down to the arena."
"Let's go, Akamaru!" Kiba said as he clenched his fist, receiving a bark from his dog in response.
"Good luck, Kiba." Hinata said with her typical soft voice, which was really cute for Kiba, who smiled widely at the Hyuga's phrase.
On the other hand, a discussion had been interrupted in team 10, which helped to catch the Akimichi by surprise. "Huh? So I was the last one?" Chouji lowered his head in disappointment.
"Don't care much about it, you'll still win!" Ino said, giving him a thumbs up and a wide smile.
"You act like Naruto..." Shikamaru replied with an annoyed tone, earning a strong hit from the blonde kunoichi, who got furious at the comparison between her and Naruto.
Gohan ignored the discussion that had just taken place, turning to Chouji with a smile as he left for the arena. "Good luck! I know you can win this!"
The Akimichi nodded in a way of thanking the onyx-haired warrior, giving a glance to the hardly dirty purple clothes he was wearing, noticing that the only damage they had received were the mark of the kunai that he received when he protected them back in the Forest of Death.
Kiba arrived first at the arena, as his place in the platform was closer to the stairs than the Akimichi's one. They bumped their fists before fighting, they were good friends after all. They adopted their respective fighting stances, Akamaru just showing his fangs, as Hayate slightly bent down to give the starting signal.
"Fight!" The jounin ordered with a strong voice.
Kiba and Akamaru were quick to start pressuring on the Akimichi, who knew from the start that he'd have to go on the defensive against the dog trainer. Chouji actually had little complications when defending Kiba's attacks, but his dog companion caused him quite a lot of problems, as it always achieved to bite or scratch him. The little dog now turned into the chips eater's main objective. Chouji took some distance from his opponents, winning enough time to do the hand gestures required for his signature jutsu, although the constant attempts to do it were interrupted by the fast duo of a dog and it's master.
The dog trainer noticed this, of course, and took advantage of his opponent's slowness at the time of doing jutsus. The only thing that Akamaru and Kiba did was to accelerate the pace of their offensive, creating blurs for the less trained eyes and maximizing the damage received by Chouji. Akamaru's bites and scratches pushed the Akimichi to succumb to pressure, taking the desperate decision of making hand gestures while being under attack. By the time he was done with the jutsu, his legs were bleeding severely and his arms were filled with marks from the dog's claws and fangs.
"Expansion jutsu!" Chouji finally yelled, relieving the pressure, concern and even fear that filled his teammates at the moment. His hands increased their size immensely, showing that his technique had been successful. He used his now giant hands to push his opponents back, actually managing to push Akamaru all the way back to the wall, getting it unconscious.
"Damn it." Kiba said to himself, his face serious and concerned, and honestly, why wouldn't he? His strategy had now been put on critical risk of not being even useful anymore, as it relied basically in the involvement of his dog companion in the battle. "If you want to play serious," the Inuzuka said as he made hand gestures, a smirk on his face, "then we'll have to play seriously, too."
Two shadow clones appeared at each side of the original Kiba, whose smirk now turned into a challenging smile. The original Kiba grabbed two kunai from his pocket, getting in position to attack, but Chouji was taken by surprise as the kunai were just thrown to him, one being tied to a smoke bomb. The shadow clones ran directly at the opponent, who had already dispersed the smoke using his giant hands as a fan, while the original one went back to aid Akamaru.
"Huh, so not only does he have Naruto's hairstyle but he also copies his jutsus." Shino pointed out with his typical silent tone, as if he was speaking to himself.
The clones were already gone and the original Kiba had just dodged an attack from the Akimichi along with his dog, who moved to the opposite of his master. Akamaru, now buffed thanks to the effects of the soldier pill he'd received from Kiba, growled at the Akimichi, who got nervous as he recognized what had happened to Akamaru.
A soldier pill... Chouji thought as a drop of sweat went down his face. His hands moved in front of him, now acting as a wall against any possible attack that could arrive from the duo. Little did the Akimichi know of what was coming.
"Man beast clone!" Kiba said as Akamaru jumped into his bent down back. Akamaru turned into an exact clone of Kiba, both of them now showing off their teeth. Akamaru, now a clone of Kiba, jumped from his back and got into a beast-like fighting stance.
Meanwhile, Chouji was unable to see any of what was happening as his giant hands blocked the sight, but he couldn't really afford to lose his main defense against the enemy offense. The duo, now having more animalistic characteristic such as sharp claws, jumped to the attack against the giant hands of the Akimichi, who tried to block them but failed due to the duo's incredible speed.
"Man-beast taijutsu: Fang over Fang!" Kiba yelled before the two of them turned into a weird type of drill, going through Chouji's defense and being hit directly.
Chouji fell unconscious after the hit, he had not been able to block it and the attack had been just too powerful for him to resist it. Akamaru turned back into his normal form as his master started celebrating their victory, to which the dog joined.
"Hmm, as Chouji Akimichi isn't able to continue fighting, the winner of the battle is officially Kiba Inuzuka." Hayate announced, causing team 8 to start celebrating while team 10 got disappointed for his friend's loss, although Gohan was only relieved that he had survived the fight. "That gives an end to the preliminary exams, so once I'll go ahead and explain the rules of the third phase, so you will have to explain the injured that are in the nursery what I'm about to explain to you."
"Oh, don't worry about that, Hayate, I'll do it myself." Hiruzen's voice filled the arena, catching everyone by surprise. The Third entered the arena through the main entrance, followed by his assistant, who was still bandaged. "First of all, I want to congratulate you all for your performance in you respective matches, you have all fought admirably, with the will of fire burning in your spirit." This statement surprised everyone even more, as they could swear that the old man had left the place. "Taking that apart, I will proceed to explain the third phase and it's rules," at this point, the Hokage had already gone back to the position he was before the preliminaries started. "the third and last phase of the exams will be held in a month from now, this is because we believe you all need to have time to prepare. Now, the rules are basically the same of the preliminary matches, the only difference being that there will be an audience. The matches will be announced two days before the day of the matches." He made his typical smile. "This would give an end to the preliminary matches, therefore, you are free to leave."
The genin and jounin present followed the Hokage's suggestion, noticing that more than a suggestion it was an order. Before he left, Asuma grabbed Gohan's shoulder while still smoking his cigarette.
"Huh?" Gohan raised his eyebrow in confusion.
"I need to talk to you later, so let me know when you can," Asuma said with a calm and relaxed tone, "it's about being a shinobi."
Gohan nodded in response, already knowing what he would tell him. "Maybe tomorrow."
"Alright, see ya in the training camp." Asuma said as he waved and left for the entrance.
The saiyan turned to his teammates, who were still talking, even Chouji, who was still bleeding. "See ya."
"Goodbye, Gohan!" Ino enthusiastically and kindly said, waving back at him.
"Bye, whatever." Shikamaru indifferently said.
"Uh, bye. If you're eating dinner outside, make sure to invite me!" Chouji said as he smiled and gave Gohan a thumbs up.
So, the preliminaries are over and the chunin exams are getting closer to an end!
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and remember to leave any feedback or whatever in the reviews! Oh, and btw, I'd like to ask if you'd like me to decide the pairings or if you prefer for me to do a poll or something to decide them, so feel free to answer that too.
Have a nice day and see you later!