Chapter Nineteen
A/N: I'm surprised I'm giving team 7 so much play as I barely like them, but they are the "main" characters so I suppose they should show up at least this once more. As far as the next chapter, which may be out by Sunday, expect Neji to have yet another dream.
"Neji! To your left!"
The boy pivoted on his foot and swung for his opponent's midsection. There was a soft "oof" to prove that his blow made contact. "Which one of them has the scroll?"
Temari hit her opponent over the head with her fan and grabbed something from the pouch at his waist. "I got it." She smiled at TenTen who had her victim pinned up on a tree with several of her many daggers. "Waiting around at the base of the tower wasn't such a bad idea."
With a swift kick to the ribs, Neji finally disposed of his opponent. "Are we sure it's a Scroll of Earth?"
"That's what it says." Temari rolled her eyes.
"We've completed the objective. Let's just get this over with."
"Not so fast." A familiar voice shouted down from the trees. "We didn't get to finish our fight."
TenTen looked up at the trees to see team seven grinning back down at them. "Do you seriously intend to fight us here?"
"You have something we need." Sasuke leapt down from the tree and landed directly in front of Neji.
"Do you really think you'll win?" Neji questioned.
Sasuke sneered. "You're hardly a match for me. You're lucky Kurenai saved your ass."
"If I remember correctly, you were the one about to lose."
Naruto took a fighting stance opposite Temari. "Are we going to fight them or not?"
Neji cocked his head in TenTen's direction. "Let me know when you're done with her."
"Hmm." She replied.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" Naruto split himself into fifteen clones and jumped at Temari, who just smiled and blew them away with her fan.
The boy gritted his teeth as one by one the clones exploded on contact, and then he put his hands together and summoned them again.
"I suppose your precious Sasuke-kun wouldn't let you back down even if you wanted to?" TenTen questioned.
"Like Neji is any different." Sakura huffed.
"Neji cares about me. I doubt Sasuke feels anything toward you. Stop deluding yourself."
"Shut up!"
TenTen clenched her fists and closing her eyes, breathing in and out steadily as she felt the fire spread through her body from a spot deep in her chest. She concentrated harder and she felt it seep through the skin on her hands, a strangely pleasant feeling. She opened her brown eyes to lock onto the frightened green ones of the kunoichi in front of her. "We've come way too far to lose now."
Sakura breathed deeply and held her kunai in front of her to protect herself.
"You're afraid, aren't you?" TenTen questioned.
"Shut up!" Sakura repeated, her fighting spirit beginning to rise to the surface. She was not scared. She and the others had faced much worse than TenTen and Neji, and in fact, they'd survived Orochimaru and Gaara.
TenTen resolved to get this over with quickly. Neji would need her eyes if he was going to fight Sasuke. She charged the other girl.
Sakura planted her feet into the ground and when TenTen was only a few inches away from striking her in the face, she dodged the blow and slammed the kunai into the girl's side and then jerked it back out, sending a stream of blood up into the air.
TenTen skidded to a stop several feet away. Her wound was bleeding badly. She managed a weak smile and lifted one of her hands and placed it on the wound, searing it shut. "Nice try." She stood straight up. "Care to try again?"
Sakura steadied the now bloody kunai in front of her again.
The two girls charged at each other again, but this time TenTen avoided the kunai and gripped her opponent's arm, spreading the flames onto the other girl's body. Disgusted by the lack of competition she flung the girl aside. "I'm ready."
Neji squeezed his eyes shut tight and opened them to see through TenTen's. He smirked behind his mask and drew a kunai. "Now we'll see who's the better ninja."
Sasuke took a fighting stance and stood his ground.
Neji laughed. "Are you waiting for me to attack?" He set the weapon on fire. "Very well then." He swung at Sasuke with his flaming kunai.
The other boy ducked and caught Neji's hand. Thanks to Kakashi-sensei's training, he was still faster than Neji. He retaliated with a fist to the boy's stomach, and another one, and another one. Sasuke's heart beat faster in his ears. He was winning the fight. Spinning slightly, he kicked Neji hard in the face, splintering his mask and sending the boy crashing into a nearby tree.
Standing shakily to his feet and leaning against the tree trunk, Neji coughed hard, spewing a thick liquid from his mouth onto the mask. He quickly guessed it to be blood, and was proven right when he wiped it from his neck. "Lucky."
Sasuke nearly attacked him then and there. "Luck has nothing to do with it. I'm a superior ninja."
"You're pathetic Sasuke. Nothing more than a sniveling coward."
Sasuke tightened his fists, his fingernails digging harshly into his palm. "Are you sure you want to taunt me?"
"Are you sure you want to fight? I'm giving you the opportunity to back down."
Sasuke snorted. "Why should I back down from a fight I'm not even losing? Face it Hyuuga, without Byakugan, you're nothing."
Neji distanced himself from the tree, taking small steps toward his opponent.
Meanwhile, Temari was having small complications with her opponent. While she had managed to prevent his clones from injuring her so far, he was managing to come dangerously close to her with each try.
"I'll make it easy for you." Naruto laughed. "Just hand over the Scroll of Heaven and I won't hurt you."
Temari sneered at the blonde boy. "What makes you think that you could hurt me?"
He sighed. He had warned her. Once he got her fan away from her she would be unable to continue fighting.
Neji was paying no attention to what was going on around him, he had more pressing issues to deal with. The Uchiha boy turned out to be more of a pain in the ass than he had previously thought. He had obviously been trained well after he had been dragged back to Konoha, a mission Neji was beginning to regret having been a part of.
"Aren't you going to do anything?" Sasuke questioned. "Use your fire spells?"
His opponent didn't reply to his taunt, he just launched himself at the other boy.
Sasuke met Neji in the air, exchanging frenzied blows before springing apart and landing uninjured on the ground. Well, not completely uninjured, Neji's kunai had managed to dig a nasty cut under his right eye. Sasuke lifted a hand to his cheek to assess the damages. The jagged line started about a centimeter below and to the right of his eye and traveled down near his mouth.
Neji snorted at the stunned look on Sasuke's face. "What's the matter? Worried that the girls won't like your face so much now?"
Sasuke's bloody hand fell slowly to his side. "I don't care about what those stupid girls think of me. Be happy you managed to scrape me, because you won't come close again."
"You thought you were fast enough to avoid my attacks, and now you're scared because I hurt you."
Sasuke slipped back into his fighting pose. "Even the best laid plans…" He charged the boy and delivered a swift kick at his ribs that was expertly blocked.
Neji locked his hand around Sasuke's ankle. "If you're going to double your efforts then I will as well." He twisted Sasuke's foot hard to left, relishing the sound it made as the joint cracked. He then used the appendage to throw the boy back a few feet.
Sasuke groaned as he gingerly shifted the weight to his injured foot.
"We're about even now, aren't we?"
"Even this way, I'm still faster than you."
Neji sensed a presence behind him. No, not behind him, behind TenTen. He opened his mouth to shout a warning to the blinded girl, but he was too late. There was a shrill female cry and then his vision went black. Before his mind could even control his body he was beside TenTen, his left arm restraining her attacker, his right arm holding a kunai to the girl's head. When he finally spoke, his voice was heavy with that unpredictable emotion known as anger. "Leave us."
"Not before we take your Scroll of Heaven." Sasuke protested.
"Get out of my sight before I kill your teammate!"
Naruto tore his eyes off of Temari to look to where Neji was standing, choking the life out of Sakura. "Let her go!"
"You're in no position to argue with me!" Neji countered.
"Don't hurt Sakura-chan!"
"She should've thought about that before she hurt TenTen."
Convinced by the way Neji was twisting his body in the direction of the sounds, Sasuke guessed that the boy was back to being blind. He crept up on him from the side.
Neji pressed the blade into Sakura's flesh, drawing a small drop of blood. "This girl will bleed a lot more than this if you continue to try to attack me Sasuke. I'm suddenly feeling very much like shedding blood. If you want, I can kill her and then you."
"Sasuke!" Naruto yelled. "Don't be stupid!" The crazed look in his blue eyes said plainly that he wouldn't forgive the other boy if Sakura was killed over this. "There are tons of teams with Scrolls of Heaven that haven't finished yet. We can steal one of theirs."
Sasuke relented. "Alright Hyuuga, what do you want us to do so you release our teammate to us safely?"
"Retreat." Neji replied. "My teammate is on the verge of death and she needs immediate care. I want you to leave at least a mile and I will let Sakura go in five minutes."
Naruto nodded at Sasuke. "We'll do it."
Neji heard shuffling and retreating steps as the two boys made good on their promise. Almost instantly he shoved the girl away from him in disgust. "GO!" He snarled.
Sakura didn't protest, she scrambled to her feet and ran. Plunging her kunai into TenTen's neck had been an act of total fear. She didn't know what was wrong with the two genin, but she knew that they would kill Sasuke if they had to and that scared her straight to the core, so she had done the only thing she could think of to stop them, stopped TenTen.
Neji fell to his knees in the grass, ignoring the tossing of his stomach and felt along TenTen for the wound. At the point where her shoulder met her neck his fingers passed into a pool of blood. His fingers trembling, he tore a long strip off of his shirt and wrapped it gently around her wound. He caught the ends and tied them as tightly as he could. He then lifted the girl from the ground. "Lead me to the tower Temari."
The older girl collected TenTen's discarded weapons and then put a hand on her teammate's shoulder and guided him the few hundred feet it took to get into the tower. Once they were inside and below the sign she opened the two scrolls, hoping to get some sort of assistance.
Her prayers were answered in the form of Hagane Kotetsu. "Congratulations." He didn't sound happy. "You have passed this part of the Chuunin exam." His brown eyes darkened as they fell on the unmoving body of his sister safely nestled in Neji's arms. "What happened to her?"
"Team seven happened. While I was using her eyes, Haruno Sakura snuck up on her and stabbed her in the neck."
Kotetsu took his sister from Neji. "I'm sorry, but you won't be able to participate in the next part of the exam."
"WHAT?" Neji looked as though he was about to explode.
"If your teammate is unable to participate, let alone walk, your team will be disqualified. All three members have to make it through the exam safe."
"That's bullshit!"
"It's a rule. I hate it as much as you do."
"You're a damned liar. You're just happy I won't be able to fight."
TenTen stirred in her brother's arms. "I'm okay Kotetsu. I'll just need to rest a little and I'll be ready for the preliminaries. There are still two days left."
A grave look on his face, Kotetsu lifted the hem of her shirt and showed her the purplish-blue bruises on her side. "I'm afraid it won't be that simple. You're bleeding internally. You'll need immediate medical attention, and the doctors will advise that you do not take part in the rest of the exam."
"No." TenTen shook her head. "Don't disqualify them, please. It's not their fault I got hurt."
Kotetsu glared at Neji. "You're right. It's not their fault, it's Neji's alone. You entered the exam against my best wishes because you knew he wanted to be a Chuunin and you wanted to make him happy. Be selfish for once TenTen."
She feebly grabbed at his chest. "Talk to Godaime, to father, to anyone, don't let them disqualify my team because of me." With that she slumped in his arms, falling unconscious once more.
Kotetsu turned around. "Follow me to the medics."
Neji followed along in silence. This time Kotetsu was not merely releasing his frustrations on him. It really was his fault that TenTen was hurt.
