Thanks to Doranobaka for the spelling of metronome. Congratulations, you win a... er... Shout-out. Hello!
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Kakashi waved to Lee and Sakura from his point along the railing overlooking the stadium's grounds. "Come on, you two. The final matches are about to begin." Naruto paced between him and Gai, keyed-up, too full of energy to keep still. Jiraiya, on the other hand, looked like he was more ready for a nap than an afternoon of battle-observing.
"I see everyone came out for this one," Lee grinned.
"Even Sasuke," Sakura noted, looking a few tiers up to where, flanked by ANBU, a familiar dark-headed shinobi stood silent watch.
Sakura and Lee had both expected the testing to be harder that time around, and had drilled book-knowledge into Naruto until he was—unhappily—able to pass the written part of the exam. The primary part of the trial in the forest had finished for them after they fought and beat Tenten's new team, but the secondary, the fighters positioned around their destination, had proven harder to win against. Apparently the added difficulty had proven hard for too many others, as well. Only four teams qualified for the final test phase, and of those twelve people, two dropped out because of their injuries.
"Glad we didn't have to do preliminaries this time," she said, almost to herself.
"Eh?" Lee blinked at her, then smiled with understanding. "Yeah. This ought to be interesting enough as it is."
Their three passed. Two from Rain passed, as well as two from Grass. And of course, the three from Sand passed. Her first fight was against a Rain ninja, Lee's against a Grass. But Naruto . . .
"We can still call the fight, Naruto," Kakashi offered. "With relations between Leaf and Sand this strained, either way the fight between you and Gaara ends, things will be ugly."
Naruto stopped pacing for long enough to face his former instructor, jaw set and teeth bared in fierce determination, eyes gleaming with ego and trouble. "It'll be okay. Just watch. Besides, if either Lee or Sakura wins their match, then they probably have to fight a Sand-nin too. So there's no point in canceling mine." Then he resumed pacing.
Lee went up first, and put his opponent in the dust in record time. The Grass ninja stubbornly refused to give up until the point that he became all too familiar with Initial Lotus. Beating his opponent into unconsciousness qualified as a win for Sakura's green-clad teammate, and scattered applause marked his departure from the arena floor.
Lee bounded back up to her side, prodded her with an elbow, then colored. "Hey. Give any thought to what I said earlier?"
Stuttering and blushing, shifting from one foot to the other until he'd resembled nothing more than a human-shaped green metronome, he'd managed to ask if she would like to go out sometime. Taken aback, she'd told him she'd think about it. And she still was.
He's . . . unique, yeah, but he's a nice guy.
Maybe you can get the chance to trim his eyebrows down after all, Inner Sakura noted.
Assorted possible scenarios marched across her mental vision. Half of them made her giggle, the other half made her cringe.
But really. He's good, he's sweet, he brings me flowers, and he's got a decent sense of how to treat a girl, unlike the other guys in my life. If I remember correctly . . .
Naruto's best moment has been to keep his new pet praying mantis out of her food, after letting it startle her almost out of her seat. And Gaara, after a snarling exchange that drove a particularly hands-on and persistent Sound genin away from her, had responded to her anger at not being allowed to fight her own battles with a comment so creatively obscene that she'd been shocked speechless. She'd gone from stunned to mortified when an equally slack-jawed Ino had asked if that meant he was hitting on her.
The redhead had sought her out to apologize later, explaining that he didn't think he could seem close to any of them for their safety and even blaming the quip on one of Jiraiya's books. He actually seemed confused as to why she'd think he'd meant any of it, claiming that friends don't do things like that so she should have known better. But he'd still given her some very strange mental pictures to sort through, all of which both thoroughly disgusted and disturbingly intrigued her.
Even if she refused to admit the latter.
I will not have a crush on him. I will not, will not, will not! I'm done with angsty, angry, distant psychopaths!
Almost defiantly, she turned to Lee. "Yeah, I will. How's ice cream sound, once this is all done here?"
She thought he would shout, dance, or do some other over-the-top performative act—but the possibility of that was cut off by Naruto's dismayed sound. Kankurou's battle was finishing.
"Oh," she said unintentionally, and the three Leaf genin simultaneously cringed.
"That was messy," Kakashi said, seeming for the most part unfazed.
The referee's voice drifted up to them. "Winner, Kankurou!"
"Your match, Sakura." Naruto gave her a brotherly whack on the back. Lee gave her a wink and a thumbs-up.
The Rain ninja she fought eventually threw up a giant shield of what looked like stabilized water. Sakura paused for a second, impressed at the amount of chakra it had to have taken to create such a wall, then set a shadow clone to climbing over it. Another clone appeared a short distance away, poorly disguised with genjutsu and set to digging its way underneath. She herself found the wall's edge—and while her opponent was busy with the clones, she snuck up behind them and flattened them with one of the combinations Lee had taught her. Grinning broadly, Sakura arrived back at her spot in time to see Temari's match start.
"I still can't believe that Sound sent genin here to test," Naruto mused from beside her.
"Yeah," she replied absently.
"I guess the forest was too much for them, though."
In defiance of just about everything that had happened in the past few months—or perhaps in spite of it—Sound had sent three teams to attempt to test up. They were loud, rude, aggressive, and the guys had leered a little too much at the female Leaf genin for Sakura's own peace of mind. And none of them came out of the forest, period.
"Yeah," she nodded, watching a definitely outclassed Rain ninja be battered into bleeding submission. This time Temari kept track of her surroundings well enough to notice and deflect any attacks the other fighter made, no matter what angle they came from. From almost directly across the stadium, her brothers watched impassively.
Naruto's voice took on a slight edge. "Know anything about what happened to them?"
Temari had cornered her before their last meeting with the Hokage. "What'd you guys do to him?" At Sakura's startled confusion, she elaborated: "Gaara. We beat our old time by ten minutes, but then he went back out through the line. Alone. He came back the next day with three more scrolls. Look at who's here and who's not, who walked or was carried out and who can't be found, and you tell me what he's done."
Naruto was still waiting. "He culled them," Sakura whispered, suddenly realizing exactly what Gaara had done. Not just killing. Cleaning. "Like picking weeds out of a garden. Or stones out of a pile of sand."
Reconciling the mental image of him as a blood-covered, howling embodiment of Destruction with her memory of the somewhat dusty, almost cheery boy she'd found waiting on her doorstep two weeks before was proving awfully hard.
"Really," Gai said, raising an eyebrow, making an educated guess at who "he" was. She hadn't known he was listening.
"Ought to put a damper on Sound's up-and-coming, if this many get wiped out so early on," Kakashi nodded.
And of course, it almost seems like those two think better of him for it! Inner Sakura rolled her eyes.
Naruto shrugged, grinned. "Looks like it's almost time for my match!"
"Naruto . . ." Gai started.
Jiraiya straightened, suddenly appearing fully awake. "It's okay."
"Yeah," Naruto agreed. "We're just gonna have a good, clean, by-the-rules fight."
He looked out across the open air, seeking his opponent. As one, they leapt over the railing into the arena.
Lee glanced over at her. "You're worried?"
Inner Sakura stomped, screeched. Damn straight I am! Outwardly, Sakura was more composed. "Yeah. I don't want . . . I don't want either of them to get hurt. But these are supposed to be . . ."
"They know exactly what this battle is supposed to be," Lee said. "Both of them."
Below them, the combatants attacked each other, and her attention was riveted on them. At first, it was simple things. Shadow replicates fought sand clones. Shuriken met sand shields, and a blond in an orange outfit wove and dipped around sandy missiles. Then things went to another level.
"The sheer volume of chakra they're using is certainly impressive," Kakashi said after a while, as if to himself.
"Think they can keep it up?" Gai responded.
Jiraiya smirked. "You think any student of mine wouldn't have the sense not to overexert himself?"
"It's Naruto," Kakashi returned. Jiraiya huffed and crossed his arms.
Below them, Naruto's Rasengan made contact, but his opponent's replacement exploded into a cloud of sand. The real Gaara dropped, slamming open palms onto the ground. A wall of sand rose up and swamped half of the arena, Naruto included. Sakura gasped. Beside her, Lee chuckled. "I remember that one!"
Before she had the time to turn on him for laughing at what could possibly be the end of their teammate, a toad the size of a small house dug its way out of the newly formed desert, Naruto clinging to its back.
Gai didn't look away from the proceedings. "Summoning technique, eh, Jiraiya?"
Sand shields and deft maneuvering kept any of the toad's attacks from succeeding. Eventually, after a sand spike narrowly missed skewering the toad's head—and Naruto with it—Naruto dismissed it. Gaara watched, stone-still, and even from her distance she could see the teeth in his smile—and then he shuddered, twisted, and shifted shapes.
Obviously still miffed from Kakashi's comment, Jiraiya was the only one who didn't look shocked at the creature now facing off with Naruto. Sakura's hand went to her mouth, and she bit her knuckle, trembling. The last time he did that was . . . Somebody was going to die.
"Sakura."
She turned away from the shadow replicates bombarding and being destroyed by the sand demon to meet Lee's too-calm expression. "It's okay."
Fear and frustration boiled over. "What do you mean, it's okay?"
"They know exactly what the mood of the crowd is. They know exactly how relations are. And it's okay."
Apparently Naruto had damaged Gaara's second form enough to warrant him dropping it. Sand fell away from the red-headed ninja, who straightened, flexed his hands, and smirked. The expression was matched by Naruto, and the two charged at each other again.
Gai blinked. "Taijutsu?"
The display was blinding. Neither gave more than they received.
"They're out of chakra, then?" asked Kakashi. "If so, they should both drop soon."
"Don't bet on it, Kakashi," Jiraiya scowled.
"Their flow," Gai whispered, eyes welling up with emotion. "It's beautiful."
Long minutes passed. Lee grinned at a particular move, even though she didn't see how he could really catch it at the speed the two were moving. "Heh. I taught him that."
She was missing something, something major. "What?"
"It's okay. They're playing by the rules."
His offhanded dismissal of her worry served only to piss her off. "I know the damn rules! The rules are kill or be killed, or beat the other person so badly that they can't continue and the referee steps in to stop things, and you know as well as I do that both of them down there are stupid enough to prefer to die than let the other win!"
Inner Sakura screeched again. Guys! I hate them! All of them!
Now rolling around on the ground, it looked like the combatants were trying to throttle each other.
"All the rules," insisted Lee.
Something major. Her tone was harsh, angry. "What am I missing?"
"The rules state that the competitors show off the best of their abilities to those around them, show how capable they are of being an asset to their village, becoming a better ninja."
In the arena, the two boys rolled away from each other, panting, then attacked again. This time chakra-based offenses were mixed in with the taijutsu. Lee frowned. "I didn't teach them that."
"Them? You've been teaching them? Both of them?" Gai whipped away from the railing to face his student.
Lee's hands came up, defensive. "It's the only way they could make it work!"
She tugged his arm back down. "What!"
"The rules! To continue fighting until the referee ends things, until someone dies, or—"
In the ring, Naruto and Gaara broke again, paused, then straightened. Each bared teeth at the other in matching smirks. Hands shot into the air simultaneously.
"I give!"
Lee continued: "Or gives up."
Gai and Kakashi stared. She stared. Jiraiya chuckled. "They're not done yet."
To the referee's dismay, the boys closed the space between them. Palm hit palm with a single smack, and clasped hands jerked to the sky. Their twinned roar was drowned out by the crowd's exuberant response.
"Allies!"
Oh. Oh wow. They . . . Oh wow. I'm not gonna cry. I'm not.
Beside her, Lee bawled unabashedly. "Beautiful! Just beautiful!"
"They didn't tell us," Gai gaped.
"Of course not," Jiraiya grinned. "If either of you had anything to do with it, then it would be argued that at least one of them had been pressured into something. Those two came up with this themselves."
"It seemed awfully . . . real to be choreographed." Kakashi said, his eye narrowing.
"That's because it was real," said Jiraiya. "It's what they've been doing every day now for the past two weeks, since they figured out they were too close to evenly matched for either to have a clean win. This was just another chance for them to try to beat the living hell out of each other. A fight to the absolute finish between them could only end somewhere ugly. That wouldn't do anything good for relations; they knew this. They also knew they knew each other's techniques and combos well enough to not be killed by them in this span of time. So, when they bounced the idea off of me, as an older, wiser, and unbiased individual, I approved."
Two weeks ago he came to you, filthy and happy, and let you pet him and feed him and didn't tell you a damn thing.
I really hate guys, Inner Sakura grumped. But the sentiment faded as the two approached her, arms around each other's shoulders. Each was covered in bruises, scuffs, and dirt, yet still sported matched demented grins.
Evenly matched, almost down to height. Wait—When the hell did they get that tall? The pair stopped in front of her, blue eyes at the level of hers, green eyes more than there, both nearly bursting with glee. She tried to think of something to say, some congratulatory words that they probably hadn't heard on the way up, mouth working soundlessly around a hopeless smile. But before she could put words to emotions Lee barreled into her, carrying her into them while wetly blubbering something mostly incoherent about how great they were. Squished between the trio, she couldn't help but laugh along.
She looked up in time to see Sasuke turn and walk away from his viewpoint, followed by his ANBU guards. Then the circle she was the center of started to squirm, prodding at one, shaking the other, voices raising in friendly bickering.
"You spiny Sand shit, you almost killed me out there!"
"You deserved it!"
"You think I deserved it? Get back out there with me now!"
"With kicks like yours, Naruto, he probably will kill you next time!"
"I did not flub those kicks!"
"Yes you did!"
She added her voice to the fracas amidst her own laughter, vociferously protesting her ill treatment and pushing on the green and orange material that first fell under her hands. Lee and Naruto picked that moment to shove forward, each intent on getting in the other's face over the placement and speed of kicks that she really didn't remember seeing, and she was propelled backwards into a stable something that rumbled amusedly into her ear as a hand snaked around her to press and spread against her stomach.
From behind her, Gaara chuckled again. The act blew warm breath over the side of her neck, and she squirmed away from him, suddenly less than comfortable. "Guys? Guys! Hey, it's time for Lee to go up again."
Lee and Naruto let go of each other's collars abashedly, laughed. "Okay," Lee said. "Don't get into trouble while I'm gone!" He flashed them a smile and a thumbs-up, then bounced over the railing to meet Kankurou.
Someone cleared their throat. Turning as one to the sound, the three found Konoha's Eternal Rivals elbow to elbow, watching them. "You two," Gai grated. "Explain."
"Now," finished Kakashi.
Naruto slouched, fingers lacing behind his head. "What's to explain? We fought, we showed off, no one won but hey, who cares, right? We did it for the greater good, you know?"
"And it doesn't matter now what happens in the rest of the battles, whether Leaf or Sand wins," Gaara said. "Because the people are going to remember what we did instead of tallying up wins and losses."
"So you don't care that you don't advance." Kakashi's hand went to his chin.
The boys looked past her at each other, then shrugged. "Nah," grinned Naruto.
"Not at all," Gaara agreed.
"Even if you don't make chuunin because of it?"
Gaara's expression went cold. "If we don't, we'll try again next time. But it doesn't matter. We did what was needed for the good of the alliance."
The two instructors were silent, then nodded to each other. They turned as if to leave, then turned back. "Jiraiya, you too."
The Sannin snorted softly, but lurched after them. Left behind, the three resumed observing Lee's battle, watching as he danced between Kankurou's wires, puppets, and Kankurou himself.
Naruto folded his arms against the railing and braced his chin on them. "Think we're in trouble?"
Gaara leaned against the railing and blinked brightly at them, the corners of his mouth twitching, apparently back to human mode. The only thing to really visually set him apart from any other gleefully trouble-seeking young male was the blackness around his eyes. "Who cares?"
Below, Lee had navigated Kankurou's wires and was engaging him in hand-to-hand combat. Kankurou didn't stay up for long, but refused to give once down. The pair grappled only briefly—the Sand ninja apparently too confused by the rolling around to properly be able to control his puppets—before Lee slipped behind him, wrapped legs around his chest, and locked the larger boy up in a choke. Kankurou turned the color of the markings of his face within seconds, and his hand shot up in admission of defeat right before he passed out.
"That'll count against him," Gaara murmured. Then, "I don't know how to do that well yet."
"Maybe next week," Naruto encouraged.
"I have to touch base with Sand first," he scowled.
"Whenever you're back, then."
Lee returned, as emotionally buoyant as he was when he'd left. "Sakura, you're up."
On the ground, Temari watched her cautiously over a half-spread fan. "If either of us killed either of you, he'd probably kill us, you know?"
She could be brave, too. "It doesn't matter. Give it your best."
Temari's best, she found, was actually rather painful. Shadow clones, replacements, and every trick she had learned from sparring with the boys eventually wore down to nothing. She woke up in time to see the referee declare the blonde girl the winner. Staggering past Lee, Sakura slapped him on the back. "Go get 'er, buddy."
"If I hadn't been kinda worried, that would have been funny," Naruto quipped as she returned. She couldn't think of anything pithy to say, so she hit him instead. He came up laughing. "Stamina is part of what they're looking for here, right?"
"Quiet." Gaara gave him a not-too-kind elbow. "They're starting."
Temari had apparently learned from her brother's mistake, and refused to let Lee get anywhere near her, battering him away with assorted assaults. Watching, Naruto grinned. "Looks like she'll give Fuzzy Eyebrows a good run for it, huh?"
"She's really good," Sakura agreed.
"Much better than she was before," Naruto proclaimed. "Glad I don't have to fight her."
Lee must have opened a gate, she decided, because he suddenly took off, blurring around the field while evading blasts of wind. Once he closed the distance between them to attack, though, his evasion didn't matter anymore. Temari took a few good hits, but the strikes seemed to help her figure out the pattern of his movements. Having found said pattern, she intercepted it, cracking him with her fan itself before launching him skyward. He bounced once, face down, and she was on him before he could hit the ground a second time, knee in his spine and drawn kunai placed at the back of his skull.
Lee raised a hand shakily, grinning at his predicament. "I give!"
Temari grunted, then stood, grabbing his raised hand to pull him to his feet. In the stands, Gaara sniffed, but the corner of his mouth twitched again.
"Winner, Temari!"
Lee laughed his way back to them, so ecstatic it as if he had won. "I did it!"
Naruto scratched his head, squinted. "Um, man, you lost. I think you bounced a little too hard there."
"I didn't die, I meant! Konoha's taijutsu specialist went up against not one, but two of Sand's best and survived! No, not just survived, to a point, succeeded!" He scooped Sakura up and spun her, shrieking, in a series of wobbly circles. "Ice cream for all of us! On me!"
Gaara prodded Naruto. "Like I said before. People try to tell me that I'm insane, but they seem to forget him."
"Na. They don't forget him. They just try, sometimes."
Sakura clamped onto Naruto's shoulder, back on her feet but dizzy. "That was not fun."
The stands were starting to empty. Naruto glanced around, confused. "I guess we find out how we did later?"
"Guess so," she said, releasing her grip on him. I'm sure he'd prefer a giant ceremony, involving the entire village, if he did make it. But we don't know if he did—or if any of us did yet—so any ceremony, big or not, will have to wait.
"Guys!" Lee waved from over towards the exit. "Ice cream!" With assorted sighs and chuckles, the trio turned to follow along behind him.
Once outside, Gaara paused, inhaling. Beside him, Sakura and Naruto turned, curious.
"The air," he said, as means of explanation. "Winter's promise."
They blinked, confused.
"It's a smell, and a taste, and . . ." He looked blankly at them for a second, then reached for Sakura's shoulders, turning her around to face the breeze. Naruto shrugged, then turned also.
"Breathe in through your nose and your mouth," he said from behind her, oblivious to the curious looks of the people passing by. "You'll feel it . . . In the back of your nose, and the tip of your tongue. And here sometimes, too." Fingers delicately traced her collarbones through her dirt-stained dress.
Frowning, trying to mentally put his proximity somewhere that it wouldn't bother her, she closed her eyes and inhaled, then shivered. "It's . . . cold. But not."
"That's weird," Naruto laughed. "They don't teach you that in ninja academy!"
Sakura turned to meet a quiet, pleased half-smile. She wasn't sure whether she should thank him or tell him to not stand that close to her. Lee decided things for her by loudly returning. "Guys! What are you doing?"
Naruto cackled. "Special, secret, super ninja weather forecasting techniques!" His fist shot into the air and he hopped from one foot to the other.
Sakura rubbed her knuckles against her forehead and tried not to laugh at Lee's wide-eyed, shocked expression. "Really?"
"Kind of," she said. She didn't have to look back to know that Gaara was smirking.
"Will you guys tell me about it over ice cream?"
"Sure," came the low reply, and the Sand ninja stepped around her to walk ahead with his friend.