Chapter Four: At The Chuunin Exam Finals
"I guess the first two phases weren't all THAT bad, huh, guys?"
"Shien, it was probably twice as tough as last time. I STILL don't know how Hiromi and I managed to make it to the end."
"Well, how am I supposed to know? It's been a month now, you two are walking to the final tournament, and you two still haven't told me about what went on in there."
"And we told you, we're not allowed to tell until AFTER the tournament is over."
I guess I'd better stop asking. After all, the test is over, now, and I can tell Shikamaru that my teammates passed. "Fine, then. Here're the gates. Good luck, guys. I can't wait to see you two face off in the finals!" At that, I went up to the observers' seats, and they went around to the participant's area. Only six others were there, from a crowd that Kentaro had, if anything, underestimated. Normally, there are roughly 51 entrants to the exams. There were over 200 this time, and as planned, the exam had been fair to incomplete teams.
I took the seat and waited for the announcements. However, there was also a program, which I picked up. It had a few statistics on the exam. For example, that over 40 of the people entering it were from Konoha… including 6 out of the eight finalists. For the first time in history (probably due to the number of entrants), thirty-two people made it past the second round, requiring a two-phase elimination to get the top candidates for the tournament. Last and most important were the brackets.
Hmm…Akimichi, Hyuuga, Aburame, Muutoh of the Sound, Uchiha, Shoto of the Sand, Rock, and Nara. Gotta wonder how this one's going to turn out, and my teammates will not be facing each other until the finals, after all. I glanced up at the Judge's Box. There's Dad in full Hokage uniform, there's the Kazekage, and the lords of the Fire, Thunder, and Wave countries. Not a bad panel, overall.
The tournament announcers had called out the participants while I'd been reading, and the first match was about to begin. Akimichi Sarutobi, named after his father's late Jounin instructor, and my teammate, Hyuuga Hiromi. "Win this, Hiromi!" I shouted, amidst the din of the opening cheers, and activated my eyes to be able to see exactly what was going on. There are some things you don't want to see, but for everything else, gotta use the Byakugan. What is that seal he's making… his two last fingers, thumbs, and forefingers extended and meeting at the tips, middle and ring fingers folded over… whoa, lot's of chakra is flowing!
"Baika no Jutsu!" He yelled, and he was suddenly three times the man he was before. Literally, he grew out into a giant ball. "Nikudan Sensha!" With that, he went spinning like a crazed wheel, and tore in at Hiromi. She, on the other hand, calmly looked at the oncoming attack with more calm than usual.
Let's see… three, two, one, and THERE she goes
About a second before the Meat Tank connected, her stance changed. Her arms suddenly formed a straight line, her head down and out of the way. The tip of her right hand was touching the ground. Her left was up in the air. Both were flowing with chakra.
Suddenly, almost half of the stands were up on their feet. This included ALL of the Hyuuga clan, my mother included. What the… SOMETHING about that stance just scared the living daylights out of a lot of people. What could it be, though? I've never seen it before in my life.
The Meat Tank got to her, and the purpose of her stance became clear. The poor Akimichi went flying as he went up and over the improvised ramp, colliding with the wall, hard, halfway up to the audience. Hiromi seemed nearly unharmed from the exercise, and ran to where Sarutobi was returning to normal form and falling to the floor…
Bam.
His feet had barely touched the ground when he sailed back upwards, from a full-out Jyuuken upper palm-strike to the lower jaw. He landed among the audience, and did not get back up. The nervous muttering in the stands stopped cold. Whatever it was that had scared them all so much, it apparently hadn't happened.
One second, and Hiromi was walking towards the stairs. The next, there was a blur, and she just wasn't there.
What the… just as I took down the Byakugan, too! Reactivating… oh, this is bad.
A masked ninja was standing atop one of the walls, Hiromi either asleep or unconscious in his arms, a sharp-looking kunai resting at her neck.
Hmmm… no forehead protector on him. This guy is either a freelance, or just doesn't want to show where he's from. Probably expects to die here, too.
"STAY seated! Uzumaki
Naruto, this girl is my hostage now. You will have ANBU stand down
and accede to my demands, or she dies here. If I'm forced to drop
her, the Genjutsu she's under will eventually kill her."
Now,
let me explain something. NOBODY likes a bully. Terrorists get even
less respect. This is especially true among those who spend their
lives fighting them. Even more so was that he had MY girl in his
arms, and I was not going to let that situation stay. There was a
shouted conversation going on between my dad and the man, but I was
paying it no attention. I was seeing RED, my mind working the lines
that would lead to Hiromi's recovery.
The equation is simple. If he sees any threat, Hiromi dies. The Genjutsu is no problem, not with Sakura-sama less than a minute away. The thing is, if I jump up or form a seal, he'll probably see it. Trick is, a kunai wouldn't work, either. Anything he recognizes coming his way, and it's all over. If it takes him a second to identify, though… It'll have to be a Jutsu, but one that doesn't require seals to use. The only one I know is the Rasengan, but he's almost fifty meters away from me, and Hiromi will die before I could get in striking distance. I need a way to LAUNCH it.
Somewhere in my mind, a pattern formed. The reason the Rasengan was strictly melee was due to its pure chaos factor, requiring the user to maintain a tight bubble around it. But what if the bubble ITSELF were to be changed, compressed even further down, supercharged, made to catch the air, and set to spinning like a baseball?
It'll only have to hold for a second and a half, to get from me to him. I have the clearest shot here, a decent side view. I only get one chance…The power started to gather in my right hand, the light hidden from the ninja's view by my body. The Rasengan formed, but that wasn't all. It spun even faster, compressed itself down much more than before. Even so, I continued to pour the power in. I could SEE it, an advantage my father never had. It's ready…I spared just enough time to catch an exchange in the negotiation, one going swiftly downhill. I sent a quick prayer to whoever was listening, and threw.
The man never knew what hit him. The bolt took him just below his right armpit, carrying with it every last scrap of power and rage I could muster, and propelled him off the edge of the stadium. Hiromi never touched the ground, caught by the closest observers as she fell in.
Suddenly, all eyes were on me. It was just as well, since I blacked out from chakra drain just as Hiromi was caught.
Interlude Four: On the Creation of New Jutsus
Every technique that any shinobi uses had to have been created by someone. Some villages, like Konoha, have recently made it a requirement that a Chuunin create an original Jutsu before being allowed to rise to Jounin rank.
There are three general ways that the creation of these new Jutsus comes about. The first, and by far the most common, is patiently working out the details of the technique over time. It is slowly developed for a specific application or purpose, and is usually quite good for its specific intention. One such technique was Hatake Kakashi's only original contribution, the Chidori. Although it has a long charge time, requires a huge amount of chakra, and leaves the wielder vulnerable to counterattack should it fail, it is almost universally lethal as a single strike technique. Though the Chidori is an exception, these techniques tend to be at least somewhat useful in more than one situation.
The second method of creation is one of desperation or inspiration, and on-the-spot genesis of the new technique. Often, these take place in life-or-death situations, where nothing the user has at his disposal would successfully extract him. These tend to be closely derived from other techniques, and have some severe drawback, often that they require too great of a chakra investment. It is theorized that the Hyuuga family's Kaiten technique was originally a desperation move, when one of the family's members found himself being attacked from all sides. Since their Jyuuken style already involves explosive releases of Chakra, simply performing it from the whole body during a defensive spin is a logical extension.
This example brings up an interesting detail in the creation process, that of refinement. Take the Kaiten, for example. Originally, it probably instantly exhausted the user from over-use of chakra. However, it is now the family's premier defensive technique. Over the years, users of the Kaiten found ways to regulate the use to just enough chakra to deflect opposing attacks. This refinement process forms a third, little-known method of Jutsu creation, as the technique is often changed enough to be considered a new one entirely.