The result of training
The rather plain piece of desert, that somewhat Suna had set apart as a 'training ground' for the guests waiting for the final stage of the Chunin Exams, was exactly what it looked like: a stretch of sand blown by the wind that from time to time uncovered bone dry, cracked ground. Team 7 was far from the dark, damp soil that was the basis for the forests of Hi no Kuni, the chunin-hopefuls were even further away from the vastly different environments that would have been available in Konoha for them to use.
Neji kept his eyes closed even while his Byakugan took in the surroundings, the grey-ish awareness that came to him with his 360° vision allowed him to remain mindful of everything within his range. The further he looked, the more blurry grew the shapes in his immediate vicinity. It wasn't a weakness of his esteemed bloodline, but a limitation of the human brain, that simply couldn't focus on the things that were closer and further at the same time.
It was for that very reason that Neji's Earth Natured chakra was spread evenly across a 3 meters radius. While the shape of Sasuke and Kabuto were blurry lumps of grey to his sight, the way their weight rested on the chakra-infused ground was enough to allow him to model not only their position, but how they were holding themselves.
After all, balance or not, when your weight rested only on the heel of your left foot and what felt like the base of a palm, there were only so many ways in which you could angle your body.
Familiarity did the rest.
So, even with his eyes closed to avoid the everpresent dust, that every evening he'd spend an unholy amount of time to get out of his hair, even with his conscious attention stretched to the edge of his range, which included no less than three blocks in every direction, Neji knew that Sasuke was moving so slowly it almost felt painful, transitioning from one position to another, his muscles adapting to the staggering amount of precision he demanded from each of his actions.
Neji perceived clearly how Kabuto shifted in his seated position, his posture likely slightly hunched forward as he tried to cram info upon info in his mind, with the hope that any piece of it could become useful in any given moment.
"I think I figured it out." Sasuke's voice cut the silence in which Team 7 was conducting their training.
The words were delivered with a casual air of smugness that Neji had long since learned to associate to either a new way to screw with the Hyuga Bloodline or simply yet another strange training method that the Uchiha enjoyed pulling out of nowhere.
"Figured out what?" Kabuto was the first to crack, if only because he didn't participate in the constant attempts of Neji and Sasuke of showing each other up with something new and unthinkable.
The Uchiha returned to a seated position, his hands briefly lifting him off the ground so that he could slowly move his legs, straining his core muscles as he answered: "How Lee became an actual Ninja."
"Are you lacking oxygen in your brain?" Neji scoffed, his attention wavering from his training while he turned slightly towards his fellow prodigy: "Lee is going to be tossed out of the Academy sooner or later, that you keep supporting him, to the point of saying that he's already a shinobi doesn't make sense, and it is..."
"Cruel?" Kabuto supplied when Neji found himself unwilling of taking the Martial Artist's defense.
"You forgot something." Sasuke raised a single finger almost mockingly, evening his expression while he regulated his own breathing, forcing himself to erase any possible tell from the language of his body.
Neji smirked, seeing how his shoulders were just a bit too tense, how his head had twitched instinctively towards the last place that the three Genin had seen Kakashi walk away from. What has he lied about? What is he hiding now?
The talented Hyuga wasn't a stranger to secrets, he himself had a few, but while his fellow prodigy could omit what he wished to keep secret, outright covering something with a lie wasn't so easily done when the Byakugan allowed Neji to see every part of him at the same time. Besides, his outright clamping down on his body's reactions was a tell that there was, in fact, something that he wished to keep hidden.
"You forgot that if there was no possibility for him to become a ninja," Sasuke resumed his speech before Neji could needle him about what had just made him nervous, "the Academy would have already tossed him out. Keeping a student with no potential of success in a class only slows down the others, and thusly becomes a cost with no gain."
"You are saying that being simply unable to mold chakra doesn't stop him from being a ninja." Kabuto correctly interpreted his teammate's words, "No, you're saying that whoever is in charge of the Academy in particular already knew that it is possible to fight without manipulating your own chakra."
"Or whoever is in charge has been told." Sasuke nodded imperceptibly towards the medic-nin, "I doubt that Lee's presence in class has been bought, the Academy has the precise duty of producing genin, and I can't imagine a complete lack of supervision, besides, my friendship with Lee is known, that would have put him in the spotlight."
"When you say 'I figured it out'." Neji spoke slowly, cutting between Kabuto's obsession with analyzing each word that left a human mouth, "You actually have proof, or it is another of your 'ideas' that sound reasonable but that could just be flights of fancy?"
Sasuke smiled mysteriously at his fellow prodigy and rose to his feet, his chakra calm and quiet while his breathing didn't hitch from one movement to another. In fact, now that Neji brought his focus to his teammate, he noticed that the Uchiha's heartbeat was as regular as a clock. Slow, deliberate, something that wouldn't have been out of place during meditation, but that certainly caught the Byakugan's attention.
"I'll tell you after the exams," Sasuke smiled openly then, "who knows, maybe it is just bullshit."
The Hyuga switched his focus from the outer edge of his field of vision to his immediate surroundings, only to hold back a smile as he saw how Sasuke had once more contorted himself in order to casually take a peek, his eyes blazing with chakra, over the shoulder of their team's medic, who was instead burying his nose in quite a thick tome.
"You have simply to let the training do his part." the Hyuga sighed at the bespectacled spy, accepting the Uchiha's decision of clam up about his discovery, "I assure you, your level is high enough to let you contend with any couple of average chunin, you simply think too much."
Neji wasn't one to take pity on the weak, but after the countless hours that Kabuto had accumulated to patch up both the Hyuga and the Uchiha so that they could push through the nastily exhausting training months that had come right before the chunin exams, a word of advice was something he felt he could spare. It had been some time since he last felt like setting the world aflame just so that he could see the Main Branch burn, and when Sasuke didn't want to share something, there was no way to fork it out of him.
"What about... that girl?" Kabuto had come a long way since his occasional stutter, but he still hesitated when he was nervous, and given his position, it was somewhat understandable.
"Poison." the annoyed uff of Sasuke made clear that he was far less forgiving when it came to the 'pussyfooting', as he called it, of their bespectacled teammate, "But that's supposing that you'll win your match against the puppeteer and I'll lose mine."
"Maybe I should wear an armor like yours." Kabuto sighed, his worry obvious in the way his shoulders trembled for a fraction of a second.
"It would slow you down," the Uchiha cut down the idea, "I wear it only because otherwise Neji would tear me apart in Taijutsu."
"It slows you down too." Neji felt his lips turn upwards as he pointed out the fact that never ceased to amuse him: for all of his talent, Sasuke's taijutsu simply couldn't match the insane speeds of someone that didn't need to keep his momentum for his blows to be dangerous, "If you stopped wearing that red target, maybe you could keep up."
"Given that you don't need to put much weight behind your Gentle Fist, I reckon you'll always be a bit faster than me when it comes to simple hand to hand, and those knives you insist calling 'swords' don't slow you down all that much, even if when you transition from one form to another you still get sloppy with your footwork." Sasuke snorted, "I'll keep my armor, thanks. And what if it is red? These are chunin exams, we're here to show off our village's might, and if we're dangerous enough, it's likely that we'll be popped into a bingo book or two. Iwa and Kumo are... well, you get what I'm saying."
"Should you really advise me?" Neji asked as he quickly switched his focus, far-close-far-middle ground-close-far, "We could end up fighting each other in the Tournament."
The snort of Sasuke was amused, and at the same time, Neji could tell that it completely lacked any mockery. The Uchiha was often amused by the strangest things, but the Hyuga prodigy had to admit that he had never seen or perceived Sasuke laughing at him. Oh, he mocked him from time to time, he poked him to make him tick, but it was always with the final intent of laughing together.
"The point of fighting between ourselves is to fight well, not to win." Neji could tell that Sasuke was smirking now, even as he transitioned his weight to a full hand-stand only to still completely, the weight on his hands not shifting while the rustling of clothes confirmed that he was moving his body anyway, the control he demanded from himself as worthy of respect as ever.
The Hyuga grunted absent-mindedly, switching his focus on the Suna-jonin that had been assigned to keep a discrete eye on Team 7 activities: namely, he was there to make sure that the Konoha-nin weren't going to spy on the allied village. If the shinobi happened to learn something that the chunin-hopefuls from Suna could find useful... well, that was just lucky, wasn't it?
"Having said that," the two hands resting on the burning hot sand started to push less in the ground as a single foot was slowly laid next to them, "why would I wish to lose a well-fought match?"
The quiet hilarity that Neji felt mounting in his chest was cast aside after a brief upturning of his lips, once more his focus switching so that he could take in the vast amount of things that rested in the almost complete circle that described the edge of his vision.
The Bloodline of the Hyuga was infamous: perfect vision, through objects, through living beings, 360°, and it allowed the user to actually see chakra. Truly, with the Gentle Fist, which provided the strongest defense ever seen in a close-quarters combat, it turned Neji's calm into a fearsome fighter.
The only limitation on the power of Neji's eyes was the human's brain ability to analyze and interpret the amount of information it was provided. In the same way, the sight of your surroundings blurs as you read a book, your eyes focusing on the letters that form the words you follow, the entire world was present in your eyes, albeit in a limited range, but only the user's ability to focus opportunely turned the Bloodline into a tool with almost endless uses.
Sasuke had spotted the natural blind point of Neji's Bloodline after an endless sequence of spars, the Sharingan easily allowing him to spot the tinies pattern in the Hyuga's movements. Like the older prodigy expected from his teammate, Sasuke had ruthlessly exploited the gap in his defense, until Neji figured out a workaround.
It was obvious in hindsight, no eye, no matter how sophisticated, can truly see perfectly in a sphere: somewhere the optic nerve has to connect the brain to the organ responsible for sight. And so, the rather small blind spot in Neji's otherwise perfect vision grew larger with distance.
In truth, he only had to turn his head to check the hole in his field of vision, but it was yet another thing to add in his heavily personalized Gentle Fist.
"You've seen the girl, right Neji?" Sasuke's voice brought the Hyuga back to the present, "Lots of chakra don't buy the wariness that her teammates showcased, she either has some skill to leverage those, or she's insane and could snap at any given moment, even against her fellow countrymen."
Sasuke finally returned to a standing position, only to raise his left leg and bend his right knee, slowly but surely lowering himself as if he was sitting on thin air while resting his off leg upon his stressed joint. Neji simply shook his head at the Uchiha's insistence about not using chakra when transitioning from one form to another, it wasn't like it would damage his flexibility.
"We will see if I'm right or not." Sasuke spoke before Neji could comment on the insensate pose that the Uchiha had just assumed.
"I haven't said anything." the Hyuga actually blinked in surprise, getting a colorful flash of the blood-red armor that his fellow prodigy insisted on using.
"I could tell," the Uchiha snorted, "when you want to mock me for my training habits you always do that 'almost smiling' thing that scares off Tenten when she bugs you too much."
The arena in which the final stage of the Chunin exams took place was... plain. As plain as I remembered Konoha's from my metaknowledge. Only, instead of a small bush of trees that broke the monotony of a plain dirt floor, the circular area embodied the same meaningless training ground in which my team had spent the last month refining details of our skills without showcasing our true capabilities, knowing that everything we showed would be reported to not only the genin from Suna that would then be better placed to fight us, but to the Kazekage himself, and that eventually meant that our Bingo Books would be much more accurate.
In the long term, actually training anywhere but in your home village was unnecessarily risky. Between the possibility of being attacked while you were busing figuring out a new technique, tiring yourself out before a confrontation, or simply being spied upon without your knowledge, unwittingly revealing your possible weaknesses and strengths.
So we had polished our chakra control as much as we could, we performed stress-stretching that made our ligaments almost tear only to be strengthened under the expert care of Kabuto, who I had been forced to allow treating me after the several months we spent together. It isn't like Kakashi would allow him to try something, for all that he doesn't care, his orders about us are quite obvious.
I spent the previous month by optimizing what I already knew, refraining from testing out the ninjutsu that I still had to apply in actual battle. Performing painfully slow katas and yoga, with attention to my breathing. Sitting in meditation as I practiced chakra nature manipulation, Katon, which came to me as easily as breathing, and Raiton, which jumped across my chakra pathways faster than I would have believed possible.
Where controlling Katon was about feeding it opportunely to let it grow and build up as I wished, only to suffocate it very much like a flame, directing Raiton was... unnatural. Oh, I could do it, with the aid of hand seals, mudras that generated a sequence of differences in potential in my own chakra pathways that lightning naturally followed.
I can hardly wait to figure out wind-natured chakra. I thought wistfully, already imagining the possible combinations that I could pull off with it once I became enough proficient in it. It would take a long time, I hardly doubted it: after all, to master my Katon I had years with a lot of free time, and it was my primary affinity. Maybe I can trick Asuma in letting me use my Sharingan for it? Kurenai was a newbie when she was assigned her team, wasn't she? And she should be a Genjutsu Mistress, I wonder, how do my skills stack against hers?
As I planned the next steps I would take to up my training once I was back in Konoha, I returned to the revelation of a few weeks before: the one that made me realize how Lee could become a shinobi.
Chakra is always moving. That was an inescapable truth that no living being could avoid or manipulate. Sure, chakra swirled, trickled, flared, slowed down to the point of being sluggish, and did whatever it did when it interacted with Nature Chakra. But it was always moving, just as our bodies were always moving. And I knew that Lee would become the next coming of Maito Gai.
With that in mind, and acutely aware of how I had started my exercises to blow my first fireball, the importance of breathing had come to mind. Oh, they had told us back in the Academy to exhale when straining a muscle and exhaling while relaxing it, but taking it to the logical extreme, as I had done with the exercises necessary for Fire Nature manipulation, brought me to a potential world-changing discovery.
Enhancing our bodies with chakra came naturally after a while, but it still required conscious effort. A minute part of my mind was centered on moving chakra to reinforce my limbs, to toughen my bones.
Something that Lee would one day accomplish subconsciously: by breathing.
It was only a theory, for the time being, nothing more than an educated/lucky guess, but considering that up to this point I had reinvented and personalized Fire Chakra Manipulation, I felt reasonably confident about my own guessing talents, knowing that they were born from the unholy mixture of my metaknowledge and instinct. I'll try it out once we're back in Konoha.
With a twitch of my shoulders, I shook myself out of my plans when Neji tapped my shoulder, his chin twitching towards the arena.
I still need to figure out something for his seal, with his talent and our rate of growth he might be accepted as a Clan Head as soon as he's 14 or 15 years old... My eyes rested on my friend for a second, and I froze.
Since when I started planning a future in Konoha?
I gulped, instinctively evening out my breathing with the experience born during the last month spent in Suna.
I forced myself to smirk when Kabuto's face was plastered in a rather fixed 'surprised' expression even while he was declared the victor of his match against a Puppeteer, who he had defeated by using chakra scalpels to cut off the strings that the Suna Genin used to pilot his wooden contraption.
"Able to fight back the poison but not capable enough to disable the paralysis affecting his face?" I snorted, my mind still reeling with the sudden awareness that I was actually considering Neji a friend, no longer only the unintended result of a half-assed plan to be promoted faster.
"Focus, you're up with the girl," the genius Hyuga's voice held a faint amusement to it, knowing as I did that there would be a single match capable of pushing the two of us, and that would be the final in which we would face one against the other, "shouldn't you wear your armor?"
"Oh," I replied with a sly smile that felt a bit forced while I was struck by how much I had grown used to Neji's companionship, "I have it in a scroll, today don't have to worry about my opponent needing only a single hit to take me out."
I made my way into the Arena with a blank expression on my face and controlled breathing, discarding the distraction that was the voice of the crowd only to heighten my focus on both the ninja I was about to face and those sitting around the 'ring' made of coarse sand and the occasional plain stretch of overcooked dirt.
What am I going to do? For all that I enjoyed Neji's companionship and strength during our training, and I had somewhat grown used to Lee's exuberant existence accompanied by Tenten's obsessive nature when it came to weaponry, I still had every intention of fleeing Konoha before shit could start going down.
Do I?
The proctor spoke, but his words weren't all that important while I questioned my resolve. Even while I was distracted by my inner turmoil, my eyes instinctively looking over the only participant of the exams on which Team 7 didn't have a read. If I didn't know for sure that the Jinchuriki from Taki was Fu, with her green hair, orange eyes, and sunny personality, I would have suspected her of being the holder of the Seven Tails.
"Azumi Kizaru from Taki will now face Sasuke Uchiha from Konoha!"
Can I convince him to leave Konoha with me? Can he, with the Caged Bird Seal on his forehead? Would he? Remaining meant... and I shuddered considering the option for the first time, becoming another gear in the machine, and tying my interests to the welfare of Konohagakure.
Didn't I do that already? Besides training under Kakashi I am somewhat comfortable with this life.
So easily I had gone from my casual disregard for all things shinobi-related to planning a future in Konohagakure no Sato, so easily I had gone from despising violence to ignoring the lives that I had taken. Oh, Konoha had been careful with not sending Team 7 against anything resembling an innocent, but the existence of those missions wasn't something that I could forever ignore.
"Begin!" my sight snapped back into focus at the words of the Proctor.
I blinked, returning my attention to the fight i was in: of all the genin I had met, this one was the only person that managed to give off the 'look'. It was a mix of little things, from the hunched left shoulder, where I could spot senbon hidden in the clothes, to the way her eyes didn't focus into mine, choosing instead of staring my breastbone as if she could apply X-rays.
She had straight, shoulder-lenght black hair, heavy eyelids that hid sharp blue eyes and thin lips. Her build was as slender as most kunoichi', and as she wore a jacket over the shirt that hid the mesh she used to protect her torso, I couldn't evaluate her muscular tone, thusly I wasn't able to make predictions about her taijutsu. Her ensemble was completed by a long pair of dark grey pants tucked in standard black shinobi sandals.
There wasn't killing intent, not yet, I could see how she was poised to attack without being tense, as if she was either used to the bloodshed or indifferent to it. There was a languid grace about how she carried herself however, something that I knew was born of awareness and confidence.
My eyes trailed over her pouches, noting the additional presence of senbon hidden here and there along the seams of her clothes. Armed to the teeth.
Something that Kabuto went a long way to hide, something that Neji and I were starting to notice, something that no genin up to this point had ever exhibited. Awareness.
Something that some of the older genin somewhat had, I had witnessed it in the preliminaries, but lacking the power to back up their more mature view on life, it made it obvious to discard them.
It was the difference between being gullible and knowing one's own place in the world, or at least being aware of the place that the world expected you to occupy.
All those considerations swarmed my head in a fraction of a second, washing over my soul searching as instinct kicked in: I jumped back, a full Tiger handseal in front of me as I molded chakra with the experience I had slowly collected since I had first awoken in Sasuke Uchiha's body.
Raging hot, the fireball completely engulfed my field of vision, and still midflight, I stopped feeding chakra into the technique, adding a ram seal to help me focus as I shaped once again the Katon Chakra I had built up in my belly.
A Fire Clone of myself appeared in front of me just as I sunshine to the left, intercepting the kunoichi that had calmly dodged my attack: the first thrown projectile to reach her was deflected by her kunai, and she simply jumped out of the way of a hail of shuriken, three of which changed direction when I pulled on the wire tied to them.
She simply jumped back, her heavy-lidded gaze never leaving me as I pursued, chakra flowing into my hand to propel a kunai at insane speeds in order to push one of the shuriken to streak to my right, cutting off one of her ways to escape.
My eyes met hers then, Sharingan spinning as I instinctively pushed an image of the surroundings into her chakra pathways.
My attention split as I kept my eyes locked with hers, taking in every minute twitch of her muscles and aborted motions of her eyes. The other half of my focus remained on the illusion I had built, that matched reality perfectly. In her head, she saw the Arena as it was, she saw me as I was, she saw my weapons flying as they were, she heard the correct sounds, and her feet met a ground that had the correct consistency.
But in the illusion she was operating under, my clone didn't exist.
It was then that I kicked it up a notch, closing in only to be met by a solid defense.
I pulled back on my punch before she could skewer me with three senbon she held between her knuckles, and I raised my left leg, landing my foot on her incoming kick. My other foot was laced with chakra and kept me loosely anchored to the ground as I used the momentum she generously gifted me to spin, my left leg shooting upwards in a slashing motion that made her bend backward, avoiding a Knockout hit.
Then my clone landed a punch in her temple with same precision of an expert craftsman, just like he would hammer a nail into a beam without harming the surrounding wood, my clone exercised the exact amount of force to solve the problem she represented, and the kunoichi went out like a snuffed candle.
I completed my spinning motion and I jumped back, crouching on the ground only to perform a henge to make me look like another random rock.
My clone remained ready to fight if she was to rise from her position, but from how my genjutsu had unraveled, testifying the sudden change in chakra flow that went from a conscious person to an unconscious one, I felt confident I had won.
When I was declared the victor, my eyes found Neji, who was almost rolling his eyes at how easy our fights were being.
What am I going to do?
Hiruzen Sarutobi sat impassively in the booth reserved for the Kage visiting Suna, Rasa of the Gold Sands looking with a blank expression in the arena, his eyes slightly narrowed under the shade of his hat.
The Sandaime spared a knowing glance at the Kazekage: between the advantage of the home field and the usual manipulation of the preliminaries the presence of Suna Genin was enough to showcase the services of the Sunagakure no Sato, but against the showing of both Sasuke Uchiha and Neji Hyuga the performance of the puppeteers and Wind Natured shinobi didn't manage to shine like Rasa would have liked.
While many of the genin competing had made a good showing in the last stage of the Chunin Exams, employing either tactics or techniques worthy of the title of chunin, they were somewhat... forgettable. Capable, but common.
Wearing the clothes that made crossing the desert easier, the Suna genin that should have shone like stars in the sky to attract customers and contracts had fallen ridiculously short of the Konoha Team. Well, of two of its three members at least.
And that had never been clearer as the Hyuga and Uchiha made their way in the arena.
On one side of the Proctor, there was the Hyuga: a grey mesh worn under a pale white Kimono, which hid the vambraces in grey ceramic he carried on his forearms, a telling bulge in the way one of the sleeves swayed in the everpresent breeze revealing the presence of a weapon different from the standard throwing projectiles, such as kunai, shuriken or senbon, which were stored in pouches secured to the black-clad legs of the genin.
His long brown hair fell straight to the middle of his shoulders, held back from his pale, blank eyes by Konoha's forehead protector, and all in all, despite his youth, he portrayed an image of professionalism and elegance.
He had distinguished himself through the casual ease he had faced any opponent with, having to resort to the Vaacum Palm only to shatter a puppet when it came to the turn of one of Suna's traditional puppeteers. There was no denying that he had an insane speed for one his age, and that his taijutsu was devastating.
On the other side of the Proctor, there was the Uchiha.
With shaggy black hair that reached his shoulders, eyes blazing blood-red that matched his armor under the unforgiving sun of Sunagakure, and the fair features of the Uchiha Clan that were barely hidden by the baby fat that still slightly clung to the nine years old child, Sasuke claimed most of the crowd's focus: his armor, after all, was clearly a nod to one ancestor in particular.
From beneath the blood red ceramic pauldrons that covered his shoulders black-painted leather protection rose to just below the ear of the Uchiha, circling back to protect the top of his spine under the shaggy mane of hair. The entire torso of the boy was a succession of ceramic plates that were kept together by said leather, which allowed the armor to move with its wearer with minimal disruption to his movements.
Two, more or less square-shaped panels, of the light yet sturdy material covered the pecs of the child, while his abdomen was hidden under several rectangular pieces that slightly overlapped one with another. Around his hips, the armor fanned out in a samurai-like fashion until mid-thigh. The legs of the Uchiha were clad in black shinobi pants, where pockets could be spotted along with twin pouches just beyond the coverage of the armor.
The upper part of the Uchiha' arms were covered by the same black leather that reached just over the elbow, which was covered with a slightly spiky blood-red plate that clearly doubled as a weapon, just like the vambraces on his forearms, that matched the shin guards he wore over his trousers.
Held loosely in his left hand there was a jian perfectly sized to match the height of the 9 years old shinobi: it was a rather plain weapon, but there were ripples on the blade that reflected the sun in a multitude of motes, and the ringing sound it made when the Uchiha flicked it with his finger was telling of the quality of the steel itself. The handle was wrapped in black strips of leather, and the small pommel had notches on it, likely because in this way that the blade could easily be hung to the Uchiha's armor, foregoing the need for a scabbard. The shiny grey of the steel naturally captivated the attention of any who watched, and Sarutobi held back a smile as he realized that it was just another distraction.
The only thing that wasn't black or red was the Konoha forehead protector, that young Uchiha carried on a bandana on the front of his throat, a bit lose, as if he was ready to pull it up to cover his mouth. And for all Sarutobi knew about the extensive bag of tricks that the Uchiha and the Hyuga had developed to counter each other, it was even possible that the bandana had filters hidden in it to be turned into a temporary anti-gas measure.
"That armor will weigh just as much as the Uchiha." Rasa snorted openly at the showmanship of the black-haired prodigy, who had taken the meaning behind the chunin exams and rode it as a weapon.
Sarutobi smiled lightly at his fellow Kage, his eyes never leaving the problematic miniature Madara. He had waited to face Neji before donning his armor, he wore a dull red and gleaming black, the colors of the Uchiha, and his eyes blazed so much that he didn't have to keep his clan's symbol plastered on his back.
With the mere act of walking into the Arena ready for war, he was saying: 'Only a fellow Konoha-nin can push me this far.', and also ' I am Uchiha, I am Here.' Given the easy way in which both he and the Hyuga had breezed through the exams, in particular against their opponents in the last stage, there was little doubt that Kumo and Iwa would add them to their Bingo Books.
After all, the precociousness that brought them to be strong despite their age wasn't in itself a promise of becoming an S-rank, but with their Bloodline so revered, there was a strong chance that they would.
And worse, they know about it. Sarutobi hid a frown under the shade of his hat, pride had spelled more than one shinobi's demise, but it couldn't be said that the duo, the Uchiha in particular, lacked caution. Each surprised the other far too often for them to ignore the fact that they could die by the smallest mistake.
Flaunting his abilities as Sasuke had, however, a single handseal for a fireball, adding another to modify a jutsu on the fly and shape a clone, the shurikenjutsu, the visual genjutsu... he wanted to be recognized, and Sarutobi feared that it would be for the wrong reasons. Konoha earned contracts by the fame of its most infamous members, but before those bounties became something to be proud of, the shinobi in question had to prove to himself that he was above the assassination attempts that came with the fame.
Maybe it's a message to his brother? The Hokage wondered while the two genin squared off each other, He never named it to his peers, but there is no denying that after the Massacre he seemed to find his focus. How lucky we are that he didn't break... he has peers, he even enjoys reverse engineering Akimichi recipes... Perhaps, perhaps it could be done.
With the sensation of having made a choice already, the Sandaime Hokage, God of Shinobi, Monkey Summoner, and Head of the Sarutobi Clan, Hiruzen leaned back marginally in his seat, his eyes landing on the fight that the two most promising genin since Itachi were displaying for the world to see.
Neji was the first to act, blitzing towards his opponent with the faintest trail of chakra being visible on his outstretched fingers. He was aiming for the forehead of the Uchiha, hoping to land a single touch capable of staggering his opponent by completely breaking apart the chakra flow necessary to maintain active the Sharingan.
By the time he reached Sasuke, the latter had already taken a step back, throwing a powerful punch with his right hand, only to swing upwards with the jian he held in his left when his first attack was easily pushed aside.
Neji was forced to twist on one side, the sword that Sasuke had forged to his own specifications whistling through the air as if it weighed nothing.
Under the attentive gaze of the Kage sitting in their booth, the Hyuga kept his momentum, slipping one foot beside the one of his opponents as he spun, the first failed jab turning into an elbow targeting the temple of the Uchiha, who leaned back, a straight kick landing on the side of his fellow prodigy.
Sasuke used his foot on his opponent's body to push himself back while he brought his free hand to his lips, a familiar half Tiger seal easy to see for everyone, and even if he lost much of his leg power since the Hyuga was spinning, he spewed forth a fireball during his backflip.
Neji slammed forth his left hand, the Vacuum Palm Technique dispersing the flames while he kept chasing the Uchiha that so desperately sought enough room to leverage his ninjutsu to the maximum of his ability.
Sasuke landed after his summersault with his jian cutting the air horizontally just in front of him, holding back the pursuit of his opponent while the latter brought his right hand in the wide left sleeve of his kimono, unsheathing the twin Butterfly swords that quickly found their place into his awaiting palms.
The following exchange was a whirlwind of steel, the short and wide blades of Neji deflecting the stabs of the Uchiha's jian while the latter exploited to the maximum the leverage his longer weapon granted him.
Neji deflected a stab of the jian with his right sword only to slash with his left, which was deflected by a kunai appearing out of nowhere in the Uchiha's free right hand, a twitch of the wrist later, and the Hyuga was forced to lean back to avoid the thrown weapon, his right foot kicking Sasuke's left arm in order to keep him from using his sword.
One of the Butterfly swords flashed, severing the ninja wire that tied the kunai to the Uchiha's hand, and immediately it was pushed forward, the large flat of the blade covering the torso of the Hyuga from his opponent's sight.
An istant later, the Uchiha's right punch went crashing against the side of Neji, who tilted his body sideways, a thin layer of chakra leaving the tenketsu on the side of his ribcage to make Sasuke's swing slide behind the Hyuga while his left arm clamped down, trapping the black-haired shinobi's arm against his side.
Immediately after, the sword held in the Hyuga's right hand slashed against the Uchiha's left arm, striking the blood-red vambrace with a screeching sound.
At the same time, Neji spun on his right foot, landing his left one on the Uchiha's lightly bended knee, that he had brought forward both as a layered feint for his first punch and in order to prepare for his following sword-attack.
A simple outward push with the Hyuga's weight was all that was needed to unbalance the shinobi. Sasuke rooted himself with chakra on his remaining foot, and crashed his forehead into his opponent's head. Immediately, Neji pushed sideways with his right foot, his left forearm rising on the inside of the Uchiha's right bicep as he twirled on the left foot once more on the ground after having kicked away his opponent's leg.
As Neji spun, his force and momentum were enough to gain leverage on Sasuke's shoulder, who found himself forced on his left knee and to release his grip on the jian's hilt in order to sab forward with his fingers poised like a speartip, aiming for the Hyuga's femoral artery.
A twist of Neji's right wrist forced him to abort his attack to avoid the Butterfly sword severing his tendons.
A second later, the Hyuga dropped his weapons and twisted, his left hand clamping over the Uchiha's right pauldron while his other hand jabbed forward, forcing Sasuke to drop the jian in order to place his armored forearm in the way of the attack.
The loud crack that echoed in the arena was followed by a swathe of flame that set alight the left sleeve of the Hyuga even as he jumped back.
The two prodigies looked one another, the blood-red vambrace on the Uchiha's left forearm falling apart after the attack while the Hyuga lost one of the wide sleeves that kept his opponent from being able to closely see his opponent's movements.
For all of the relative success of the Uchiha in briefly setting alight his opponent's clothes, it was clear that the winner of that exchange was the Hyuga. After all, he had broken a piece of armor that would no longer be able to defend the black-haired prodigy from the outrageously dangerous Gentle Fist. And yet, the Uchiha could easily recover his jian while the Hyuga had been forced to abandon his Butterfly Swords to capitalize on the opportunity of breaking a single piece of the blood-red armor.
"Earth Natured Chakra to support Taijutsu?" Rasa of the Gold Sand asked with a bored tone as he looked down in the arena, his expression betraying nothing if not irritation at the lack of a Suna genin in the finals.
Sarutobi nodded thoughtfully as an answer, narrowing his eyes as he read the lips of the Hyuga: 'You're slow.'
There was no cruel taunt in the Byakugan wielder's expression, even if he hesitated when the Uchiha's face remained flat and his body language was managing to hide almost all of its natural tells. In any case, it is clear that the ruse of Kabuto has come to an end, I cannot allow Danzo any more room to maneuver so close to these two.
His old friend had remained quiet since the massacre, his presence almost vanishing from Konoha even while his policy within the Council remained present, Kakashi had confirmed that Yakushi wasn't what he portrayed himself as, but that his skill as a medic-nin, coupled with his survival-related abilities, made him a fitting complement for a couple of prodigies. In truth, there was little hope that an actual genin could truly connect with the two, they had each other's backs, and they'd refuse anyone incompetent to their eyes while eventually sniffing out anyone who portrayed himself as someone he was not.
In truth, Sarutobi couldn't blame the Uchiha for holding back on his affections, was it truly a wonder that he had somewhat connected with young and outcast Lee, prodigious and lonely Neji, and bright if obsessed Tenten? He could read them, he was sure that they wouldn't betray him as Itachi had done, and while he did invite Kabuto to his little BBQs, it was clear that it was to keep an eye on him more than anything else.
Then the fight resumed, and Sarutobi almost sighed as he returned his focus to the current events.
The Uchiha this time was the one to close the distance between the two: a clone was shaped into reality with a Tiger and Ram sequence of hand seals and attacked first, blatantly leaving an opening in his defense while the original tied a small bell to the handle of the jian that he had recovered from the ground.
The Hyuga was forced on the defensive, his speed and control the only thing to keep him safe from the kunai-wielding clone while the original circled around waiting for an opportunity to pounce.
The following taijutsu exchange was brutal on the clone's part, who left many openings while he relentlessly assaulted his target. Neji waited, carefully directing the fight so that he always kept the original on one side where he could quickly act in case of an attack, when mid lunge, the Katon Clone exploded in a gush of flames.
The Hyuga reacted almost faster than one could blink, dispersing the flames with yet another carefully controlled Vaacum Palm, while the Uchiha capitalized, darting forth only to retreat when a thick black smoke exploded from beneath the Hyuga's feet, denying Sasuke the greatest advantage of his eyes.
The Uchiha moved towards one side of the Arena, his eyes darting over the surface of the black smoke that so easily had denied him his advantage, only to sharply twist the hand holding his jian, the bell tied to its hilt letting out a crystal clear sound that was blatantly laced with chakra.
Feeling his chakra land an illusion that was quickly dispelled, Sasuke's heard turned left, only to jump back when the Hyuga busted out of the smoke, his fingers quickly zeroing in on his opponent.
The sword flashed, and the Hyuga's arm was cut off at the elbow.
While the Neji that had been wounded fell apart in clumps of dirt, the Uchiha slashed to his left, where the blade was swiftly parried by the Butterfly Sword that the Hyuga had managed to recover thanks to the cover of the black smoke.
Another fierce bout of kenjutsu ensued, the Uchiha slashing madly with his jian and supporting his attacks with the occasional bout of small-scale fire ninjutsu while the Hyuga whirled on himself, parrying and redirecting each attack with ease, until the ringing of Sasuke's bell laced the air around them with yet another illusion.
The Uchiha suddenly abandoned his slash as he jumped, his left foot landing on an overextended jab of his opponent and his jian biting deep into the Hyuga, who once more revealed itself to be a Tsuchi Bunshin while the original snapped up from underground, his pointed fingers cracking once more against a piece of the Uchiha's armor.
Sasuke's left shin-guard cracked as he repeated his stabbing motion instead of retreating, the plunge of his jian being once more parried by the Hyuga who had caught a Butterfly sword from his clone just as he dissolved.
That didn't stop the kunai appeared out of nowhere from biting deep in Neji's shoulder.
A spurt of blood later, the Uchiha was engaging the Hyuga, the rivalry between the Doujutsu users shining like never before as both brought to bear the tricks they had developed somewhat in secret during the previous month.
Dropping temporarily his Jian, Sasuke hands fell into a Bird seal only for him to grab his blade before it could hit the ground, using it to jab sharply at his opponent, who parried with the ease born of experience.
It was then that a low-ranked Raiton technique sparked from the Uchiha's free hand, the brief arc of lightning striking the Hyuga too fast for him to react. The bluish-white energy crackled over Neji's left arm, and stole a pained grunt from the white-eyed prodigy.
"Lightning too?" the Kazekage commented, "He has the advantage."
Sarutobi ignored Rasa, well aware of what had been taught to the two prodigies under the care of Hatake Kakashi, and he observed as the Uchiha blitzed his rival, blood-red eyes shining under the afternoon's sun while the ringing of the bell tied to his words kept overlapping illusions over the Hyuga.
The Sandaime Hokage's eyes widened imperceptibly when his experience translated the events in the arena in the same time Rasa had taken to blink: the Hyuga's arm struck by lightning just had its chakra control shot to oblivion. Between the painful jolt of electricity along the nerves, it appeared that the Uchiha had dedicated an outrageous amount of time to the single purpose of replicating, if in a bastardized and well less efficient way, the effects of the Gentle Fist.
Neji broke through illusion after illusion, the multi-layered genjutsu being anything but subtle. But with the stinging pain that sent out of whack his chakra control in the arm hit by the raiton technique, and forced to used a single Butterfly sword to hold back the Uchiha, the wielder of the Byakugan quickly found himself on the defensive.
Still slower than the Hyuga, the Uchiha kept up his relentless assault, his steps scratching on the ground only occasionally to throw off the rhythm of his opponent, chakra occasionally anchoring him to the ground with no forewarning, allowing him to change his direction on a dime even as he stressed his ligaments to support the momentum he accumulated.
And for all of his speed, Neji couldn't tank the hits that were delivered with Sasuke's jian: was it only a question of body strength, the Hyuga could have pushed back, but with the length of metal in Sasuke's hands came leverage, which multiplied the power of each strike enough to have the white-eyed genin grit his teeth to bear through the impacts.
And while the genjutsu were far from being the delicate and outright elegant ones that Sasuke could implant with the Sharingan, there was something to be said about quantity being a quality of its own, and Neji's frown deepened as he had no breathing room to dedicate his chakra to reinforcing his body, to break through the multitude of small illusions, and to use a technique to exploit their closeness.
Mechanically keeping up with his assault, Sasuke's broken pattern wasn't matched by his breath, which was instead constant, if heavy. And while the constant flaring and subduing of his chakra gave Neji some room to predict his movements, the wave upon wave of Genjutsu, which ranged from tinging everything an outrageous shade of pink to concealing the revealing glint of a kunai being thrown in close quarters, assaulted the Hyuga's chakra pathways while his bloodline was made to trip when the Uchiha flooded his right leg with chakra and leaned all his weight on his left, as if to deliver a powerful kick, only for the red-eyed genin to stop mid-movement, throwing instead a shuriken.
Both the Uchiha and the Hyuga were burning through their chakra at outrageous speeds, their limited reserves stopping them from relying on nujutsu, but with an arm incapable of delivering the jabs of the Gentle Fist, and eating through his chakra reserves like crazy as Neji couldn't control how his chakra bled through his tenketsu while he tried to reinforce that limb, Sasuke started to strike several times, drawing blood.
Coupled with that first stabbing wound he received with his underground assault, Neji's grip on his weapon kept growing slicker and slicker, while his body started to lag behind the instructions delivered by his brain.
There was no Substitution to be had with any of the surrounding rocks, the only thing that Neji could obtain was to waste chakra and expose himself to the punishing shurikenjutsu of his opponent, remaining still clearly wasn't a winning strategy, so the Hyuga prodigy did the only thing he could.
Violently altering the flow of his chakra, he burned through the layered, weak illusions while his fingers went temporarily numb. His remaining Butterfly sword fell from his blood-covered hand while Sasuke's capitalized, instinct and habit driving his body while he focused on his chakra flow to keep the Hyuga out of balance.
The Uchiha's stabbed forward, the jian skidding over the femur of the Hyuga as it parted skin, flesh, and sinew like it was paper, and with his arm extended as it was, Neji acted: with two fingers extended, and all the poise of an artist in the 'zone', he struck.
The pain was a distant thing due to the blood loss, his heart hammering so fiercely that he could feel his teeth pulse, and the tiredness acted as a frame for the painting that was Neji's last attempt at victory.
The first time his fingers touched the Uchiha's forearm, exploiting the lack of vambrace that he had broken at the beginning of the match, everything after the elbow went limp, the second time, Neji's Gentle Fist landed just beneath the pauldron covering Sasuke's shoulder, and the red-eyed genin's left arm became completely useless.
While he tried to deliver the third strike, Neji saw thanks to the Byakugan the retaliation of the Uchiha.
Neji rose his left arm to shield his head, but with his chakra out of whack, Sasuke's right, wide kick, crushed through his defense, slamming the Hyuga's own arm against his head as he was blown clear off his feet, the jian still stabbed through his right thigh, Sasuke's left arm useless now that the white-eyed prodigy had managed to deliver two decisive strikes of the Gentle Fist.
Then he rolled a couple of times in the dirt, the sword still into his leg jostling his wound terribly, and he went unconscious just as the Uchiha fell to one knee, out of balance now that he couldn't use his extremely refined chakra control to keep up the bastardization of the Shunshin in close quarters, his breath losing composure while the expenses of the outrageous number of genjutsu he had layered through the bell tied to his jian made themselves known.
Sarutobi watched with an impassible gaze the Proctor close in on the Hyuga and quickly declaring him unable to continue, while the Uchiha's heavy breathing could almost be heard even over the cheering crowd.
The Monkey Summoner nodded thoughtfully at the display that was sure to net Konoha a large number of customers, only for his eye to catch a white, wild mane of hair disappearing from the crowd, a faint echo of a flare of chakra making itself known to his aged senses.
Given that the God of Shinobi himself hadn't noticed that remarkable head of hair before, it was easy for him to guess who was to have caught his attention with that faint flare of familiar chakra.
And while the Proctor declared the victor and Rasa rose to his feet to deliver his closing speech for the Chunin Exams, the Sandaime Hokage once more hoped that there would be a way out for him.
His eyes landed once more on the Uchiha, who stood straight in the center of the Arena, his expression flat and uncaring even while his eyes followed the Hyuga who was being led to Kabuto, who quickly started acting to stop the bleeding caused by the sword Sasuke had struck in his teammate.
AN
This chapter is somewhat a mixed bag, I wanted to push forward the story but I got stuck with some Byakugan Lore and with some characterization.
The several jumps in perspective are maybe confusing, but I've placed a line-break between each of them, so we have a third person on the training-chat of Team 7, first-person on Sasuke's sudden soul-searching, and third-person again on the fight between Sasuke and Neji, with insight from the Sandaime and the secondary importance of Rasa, who is mostly used to showcase that even allied Kage are not friends.
So, opinions? Ideas?
I'm really nervous, how did the Neji-Sasuke fight go? I feel pretty confident when the fight is in first person, by from an outside perspective I'm not sure. Let me know!