Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the edgiest of them all?
Ten years earlier
"Congratulations on your victory, Ge-No fucking way." The chunin stared.
Two genin and four scrolls were in front of him.
Itachi absently picked his nose. "So that was round two, right?"
"You..." The chunin stood there, flabbergasted. "How? It's been, what, two hours?"
"I know. I'm disappointed in myself as well." Sighed Neji. "My movement was terribly inefficient. May I have another go? I could at least half the time it took."
"You..." The chunin spluttered. "But you were split up! How did you find each other?"
"Byakugan?" Neji offered. "Wait, were we not supposed to be split up?"
"That doesn't make sense." Itachi frowned. "This wouldn't have even been a challenge if we'd been paired up. I wouldn't have had to worry about whether or not to help save that other team of leaf genin, we'd have just gone in and done it."
"I saw that." Neji remarked. "Good work, by the way."
"Thank you."
"G-g-Go ahead." The chunin moved to the side of the two monster-children and let them pass.
"Oh, by the way..." Itachi turned around. "I do have one question. What's the plan for picking up the ninja who were following us? Because we sort of left them in the woods."
"The...the overwatch ninja?" The chunin blinked. "The jonin looking after you so you don't open the scrolls early?"
"Well, yes." Neji tilted his head. "Were we not supposed to incapacitate them?"
The chunin fainted.
Present day
"Okay, maybe Hinata will have time to get her seal fixed."
"Lets see...next round is Hinata vs Sai."
"godDAMMIT!"
"Fuck!"
"Ugh...I'll go get her."
"Are you sure it's a good idea to kill more Konoha ninja?" Orochimaru asked, casually.
"I didn't fancy my chances holding back," Kabuto reasoned. "and after they saw me it was their corpses or my cover." He began performing a specific jutsu he'd learned from his medical training to turn the ninjas' brains to mush.
"Fair enough." Orochimaru conceded. He was leaned against the wall of an alleyway, trying to keep the blood of the corpses off his feet. "How went the exam?"
"I tried to make contact with team seven to assess their progress, but they spent the vast majority of the time hiding in a cave." Kabuto apologised. "They only got out for an hour or two before finishing. While looking for them, however, my team encountered team Gai. That's Sai and his friends." He clarified.
"I see." Orochimaru mused. "How is our good friend Danzo, by the way?"
"Still scheming, and possibly still chasing after Hiruzen's hat." Kabuto sighed. "Subtext from Sai implied he had a reason to get through to the finals, so I threw the fight. I hope you don't mind."
"No no, appease him for now." Allowed the snake sannin. "As long as he doesn't interrupt what we're organising with Suna, he can do as he wishes."
There was a cough, and he turned to look at its origin annoyedly. "Excuse me! We're trying to ignore you."
"Apologies, sir." Dosu dipped his head. He and his team were huddled in the corner of the alley as their superiors talked.
"No, it's fine, go ahead."
"It's just..." Dosu tilted his head in thought. "Why are we still alive? We've failed our mission and our cover is blown. Why isn't your pet medic turning us to mush?"
"Perceptive as always, young Dosu." Orochimaru crooned. "In truth you haven't really failed. I sent you in to infiltrate the exam and test whoever I decided to gift the curse mark, and you did."
"But we got caught!" Protested Zaku, somewhat masochistically. "We had to take out that team with the dog and bug dudes to get into the third round, but then Uzumaki tattled on us immediately."
"That was very stupid, yes." Agreed their master. "But I still have uses for you and your team in this mission, and that means I need you alive. Although it would be nicer to have your corpses so they don't go looking for you..."
"The sand siblings killed a trio in the forest." Kabuto offered. "With a clothes switch and sufficient mutilation, they could be mistaken for these three."
Orochimaru stood fully and began leaving. "Perfect. And I'll go pretend to be a distraught and outraged Sensei over the death of my students." He sighed dramatically. "Truly, there is no rest for the wicked."
Hinata walked into position across from Sai. He smiled at her emptily.
It was one of the reasons she didn't like him. Her clan had many books on reading people's emotions, and while she had originally struggled with it, she could now often spot whenever someone was lying to her (except very experienced ninja). But now she couldn't ignore it, and it upset her when she spotted it. One of the most appealing things about Naruto was that he was terrible at concealing his thoughts, and rarely even tried. Sai though...it was like his face moved, and his brain was blank behind it. He was untrustable.
"Are you well, miss Hyuuga?" He asked, still smiling. "It wouldn't do for us to compete when you are not at full strength."
"You will find me more than adequate." She replied, simply.
"Excellent!" Sai's smile widened. "Please do not hold back."
The curse mark pulsed, and Hinata made sure not to show it. No chakra flow, the toad sage had said. Sure. It's not like her entire fighting style relied completely on chakra flow. The bursts from her fingers and palms weren't really taxing on her reserves, but they were enough to set the curse mark off. As was summoning, as was the Byakugan, as was...her entire arsenal, which she was now realising was a very dangerous weakness. Her fingers twitched. Traditional pressure point katas it is then.
"Are both contestants ready?" Gekko confirmed. They nodded. "Alright then. Begin!"
Hinata knew Sai would expect her to run straight at him. But she was tired, so that's exactly what she did. He was faster than Tenten, Hinata realised with a start, as he began drawing in his scroll. Because Hinata was faster than Sasuke and Sai's ink and paper flowed to form shuriken when she was further than he had been. The mild mannered, innocuous member of team Gai was actually good. And she had never actually seen Sai fight.
To quote Sasuke: 'Oh shit'.
Then the time for retrospection was past, she was ducking and dodging and sorely missing her perfect vision. Sai backed up, still drawing, and then a trio of snakes left his scroll and slithered towards her, bodies made of paper and ink.
Summoning jutsu? Blood in the ink? No, no summon looked like that. She couldn't check, of course, because she couldn't turn on the Byakugan-
The first snake launched at her throat. She caught it around it's neck, but it extended unnaturally to continue biting at her. Undeterred, she brought her other arm up and tore it in half. The other two snakes moved to wrap around her legs as Sai threw another brace of paper shuriken. Grimacing, Hinata jumped into the air. In one turn, she drew and flung two kunai at the snakes beneath her, pinning them to the floor, then twisted until her fallible eyes could see the incoming projectiles, and plucked two of them from the air, deflecting the rest.
She landed, Naruto whooped from the stands, then she flung her two shuriken at Sai. He leaned left.
"Well done." The pale boy judged, still smiling. "Let's up the difficulty." He finished a drawing. Leaping from his scroll was a...porcupine?
"Is that going to turn into armour or something?" Hinata asked, hesitantly. The porcupine saw her, glared and launched a volley of spines from its back. Okay then.
Hinata ran.
The porcupine, apparently, did not seem to be running out of ink anytime soon. It fired in a line, not a cone, but that line had some width to it, which meant that the closer she got the higher risk she ran of it pegging her. She had made herself too paranoid about there being something in that ink to allow that. Problem was that unless she was in Sai's face pressing him,
A) she didn't have any attack options and
B) he could do whatever he wanted.
This was demonstrated quite clearly when he pulled out another ink creature, this time a...skunk? She dodged another blast of spines and looked at it in confusion. It waltzed outwards, until it was just as far away as (Hinata realised with a start) she had managed to get before Sai had reacted to her. So Sai had good game-sense too, why hadn't she picked any of this up before? Then the skunk turned it's back to her and-oh come on.
Thick black smoke began spewing from its...it was farting, that's what it was, it was farting. "Really?" She yelled at Sai. He shrugged.
The smoke was spreading throughout the arena. Now this was definitely poisonous, or at least she was meant to think it was, he was trying to pin her into a corner. She threw an experimental shuriken at the animal, but Sai intercepted it with one of his own.
She grimaced.
So if it could affect her with just a touch, she was dead without using rotation. If it couldn't, though, Sai had just signed his own death warrant. Defeat warrant. Bad curse mark. Hinata took in a deep breath, and sprinted into the clouds.
"It's beautiful." Naruto gripped the railing between him and the battlefield, staring down at the ink creatures. "A weaponised fart...I'd never thought it was possible..."
"You aren't worried it's going to hurt your teammate?" Kakashi eyed him.
"Hinata'll be fine." Naruto dismissed. "But look at it! It's farting! This is a level of pranking I've never seen before! I need to step up my game."
In the arena, Sai waited patiently and watched. The smoke broiled but stayed in place, probably influenced by his chakra. It had been a good twenty seconds since Hinata had entered the smoke cloud and the battle had halted in its tracks.
"Twenty ryo she never comes out!" Shouted Asuma.
"I'm in!" Kakashi shouted back, then held his hand up in the air.
Hinata burst from the smoke running straight at Sai, and threw a kunai.
A grumbling Asuma chucked a pouch of coins into Kakashi's waiting palm.
Sai dodged the kunai, boredly, as his porcupine fired another volley of spikes at Hinata, who took a breath and vanished back into the mist.
Then the kunai turned into a Hinata. Sai spun in place to catch her palm on his lead hand, then pulled a sword from his back to cut at her, but Hinata was still faster than him at close range. The porcupine had to turn around and fire, clipping Sai with needles in order to catch her in her assault, but by that point she had already deadened every nerve in his right arm. His drawing arm. And then she popped. The real Hinata was already charging back out of the smoke, flinging even more knives at him and his porcupine (Naruto had handed her his spares before the fight). Suddenly, Sai's eyes widened. They actually widened. And trapping his scroll with his knees, he used his off hand to put pen to paper, then flung a paper shuriken towards Hinata. Then, in between them, erupted a great ball of flame.
Hinata coughed, and staggered to her feet. That clanless peasant. He's actually really good. The shadow clone splits chakra rather than consumes it. That's what Kakashi had told her. That technicality meant it didn't set off the curse mark, which was a godsend, one she had taken full advantage of. Even so, she had expected him to take out the shadow clone disguised as a kunai. She had expected him to survive her real body's simultaneous assault, even with one hand. She had not expected him to realise the shadow clone had tagged his scroll with an explosive tag, then put that tag onto a paper shuriken and throw it in time to blow up all her other projectiles and hit her.
She plucked one knife out of her padded white jacket and glared at him. "I killed your skunk."
He nodded. It had been caught in the explosion. "It wasn't very useful, don't worry. Besides it's about to get replaced."
Cursing she jumped to her feet, but the porcupine's attack pinned her down again. She summoned a shadow clone, planning to perform a similar manoeuvre as had killed the skunk, and then an eagle burst from the scroll. Hinata gulped.
It was big. It's body itself was twice as long as her, and its wingspan was proportionally giant. If it were a summon it would have cost almost as much chakra as she possessed. Summons were teleported in, not made, but they were alive, not ink facsimiles, so she didn't know how the cost of it compared, but it was obviously dangerous.
"Do it." She bit out. Her shadow clone moved behind her.
The eagle screeched, and buffeted its wings. A massive gust of wind hurtled towards her. Behind her, her shadow clone narrowed its eyes, and began striking at various points on the back of her neck. She felt the area start to go numb, and moved into stance. "Eight trigrams!" She shouted. "Rotation!" She span in place. The eagle's wind had no effect on the Hyuuga jutsu, forming a small whirlwind around her.
Hinata ended her spin and immediately drew a scroll from her jacket pocket, biting her thumb and smearing the blood on the parchment. She only had so much time, after all. Her shadow clone's efforts had deadened all chakra points that lead to her curse mark, effectively cutting it off from her circuit and letting her use ninjutsu with impunity. It had the side effect of cutting off chakra flow to her brain, but that left her with a good thirty seconds to end the fight before she passed out.
She poured chakra into the scroll and it responded, as she called upon a newly familiar summon. Forsooth, the first owl she had met popped into existence, took one look at the battlefield, and took to the air, launching a screech of defiance and beelining for the paper eagle. Hinata and her clone activated their Byakugan and charged straight forwards at Sai. The porcupine could only hit one of them, and only made the real Hinata veer away before the clone was upon it. Sai threw more shuriken, but Hinata Prime got in the way with another rotation, allowing the clone to slam a palm into the porcupine, shredding it with a burst of chakra. Sai's face tightened imperceptively, though anyone's eyes but Hinata's wouldn't have caught it.
Twenty seconds of consciousness remaining.
Forsooth grabbed onto Sai's eagle and began tearing into it with beak and claw. The paper animal silently struck back, but Forsooth was bulkier, and did far more damage. Scraps of paper fell to the ground.
The two Hinata fell upon Sai, who drew his sword with his one remaining good arm and kicked his scroll behind him. His attention fully on her, he withstood for a few moments, before going into a one armed somersault. In a display that she almost didn't believe even as she saw it, he flipped his sword between his feet and kicked it at the original Hinata, at which range she had to catch it to avoid being impaled, and skidded backwards as her clone pressed forwards. Mid somersault, Sai drew with his left hand on his scroll and whipped the whole thing towards her. The Hinata shadow clone could see the chakra in the paper, and saw it form something very similar to an explosive tag. She trapped it between her legs, but now her easily destroyable body wouldn't keep the explosion from hitting the real Hinata. Sai's smile turned just a little cruel.
Ten seconds until she lost consciousness. Darkness began to spread across her 360 vision, and she started to feel dizzy and faint. She threw Sai's sword into the air. Her shadow clone noticed it immediately and started flashing through the hand seals for the substitution jutsu, Sai immediately realised what she was doing but was too busy in his retreat to interfere. Sai's sword stabbed up into his eagle, eliciting a silent wail from the thing, then the sword switched places with Hinata's clone, and the scroll trapped between her legs. The scroll exploded, popping the shadow clone immediately, and tearing the paper eagle immediately into shreds. The real Hinata on the ground grabbed the sword from her clone's original position, throwing it hilt first at Sai's shoulder. His right shoulder. She saw the muscles in his deadened arm twitch, then his left moved up to try and snatch the blade, but he was too slow, being hit in the shoulder and sent spinning. Then she was on top of him.
The palm strikes rained in. "Eight trigrams!" She shouted, once he was fully unable to react. "Sixty four palms!" She had learned that lesson from Orochimaru.
Sai's limp form collapsed to the floor, as the burning remnants of his eagle fell around them.
"Call it." She snapped, out of breath.
"Victory goes to Hinata." Gekko confirmed. "And someone get her a doctor."
Yes, a doctor would probably be good. Hinata looked up to the stands. Naruto was there, cheering loudly with his fist in the air. She'd done it. She'd won, without losing control, without opening the curse mark, and he was happy.
She might have smiled, had consciousness not left her. As it was, Forsooth flew down and gently lowered her body to the floor next to Sai's.
I'm really happy with how that fight turned out, actually, and so is Hinata.
With the dialogue from Orochimaru and Kabuto, I tried to explain more about how certain teams managed to pass and some didn't, but bottom line is that Kabuto's team lost to Sai's, and with Sakura replacing Hinata, Shino and Kiba's team got smaccd by the sound trio in that final melee. Next we finally get those damn curse seals...sealed...and Naruto's chance at glory.
