(A/N) Hi! Guest: I'm afraid I'll have to say no, that would be a royal disaster made of the Chuunin exams. More of one than usual. Would be hilarious and epic, but no. Also, did you know Hiding in the Mist is a D-rank technique? Crazy, right?
...So I have no idea how to write a brute force battle. Apologies, but Fuu and Naruto's fight was waaaay under standard, and I have no clue what to do about it. Don't get mad, if someone rewrites it, I'll replace it and give 'em credit. It fought me all the way, so like, I dunno, blame me, but don't like, get super angry in the comments? Constructive I'll accept, just angry ranting, no thank you.
"Fuu vs Naruto Uzumaki," Genma called, before leaping away.
"You're going down!" Naruto shouted, pointing at her.
"Not if you can't catch me!" Fuu shouted gleefully, sprouting her wings and flying up into the air.
"Try me," Naruto replied, running up the nearby stadium wall, flipping off of it and tackling Fuu, who started punching him.
Hiruzen sighed heavily as the two rolled on the ground for a bit, wrestling and trading occasional punches. Shisui pretended he wasn't laughing at them.
Fuu disengaged suddenly, flying up and throwing a fireball at Naruto, who cheerfully threw a more powerful wind jutsu right into the fireball, changing its direction so it was sent flying right into Fuu, who substituted away.
"They have some firepower," Danzo noted.
"Troublesome," was Shikaku's answer.
Naruto created a huge amount of clones, Fuu quickly following suit, the two armies leaping at each other, the arena quickly being filled with smoke.
When it cleared, Fuu was strung up like a christmas turkey, wrapped in wire and some exploding tags.
"Surrender!" Naruto shouted, pointing his tanto at her.
"Never!" Fuu abruptly substituted with a log, leaving it to its fate. The tags exploded, the rapidly tightening wire shredding the log. She lunged out of the trees, crossing tanto with Naruto in a shower of sparks.
A fast kenjutsu exchange later, and they leaped apart, Fuu once more falling prey to one of Naruto's traps, falling into a rather deep pit, and promptly tied down by a couple dozen wires and a net.
"You booby trapped it!" Fuu squawked loudly.
"Darn right I did!"
Another substitution and it was a taijutsu battle.
A simultaneous punch, and both were out like lights.
"Double knockout, alright," Genma said as the two were carried out. "Next match, Gaara vs Hinata Hyuuga. The winner of this match takes the tournament."
Gaara appeared on the floor of the arena in a swirl of sand. Hinata opted to walk down.
"Ready?" Genma asked. When he received two nods, his hand came down, and he jumped away. "Begin!"
Immediately, both sand and mist spread across the arena, completely concealing it from the observer's view.
Hinata hid herself in the mist, avoiding the sand that was trying to figure out where she'd gone. Gaara had far more stamina then she did, and even if he was limited to wooden puppets so as not to freak everyone out too much, that did not reassure her one bit.
Because of her byakugan, she could see where Gaara was. He didn't know where she was, so that was somewhat reassuring. His puppets remained in a defensive stance, protecting him from all sides. Hinata just had to sneak between them to get to him. If he was unconscious, he couldn't pilot anything. Of course, she had to get past his sand, but the water in the air was already slowing it down.
Eh, she could spare some mist, and, well, the audience probably wanted to see. Time to put the water jutsu Kakashi had taught her to good use. And the increased chakra reserves he'd been pushing her to get, so she could better keep up with her teammates.
"Suiton: Water lances," she murmured under her breath before changing positions to fire the lances between the puppets. Water lances shot from her mouth, using some of the mist in the air to properly form.
Each one impacted harmlessly against Gaara's sand shield, but dampened it further, making it slower to react.
Hinata changed positions as a puppet shot out to try and scratch her. One scratch and it was all over. Gaara was very good at knock out and paralyzing poisons, and one scratch with a poisoned blade meant she would be unconscious or paralyzed in seconds.
She ducked a kunai thrown in her direction, changing positions again when she spotted the sand hovering in the air.
If she could get all of the sand sopping wet, and have a clear trail to it, she could use her one lightning jutsu to basically disable it until the match was over. It would drain most of her chakra, lightning was not her chakra nature, after all, water was, but if she could pull it off, Gaara's primary mode of defense would be completely offline at least until the match was over.
Worst case scenario would be if he hadn't actually taken out all of his sand. She'd just have to douse him with water too, just to make sure. He would probably brush off the electric shock fairly quickly, he was a biju container after all, but that wouldn't be the point.
With her remaining chakra she could probably manage two water dragons, a lightning shock, then about ten minutes of gentle fist. Hopefully it would be enough, in addition to the remaining mist being dropped to cover the ground in water.
Hinata changed positions again, spotted an opening, and called up a water dragon, using most of the mist in her area, leaving her vulnerable to the four puppets she hadn't hit with the water dragon. On the plus side, as far as she could see, Gaara was currently sopping wet, and not very happy about it, and so was all of his sand.
Now, Hinata just had to get back over to where the water dragon had left a water trail for her to send the shock through.
A 32 palms later, and the four puppets had been destroyed, and Hinata was down some chakra. She ran quickly over to where she had made the dragon, and stuck her hands in the water, at the same time coalescing the mist to where Gaara was, and releasing it. It fell down, soaking him further. Gaara did not look happy, the scroll he had pulled out now soaking wet, effectively trapping the remainder of his wooden puppets inside until it dried.
"Raiton: Lightning Shock!" Hinata cried, and Gaara stiffened at the same time his sand fell down around him, now deprived of his chakra, and completely unresponsive.
Hinata lunged forward, and Gaara met her, a kick aimed at her head. He wasn't slow, by any means, but Hinata was faster. And more flexible. She bent over into a perfect backbend, before flipping over, trying to hit Gaara's chin as she landed neatly on her feet.
He had dodged, of course, and they began an intricate dance, Gaara's puppeteer training necessitating a taijutsu style based around getting him away from his attacker so his puppet could attack. Hinata let him come to her more often than not, after all, she held all of the cards right now. Her chakra was running lower and lower the more this went on, and she eventually stopped channeling chakra to her attempted strikes, only channeling chakra at the last second, if the blow was going to connect.
When Gaara pulled out his rarely used tanto, Hinata pulled out a kunai, she did not have enough training with the tanto to match him, as he had been doing it since he was a child.
She went on the long range offensive, throwing kunai, shuriken, and senbon, something she had recently begun carrying around.
Nothing hit him, as he deflected it all with the flat of his blade.
Hinata was running out of weapons, so she ran at him again, charging up chakra for one final strike.
She knocked the tanto out of his hands with a very lucky strike, dodged an attempted strike, and began. "8 Trigrams, 64 palms!" She shouted as she began striking. "2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64!"
Gaara was thrown back, slamming against the opposite wall. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Hinata hadn't used chakra in two of the strikes, both of which had been to knockout points on the human body, rather than the standard chakra point hits. The result? An unconscious jinchuuriki.
"Winner, Hinata Hyuuga!"
Hinata didn't bother looking to her family. They didn't care anyway. She looked to her team and where she could see part of the Akatsuki sitting in the seats.
Naruto and Fuu had recovered quickly as always and were cheering wildly, Shisui had joined them, of course. Sasori nodded to her solemnly, as did Itachi. Kakashi eye smiled cheerfully at her, his perverted book nowhere in sight. Kisame grinned, all sharp teeth and pride. She had been using a Mist jutsu, after all.
Hinata beamed, sneaking a glance at the kage box. They seemed impressed, so she took that as a good sign.
(A/N) Yay Hinata! You probably weren't expecting her to win, right? Sorry once more for the Fuu vs Naruto, it fought me for every word and was generally a freaking nightmare. Ugh. Also, should be about 5 chapters till this story ends. Weird right, so close to ending. Gonna be a nightmare with all those empty spaces tho… Oh well, not like I don't have enough stories to fill them all.
So, I dunno where those of you who voted for A Nara's Shadow Through Time and Space went, but it wasn't to check it out. So you might wanna go do that… You picked it after all.