*Chapter 19*: Chapter Seventeen: Sharp
Chapter Seventeen: Sharp
"Begin!"
Sasuke and Chihoda darted forward, Chihoda with his nekote, and Sasuke with a pair of kunai. As Sasuke thrust with one kunai in an attempt to create an opening for the second, Chihoda gave a half hop, tucking his feet up under him and tumbling, giving Sasuke a swift rake across the back. Sasuke's quick slump flat prevented the attack from being more than scratches, and he log-rolled himself to the side to avoid the double foot stomp Chihoda attempted on landing. Sasuke curled his legs up and somersaulted backwards, avoiding several more savage kicks, before turning his backroll into a ground-to-standing backflip. Chihoda pressed his advantage, and Sasuke deflected several swipes at his face at distances entirely too close for comfort.
The parries left his midsection open; only a hastily raised leg deflected a kick bearing nekote gripped by the toes of his adversary's tabi. As it was, the raking talons still opened a trio of parallel cuts from the front of his knee along the outside of his right thigh almost to his hip. Sasuke slid his knee up beneath the kicking leg before it could withdraw, driving the leg upwards as his right elbow came down. There was a solid bone to bone contact across Chihoda's shin, and a nasty bruise began forming almost immediately as Sasuke tried to follow up with a stabbed kunai at the Taki-nin's thigh. Chihoda twisted, freeing his leg from Sasuke's hasty pin, tumbling aside and avoiding the blade; and the two genin skipped backwards, carefully eyeing one another again.
Sasuke cautiously assessed the two hits Chihoda had landed on him. Neither attack has gone very deep at all. They stung a little, but weren't too serious. Suddenly, he felt something running down the back of his neck. Somewhere in the exchange, the claws must have hit his scalp. Still, the little cut on the back of his head wasn't a big issue; scalp wounds, though usually very bloody, were rarely life threatening, barring infection. Since it wasn't on his forehead or anywhere it could drip into his eyes, it wouldn't really matter until this fight was over.
Chihoda allowed Sasuke the time to assess his injuries, while placing a hand over his own shin. There were a few seconds of greenish glow around his hands, and Sasuke watched with incredulity as the Takigakure nin healed the bruise, breaking out in a light sheen of sweat as he did. The healing apparently took some effort, but he wasn't breathing very hard.
"Medic nin," Sasuke said evenly. "In training?"
Chihoda shrugged. "Something like that. Sure you don't wanna give up now?"
"Over these?" Sasuke snorted. "If you really have to ask over something little like this, maybe you're the one who should be giving up."
Something hardened in Chihoda's eyes as he glared back. "Whatever. It's your funeral."
The two dashed forward again.
"Why is Sasuke only using taijutsu?" asked Haku.
"He's just posturing," Naruto answered. "This Chihoda is obviously a taijutsu specialist; Sasuke wants to humiliate him by beating him at his own game. Totally pointless. He should know better than this."
"He's not doing a very good job at it," commented Kabuto from beside them. "He's barely holding his own."
"Naruto," Shikamaru said, narrowing his eyes. "Something's wrong."
Sasuke scowled at the Taki-nin as they skipped further back from each other again. He was getting tired quickly. At first, he thought the claws had been poisoned, but he felt no burning, no sleepiness, none of the telltale signs that would indicate his liver or heart or other vital organ functions were being compromised. But he was having trouble maintaining his top form, and he knew he was in better shape than this. And he was starting to have a little trouble catching his breath.
The flow of blood from his scalp was still trickling. And that was what cued him in; it should have stopped by now, or at the very least, thickened up enough to slow the flow of blood. He'd so far prevented Chihoda from hitting him again, but the blocks and dodges were getting slower. He was having more trouble landing any hits. In fact, he was having trouble even attempting to capitalize on what few opening his opponent was leaving.
His leg was still bleeding also, and the blood was soaking into his right sock, while the back of his shirt was becoming a deeper red than it had started. His eyes flicked across the arena floor, as he saw drops of blood — his blood — everywhere they'd sparred across. All of it was still wet.
His eyes darted back to Chihoda's hands, and the nekote they wore.
"Give up yet?" His opponent asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet, nekote shining across his toes.
"Fuck this," Sasuke said, channeling chakra to his eyes and activating the Sharingan.
"Gonna cheat now on your taijutsu?" taunted Chihoda, laughing, while reaching into his tool pouch. "It doesn't matter; it's too late for you to win now. Do whatever you like."
Sasuke understood immediately. On Chihoda's claws was something that kept his blood from clotting. And now, he was intending to use smoke bombs, trying to draw out the fight. Chihoda's strategy was attrition. The longer the fight went on like this, the more likely that Sasuke would lose. In fact, against most genin, the fight would already be over. All Chihoda had to do now was simply wait it out.
Sasuke was fast, but with the effects of several minutes of both fighting and bleeding, Chihoda was simply faster. Before he could get to his opponent, the Takigakure nin had been completely concealed by the emerging cloud of smoke, as had the majority of the ring. Sasuke's ears told the tale of another smoke bomb going off, and he remembered a bridge back in Nami no Kuni.
Sasuke's hand went to his own pouch. Nasty little tactic… and pretty effective, too. Doesn't feel like poison, and it's subtle enough to not be noticed 'til it's too late, he thought to himself, as his fingers closed on the little metal box. He pulled it out and squeezed the dimples on either side, letting the tiny, chakra laden pill fall into his mouth. He bit into it and swallowed. Good thing I can afford emergency supplies.
Modern shinobi science has given birth to a number of powerful and innovative tools. Exploding tags, wide-spectrum antidotes, soldier pills, and many others graced the kits and arsenals of shinobi due to the sciences of chakra. In fact, the only real trouble with most of them is their cost. A soldier pill costs a third of the pay for the average C-rank mission, a blood pill costs half again as much. Unless one's family could make their own, like the Akimichi or the Inuzuka, such aids were tools of desperation.
For a Taki genin, considering how poor Takigakure was, one could not expect to find a blood pill in the kit of anyone lower than jonin status. For the sole remaining heir of all the Uchiha holdings and wealth in Konahagakure, such things were somewhat pricey, but still a viable option, and something not to be left behind. Just in case.
Chihoda found himself up against someone who could fight as effectively with impaired sight, and he'd inadvertently given Sasuke enough time for the blood pill to take effect. Before the cloud from the second bomb had dispersed, he found himself on the defensive against an Uchiha with an arsenal of fire jutsu and ears good enough to direct them. As the smoke cleared, several shuriken flew outwards, each coming closer and closer as the Sharingan predicted each successive dodge, giving him less and less time to react as he recovered from wilder and wilder maneuvers he'd been forced into. Finally, two kunai were bearing down on him as he hung in midair. A truly amazing midair twist caused one kunai to clip his hair just above his ear, while the second one was prevented from driving into his eye by a head jerk to the side that left the kunai to draw a bloody trail across his cheek and ear.
Chihoda landed hard on his back as Sasuke pulled out another fistful of shuriken, Sharingan spinning, as he prepared his next assault. What held him up short was the sudden fear in the eyes of the Taki-nin as his hand clapped to his face where the kunai had cut him. It was just a scratch, but...
"Of course," Shikamaru said suddenly. "No wonder he could think up a strategy like that."
"What do you mean, Shikamaru?" asked Ino.
"Think about it, Ino," he replied. "Obviously he's got a reason for fear. As soon as he gets some space to do so, I'm betting that he's going to bandage that… or heal it, if he has the time. And he'll do anything he can to— There." Shikamaru pointed to the billowing cloud arising from the latest smoke bomb. "By the time that clears up, he'll have already dealt with that little cut."
"What?" said Hinata in surprise. "B-but... why would he be so worried about it?"
Haku's eyes lit with the realization. "Because that cut could kill him. He's a hemophiliac!"
"Exactly," agreed Shikamaru. "Which is why he dodges so well. And why he doses his weapons with a long acting anticoagulant. It's the simplest and easiest way he could level the playing field."
Sasuke caught sight of his opponent as the smoke cleared. He'd bandaged his own leg already, and Sasuke could see that Chihoda had healed the scratch on his face and ear.
"So, that's it, then," Sasuke stated. "You're a bleeder."
The Taki-nin snarled at him. "What would you know about it?" he demanded.
"Enough to know that you shouldn't have even made it out of the Academy," Sasuke answered. "You can't be a ninja if you can't afford to bleed."
'SHUT UP!" Chihoda shouted. "I'll prove to you — to EVERYONE — that I can still be a ninja!"
Above, in the stands, Lee and Gai exchanged a long, meaningful look.
Chihoda acted with desperation, now; no more smoke bombs, no more stalling. His assault was a frenzy of motion that not even the Sharingan could entirely evade. He was clearly a master of taijutsu, and though Sasuke couldn't land a clean hit on him, each of them accumulated scrapes, bruises, and nicks. But only one of them was under the effects of a blood pill, and it was starting to show.
The arena was spattered with small drops of blood from each of them, smears of it making their footing treacherous and difficult. Within a couple of minutes it had become apparent that Chihoda was losing, but he refused to give up, thought he was panting, his movements were slowing, and he'd lost the crisp snap of readiness. And Sasuke...
Sasuke kept seeing in Chihoda's desperation a familiar spark, a spark of something that Naruto had lost from his academy days: the faith… in himself and in the underlying goodness of the world; the absolute certainty that if he worked hard enough, kept fighting, he'd eventually reach his dreams. He never realized how much he missed that spark, that innocence, that belief that anything was possible. And though Sasuke could have ended it by now, could have crushed him... somehow he couldn't bear to crush the Taki-nin's dreams. He realized with a start that the flames of his own anger had long since gone out. He still felt the sadness from his family's massacre, but his need for revenge to ease his own pain was gone, and all the feeling he had left for his brother was a sense of deep regret.
In the end, Sasuke simply stood, watching, as Chihoda wavered, dripping blood from a half dozen tiny cuts, struggling to maintain his blurring focus on the Uchiha heir. Sasuke was ready to defend, of course, ready to fight back if the Taki-nin made any aggressive moves. But it seemed that the limits of flesh had finally surpassed the iron will which stood behind it, screaming to continue the fight, as the genin's rubbery legs collapsed under him. Chihoda fell to the floor, his legs bent under him. His arms fluttered lightly as did his eyelids, and he passed out.
As Hayate announced the win and called in the medics waiting on the sidelines, Sasuke stood staring at the sight of the medics tending to the Taki genin with a mixed feeling of... dirtiness. He felt no pride in the defeat of this opponent. The medics started manhandling him, trying to get him to lay down on a stretcher as well, and he resisted them out of irritation, until they pointed out that he was still under the effect of multiple doses of a powerful anticoagulant, and that it would be in his best interests to come with them to the hospital to get the substance flushed from his system before the effects of the blood pill wore off.
Sighing, Sasuke accepted their ministrations, as they bandaged his wounds for transport, before carting him off to the hospital.
Unnoticed by anyone, the jonin for Team Isha got up and left as well.
After a short break while the spatters and smears of blood were cleaned up, Hayate coughed into his hand and nodded toward the board. The next match had been chosen.
Tsurugi Misuma. Tenten.
The fight between Tenten and Tsurugi was short and exceedingly vicious. Tenten opened the fight by opening up several bloody wounds on the genin from Team Isha with a volley of shuriken and kunai, but the Isha-nin had evaded the worst of it and dislocated all his joints, wrapping himself around the kunoichi and attempting to squeeze the life out of her unless she surrendered. Tenten kicked open a scroll she had dropped, summoning a pile of weapons — an accident, many had thought, until she used the pile to execute a Kawarimi — and Tsurugi found himself constricting a more or less random assortment of very sharp bladed weapons.
You had to hand it to the medic-nins; they actually got there in time to keep him alive. Not that Tenten was unscathed; the grapple had dislocated her right hip and shoulder, sprained her left knee, and cracked three of her ribs, but it was a testimony to her toughness and powers of concentration that she had managed to pull off the jutsu in the middle of the constriction, not being disrupted even when her ribs began cracking. But while she had been hurting and not at full capacity, Tsurugi had been much worse off. The profusion of blood had required another short break to clean up. Her team applauded her 'youthfulness', and in a break from her usual habits of irritation she gave them the thumbs-up and nice guy smile. …Left-handed, of course.
Naruto took the time to look around at the other genin while the cleanup was going on. He'd noticed that the sharp, stabbing pains of the chakra parasite had mostly receded. He made an attempt at channeling chakra and found that it wasn't that bad… as long as he didn't channel too much at once. He could probably handle a few jutsu before the pain really started to hamper him; he'd just need to be conservative with his chakra output.
Hayate nodded at the board again, stifling a cough. The third match had been chosen.
Uzumaki Naruto. Akimichi Choji.
Naruto looked over at his opponent. He didn't know a lot about Choji; he just remembered the husky genin having been a heavy eater back at the Academy, and being Shikamaru's best friend. Looking at him, it was fairly plain to see that he still ate a lot; but Choji was big in more than just a fatty sense. There was a sturdiness to his features that bespoke muscle hiding beneath the surface. As Choji noticed Naruto's gaze, he lost a little color, gulping visibly. Naruto maintained his flat look, neither attempting to intimidate nor reassure. Choji started shaking lightly, and beads of sweat popped up on his forehead.
"Choji!" called Shikamaru. "Remember what I told you!"
Then every Konoha genin present — save for Ino and Choji — adopted a stunned look as Sakura walked up to Choji and hugged him, before standing on her tiptoes and kissing the husky Akimichi on the nose. "I believe in you," she whispered to him. "Remember what you've learned."
Choji swallowed hard before he nodded, hugging her back. Then he gently disengaged her arms from around him and walked toward the staircase, still pale, but determination in his eyes and his step.
Naruto raised a confused finger in the air, mouth slightly open. Uh... but what about Sasuke? Wasn't she just hanging off him, along with Ino, at the beginning of the first exam?
ACTUALLY, YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED A LITTLE CLOSER WHILE THEY WERE CONVERSING. SAKURA WAS ATTEMPTING TO GIVE INO A HAND IN GETTING SASUKE TO SPEAK TO HER.
Wait, what? How do you know that?
FOOLISH GAKI. I HEAR EVERYTHING YOU DO, EVEN IF YOU AREN'T PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO LISTEN TO IT.
Meanwhile, Sakura blushed, noticing everyone looking at her. In a small voice, she said, "Well, he's really fun to be around, and he's the sweetest guy I've ever met."
Shikamaru thought about this for a moment, before nodding. "Yeah, he's a great guy. Glad someone finally noticed."
Naruto shook off his amazement before he started towards the stairs himself.
Hesitantly, Sakura called after him. "Naruto?"
Naruto paused, turned to face her. "Yeah?"
"You always... used to say that you liked me," she said.
Naruto looked at her for a long moment before he finally nodded.
"If you really meant it... then, please. Please don... don't hurt him," she begged, almost in tears.
Naruto gazed back at Sakura, feeling... slightly sad. She was obviously afraid of him. Is this what it meant to be strong? Having everyone fear you? Everyone certain that you might hurt or kill them, even if you never did anything to them to warrant it? He found he didn't like this very much... but then, fear or hate was pretty much all he recalled ever receiving from the people he was supposed to be protecting, even before he'd gotten strong. At least this way, he was safer, and so were they, regardless of whether or not they much appreciated it.
Finally, after a long moment where Sakura tried to hold his gaze, but failed, he said, "Sakura. I don't ever hurt people from Konoha if I have a choice. I only hurt those who attack me. …And traitors," he added almost as an afterthought. He flickered his Kamigan as he said this, and noticed the sick look on Kabuto's face with a bit of satisfaction.
Naruto thought about the obvious affection between Sakura and Choji and felt a painful stab of jealousy. Surprising, that; he'd thought he was over her. I suppose you never really get all the way over someone like that, he thought to himself.
I WOULDN'T KNOW. HUMANS ARE COMPLICATED CREATURES.
Naruto sighed as he walked down the stairs. Bii-san... sometimes I envy you.
Choji and Naruto stared at each other for a moment, before Naruto said, "Shikamaru talks about you."
Choji blinked in surprise. "W-what?"
"He says you're tough," commented Naruto. "In fact, while we were in the Forest of Death, he said you were as strong as me. So show me." Naruto smiled.
"B-but... yo-you're a demon..." said Choji nervously. Naruto grimaced. Choji looked a bit embarrassed. "S-sorry... I didn't mean to-"
"I'm not a demon," Naruto said. "Not any more than a bowl is the soup that's inside it. And it's not really a demon. The ones who made it called it an ATMA. Just a weapon from a long time ago." Naruto felt Hayate's gaze on him from the side, and continued with a faint smile. "I'm not gonna turn it loose on anyone in Konoha. That's not who I am, and it's not what I do. I reserve that for those who threaten Konohagakure and its citizens..." Naruto turned his head and looked Hayate in the eye. "…And if you look at my record I have never killed anyone I wasn't told to, unless it was defending me or someone else. Does that reassure you, Gekko-san?"
Hayate shrugged and coughed lightly, before saying, "Just so long as you can control all aspects of yourself." He coughed again, and the wheeze was like a tired rattle in his chest.
"Why haven't they removed it?" asked Naruto curiously. "It's only in one spot, and it's not even that big, just in a clumsy location for breathing." Hayate froze, and his sunken eyes widened. "Talk to you after the match, Gekko-san. Shouldn't you be starting our match?"
Hayate was suffering from stripped gears, the mental equivalent of throwing an engine from fourth gear into reverse, then back into third again, while gunning the engine and somehow, miraculously, not stalling it or throwing a rod. It took him a moment to get back to where he was supposed to be, and in an uncertain voice he said, "Begin!"
"Choji," Naruto said, as Hayate backed away expectantly, "Why do you look at me like you're scared of me?"
Choji steeled himself before favoring Naruto with a grin, albeit a somewhat shaky, nervous grin, but a real grin nonetheless. "I-I'm not scared r-really... just kinda… nervous." He nodded, forming a couple of hand-seals. "I know I c-can't beat you. But that doesn't mean I-I'm gonna make it easy for you!"
Naruto grinned. "You know I don't kill or maim anyone from Konoha if I can help it, right?"
Choji nodded, settling down a bit.
"Then come on. Let's do it!" yelled Naruto, his eyes flickering to black.
To the onlookers in the balcony, it looked like Naruto was immediately on the offense, and Choji was hard pressed to defend... but still his defense was strong in taijutsu. Choji was able to expand portions of his body rapidly, and even with the Kamigan telling him where Choji would move to next, it was hard for Naruto to get a fist past a blocking hand that was five feet wide. Then out of nowhere, Choji landed a hit.
Naruto was having a blast! Choji had a solid defense. Naruto was slowly picking up the tempo, faster and harder, trying to break through, when the expected hand wasn't there to block, and Naruto was off balance. It was only slightly, and only for a split second; but Naruto saw a fist loom in his vision too quickly to dodge, and threw up an arm to block.
The punch didn't land when he expected it to, and Naruto froze momentarily, until he saw the fist swelling outside the boundaries of his blocking arm. Had he immediately dodged he could have gotten out of the way, but the expansion of the fist created an optical illusion that made the punch look like it was coming faster than it was. Not that the punch was slow — far from it — but the miscalculation made Naruto hold still for the fraction of a second that it took for the fist to launch from hip level to full extension, while simultaneously expanding to roughly the size of a full grown cow.
Naruto felt like he'd been hit by a truck. No block could absorb the force behind that kind of a blow, and Naruto's elbow drove into his own ribs, his fist into his breastbone, and his body flew upwards in a long arc as blood sprayed from Naruto's mouth. His teeth had slammed shut on the inside of his cheek and the side of his tongue.
Choji knew quite clearly that this was his moment. He quickly judged where Naruto would land and expanded his entire body, before giving a small hop forward to begin his meat tank rotation. If he timed this right, he'd smash into Naruto just as he was about to land… and maybe even get the K.O.
RINNNNGGG-buzzzzzz-RINNNGG
KID! SNAP OUT OF IT!
Bzzzzzz-OWWWWW Shit!
KID! DO SOMETHING!
Naruto shook his head. The force of the blow had been like nothing he'd ever felt, not even the flashback effect of experiencing his clone impaled on the arm of the Kusanin back on the first day of the exam. It was weird, though. Remembering that ghost pain carried no emotional content, no attachment to anything meaningful. Strange to not associate a memory of pain with anything...
KID, WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME. PULL IT TOGETHER!
Naruto realized that his arc of flight had crested, and he was heading earthbound. And with no leverage, he'd end up falling right into Choji's attack as he barreled forward with all the subtlety and gentleness of an avalanche. Naruto assessed the parasite mark and found that it wasn't hurting at all for the moment; he'd be able to pull off at least a few moderate- to high-level jutsu now. Or was it just not hurting compared to the pain in his tongue, ribs and chest? Well, whatever.
Naruto formed himself up and made a kage bunshin, who swung him downwards, increasing his speed and turning his tumble into a straight line attack, calculated to plant both feet with maximum force at the end of his drop into Choji's rolling mass.
It was at this point that Naruto got an unpleasant lesson in applied physics.
Friction is the resistance to slippage between two surfaces when applied to one another. Friction decreases when the two surfaces are buffered by a low viscosity fluid, when the two surfaces are very or relatively smooth, or when pressure between them is low. Conversely, a dry, uneven surface, when applied to another dry, uneven surface, at very high pressures, with no materials or buffering agents between them, creates a zone of high friction, however briefly. In this case, Naruto's feet may as well have been glued to Choji's body as the force of Choji's rotation transferred in part to Naruto's dive, and sent the blond genin tumbling forward completely out of control, landing painfully on his back. The wind knocked out of him, Naruto couldn't dodge as Choji's massive form ran him over like a frog on a highway. Naruto did the only thing he could think of. He kawarimi'd with his clone that was still falling overhead.
Thus began Naruto's second unpleasant lesson of the day as his clone could not successfully disperse before its pseudo body was smashed into pseudo jelly. The splattered clone dispersed from the massive damage and Naruto got hit full in the brain of exactly what it felt like to be ground into a fine, sticky paste in the space of a quarter of a second.
Kage Bunshin no Jutsu was a 'forbidden' jutsu for a reason.
The watching ninja looked on in bewilderment as Choji — cheery, chubby Choji — pounded and battered the 'star' ninja of
Team Akachi. As Naruto fell from the air, he shuddered and shouted a hoarse, pained yelp, landing in a huddled ball while Choji slammed into the arena wall, shaking the tower to its foundations. Naruto forced himself somehow to stand as Choji picked himself up, legs wobbling and looking about fifteen pounds thinner as he tried to gather himself to finish the fight. He'd put everything he had into those attacks, and his panting, shaking form clearly showed it.
Naruto was all over the place. He was a mess. The physical damage was unimportant; Kyuubii's chakra was already dealing with it, but the mental impact of enough pain to force a normal person into shock left him reeling and unsteady. The curse mark was throbbing a little but, compared to what he had just felt, it was almost laughable. His eyes started to focus again as he saw Choji start to roll up into a ball and come at him again. Naruto jumped out of the way, dodging desperately, trying buy himself time to get back into the fight. Choji rolled past far too swiftly for safety, as Naruto felt the wake of air shake him as he barely leaped aside in time. Choji's rolling charge slammed into the opposing arena wall, and the building shook again, as a portion of the wall buckled inwards, stone splintering and flying outwards.
Naruto landed, shaky but improving, and got a clear look at the damage Choji's impact had left. Just goes to show you. Shikamaru always knows what he's talking about.
YOU MEAN IT HAS TAKEN YOU THIS LONG TO FIGURE THAT OUT? FOR A GENIUS, YOU CERTAINLY ARE SLOW.
Naruto snorted, as he formed another batch of fifteen or so Kage Bunshin. Bii-san... with all due respect... shut up.
Naruto sent three of his clones charging forward as Choji, his expansion technique dismissed, leaned against the wall and tossed something small in his mouth. As he bit down and swallowed, the clones attempted a joint attack, one that Choji, suddenly refreshed, blocked with hands that swelled to massive proportions. As the clones rebounded, preparing to renew their assualt, Choji lashed out again with his fists, and Naruto permitted the clones to dissipate rather than let the kage bunshin take the chakra they'd need to maintain their forms under the damage they'd taken.
Their memories flooded his mind, and they'd gotten a look at the pocket Choji was now closing: a small, plastic bag with a number of pellets inside that he would bet were hyorogan, as well as a plastic container with three larger pellets of a more colorful variety. What on earth were those? he wondered to himself. They were a problem. If they were Hyorogan, that meant Choji would be able to use that rolling attack with impunity for as long as his supplies of the soldier pills held out. And it was almost impossible to hit Choji with any sort of lasting effect while he was so massive and rotating the way he did.
Then an almost completely forgotten item occurred to him. In fact, other than a fight in Nami no Kuni, he'd never actually seen them used in a real fight. Naruto reached into a pocket of his own, with a smile. I think that I know EXACTLY the tools I need to fight that rolling attack.
Naruto walked to the front of the group of clones, carefully keeping the hand behind his back in sight of his clones but out of the sight of Choji… and was rewarded with a soft chorus of chuckles in his own voice from behind himself. The clones mimicked his action, and Choji, watching them cautiously from the far side of the ring, felt a moment of anxiety as he saw the look in Naruto's eyes, echoed by his many copies.
Choji shook it off as intimidation. Team Akachi was known to be intimidating... and Naruto had turned out to not be quite so strong as the rumors said, regardless of what he'd heard from Shino and Hinata. Sure, Shino was creepy and all, but everyone knew Hinata absolutely worshipped the ground Naruto walked on, and Shino would support his teammates before all else. Naruto obviously couldn't deal with Choji's sheer, brute force; so Choji would give him more of it. And he might actually make it to chunin through his first Chunin exam.
Choji swelled up again, rolling forward like a juggernaut. Naruto and his small crowd charged forward to meet him. And just before the two forces would meet, Naruto and his clone crowd dodged to either side.
Choji was a victim of momentum; superficial cuts and puncture wounds appeared all over his massive form as he rolled over the caltrops Naruto and his clones had dropped behind them as they charged forward. While none of them was life threatening or even particularly damaging, the unexpected wave of stippling pains unraveled Choji's jutsu and sent him tumbling head over heels, jarring him painfully.
Naruto had no time for triumph; the chakra parasite was throbbing again, getting worse with each pulse, and he knew that if he was going to finish this off he would have to do it quickly. Even so few (for him) as fifteen Kage Bunshin had apparently been too much; his limits with the mark kept dropping the longer he had it. No time left.
Naruto let the clones dissipate, channeling chakra to his feet and staggering slightly as the curse mark spiked viciously. But he mastered himself and leaped, landing atop Choji with a kunai directly under his chin. Most of the caltrops that had stuck into Choji had vanished when the clones who'd dropped them had been released. Choji froze in shock and stared up at Naruto with his old fear surging again, as Naruto looked him in the eye and demanded quietly, "Yield." Choji gulped and said, "P-proctor, I y-yield."
"Winner: Uzumaki Naruto!" Hayate announced.
To Choji, Naruto looked and felt relieved; he got himself up off the shaken Akimichi as Hayate made the announcement. The smaller boy reached down to help Choji up to his feet; but as Choji reached out to take his hand, Naruto suddenly cringed and shook, neck and arm tensing horribly as a strangled noise made its way out of his throat. Choji blinked, only to cry out in astonishment as Naruto collapsed next to him, the blond huddled into a fetal position and desperately clutching his neck.
Hayate ran forward to the blond genin, but Kakashi, now watching the matches after his meeting with the 'Hokage' and Gai, shunshin-ed to the arena floor and spoke to Naruto in soothing, calm tones as he made several hand-seals and touched Naruto's shoulder. From the blacony, Hinata gave a terrified shout and vaulted recklessly over the rail, landing clumsily in her panic, but still ran to Naruto's side. Hayate started to call the medic nins forward but Kakashi halted their progress with a raised hand.
"This isn't so much a medical emergency as one that involves seals," Kakashi said calmly, his face unreadable as ever beneath his mask. "Being that I am more accomplished in what is needed for this particular problem, I will attend to this." Hayate and the medics looked up at the Hokage, who only nodded at them, before they stood back and let Kakashi take Naruto from the room, while Hinata followed closely, eyes only on Naruto.
Choji gazed after the blond genin as he was carried and followed from the room, feeling a mix of confusion, guilt, and uncertainty. What the heck is going on?
End Chapter Seventeen
-AN: Hmm. Well, I guess that wraps that up about as effectively as I could manage. Kind of falls flat there for me at the end, but I couldn't find a more appropriate way to end the chapter. I'd thought about giving the next match-up to sort of flavor the mix for the readers, but most of the matches are going to be very interesting; in fact, the coolness only builds.
A sneak preview for all of you: Match Six is Neji versus Kabuto. Neji fights for the pride of the Hyuuga clan, as well as his status as a genius, while Kabuto fights for his life. The other matches will be fairly epic, or at the very least rather fascinating. I don't intend for any aspect of the prelims to be boring. Gaara does not fight Rock Lee; nonetheless Gaara's fight will be tougher than he would have expected. Things are falling into place for me and while updates will be slower now, I'll still be posting, thanks to my pre-readers who helped me smack my head through that writer's block that was holding me up the last week or so.
A further note on chapter order: The interlude I posted does NOT properly belong in the place that it was posted in the story, but it gives nothing away about the prelim matches and doesn't really hurt any of the surprises I've still got, both contained therein and with events subsequent to it. Eventually, as the story catches up to its proper place I will move the Interlude to where it belongs. Until then, I will leave it where I posted it. Just be forewarned that at some point in the future I will reorder it to its rightful place.
Nothing else major to add, except that I have been exposed to the mind raping horror that is the YouTube series Italian Spiderman. Watch it at your own risk, and beware the penguins.
Ja mata.
-AXENOME