Chapter Sixteen – 'The Preliminaries, Part I'

The fanfiction website is screwing over my dividers so I'll change it over the next few days. Sorry about the inconvenience.

The son of Akasuna no Sasori, the Yondaime Kazekage.

Those words echoed in Tenten's mind, and she knew now why her sensei had warned her to be careful. Akasuna no Sasori was famous for having slain over three hundred Iwagakure shinobi in the Third Great Shinobi War. Even if Yattoko was not Sasori, he was still his son, and so he was bound to have something up his sleeve, something powerful. Tenten had already resigned herself to the fact that she would not make it into the finals: after all, she was only a second generation ninja, and her father had only made it to Tokubetsu Jonin status himself before retiring to work in the trades. However, she was determined to do as best she could here, and hopefully draw out some of Yattoko's special techniques, so that any of her fellow Leaf genin that might face him in the next stage of the Chunin Exams would have an advantage.

Across from her, the red-haired boy stood calmly, waiting for the match to begin, arms crossed over his chest. He was fairly non-descript; with his bright red hair, pale white skin and white robes, he could have easily passed for his father in his younger age. Tenten knew she would have to be a fool to believe the boy was unprepared. Doubtlessly he was only waiting for the proctor to start the battle.

Speak of the devil. Uchiha Raika backed away from the two, anticipating a fast, harsh brawl. "Are both fighters ready?" He asked, activating his swirling Sharingan eyes to keep better track of the battle.

Tenten nodded her head furiously. It was now or never. Yattoko merely gave a mere twitch of the face to indicate his readiness, his calm, unblinking face focused on Tenten all the while, slightly perturbing her. Raika took one last look between the two of them, before bringing his hand down. "Begin!"

Up from the stands, Naruto held back a smirk, internally shaking his head, all while keeping a calm, observant gaze at the battle. Earlier, he had seen the pose that Tenten had taken just before the battle had started: that of a defeated kunoichi. Within a few seconds, however, she had stood upright, looking every bit the defiant female again. Clearly she was going to give it her all. Too bad for her, though. Naruto didn't know the full extent of what Yattoko could do, but he knew a large portion of it, and what he did know terrified him of just how strong Yattoko might be when he fully matured into his abilities.

Where Akasuna no Sasori was known as the Scorpion, Yattoko was known as the Pincer.

Chakra was an odd, wonderful entity. It was an energy form that could take on a semblance of mass, and be manipulated to do multiple things. One such thing that it could do was form 'strings', which the user could send vibrations along back and forth, transmitting information and physical movements. This allowed a puppeteer to control his puppets, while also receiving visual and auditory feedback from his creations.

However, chakra also had its limitations. For example, it could only 'travel' straight or in a parabola, restricting the chakra string between a puppeteer and his puppet to either being a straight line or going in a steady wave-like movement. While a puppeteer could hardly be considered a close-range combat fighter, this also meant he could only control a limited area in front of him, as he could hardly curve a chakra string around his opponent to hit him from the back. A few had worked their way around this. Akasuna no Sasori did it with sheer brute force, amassing over a hundred puppets that he could call up if he was ever pressed to reveal his complete power. Hakko Awai had done it through the use of clones.

One person, however, had defied the laws and limits imposed on chakra. How he had done it, Yattoko would not reveal to anybody, not even his own father.

Tenten could only allow herself a split second to gape, before she had to jump backwards to evade, of all things, a mace. Having been dodged, the weapon quickly flew back to Yattoko before it disappeared from sight. Tenten was not even allowed a split second as Yattoko through a ball at the ground in front of him, exploding into a big burst of smoke, blocking off all visibility. Taking a deep breath, she quickly moved to one of the arena walls, theorising that she would be better off if she could only be attacked from three sides and from above in the smoke.

She wouldn't make it to the wall, however. Only through sharp hearing and instinct honed through a year's training underneath a highly physical instructor allowed her to hear the whistle of another weapon through the air. Jumping high into the air through the use of chakra, she temporarily rose above the cloud of smoke. With the few seconds of visibility granted to her, she back-flipped away from the epicentre of where Yattoko had launched the smoke bomb, trying to put as much distance away from the opposing genin as possible.

While flying through the air, however, she saw several kunai flying at her out of the smoke. She made to take out a pair of kunai to knock all of them away, only for her body to freeze as she saw what she considered to be the impossible happen: the kunai suddenly curved in mid-air while still coming towards her. Shaking her thoughts quickly, she let the adrenaline course through her body as she barely parried all the kunai from different directions.

Landing on the ground, she saw the kunai she had batted away suddenly retract back into the now mostly-visible area of smoke that the Kazekage's son had created. Chakra strings, she told herself, even though the studies of foreign techniques in the Academy had never said anything about a chakra string being able to curve like that, but it made sense with his father being a puppeteer.

However, the tempo for had been set, as Tenten had already been pushed hard on the defensive. The immediate danger suddenly gone, her body's release of adrenaline was declining. She would have to either end the battle soon or get an adrenaline rush back again or else she would risk a crash. Knees bent to take off from the ground again in the face of this unusual fighting style, she waited as the rest of the smoke cleared away, leaving Yattoko Awai in a mostly standing position, but with his arms and hands outstretched in front of him.

Quickly collecting her breath, Tenten reached up down into her slacks, grabbing a scroll held on an inside holster on each side of her hips. There was no shame in using her trump card if it would force him to reveal something that his next opponent could counter...right?

It was a rather remarkable style, Naruto observed. The hands and wrists had a large number of the bones in the body, and similarly they had over one hundred of the three hundred sixty one tenketsu points on the human body. Yattoko had engraved a storage seal on the joints of each of his fingers and thumbs, giving him twenty-eight in all. Through expert control of his chakra, coming from years of using chakra strings from those same digits, he could call up any of the weapons that he held in his seals in less than a fifth of a second, and could similarly put it away in less than a fifth of a second. Combined with his unique talents in chakra strings, he could hit somebody from ten different directions with ten different weapons in less than a second, forcing a fast victory if he needed to.

Of course, he knew the Kazekage's son was just toying with Tenten, or else it would indeed have been ended in a second. He had only met Yattoko on a few occasions, becoming sort of distant friends, but he could already tell the boy was one who liked to analyse an opponent as much as possible before finishing him or her off, probably hoping to find something he could fit into his own style.

Speak of the devil. Yattoko had given Tenten a break, most likely waiting for her to pull out a trump card if she had any. Leaning forward on the railing of the viewing area, Naruto watched as Tenten took out a pair of large scrolls, placing them on the stone floor. She briefly touched both scrolls, channelling chakra from her hands into the rolls of paper, before they began to rise into the air and release smoke. With continued interest he watched Tenten jump into the air, grabbing onto the scrolls and then furling them open. "Sōshōryū" (Twin Rising Dragons) Tenten shouted out as the kanji on the unfurled scrolls suddenly lit up.

Naruto had to whistle at the display as a mass of weapons came out of both scrolls, all of them honing in on Yattoko. He liked to think he had fast eyes, but even he could not keep a track of the flurry of kunais, swords, senbon, shuriken and various other assorted weaponry that came out, though he noted the metal wires attached to several of the larger pieces of equipment. No matter, he was confident Yattoko had something up his sleeve to counter the move.

Yattoko took the opportunity to prove him correct. One second, Yattoko was in his assumed position, and the next, he had a large metal shield easily several meters in its dimensions flying out from his person. Naruto covered his ears quickly using his hands, and just in time: even the muffled screech of metal against metal dealt a few seconds of minor pain to his hypersensitive hearing as the shield blocked all the items that Tenten had summoned out of the scroll.

Tenten took a second to gape at the shield, before she tried to pull back on the weapons that were attached to her fingers by metal wire. To her surprise, the wires all turned up slack. She attempted to move, but before she had a chance to react, she felt cold metal at her neck.

"Surrender now," A voice hissed in her ear, as the rest of her body caught up with what had just happened. An arm around her neck and body heat not her own affecting her back alerted her to Yattoko's presence, and it did not take much to deduce he had just gotten her with a kunai to the neck.

Refraining from gulping or swallowing with her neck precociously close to a razor-sharp edge, she spoke carefully. "Proctor, I surrender."

Throughout the whole battle, it seemed as if the observing area had been holding its breath, and it had just released it. A quick buzz sparked up, as several of the genin began to talk to each other. Yattoko had barely had to move, and only a few of them had seen his movements as he first cut through all the metal wires and then come up behind Tenten.

Naruto looked at the boy in green spandex who had earlier been with Tenten down in the arena. Quickly going through his mind to see whether he was 'supposed to' have an idea of who this boy was, he came out in the affirmative when remembering a couple of classes between the upper-years back in the Academy. "Yo, you're Rock Lee, right?" He asked the chunin hopeful.

The boy spun around, catching Naruto off-guard with the ferocity in his eyes. "Yosh! That I am! What do you wish to ask of me?" He queried, grabbing Naruto's hands in his own

"Uh...right..." Naruto said, slightly perturbed. Freeing his hands away, he pointed down to Tenten, noticing Yattoko whispering another couple of words to Tenten and the kunoichi blushing. Figured Yattoko would at least be a bit of a playboy. "She's your teammate, right?" Cutting Lee off before he could go on another awkward tangent, Naruto continued, "Not to be rude or demeaning or anything, but I think she needs to diversify her talents a little bit more."

Lee frowned. "That is not very nice, Uzumaki Naruto-kun," though he privately slightly agreed, "Tenten takes great pride in her abilities with weapons. It is that which stokes her flames of youth!" Again, he had begun to get flamboyant towards the end, pointing one index finger to the sky.

"While you make a good point, Naruto," A deep voice came from behind the flaxen-haired genin, "Leave that to her sensei to help her. Maito Gai is a good sensei, if a bit eccentric, and I am sure that Tenten-chan has been taught other things that she does not use on a regular basis."

Naruto whirled around at the familiar voice, coming face-to-face with his sensei. "Yamato-sensei!" He exclaimed. "I didn't see you with the Hokage earlier, where were you?"

Yamato allowed a small grin. "I had a few other things to take care of that only I could do, but I managed to free up some time to come and watch you finally." Eying the arena and its undamaged state, he quickly deduced the lack of matches. "I assume that was the first match?" Getting a nod, Yamato stroked his chin. "Good, good. Well, congratulations on making it to the third round, Naruto-kun, even if it is the preliminaries. I guess I made a good choice in nominating you three."

"You guess?" Naruto threw his hands up in the air in mock protest. "You mean you weren't entirely faithful in our abilities to make it this far, Yamato-sensei?"

"Now, now, Naruto," Yamato said, only partially going along with the act, "You do have to remember you three are rookies, and besides, I have had you for less than half the time that the other jonin senseis have had the rookie teams. Although," he noted wryly, "That you were the only rookie team to make it here is icing on the cake for me to mention to Asuma or Kurenai-san." Asuma seemed to be optimistic that his team had gotten lost but was still alive. Yamato certainly hoped so.

As Naruto was busy squawking a "Yamato-sensei!" out in protest, Rock Lee, who had up until now been silent in the face of the conversation between student and sensei, decided to butt in. Grabbing Naruto by the shoulders with one arm, he shouted, "Yosh! The flames of youth burn wildly in you, Naruto-kun! I can see why Gai-sensei has praised your team so and warned us to watch out for you!"

"Lee-san," Yamato spoke up. When the green-donning genin turned around, the Shodai quasi-clone fixed him with a weak version of his scary face, causing Lee to jump back, freeing Naruto up from his grip. "My student needs to fight now, you know."

"...Huh?" was all Naruto had to respond before turning around to see the board. On the top was his name Uzumaki Naruto. Quickly looking down, he watched the other bar scroll through several names before it settled on Shoja Akatsuchi.

Naruto took in a deep breath once he remembered his opponent from his intelligence reports. Good Kami, he was fighting the grandson of Ganseki, the golem summoner. Feeling a squeeze on his shoulder, he turned around to see Yamato looking at him, slightly worried with his eyebrows creased. "Naruto," Yamato warned, "I want you to be very careful. Your opponent is related to a man who can summon inanimate constructs called golems. I have no idea if Akatsuchi has had any training from his relative, but you should be very careful none the same. Forfeit if you have to."

Naruto nodded, gaining a grim look on his features. "H-Hai, sensei."

And so it was, only a minute later, that Naruto found himself looking opposite his opponent. The black-haired larger Akatsuchi looked deceptively fat, much like Chouji was (or rather, had been), but Naruto was not fooled. One hit from this guy could knock him out if it was to the wrong part of this body, notwithstanding the golem the guy could vomit out from his mouth. He would have to be careful to feign surprise should Akatsuchi pull that golem technique out, as well as not display too much of his own prowess. That was the key: as much as he knew he could easily defeat Akatsuchi without much effort, he could not show off too much strength or else questions would be asked. Although it would sting his pride, if worse came to worse he would have to forfeit and not go to the finals.

"Konoha genin," Akatsuchi hissed in a surprisingly high voice, a yellow scarf around his throat, signalling his hostility before the battle had even begun.

Naruto didn't let himself be fazed, as he growled back at his opponent in a low guttural tone, "Iwa genin." Tugging at the hem of his black sleeve, he pulled out a kunai from the inside.

Up above in the observing area, Sarutobi watched over the proceedings, analysing the scenario with a calm, methodical eye. This should be interesting, he thought to himself. Don't prove a disappointment to me, Naruto-kun.

Uchiha Raika, who had had a fairly easy first match, particularly with a genin who had not deigned to kill his opponent even though he could have with his speed, braced himself for what he foresaw as a likely huge second match, and decided that he should leave his Sharingan eyes activated. Looking between the two, he asked, "Are both fighters ready?" Getting furious nods from each genin, he went through the customary raising of his arm, before lowering it again. "Begin!"

Well, that's the end of that chapter. I know I said I would try to start updating quicker, but Yattoko's style of attack took me far too long to brainwash up :/ I originally was going to have at least two, possibly three fights in this chapter, got to the end of the first match, went "meh", looked at story stats and realised there hasn't been a short chapter in a while, and concluded it up quickly. The next chapter should have a lot more meat to it, and the prelims should be wrapped up in three chapters, though I'll have to come up with a few more OCs to fill it out.

That said, in this chapter, I wrote some stuff from Naruto's perspective for a good reason: he knows what some of the Sand genin can do, and their history. I'm not going to have everyone suddenly stop in the middle of the battle and monologue about what they can do. They're bloody ninja.

As a side note, for those of you who might have been wondering when Rise of a Kitsune is getting an update, it's going through a rewrite. Far too many clichés that I don't really like, plus the rewrite is geared to progress a lot smoother into what I had overall planned for the storyline.

The fanfiction website is screwing over my dividers so I'll change it over the next few days.

That said

Hells Mercenary – Pretty much, I dislike how Naruto broadcasts his hate for all of Konoha to see. Artful Lounger has a pretty good subversion in Kage no Naruto

Lazy Bastard – Wait and see!

greywizard_dumbledort – My reasoning goes a bit like that on both points. Canon Sasuke goes nuts when activating the Curse Seal in the Forest of Death, but at the VotE, he doesn't really go nuts until Level 2, suggesting some level of resistance after he regains his body strength.

Also, I threw up three Naruto story challenges on my profile. For those who are interested, a basic rundown:

Retro Naruto

This one requires a bit of background. Read Deathfire-san's 'Only Human' or MystikD109's 'A New Cause'. The former was started in January 2007 and finished 6 months later, while the latter was started up in 2004 and finished in 2005. Mystik's Akatsuki is nothing like what Akatsuki is today, because few details had been released on Akatsuki at that time. Akatsuki in Only Human strongly resembles canon!Akatsuki but it was done before the second databook was released, so there are little bits such as Kakuzu being 300 years old, and since it was before the Jiraiya visits Ame arc, the author envisions the Akatsuki leader to be a sort of technological villain. Most chapters of 'The Nine Broken Mirrors' by Ayien and of 'Lost Soul' by LD 1449 are also good to read to get an idea of what I mean.

Point being, these authors started about 150-250 issues ago, so they had to create their own worlds . That's what the challenge of 'Retro Naruto' is all about. Forget all the recent history with Pein and Madara. Don't use anything that was introduced beyond the end of the Kakuzu and Hidan arc (with a couple of exceptions - you can feel free to use the authentic tailed beasts, since the Legend of the Tailed Beasts is bs, as well as actual real names such as Namikaze Minato and Hiruzen being Sarutobi's first name. If you really want you could get away with jinchuuriki and kage identities), if that: you could even use only Part I material + Kakashi Gaiden and pretend Part II doesn't exist at all.

A few of you might ask: "What's the point?" Well, it seems to me like a lot of writers have basically become constrained by canon material instead of trying to expand on it. A ton of fics are basically just rewritten canon with a bit of a twist thrown in. If you ditch the whole Rinnegan, super-ultra-mega Sharingan, ROOT, the planned Uchiha coup, etc., then you have to come up with your own ideas on a lot of things, like why Itachi killed the clan, what the relations are between the hidden villages, what the motives of the Akatsuki are, who leads the Akatsuki, etc, while still keeping the core of the story of Naruto's perservance in odds roughly the same.

There aren't really any specific other guidelines to follow here other than what has been followed before.

Normal Naruto

I s ee a lot of fics where the Kyuubi never attacked and so Naruto gets to grow up as the Yondaime's son.

The challenge for this fic is to take a twist on that. Naruto is no longer the son of the Yondaime. Instead, he is a normal person who isn't related to royalty or clans or any Hokage, and he ISN'T a jinchuuriki. Again, he is NORMAL, at least by shinobi standards. He doesn't have a bloodline either. Yes, this Naruto may as well be an OC, but then most fics see a Naruto who is basically an OC anyways, just thrown into canon!Naruto's circumstances. What differs here is that this 'Normal Naruto' shares most of canon!Naruto's personality: loyal, with unwavering willpower and endless determination.

Mute Naruto

I've seen se veral blind Naruto fics, a few deaf Naruto fics, and a few others where he is missing a limb or is unable to use chakra at all, but only a couple of Mute Naruto fics, with one of those being decent. Being mute, for Naruto, is arguably the least debilitating physical defect that he could have (as even real life military organizations use hand signs a lot, and you can write shinobi up as doing the same). However, it does have two big effects: canon!Naruto acts out for attention, but a Naruto without a voice, while still able to do the same, is much more ineffective in doing so. Additionally, he has to communicate through hand signs, expressions, or through the written word. This would develop his patience at least, but also make him a bit less optimistic and a bit more moodier. Additionally, since he cannot speak, he cannot verbalise a jutsu when he uses it. Depending on what school of fanon thought you subscribe to, verbalising a jutsu isn't necessary, but helps significantly in concentration and stabilisation of the jutsu, so Naruto will have to work around that.