A/N: Okay. This one's another long one, and is going to be the beginning and cover some of the chuunin exams (which'll be really choppy in parts, 'coz some are more important than others XD). There's goin' to be some fun stuff comin' up about the genins, so get ready! :) And…Neji's not gonna show up much again XD He'll be like, the "main" character after the chuunin exams tho'. :)
Oh yes, very minor manga spoilers, but nothing really…bad. :)
Thank you for the reviews you guys!
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An Unexpected Night
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Chapter Five
That day that he found the semi-conscious Neji on his kitchen floor, he hadn't asked questions about what had happened and instead had just helped the boy up and gave him one of the painkillers before putting him to bed. He had cleaned the mess that had been made, all the while trying not to think about it, and whether Sakura had known something like this was going to happen; and if she had, why hadn't she tried to prevent it? Or…was that what the vile and painkillers were for?
He honestly hadn't known, and didn't think that it wouldn't have proper for him to have questioned Neji when the boy clearly was too stunned by what had happened to have answered his questions. So he had let it go, pushed it to the back of his mind for later questioning, and instead focused on what was immediate; which had been the chuunin exams.
Now here he was, a couple days later and "enjoying" his position in the chuunin exams.
Shikamaru yawned as he sat down on the hard stone floor of the building where the preliminary matches were going to be held. He had been in Hayate's old position for about a year now, for most of which he had spent learning about what to do in certain situations, when to stop a match, when to step in, etc. and running through mock-exam exercises so it would become an unconscious move to step in if need be. Needless to say, as his first time judging matches from down below (and not participating from above), it didn't seem so bad; but then again, he'd complain about it regardless, especially if more genin than normal were to show up (which, this time around anyway, was expected; it was estimated that twice as many teams than ever before had shown up and quite a few of them had teams that, to him, sounded too much like Neji's for comfort).
Softly he sighed to himself and glanced at the clock on the wall. Because of the expected large turn-out of genin going into the preliminaries, the exams had actually started at five that morning, instead of the usual seven. He had been instructed to be at his post by 7:30, since by then the teams would already have started going into the "Forest of Death", and he was supposed to be there in case there was a repeat of Team Gaara those years ago when they got through in an hour and 37 minutes. (Honesty, the only team he could see doing that was the one he had adopted, but he hadn't actually seen any of the other teams; heck, he didn't even know, beyond Neji, who was even a sensei!)
Yawning again, he laid himself down on the stone and put his arms under his head as a make-shift pillow. It was only around 7:40; even if a team managed to come in the same time as Gaara's had, he'd still be able to catch himself a half-an-hour nap.
--
"Shikamaru! Sleeping on the job?"
Shikamaru groaned as he slowly opened his eyes, and resisted the urge to jump when several familiar faces came into view. Reluctantly he sat up, glanced at the clock (which read 7:53), and laid back down in mild annoyance. "I was going to get up in 20 minutes, Sakura. What are you guys doing here, anyway?"
Sakura grinned wryly, and thumbed in her companion's direction. "They wanted to come up here since they're positive that their genin will make it through, and I'm here as the head medic in charge of the exams." Sheepishly she added, "And…I wanted to cheer on Aimi-chan, Hiroshi, and Keiichi, since I'm sure they'd make it through as well."
Shikamaru glanced at Naruto, Lee, and TenTen, and sighed when he saw that the three of them were animatedly bickering about something (their genin, probably). His gaze momentarily lingered on Naruto and the slightly tattered trench coat he was wearing that he had gotten from Tsunade on his 18th birthday; on that day they had all learned something they had never even had guessed about the boy's parents, and although Naruto had refused to even touch it at first, Shikamaru could now see that the long jacket was very important to him.
"Hey, Shikamaru-senpai. You're not gonna believe this."
Shikamaru narrowed his eyes slightly as the headphones to his mic crackled to life, and the voice of one of the chuunin helpers streamed through. "What is it?"
"One of the teams is coming at you fast; I'd guess that they'll reach you in approximately ten minutes."
Shikamaru's eyes widened slightly, catching the attention of the other three in the room. "Ten minutes? Are you sure?"
"Positive. I'm not really familiar with the teams, but it's definitely one of the ones from here."
"Konoha, then." Shikamaru muttered to himself as his gaze landed on Naruto, Lee, and TenTen. "What about the others?"
"Just a sec." The mic died for a moment, then came back to life with, "Um…it looks like one of the other Konoha teams is right behind them, maybe by 5 minutes. The other two seem to be engaged in battles with teams from other countries, but are still pretty far ahead of the main group."
Silently Shikamaru held his thumb up as a signal that all four Konoha teams were doing well before speaking again. "How many teams are left?"
"Mm…15, maybe. Man, these genin are tough! I think we'll have to do what Tsunade-sama was saying about doing two fights at one time, if we're to stay on schedule. I'll keep you updated, 'kay? Over'n'out."
Sighing, Shikamaru turned his mic off and ran a hand through his hair. "Someone's got a crazy team; they'll be here in about ten minutes."
"Ten minutes? But…they've only been out there for maybe an hour and a half! They've got until mid-afternoon, so why so quick?" Sakura's eyes narrowed in confusion, her gaze locking on the clock. "That's nearly ten minutes faster than what Gaara, Temari, and Kankurou did!"
"Damn…" Shikamaru muttered to himself, then added, "Another team's about 5 minutes behind them; both are from here."
Naruto and Lee cheered and TenTen smiled, while Sakura and Shikamaru exchanged a glance. Just whose team was it that shot through the forest like it was nothing? Apparently Neji's team wasn't the only one with ahead-of-the-class genin on it…
--
A little under ten minutes later they could hear the muffled sounds of shouting, causing them all to stop and see whose team it was that had come first. Slowly the voices became easier to hear, until they could clearly hear a young girl's voice.
"Kenta-kun, matte yo! There's not a prize for being the first ones here, you know!"
"Yuna, just leave him be. You know how he is when he gets excited."
Shikamaru had no idea whose team it was, even with their names being said. Just as he was about to turn to ask whose genin they were, the shouted, "Lee-sensei!" stopped him and caused his jaw to slacken slightly. They were Lee's, huh? Somehow he got the feeling he should've known that…
Immediately after the shout three genin skidded to a stop, a matching grin on all three faces. The first was a young boy with crimson red hair cut short so it reached just below his chin, and dark blue eyes. He was wearing a black undershirt and baggy black pants, and a white jacket that only had one button in the middle of the boy's chest; in the back it hung down to about mid-knee, and swished with every slight movement that the boy made. On his back was an equally crimson red staff with a symbol that Shikamaru couldn't recognize carved into it. His hitai-ate was tied around his forehead where it was meant to be, and held back the boy's hair away from his eyes.
The second was a girl with long, dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her shirt was brown and black, with an off-white strip running from one of her shoulders down all the way to the bottom of it, which ended just below her hips. Her shorts were brown and black like her shirt, and also had an off-white strip running down it, only this time it ran down both legs. Her hitai-ate was sown into her clothes at just below her stomach.
The other boy's outfit was tame compared to his teammates, with a pair of baggy tan shorts and a civilian-style navy blue shirt. His hair dark violet, short, and stuck out at random angles and generally ignored all the laws of physics. His eyes were a calm shade of grey, and were currently sparkling with amusement.
"These are my youthful genin, minna!"
Shikamaru turned his attention to Lee, who had joined the three genin and was now grinning like a proud father; or, in this case, team leader. Somehow not one of the three seemed annoyed at Lee's over exuberance, and actually seemed to welcome it; if the grins that stayed in place didn't give that away enough.
"The name's Takahashi Kenta. Hope you're all doin' well." Kenta winked at Sakura and TenTen, and Shikamaru had to hold in a laugh when the two girls raised an eyebrow in return. Apparently they hadn't expected for someone on Lee's team to be a shameless flirt.
"Umm…I'm Torisei Yuna. It's nice to meet you everyone." Yuna smiled shyly, the carefree grin from before gone (from the looks of it she was shy around people that weren't on her team, which immediately reminded him of Hinata).
"Yamakazi Mitsuru. Ignore Kenta, he's just an idiot." Mitsuru grinned and dodged an attack from Kenta, who was mock-glaring at him, amusement in his eyes as well. "You only attack 'coz you know it's true, Ken."
"Hai hai." The still grinning Lee rested a hand on both boys' shoulders, and said, "I have faith in the youthfulness of my students, and know they will go far!"
As Lee launched into a praise session of his genin, Shikamaru blocked him out and turned his attention to the front again. The chuunin had told him that another group was coming right after them, so they should've been coming any minute.
"Lookin' for Hiro's group?"
Shikamaru blinked at hearing Kenta talk to him, and nodded. "They were behind you, weren't they?"
Kenta nodded, and brought his hands up to lock behind his head. "They didn't wanna race, though, which sucked much since it would've been fun…"
Shikamaru simply smirked slightly in response, before talking caught his attention. He couldn't hear much, but what he could hear confused him beyond belief.
"…Kei, don't make a scene, alright?"
"…Screw off, Arakaki."
"Oh, c'mon you guys! Don't start that here, save it for some time else!"
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow as a very peeved looking Keiichi walked into the room, while a sighing Hiroshi and a mildly annoyed Aimi trailed behind him. The trio normally was very friendly with each other, so this sudden turn of events seemed strange.
"Oi. Don't be a pain in the ass, you guys. I have enough to deal with right now; I don't need you three bickering and adding more to that." Shikamaru said as the three stopped in front of him, their eyes purposely locking onto spots in the complete opposite direction from each other. When they didn't respond Shikamaru sighed and ran a hand through his hair in slight annoyance.
He, of course, didn't notice the look of worry that Kenta sent toward someone in his group; if he had noticed, he might've understood – at least partially – the reason behind it. But since he didn't, the look went unnoticed by all, and most importantly was unnoticed by the one it was aimed at.
--
Over the next couple of hours the rest of the teams arrived, coming to a total of 12 teams making it through; which was cut down from the 36 teams that had originally gone into the forest. When all the team leaders had arrived and moved to stand with their respective group, Shikamaru cleared his throat and begun.
"Because of the large amount of genin that had managed to get through Practice Area #44, we'll have to do preliminary matches to bring the group to a more manageable level. And since there're a lot of matches to get through, we're going to split the group in half so we can be running two matches at the same time to make this part of the tournament move quicker. Any questions?" When no hands were raised in response to his query, Shikamaru motioned toward Genma who had joined him just minutes before and added, "Genma's going to read off a list of names. Those people whose name he calls are to follow him into the other room, where he'll be holding the other half of the matches."
As if on cue Genma began reading. "The following people please follow me: Yoshizumi Akio, Natsume Masao, Kaoin Yasuhiro, Yoshioka Tomoko, Kushinagi Akira, Matano Kohaku, Yamakazi Mitsuru, Kawabata Mahiru, Uetake Daichi, Yunokawa Tetsuo, Sanjo Kosuke, Shibata Daisuke, Ono Yuu, Ikeda Youhei, Etsuko Jun, Minami Hideo, Shigenoi Iori, and Hiyashi Aimi. The rest of you stay here and listen to Shikamaru's instructions."
The group that had their names called begun walking away, some a little more hesitantly than others. After receiving a hug from both of her partners, and giving Shikamaru a hug of her own, Aimi joined the group and waved once before the doors were closed
behind them. Sighing softly, Shikamaru gathered the remaining genins attention and started. "Alright, so the matches are going to be randomized. You win when your opponent falls unconscious, gives up, or, in an extreme event, dies. When all of you arrive on the balcony that lines the walls, we'll begin."
Silently Shikamaru watched the genin and their respective team leader climb both sets of stairs, until the last one stopped at the top and rested against the cold bars. Nodding slightly to himself, he turned to the wall that had the board for the matches and pushed the button that got the machine running. After flipping through the names for a few seconds, two names remained on the board.
Taking in a deep breath, he said, "Takahashi Kenta versus Urasawa Ren." When the two boys arrived on the ground floor, he held up a hand then quickly brought it down. "Begin!"
He honestly hadn't known what to expect from the red head on Lee's team, but this certainly wasn't it. The boy's movements were fluid and controlled perfectly, and were quick enough to easily confuse his opponent almost immediately. For the whole fight – if you could even call the two-minute battle that – a smile remained on Kenta's face; it didn't even seem like the boy had actually tried to fight his opponent and was instead playing with him, as if the entire exam was nothing more than a big game to him.
When Ren fell to the ground and didn't make any motions that implied that he was going to get up, Shikamaru held up his hand. "Winner, Takahashi Kenta!"
On the other board that was behind Shikamaru, Kenta's name appeared at the top; cheers from Yuna and Lee resounded in the closed room and echoed long after they had stopped.
The next line of matches went by quickly, and didn't really have any reason to stick in Shikamaru's mind for more than a couple seconds. He only paid true attention to the match when one of the names he had been waiting for appeared.
"Arakaki Hiroshi versus Tsushima Ryou."
When the two boys reached the floor, one faking a yawn while the other looked on in annoyance, Shikamaru repeated the motion he had made for the previous matches and said, "Begin!"
The fight again seemed mismatched, like Kenta's had been, and was over long before anything truly interesting appeared in Hiroshi's arsenal of ninjutsu techniques. (Sadly, Shikamaru had actually been expecting something interesting to have come from that fight. Apparently he had overestimated the opponent, or underestimated Hiroshi; either way it didn't matter since it didn't give him too much entertainment.)
The other match he had wanted to watch, which had been Keiichi's, also didn't come off as too interesting, since clearly the level that Neji's genin were at was far above those of the genin from other villages, save the few others that had managed to surprise Shikamaru by how quickly they also managed to win their fights. Before he knew it all the matches went through, for both him and Genma, and the board listing the genin that were moving on was full.
"We still have far too many genin to do the actual tournament part of the exams, so we'll have to go through another round of preliminaries tomorrow. But for now you guys can leave and rest up, and those still in it should be back here by seven tomorrow morning."
At the dismissive tone of Genma's voice, the genin and their team leaders began trailing out the door, the victorious ones talking excitedly to their partners about their next fight the following day.
Now he had to make his way to the meeting with Tsunade to get to, which he dearly hoped wouldn't take too long to get done with…
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Shikamaru yawned widely as he finally stepped into his house after the first part of the preliminaries and the 2-hour-long meeting him and the other exam supervisors had had with Tsunade. They had decided on doing the next round of preliminaries as they had done the first – half with Shikamaru, the other with Genma – which would give each group a bye-person, therefore making later rounds a little easier to handle so there wouldn't be so many singles fighters there.
Mentally he shook his head to rid himself of the thoughts of tomorrow, and instead reflected on the matches he had witnessed that day. It was a really curious thing, the way those three fought so similarly. It was like they were all from the same mold, even thought their specialties varied; at least on Hiroshi and Keiichi's part, since he hadn't actually seen Kenta fight enough to figure out what his specialty was.
"…You're back. I was going to make ramen if you hadn't returned in a couple more hours."
Shikamaru glanced at Neji, who, for all intents and purposes, looked like he had just woken up, and shrugged. "I'm sick of ramen. Soba work for you?"
"…So you go from one noodle meal to the other?" Neji raised an eyebrow before he turned away in a dismissive manner. "Whatever's fine."
Shikamaru grunted in response and headed for the kitchen, his mind returning to the fights. His body went through the motions of making dinner while he thought of the way the three fought, and ended up re-verifying his suspicion that they fought too much alike for it to all be a coincidence; for Hiroshi and Keiichi to at the very least resemble each other's fighting style he could understand, since they were on the same team, but Kenta? He really hadn't known Neji's group before having picked them up, but for some reason he was fairly certain that lee's genin and Neji's genin didn't mingle much, let alone train together.
And since he was thinking along the lines of curious happenings, what had happened between Hiroshi and Keiichi before the matches, right after coming out of the Forest? He had never heard Keiichi call Hiroshi by his last name, and he had never heard Hiroshi be even remotely annoyed at anyone. It didn't make any sense to him at all. Maybe Neji'd know something about their relationship that he did not…?
"If you keep staring off into space like that, Nara, the noodles will overcook."
Shikamaru was torn out of his thoughts by Neji's quiet voice, and then unconsciously widened his eyes in surprise when he felt a soft hand covering his own. For a single moment he thought that Neji had something weird on his mind, before he silently let out the breath he had been holding when Neji simply removed his hand from the pot handle it had been on and begun finishing the remaining parts of the meal that Shikamaru had been too deep in thought to bother starting. Clearing his throat of the sudden lump that made its way there, he took and step back and tried to figure out just why he had had that kind of reaction to Neji; let alone another guy! Mentally he shook his head and watched Neji work, his mind drifting back to the "relationship troubles" that Hiroshi and Keiichi had been experiencing. Now was the perfect moment to ask about it…
"Do Hiroshi and Keiichi fight often?" Neji froze and glanced at him, before continuing on with what he was doing, making Shikamaru add, "I was asking because they were arguing a bit after coming out of the Forest. It seemed a little odd for Keiichi to call Hiroshi by his last name, so that's why I was wondering…but if it's too much of a pain to explain, I don't really need to know."
"Is calling Hiro "Arakaki" all that he did?"
Shikamaru, who had actually thought that Neji wouldn't answer him, blinked momentarily in surprise before shrugging. "I couldn't really hear them all that well, but that's all Keiichi did. Before that, though, Hiroshi told to him to not make a scene, whatever that meant."
Neji's eyes narrowed slightly as he muttered something to himself, and then turned to face Shikamaru. "Keep an eye on them for the next couple of days. Make sure they're separated at all times and make sure that Hiro doesn't talk to Kenta." At Shikamaru's confused look, he sighed. "Kei's like this because Kenta's there."
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "Kenta? Why?"
A funny look entered Neji's eye as he grabbed two bowls out of the cabinet and set them on the counter. "You really don't know? And they say you're intelligent."
Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. "I'd know if it were important enough to know."
Neji laughed dryly before handing Shikamaru one of the bowls. "Then this is one bit of important information that you don't know, Nara."
--
Neji hadn't said much else after that, leaving the two of them to sit on Shikamaru's couch in slightly-companionable silence. Although he thought about it for the rest of the night, Shikamaru couldn't find out what connection the two had with one another, leaving him clueless about why Keiichi could be acting so out of character because of one boy on Lee's team.
The following morning the thought still was bothering him, even as the group split in half like it had done before. He had even been so deep in thought to not notice that several fights had gone by; only when a soft "Shika-sensei? Are you okay?" reached his ears did he wrench himself out of his thoughts.
Blinking a couple times, he laid eyes on Aimi who was standing in front of him, her opponent standing across from her, a mildly annoyed look on both of their faces. Apparently he had called them down for their fight, but had yet to give them the signal (which made sense for Aimi to worry about him).
For a few seconds Shikamaru scanned the other girl Aimi was fighting – Itsuki, was her name – and saw the familiar Suna symbol tied around her waist. In appearance the girl actually reminded him a lot of Temari, aside from the fact that the girl's hair was tied in one ponytail instead of the four that Temari had hers in. What set her off as different, though, was the way that tiny, slightly twisted smirk settled so easily into place as he raised his hand to begin the fight.
What he couldn't know at that moment was that the blind faith he had put into Aimi – since he had seen her fight for the past week, and knew that she was highly skilled – would be his downfall, and that Aimi wouldn't be the one winning.
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A/N: Hmmmmm…yay for choppy chuunin exams! XD There's actually only going to be three fights I will focus on…and Aimi's fight is one of them. :) So all the rest will be quickly skimmed over, all the way through the remaining part of the tournament. And we had some very slight Neji-stuff in here, since it felt wrong to have him not in a chapter. :shifty eyes:
The exams'll be over next chapter (which should be out Saturday), so Neji'll play a bigger role in two! And other stuff about the genin will be uncovered. :)
Read and review!