AN
Fangirl squad members DarkRavie and Serenity Maxwell: thanks for your support as always, and Maxwell, yeah, sometimes the short chappies are the most interesting- sometimes…. Then you've got the long epic battles like the raid on Akatsuki that I had to shorten if I was ever going to finish, and the upcoming battles here in the chuunin exam.
To all!: Sorry about the long delay betwixt and between- I expected to write a lot over vacation- but aside from a serious case of writer's block- I also fell sick during break- :Insert glare at my mother from whom I caught whatever uber flu strain or equiv this is: almost feels like bronchitis again- kind of like when I had that and strep throat simultaneously… but whatever… hopefully I should finish both recovering and the chappie…
During the fights I'll be changing where the story is told from frequently, so I'll only be announcing specific view points between battles.
End AN
Three years minus some change ago, everyone and their uncle had come to see the last of the Uchiha clan and the Hyuga prodigy. Everyone expected they tournament would peak when those two fought- only to witness the village prankster beat the prodigy- while nobody actually saw the conclusion of the Uchiha's only battle. By now Naruto had made a name for himself, and if possible, it seemed the stadium was even more crowded…
Sakura noticed Naruto looking around at the crowd, "Yeah, it hasn't been near this big since then; Neiji alone drew a fair crowd in the exam that followed, but since then… I don't know if the crowd is bigger or the same, but I am sure most of it's here for you."
It was then Lyle's team arrived as well, coming to join team 7 in the center of the stadium before the fights.
"Ya know, it's sad, the point of this month preparation time was to be able to spy on and learn about your opponents," Nora commented, "and they only thing I learned for certain is you're a Jinchuuriki, and all any of you learned about us is our team's true loyalties in Rain."
"I learned a bit more than that when we fought briefly in the forest," Naruto smirks, putting his arms behind his head as the announcer calls out the first match, everyone but the announcer/referee, Nora and Naruto left the ring.
Nora took an aggressive stance, "You saw us fight conservatively." She reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked slightly like brass knuckles, except they were a rough stone material. She struck one of them against the shoulder of her vest, causing a spark, that spark exploded into a raging flame that she worked between two hands with her chakara.
"Gee, I wonder what elemental affinity her chakara has," Naruto mused sarcastically.
Reaching to her side she grabbed her spiked chain, and some chemical on the chain caught with the flames and the entire chain erupted in flames. 'Okay, fire bad, because my wind only makes it stronger, let's see- step one- don't get burned. Step two, don't drag this out.'
As an opening test Naruto threw a few Kunai towards Nora, she swung her chain and knocked them effortlessly aside. Nora took that as her cue to test her own waters, she threw her chain towards Naruto, and the flames continued on in a straight path beyond the chain As Naruto moved to dodge, the flames followed, turning with him. Reacting with this in mind, he put a great deal of chakara into his fist and puched the ground, shooting a wall of earth and digging a decent crater into the ground. Naruto then did several jutsus in succession so after Nora's flame attack blew past the thing wall of dirt, Nora didn't see Naruto behind it. Nora looked in all directions, including down as she jumped to one side. She kept peering from one direction for the next looking for any signs of where Naruto had hidden himself. Finally she frowned, "Alright fine- you wanna play hide and seek, I'll play scorched earth."
Holding her chain in one hand, she called a small piece of fire into a sphere, making one handed Jutsus with the other, the sphere of flame burst out and spiraled itself around Nora, forming a spherical barrier of fire. The rising from the sphere of flame erupted a dragon-like shape. The chakara made dragon-shape breathed down fire all over the stadium, scorching the grounds, destroying the trees and all other hiding spots-
Suddenly she stopped- a Kunai wrapped in a pocket of air shot through her barrier- having pushed the flames aside, it struck the hand she had been forming seals with, and as she stopped the dragon stopped, and the fire spinning around her died out, leaving only the smoldering trees and a dwindling flame on her chain, which she had dropped to grab where the kunai had struck. She looked around quickly and saw what had happened. She saw Naruto standing on a pillar of his clones, one standing on the shoulders of the next, the bottom few were badly scorched. He release his jutsu and all the clones vanished, letting Naruto fall through a plume of smoke. She moved quickly while Naruto dropped, diving for her chain on the ground- but as she did Naruto managed a diving tackle and got one of his arms around her, she pinned her chin to her neck to keep him from getting her in a head lock. She pulled one of her elbows and slammed it fiercely into Naruto's side. Naruto choked out a gurgle, but rather than loosen his grasp, he used the hand that wasn't wrapped around her and proceeded to return the favor with interest. After several minutes of rolling, pounding and punching, Naruto maneuvered her far away from her chain. As he finally pushed off he tore of her vest, thus taking the bulk of her weapons away, as well as the surface to strike her flint knuckles against to spark fire.
She quickly went for a pouch at her leg and grabbed a handful of Shuriken, and tossing down her flint knuckles, "Okay, next time I'll make the flint knuckles of two different types, so I can strike one against the other- never mind the risks." She took a defensive stance this time.
"Just so you know, next time you move towards me, I'm ending this."
"If you were anybody else I'd tell you where to shove it, instead I'm curious." She reached back and prepared to throw her last fistful of shuriken. She threw them and charged in the same motion. As soon as she did, Naruto moved as well, summoning a half dozen clones, he kicked her into the air from all sides, throwing one of his clones to follow and kick downwards just as they reached peak height, allowing the mix of gravity and the force of his kick to thrust her down that much faster- into the waiting fists of the remaining Narutos.
"U-Zu-Ma-Ki- NARUTO RENDAN!" He emphasized each stage of the move speaking as he struck.
kaKAkaKAka
Kankuro smirks as he remembers Naruto having used that move before; he looks over at Gaara as the other leaders begin to discuss the results. He finds it amusing that Gaara gets to have some say in Naruto's chances at Chuunin, of course they all know Naruto's been ready for some time, and really most of the leaders are only discussing it as a matter of politics. Nora however showed interesting skills and a valid method of applying them. On the down side, the only studying of opponents any of the contestants managed was during the second task.
As normal policy they address the main points while they're still fresh in mind, then make final decisions at the end of the tournament. Just as they finished up, Lyle and Matsuri came onto the stage. Soon after the fight began, Kankuro's attention immediately flew to Gaara. A small bit of dirt from his sand armor came free from his chest and began spinning circles around where it had come free. A number of the leaders jumped to their feet, their guards also jumping in response. Kankuro quickly raised up both hands to calm everyone, "Gaara, are you alright?"
As if nothing had happened Gaara looks at the dirt spinning circles, "Just fine Kankuro," With a moments effort the dirt returned to place and everyone looked back to the fight, albeit feeling a little more tense.
Tsunade looked a little closer as Matsuri parried and took a heavy blow to her arms from Lyle's Tonfas to move in close and ram one of her elbows into Lyle's head. Tsunade turned in time to see more dirt fly from Gaara's arms with a slight tensing of his body. It began circling the same way as had been on his chest. Everyone in the room tensed, but nobody said anything this time….
CRACK
Lyle struck a bashing blow to her side-
More sand flew from Gaara's side-
Matsuri dropped down and kicked Lyle's legs out from beneath him. Lyle flipped back onto his hands as soon as Matsuri made contact, he pulled both legs in and kicked out striking Matsuri in the chest sending her flying back and striking her back on the ground-
The entire room jumped again as dirt flew from Gaara's upper body, both chest and back-
"Gaara are you sur-" Kankuro stopped short as Gaara glared as him. Everyone nervously sat down.
Tsunade smirked knowingly as she sat down as well, wiping an imaginary itch on her nose to hide her expression.
Lyle took a step back in curiosity, he was noticing a pattern, she kept her hands lower at her body, so she could protect more of his attacks to her center of mass, but that left her vulnerable every time he went higher. He'd managed to batter her arms pretty badly, she was parrying most of his blows and diving in to strike back, which works great in a short term plan. But in the long term that meant his damage to her was more concentrated on her arms, while his damage was less layered and more spread. Every time she pulled out a weapon, it was with standard moves, easy to predicted, she had a lot of variety, but not much in specifics, the only time he'd had trouble was when she pulled out her jouhyou, she'd taken one of his tonfa from him, but he came in with the other one too quick for her to use the thing a second time.
Tonfa in one hand, bare fisted in the other, Lyle planned to test the pattern she seemed to be obeying, something seemed fishy about it, too obvious, but his gut was telling him to go with it, logic said it was too obvious, a trap, but instinct said she would stick to her pattern-
Lyle rushed forward, aiming his fist for her abdomen, and his tonfa swinging for her head. She tried to pull herself back, but still, pushed aside his fist, and his tonfa rapped brutally against her skull-
FOOMPH!
Everyone in the room thought for half a second that was the sound of Lyle's tonfa, before they could realize it was too close, they saw the table moving. The sand armor all over Gaara's body had flown off and blasted into the table, both sides shooting up as the table split at the point in front of where Gaara was sitting, the two halfs slapped against each other, and the longer half snapped over and flew off and into the wall. Kankuro jumped back, and every other leader, even Tsunade jumped back from their seats as well. Every guard in the room reached for some sort of weapon.
"Wait!" Tsunade called out before anyone did anything more rash.
Gaara looked around at the damage- "Well, after I apologize for my loss of control I know the first piece of information anyone is going to mention is about her defeat, how she blocked what seemed clearly to be the wrong attack." Gaara calmed himself and instead of reforming the sand armor for the moment, more to calm everyone else in the room, he formed it into his gourd in the corner of the room, walking over to re-cork it after he put the dirt inside. Then he turned back to the other leaders to finish his thought, "I have some information that may alter your opinion of the event…"
"She's pregnant," Tsunade finished for him. Gaara looked slightly shocked as he looked over at Tsunade and nodded with the shock still on his face. "You're the father," she added as she sat back down in her seat by the rubble that had been a table, Gaara only nodded again.
There was a good two minutes or more of silence, from a mixture of shock, and awe both at the information, and at the show of power Gaara had put on wholly unintentionally.
After Tsunade felt the information had sunk into the room more clearly, she reached into a hidden compartment of her chair and pulled out a bottle of sake, "Congratulations."
It seemed to be Gaara's turn again to be shocked. Tsunade smirked as she stood up and walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a number of glasses, she poured for each person in the room and handed them out, when she got to Gaara last she held out the drink to his hand and spoke, "You're a grown Shinobi Gaara, and a leader of your own country, we're not going to yell and call you irresponsible, because you obviously are quite responsible, looking at what you've down with Sand Village since becoming KazeKage. But forgive me if I feel a child's imminent arrive is cause to celebrate."
Gaara finally took the glass, Tsunade lifted hers in the air in toast, "To the next generation."
Everyone raised their glasses with her in toast. After everyone had taken their sip, Kankuro seemed to find his voice again, walking up behind Gaara, "So, you're going to be a father, whoo-boo, I wonder who's going to be the poor fool to tell Temari she's going to be an aunt."
"Go on, we can take a hold until the next round if you want to check on Matsuri," one of the other leaders suggested.
Gaara turned quickly to face that leader, then bowed and thanks, grabbing his gourd as he dashed out the door…
"Besides," one of the other leader's added, "We're going to need a new table…
teTEteTEte
Temari was standing over Matsuri as the medics were taking her from the field. Shikamaru came over and set a hand on her shoulder reassuringly. After he felt her relax a little, "I have to wonder though, why she took the blow to her head?"
As Temari tried to think of an answer they both saw Gaara running down the stairs, Kankuro a little more calmly following…
"I think I know why Gaara's here, but why are you here Kankuro, shouldn't you both be back with the other leader's discussing the results?"
Kankuro couldn't suppress a smirk, "Oh I don't think you know why we're here Temari."
Temari glared at Kankuro, Gaara reached for Matsuri's hand and squeezed it briefly before the medic's took her into the other room-
"Oh- well then smart guy, fill me in why don't you."
Shikamaru quickly let go of Temari's shoulder as he felt her tense up.
Kankuro started chuckling, "Because Matsuri's about to make you an aunt."
"WHAT!" Temari reacted faster than Kankuro expected, whipping out her fan and move to strike- "What did you do Kankuro!"
"HEY WAIT! What the hell makes you assume it's me!"
Temari stopped mid swing- "You mean?"
She lowered her fan and looked over at Gaara as he stared through the window in the door while the medic-nin's worked on Matsuri's arm and checked her head for any serious damage.
She opened her fan back up and swung at Kankuro anyway- "Next time be more CLEAR!"
Kankuro smacked into the wall, several shinobi immediately came in to see what had caused the disturbance so close to the medical ward-
inINinINin
Ino peered around the corner to see what the loud smacking sound against the wall had been. She caught a glimpse of Kankuro sliding down the wall only half aware of his senses. Gaara staring into the medical ward, and Shikarmaru reach back for Temari's shoulder, "Temari he wasn't trying to mislead you, he was only trying to rib at you that you were going to have a little nephew- or niece," he added the last part after a moment of thought.
Temari frowned, but after a moment relaxed again, and reached for Shikamaru's hand on her shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze.
Ino pulled back into the other room in shock- "Th-tha-that-" she felt a rage building inside- only she wasn't sure who she was mad at… In fact she wasn't even sure why she was mad… She'd never considered Shikamaru anything but a pain in her side- but thinking about it, the anger she felt was clearly jealousy-
"Oh god no- I can't be- that's just so… troublesome…"