A/N: Sorry it took so long, guys. I finally got a job and I've been really focused on that. Updates are probably going to be like this for the foreseeable future, but they will still happen!
Naruto stared across at the Suna kunoichi, Temari according to the proctor, and let his gaze roam down her body. While his purpose was to analyze her for the upcoming fight, he couldn't help but notice that she was hot, very hot. Her battle fan was slung onto her shoulder, sitting next to her neck – a rather shapely neck from what he could glimpse around her hitae-ate. She had a mesh shirt that was peeking out from a very light tan dress that went to just above her knees. The rest of her legs – a rather nice pair with just the right amount of definition and perfectly smooth – were uncovered and led to a pair of basic shinobi sandals. Combined with his observation and the research he had done over the last month, Naruto knew that she was a long range fighter, but she also seemed to be decent at using that fan as a melee weapon as well.
He raised his eyes back to her face and saw that she had an eyebrow raised and wore a smirk on her face – she seemed to have noticed his scrutiny. Naruto waggled his eyebrows in response and smirked himself when she huffed and went back to her typical indifferent visage. It was at this moment that the proctor said, "Hajime!"
Naruto immediately ran through a few hand seals, quite a bit quicker than he would've been able to before this month, and said, "Wind Release: Wind Bullet!" As he finished his hand seals, his hands formed into a circle held at his chest and a moment later, a blast of air rocketed towards Temari. Temari, hearing what technique he was using, sent a gust of wind at him with her fan. The two jutsu canceled each other out and the residual wind brought up a small dust swirl.
The two jumped back a few feet and scrutinized each other once more. Naruto narrowed his eyes at his opponent. I didn't expect her to be able to react that fast. Either she's stronger than she looks to wield that huge thing so easily or that fan is a hell of a lot lighter – and more fragile – than it looks. He relaxed his shoulders slightly while keeping his legs tense. Kakashi-sensei had taught them that little trick. According to him, when you visibly relaxed your shoulders, your opponent is likely to unconsciously relax themselves – a useful little trick to throw them off-balance. Naruto made a mental note to thank Kakashi-sensei when he noticed the little trick work.
He smiled over at her and pointed casually at her fan, a movement that caused her to flinch in wariness, and said, "That's a pretty sweet fan. Where'd you get it?"
Shinobi and kunoichi that focused on a particular weapon were always willing to brag about it, and Temari was no exception. "It was custom-made by the greatest fan-smith in the Elemental Nations, Hayabusa Ryu!"
Naruto had no clue who that was, but he forced a visage of slight awe and responded, "Really? That's pretty impressive. I bet it's made out of some super-cool, rare metal that I've never heard of, huh?"
The act was a success as she relaxed once more and laughed. "Nah, nothing that awesome. Just plain old steel. It's got a few seals on it of course, but that's about it."
Naruto had expected to need to probe a little further to attain that information, so he was quite pleased by her response. That answers that question. If there are seals on that fan, one of them has to be a durability seal, which would compensate for making the fan lighter. He stood up straighter and saw that his opponent did the same. With a sudden surge of chakra, Naruto blasted forward.
As he expected, Temari immediately opened her fan and blew a wall of wind at him. He had kept his hands near each other for such an occurrence and quickly shot a wind bullet at her. Thanks to his training with Hayama-sensei, he had a good enough proficiency with wind chakra now that he was able to compact this wind-bullet into a smaller sphere. Where the first bullet had been big enough that it had simply canceled out her first wind blast, this one punched an invisible hole in the middle of the wall. Temari's eyes widened but she had no time to react further because Naruto had burst through the gap and an instant later was in her face, fists flying.
Temari, caught by surprise, was forced to backpedal wildly to avoid getting decked by the seemingly wild and uncoordinated punches. After a moment of backpedaling, she was able to get enough room to lower her fan from her shoulder and swing out at him. Naruto was forced to jump back and that gave Temari the time she needed to flip backwards and put even more room between them.
Ino Yamanaka was a proud girl and with good reason in her opinion. She was pretty, smart, and she was the heir to her clan. Her father was always trying to knock her down a peg – "Pride is a ninja's biggest weakness" – but Ino had never really taken the lesson to heart. She sighed and frowned as she sat in her seat at the arena waiting. Maybe if I'd listened to Daddy, I'd be waiting down there instead of up here.
She sighed again but was broken from her musing when Chouji and Asuma-sensei sat down next to her. Asuma had made sure that he was not within arm's reach of Ino and immediately took advantage of this to light up a cigarette. Ino scowled at him and smiled at Chouji, saying, "Hey guys! Have any trouble finding me?"
Asuma glanced over at her and smirked, saying, "How could we miss your bright yellow hair?" Ino scowled playfully at him before she smiled slightly. Asuma continued, "You guys talk to Shikamaru much this last month?" Chouji and Ino both shook their heads with a slight frown. "Ah well. I'm sure he'll do just fine. And if he doesn't then that'll mean he gets to take a nap faster." He frowned. "Actually , that's seems far more likely to be his goal."
Ino and Chouji both nodded while Chouji took a moment to say, "So what's the line-up for the matches?"
Asuma sat back and put his feet up on the back of the empty seat in front of him. "Uzumaki and that Suna girl are up first. Should be interesting."
Ino scoffed and crossed her arms. "Unless Kiba was just a fluke."
Chouji nodded sagely and Asuma shrugged in agreement. As the proctor announced the beginning of the first match Asuma finished his cigarette and leaned forward, intent to not miss any of it.
Back on the field, Naruto was now openly grinning with his hands back in his pockets as Temari was staring intently at him, trying to figure him out. Naruto chuckled and said, "Looks like your research didn't help you much, did it?"
Temari relaxed a little but didn't let her guard down. "No. My research led me to believe that this would be easy." Naruto waggled his eyebrows at her and she let out a small grin. "I'm glad it won't be."
Having decided that she was ready for the next barrage, Naruto reached both hands down into his weapons pouch and flung a handful of pellets at Temari. Right afterward he reached right back in and threw two handfuls of shuriken.
Temari saw the pellets coming her way and immediately expanded her fan and swung a wave of wind out in front of her. As soon as the pellets reached the wind attack, instead of sending them away from Temari, the wind caused them to burst and allowed them to expel a large, thick cloud of white smoke. Seeing this, Temari's eyes widened and she went to send another follow-up blast of wind to disperse the smoke. She halted, however, and took cover behind her fan when she heard the sounds of something else whistling through the air. She was glad she did so when a moment after, she heard the sounds of projectiles hitting her fan. Hearing the projectiles stop, she quickly moved from her position and tried to sense where her opponent may be.
In her haste to move from the area, she failed to notice a tell-tale puff of smoke erupt from the shuriken that had hit her fan. When the smoke cleared, all the shuriken had disappeared.
As soon as his smoke pellets went off, Naruto took off on a loop around around the side of the arena where he took cover behind a copse of trees. He knew he had little time while his opponent couldn't see, so he had to act quickly. He immediately made a handful of clones, and they all started making as many clones as they could which then ran in every direction and henged into whatever they could think of that would blend in with the scenery.
That done, he waited a few moments and then sent the clones not henged to go ferret out his opponent.
Temari waited a few more moments before she dispelled the cloud of smoke that was still hanging like a wall in the middle of the arena. She narrowed her eyes when she saw that Naruto had disappeared, but she wasn't surprised. She braced herself for an attack from anywhere. She needed to think of a way to get this fight back under her control.
Before she could come up with an effective strategy, she noticed four narutos were rushing towards her from the left. They were running in a staggered formation and the two in front had just thrown 3 kunai each at her. She mentally scoffed and was about to swing her fan when she noticed that the two in the back had thrown more of those pellets. Instead of swinging her fan she collapsed it and brought it around in front of her to use as a melee weapon. She dodged the kunai, but then there were four narutos swinging at her. One was using a kunai in each hand, one was punching at her with a shuriken held between each finger, and the other two were swinging with just their fists. She rapidly backpedaled, not used to having to deal with so many opponents up close, let alone so many with different weapons all at once.
In a panic, she charged chakra to her legs and jumped in the air as high as she could. She unfolded her fan and put it under her feet so that she could get a moment of respite while she hovered. She heard a grunt and turned her fan around and her eyes widened at seeing Naruto flying towards her. With a glance behind him, she saw a daisy chain of narutos that had apparently swung this one at her. She barely had time to pull out a kunai and block the swipe he made at her with his own kunai. She had already figured out that he definitely had the advantage on her in close combat.
As much as she was loath to do so, she back-flipped off her fan and back down to the ground, scanning it for any sign of a trap beneath her. Seeing none, she gave a sigh as she landed and took a breath to reorient herself. At that moment she felt a kunai press against her throat from behind and a breathy voice whisper in her ear, "And that's the end of that, my dear. There are so many things I'd love to do to you in this position, but you'll have to wait until later for that. You should forfeit before people start to wonder what we're talking about."
Temari nodded slightly and announced, "I forfeit." Once the kunai was removed from her neck, she elbowed the blond behind her hard in the stomach, attempting to retaliate for coming on to her. She was surprised when the Naruto behind her burst into smoke. She turned back around when she heard a cough from in front of her.
The real Naruto was holding her fan out to her. "It really is a beautiful weapon. I'm glad I didn't have to damage it to win. I'd love to hear more about it if you'd be willing." Temari smiled at him as she took it back. "Or we could do other things if that's what you desire." She glared playfully at him and smirked before she walked out of the arena toward the medical center.
If Naruto wasn't so busy basking in the cheers and applause of those in the audience, he would have noticed her hips swaying slightly more than usual.
"What the hell?" Ino was shocked. Like most of her classmates, she had assumed that Naruto's victory over Kiba had been due in part to luck, but mostly due to Kiba's overconfidence. That fight had removed that skepticism entirely.
Chouji was in a like state of mind if the chips drifting out of his open hand were anything to go by. Asuma leaned back and pulled out another cigarette to light up. Taking a puff, he said, "Well, I'll be. That...was incredible." He took another drag from his cigarette. "He was in control from the very beginning. Everything he did in that fight set up that finish. I don't know if Shikamaru would've planned that better."
His two students turned to him with eyebrows raised but he was dead serious. They slowly turned back to watch the next fight.
Kakashi was swelling with pride. His student – the supposed dead-last – had just dominated his first fight in the finals. And Kakashi knew he had barely opened up his can of tricks. From in front of him, the Hokage lit up his pipe and took a puff, saying, "Well done, Kakashi. You've made him proud." They both knew who the Hokage was referring to.
Next to them, the Kazekage said, "Yes, that was indeed impressive. As much as I hate to see my daughter lose, she was most definitely outclassed in that fight. Definitely promotion worthy if that fight wasn't a fluke." The Hokage hummed in agreement and Kakashi smiled again. They looked back to the arena to see the next fight begin.
"Aburame Shino vs. Nara Shikamaru. Hajime!"
A/N: For those of you who look far too much into this sort of thing, this chapter is not hinting at a naruto/temari romance/pairing at ALL. I haven't even thought about that shit. Because they're 12...Fucking pedophilic perverts, the lot of you.
On a more important note, how did you guys like the fight? I'm honestly not too experienced at writing fights so let me know if you guys have any feedback for me.
PEACE OUT