Naruto: Conquest

Naruto stood patiently in the middle of the arena where the final phase of the chunnin exams would take place, Sasuke and Sakura flanking him. Of the three genin –indeed, of all those standing in the arena– Naruto was the only one in traditional dress: dove grey hakama under a mottled grey haori decorated with storm clouds belted by a blood red obi patterned with flowing ripples. The blond's shoulder-length hair was tied up in a samurai-style topknot, making him look totally different to how he used to and rather Yamanaka-ish. Sasuke wore a pitch-black Chinese jacket and indigo trousers bandaged at the ankles, ninja-to hilt peeking over one shoulder as he stood to attention on Naruto's right and stared straight ahead. Sakura to his left had on dark pink leggings and kimono-style top under her white medic coat, hands shoved in capacious pockets as above and all around them the audience chattered and rustled like an oncoming storm.

Dosu the Oto-nin hadn't arrived but all the other genin were there, arrayed on either side of team seven and forming a slight curve facing the proctor.

The only reason they hadn't started yet was that the kazekage still hadn't shown up. This was not entirely unprecedented; arriving slightly late and making people wait for you was an age-old way to flaunt power. Naruto sighed softly, mentally going over his weapons and resources. Ame-kaa-san had been a little odd this morning and had insisted all of them be armed for S-class nukenin before letting them leave the house.

His foster-mother wasn't coming to watch the match, having chosen instead to spend the day at home with the baby triplets and the younger kids. Itachi and Han however had come and were somewhere in the audience, as were an undisclosed number of Yuurei. Ittan-momen for one had promised to turn up and watch him flatten Neji.

The blond jinchuuriki wasn't particularly bothered by Ame-kaa-san's absence: he was after all the oldest of sixteen now and the babies always came first. Besides, he had been promised a party if he actually got promoted, which was even better. His mother's bloodline meant that she could 'watch' his match without being here anyway and anyway, she didn't much care about his career. To her he was Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto and that was all that mattered.

Naruto glanced up as the Sandaime announced the start of the exams; the kazekage had finally arrived and was sitting next to the hokage in the box. Unfortunately the blond had been forced to keep down the range of his sensory abilities since turning up at the arena as such a high concentration of people in such a small space would otherwise be dizzying. Which was a shame, as he would have liked to get a feel for the kage of a rival village, especially considering who said kage's children were.

"Alright guys," the proctor, one Shiranui Genma who Naruto knew very well indeed from the tokubetsu jounin's frequent visits to Benihime, started. "This is the final test. The arena is different but just as in the preliminaries, there are no rules: you fight until one of you dies or acknowledges defeat. But if I decide a fight is over, you stop or I will step in and make you stop. Got that?" He paused, eyes raking over the nine assembled genin. "Good. Now the first fight is between Uzumaki Naruto and Hyuuga Neji. The rest of you go up to the waiting area until you're called."

Sasuke and Sakura silently turned and walked across the arena, steps in perfect sync with the kunoichi a pace ahead and to the left of the Uchiha, their choice of formation announcing silently to all assembled that they were a team and everyone else was the enemy, no exceptions. Naruto subtly shifted on his toes into a more balanced stance and let his fingers drift towards the seals in his sleeve cuffs that held his wakizashi and tanto.

"Looks like you have something to say," Neji remarked with a smirk.

Naruto returned a small smile full of teeth. "You're going down Neji," he said coolly. "No doubt in my mind who's the better shinobi here."

The Hyuuga genius activated his byakugan but said nothing.

"Now, let the fight begin!" Genma said loudly before stepping swiftly out of range.

"It will be fun watching you fall apart once you discover reality," Neji said loftily.

"I thought this was a fight, not a tea party," Naruto retorted teasingly. "Or are you all talk and no action, Neji-chan?"

That got a thunderous snarl but no actual attack. The jinchuuriki didn't shift, fingers lightly brushing the seals in his sleeves while his feet stayed planted in a ready stance. He pondered the option of out-waiting his opponent, but decided against it: he was after all here to entertain the audience and showcase his skills. Instead he focussed his chakra, brought his hands together and silently created two clones. The three of him settled into one of team seven's favourite attack formation, with the one at the front with his hands free while the one on the left produced the steel fans Naruto had used in the preliminaries against Kiba.

"Your chakra may be evenly distributed amongst the three of you," Neji told the lead bunshin, likely assuming it was the original since it had not drawn a weapon, "but you still have only one real body."

"Are you trying to intimidate me or reassure yourself, Neji-chan?" the Naruto with the tessen asked, eyes gleaming.

"If you intend to attack, then do so," the Hyuuga snapped.

"Manners-"

"Neji-"

"-chan!" The three Narutos said as they attacked. The front Naruto called up a fire-whip as the left-hand one opened the steel fans and right-hand one released a barrage of shuriken. The Hyuuga genius ducked under the shuriken, leapt out of range of the fire whip and tried to hit the nearest Naruto, but instead his fist collided with an open fan. Taking advantage, that Naruto shoved forwards and slashed open the retreating arm with the other tessen. Neji retreated further, dodging the fire whip twice more and leaving bloody spatter on the arena floor.

"Ready to take me seriously yet?" the third Naruto drawled, a kunai twirling idly around one finger. "Or do I have to bleed it out of you one cut at a time?"

Neji narrowed his eyes. "Such arrogance. You will never be hokage. Talent is determined at birth; such is fate."

"So the fact that I should have graduated a year ahead of you and deliberately fudged the exams twice means that, by your reckoning, I must be way better than you are?" the Naruto with the fire whip asked mildly, jutsu lashing out and forcing the Hyuuga to dodge left, then up into the air.

"Wha-"

"Yep, I faked out at everything after my third week in the Academy," the Naruto with the fans agreed as the one with the whip bent the thin, incandescent chakra construct it was controlling and tried to ensnare the Hyuuga in it. "Isn't that the true ninja way? To deceive? You're good at Taijutsu, Neji-chan, but we're supposed to be ninja not martial artists."

As the two Narutos proceeded to harass and chase Neji the third one drifted away and started setting up a seal perimeter.

"You expect me to believe you deliberately graduated two years late as the dead-last?" Neji snapped as the fire whip grazed the back of his coat.

"I thought your eyes could see everything, Neji-chan?" the Naruto with the fans pointed out as he ducked under a blow and whacked the Hyuuga across the face. "Why are you asking, am I too opaque for your all-seeing eyes to decipher?" He grinned. "Do I need to dumb myself down for you, Neji-chan?"

The Hyuuga genius finally stopped retreating and attacked, ducking around the fire whip and trying to land a solid hit on that Naruto. The blond however had been evading a jounin in combat for the past six months and did not make it easy for his opponent, who also had to duck and deflect the steel fans the other Naruto was using. The third Naruto quietly sank underground as Neji's chakra spiked and both clones abruptly dispelled, leaving the original with memories of an unusual whirlwind-like defence. The blond wondered if he could recreate it with wind chakra; a defence that shredded opponents rather than just knocking them away would be very handy.

He silently created another clone, this one nothing more than a heavily reinforced puppet he controlled directly rather than an independent entity, to distract the Hyuuga as he travelled underground towards his opponent's chakra signature.

"You are within my field of divination," he heard Neji say through the puppet-clone as the Hyuuga fell into a familiar stance. "Juukenhou: Hakke Rokujuuyon Shou."

Recognising what was coming Naruto paused underneath his clone and sent upwards a burst of chakra to reinforce it before darting forward. That was a main house technique; it seemed Neji had been spying on somebody else's lessons, pretty impressive really. He had learnt that, while the byakugan could look through walls and other solid surfaces, Hyuugas had to look down and concentrate to actually see though the ground: 359 degree vision granted an almost perfect circle of perception, not a perfect sphere. He could no more see straight up than straight down, which Naruto intended to take advantage of.

"Two hands! Four hands! Eight hands! Sixteen hands! Thirty-two-"

The clone finally gave way and Naruto shot out of the ground, both blades drawn, far too close to Neji's exposed back for the white-eyed teen to react in time.

Uzuken, Swirling Blade, was designed on similar lines as the Hyuuga Gentle Fist in order to take out multiple opponents without taking a hit. However Uzuken was far deadlier as it used sharp steel rather than chakra-enhanced fingers to land blows and had a considerably wider range. Two swift cuts later Neji staggered sideways, bleeding heavily from his right arm and limping from a wound behind a knee as above his right hip his jacket was dyed deep crimson.

"So much for 'all-seeing eyes'; don't you know a bunshin when you see one?" Naruto mocked his opponent, voice flat and cold. "So disappointing that a member of such a distinguished clan should be so abysmally ignorant of village history."

"History?" Neji repeated faintly, shuffling backwards away from the blond.

"And lo, the clan of Uzumaki was allied to the clan of Senju and Uzumaki Mito was wed to Senju Hashirama to cement the alliance," Naruto quoted from the elderly history text he'd found in the library dating from the time of the Nidaime. "And none stood against them save the Uchiha, for though the Senju were mighty in taijutsu and ninjutsu the Uzumaki were masters of kenjutsu and fuuinjutsu and the most feared of all clans for their knowledge and skill." He made a single handseal, activating the chakra suppression field. "Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors in the future, Neji-chan."

His byakugan no longer active, his chakra inaccessible and his body mangled, the Hyuuga collapsed to his hands and knees. "But, but..." he rasped.

Naruto shrugged. "I was taught that a ninja's greatest skill, the one most important to cultivate, was to cheat fate, defy others' expectations and turn the odds in your own favour. To do that requires that I both know myself and deceive others of my capabilities, Neji-chan. You on the other hand are so painfully straight-forward it is painful to watch." He paused. "Do I have to kill you or are you going to forfeit?"

"I..."

"Why do you rage so blindly, Neji-chan?" Naruto coaxed, sensing weakness and opportunity as he idly flicked the blood off his blades. "What drives you so furiously?"

"The Hyuuga destiny of hatred," Neji gasped, blank eyes watery from pain as he gazed at the blond.

"Oh?" Naruto was using other skills now, learnt in the okiya from his early childhood and constantly honed ever since: how to make your body language soft, open and accepting, your tone gentle and welcoming. How to tease information from people so you could help them, no matter how reticent they were.

Naruto had perfected these skills against the best Konoha's T&I Department could offer: Neji didn't stand a chance.

"The Hyuuga family has a special ninjutsu passed down in the main family," Neji murmured, "a Juinjutsu."

Naruto made a small encouraging noise in his throat, lowering his sword as his earnest, empathetic blue eyes met Neji's blank, pained grey orbs.

"The mark of the curse represents a bird in a cage, the symbol of being tied down to an inescapable destiny," the Hyuuga went on, clumsy fingers reaching up to untie his hitai-ite and reveal a manji-shaped seal branded on his forehead. Naruto crouched just out of the fallen genin's reach as he listened to the sorry tale of pain, woe, accidents of birth and the loss of the father he worshiped. When the branch Hyuuga finally ran out of words the blond lessened the chakra projection of safety and comfort and sighed.

"So you, who proclaim yourself destined to protect the main house with your life from the moment of your birth, did your best to kill the one you are supposed to be defending?" he pointed out dryly. "It seems I'm not te only one fighting my so-called 'destiny'."

Neji gaped in shock as Naruto gently laid the blade of his sword across the fallen Hyuga's throat. "Yield or die, Neji-chan, but know this: had your clan head all those generations ago approached the Uzumaki clan and bargained for a seal to safeguard their bloodline rather than steal a flawed prison seal designed to be placed on hostages, you and yours would never have suffered so greatly for so long. Foundation seals are hardly rare: I know four different ones and I'm barely a quarter of my way to journeyman in Fuuinjutsu." He paused. "In fact, Mito-sama, the Shodai's wife, could easily have resealed the Hyuuga with a more effective and less painful seal, had she been approached for her assistance. Ironic, don't you think, that you complain of your burden to the only person still living capable of lifting it?"

Neji's mouth opened, closed, opened again and then his eyes rolled back in his head as he fainted dead away.

"The winner of the first match is Uzumaki Naruto!" Genma announced. "Oh, and de-activate that seal field or the rest of the fights will be too dull for words."

Naruto obligingly deactivated the field but left the anchor tags where they were; a trap laid is a trap set after all and this one was reusable.

Notes

Juukenhou: Hakke Rokujuuyon Shou = Gentle fist style: Eight trigrams sixty-four palms.

Fuuinjutsu = Sealing Techniques

Juinjutsu = Cursed Seal Technique

A/N: And that's Naruto's fight over. Next up is Sakura versus Gaara, which I've already written and just needs typing up. Yes, it has been a while, but my muse has been cranky lately. I'm trying to work out how to write the pre-invasion bit right now, which is giving me trouble. I'll get there though.