A/N: Lots of breaks in this chapter. It's not my favorite, but I enjoyed writing the fights. I also tried to inject some humor. Did it work?

Naruto stood in the center of the arena across from Neji. The proctor signaled for the boys to begin. Naruto put his fist out in front of him.

"I feel bad for you, but what you did to Hinata…" He shook his head and then glared hard at Neji. "I'm going to kick your ass."

Neji chortled. "What do you know about the Hyūga?"

"Two families comprise the clan: Main and Branch. The Main line has all the power while the Branch line has a special seal placed on them when they're young. The seal will protect the Byakugan from falling into enemy hands, but it also allows the Main line to punish and control the Branch line. I had to look up the word for the two of us meeting like this. Ero-sennin wouldn't tell me, the prick."

"What?"

"Irony. The word is 'irony.' You have a seal that was placed on you that has determined a large part of your life. It's ironic that we're facing each other. Ero-sennin explained it better."

"Your fate was –"

"F#ck fate. Fate is an excuse for losers. You might be a genius, but you're also a loser."

"Don't discount fate. It was my fate to blah blah blah..."

Naruto stopped paying attention. Neji clearly needed to get that crap off his chest. Naruto decided he'd let Neji talk it out for a while before dismantling him.

"You done whining? 'Cause I'm gonna beat you senseless, dattabayo."

Naruto molded chakra and disappeared from view. He slammed a side kick into Neji, sending the older boy flying across the arena. Naruto molded more chakra and disappeared again before reappearing and slamming a brutal double hammer-fist into Neji.

Neji hit the ground with a bounce and a crack.

"Get. Up."

Neji rolled to his hands and knees, pulling himself up. He glared at Naruto as he stood. Naruto barely let him finish standing and rapidly slammed his left elbow into Neji's ribs, his right elbow into his collar, and then his left hand shot out grabbing Neji's shirt and pulling him closer as Naruto's right knee shot up into Neji's gut. Naruto extended his right leg and pushed Neji away with the force of combining the strike with a shunshin.

Neji flew through the air, his breathing choked and gasping. This wasn't a fight anymore, it was a humiliation. Still, his pride would not let him quit. He rolled to a stop and began the struggle back to his feet.

Naruto waited for Neji to get up. He watched Neji struggle and gasp and cough blood. He made four clones without the hand sign. They all nodded together and the chakra they needed for the techniques they would use was ready instantly.

Katon: Flame Bullet. Raiton: Thunder Strike. Suiton: Water Bullet. Futon: Great Breakthrough.

Each technique flew wide of Neji, landing against the arena wall. Neji's Byakugan could see the wall behind him. The techniques' striking the wall made a smiley face with a tongue sticking out and a thumb's up on the wall. Four Narutos stood with smirks.

Neji raised one hand while holding his excruciating ribs. He saw a hand coming out of the ground under him. "I forfeit."

The hand stopped and Naruto climbed out of the ground, canceling his Doton: Hiding Mole jutsu.

The crowd was cheering and Naruto was embarrassed, but pleased. He waved to the crowd as medics rushed out to carry Neji off the arena floor. He turned to Neji.

"Thanks for the match, Neji!"

oOo

Shikamaru watched as Naruto systematically destroyed Neji. Whatever training Naruto had done had made him far and away better at fighting. There wasn't even a strategy to what he was doing: this was overwhelming with sheer brute force.

And then he unleashed four different elemental techniques without hand signs. Naruto's chakra control was not that good. Wait, that hand under Neji makes five different elements. Shikamaru paid very close attention to the blond boy.

oOo

Naruto bounced his way back up to the competitors' box. That win was fast. He knew he'd improved, but he could barely land any hits on Jiraiya and Jiraiya seemed to shrug everything off.

Maybe the creepy old perv really was a great ninja…

oOo

Naruto started talking about what kind of ramen he wanted from Ichiraku Ramen after the tournament, having a sort of debate with himself on the merits of each. That was the clincher for Shikamaru: there was no way anyone would be able to fake everything about Naruto's personality. It was more likely that Naruto, the dead-last, the worst student in the history of the academy, had rapidly improved to the point where defeating Neji was as easy for him as it probably was for their jonin-instructors.

"Troublesome."

"Eh, Shikamaru?"

"How did you improve so much this last month?"

"Training!"

"Much too troublesome."

"Relax, Shikamaru! It looks like you're up next!"

Shikamaru felt a slap on his back and he tumbled over the railing onto the arena floor before he could forfeit. Naruto was shouting encouragement and he could already feel a glare from somewhere in the stands. He closed his eyes and heaved a heavy sigh.

"Troublesome."

oOo

Naruto watched as Shikamaru out-thought his opponent. He was especially interested in the wind techniques that Temari was using.

He managed to gather some information about Gaara, namely that he was a jinchuriki, but the chance encounter at the hospital hardly counted as information gathering. And Shikamaru probably figured out about the kyūbi, but he was super smart.

Temari and Kankuro didn't leave their hotel and there were other, easier targets to assess. Besides, Temari obviously used wind techniques with the fan and whatnot and Kankuro used puppets. That was good enough.

Sasuke was practicing on top of a plateau with Kakashi-sensei, probably messing around with sharingan techniques. Shikamaru had drilled with his team and hadn't really trained. Shino did stuff with bugs, like his clan. He'd read up on Nara and Aburame clan techniques so he had a good grasp of the kind of stuff that meant. Naruto involuntarily shuddered at the thought of so much reading. So boring!

The library alluded to the fact that the sharingan wasn't good enough at seeing chakra to copy techniques without hand signs, so he was confident that Sasuke wouldn't copy any of his techniques. But that didn't mean he wouldn't be able to counter them or have new techniques of his own.

Shikamaru forfeited!

"Why would you forfeit?!"

Shikamaru shrugged. "I don't have enough chakra left to finish the fight. There's no point in continuing."

oOo

Sasuke and Kakashi made a dramatic entrance. They were very late. Kakashi secretly hoped that Sasuke would be disqualified and wouldn't have to fight Gaara. Sasuke wasn't ready for promotion anyway. Impressing everyone with Sasuke's combat prowess wasn't a priority for the village as it might have been in the past. So many rookie genin made it to the final that one particular boy's performance, no matter how good, wouldn't matter.

Keeping Sasuke alive was a priority for Kakashi. He'd trained the boy, given him the best chance he could. But Gaara was obviously mentally unstable and far more powerful.

He had to fake his relief that Sasuke would have to fight. Of course they made special allowances for Sasuke. Everyone was interested in the last Uchiha. He still wasn't getting promoted to chunin. Hell, after that flashy arrival there was no way the Hokage would promote him from the exam. Field promotions were always a possibility, but Kakashi doubted that would happen either.

Sasuke was just too obsessed with personal power, with being strong enough to kill Itachi. But it looked like Sasuke would be fighting Gaara after all. Oh well. He tried.

oOo

Naruto and Shikamaru raced to find someone, anyone who could stop the fight. Gaara had just killed two men in the stadium before heading out to fight Sasuke. Gaara would have no problem crushing Sasuke to death.

Naruto watched Sasuke move just like Lee had and paled. That wouldn't work against Gaara. It already hadn't worked. Then Shikamaru spotted Kakashi-sensei and elbowed Naruto.

"Kakashi-sensei! You've got to stop the fight!"

Kakashi looked back at Naruto and smiled. He couldn't stop the fight and he knew it. "Maa, why so worried? Don't you think I prepared Sasuke for this? I watched the preliminaries as well, you know."

Naruto stopped. "Well, it's not that."

Kakashi waved. "Then don't worry about it. Just watch."

oOo

Sasuke ran up the wall and his hands flashed through signs. Lightning chakra erupted from his hand and he ran at incredible speeds toward the orb of sand in which Gaara was hiding.

"You taught him that jutsu?" Gai looked at Kakashi with an eyebrow quirked.

"I'm not sure you're in any position to lecture me about what techniques to teach. Isn't that right, Lee?"

Gai just grunted and Lee was confused.

Naruto started to feel sleepy and drifted to the ground.

oOo

Naruto woke up to Sakura shaking him awake. He picked himself up and rubbed his eyes.

"Wha happened?"

"Genjutsu, idiot."

Sakura moved to wake Shikamaru, but Shikamaru just turned as she reached out and said, "Don't waste the chakra." He may have also mumbled, "Troublesome." The world will never know for certain.

Kakashi jumped in front of the three. "You have a mission. It's A-rank. Track Gaara and Sasuke. Provide Sasuke with backup. Shikamaru, you're team leader. This here is Pakkun. He'll follow their scents."

Pakkun was a pug wearing a leaf hitai-ite and a blue vest. Pugs are ugly, I don't care how you dress them up. If Pakkun wasn't able to speak, I would call his attire stupid and his owner an a$$hole. I have strong feelings about dressing up animals. Pakkun obviously likes his clothes and doesn't mind being a pug, so whatever.

Gai jumped down and smashed a Sand shinobi into the wall, opening a hole.

"Go!"

The four jumped out and sped across the treeline, leaping from branch to branch. Shikamaru turned to Naruto.

"How fast can you go?"

"Much faster."

"This is as fast as I can go and still have chakra to fight. I'm still pretty drained from my fight. Sakura?"

"I can keep this pace."

"Pakkun?"

"This pace is fine."

Before long, Pakkun stopped and told the three young ninjas that they were being followed.

Shikamaru frowned. "How many?"

"I thought it was eight, but it's actually nine."

"Okay. You and Sakura go ahead. Mark your path so we can catch up. Naruto and I will ambush them. Between the two of us, we'll be able to take care of them."

Sakura asked, "Are you sure?"

Shikamaru nodded. "Naruto is an assault specialist. My techniques work best with an assault specialist. We should be able to catch up quickly. But if we let them catch all of us, then we'll be hard-pressed to deal with them and catch up to Sasuke. We might not even survive in that case. Go."

Sakura and Pakkun sped off, leaving Naruto and Shikamaru.

"Here's what we're going to do..."

oOo

A group of eight Sound Ninja dropped down onto the forest floor. One of them disarmed a ninja wire trap with a kunai. Another looked around, tracking footprints behind a bush. They all froze, one of them stuttering out, "I c-can't m-move!"

Eight blonds wearing orange jumpsuits shot out of the bushes with weapons already drawn. The last thing the group heard was a quiet mutter of, "The first move is always a bluff," coming from the forest.

After the eight hit the ground, their shadows retracted to some shrubs next to the trunk of a tree. The Narutos were all still cheering in the clearing when a ninth Sound Ninja struck two of Naruto's clones, dispelling them in puffs of chakra smoke. Before the Sound Ninja could hit any more clones, he was unable to move.

"That worked great, dattebayo! He totally thought I was alone!"

"Drop him quickly. We still have to catch up to Sakura and Pakkun."

"Oh, right." The remaining six clones beat the man. He may have died. Or not. Who knows? T&I isn't saying one way or the other.

Shikamaru reached into his pouch and pulled out a soldier pill. He eyed it warily, but then shrugged and tossed it into his mouth. He and Naruto jumped into the trees and raced to catch up with Sakura and Pakkun.

They followed a trail of marked trees. Sakura had obviously taken a kunai and slashed the bark as she passed, pausing only long enough before she pushed off again to make a crescent cut. Soon they could hear shouts and rumbling and the cracks and clangs of combat.

Shikamaru held Naruto back to assess the battle. Sakura was carrying Sasuke, who was covered in black curse marks, and dodging a strange creature made of sand.

"Troublesome."