Chapter 28 - Chapter 27

In the stands, Shizune sat holding Tonton in her arms so that the little pig could see what was going on as well. She seemed to have an excited expression on her face as Neji walked out to face Naruto in the last fight of the series, "Wow, that was pretty cool. They came back from a three-to-one deficit by pretty much outsmarting two opponents back-to-back." Lee had accessed the Eight Gates and was forced to blow the technique without ever dealing a scrap of damage thus it was easy pickings for Naruto to finish him off in a move or two. Against Tenten she was outsmarted by Naruto's copious use of clones and field positioning, "This has been an impressive series."

"Impressive nothing." Tsunade muttered staring at one of the tickets in her possession, "If that brat knocks off the Hyuuga kid and eliminates that team from this tournament I'm out 200,000 ryo." Shizune's face was absolutely mortified at hearing that and Tsunade gave her a sheepish look, "Hey, they seemed like a sure thing to advance."

"You said you bet 20,000… altogether!" Shizune said loudly, Tonton also oinking angrily in her arms, "What are we supposed to do if you lose? That was most of our money that we have on us and there's no branch of our bank in this country! We'll never get enough supplies to make it out of the country now!" Why did she have to be the one that was responsible? Sometimes it was like travelling with a kid, a kid that liked alcohol and had the greatest chest in the entire world bar none.

"It'll work out." Tsunade said, not fretting over the monetary situation, "The brat just fought a full-scale battle. Did you see all of those clones he used? He's got to be exhausted after all of that. The Hyuuga kid is fresh and he's supposed to be the best. He can beat a tired rookie."

Normally, but if she thought that Naruto was actually tired after creating a hundred clones then she was horrifically mistaken. And there wasn't really anything normal about this rookie.

XxX

In the viewing area for the competitors, Tenten walked her way up to the railing and leaned against it with a sigh, "I can't believe he beat me. Half a year ago he couldn't even touch me." Her brown eyes then blinked in thought, "I guess he technically didn't touch me this time either… but man. He said he'd get stronger and he did."

"I didn't think Naruto could fight smart like that." Sakura said after seeing him trap Tenten. The last time she had seen him fight by himself he more or less tried to kick Sasuke to sleep until the self-imposed time limit on the match expired and that was the limit of his strategizing.

"Goldie-kun isn't stupid." Ino said, leaning on the railing near her old friend, "He just likes using his body more than he likes using his head." The wounded blonde girl smirked at Sakura despite her injuries, "But he always keeps saying his mind is scary… and he's kind of right about that. Shikamaru might be smarter than us and can come up with a plan for anything, but Goldie-kun is clutch and he can pull a win out of his ass if he has to."

Sakura took Ino's words to heart as something to remember since if they won their fights Team 10 and Team 7 would be facing off in the next round, but still, "You're talking like one of Naruto's half-baked plans would work on Sasuke-kun. He's still a long way from being that good." She looked over at Sasuke and noticed that he was looking intently at the field, as if he were trying to discern some kind of riddle. Or maybe the upcoming fight was just too interesting for him to respond to.

"Who cares about that?" Tenten said, possibly cutting off the two younger girls from bickering, "This is the last fight and the only thing you should be worried about right now. The winner's team advances. But Naruto can't beat Neji even if he could beat me. There's no way."

Shikamaru shook his head at Tenten's words, "I wouldn't be so sure about that. Naruto hasn't used up his bag of tricks yet."

Over with the kids from Suna, even Gaara was paying full attention to the battle for his own reasons, 'Keep winning Uzumaki. You'd better keep winning so that I can kill you legally or you'll regret it.'

XxX

Asuma had now settled down from his previous celebratory actions and had instead taken to taunting Gai, "So how's that two match lead working for you Gai? Oh wait, that's right they dropped the ball! Now it's dead even again, like nothing ever happened at all! I want my 80,000 ryo!" 20,000 ryo per sensei, since Gai, Kakashi, Asuma, and Kurenai had all bet on their teams to go further in the tournament. The winner of this series and Kakashi's team would be the only Konoha teams in the bet left to contend.

"It's not over yet Asuma." Gai said with a pinging smile, "You know full well how good Neji is. He won't fall easily even to one of your wily students."

"Yep. They're wily." Asuma admitted freely, "Team 10 is number one at running away, hiding, playing possum, misdirection, and all of that off-handed stuff. But when it comes to a straight fight there's one of them I'd never bet against, and he's out there right now."

Sitting to the side of them both, Kakashi took that moment to give his opinion, "You know, I'm actually really looking forward to this. I daresay I'm excited to be a part of it." He said in his usual dry tone of voice.

"So who's winning?"

The three men all turned to the side to see Kurenai descending the stairs with Shino helping Hinata on the way down, "It's more or less dead even going into the last fight." Kakashi said as he didn't trust Gai or Asuma to give impartial commentary on the happenings thus far, "It's actually been a really exciting series. And as you can see, Naruto and Neji are the last two standing."

Hearing that Naruto was about to fight Neji gave Hinata pause as she gasped at the news. Yet when she looked at the field she saw Naruto and Neji walking towards the Zen-garden from their respective places on the field to begin the faceoff, "Naruto-kun's going to fight Neji-niisan?"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

"Naruto-oniisama is going to fight Neji?" Hanabi said as she looked at the screen. So far this series of matches had brought up spirited debate and conversation among the people in the stadium, mostly questioning over how Naruto ever hoped to fight toe-to-toe with someone like Neji.

While her father was watching intently, prepared to see a more wider breadth of Neji's skills, Hanabi had a smirk on her face. Everyone thought that with Naruto's style of getting close he was at a marked disadvantage due to the Juuken and the Byakugan. Well she knew something they didn't, and she figured that she rather liked keeping the secret that she had.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

On the field, Genma stood between Naruto and Neji as they both stood across from each other. Neji's face didn't show any inflection of opinion on Naruto's reaching him in this tournament, but he spoke up anyway, "Are you ready to face your fate as a failure once and for all? This should be the ultimate lesson for someone like you, someone that did so much to get so close, only to fall in the end."

"If I lose it won't be because it was my fate to." Naruto said, his goggles that he pulled down before his fight with Tenten still obscuring his blue eyes from Neji's view, "It'll be because I wasn't strong enough today. But I am strong enough. Fate doesn't have anything to do with this fight. And I'm not a failure."

"I'll leave you with this…" Neji said coolly, closing his eyes and crossing his arms, "A bit of counsel to think on while you're sitting in the hospital after this is over. For as long as people have known of you it has been because you were a prankster, a loudmouth that everyone in the village had heard screaming to the skies about your foolish goal of becoming Hokage. What chance do you think you have of becoming Hokage? Every Hokage has been a splendid ninja from the moment they began, the second they picked up the art. Can you honestly tell me you can compare yourself to any of the past Hokage at this point in your career?"

Naruto's fists clenched in anger before unclenching, "Does all of this have a point or what? If I wanted someone to talk down to me I'd let Sasuke-teme do it. At least his banter is better than yours."

A smirk came across Neji's face as his eyes remained closed, "My point is simple. People don't change. The way you are born is the way you will be for your entire life. A failure will always be just that, a failure. And the only escape from your fate is death."

"So all of this was just me going with fate?" Naruto said, gesturing to the arena around him, "Getting this far in the exams, beating your teammates? Well fate must just love me then." He said that ironically because fate most certainly did not love him, and he knew that from personal lifelong experience.

Neji shook his head, "Your victories are all circumstantial. You defeated Lee, why? Because of your teammates. You defeated Tenten with pure luck. It was pure luck that you fell into that moat and avoided the fate of your clones to her jutsu. And it was all done so that you could be taught this lesson by me personally. No matter how hard you struggle, no matter what you do, you cannot escape your fate."

Taking the last of Neji's words with a scoff, Naruto stood at the ready in his combat stance, "You make your own fate."

In return Neji slid into his own taijutsu stance with his eyes still closed, "It seems as though you are one of the types that requires a point to be beaten into your head."

"Likewise…"

The crowd was buzzing and roaring in anticipation for the bout. Genma looked between the two genin, and if those two didn't look ready to fight then he needed to reevaluate the definition of the word 'ready'. There wasn't even any need to ask them, he already knew the answer, "Match five, the final match of the series! The winner's team advances to the next round: Hyuuga Neji of Konoha vs. Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha!" If anything the people got louder in anticipation once he introduced them. A part of him wanted to milk the tension for all it was worth, but that would have been tacky, "Begin!"

"My eyes can see everything about you, and they can see that you are destined to fall!" Neji said before opening his eyes, "Byakugan!" The veins around Neji's eyes became visible, indicating the activation of this technique. With his enhanced eyes he clearly could see the grin that pulled from Naruto's mouth once he did so and the twinkle of his eyes underneath his goggles.

"Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!"

A bright flash of chakra emitted from Naruto's body in the form of a shockwave as far as Neji's eyes could see. A regular person could never see the technique, but Neji was able to, and he got more of it than he ever wanted to get a glimpse at as he recoiled in pain, holding his eyes and stepping backwards out of his stance.

XxX

Up in the balcony, Sasuke, who had been watching with his Sharingan on, abruptly turned his kekkei genkai off and turned away from the fight holding his eyes, "Gah! What the hell was that?" He shouted in pain.

"Sasuke/Sasuke-kun!" Chouji and Sakura ran over to Sasuke who had seemed to suffer some kind of damage to his eyes, "What happened?" Chouji asked in concern.

"It feels like a flash bomb went off in front of my face!" Sasuke said, rubbing his eyes to get some kind of relief.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Hanabi shook her head once she saw Neji recoil in pain at what the audience perceived to be nothing, "Poor Neji. Naruto-oniisama's technique is the downfall of all doujutsu of insight."

"What do you mean by that Hanabi?" The little girl turned to her father who was looking at her with his usual stern, taciturn face that would have intimidated anyone else. To her he was just 'dad' so it wasn't particularly unnerving, "Do you know what just happened?"

Hanabi nodded, "Yes father. Naruto-oniisama released a pulse of chakra that he uses to locate things around himself. But when you look at it with the Byakugan it looks like a flash of chakra moving in all directions before hitting us in the eyes." She shivered in her seat slightly at recalling her experience with it, "It's terrible."

It was strange to see his daughter acting like a normal little girl due to the way she was during training, but that shiver was not an adult Hyuuga gesture, it was something a little girl would have done.

But he understood what she was saying nonetheless. The Byakugan could see chakra. Naruto was releasing pure chakra as a method of sensing the environment around him. That chakra flew outwards sharply and swiftly, otherwise the technique would be useless for sensing if it were slow. And once the chakra hit someone's body it would also run up their front, as in their faces, and the chakra would also run across their eyes.

As far as a Hyuuga was concerned that was like running a searchlight directly at their face or worse. Worse because it seemed to hurt at close range, and worse because as long as the Byakugan was active there was no safety from that move even with their backs turned due to the 360 degrees of sight.

XxX

Naruto let out a boisterous laugh as Neji stumbled back, "Can you see me now?" He asked with a devious looking grin on his face, "Then take a look at this!" Naruto ran forward and placed his own head under one of Neji's arms before securing his own arms in place around Neji's torso, trapping him in place. He then popped his hips and lifted Neji in the air by this manner before bridging himself backwards and slamming Neji over onto the sandy ground, leading with his upper back, shoulders, and neck, "Ourora no Jozan (Aurora Divide)!" Naruto then rolled through his bridge and backflipped over Neji, landing on his feet.

At first Neji didn't move an inch from his position, laying on his shoulders and neck with the lower half of his body folded forward and the top half stuck in the sand, but eventually the rest of himself rolled through as well, depositing himself face-first on the ground instead of on his back.

Naruto figured he was out cold, or worse. The landing was terrible, he fell with all of Neji's and his own weight on the back of Neji's head, neck, and upper back. However Neji's hands gripped the sand in the Zen-garden tightly and he pushed himself back up to his knees and then his feet, showing Naruto that while he had his head in the sand he had deactivated his Byakugan, "Interesting…" Neji said as he slowly got up, "I believe you would do the same thing every time I activated my Byakugan… what a trump card."

"Little Hanabi told me that my sensor jutsu hurts the Byakugan." Naruto said with a smirk on his face, "And I figured, what better way to handicap you? If you can't use your Byakugan you can't use your Juuken. You're done!"

"I see…" Neji said wiping the sand off of himself and working his neck to ensure that he wasn't injured. The sand had literally saved his neck, because Naruto had spiked him like a lawn dart, "It is quite ironic that despite the fact that the Branch House is slated to serve the Main House, it is a Main House Hyuuga that has revealed a weakness to our Byakugan. Ironic in the most anger inducing way possible."

Naruto shrugged with a frown, "Little Firecracker didn't do anything, I used the jutsu around her, it hurt her eyes. It's that simple, it's not hard to put together." It wasn't fair to blame Hanabi for watching him perform his jutsu the way any Hyuuga would have, "Hey, maybe I was fated to learn this jutsu so that I could kick your ass?" He joked, getting back into a ready position.

Neji set himself back into a basic Jyuuken stance, "I didn't say I gave up. I simply said that the Byakugan was useless against you. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. I am not that easy to overwhelm."

"Yeah?" Naruto said with a chuckle, "Well what are you going to do if you can't see inside of me to do anything? Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Four Naruto clones popped into existence and rushed at Neji directly, looking to take advantage in a hurry.

"If you think that I need my eyes just to fight…" Neji said as two Narutos came at him first, reaching out to grab him. He swatted the hand of the one on his right down and spun around, simultaneously grabbing that clone by the face and sweeping the leg of the other one, knocking it to the ground as his hand formed a claw hold on the clone's face and slammed it to the ground by the head, dispelling them both, "…You are woefully mistaken."

Naruto had felt victorious until Neji managed to defend himself with a more brutal and direct looking attack style than Naruto had seen him use with his Juuken, "What?"

Neji stood back up regularly and remained in his fighting stance, "Do you really believe that all we are taught is how to attack the tenketsu and your chakra network? That we were poking around with your chakra from the very start of our training? Wrong." Neji said, narrowing his eyes, "Before we ever gain access to our Byakugan we are taught to fight from the moment we are able to stand and walk. So until we can access our Byakugan we are drilled in a harder style based on the principle of teaching our younger practitioners the basis of the Juuken and conditioning them to some of the motions they will learn later."

A blank stare came from Naruto, even visible even through his goggles as all three remaining Narutos tilted their heads to the side, "Huh?" They chorused in unison.

"Idiot…" Neji mumbled before trying to dumb it down, "Before we learn the actual Juuken, to get us used to fighting we learn a full-contact style based on the Juuken. One that doesn't cause internal damage and is less precise since it is meant to hurt you externally."

"Oh." All of the Narutos said at the same time, understanding him now, "But why didn't you just say that at first?"

"I did!" Neji snapped at him before regaining his stoic composure, "However I don't need to use chakra to deal you damage, but then again adding it doesn't hurt… because after all if I hit you in the heart or in an organ it doesn't matter if I can see it or not does it?" With that, Neji charged forward at Naruto and his two clones.

Running interference for their creator, Naruto's clones charged ahead to meet him, both of them throwing punches that Neji caught in the palms of his hands, but when he tried to pull away he found that his hands were stuck fast to the fists of the clones who both smirked as they had Neji held wide open for the original Naruto who ran up to Neji and jumped up and kneed Neji in the face, then sticking himself to Neji's chest with his right knee and his shoulder with his left foot as a base for himself to settle to aim his elbow at the top of the helpless Neji's head for a sharp downward strike, "Kuro ni Utsurou (Fade to Black)!"

Just before Naruto could deliver the crushing elbow strike that would have smashed the top of his head like a coconut, Neji allowed himself to fall directly back while Naruto's clones were still sticking to his hands. He used his legs for a pair of rolling throws to toss the clones overhead. He went all the way through with his roll, winding up with him on top, and the attached Naruto on his back on the ground. Neji drew his hand back for a palm strike meant to deliver crushing damage to Naruto's face.

However he was still close to Naruto, and Naruto switched up his taijutsu gameplan. He gained enough space between himself and Neji to shoot his legs up, wrapping them around Neji's neck and one of his arms under the shoulder, trapping him in a tight choke, "Sankaku-Jime (Triangle Choke)!"

Neji began flailing away once he felt his breathing begin to strain and eventually stood back up with Naruto's body hanging off the top of his head, holding his top half bent over towards the ground. In a move of desperation, Neji moved his legs by Naruto's head and began to stomp on his face, eventually dislodging him and freeing him before he could lose consciousness.

In retaliation for the stomps that busted his nose, after letting go of his choke on Neji, Naruto kept a hold of the end of Neji's very long hair while still on his back on the ground and proceeded to kick him in the head and face repeatedly and unmercifully.

'He fights like a thug.' Neji thought to himself as Naruto's kicks scrambled his senses. He reached for a kunai and used it to cut the last few inches of his own hair under his tie that kept it from swinging too wildly in battle. He looked down at Naruto angrily and turned his kunai in his hand to stab downward at the grounded Naruto only to find his blade clashing with Naruto's quickly drawn machete.

The blood from the wounds that had freshly been formed on Neji's face by Naruto's barrage of savage kicks dripped down onto Naruto's face before the blonde with the currently bloody nose and busted lip kicked Neji in the side of the head one last time to break up their crossed blades, allowing him to jump back to his feet.

Neji spit blood on the ground in a very undignified manner as he still held the kunai in his hand, "I see you fight appropriately to your station." He again saw a blank look on the bloody face of Naruto and sighed as he put the weapon away, "You fight like a hood."

"It's supposed to look ugly." Naruto said in defense as he sheathed his machete, "And it works. Now let's try this again." With that he made three more clones that went after Neji like before.

When they got close enough to engage him, one clone ate a kick to the face that dispelled it, but the two others managed to get a hand on Neji, sticking to him again to hold him in place as one of the clones delivered a nasty close-range knee strike to Neji's body. The original Naruto took note of this and formed dozens of clones that rushed forward to take advantage, this time with a knockout beatdown of epic proportions in mind.

Instead of panicking to free himself, Neji smirked at the advancing original, "I know the secret to your taijutsu." Neji said before somehow breaking the grip of the clones and a wave of visible chakra emitted from his body just as Naruto started jumping towards him set to attack, "Hakkeshou Kaiten (Eight Trigrams Palm Rotating Heaven)!" He began to rapidly spin, turning that visible chakra into complete shield of the energy that dispelled the clones and knocked Naruto away, sending him bouncing off of the top of a rock in the Zen-garden.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

'What?' Hiashi thought to himself in shock as he saw Naruto get sent flying by Neji, 'That was a Main Branch technique! How did he learn how to perform it?' He could see the satisfied look on Neji's face over the monitor as if the boy just knew that he was being watched by Hiashi right then.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exam Arena)

Naruto appeared from the other side of the rock his body had unceremoniously bounced off of, still ready to fight as he shook the sand off of his body, blood streaming down his face from his forehead, nose, and mouth from accumulated damage, "What was that? How did you break my grip?" No one had ever done that before. He had been overpowered once he had actually grabbed hold of someone, but once he grabbed someone that was that. He didn't let go until he wanted to do so. Until now. He was actually more concerned about that than Neji's defensive jutsu.

"You think that I'm not aware of your application of the tree-climbing exercise to you taijutsu?" Neji said before chuckling a bit, "It took a moment at first to realize how you were sticking to me with the back of your hand and the bottom of your knee. But then I realized that you're just using tenketsu that most shinobi ignore due to the lack of use they generally find from them. I can break your chakra's grip on me by disrupting it with my own chakra flow in that exact spot. Most shinobi wouldn't be able to do this, you're just unfortunate that you ran into me."

Okay, so grabbing Neji and caving in his face with profuse violence was no longer an advantageous option.

Machete time.

"I don't need to grab you to hurt you, and I've been kicking your ass from the very start." Naruto said as the metal of his machete rang against the sheath when he drew it, "The only time you've ever hit me is just so you could keep me from putting you out. You can take a beating though."

"You'll never touch me again." Neji said resolutely, "You can't get past my ultimate defense."

"Let me guess." Naruto said dryly, "I'm fated to be stopped by it."

Chucking his machete would be a no-go this time. That only worked the last time because his opponents had trapped themselves and made it as easy as hitting fish in a barrel. Neji had already seen it once and wouldn't be stupid enough to stand in its way and test his defense against it even if he believed it was that strong, he could avoid it as easily as child's play. He didn't peg Neji as the type to do something unnecessarily so he wouldn't either.

But then again Asuma said that wind element chakra could cut through anything.

"Let's see if your ultimate defense can stop the ultimate battle element from cutting it to ribbons." Naruto said, holding his machete at the ready to charge Neji down.

Neji merely smirked and set himself in his stance, prepared for the clash of abilities, "If that is what you want. I'll be glad to embarrass you again before I end this battle, all without the use of my Byakugan. Even without the use of my kekkei genkai you're still just a failure, destined to fall to one greater than you."

Instead of charging, Naruto let his machete fall from his grasp as he held onto it by its chain to keep it from falling into the sand, apparently having second thoughts on the charge, "You know for someone that thinks they can see everything you sure are blind. What do you think of yourself? Tell me your opinion of Hyuuga Neji."

Neji blinked in surprise. No one he had ever talked down to ever asked him that question, "I'm referred to as a genius. A prodigy. The strongest Hyuuga of my generation some say."

"I didn't ask you that." Naruto replied, pulling his goggles up back to his forehead to look Neji in the eyes seriously, "I asked you what do you think of yourself, not what other people think of you."

Once Naruto's question rolled through Neji's mind for a few seconds, he clenched his fists hard enough to draw blood from his unbandaged hand, "I'm a slave, destined to toil for the rest of my life in a role thrust upon me due to an unfair caste, all for 'tradition'. No matter what I do, no matter how talented I show myself to be I will always be considered beneath talentless people who are incapable of being effective ninja. People like Hinata-sama." He finished, seething in anger, "I'm like a bird that's been caged, never to find a use for the wings I've been granted. Never to fly."

"And you're okay with that?" Naruto asked him, "You're alright with thinking of yourself as a slave, as useless? Then you're the failure. Not Hinata, not me… it's you." Neji's eyes widened at Naruto, "I might not be the smartest ninja ever like Sakura-chan or Shikamaru, and there are guys like Lee that are faster, and guys like you and Sasuke have amazing bloodline abilities that I can't touch, and Gaara and Fuu have powerful techniques that make fights so easy… I know that." He admitted freely, "I did fail. I got knocked down a lot… and believe it or not I got knocked down right at the start of my life, kind of like you."

Neji's eyes narrowed and the only thing keeping him from activating his Byakugan out of anger was the fact that Naruto could let loose a blast of chakra that would make him blind again. He didn't think he could dodge an attack blind.

He'd have to work on that later or something… in addition to trying to overcome his blindspot even when the Byakugan was active.

"What would you possibly know about having a mark on you that you can never rid yourself of? That follows you everywhere and will be with you until you reach the grave." Neji said in an accusing voice.

"You can believe me if you want to, it doesn't matter." Naruto said, not upset at all by Neji's refusal to believe his words, "But even though I've failed before, even though Hinata might have failed before, we're not failures. Everyone screws up, but being a failure is letting everything that's happened get to you, to let it beat you in the end like you did. You've got to keep reaching. You're not born to be a success or a failure, you've got to make it that way yourself. No matter what you're going to get knocked down somehow… you've just got to know how to fall… and get back up when you do."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Hanabi looked at the screen with Naruto's face on the screen with a huge smile on her face. One could even say that her clear eyes were sparkling at the way the whole thing looked on the screen. It was like Naruto was a superhero or something… mostly because on the massive screen that allowed everyone in the stands to see the action you barely registered the fact that Naruto was so short.

"Naruto-oniisama is so cool." Hanabi whispered in awe. She didn't even care if her father heard her that time. It needed to be said. Uzumaki Naruto was the coolest person she had ever met in her seven, going on eight, years of life. Of course that might have been because she didn't get to meet many people outside of her clan and he was the one she had the most pleasant prolonged contact with.

On the other hand, Hiashi didn't care about that. His mind was stuck on the concept of failure and Naruto was right, everyone made mistakes. No one is ever perfect, but if one shows the desire and intent to improve their faults then anything could be overcome in time, 'Maybe even the rift in our family can be as well.'

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exam Arena)

The crowd had been dead silent for Naruto and Neji's conversation, hence they heard it all. It brought a smile to Hinata's face when she heard Naruto more or less defend her from Neji's accusations of referring to her as a failure, 'Naruto-kun you really are a strong person.'

Kurenai had to smile at that kind of determination and even Kakashi's single visible eye crinkled in approval. Asuma just lit a cigarette with a cool look on his face that said, 'That brat's on my team.'

And Gai… well Gai was being youthful, "Such passion and heartfelt determination!" Gai exclaimed with tears streaming down his face dramatically, "A spirit that shines bright in the dimmest of backgrounds can only be held by one brimming with youth! Go Naruto! Show the hard work that has brought you this far, and let it burn brighter than the flames of genius!"

Kakashi had to then choose that moment to chime in, "Uh Gai, not that there's anything wrong with rooting for Naruto… but this is the last fight. If Neji loses then your team loses, and that means you lose… and you're out 20,000 ryo."

"I deserve such a punishment for engaging in the unyouthful activity of gambling in the first place!" Gai said, now shedding tears over his own regretful actions, "And Neji will learn a far greater lesson should he lose! Yes, Naruto's victory is the best thing for everyone! Naruto! Take notice of my manly features as I, Maito Gai, cheer you on to victory!"

XxX

Kabuto looked down at the field sheepishly after hearing Naruto speak to Neji, "He's one tough guy isn't he?"

"More like stubborn." Sasuke remarked with a smirk.

Ino shook her head with a smile on her face, "That's our Goldie-kun though."

XxX

(On the Field)

"We'll see how strong that heart of yours is once you're in cardiac arrest." Neji said to Naruto, done with talking and prepared to fight again.

"You really are blind." Naruto said, swinging his machete around in a circle, "Not for the other reason I was talking about before, but because you didn't see this coming." Naruto said as he made a single half-ram seal with his other hand, "…Maybe that just makes you deaf though."

It was a wonder to Neji what he was talking about until he paid attention over the crowd noise and heard a sizzling sound underneath his feet, "What? No! I won't!" Neji immediately activated his rotation technique just as a massive blast rocked the area around him. The smoke from the explosions cleared and Neji stood standing in a smoking crater created by his jutsu and the explosion, breathing heavily at the near miss that he managed to block, "That was it? I told you that nothing gets through my defense."

"Nothing that you can see." Naruto said, still swinging his machete in a casual circle, "But who do you think planted those tags in the first place?" He said with a massive grin before letting out a sharp whistle.

Before Neji knew it, ninja wire had been bound tightly around his entire body, holding him in place, unable to initiate the rotation aspect of his defensive jutsu, "I… can't move." From the sand rose up three clones of Naruto; one behind him and one on either side of him, all holding the wires tight, "What?" The clones all had their goggles down and their bandit bandanna-style headbands pulled up over their mouths and nose in addition to being covered with sand, "The sand was loose enough for them to crawl underneath towards me! But how could they see me down there? How did they know where I was? And when did you make them?"

"I made them when you tossed me behind the rock with your spinny move." Naruto said, "You can't see everything important without your eyes on remember? You've got a bad habit of not looking around you past what you already see in your field of vision." That was a bad habit from Byakugan use that Naruto picked up on early, "What you see normally isn't all that's going on around you! And they found you because that jutsu I used to blind your Byakugan isn't meant to do that, it's supposed to be a sensor jutsu. Sand is loose enough for me to feel things through unlike solid ground, so they knew where you were the whole time.

"I can't believe it…" Neji thought, continuing to struggle in vain. One Naruto was strong enough on his own, three holding him was impossible to free himself from, and instead of using chakra they managed to sneak the ninja wire around him under the sand so there was no way to break free without the necessary brute force.

"Believe it." Naruto said, making a holding out his machete in front of him by the chain at the end of it as he started to swing it in a circle faster and faster, channeling wind chakra through it as he made a half-ram seal and held the extended fingers up to his neck as if he were checking his pulse, "You lose, dattebayo. Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!" Naruto began swinging the machete on the chain almost making it look like the blades of a fan before he held it up in front of his face and blew into it.

A direct cyclone the circumference of the swinging machete's length came flying out from the front of where Naruto was blowing through. It blew all the way towards Neji and engulfed him completely before small cuts began to appear all over his face, clothes, and body from the jutsu. Neji began to scream in pain from the wounds being created on his person, not even able to step back or get his arms up to try and protect his body, before he finally fell to his knees and slumped to the ground unconscious.

The clones dispelled as Naruto cancelled the jutsu and stopped swinging his machete, letting his arm and the chain go slack as the blade of the machete dropped limply into the surface of the sand. He let out a sigh as Genma walked over to Neji to check him over. As the proctor checked for Neji's well-being, Naruto placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He was glad he was done fighting for the day… just as soon as Genma-.

"The winner of match five: Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha! Therefore advancing to the semifinals of the tournament are the winners of bracket one: Nara Shikamaru, Yamanaka Ino, and Uzumaki Naruto!"

That was what he wanted to hear.

And apparently the crowd did too as they went wild at the conclusion of the battle. As the medics checked Neji over for any substantial damage, Naruto walked away and gave a few waves to the crowd with a grin on his face, keeping the cigarette trapped between his teeth. Eventually he got too excited to just walk back and started running and jumping around at his victory, all the way back to the tunnel.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Even Konoha's partial crowd had to cheer at the conclusion of the Team Gai/Team 10 series of battles. The fact that the resident jinchuuriki managed to pick up the win didn't seem to bother them much, if any at all. On the screen he didn't look like a container that was going to lose control and bring about Kyuubified doom upon them all at the drop of a hat, he just looked like an excited kid that had just picked up the biggest success of his entire life. Who couldn't feel that and get excited about it?

Up in the highest box with his sensei's two oldest teammates, Jiraiya had to let out a laugh, "Way to go kid. I told you if you really wanted something, you take it."

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exam Arena)

At the moment, the Konoha contingent were mostly mortified due to the actions of one of their jounin. This time shockingly it wasn't Gai, it was instead Asuma who was up and celebrating Team 10's victory the only way that was appropriate for that point in time with a come from behind win like that.

By standing and repeatedly pelvic thrusting directly in Gai's direction triumphantly… while he was still seated.

"Can you feel it Gai?" Asuma asked while pelvic thrusting after every other word for emphasis, "Can? You? Feel? It?" Kurenai was covering the eyes of Shino and Hinata from Asuma's rather lewd physical gestures, "That's the feeling of watching your team get smoked like the last pack in the carton! Kami, it's a good time to Sarutobi Asuma right now!"

While this was occurring, Kakashi took out a camera from one of his vest pockets and took a picture of the scene for posterity, "Feeding Team 7 at the restaurant last night due to Chouji's appetite: 1000 ryo. Jiraiya-sama's rare collector's platinum edition of Icha-Icha that I found yesterday during the festival: 10,000 ryo. Seeing your colleague do pelvic thrusts directly into another grown man's face while his girlfriend, two young children, and 20,000 people are watching, not to mention the fact that the camera is on him right now: priceless."

That was enough to stop Asuma mid-thrust, "Wait, I'm on camera?"

"…Who's his girlfriend?" Kurenai asked, narrowing her eyes at Kakashi.

XxX

Shikamaru was watching the jumbo-screen feed, complete with Asuma-brand pelvic thrusting and a graphic displaying his name and the names of his students. Shikamaru palmed his face and shook his head while most of the others in the competitor's box started laughing, "…Asuma I swear to Kami… I thought you were cool. You're totally making us look bad after that win."

Meanwhile over on the bench against the back wall Ino was sitting down to rest again, only because Naruto was back up there as well, and Ino was currently fretting over the bloody mess that was Naruto's face and scuffed mess that was his long-sleeved blue undershirt and orange pants. He told her that it was mostly cosmetic damage, but she wasn't necessarily listening. He was bleeding from his hairline where he had bounced off of the top of the rock after Neji's Kaiten and it had time to run down his face without him wiping it away, but the bloody nose and lip he had suffered from when Neji stomped on his face were really the worst looking due to it running down the front of his face and shirt staining him with his own red.

At this point Ino wasn't even listening to him when he tried reminding her that he healed fast.

"Ino-chan it's alright, it's just blood and it's mostly dry by now!" Naruto disputed against his female teammate. He had taken a seat next to her to see if she was doing any better after getting thrashed by Lee and once she had seen how squalid he looked once he had taken his seat she immediately began to fuss even though she wasn't any better off at all. He guessed because she wasn't bloody. Some of it wasn't even his though since Neji had the 'courtesy' to bleed on him as well, "All I need to do is go to the bathroom to wash it off."

Maybe he should have done that before coming back? Or maybe during his celebration he could have jumped into the moat for a victory lap through the stream… but then he would have lost his cigarette. So that wasn't an option at the time.

Ino wasn't having any of his excuse making as she held his face in her hands and checked him over, "Goldie-kun there's a difference between being just resilient and running a marathon. You just fought three straight matches, and you still think you're alright?" Well, he was hungry… and he was starting to get a little sleepy, but he figured that was just the lack of adrenaline kicking his ass, "Ugh, you're a total mess. Poor baby… doing all that for us so we wouldn't lose."

"He's fine." A rather terse female voice said, getting their immediate attention. They both looked to see Fuu standing nearby, a decent distance away though as she tapped her foot impatiently and drummed her fingertips off of the bicep of one of her crossed arms, "Little wounds like that aren't enough to do any real lasting damage to someone like him. So you can get off of him now, you're just wasting your time."

Who did that girl think she was? Even if she was strong the way she showed herself to be in round one she wasn't going to stand there and tell Ino how to act after the bullshit she had just gone through a few minutes prior in her last fight.

"Why does it matter to you if I touch my teammate? He belongs to me." Naruto's eye twitched as Ino pulled the side of his head into a hug against her chest. Yes, it was nice… it was very nice, but he really didn't like the part where she said he belonged to her. The blonde Yamanaka girl was smirking at Fuu as she did this, rocking her body with Naruto's for added tauntability, "Of course I can see why you might be upset… I mean you don't have anyone this adorable to latch on to on your team… and now you have to go out there and get beaten up by the hottest guy in the tournament to boot."

Naruto took note of Fuu's reaction to Ino's remark and he could feel the same rising ire he felt when he started walking closer to Fuu in the stairwell, "Ino-chan that's enough." He said, confusing her over why it mattered.

"Why?" She asked as Fuu took that moment to walk away towards the doorway to wait on heading down to the field, "Oh, is it because she's a jinchuuriki?"

"No." Naruto said, his head still halfway against Ino's chest because come on, who in their right mind would push her away if they didn't have to? Still, he answered her question, "Just being a jinchuuriki by itself doesn't make you dangerous." Gaara was a serious contradiction to that statement, but he was willing to stick by it.

Before she reached the doorway, Fuu spoke up one more time, "I can 'latch onto him' all I want when I'm squeezing the life out of him next round." Her two other teammates Houki and Dorobou followed her out.

Dorobou took that opportunity to snicker, "But Fuu, I thought I was the only one in your life. You would cast me aside for a younger man?" Of course he got no response from her as she had already descended the stairs. Not that she would have even dignified that with a response anyway, "So beautiful and so cruel."

As the Taki team left, Ino blinked while still cradling Naruto's head to her chest, almost as if she forgot he was there, "What was that all about?"

He wished he could tell her exactly what she wanted to hear, but he didn't know what it was about himself. There was something familiar about how Fuu reacted though, he didn't know what it was but it was going to eat at him for the rest of the day once the fights were over.

"Looks like it's our turn again." Sakura said, patting her cheeks for blood flow in an effort to try and get herself warmed up somewhat for the next fight. She pointed over at Ino confidently, "Sit tight Ino-pig. After this is over you can start thinking about all of the ways I'm going to tear you apart tomorrow." She then paid attention to something very obvious, "Why are you holding Naruto's head like that?"

Ino tilted her head confusedly and answered her question with a frown, "Because Goldie-kun's had a long day and earned snuggle time with his Ino-chan." She gestured her head down to Naruto's rather worn out appearance, "Look at him. He just looks like he needs a hug." She said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"But what about Sasuke-kun?" Sakura said, not noticing the glare directed at the back of her head from said boy for bringing the topic up in the first place, "He's right here."

Ino fired back immediately, "Sasuke-kun's about to fight, and does it look like he needs a hug at all right now?"

Without missing a beat, Naruto responded in kind even though he wasn't even in the conversation, "Sasuke-teme always looks like he needs a hug." He said with a smirk before Ino used one hand to pull on his whisker-marked cheek, "Ow!"

"Be good." Ino chided as if she had some kind of control over Naruto. Since she had his head directly in her grasp she actually sort of did. But why could she argue with Sakura and he couldn't even crack a joke? That wasn't fair.

"Alright, enough." Sasuke said in an exasperated voice as he walked towards the doorway, "Come on Chouji, let's go win this thing." Said chubby boy hopped up from his seat on the ground near Shikamaru to head on out to the field.

Sakura saw her two teammates heading out to go down the stairs and ran after them to catch up.

"It is good to see that you were victorious Uzumaki."

Naruto and Ino turned towards the sound of the voice, this time it being Gaara, leaning on the wall near his team. The unexpected comment from Gaara actually managed to inspire Naruto to free himself from Ino's warm and demonstrative embrace, "Well thanks Gaara… I guess."

"If you failed to win I would have killed you."

Naruto raised an eyebrow while Ino paled at the directly blatant threat against his well-being. Naruto didn't react any further because he had a question that would have outweighed any trepidation he had at the moment, "Wait, you said you were going to kill me anyway."

"I was. I am." Gaara admitted, "But as long as you are in the competition I can do it without a chance of repercussions. If you had lost I would have been forced to kill you… and your entire team due to the inconvenience of going out of the way to then get to you."

The feeling of Ino clutching tightly to his arm got Naruto's resolve to harden in the face of Gaara's callous threat, "You'll have to go through me first."

"That was the original idea." Gaara said before moving towards the railing to watch the next match.

Temari and Kankuro had never seen Gaara after someone like this before. It was almost like Gaara himself was finding a way to take pleasure out of waiting to kill Naruto instead of just doing it, like a cat playing with a wounded mouse or something.

It was actually creepier than just watching him flat out kill things that made him angry.

And something about it just felt wrong. More wrong than it usually did, "You're not a completely worthless wind-user like I thought at first so I'll give you some advice." Temari said quietly so that Gaara didn't hear her, "If you get that far, far enough to fight Gaara, just quit. Surrender and leave. Go home as fast as you can."

"You can't beat Gaara." Kankuro said, following up on her point, "No one's ever even touched him before. Hope they've seen enough to promote you if you make it that far and just go."

XxX

(On the Field)

"Taki team wins the coin toss." Sekka said, pointing towards them, "Pick your matchup." He said as the teams stood on the stone bridge spanning the stream.

"Team battle to get this over with quick." Dorobou said confidently with a smirk. His strangely patterned eyes seemed to shine with poise, "We haven't seen anything impressive from these kids, even if one is the 'Last Uchiha'."

It wasn't anything that Sasuke hadn't heard before from opponents trying to taunt him. Team 7 had run into about four different teams inside of the caves under the mountain and each of them pretty much said the exact same thing… right before Sasuke kicked their heads in or Chouji stepped on their faces.

As they all looked ready to begin the fight, Dorobou looked towards Houki again, "If you go down again in this round you had better hope that you die in the process or I'll kill you myself weakling. It's been said before, but we don't need you anymore." Maybe intimidation would get him to fight a bit harder this time, maybe inspire him to get back up after just one hit.

Sekka shook his head at the brazen threat on his own team member before projecting his voice, "Quarterfinal match, one team battle only! Fuu, Houki, and Dorobou vs. Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Akimichi Chouji! Begin!"

Sasuke was quick on the draw with his Sharingan activated to start the battle with a quick set of hand-seals and a bang, "Katon: Housenka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu)!" In a hurry, Sasuke fired a volley of small fireballs from his mouth in a wild trajectory.

Fuu immediately jumped backwards, far out of the range of any of Sasuke's fireballs as she jumped away from the bridge and away from the streamside towards the forest area where she leaned against the nearest tree in a manner reminiscent of the way she got out of the way last time.

Houki was shoved out of the way by an arm that stretched out and shoved him out of the way over the side of the bridge, sending him landing into the moat. Dorobou merely jumped backwards all the way to one of the corner pillars of the bridge, using the strange black threads in his body to grab a hold of it and help him get high up on it to avoid Sasuke's attack as his arm reconnected with the use of his black threads.

Houki surfaced from being shoved into the moat and stood up on the surface of the water, "Thanks Dorobou!" He said, as he honestly didn't feel like getting peppered with fireballs.

"Everybody gets one." Dorobou replied seriously before looking over at Sasuke, "Is that all you've got? I don't even need to try. Iwa Bunshin no Jutsu (Rock Clone Jutsu)!" He then spit out three wads of rock that landed hard on the bridge and formed into clones of himself.

A smirk came to Sasuke's face once he saw that, "If you haven't noticed, I know a guy that can make way more of these things that you… and his clones are better!" He shouted as he ran towards the forming rock clones, "Chouji let's go!"

Chouji had already been in his expanded body form, having used Sasuke's opening attack as the opening to do so, "Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank)!" Chouji immediately began rolling towards the rock clones and Sasuke. Sasuke jumped directly over Chouji and the rotund ninja bowled the rock clones over like pins as he continued on his way to attempt to fell the pillar Dorobou was hanging off of.

"I can already tell the big flaw in your jutsu other than being pretty slow!" Dorobou said as he jumped off of the pillar and landed on the railing on the other side of the bridge, "You suck at maneuvering that thing!"

"We knew that already." Sasuke said as he began to land from his jump directly on top of Chouji's spinning form. He was only able to stay on long enough to kick Chouji in the side, and this assisted him in turning the ball to aim it in a sharp turn at the Taki ninja, "We fixed that!"

Dorobou only had time to create more threads from his body to try and catch Chouji's boulder-like body, but all this did was serve as a cushion once it plowed into him and knocked him away, taking out the stone railing of the bridge as well with the force of the roll.

As the body of the kinjutsu using ninja took the hit, black threads visible as they wafted in front of him, Houki looked up in awe, as Dorobou flew by over his head, "No way!" He had never seen a situation where he had been outclassed like that. Of course then he had to deal with the fact that Chouji's boulder body was now directly above him, "AAAHHH!" He ran on the surface of the water and dove just as Chouji crashed into it with a great splash.

XxX

Fuu had to admit that she felt a twinge of satisfaction at seeing Dorobou get hit by Chouji's boulder attack. It felt good and she would have readily admitted that any day, whether he was her teammate or not. That word didn't particularly mean anything to her.

At that moment Fuu saw and felt a swirl of leaves surround her body and she went into a slight haze for a second before snapping out of it, putting her on instant alert as she hopped off of the tree she was leaning against. Her eyes looked around for an attacker but she could find none no matter where she looked.

After keeping her eyes peeled for a sign of any sort of movement and finding none she looked back towards the bridge but did not see Sasuke or Chouji, nor Houki or Dorobou.

Before she could start thinking about any of it she could hear the roar of the crowd get louder. She looked at them to see they were all looking directly at her, raising her ire for some reason. Before she could speak she heard the same noise of people directly behind her, but closer. She turned around to find herself in the middle of a crowd of people thousands deep of all ages and sizes, everyone she had ever met or seen all encircling her and getting closer with looks in their eyes of malicious intent despite the smiles on their faces.

In her head as clear as day she could hear those people asking her to come closer to them, some offering her a birthday gift, others just children offering her to join them to play, but as they got closer many of them began brandishing weapons, still smiling at her.

She felt like a little girl again, and she hated that because she knew what would happen next. Thus she let out an ear-shattering scream of desperation.

XxX

(Real World)

Houki's body was sent flying up from the surface of the moat to land on the bridge motionless. Sasuke walked up to him and kneeled down, grabbing him by his soaked hair to pull his head up as a method to check his consciousness. He shook his head and Sekka called it, "Houki is unable to continue! He is eliminated!" As medics hustled out to take him off of the field, Chouji made his way back to the bridge. It was an easy spot to fight from for those two as they were direct combat specialists.

"Good work." Sasuke said as Chouji looked just as soaked as Houki did, though not nearly as beaten up, not even close, "Where's Sakura? Did she help you?"

Chouji shook his head as he tried to swipe the water from his hair and headband, "No, she didn't even need to. I beat that guy in like twenty seconds." He pointed over to the end of the bridge where Sakura was running towards them, "There she is. Where were you?"

Sakura pointed behind herself towards the forest area, "I put Fuu under a genjutsu to keep her busy while we defeated the other two… I can't hurt her myself if Kiba couldn't so I figured I'd wait for you two instead of attacking her myself." She said with a smile before watching the medics carry away Houki, "Wow. Really? Again?" She said with a deadpan look on her face. Talk about a third wheel.

"Yep." Chouji said, proud of his handiwork, "Now let's go finish off-."

Chouji's comment was cut off by a scream that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. All of Team 7 turned to the forest area to see the sight of two fully uprooted trees flying from the ground. Through that, Fuu seemed to be running towards them rapidly.

"I thought you used a genjutsu?" Sasuke said, debating the merits of fight or flight in this instance. Pride be damned, that girl was radiating a strange green chakra that his Sharingan could see as clear as day. Little did he know it was a visible glow for those paying attention with regular eyes as well.

Sakura brought out a kunai for self-defense, "I did! It was weak though, so she could have broken it. It was just Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu (Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Jutsu). It was the second genjutsu Kakashi-sensei taught me when I was learning them, the one he used on me during the bell test." She felt out for her hold on the jutsu, "Wait, she didn't break it!"

"Then how is she still running towards us?" Chouji asked skittishly.

"I told you it was a weak genjutsu! She isn't bound by anything!" Sakura yelled in return before taking a chance and ending the genjutsu. She could swear she saw the awareness return to Fuu's face before it twisted in pure rage and she ran at them harder than before. Sakura threw her kunai at Fuu. Much to her chagrin however, it merely bounced off of her as Fuu started charging across the bridge faster than they knew they could run from.

Sasuke could see how fast she was moving with his Sharingan, so he technically had more time to try to come up with an answer… and he only really had one idea at the moment, "Chouji, I think we need to do it. We've got to use that move!"

Chouji looked at him in surprise, "Are you sure?" It was supposed to be their trump card in team combat, something that the two of them had created right after Chouji had returned from training with his father over the last month as a combination method of easily dealing with Naruto's multitude of clones and Shikamaru's shadow techniques simultaneously. It was an unspoken agreement that they were saving it for Team 10.

"Yes, right now! Let's go!"

"Whatever you say!" Chouji said as his body expanded and he began to roll towards Fuu in an effort to fight pure direct force against pure direct force, "Roll!"

Sakura looked on in horror. Fuu could stop Kiba's jutsu with her bare hands. What made them think she couldn't stop Chouji's clan jutsu as well? Turning to Sasuke she saw him running after Chouji and making hand-seals, "Sasuke-kun, what are you going to-?"

"Konbijutsu: Katon: Fumetsu no Ryuusei (Collaboration Jutsu: Fire Release: Immortal Meteor)!"

Both Sasuke and Chouji shouted this as Sasuke breathed his fireball directly at Chouji's rolling frame, turning his human boulder form into a flaming mass careening right at Fuu.

XxX

Naruto's jaw dropped as he almost hung over the railing trying to get a look at what he was seeing, "Holy crap! Sasuke just set Chouji on fire!" He blinked to himself about how wrong that sounded, "…And he was okay with it?" He turned towards Ino and Shikamaru, "We've got to come up with something like that."

Shikamaru knew that Chouji had things like this in him if he put his mind to it, but this was ridiculous, "…Good luck with that."

XxX

"Ah, so it did end up working after all." Kakashi said as he saw the jutsu from his two genin take shape, "Good for them. They never told me if they managed to work it out properly or not."

The casual way he was speaking made Kurenai question Kakashi's sanity, "One of your students is on fire… and you don't seem to care." It wasn't the first time she had felt this way about the man's mental faculties though. However this was absurd, "What kind of self-sacrificial jutsu-?"

"I told them specifically to never try it unless they were sure they had it worked out correctly." Kakashi said in defense of himself, "It's no worse than teaching a genin to open the Eight Gates." He said with a pointed look at Gai.

"He did what?" Kurenai asked with a dumbfounded look.

Kakashi looked at her with a cocked eyebrow before a look of realization crossed what was visible of his face, "Oh right, you weren't here for that. But yes, he did. And you can officially not refer to Asuma as irresponsible for the whole smoking thing anymore." Definitely not when other genin were slinging around body destroying kinjutsu and setting each other on fire for desperation attacks.

Lucky for all of them that there was no such thing as social services in this society huh? Yes indeed.

XxX

(Moments Ago - Within Fuu's Genjutsu)

Just like when she was a little girl Fuu no longer allowed the crowds, no longer allowed anyone to get close enough to harm her without making them pay for it. And she charged, mowing her way through the mass of people surrounding her just as easily as she did the first true time she activated her combat abilities.

She could never feel safe. She learned that lesson a long time ago. Everyone wants to hurt her, test her limits, and she always had to stay sharp. Her guard could never be down for her own security purposes. Anyone that got close to her was a threat to her safety, and anyone that was a threat to her safety had to be neutralized.

But then the genjutsu suddenly faded and the crowd left, the voices stopped.

Fuu looked ahead and felt pure anger as she saw Sakura and realized what had happened to her. She never stopped running. They could try to stop her but none of them could. If she so desired it there wasn't anyone that could stop her.

The large Akimichi boy began to roll towards her, maybe to slow her down. Fat chance of that happening. She'd kick him to the side like the ball he was and then she would move on to the other two.

Then he caught on fire.

XxX

(Real World)

Fuu immediately stopped running on a dime when Chouji's flaming ball form filled her vision. She couldn't just turn and get enough speed quickly enough to get off of the bridge, and the ball and the flames were too large to dive to the side to avoid. It was moving too fast to dodge by jumping from the bridge either.

This was going to hurt her and she knew it… and that only made her stronger.

Lifting her hands, Fuu stopped the gigantic rolling Chouji right in his tracks, forcing him to spin while in her hands as he rotated hard enough for the stone bridge beneath him to break slightly.

Fuu could feel the intense flames burning her hands and forearms and let out a scream at the pain running through her before her eyes let off a green, pupil-less glow and green chakra started radiating from her body. She shot a leg back and kicked the bottom of Chouji's ball and the bridge, propelling him directly into the air.

Sasuke and Sakura watched in combined awe and horror, everyone did, as from the bottom and the top of the red cylinder on Fuu's back a pair of chakra blasts emerged and expanded outward, humming as if they were four insect wings in flight. She flew up and met Chouji to where she kicked him in the air as he started to descend, still in ball form.

Flitters of ash came off of Chouji's ball-body. Fuu on the other hand had very severe burns on her hands and forearms and her white armwarmers had burned away, but she formed a fist anyway, one intended solely for Chouji as a receipt for his bold attack against her, "Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow)!"

She punched Chouji as hard as she could and sent him flying all the way up to the high ceiling of the arena where he hit it hard enough for parts of it to fall along with Chouji himself. Chouji was no longer in his ball form, but he was still expanded as he fell back to the ground. His body landed in the Zen-garden, sending up a mass of sand as Genma hustled over with a group of medics.

Fuu merely hovered in the air above the Zen-garden overlooking the scene before she heard a very loud and distinctive noise coming back from the bridge area.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – Bridge Area of the Field)

Sasuke and Sakura could only watch as Fuu flew into the air right before their eyes to follow up with her attack on Chouji, "Damn it!" Sasuke growled, his Sharingan eyes spinning angrily in his sockets. She was too high in the air for them to reach even with any of his fire techniques.

"Chouji!" Sakura cried out for their helpless teammate as she could see an angry Fuu gearing up to punch him.

With their attention swept by Fuu's overwhelming presence they never felt the creeping figure walking behind them, "That hurt…" Both Sasuke and Sakura turned around only to be swatted by two masses of black threads. Sasuke was sent rolling head over heels down the bridge while Sakura was smashed into the side of the bridge that still had a railing, "You and fat boy really did quite the number on me Uchiha." Dorobou said, "Even with the Jiongu that still hurt."

Sasuke sat up only to be hit with a dismembered fist that flew over and punched him before being retracted back to Dorobou. Sakura looked up at Dorobou and attempted to make a rushed set of hand-seals only more black threads to reach for her and grab her around both wrists in order to yank her up to her, holding her hands above her head as he delivered a hard punch to the stomach that had Sakura coughing up blood.

"Sakura!" Sasuke yelled as he stood back up and ran towards Dorobou, "You son of a bitch!" He reached under the back of his shirt and pulled out a fuuma shuriken but just as he was to throw it the thick black threads moved Sakura directly into his path, guaranteeing that a hit would cut clear through Sakura first before it ever reached him. In his hesitation another stretching punch nailed Sasuke in the face.

Laughter started to come from Dorobou, "There. You get the idea Uchiha. If you try anything on me you'll be killing her first if you even hit me at all!" He turned Sakura towards him with the use of the threads, "Don't worry beautiful. I won't be testing out that organ harvesting idea on you or anything. I doubt you have any that are useful to me. You're more useful to me like this." Sakura's arms and legs were bound by the threads so instead of lashing out with an attack she spit in his face and got another hard punch to the stomach for her troubles.

"What do you want?" Sasuke yelled at him, still holding onto the fuuma shuriken. It couldn't just be to win.

"Your eyes!" Dorobou yelled, "I missed out on my chance to obtain one pair of legendary eyes in my last match but I simply can't let an opportunity like this slip away. I've never transplanted organs into my own body before but I know it can be done, and with the Jiongu it's supposed to be easy! But you would probably surrender before you give them up to me and I don't want that. And you'll let her die before you ever give your precious eyes up, so I'll just kill you and take them!" He formed the bird seal and stomped on the ground, "Doton: Doryuusou (Earth Release: Earth Flow Spears)!"

Near Sasuke, the ground spiked up in an attempt to impale him where he stood. As he moved, he could see the ground shifting to do the same, allowing him to preemptively avoid repeated attempts at stabbing him with ever shifting spikes.

"I've had enough of you!" Sasuke yelled as he revealed it to actually be two fuuma shuriken, unfurling them both as he continued to dodge. In response Dorobou placed Sakura directly in front of him to be a human shield. Both of them looked at each other, and the look in her eyes told him to attack anyway. So that's what Sasuke did. With a yell of exertion he threw the large weapons directly at Dorobou and by proxy Sakura as well.

Sakura just stared straight ahead with not a hint of fear on her face as the blades flew through the air… right past both her and Dorobou.

The Taki ninja couldn't believe it. After the effort and the internal battle it took to decide to launch the attack in the first place not only did one do so, they both missed! He had to laugh, "What were you aiming at?"

"Not you." Sasuke said, gritting his teeth with a smirk revealing that he had ninja wire between his teeth and in his hands. The wires were attached to the shuriken that whipped around the pillars at the end of the bridge and came flying back towards Dorobou's rear, "Soufuushasan no Tachi (Manipulating Windmill Triple Blades)!"

The weapons cut through the threads holding Sakura's ankles and wrists, freeing her and allowing her a chance to escape. Dorobou immediately gave chase to overtake her as she ran directly towards Sasuke "You bitch! You're not getting away! I'm a genius! I'm the keeper of the jinchuuriki! I'm the greatest prospect Taki's had since Kakuz-!"

"Nobody cares…" Sasuke said, quickly making three hand-seals the moment he cut Sakura free. Lightning began to gather around his left hand and a loud noise that resembled the chirping of birds, "…About how talented you are in prospect. I'm talented in prospect." His Sharingan glared angrily at Dorobou with hatred for trying to take a hostage against him, a hostage that was his comrade, "What matters is actually going out and proving how good you are… again, and again, and again! That's the only thing that being called a genius means; that you have to keep proving it!"

XxX

Gai turned towards Kakashi with a disapproving gaze while the other jounin were staring in awe at what Sasuke had formed in his hands, knowing full well what it was, "I can't believe you taught Sasuke that technique Kakashi. A pure assassination technique."

This time Kakashi didn't choose to ignore Gai's statement, "I don't really care about your judgment Gai… because Sasuke needed this." He said, mirroring Gai's own comment on his teaching of opening the Eight Gates to Lee.

Hinata's Byakugan could see the massive amount of power rippling off of Sasuke's left hand, "His chakra is so intense." It had to be since it could physically be seen even without her doujutsu.

Kurenai had never seen Kakashi's own personal jutsu but she had heard about it and the telltale noise that it made when formed, "But still Kakashi. What made you teach Sasuke your first signature ninjutsu?"

"Because he's like me." Kakashi said, once again making Gai reflect on why he taught the things he did to Lee, "I've taught him to use this jutsu keeping in mind its one single purpose. To protect those precious to him." 'The way I wish I could have back then.'

XxX

He ran forward dragging his lightning-covered hand through the concrete of the bridge, tearing it up as he sprinted forward.

He could clearly see Sakura running towards him with Dorobou right behind her and his eyes were set firmly on him, "Being a genius means that you have to live up to those expectations! And for the sake of the people that believe in you, you can never let them down!"

Sakura turned her head to Sasuke the moment they passed by each other and for a second she felt like she had Sharingan as she felt time stop. Quicker than a bolt of lightning, no way for anyone to actually have seen it, she could have sworn that he turned a slight glance of the only eye of his she could see towards her, as if to make sure she was okay before moving along, "…Never again…" She thought she heard him whisper to himself. And just like that the moment was over and they passed each other, one moving far faster than the other with a target in mind.

Dorobou saw the lighting around Sasuke's hand and moved his black threads directly at Sasuke in an effort to stop him, but all that got him was a mass of cut threads and a slight shock from a contact charge that slightly paralyzed him enough for Sasuke to finish, "No!" He yelled. He hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of his kinjutsu, 'I was going to be greater than Kakuzu…'

"Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"

Sasuke slammed the Chidori right into Dorobou's chest, punching it right through the left side of his heart out the back of his chest. His hand still chirping with the lightning chakra in his hand, Sasuke moved his mouth closer to the still standing, yet officially dying, Dorobou's ear. His whisper was only heard by himself and the dying man his hand was stuck through due to the sound of the Chidori still going, "You made a mistake when you tried to kill my teammate. I'll never let anything like that happen again if there's anything I can do about it."

With a squelch he pulled his hand from Dorobou's chest and let him drop to the ground, no more motion in the black threads that had been fully on display outside of the genin's body.

He turned back towards Sakura, shaking the life fluids from the deceased Dorobou from his hand until he heard the sound of insect wings beating. He turned around to see Fuu right in front of his face, her glowing green pupil-less eyes staring at him, and he saw her fist coming directly at him in special Sharingan slow motion.

Sakura looked in shock as Fuu landed from her momentary position over the Zen-garden where Chouji had fallen to and punched Sasuke right in the face before he could ever react. Fuu was absurdly angry at Sasuke for adding the fire to the portion of the attack that had so badly injured her hands. If he hadn't then she would have been able to stop Chouji's attack with barely a problem.

Gritting her teeth angrily, she flew towards Sasuke who was tumbling hard backwards. Sakura tried to get between her and Sasuke, but Fuu merely barrel-rolled out of the weak girl's way, blowing her off of the bridge with the mere intensity of the chakra wings emitting from her red cylinder. With the distraction easily dealt with, Fuu turned her attention back to Sasuke.

Sasuke managed to roll through, loopy and bleeding from Fuu's punch, but he was able to form another Chidori in preparation for her. It wasn't fast enough to attack her with as Fuu body-tackled Sasuke, squeezing him tightly as she started to fly up into the air with Sasuke in her grasp.

Sasuke struggled, but it was like being caught in the grasp of a stone statue. In Fuu's bearhug he could feel his bones creaking as his arms were by his side out of the reach of the other, 'I can't even reach my hands to make hand-seals!' No Kawarimi for him.

After flying high enough in the air, Fuu just held him there in a hover as he continued to try and fight to no avail. She just stared at him as he continued to fight against her as best he could.

"Let go of me!" Sasuke managed to wheeze out as Fuu's grip was murder on his standard breathing. He may not have been able to get himself out with a Kawarimi, but he still had the Chidori in his hand and used it to shock Fuu's thigh, eliciting a cry of pain from her as her muscles tightened. Once she squeezed tighter it finally broke his focus and he let the Chidori go.

In response to his demand and attack she glared at him and her lips quirked slightly towards a sneer, "Whatever you say." She said before turning them directly upside down, allowing them to hover in the air for a few long, arduous seconds for cruelty before she turned her wings off. Both she and Sasuke began to fall to the earth with the naturally eternal weapon known to man as gravity, "Keshi Gomu o Oshi (Eraser Press)!"

Sakura had been knocked into the water and thus could only watch Fuu carry Sasuke over one hundred feet into the air before flipping upside down and allowing them both to fall to the ground. Sakura scrambled to get out of moat and over to the forested area where Fuu was dropping.

Fuu let Sasuke go and let him fall through the top of the canopy of the forest and merely stared as his body pulverized every last branch in his way on the fall to earth. She wasn't sure if all of the snapping noises were branches or Sasuke's bones, but with as thick as some of those branches probably were it was probably both.

Sakura ran towards the forest area of the field as fast as she could and heard the crashing noise of Sasuke falling through the trees, "Sasuke-kun!" She shouted, running through the brush and the foliage before finally reaching the area covered with destroyed branches, tree parts, and a broken looking Sasuke, "Sasuke-kun no!" She immediately dropped to her knees once reaching him, but didn't dare move him or touch him, "Someone help!"

He was still alive, but he was a complete mess. He was still conscious because his breathing was pained and his eyes were clearly showing that he was in agony.

The sound of something moving through the leaves gave way to Fuu descending towards the ground before turning her wings off, her glowing green eyes staring at Sasuke and Sakura. She began to walk closer towards them as Sakura reached for a weapon but found it futile to do so. Fuu had a limp due to the fact that Sasuke shocking her forced the muscles in her leg to lock and the nerves to go haywire, still she had a look of anger in her face.

"Stop!" Sakura yelled, tears beginning to fill her eyes as she thought about all that had happened, "You've won! We give up okay? It's over! We surrender!" That still didn't stop Fuu from continuing to walk forward, "I can't beat you, but I'll fight you to stop you if I have to!" Sakura stood up with a kunai, ready to defend herself, "I said we give up! There's no reason to fight anymore! After all of this are you going to kill Sasuke-kun the way you killed Chouji? They were both defenseless, Chouji was already beaten!"

Fuu stopped walking and simply stood in place, "You say you give up?" Sakura held her ground with her weapon just in case but nodded. At that the green, thin aura around Fuu's body faded and her eyes went back to having features and to their original orange color, "Fine." With that she turned around and began to leave the forest area as the proctors entered with medics, most of whom had been working on Chouji when Fuu had been fighting the others. They had only stopped on the bridge to check Dorobou for his vital signs only to find none, "She quit. He can't fight. I win."

Sakura nodded with a sniffle as she dropped back to her knees near Sasuke as the medics began checking him over. Sekka hurriedly projected his voice to announce the end of the fight, "The winners of the match and advancing to the semifinals as the winners of bracket two: Fuu, Houki, and Dorobou!"

Sekka went over to Sakura who couldn't believe what had just happened to them all. He placed a hand on her shoulder, getting her to look up at him, "Your other teammate in the garden, he isn't dead. The expanded form he had when he landed and the sand protected him when he hit the ground. He's pretty bad off, but he should be fine."

Sakura nodded, sparing a brave smile as the doctors loaded Sasuke up, preparing to move him somewhere to give him good treatment.

XxX

Fuu limped her way out of the forest and could hear the whispers of the crowd again now that they had seen her jinchuuriki form. It was expected, but she didn't care about any of them. She could have killed Sasuke. If she had released him any lower, making it so that he didn't hit the thick canopy leaves before falling through the branches to the ground he probably would have died. She also could have held him up over the barren area or the bridge itself. That would have done the trick.

She didn't kill the Akimichi boy either out of the anger of what had happened to her. Once he survived her punch she didn't feel vengeful enough to kill him. They hadn't waved her off or announced him as eliminated so she could have delivered another one to finish him if she wanted to.

So why didn't she? When the genjutsu on her was first canceled and she realized that Team 7 had made her live her nightmare turned reality she was angry enough to kill them, it even got worse when she was burned. While she didn't go out of her way to keep them alive she didn't kill them when she could have.

"You're not a monster."

'I am a monster.' Fuu thought to herself, 'If that's what you're treated like, and that's what people see you as then that's what you are… like it or not.'

"Will you stop saying you're a monster!"

'Kid…' Fuu thought as she limped towards the entrance tunnel, 'I'm only saying what everyone else around me has said… I'm stuck with the Nanabi. It's the thing that's defined me for the last ten years, ever since I was six and they stuck me with it when I entered the Academy. If you've got one in you too then why would you tell me not to think of myself as a monster?'

"Because if that stupid thing inside of you makes you a monster that means I'm one too!"

Growling to herself, Fuu was wondering why that little punk was stuck in her head. Maybe because he was the only person that ever went out of their way to talk to her. He did it only because he wanted to… at least that's what he would have said. But there was something else he said that wasn't even directed at her. That something just stuck with her. Something he said while he had been fighting Neji

"And you're okay with that?"

'…No. No, I'm not okay with that. I was never okay with it.' Fuu's footsteps echoed through the entrance tunnel as she decided to go to the medical bay. She could bandage and treat her own burns, because those doctors weren't going to touch her. She wouldn't allow it, 'I just-… It doesn't matter. I am what I am Uzumaki Naruto… and next round I'm going to show you just what that is.'

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Chakra Seals: The Vindictive Bitch of Fuuinjutsu

The reason good, useful chakra seals are really high level is because it's really fucking hard to properly seal away an enemy's chakra. The arrays are complicated and have to be perfect… no mistakes. A single mistake will mean that you aren't sealing a single damn thing, all you did was make a pretty pattern that looks like dyslexic kanji. Even worse, if you screw it up you could be messing with your own chakra, and that's worst case scenario.

Even then, a lot of seals can be broken. An opponent with an intense enough chakra can overpower your seal with pure will and chakra strength. That's a terrible situation. Hope that you never fight someone with chakra that strong. It usually happens like that when your opponent has chakra that is as strong as your own or stronger so be careful with that.

Now back to designing your seals. The reason it is so precise is because chakra itself is the most important thing in your body. Without chakra you are dead… which is why sealing off chakra for good is impossible, because a body needs chakra to circulate. To do that would kill. It's like a law against nature that you can't do that. People have tried. For as long as fuuinjutsu has existed people have tried, and there is indeed a way to do so… but guess what the price is.

YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL!

So yeah… be careful with that.

Jutsu List

Ourora no Jozan (Aurora Divide). C-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. Similar to Genshi Kujo (Atomic Extermination) the user will grab a hold of the opponent aggressively around their waist and will quickly lift them off of the ground before bridging their body back and slamming them on their head and neck, using the weight of the enemy and the user to cause damage that could be nigh fatal. The only thing keeping this technique from being rated higher like Genshi Kujo is the fact that this move is performed from the front as opposed to the back, making it more dangerous to attempt than the other.

Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-range. Using a rapidly swinging object that can be used for chakra flow techniques as a medium, the user will flow wind chakra through the proper item while blowing into the spinning object. The wind chakra circulating through the weapon will be forced forward through the chakra sent out from the user's mouth during his blowing and will be sent towards the enemy in a single direction, direct cylindrical fashion. Anything hit with this jutsu will not really be forced back, the wind will push them back enough to make walking forward difficult enough to shove a man back a few steps, but not strong enough to knock a sturdy target down. Instead, the real damage comes from countless invisible blades that can cut into the opponent's body.

Konbijutsu: Katon: Fumetsu no Ryuusei (Collaboration Jutsu: Fire Release: Immortal Meteor). A-rank nintaijutsu, offensive, close-range. An original collaboration technique between Akimichi Chouji and Uchiha Sasuke. Combines the powerful rolling propelling force behind the Akimichi clan technique Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank), and the roaring damaging flames of Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu) to burn and smash through anything in its path. Chouji's very resilient jacket that he usually wears gives him time to complete the technique without suffering burns himself. The jacket along with the flames dissipate after it is burned through as a safety precaution, so there is only a small amount of time to use this technique before it just becomes the regular Nikudan Sensha.

Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow). C-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. This technique is merely Fuu delivering a punch to an enemy. What makes this jutsu potent is the combination of Fuu's use of Tekiousei-Tai (Adaptable Body) to condition her body and her wings of chakra granted to her in her jinchuuriki form, allowing her to deliver a dense, hard punch with the power and speed of flight behind it. It is capable of sending an enemy flying and killing a shinobi in one strike thus she is accustomed to only throwing one punch.

Keshi Gomu o Oshi (Eraser Press). B-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. Fuu takes a tight grip of her enemy so that they can't move and flies with them into the air before diving straight down and dropping them towards the ground to smash them. It is similar to the Omote Renge (Front Lotus) in base appearance, only Fuu holds the opponent from the front, she uses her pure strength to hold an enemy in place instead of binding them, and she lets go of them instead of crashing into the ground with them.

Yeah! Chapter done son… or daughter.

The wind jutsu Naruto used was taught to him by Asuma a few chapters ago when he asked him for it. It was the one that stripped the parts of bark from the tree in the flashback in chapter 23.

Now for those of you that are probably (Inevitably) going to say why didn't Naruto smash Neji in six seconds… he would have had the fight not started on sand. And after that when he turned his Byakugan off, he doesn't need his Byakugan to really do things like dodge stuff he can see. Not having his Byakugan isn't going to make Neji automatically suck at life. He wasn't good at fighting just because he had the Byakugan, he was good anyway and the Byakugan made him able to do things like hit all of the tenketsu in someone's arm in the middle of a fight.

Not having the Byakugan meant that he couldn't seal off Naruto's chakra, he could still damage his organs, he could still use Kaiten, and he could still knock the shit out of him, because if you don't think a palm strike can knock you out as easily as a closed fist then you've never been hit with one by someone that knows what they're doing. Trust me, palm strikes are awesome (If you've never seen people break bricks then shame on you).

The only reason people don't do it in MMA is because a punch is easier to do and the gloves are pretty cumbersome to use with proper palm strikes.

Now it's Gaara's team's fight and the first day of fights will be complete.