"Damn it!" Shikamaru said as Ino held her hands to her mouth once Naruto emerged from the wood section of the battlefield and fell out on his face with blood trailing from his mouth. Both of them suddenly ran for the steps to make their way down to the field, "Naruto doesn't get taken away on stretchers! That's not how he does things!"
"He's unconscious Shika." Ino said, trying to defend why he would be doing so, "But he's never that hurt though… ever." They had seen him take some blows. When that big muscle-mass increasing missing-nin smashed him back during their last C-rank he got up, "What happened in that forest after he used the seal? Did Fuu hurt him in that fight?" They didn't really get a good look deep past the trees so it wasn't clear to them what happened.
Shikamaru then suddenly stopped on the steps as he had a thought on something, "Fuu had powers… Gaara had powers… Naruto didn't have any obvious stuff like theirs though. He said his ability was his healing. He used that seal and then the fight ended so he turned off Fuu's natural ability to win somehow… which meant he turned off his own healing!" His own injuries either weren't finished healing and got worse after the sudden loss of Kyuubi's influence, or he was hurt worse after turning the healing off and couldn't recover until he walked out of the effect range of his own seal.
"Did he know that would happen when he used it?" Ino asked in alarm. Naruto's healing along his massive amounts of chakra were the bread and butter of his fighting ability. Shrugging off hits that would cause a normal genin to give up were part of what made Naruto special. He wasn't supposed to actually get hurt. He was always supposed to just get up and walk it off, at least that was how he had molded his image to be seen by them.
Shikamaru shook his head before he and Ino started running down the stairs again, "No… I don't think he did. He just knew that it negated all chakra use. He was never beaten up while it was on. How would he know?"
As they reached the bottom of the stairs they saw the medics carting Naruto back to the medic bay. His eyes were still closed due to his state of unconsciousness when his teammates got to him, "How is he?" Shikamaru asked Sekka as the Suna proctor/medic-nin had his hands glowing with chakra as a diagnosis, "He's not going to die is he?"
"I think you'd have to decapitate this boy to kill him." Sekka said earnestly as he turned off his diagnosis jutsu, "He's stable for some weird reason. His ribs are already knitting themselves back together. No damage to his lungs thank Kami. I don't think he'll be fighting next round though. Samurai medicine is notoriously slower to take hold even though for the long term he'll be as right as rain. As a proctor it would be a conflict of interest for me to try and heal him as long as your team is in the competition. The predetermined doctors have to do it, and either way he'll get fixed up just fine." His gaze turned rather serious, "I'd worry about yourselves right now if I were you."
Shikamaru and Ino stopped following as they went into the medical area, shutting a large pair of doors to leave them behind in the entrance tunnel. Both genin looked at each other at the same time, "At least he'll be alright." Ino said with a sigh of relief, "I'll kill him for being so stupid and getting messed up like that."
Shikamaru was thinking about something else though, "Didn't the Gaara guy say that if Naruto didn't fight he was going to just kill him anyway… and us?"
That thought sobered Ino up and brought her right back to the point of desperation, "He did… he said it more than once." She looked at Shikamaru in worry, "Do you think he can heal in three hours? Enough to at least defend himself or run?" Three hours would be when the last match happened, "I don't think we can just cut out and leave the exams can we?" Ino asked.
In theory they could… but not only would everyone see them quit in the arena, anyone watching anywhere else in the world would see Konoha quit without even trying to fight. All of the fights it took to build up the village's profile throughout the exam could be cut down if they did so. Even to save face for the village running wasn't an option.
"Is Uzumaki going to fight or what?"
Both Ino and Shikamaru turned down the tunnel to see Gaara staring at both of them in his blank manner, but both could feel the bloodlust radiating off of him. Both of them involuntarily shifted into reactionary positions in case Gaara tried anything, "Why does it matter?" Ino said, trying to put up a brave face, "You saw him win just now didn't you? That means that our team is in the finals."
"I also saw him fall on his face like a weakling." Gaara said coldly, "Mother and I saw his blood when they moved him. He is injured isn't he? So will he fight? Because if he isn't I'll simply put him out of his misery now for wasting my time."
The pop of the cork coming off of his sand sent a shiver down the two remaining Team 10 member's spines. He was dead serious. He would go right in there and kill Naruto in front of the medics and everyone. And if they tried to stop him he'd kill them too. They would never even get past him to begin trying to find Asuma before Gaara got to Naruto.
"I told him I would kill you both too." Gaara informed them, his sand starting to hover in front of them, "If he didn't fight I said that I would definitely kill the two of you." It started moving towards them.
Thinking fast on his feet, Shikamaru had one choice to make to give them all a chance. It wasn't good but it was the only shot they had at the moment to buy some time, "It's a good thing he'll be front and center come show time then huh?" He said, putting a bluff of a smirk on his face. Ino looked at him in shock, hearing what he was going to say, "Do you really think someone like Naruto won't be up in three hours? He'd only need half of that if the rules said so."
'He's bluffing.' Ino finally realized. There was no way to say when Naruto would be up, if it would even be today, nothing like that. Gaara didn't know that though, and the confident way Shikamaru was talking was enough to convince Gaara who seemed desperate to fight a true battle against Naruto.
"If you kill us then you'd really be jumping the gun." Shikamaru continued with a shrug, "It's not really up to anyone but you if Naruto fights you. He just got through fighting one jinchuuriki so of course he's going to need a bit to rest."
Gaara just stared blankly at the fast talking Nara before turning around and walking away, "Now or later I guess it doesn't really matter when I kill him. I will hold you to that however. Both of you are going to die regardless if he doesn't show up. I'll see to it myself. And I will get him anyway."
The echo of Gaara's footsteps in the tunnel left their ears, getting Ino to lean against the medical bay doors and slide to the ground, "That was close…" She said, wiping a cold sweat away from her brow.
"So we can't quit without a fight or else we look like cowards and Konoha's going to end up paying for it later." Shikamaru said, explaining their choices, "If Naruto doesn't show and isn't ready for action by fight time that guy's going to crush us before we can even scream. And even if he is ready… is his healing really that good that he'd help us put up a fight?"
Ino held her head in her hands and shook it around, "I should have just stayed in bed this morning. It was nice in bed… all warm, and I didn't even care about fighting anyone or getting killed or anything." She pulled her knees to her chest as Shikamaru took a seat next to her on the ground, "What are we going to do Shika?"
"Even if the village's reputation wasn't in the equation, even if we did quit once the fights began and we threw the whole thing to save ourselves he'd get to Naruto before we could stop him." Shikamaru said with a sigh as he thumped the back of his head off of the door one time to show his stress, "It's not just about us Ino. But Naruto always had our backs whether we wanted it or not."
Ino nodded before the two just sat in silence, not caring about moving for the time being, "So… we're fighting to try and stop that guy aren't we?"
"Yep."
"Do you have an idea?"
"I've got bits and pieces worked out here and there. Most of the final ones I come up with suck though."
"Beautiful… and how long do we have again?"
"…Less than three hours."
XxX
(2 Hours, 41 minutes until the Final Match)
"What do you mean I can't see my brats?" Asuma said to the head samurai that seemed to be separating the spectator section from the area of the arena where the competitors dwelled, "I've got one that got carted off to the medical bay and I can't even go back there?"
The five samurai watching over the area stood fast though, even in the face of the perturbed jounin, "Our orders were that the genin still in competition could receive no counsel with their jounin. The chance of you slipping them advice of some sort is too high and this is meant to test their capacity as shinobi. The reason your companion was allowed back last time to see her squad was because they were already defeated. Whether or not one of your students is in the medic bay he is still in the competition. He is fine though, we can assure you that he is not in danger."
That wasn't necessarily good enough for Sarutobi Asuma. The only thing keeping him from making a scene was the combination of spectators taking the three hours to wander about getting a good look at him, the fact that Kurenai's team was there and he was supposed to be an example, and the fact that Kurenai herself was there with a hand on his shoulder as a method of trying to keep him calm.
Asuma stood there with his fists clenched before turning around and walking away into the crowd of people that cleared out of the way of the perturbed jounin, "Asuma wait!" Kurenai said as she and her genin walked to catch up with him, "Calm down okay. Just take a few deep breaths."
He stopped trying to leave them in the dust and stopped before pacing about, "Fine… just… give me a minute." Man, having a team to worry about was taking all of his cool away and making him age faster than those damned cigarettes were.
"Well if it isn't Sarutobi-sensei's little brat."
Asuma, Kurenai, and Team 8 saw a blonde woman with a sizeable chest area coming towards them with a pig following behind, "Tsunade-hime?" Asuma and Kurenai said simultaneously.
Tsunade nodded at being recognized by the younger pair of jounin before she turned to Asuma, "So I'll go out on a limb after hearing and seeing you just now and I'll say that those brats that just won are yours."
"Yes…" Kurenai said, speaking for Asuma who in turn just glared back at the samurai set up on guard, "The little blonde one that fought last, Naruto, he's kind of worried about him. Plus with the team that they're supposed to fight later today…" She just left it at that. Everyone had seen what Gaara could do, and Temari and Kankuro knew how to handle themselves as well to say the least.
"Well… I can't believe I'm saying this, but I honestly wish I could help the runt out." Tsunade said matter-of-factly, getting a set of surprised looks from everyone she was speaking to, "I have a load of money on the team he's on, and if they can do it again and win I'm free and clear of my debts… in this country anyway."
Asuma gave her a deadpan stare. He thought his old man was just exaggerating when he said that she sucked at gambling, "Uh, thanks I guess." He blinked and looked around realizing that something was off, or missing, or something, "Wait, where's Shizune? The last time I saw her she was back for the chunin exam where we got promoted."
Kurenai's eyes widened in realization. She remembered that. Shizune was pretty much in their generation and they knew she had left and had been travelling with Tsunade, "Where is Shizune?"
Tsunade looked around once she realized her rather meek assistant wasn't with her, "I don't know. She was just with me." This was the second time this had happened in three days, "She must have gotten separated in the crowd somehow…" Tsunade said with a frown on her face.
XxX
(2 Hours, 15 Minutes until the Final Match – Depths of the Arena – Medical Bay)
"Ow…" Naruto groaned weakly as his eyes cracked open, "Stupid lazy fuzzy bastard…" Naruto muttered in reference to the Kyuubi. The stupid thing had taunted him and chewed him out while he had been unconscious about turning the healing ability off without realizing what he had done, "Can't a guy make a mistake… a painful mistake?"
His vision stopped swimming long enough to notice one of the helmeted and lower facemask wearing samurai medics with glowing green hands standing over his body. He was sans shirt to reveal the large and nasty deep bruising on so many parts of his body that showed just how bad his injuries from Fuu had been. Naruto knew enough about medical ninjutsu to refrain from moving to allow the person healing him to work without problems.
Wait.
Glowing green hands? Medical ninjutsu? Samurai medics didn't use medical ninjutsu… they didn't have ninjutsu, they had their own treatments that involved chakra but he had already seen more than enough to know that this damn sure wasn't what they used. Ever.
"Who are you?" Naruto managed to get out before the strange samurai medic put a finger to his lips to silence him.
"Be quiet Naruto-kun." A familiar female voice said that immediately triggered his memory to two days ago. Seeing his eyes widen in realization of who was helping him, Naruto tried to talk, but the inability to move his mouth the right way sort of muffled him, "Yes. It's me. Just be calm and let me heal you, alright?"
Naruto did as was asked and let himself relax, figuring if he was being targeted to die he could have been killed while he had been out cold, "Shizune… I don't think this is allowed." He said, still rather quietly from his wounds draining him.
The samurai medic disguised Shizune let out an amused giggle that allowed Naruto to see an eyesmile from the only part of her that was visible, her eyes of course, "Do you really care if it's legal or not?" She asked dryly.
Aside from the chance of getting caught and kicked out of the final match Naruto found that he really didn't care that she was helping him, probably against the rules to boot. And she seemed to know what she was doing so he trusted her judgment and skill in this instance. He always had plausible deniability if it came to that as well, "Well, not really." He finally admitted.
"Good!" Shizune chirped brightly before running a glowing hand over his forehead, putting him back to sleep before he even knew what had happened, "Now stay asleep until I'm done. No offense Naruto-kun, you're a sweet kid, but you don't seem like the patient kind of patient. I should be done by the time your final series rolls around though." She said to the unconscious blonde, "Maybe you can show Tsunade-sama that having a little hope isn't a bad thing huh?" And with that she dutifully got back to work on trying to patch him up further.
XxX
(1 Hour, 47 Minutes until the Final Match – Kage's Box)
"It looks like Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro are going to walk away as the victors without much of a fight." The Kazekage said confidently. The improbable and partially unseen victory over Fuu notwithstanding, the girl that emerged and walked to the back didn't seem the same as the one that had tossed Naruto in there to begin with. It was as if he had broken her resolve, but that wouldn't happen with Gaara, especially with the condition the boy was in at the battle's conclusion, "Unfortunately I don't see any way for your rookie team to defeat my children."
Onoki let out a grunt, "Normally I'd be one to disagree just to ruffle some feathers, but Kazekage-dono might have a point Sarutobi. Those kids of his are stone cold." But then again they had been surprising everyone since the first round, "Personally though, the death of my genin aside, I like the blonde brat and the Nara with the shadows." He admitted, "The blonde punk has some backbone and balls the size of boulders. He has some nice dirty tricks too, but nothing like the other one on his team. I laughed from a good healthy place last round when he surrendered and made the kid in the jumpsuit screw the pooch. He hasn't even taken a hit all tournament long."
A didn't know why personally, but he didn't dig Team 10. Maybe because the way they fought went against his own personal preference towards combat, "I don't like them that much. Only one of them has any outright knockout power and he fights like the other two, as if he changed his style to a trickster to accommodate them." Dragging his opponents off of the battlefield into different areas to throw them off seemed to be his go-to for dealing with foes he had an inherent disadvantage against. Once that was done he had a myriad of indirect ways to fight, including the seal that he used and pretty much no one saw due to a distinct lack of x-ray vision from the masses. They mostly only heard him call for it.
"I assume you're referring to Naruto-kun." Hiruzen said, getting a nod from the Raikage, "I see nothing wrong with that. While plowing ahead has seemed to be his style in his single battles there is something to be said for learning to adapt to a different style of fighting for the benefit of your squad. And it has even given him some tactical knowhow for when he needed it if you pay attention. You can't always smash through everything in your way Raikage-dono."
"Says who?" A returned with a smirk.
"Let's take a count." Onoki said in a teasing manner, "How about the time around 50 years ago when Kumo cornered old Saru's squad and when your entire Kinkaku Force tried to take them down you only managed to jump on the Nidaime Hokage. A major blow for certain… if Saru here hadn't had the title of Hokage bestowed upon him right before Tobirama ran himself out into the open as bait! And he still killed over half of them by himself." Onoki said, carrying on now that he knew he had A's attention, "Or what about the time you tried to take that other Uzumaki girl from Konoha, and guess who showed up and killed every last one of the capture squad that took her? And then when you yourself went after him, what happened when you and your brother tried to beat him? And then the several times after that you tried to fight him?"
"I get your point Tsuchikage-dono." A said, gritting his teeth to hold back his anger as the oldest Kage amongst them poked fun at him and his village, "Wait. Uzumaki. Is that boy related to them?" He asked Hiruzen, getting dry looks from every other kage in the box as well as Mifune to boot, "Is that strange chakra that he used in battle like the kind that the woman we tried to abduct had?"
Hiruzen just stared at A before blinking and returning his attention to his pipe, "Yes. Let's go with that." It wasn't necessarily a lie, but the entire story wasn't known by him and it didn't need to be said aloud to anyone other than the person that it directly related to. Things were already being pushed with Onoki knowing about a little yellow secret.
XxX
(34 Minutes until the Final Match – Depths of the Arena – Medical Bay)
Shizune was in abject awe of how well Naruto was recovering. It was so fast. Faster than it should have been with the complicated nature that internal bleeding had and the problems such injuries presented. The extra blood rolling through places where it shouldn't have been had been extracted, the hardest part, and a quick plasma pill she forced him to swallow gave him right back what he lost. From there it had merely come down to working on his injuries themselves.
It took a hell of a lot of chakra to get that far with it though.
"You should be just fine in no time…" Shizune said, still speaking to her unconscious patient as her green hands ran over his torso. Her chakra-coated hands ran over his navel area and a strange pattern appeared on the bruised flesh causing her to stop and stare for a moment, "Whoa… that's not a tattoo. Naruto-kun are you a-?" Well it more than made sense after the last fight, "To think, this is the same poor kid that the Yondaime Hokage stuck the Kyuubi with." Shaking her head with a modicum of pity, Shizune returned to healing his wounds.
"Hmm. I thought the samurai had done all the treatment they could here to keep him stable until the end of the competition."
Shizune froze and held back the urge to let out a squeak at the sound of Sekka's voice as he walked up behind her, apparently looking over her shoulder before she let her jutsu drop, "That looks a lot like Shousen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Jutsu)… in my own experience with it anyway." He said, commenting on the jutsu he already saw her using.
'Oh no… I'm so dead.' Shizune thought to herself while standing frozen, 'I wonder… I could probably knock him out and hide him until the tournament was over. But then he'd still wake up and get free before the results were all in for the promotions and he would still tell that I did this. Naruto-kun's team would get busted anyway and blacklisted.' She definitely wasn't going to kill the guy. Then she and Tsunade really would find it to be hell making it out of the country.
A nod of Sekka's head preceded him clapping samurai medic-disguised Shizune on the shoulder and turning to leave, "I'm glad to see that the samurai are working to develop more fast-acting techniques to heal patients in real-time for future battles. It's about time they broke that. Carry on." He said as he walked away.
Shizune could only blink behind her partial facemask that she had not been exposed for healing Naruto. She was clearly using ninjutsu, something no samurai, even a medic, would do. But not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when she was still on the clock to finish, Shizune got back to work, 'Even if I finish, if he gets up and leaves it'll only be enough to hold him together until he can get some actual rest. Once he goes out and fights it'll be a patch job to keep him in one piece to get anything done at best.'
But it was most certainly better than nothing in any case. Thus she continued dutifully repairing Naruto's body with her chakra.
Walking along just outside of the medical bay was Sekka. As the main medic of the exams he had to ensure that Naruto wasn't going to die before the end of the exam altogether even if he himself wasn't allowed to treat him out of a conflict of interest.
The samurai had already lain the groundwork for his body to begin healing, but the problem for a shinobi in this exam was that it was such a slow process he would never be ready in time. However rules didn't say that a medic-nin couldn't treat injured fighters, just that as a proctor he couldn't and the thing was that there weren't any other medic-ninja in the village if not the entire country at the moment. Medic-ninja were important assets to shinobi villages, so having them gallivant all across the continent to the ass end of the north for an exam wasn't really prudent practice.
So either Konoha brought a ringer in the form of a medic-ninja, which was next to unforeseeable because no other country had the foresight or the mind to do so what with Tetsu no Kuni providing the default medical treatment anyway and was improbable or they would have been using her from the start, or this woman wasn't really aligned with Konoha in that manner, she just wanted to help the kid out, and she disguised herself in order to try and do so more easily without being caught.
And there wasn't a rule against that… it just wasn't done really, as something of an unspoken rule. There was no openly expressed rule that said medics can't fix competitors. Most just relied on the locals to do so until the patients could be shipped back home if the injury was severe enough simply just because.
The reason he didn't tell her it was technically legal was because it was just too entertaining watching her try to sneak around his medical bay to fix Naruto up. Hey, sometimes you've got to make your own entertainment. He had time to fill before the last fight.
XxX
(23 Minutes until the Final Match – Entrance Tunnel)
Ino let out a humorless chuckle as she and Shikamaru hadn't really moved from their seated spots to walk around the area provided for competitors, not even once since sitting down against the doors to the medic bay, "That idea… really sucks. You were right."
"I told you." Shikamaru said in an agreeing manner, "But like I said, it's the best shot we've got to have a chance here. Do you think we can do it?"
"Not really." Ino responded in a deadpan voice as she turned her head towards him, "But you seem to think it'll work so either you know something I don't or you've been eating way too many paint chips." She took on a thoughtful look, "Your fighting style was tailor-made to stall, but this is ridiculous."
Shikamaru gave her a glare with no real intensity behind it, "If you've got a better idea I'd absolutely love to hear it. Otherwise please put a sock in it Ino. Battlefield etiquette says you can't judge a battle plan while the fight is in session, you have to wait until it's over first. We haven't even started, and you didn't even come up with anything."
Instead of rising to the accusation, Ino got up and started to stretch herself out, having not moved for over two hours, "You know how they say too many cooks spoil the dish? Well if the dish sucks in the first place then why make it worse?"
"Troublesome woman." Shikamaru said, still sitting down and waiting for the time to come to face the Suna team.
"I'll remember you said that if I wind up having to save your ass somehow out there."
"Whatever."
XxX
(2 Minutes until the Final Match – In the Stands)
Tsunade had been unable to locate Shizune again, but her apprentice was a big girl and no trouble would start anywhere near this exam due to the massive amounts of samurai patrolling and in radio contact with each other, so instead of heading back to sit somewhere alone with Tonton she kept up with Asuma, Kurenai and Team 8, choosing to sit with them when the time for the final match came near. She sat on one side of Asuma while Kurenai sat on the other with Team 8 on her other side.
"You know I told your father that smoking would kill him one day." Tsunade remarked once she saw Asuma pull a pack of cigarettes out of a flak jacket pocket, "…Of course that would be the one thing that you'd have picked up from him."
Asuma rolled his eyes as Kurenai nodded her agreement to Tsunade's statement, "He keeps saying that he's not like Hokage-sama and yet he's just as stubborn about his tobacco. You have a nicotine addiction and what's worse is you passed it on to your student." She said in a scolding manner, "You know how impressionable young genin are."
Right now Asuma was quite certain that despite how beautiful the two women surrounding him were this was what it was like to be a rooster surrounded by two clucking hens… hens that could kick his ass if he decided to mouth off. He had to choose his words wisely, "Okay first of all Kurenai, I didn't influence jack. Naruto lied to you in a desperate and futile attempt to cover his own ass. I know for a fact he never had a single cigarette in his life until you made him chain smoke like fifty of them in a row. So it's your fault." Her red eyes widened at that and she turned away with a blush, "Second of all I am a grown-ass man... that is all. Third of all, the smoke doesn't get in my lungs because I coat my organs with a fine sheen of wind chakra… and even if I didn't dad's damn near 70 and we're ninja, so me dying isn't an issue here."
Tsunade just stared at him before turning back towards the field to wait, "Did it feel good to get all of that out?" Asuma nodded calmly, "Good. Now let all of that pent up tension build back up so you can freak out during your team's fight."
"Thanks for that reminder…" Asuma said, subconsciously opening his pack of cigarettes before he noticed Kurenai's eyes shift back on him like a hawk, forcing him to stash them before he lost those like the others. In response to this, Kiba once again made the whip sound with his mouth, "Shut up kid."
Kiba shrugged, "I wouldn't do it if it wasn't true. You're not setting a good example for being a positive male role model with a backbone Asuma-sensei."
"He is setting a good example for teaching us to keep our personal physical and mental health intact around women though." Shino chimed in, "I believe that is just as important in some cases."
Hinata didn't say anything, she was just splitting her attention between glaring at both Kurenai and Asuma, not really knowing who to blame for Naruto's smoking since while one was the cause the other damn sure cultivated the habit. It was okay though. Sweet girl or not, if properly motivated she still had enough Hyuuga-glare in her for the both of them in spades. She stopped though once movement made itself seen from the tunnel, "Look. It's starting." She said quietly even thought it still got their attention.
Once it was seen that Shikamaru and Ino were coming out alone Tsunade stared at her wager stub wistfully, "Well, there goes that chance…" She said to herself. Her eyes turned towards the nearby stairs at the sight of a dark figure's motion and once Tonton started oinking it really got her attention, "Shizune?"
"I've been looking everywhere for you Tsunade-sama." Shizune said as she moved past spectators to reach the seat that had been saved for her, "I'm sorry I got separated like that again." If anyone were paying attention they would have noticed that she was sweating slightly and seemed somewhat tired, but the spectacle of the final round captured attention more than her presence at the moment.
XxX
(On the Field)
Kankuro simply couldn't believe that those Konoha kids were still coming out to fight even after seeing all of Gaara's other matches. They were even down a man and they were still about to go through with it.
Gaara said that he would kill all of them if the blonde boy didn't show up to fight so maybe they were just facing the music head-on.
He wasn't going to stand there and pretend he knew what went through the minds of Konoha shinobi. They were a mess of brats too so there was always that to take into account. Maybe they thought they actually had a chance.
But when the two sides faced off on the barren portion of the field the lazy kid seemed to be as cool as a cucumber, even when the other girl looked apprehensive. But even with her she looked like she was ready, 'You stupid runts should have just quit…' Kankuro thought to himself. He was barely even paying attention for the coin toss that came up heads.
"Suna team gets to pick the terms." Jei said, looking to Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari as they had won the coin toss, "Team battle or one-on-one matches?"
From the way Gaara was looking at them no matter what he was going to try to fight first. Gaara took that moment to interject coldly as Temari and Kankuro weren't going to risk picking something instead of him and upsetting him, "It doesn't matter what we pick. Uzumaki isn't here, so they're all dead either way. Let's make this quick. Team battle."
'Well there goes the stalling idea.' Shikamaru thought to himself as Jei got himself some distance from the two teams, "I thought the doctors said that Naruto could enter the battle once they cleared him?" He asked to Jei. Ino fought the urge to give him a strange look once she realized he was again trying to bluff, "How long is that supposed to take? It's not his fault that they won't let him just cut and run up here."
Jei only stared at Shikamaru behind his sunglasses strangely, "I… don't know kid. I don't know anything about it."
"You're not screwing us here are you?" Shikamaru said, looking at Jei with a raised eyebrow. He was all in at this point, "We were sitting by the doctor place for the whole three hours just waiting on someone to tell us that." Half true. They were waiting there for news to see if Naruto somehow got over what was wrong with him, "Is there someone we can definitely talk to? Or someone that runs and oversees the whole exam?" He was scrounging hard for any way to stall.
"No…" Jei said, starting to get perturbed, "Look. If he shows up he's allowed to fight. The other team already picked team battle though, so if you lose before he gets here the match is over. Now stop yapping already kid."
'Crap.' Shikamaru thought to himself. So no actual stalling on the fight time to give Naruto time to heal, they were one down right from the start. And Gaara didn't look pleased at the absence of his intended target.
"He's not showing." The tone of Gaara was perfectly malicious in its own dry delivery, "So that means I'm coming to find him right after I go through you. Prepare to die."
One chance left to save their skins at this point, "If you just straight up kill us then the fight is over." Shikamaru argued back, "I already told you Naruto will be here, he's just getting held up by medics. He's going to be here. Fight him now instead of then when you'll get in trouble for it."
Temari glared at Shikamaru for trying to silver-tongue his way out of Team 10's predicament, 'Does he really think Gaara's not going to squash him like a-?'
"Fifteen minutes." Gaara said plainly, surprising both Temari and Kankuro, "If Uzumaki isn't here in fifteen minutes I'll kill you both. No more chances. No more stalling. Until then I don't care anymore." With that, Gaara disappeared from their presence in a Shunshin of sand.
"Gaara!" Kankuro shouted after his younger brother as Gaara reappeared standing atop a rock in the Zen-garden. Instead of even paying Kankuro any mind, Gaara was facing the far end of the field from his place dead-center, looking at the entrance tunnel and waiting patiently, "Damn it, can he do that?"
Temari took her fan from her back and held it at the ready, "The Fuu girl did it in round one until that dog kid was stupid enough to attack her. I don't think these two are that dumb though, so that means that it's up to us." A smirk came over her face, "Don't look at it like that. At least we finally get an actual shot at getting a promotion now."
After a moment of thought, Kankuro unwrapped Karasu from his back, "You have a point there sis. If all Gaara wants is Uzumaki then he won't mind a bit if we play around with these kids and show off right? Just as long as we don't let the fight end."
Shikamaru sighed, thinking that they would be scared enough of Gaara to leave them alone for him to stall for a true plan of action, "You know that plan works… unless we just surrender now. Then you end the tournament without ever getting to show anything at all other than how scared of Gaara you are."
Temari didn't take too much offense at the slight, "For a guy that acts so smart you're really stupid. Anyone with half a brain would be afraid of Gaara. But I guess I'll just have to make you afraid of me instead huh?" She said just as she took a massive swing of her war fan.
"I never said start!" Jei said, but the warning was really too late and unheeded as the massive wind came at the two Konoha genin from her fan.
Ino and Shikamaru covered their faces to avoid getting dust in their eyes as the wind lifted them off of the ground and threw them back across the barren portion of the field. Both landed hard on their backs with a thud, "Ugh… so now what? You bought us fifteen more minutes of precious life and then we're screwed for good." Ino asked as she looked over at Shikamaru.
His original answer was cut off by the chattering noise of Karasu coming at them, "We should worry about lasting the fifteen minutes first. Move!" Both of them got up immediately as the puppet tried to set itself upon them with its deadly poison blades. Both Shikamaru and Ino moved in opposite directions, splitting up to make for more difficult targets.
Ino took a look back to find that the strange weapon was choosing to pursue her instead of Shikamaru, "Why me damn it? Chase Shikamaru!" She yelled irritably at the Suna puppeteer, not exactly excited at being pursued by the creepy chattering humanoid ninja tool.
"Sorry." Kankuro said unapologetically as he followed at a distance to keep a good watch on Ino, "I'd rather chase the pretty girl. But look at it this way, you and I have so much in common. Too bad you're too young for me to actually care about."
The casual response from Ino was the pulling down of her eyelid as she stuck her tongue out at Kankuro, "Just because we both use a bit of poison doesn't mean we have much in common. I stopped playing with dolls a long time ago."
"Karasu is a puppet!" Kankuro yelled angrily at her as he forced his puppet to fire kunai at Ino, watching as she dodged them urgently, "I'll show you a doll you little Konoha brat!"
XxX
"Why couldn't Ino fight the woman?" Shikamaru wondered aloud as he stood behind one of the pillars of the stone bridge, thinking that he had gotten the worst draw out of the two of them. Keeping his cover behind the sturdy pillar was a necessity since Temari would periodically send a blast of wind his way. She certainly covered more ground with her jutsu than Naruto did with his wind jutsu, 'She's definitely long range.' He looked to the side to see Ino being pursued by Kankuro and Karasu, 'He is too.'
A short ways away off of the bridge, Temari was beginning to get impatient, "Is running away really all you're good at? Because it's the only thing I've seen you do in every single match you've had! Not this time, you're fighting today, so prepare to lose! Kamaitachi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!" Once again Temari tried to smoke him out from his cover.
Shikamaru didn't move though, he instead retaliated by trying to send his shadow out after Temari, but once she caught sight of it she moved to the side, attempting to get far enough over there to get a clear shot at Shikamaru's body. That was exactly what she got, but she also saw a second shadow trailing off of the side of the bridge, surprising her by creeping up the side of the moat and revealing itself to her, close enough to capture her.
This was far too close for Temari's own personal comfort and she instead sent a blast of wind at the ground to lift off, using her fan to glide across the moat to get herself more distance away from his shadow, "That lazy bastard actually almost got me." She said to herself, looking at the ground where the shadow had been to not find anything there. She looked back towards the bridge where the trail of shadow had come from originally only to find that he had taken the time Temari had used to take extraordinary efforts to avoid his shadow to leave the vicinity, "Bastard! All he can do is run!"
Before getting angry at being given the slip, Temari took a moment to stop and think as she landed back on the ground on the other side of the moat (forested), 'He's not that fast so he didn't get across the bridge without me seeing him.' She looked over on the other side of the bridge where the Zen-garden was only to see Gaara still staring at the entrance tunnel waiting, 'There's no way he's that suicidal though, so where is he now?'
In the middle of her attempts to think of where Shikamaru could be she turned around to see Ino rushing in her direction with Karasu still in chase mode. Deciding to focus on the target she could see she prepared to use the wind of her fan to cut her fellow blonde to ribbons.
"Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!" Ino was faster to finish building up her chakra than it took for Temari to do so and she breathed her poisonous fog, sending the red version of it at Temari.
"You think you can touch me with that?" Temari swung her fan at the poison from her adversary to blow the mist from the jutsu away, "You're a fool! What did you think would happen?"
Once the poison was blown back however, it was sent towards Karasu revealing that Ino had fired the cloud close enough to obscure her body. It was apparently a failed attempt to do so and escape however once it revealed Ino's body on the ground with cuts all through her clothing and body wrappings and blood surrounding her.
Temari smirked and moved towards the motionless kunoichi to confirm she was down and out. Karasu under Kankuro's direction moved towards the fallen Ino faster though due to the fact that as a puppet it didn't need to exercise caution. This was lucky for Temari because when Karasu got too close, Ino's 'body' exploded in a shower of senbon that Temari had to instantly react to and blow away with her fan.
"That was a nice trap." Temari said in a patronizing fashion after ridding herself of all of the senbon shot by the Ino trap dummy, "If I had been closer I wouldn't have been able to react in time." She tried to turn and search for the real Ino when she found herself frozen in place, "Oh no way… Kankuro?" She asked once she saw that the puppet wasn't moving either. A shadow on the ground was stretching between her and Karasu.
Hidden somewhere in the forested section of the field up on a branch to overlook things, Kankuro tried his best to manipulate his puppet but found that he couldn't budge it an inch. It was trapped just like Temari was, "Can he even do that? I thought that would only work on people." His thoughts on the matter came to an end when a salvo of senbon flew up at him, forcing him to jump down, "So here you are…" He said, facing down a drenched looking Ino.
"Yep." The unhappy sounding girl replied, moving her wet hair out of her face, "This is the second time I had to get into that stupid moat. The first time I've had to by choice though… so at least it's better that way"
"You don't say…" Kankuro said, still trying to move his fingers to move his puppet, failing to do so, "So how'd you pull that move on Temari?"
"I made that stupid dummy more than a month ago and didn't know how I was going to use it. It was just sealed away in a scroll Goldie-kun gave me so I could break it out one day." Ino then frowned, and not just because she was soaked to the bone, "But you can stop trying to stall just so you can figure out a way to move your puppet. As long as there's chakra in that thing then Shikamaru can hold onto it." With that being said, Ino spat a senbon from her mouth directly at the suna genin.
Seeing that there was no advantage to keeping one hand busy for contact with Karasu if he couldn't even move it, Kankuro relinquished control and broke his chakra strings to give him both hands to use against Ino since he figured he'd need them. And with that he dodged Ino's spat out senbon, 'Crap… this stupid girl has more tricks than a few.' And he didn't carry extra weapons on him other than Karasu, "Gaara's just going to kill you anyway after you run out of time! Just give up and run away while you still can!" He shouted as he retaliated and jumped at Ino to try his hand with taijutsu.
"Team 10 doesn't run away." Ino said, prepared to defend herself against Kankuro, "We just retreat tactically."
XxX
Shikamaru had finally moved from hiding to get close enough to Temari for her to see him. She had tossed the fan once Shikamaru had forced her to with the imitation part of his jutsu so now she was also unarmed. The two just stood staring at each other without moving before Shikamaru spoke up, "So are you going to give up already or do I have to do something to take you down?"
A scoff left Temari, "What are you going to do, knock me out the stupid way you did the other round to that Taki genin?" He didn't have the heart. They were both on actually solid ground this time. No nice soft land for him or a rock for her to crack her head open on.
"I don't really want to hurt a girl…" Shikamaru admitted before his eyes turned more serious than she expected from him given his attitude, "But this is more of a big deal than just trying to keep being chivalrous or anything stupid like that. In a few minutes we've got to deal with your brother. The one that doesn't wear makeup… and I already promised myself and my team that I would do what I have to back during the first time we all almost got killed." Shikamaru reached into his intentionally misplaced kunai pouch and drew one of the weapons.
Temari on the other hand drew no such thing. She had no kunai pouch in the strange place where Shikamaru drew his from so when he drew his arm back to throw she did the same with nothing but air, "Are you actually going to-?"
"I already told you." Shikamaru said gravely, "I'll do what I have to."
"Time's up."
Shikamaru turned his head to the side to see Gaara standing there as if he had been there all along. But he had been in the Zen-garden the entire time until right then. Could he really move like that without letting anyone know he was? That was crazy, "What?"
"I said that your time is up." Gaara's tone was just as unamused and as dry as ever, but his sand was out and poised at the ready as if it were alive and set to attack, "So now it's time to die." And without another word he set his sand off against Shikamaru who had to break his control over Temari to get a fighting chance at dodging.
Once he did, Shikamaru stared at Gaara with a glare because this was worst case scenario, "It hasn't been fifteen minutes yet!" He argued. All he needed was a little more time. He could go help Ino get Kankuro, and then they could try to defeat Gaara then, "What happened to the deal?"
Gaara didn't even blink as he responded, "I never agreed to wait the whole fifteen minutes. It's clear by now that he isn't coming. Feel free to fight in his place though… I want a warm up before I kill Uzumaki too." He finished as the sand started whirling about.
Shikamaru was prepared to do what he could. Temari was still without her weapon, just standing out of the way and watching so it was basically one-on-one. Not the best option, but it was better than the two-on-one alternative. Then he saw movement from the forest area and saw Kankuro emerge holding an unresponsive Ino over his shoulder, "Oh no…"
"Gaara." Kankuro said as he put Ino down on the ground and walked over to stand with said sand-manipulator and Temari who had taken to standing by Gaara in a flanking position, "Sick of just watching us smack these runts around huh?"
"Shut up." Gaara said as both of his siblings stood next to him now before turning his attention back to Shikamaru, "Now die." Before Gaara could even raise his hand to send sand after Shikamaru the sand rose up to block a kunai strike directed at the side of his neck from Kankuro. A momentarily wide-eyed Gaara turned his eyes towards Kankuro as the sand kept the weapon and the hand in place, "You're a fool."
Temari was utterly shocked and horrified. Not just because she was watching Kankuro attack Gaara, but because Kankuro seemed to have the balls to actually attack Gaara in the first place, "What are you doing?"
Kankuro didn't answer, but Gaara did instead, "He's about to pay for being stupid. That's what he's doing." Kankuro made a half-ram seal with his free hand, but whatever he was about to do was just a bit too late as the sand started to bind down slowly with crushing force.
Screaming out in pain at the punishment from Gaara, Kankuro still made the half-ram seal before shouting, "Kai (Release)!" His body then collapsed to the ground yelling in sudden anguish at his injury.
At that moment, Ino's body sat up with a gasp before shouting in pain, holding her smashed hand, "Kami! I can't even get him off-guard!" He never saw the attack coming, he never had a chance to counter, he wasn't even aware it was happening and it still didn't work. The stupid sand was totally automatic and that was just… unfair as far as Ino was concerned.
"Ino!" Shikamaru rushed over to her side to find that the bones in her right hand were just as crushed as Kankuro's. She had been in his body with her clan technique in order to get close enough to Gaara to attack him, thus she suffered the same injury that Kankuro had, "Damn it… that was a good try though." It really was. The defense was automatic if even an unseen sneak attack from point-blank range didn't touch him. How would they have known that it was completely automatic?
Ino glared at him momentarily before returning her full attention to her now useless right hand. She wasn't going to be making any more hand-seals for the foreseeable future, "To hell with a good try! I thought I had him, and now we're screwed!" Shikamaru helped her stand up as she fretted over her unbearably painful injury, "There is absolutely no way he saw that coming!"
Temari was trying to see to Kankuro and the injury Gaara carelessly inflicted on his formerly captured teammate and brother while Gaara himself simply ignored his yells and paid attention to the blood dripping on the ground from Ino's arm, staring at it before he felt something take hold of his body. He looked down and saw Shikamaru's shadow stretching over to him, "Just because I can't move doesn't mean my sand can't either." And with that, Gaara's sand went after both Shikamaru and the wounded Ino.
XxX
(Depths of the Arena – Medical Bay)
Naruto's eyes snapped open and he abruptly sat up, patting himself down to find himself covered in bandages on his body with a few on his face as well, one in particular spanning the bridge of his nose, "What the hell?" He grabbed his head before remembering why he was there, "Oh yeah. Fuu kicked the shit out of me and Shizune-chan healed me…" He didn't remember why he fell back asleep but that wasn't important.
"Well thanks." Naruto jumped out of his bed and ran over to the place right next to his, pulling back the curtain to find Fuu sitting in a chair touching up the wounds she had suffered earlier with healing ointment before redoing her bandages, "I hope I hit you hard enough to leave an impression. I almost cried in public you jerk. Thank Kami for the trees."
"Fuu?" Naruto said questioningly, getting a stiff nod from the girl, "What's going on?"
Fuu looked up to him with her orange eyes and stopped treating herself, "I'm resting down here because it's quiet and I'm tired, and I'm patching myself up because your stupid surprise machete attack got me good enough to draw blood. I'm not letting some random doctor do it." She narrowed her eyes when Naruto put his hands on his hips as if to chide her, "What? I don't know them and I'm never going to see them again after today. Why would I even try to trust them?"
A good enough point he assumed. She still seemed rather hostile, but he did just beat her moments before… wait, how long had it been since they had even fought in the first place?
"How long have I been out of it for?" Naruto asked spontaneously, not seeing a clock in the entire medical bay for reference on the time, "I remember falling out on the field, waking up, and then falling asleep again." He would leave the part about Shizune out for the time being. That was strictly need-to-know as far as he was concerned, "And where's my stuff?"
Fuu pointed over to a corner where in addition to Naruto's shirt, sandals, and gear her cylinder pack and arm warmers were. Trying to break down just what made this brat tick while she watched him rush to put on his shoes and his gear, Fuu decided to ask a question, "What you said to me when you had me beaten, you sound like you know something about it. Did it happen to you?"
"Yep." Naruto replied brightly, hooking his machete back onto his pants, "It was just one person at first, but now I've got my team and my sensei… all kinds of people now. It took a long time to find people that cared, but it wouldn't be the same if they weren't here. I don't know what I'd do. Maybe I'd be like Gaara… maybe like you. I'm not sure." He said with a shrug, "I don't know enough about you to say."
A frown came over Fuu's face, "I'll have to take your word for it then. I stopped trying to be around people after my powers manifested for the first time and I knew how they worked. It was just easier to be by myself when I realized that just not trusting everyone gave me a defense. I never had an actual sensei outside of the Academy, and Dorobou was my only perennial teammate… and he was a prick. Glad he's dead to be honest."
Naruto stopped putting his gear on and walked over to Fuu where she sat, noticing her tense up like she usually did, "Didn't we go through this already? I don't want to hurt you and I'm not going to. If you want to I could be friends with you." A grin broke out as he continued once he saw Fuu raise an eyebrow, "I'm younger than you and everything, and we're not really from the same village but so what?"
Fuu sighed, "The village thing really doesn't mean much to me right now, and the fact that you're younger than me doesn't mean much since I don't remember the last friend I had period." She shook her head and chuckled, "This is some kind of record low; the almighty Nanabi jinchuuriki cowing to a brat. I don't even feel like beating you up anymore."
"Thanks?" Naruto said as he looked at how bloody his blue undershirt was and chose to go without it, throwing it on the floor and putting his short-sleeved windbreaker on with nothing under it, "And you're not the oldest friend I have so I don't even want to hear that. Now where are my other friends? We have to get ready for the next match." At that utterance, Fuu's eyes widened, "What's the matter?"
She didn't know quite how to say it without just being blunt with it. A lack of social tact if you will, "That already started… like twenty minutes ago. You've been for more than three hours. You look like a mummy by the way." Fuu had to admit that she felt a little satisfaction at knocking the piss out of him for that long even in defeat. If they fought again she could probably beat him as long as he couldn't trick her again, "Your team had to start the fight without you."
That means that they were all alone with a three-on-two disadvantage, something that was bad even if one of the three didn't happen to be Gaara. In this case it most certainly was, "Fuck!" Naruto immediately shouted, alarming Fuu with a jolt. Naruto checked himself over to make sure he had all of his weapons on him before taking off for the first door at the end of the medical bay he could see, rushing through it to find his way to the battlefield.
Fuu just sat there wondering how after he looked right after their fight he could still move around like that, he was still just as fast as he was right at their fight's start. Then she looked at the other end of the medical bay and realized that he had never been taken there while conscious, and that the door he used wasn't the one that led to the entrance tunnel, it was the one that led back up towards the spectator's section, "Oh hell, he doesn't know where he's going…" She said to herself in exasperation as she got up to chase after her new… friend.
That was going to take some getting used to. Did friends normally try to beat each other to a pulp before becoming friends in the first place? That didn't seem normal, but then again what did she know about it?
XxX
(On the Field)
With Temari moving Kankuro out of the way now that his main hand for manipulating his puppet was busted up by Gaara's sand, this left Gaara alone against Shikamaru and Ino, but that wasn't as much of a disadvantage as it sounded. Ino was hurt in the same way that Kankuro was, and even when Shikamaru's shadow grabbed a hold of Gaara his sand was still able to run amok.
Ino was biting back the pain that came with every step that moved her hand involuntarily, but it was either suck it up or get more than just her hand crushed next time. A blast of sand separated them, forcing the teammates apart. Gaara seemed to be trying to get them both together to capture them at once. Still she didn't think it would matter too much to him if he only got one. Killing one of them would tide him over just fine until he could catch the other.
"Ino can your clan jutsu get him through his sand shield if it even goes up?" Shikamaru asked her as he threw a set of shuriken at Gaara to no avail, 'It's too fast for us like this to get past. If it was fast enough to stop Ino's attack from close range then we'll never get him from this distance with anything.'
"Even if I could I can't make the hand-seals to do it anymore Shika!" Ino yelled at him, trying to make a break for the moat, but Gaara's sand cut her off from making it there, "Does he really have that much sand in that stupid gourd?" She asked only to find a tendril of sand trying to wrap around her ankle, "Not cool!" Ino yanked her ankle free only for a violent wave of sand to batter against her and knock her back and to the ground.
'I can't just waste my move now!' Shikamaru thought in a panic as he ran to Ino and helped her up, seeing that Gaara's last attack drew more than a little blood from her face, 'It won't work twice!'
After being helped away from Gaara's assault, Ino looked at the jinchuuriki angrily and noticed that Temari was nowhere near them, still back at the bridge assisting Kankuro. Ino reached into her supply pouch with her good hand and picked up a smoke bomb between each finger before throwing them all at Gaara, exploding on him in a multicolored cloud of gases.
Shikamaru stood next to Ino, looking on desperate that the attack worked, 'Even if he can block anything he still has to breathe… good move Ino.' He thought this until enough poison had cleared out to reveal Gaara still standing there with a facemask of sand covering his nose and mouth while the rest of the sand was whipping around to disperse the poison into the air, "Oh come on! You've got to be kidding me!"
There was nothing for Ino to say about what she had just seen. Four poison bombs and he didn't inhale a smidge of it. How were they supposed to beat this guy again? She forgot exactly what the original plan was supposed to be, "Shika what are we going to do? Can't you just do that thing that you and Goldie-kun worked out?"
"Not until I know we have enough knockout power to do him some real damage." Shikamaru said, "It's only going to work once." He then leaned to the side as Ino whispered something into his ear, something that got him paying attention, "You what?" A cryptic nod from the injured girl was the response, "Are you sure it'll be-?" Another nod, "*sigh* Fine. Let's do it." With that, Shikamaru reached into his pocket while Ino pulled out another small bomb and held it at the ready.
Gaara's sand moved from his nose and mouth allowing him to take a breath at last, "You're annoying me. Just die already."
At the same time that Ino threw her smoke bomb at Gaara, Shikamaru revealed a scroll from his pocket and quickly unsealed what was within. With a hand-seal and a whip of the open scroll he sent a crashing wave of water flying at Gaara. Gaara's sand got up to protect him from it, but the sand was thoroughly drenched from the water. Ino's smoke bomb didn't release any smoke at all, as a matter of fact it didn't seem to release anything.
"You're dead now!" Ino yelled as she threw a prepared kunai with an explosive tag attached. Immediately after doing so both she and Shikamaru turned and dropped to cover up. The kunai sank into the wet sand shield deep enough for the tip of the blade to stick out through the other side.
The resulting explosion was larger than a single explosive tag should have created, engulfing all of Gaara and his sand shield in a single fireball that rocked the entire battlefield and sent Ino and Shikamaru flying away from it despite dropping down and covering up.
XxX
"Gaara!" Temari shouted once she saw the explosion. How did those two runt Konoha rookies make an explosion that big? She set Kankuro against the railing of the bridge to rest and went to look for her fan that Shikamaru had forced her to throw into the moat. As impossible as it was to say, Gaara might have needed her help.
XxX
Shikamaru coughed at all of the smoke covering the immediate area as he and Ino both sat up covered in soot and scuffs, "Where the hell did you get a methane bomb?" He felt the need to ask as Ino cradled her injured hand to her chest.
"I made it after that mission to the ranch." Ino said, in obvious pain and bad condition, "We grow a lot of plants in the flower shop and we use a lot of manure… that's all I'm going to say about where the idea came from. It took forever just to make one though, and that was the only one I had. It totally worked though." She said, sounding somewhat satisfied at her little test.
"You didn't know if it would work?" Shikamaru said incredulously as he got up and began to help Ino stand as well, "Well now's a hell of a time to test something isn't it?"
"Chill out already. I blew him away didn't I?" Ino argued back until they could hear the sound of ragged breathing off where Gaara had been. Both of them ran past the point where the ground showed the obvious effects of taking the explosion, "No way… there's just no way he walked away from that."
After running a ways past the site of the explosion they found Gaara laying on the ground, his body covered in scorch marks. The thing about it though, was that his skin seemed to be cracked and flaking off in plates. Underneath the top layer it was revealed once enough bits fell away that it was sand covering him and that Gaara's actual body was unscathed underneath.
"He had another layer of defense!" Shikamaru couldn't believe it, but it made sense if nothing else. Why put all of your eggs in one basket and believe that nothing could get past your sand wall? Even the wet, weak, easily penetratable sand wall gave enough protection for Gaara's sand armor to keep him from taking much more damage than getting the wind knocked clean out of him. Some concussive damage from the explosion itself was the worst thing that he took.
Narrowing her eyes at Gaara, Ino drew a senbon and threw it at the downed Gaara only for his original sand shield to intercept it out of the air. Out of options in her mind she dropped to the ground on her knees, "I can't believe it. Who on earth gets up from something like that? We still didn't scratch him…" She was never going to muster an explosion that big. The only reason for the first one was the chemical reaction.
Gaara slowly stood back up, staring murderously at Shikamaru and Ino, "You…" He lifted a hand to muster a mass of sand that he then sent flying at them both, "Die already!"
Ino was about to make a break for it but realized that the sand from the site of the explosion, though charred from the attack attempt, was still active as it boxed them in, "Shika!"
"Stay still!" Shikamaru said as he pulled out another scroll and spread it out on the ground underneath them. He made two hand-seals and stepped on the center of the scroll, forcing a large amount of water out that covered both him and Ino as the sand tried to capture them both, 'I only have five of these! They were all the spare scrolls Naruto had left! Using them just to survive isn't a part of the plan!' The force of the water defense was beginning to fade over time and both Ino and Shikamaru were forced to abandon it lest they wind up trapped within by sand. Both of them were able to force their way out of the sand that had been crashing around the water defense.
"I'm tired of your tricks!" Gaara shouted as he used his wet sand to clod together underneath Ino and Shikamaru's feet. Shikamaru was able to keep his footing, but the soles of Ino's sandals thoroughly caked with wet sand, forcing her to slip up a step, allowing the full measure of Gaara's slower sand an opportunity to close in on her as the sand around her sandals began binding her and squeezing, "The only thing I want this sand wet with is your blood!"
Before it could take hold of her though, it suddenly tried to make it back to Gaara, but failed as two blurs flew at the conflict. One grabbed Ino once the sand started to move in confusion over what to focus on and the other blur slammed into Gaara's head hard, sending the Suna jinchuuriki flying as his sand desperately tried to catch him so that he didn't hurt himself against the ground.
The sand managed to get back to Gaara in time to cushion his fall. As he sat in his cloud of sand, Gaara looked at the figure that had struck him with a glare as more of his restored sand armor chipped from his head like layers from a statue, a huge smash mark on the side of his head and face where Naruto's knee had hit him, "Uzumaki… you're late." As he said that, the Naruto that had hit him dispelled in a puff of smoke. The sand seemed to be angry as Gaara started whipping it around his body as a method of defense and as a way to try and dry it out.
The original Naruto had created a clone to attack Gaara while he tried to get to Ino before anything could happen to her, grabbing her out of Gaara's wet sand and moving her in a hurry, "Sorry." Naruto said, panting slightly from running around half of the arena hallways. He had actually even wound up outside before Fuu caught him and told him how lost he was prior to pointing him in the fastest direction to get to the field… right through the crowd, "I was just lost on the road of life."
XxX
Asuma's excitement at seeing Naruto come flying out of the stands to fight gave out once he heard Naruto's line of greeting, "I'm going to punch Kakashi in the stomach the next time I see him…"
Kurenai smiled wryly at the bearded jounin, "Not very punctual is he? He can make an entrance though, but isn't he still hurt? Three hours isn't enough time of healing for him to suck up injuries like what had happened to him. You don't gut something like that out." 'Even with the Kyuubi.'
"Okay…" Kiba said as if he were admitting some kind of defeat, "That was actually pretty cool. I didn't even know he could run that fast. I mean you couldn't see anything but those orange monstrosities he calls clothes fly down the stairs like a blur? How much momentum did he have? That was awesome."
That put a grin back on Asuma's face, "Yeah, he was kind of rolling down those stairs wasn't he?" At least he didn't slip and fall or anything. Then it wouldn't have been half as cool as it appeared to be from their point of view.
Shino raised an eyebrow at the sudden entrance, "Is that legal? To enter the match after it has already begun I mean? They have not called it off so I assume it is allowed."
"N-Naruto-kun still looks so hurt." Hinata observed now that Naruto wasn't flying down the stands like a bat out of hell and was standing still, "It looks like he ran there straight from the medical bay."
Not only did he look way better off than he did three hours ago, despite the fact that he still looked like hell, Tsunade saw the bandages on Naruto's person and noticed the particular pattern that they were done in before turning to Shizune who had a sheepish look on her face, "Did you-?"
"He's sure a resilient one isn't he Tsunade-sama?" Shizune said, rubbing the back of her neck, nervously laughing at the same time.
XxX
Ino, still being held up in Naruto's arms, blinked in response to what he had just said, mouthing the words he had uttered upon his arrival before giving up trying to make sense of why he had said such a thing, "Goldie-kun that whole 'road of life' thing totally wasn't cool." If he hadn't said anything it would have been something straight out of a movie, making his appearance twice as cool in her mind.
Naruto looked at the fellow blonde in his arms in surprise, "Really? I thought it was alright. Kakashi-sensei says that all the time and he's cool isn't he?" He said, ignoring the fact that they were in a fight until he noticed the very poor condition of Ino's right hand, the blood on her face, and the singe marks all over her person. Looking over he saw that Shikamaru wasn't exactly in tip-top shape either, "Are you guys alright?"
"Well we're not dead." Shikamaru said, never so happy to see such a beaten up Naruto before in his life, "So I guess things are as good as they can be at the moment. Uh, how are you walking and not puking blood right now? Last time we saw you-."
"-You looked like a big bruised orange." Ino finished for Shikamaru before looking Naruto over, seeing the bandages covering him under the windbreaker, on his arms, and on his face, "Now you look like a big orange mummy." She stood up on her own feet once Naruto set her down, "You hit him. You actually hit Gaara."
"Yeah I did. I know; I'm awesome." Naruto said, sounding pleased with himself before realizing something important. That he had actually hit Gaara… actually his clone had hit Gaara, but it was still technically him. He had hit Gaara, clean. No sand in the way. And while it didn't look like he had felt it that wasn't the important thing to take away from the accomplishment, "Wait, how'd I hit Gaara? Last month thirty clones couldn't hit Gaara with explosive tags."
Shikamaru had the obvious answer for that, "You remember what I made you do last night?"
Naruto turned towards him and nodded, "Yeah, you made me put my last five empty scrolls in the tub and fill it with water so I could seal the water away you son of a-." He then stopped to think, "Holy shit that half-assed idea actually worked?"
"You just kicked him in the side of the head didn't you?" Shikamaru replied, answering the question with one of his own while pulling out three more scrolls before tossing them to Naruto, "Go nuts."
Naruto caught the scrolls and looked over at Gaara. If those were really the key to getting hits on Gaara and keeping his sand from being fully effective wouldn't it have been more appropriate to share? "Are you sure? You guys don't want one? There's one for each of us if we need them."
Shikamaru shook his head, "Ino can't make hand-seals to use the scrolls Naruto. I don't have anything to hit Gaara with once I actually do use the scrolls. Ino used her best shot and we still didn't get him. All we could do was hold him back."
"And you're sure that I can hit him? What makes you think I can hit him?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow, getting a dry look from Shikamaru as if he had just asked a stupid question. Even Naruto had to admit that it kind of was, "Fine… if we live through this I swear you need to get some more knockout power."
"Noted." Shikamaru said as Gaara's sand started showing that it was nearly dry again, "Now kick his ass. He's been waiting just for you all day."
The fact that Gaara's sand seemed to be just as fast as ever while whipping around him meant that he had finally dried enough of it out to use again in battle. Naruto placed the scrolls into the pockets of his windbreaker and patted them as he set himself at the ready to fight for the second time that day, "Wow… I feel so special."
At least he had help this time.
Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)
Happiness is a warm pocket full of explosive tags... insert innuendo here (that's what she said)
There is no such thing as too many explosives. This is the main message you should take from this. Half of the reason you learned how to make seals in the first place was so that you could learn how to make your own endless supply of paper bombs so you'd better not ever run out of them. EVER. There's simply no excuse.
Nothing brings more unanimous joy to a real man's heart than the sight of something blowing up (almost nothing I should say), and the bigger the better. As a little boy (or girl, because let's be honest you don't exactly hate explosions either), the first time you ever saw one go off and learned how easy they were to activate you probably jizzed your pants. This is why the supply and demand for explosive tags are so high… and with inflation the price will only climb higher over time, another good reason that you learned how to make them.
If you need to use explosive notes then chances are you don't particularly care about the well-being of your target, or the immediate surrounding area. So go for broke.
Remember, if an explosion doesn't solve the problem then you clearly aren't using enough explosives.