Neji had been lost in thought ever since he discovered that Hinata had yet to arrive at the tower, but upon seeing Kurenai leave, he supposed that maybe things weren't as bad as he'd feared.
Probably just a minor accident.
"Neji Hyuga and Takara, step down into the arena!"
The moment to face his destiny once more had arrived.
With a characteristically indifferent air, he descended the stairs calmly, his poker face revealing his lack of interest in who his adversary was, who still hadn't descended into the arena.
No matter how he tried to hide behind his mask or use bandages, his tricks were all futile against his Byakugan.
"Surrender and save yourself the useless effort," said Neji, adopting a combat stance characteristic of his clan, waiting for his opponent to come down. "My path is carved in fate, and you are not a part of it."
The audience turned their heads to look at Takara's reaction to Neji's words, expecting a witty response, an insult, or anything of the sort.
How will the Sunagakure genin respond to the provocation?
"You're right, I surrender."
Everyone blinked. What did he just say?
"Takara?" Temari turned to look at her friend, baffled, very aware that a Hyuga child shouldn't pose any significant challenge to him.
Baki didn't protest Takara's resignation, but thought that perhaps Takara was hiding his abilities for the sake of the plan. After all, he only had to fight in the forest, and he doubted he left any traces in his wake.
"I arrived at the last minute, remember?" Takara explained aloud as he turned his head towards Temari, allowing everyone to hear him. "I thought I would have time to recover some of my chakra before fighting, but the fights have been too brief, and in my condition, facing the Hyuga boy would be problematic."
Kankuro exchanged incredulous looks with Gaara, who was equally surprised by Takara's words.
What part would be problematic?
Leaving the entire body of the Hyuga boy?
"Why didn't you withdraw before, then?" Hayate asked with a Saitama-like expression as he continued to cough, remembering that they had given him the opportunity before.
"As I said, I thought I would have time to recover, but my estimates of the duration of the fights were wrong," Takara shrugged, extending his hands and spouting nonsense after nonsense. "How was I to know that my companions' rivals would be so pathetic?" he said with a tone of indignation, as if the fault of the situation wasn't his. "They didn't even last a minute! What a bunch of useless people, I don't even know how they managed to survive in the forest."
Several people choked when they heard the genin, because he was right.
Nobody expected those twins to come out of nowhere to be so strong and to win so quickly.
Even Sunagakure's jonin, Baki, seemed surprised by their abilities!
But come on, the opponents weren't that bad!
Although, remembering Naruto's academic performance and Zaku's hooligan attitude...
One looks at the other, and the other looks back, you don't know and I don't know.
"Alright, then Neji Hyuga wins by forfeit," Hayate didn't want to delve deeper into the embarrassing situation, so he decided to move on to the next fight. "Next opponents: Gaara against Rock Lee, step down into the arena."
"Yosh! The moment has come for youth to show its splendor," Lee said excitedly, clenching his fist.
"Go ahead, show them the result of your youth," Guy yelled, extending his arm and raising his thumb, his smile brightening.
"Sensei!"
"Lee!"
Master and student embrace as they cry tears of joy, while Neji steps away a few meters, pretending he doesn't know those two.
"If you don't step down in five seconds, I'll disqualify you," Hayate said wearily.
"Eh? x2"
Takara agreed with the warning; just finish everything and let Gaara destroy you so they can leave this forest once and for all. He still had several experiments to try with Karin's chakra and the Hoshigakure genins, if Baki hadn't signaled him, he would have already left with his puppets.
A crunch of bones later...
"Can we go now?" Takara asked Baki.
The next fight was Dosu against Choji, and there were no more irrelevant characters, and his interest was in negative numbers.
(I just realized that I completely forgot about Dosu, but in my defense, who remembers him?)
"Don't you want to see those two?" Temari raised an eyebrow as she asked.
"One is an Akimichi, and the other uses sound, being a ninja from Otogakure," Takara replied. "What's the point?"
"Then, who do you think will win?" Kankuro asked.
"The one who uses sound," Takara didn't hesitate for a second.
"On what do you base that to say?" Baki asked, intrigued by the thought process that led Takara to reach that conclusion.
Takara sighed, feeling tedious to explain himself, but doing so anyway if it meant they could leave this place sooner.
"The Ino-Shika-Cho trio from Konoha is known, but here, there's only the muscle, and I can see that this Akimichi is poorly trained. I guess he'll try to swell up like a balloon and cover himself with kunais before trying to hit in a straight line. Then the sound one will hit him when he's an even bigger target, and it'll all be over."
The Suna group and those around them were stunned.
"How could he be so predictable?" Kankuro denied, not believing that someone who trained as a ninja could have such a simple mind.
A minute later...
"It can't be," Kankuro looked stunned as Choji was taken on a stretcher.
Fortunately, he didn't say anything like if he lost like that, he would eat his puppet in front of everyone.
Betting was never good.