Kapitel 2636: 24
Tenten looked at Kin after they'd finally been told to start, summoning Orochimaru's katana to her hand as she did so. "Shall I expect sound-based genjutsu and drugs to screw up my balance? Because I can assure you that it'll take more than those to take me down."
Kin smirked and released some chakra with a subtle single-handed seal, but Tenten noticed the genjutsu and negated it before even seeing what it was supposed to do. "Do you really think that I've only got one trick up my sleeves?"
"From what I saw during the first two stages? I'd be surprised if you had a single proper trick at all. Especially after your teammate showed that he had the one usable trick and nothing else in a frankly ridiculously long battle with a puppet."
"Yeah, Zaku's a bit of an idiot. Luckily, I'm not him."
"You're nicer to look at, at least, and I'm feeling generous. What range would you like to start at?"
Kin frowned, apparently realizing that the subtle genjutsu hadn't worked, and produced a tanto and fist full of senbon. The latter were thrown in a spread pattern while the girl jumped back. Tenten noticed that none of them had bells, and only one came anywhere near her. That one was blocked with the katana, and it was all an obvious attempt to keep distance between them. A flurry of hand seals triggered a far less subtle jutsu while that senbon was being blocked, this one combining a genjutsu with earth balls.
Tenten was incredibly happy with all the genjutsu dispelling practice she'd gotten under Kurenai-sensei, even as she launched her own earth balls to intercept Kin's. The little bit of the genjutsu that had affected her seemed to be trying to make the earth balls look like lava though, which caused some smirking. Actual lava balls were launched by Tenten a moment later, causing Kin to go wide-eyed. She dodged them, but also visibly tried to dispel a genjutsu.
"No genjutsu needed for that one," Tenten taunted, before launching a couple of explosion-release balls as well. She then started channeling a genjutsu through the katana to make it gradually appear to be shorter over the next few minutes, something that she'd picked up from an Anbu a few weeks ago. Useless against Hinata or Naruto as they were just as sensitive to genjutsu as she was these days, but Kin obviously wasn't that confident in her detection and already thought that she'd dispelled what Tenten had likely cast.
Tenten was a bit ashamed to think that she'd never considered training everything to the point of not needing hand seals before meeting Hinata and Naruto, but it definitely made things easier to use when holding a weapon.
Kin tried throwing kunai, shuriken, more senbon, and gas pellets that were likely drugged. All of these were more accurately thrown than the first set of senbon, requiring actual dodging in addition to blocking with the katana, and a wind jutsu was used to blow the gas back Kin's way. She avoided the cloud, which just seemed to confirm that it had been intended as a knockout. Tenten finally grabbed and threw a couple of her own kunai, and Kin threw up an earth wall. A moment later three Kins came out from behind it. Two were academy-grade illusionary clones and the third felt like an earth clone. The actual Kin was still behind the wall, preparing something else.
The illusionary clones were ignored, the earth clone was cut in two with some lightning chakra channeled down the katana, and Tenten had thought that she'd be darting around the earth wall to get a good shot at Kin. But the earth clone had pulled itself back together almost immediately and counter-attacked, necessitating dodging backwards instead. Frowning, Tenten concentrated and fired a stream of water from her mouth to soak the clone, then hit it with ice chakra to freeze it solid. Striking it to shatter it had it not getting up immediately, and she finally darted off to the side to circle the earth wall.
It was obvious that Kin was now approaching her limits, nearing chakra exhaustion due to low reserves, but she'd made a golem the same size of her out of rock that immediately moved between her and Tenten. Frowning at the fact that the genjutsu probably wasn't going to be needed, Tenten channeled more lightning chakra into the katana and sliced the golem in two on her way past it, only to need to dodge a rock spat at her out of nowhere by Kin. A moment later she was behind the sound kunoichi with the katana at the girl's neck.
"Victory, Tenten!" Gekko called, and Tenten withdrew and unsummoned the sword before helping Kin up.
"You're faster than I expected," Kin admitted with a frown.
"I've been training up my speed," Tenten admitted. "My team decided to leave the training weights at home today."
"I knew you'd be faster without them, just not that fast."
Naruto looked at Neji as Gekko called for the battle to start. "So, do you want to get the whining about your situation over with before I beat you like a drum?"
That had Neji blinking. "...what?"
"You've obviously got a rant saved up about the whole main and branch family issue of your clan and everyone paying enough attention in the clan is expecting you to want to deliver it to the audience. Since you aren't making it to the next match anyway, I figured that I'd give you a chance to use it before proving you wrong."
"And what would you know about my supposed 'rant'?"
"That you dislike the main and branch family system where the elders use the branch family as slaves and hostages to their will in order to force the entire family to bow to their whims and likely want to expose the whole thing to the world during the exams to ensure that nobody can hide it anymore? Not that it helped the previous times a family member did that, your grandfather claimed that someone gets the idea to rant about this during an exam every five to ten years."
That had the older boy blinking, a scowl making way to confusion as things obviously got processed. "The entire family?"
"Yeah. The main branch members didn't exactly want random branch family members killed off, but if they took action against the elders that were using things to cling to their power then they could've caused the entire branch family to be taken out with them. But hey, thanks to someone being stupid in the past we were able to solve the problem!"
Neji snorted, and pulled his forehead protector off. "So long as the branch family is branded with this seal there is no solution."
"Ah, right. You really should've listened to the summons and returned to the compound last night." Some focusing on Neji's chakra combined with the six hand seals of the release command, needed to be done as hand seals to properly interact with the warden seal, triggered the release command on his seal. The symbol on his forehead lit up, then exploded into motes of chakra as the other markings seemed to burn away and leave unblemished skin. "Setting the warden code on the modified prisoner seal to one two three four five was stupid, but we think it was a demonstration that got turned against the one who actually came up with things."
Blinking, Neji held his forehead protector to use it as a mirror. "You...but...how?"
"Turns out the Uchiha library had the final pieces needed to recreate the warden seal, and we stuck a proper prisoner seal on the asshole elders last night after your grandfather drugged them to keep them out of the way. Had you returned when called then we'd have removed your seal last night as well, but I didn't feel like hunting you down."
Naruto was going to be kind enough to let the boy recover from the shock before engaging him properly. Or at least long enough to come up with a good way to get him angry so that he might try to put up a fight.
Danzo sat there in the VIP box, having convinced Hiruzen to allow him to join the Kages solely to discuss a couple of things with the Raikage about how to possibly identify the members of his hidden faction pushing to attack Konoha. Some of the information provided could undoubtedly be used to locate Root, except that knowing it was coming allowed for preemptive countermeasures to be put into place. But now he was blinking. "One two three four five? That's the combination on my luggage."
"...seriously?" Hiruzen said, his head obviously turning to give Danzo a side-eye.
"As if the combination lock on luggage would stop anyone from getting in. I secure it with seals as well, but to use that on a prisoner seal? Madness."
"You use luggage that has locks?" A asked.
"The set was an academy graduation gift from a well-meaning but dim-witted cousin and is otherwise quite well made. I've not needed to replace it at all despite regular trips with it."
"Surely you'd change the combination anyway?"
"That's where the dim-witted comes in. The combinations can't be changed without dismantling the luggage and replacing the locks, so the set was ordered with that combination specified."
"...oh."
"Don't think that I'm going to go easy on you just because you removed the seal from me," Neji finally said, replacing his forehead protector.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Naruto agreed. "I just need to decide how to beat you down. Do you have a preference? I figure that you're used to taijutsu." A dozen clones appeared around him. "Clones are always fun as well, and make long-range more amusing." He then unsealed Kubikiribocho, resting it on his shoulder. "But we could also go with kenjutsu. You'd be amazed at how infrequently I have a good reason to use a giant sword."
Neji's right eye twitched. "You're asking me how I want you to engage me?"
"Yep."
"Are you crazy?"
"I don't think you're allowed to be a strong shinobi without being crazy, so I hope so!"
"I see. Then I think I'd prefer to engage you in taijutsu."
Naruto nodded, dismissed the paperwork clones and sealed Kubikiribocho away again. He then dropped into a Gentle Fist stance. "Okay then."
"While I acknowledge that you've trained with my cousin, that doesn't mean that you have any hope against a true Hyuga."
"Try me."
Scowling, Neji activated his byakugan and darted in, aiming to strike at Naruto's chakra points. But his eyes widened as each strike was seamlessly met by a counter. After thirty such strikes he scowled and picked up the pace, only to continue to be met strike for strike...
...until Naruto suddenly lashed out with a kick, spikes of chakra hitting several of Neji's chakra points even as the boy was launched back. A toad-style lunge allowed Naruto to keep up, snake-style was best for slipping around Neji while he was still in the air to continue to strike additional chakra points, and pushing off with the last strike allowed for a quick disengage before Neji hit the ground. That it caused Neji's path to change from what he'd been anticipating was a bonus.
"Silly to let me force you off your feet like that," Naruto chided as Neji rolled to his feet and started forcing his chakra points back open. "Surely you're familiar with surface-sticking?"
"How did you do that?" Neji demanded.
"I'm full of tricks." This time Naruto darted in, and wasn't surprised when Neji started to spin. Naruto started to spin in the opposite direction, both of them releasing chakra to form a dome at the same time. The two domes crashed into each other, Neji's blue dome against Naruto's yellow one. After several seconds the domes exploded, Neji flying out of his and Naruto darting forward to follow him again.
It had taken some trial and error to figure out that the one spinning faster when two of those domes collided would win, especially if the contact point was moving in the same direction for both users of the technique, but it was experimentation that was obviously well worth it. As was the training to spin even faster, but that was somewhat ironically made easier by not having his tail hidden. Matching speed, then pulling his tail in to increase his rate of rotation had worked wonders.
Neji attempted to counterattack as he landed, but Naruto had switched to whirling fists. Its focus on surrounding the target was particularly devastating when combined with Gentle Fist strikes as no chakra points were protected by being on the far side of the body.
An attempt at pulling out kunai to stab him was made, but it was too little and far too late. Naruto was soon standing over an unconscious Neji, Gekko declaring the match over even as chakra points were being carefully re-opened.
Neji blinked as he regained consciousness. "What happened?"
"You fell into Naruto's trap," his uncle answered. "He knew you'd choose taijutsu, and could give several of the elders a run for their money in the Gentle Fist alone. I suspect he also kept an eye on most of the finalists for the entire month, and thus knew what training you were doing as well."
"...how could he use the Gentle Fist?"
"That is his secret to reveal, should he wish to, but since you can't leave my presence due to needing twenty minutes or more to recover your ability to walk? This seems like the perfect time to have the chat about your father that I've been trying to pin you down for."
The next fifteen minutes were emotionally painful, and finding out that his father had also tried to air the clan's secrets in a chunin exam final to absolutely no effect made him feel like a fool for thinking he had been the first to think of it. At the same time, finding out that Uzumaki had been truthful about releasing the branch family's seals, with the aid of his uncle and grandfather...
There were many things to think about.
Hinata had to admit that Sasuke had been well prepared for the fight against Hitomo, but that hadn't been enough to pull out a win. It was likely in part due to still not being fully used to the wolf tail in particular, as evidenced by nearly cutting it off himself six or seven times. It was still a good showing, with a number of decent tactics shown, but it was hard to tell if it would be enough for a promotion.
But now it was time for her to face off against Temari, and Hinata thought that it was nice that Sasuke's battle had taken long enough for her father to make it back from his chat with Neji.
"You're at a disadvantage," Hinata said. "So I'll be nice and let you start."
"...a disadvantage?" Temari replied with a scoff. "Really?"
"You're primarily a wind user." With a slight mental flex the fire on her ears and tail covered her entire body. "Wind is weak to fire."
The Suna kunoichi's eyes went wide, apparently not having considered that aspect of things. A moment later she'd opened her battle fan all the way and let loose with a powerful wind attack. Upon reaching Hinata the entire thing ignited, going from a basic if wide-scale wind attack to a blue fire tornado. The ground around Hinata was scorched heavily, but her chakra was stronger than her opponent's and she was unharmed. Dismissing her own flames, she stomped on the ground to launch a lava ball, then unsealed Nuibari and formed a dozen paperwork clones. Each of them was thus holding their own copy of the sword, and they all went in towards Temari at the same time.
Seeing a Hyuga come at her with a sword, even if it hadn't been recognized as a legendary one, obviously took Temari by surprise. Or perhaps it was thirteen copies coming at her that was taking her by surprise after dodging the lava ball? Whatever the case, she still managed to put up a decent fight, and the metal of her fan was able to deflect the copies of Nuibari with ease...right up until the real thing went straight through it. Scowling, Temari immediately attempted to take advantage of that by twisting the fan to try and pull the sword out of Hinata's grip.
That hadn't worked, Hinata allowing herself to be pulled along with the sword to get into the air. Temari tried to take advantage of that by flipping her fan open to launch another wind attack, possibly hoping to put some distance between her and the real Hinata, but that left her open for the clones to pierce her clothing. It only took a couple of seconds to have Temari stitched up with the wires attached to the copied swords, barely able to move, and the real Hinata landed a moment later before grabbing the battle fan.
"Ugh," Temari groaned. "I thought I'd be able to keep you at a distance."
"I was decent with wind and fire jutsu before my changes," Hinata retorted. "But I'll admit that this would've been a lot harder a few weeks ago."
Tenten and Karui had recognized that they were both serious about their weapons and skipped the pre-battle banter. Twenty minutes of fighting with katanas and neither of them getting a true advantage had been enjoyable, but they both seemed to realize that it wasn't working at the same time. This was fine with Tenten though, because she really wanted to play with Shibuki anyway.
"Where did you get that?" Karui asked, likely recognizing the sword.
"I have an awesome teammate that managed to pick it up," Tenten replied with a grin.
"...would that be the one that was just using Nuibari, or the one that showed off Kubikiribocho but didn't end up using it?"
"The latter."
"Huh. And he just happens to have come across multiple legendary swords?"
"He got lucky with Shibuki here, getting his hands on it while reclaiming Nuibari on behalf of the Uzumaki. Kubikiribocho ended up coming to him before then."
"Damn, that's lucky."
"You should see him gamble. He has to cheat to lose."
Karui snorted, but then darted forward again and the fight resumed. Just with a lot more explosions.
A shook his head. B would never have let any student of his make that kind of mistake, that was for sure. "She was better off with the katana. Less skill, but her speed and strength were making up for it. But I can tell that she hasn't properly practiced with Shibuki."
"So it seems," Hiruzen agreed. "She's obviously decently skilled with it, but I don't think she's had it long enough to get proper practice in."
"I suspect that the same applied to the Hyuga with Nuibari, but her opponent wasn't suitable for revealing those details either way. Thinking about that, her teammate used the Gentle Fist, why didn't she?"
"We were warned of this by her clan a couple of days ago. She hasn't had time to finish retraining her chakra control, and letting some of her fire into an opponent's chakra points has a chance of permanently burning them out. She plans on avoiding use of those techniques unless she has no other way to win in order to avoid potentially crippling her opponents."
Rasa half-nodded. "A prudent course of action that is hard to fault her for in friendly matches. Uzumaki, however he can use the techniques, has no such problem?"
"My understanding is that he was able to retrain his chakra control, but his reserves were large enough to make the change less significant by comparison. That and he has little to no chance of accidentally pushing sand into a pure chakra strike."
"It will be interesting to see how he fares against my son. A lifetime of experience controlling sand, with the power diminished, compared to one who has only just gained the ability."
A snorted. "I suspect that he only gave the Hyuga the option of taijutsu because he knew his own Gentle Fist would be unexpected. Your son is known to control sand, so I doubt it will be a sand battle."
"Fighting with Gaara is always a sand battle, but I concede the point. Plans likely existed for trying to work around the sand even before the situation changed, and those will be just as interesting to see."
Tenten had to admit that she'd made a tactical error in switching to Shibuki instead of trying to draw on her other skills. The legendary sword was far too much of a draw and this had been her first opportunity to really use it, but that also meant that she hadn't practiced with it enough, and this was definitely going to count against her in the evaluations. Worse, it was a rookie mistake that she knew had been a mistake as soon as they'd resumed fighting.
Unfortunately, she wasn't being given an opportunity to switch weapons out again and didn't want to potentially let her opponent grab a discarded Shibuki while she switched to one of the swords on her back. The speed and strength advantage she'd had with the katana was now negated by Shibuki being larger and harder to wield, which had led to her having dozens of cuts along her arms. In theory the explosive tags should be making things more even as well, but she was nearly caught by them as often as her opponent was. All combined, she was slowing down more than her opponent was.
Maybe she'd be doing better if she still didn't need to concentrate for two seconds to store a weapon, but the seal array and contract were still too new and she'd not gotten enough practice with swapping weapons out either. Two seconds was better than the thirty she'd started at, but not good enough for in the middle of a fight.
Her foot landing on a loose rock had her stance shifting slightly unexpectedly, which was enough of an opening for Karui to get inside of her guard, katana against Tenten's neck.
"Dammit," Tenten grumbled as Gekko called the match.
"You're decently skilled," Karui said as they disengaged. "But with a proper kenjutsu instructor you'll go further."
"Haven't found one willing to teach me yet. I spent some time with another jounin that has passing skills, but he admitted that I'd probably exceeded his skill level before we started."
"Pity, but I wish you luck."
Maintenance teams had been sent out into the arena to clean things up after it had been dramatically reshaped by all the explosions, and medic-nin had been deployed to the stands to take care of any potential hearing damage. Tenten and Karui had also been checked over and had returned to the waiting area for the participants, Neji finally returning as well with a thoughtful look on his face.
Food had also been brought in for them to snack on, but Naruto had summoned a clone to him that had sealed away a bowl of Ichiraku's ramen instead.
"You can summon ramen seals," Sasuke commented. "I don't know if I should be surprised or not, but it explains how you got ramen in the forest."
"Technically it's a slightly different trick," Naruto retorted. "But close enough."
"I missed multiple matches," Neji commented after a minute of silence. "I'm curious how those participating did."
"Hitomo beat me due to higher skill in kenjutsu," Sasuke admitted. "But that was basically all he showed, so I'm hoping my more varied technique counts towards promotion."
"I have at least one more match to show other skills in," Hitomo noted. "Karui will need to do the same, really. Kenjutsu alone doesn't make a good chunin, but we also know each other's styles well enough to make using it against each other less than ideal anyway."
"I went for the flashy legendary sword instead of sticking to things I was more familiar with," Tenten said. "Which might have cost me promotion, despite my good showing before that point."
"And the kitten here demonstrated that I'm too wind-focused," Temari grumbled. "Zero accuracy in the reports on that entire team."
"Only if they said we couldn't do things," Hinata replied. "I'm fairly confident that we can manage everything the information on us says we can. We're just not limited to that, and never have been."
"This is also the worst way to test our skills for promotion," Naruto added, to confused looks from everyone other than Hinata and Tenten. "What? We're not a combat-focused team at all. Most of the skills we use in the field are useless at this point."
"You could've fooled me," Karui said, shaking her head. "But if fighting is secondary to your normal roles..."
Kurenai looked around the stands, wondering how many of the 'civilians' were actually disguised invaders. Picking out the likely-shinobi was easy enough thanks to sensor training, but knowing who were there simply to observe and who would possibly participate when things went to hell was another issue entirely.
"So I think Naruto has his promotion in the bag," Anko said, snacking on dango. Where she'd gotten the dango was unknown. "Hinata just needs to put up a good showing of alternate tactics in her next match, but I have no clue if Tenten blew her chances of promotion this time or not."
"It was a pretty stupid move to bring out Shibuki like that," Kurenai agreed.
"Either way, the team will be broken up after this. We'll get our full promotions, but will also be pulled off to handle other things."
"Did you hear the rumor that they're considering pushing Naruto all the way to special jounin?"
"...no."
"I only ran across it a few days ago." Not that it didn't make sense to have him recognized for his infiltration and sealing skills at this point. If there was a 'special chunin' rank then he'd likely have been granted it already too. "That might be enough to keep them together under him for a bit instead of splintering off entirely. Or maybe you'll get to keep them as an infiltration-focused team for a bit, actually, since I've sadly realized that there's very little left to learn about the byakugan and genjutsu."
"Those might work for him and Hinata, but I doubt that Tenten will stick around if the look on Yugao's face was any indication. Struck me as insulted that the girl was wasting her skills on being too flashy with the fancy sword."
Kurenai had to admit that she'd missed that one. "I know Hayate looked offended at her use of the sword, but it didn't look like he had any 'teach her to stop being stupid' intentions."
"I doubt he did, but Yugao will change that."
Well, that or drag Tenten into Anbu. Actually, all three were potential candidates for that from a skills perspective, but Hinata and Naruto were already too well-known to vanish into the program entirely. "So what do you think we'll end up doing after this?"
"We'll have a year before we're eligible for new teams if we want to take on fresh brats, but I hear bad things about newly promoted jounin being assigned to help established genin and chunin to ensure that they deserve the rank."
Ah. Right. The downside to promotion. Unless you went straight to 'elite that nobody wants to piss off' level you got tested six or seven times after each promotion to ensure that you deserved the new rank. If you were lucky the tests were subtle enough to not be noticed as tests, but Kurenai didn't expect to be that lucky.
Food had been consumed, restrooms used, the audience was once again able to hear properly, the arena no longer looked like a small war had been fought in it, and Gekko was running late returning from wherever he'd gone off to in the meantime. Though Old Man Hokage didn't seem to be annoyed, which meant there was likely a good explanation for the delay.
"Think we'll continue anytime soon?" Hitomo asked.
"Most likely something went wrong with the camera feeds," Tenten volunteered. "They'll want to either get them working again or send someone to apologize to those watching from the bars in the area."
"More likely is that the proctor is still being looked at by the medic-nin after setting off a stray explosive tag," Neji retorted. "Though it was easy to miss that it happened while the arena was being repaired."
"Fuck. That's going to count against me as well, isn't it?"
"It's possible, but I don't know if the proctor being unobservant after your match ended should be used against you."
"Except that it shows that I haven't mastered Shibuki because I pulled off detaching but not properly priming some of the tags."
"...there is that, I suppose. You still have a better chance of promotion than I do after my poor showing. Gai-sensei is going to insist on remedial training for me."
A few minutes later Gekko finally returned, summarized the first five matches without actually providing any details beyond who had won each, thanked the teams that had fixed up the arena and healed up the audience, and then apologized for the delay the latter caused in continuing for those outside of the stadium itself. This took a total of ten minutes, and seemed like it had been almost practiced to cause more annoyance to the audience by delaying things further. More charitably, it would give those outside of their seats or away from monitors in the surrounding bars plenty of time to get ready for the next match finally starting. Given that a number of people had been returning to their seats at the end of the entire spiel that seemed likely as a reason for it.
Gaara and Naruto were finally called down, and they took their time walking down the stairs to get out to the arena. Something that Gekko seemed to approve of, so they weren't reprimanded.
"Given things from the first couple of stages," Gekko said. "I'd like to remind you two that you are to be treating this as a mission where your orders include avoiding unnecessary deaths. Otherwise do your best."
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein