Bloody hell it was dark. He couldn't see anything... It was cramped too... was there someone lying on top of him?
His hand shot up to familiarize with the dark surroundings... only to meet with soft flesh. Someone's skin. And was that... a breast? Wait wait wait... where the hell was he? And who was on top of him?!
'Think Naruto, what the heck's goin' on?'
--oo--
"Hyuuga Neji...! I'll make you pay--!!"
With those words, fist raised and aimed at the branch member of the Hyuuga clan, Naruto had sworn to avenge one Hyuuga Hinata.
Except, things weren't just going his way that day
--oo--
"Aaaand, Blondie, you're last." The constantly coughing and seemingly sickly man made it to our protagonist who was antsy to pull a number.
"...I got a 1."
"Alright, well then." The man turned to face the Hokage and assorted jounin in the spectators balcony.
"First fight, Uzumaki Naruto versus Gaara of the Desert.
Second fight, Uchiha Sasuke versus Hyuuga Neji.
Third fight, Temari versus Nara Shikamaru.
Fourth and final fight, Aburame Shino versus Kankurou." The man pointedly coughed and turned to face the crowd of antsy genin standing in the beaten and battered hall. Gaara and Lee had done a number on the stone floor and wall.
On the balcony, the Hokage took a step forward and eyed the crowd. With a light cough he silenced the young ninja. "You have one month to prepare and rest for the finals. Do your best."
One blond ninja, dressed in orange scoffed as he processed the information. He had to face the red head with a penchant for massacre. Even as dense as he was, Naruto could see he would need to do some serious training for this one.
--oo--
So, Naruto needed some serious training. Time to find his sensei.
Except the tall, lazy and habitually tardy man had disappeared, along with Sasuke. It was almost as if the man had done his best to make sure he wouldn't have to face his pupil. That was a week ago.
Grinding his teeth, Naruto left the hospital, where Kakashi's trail had gone cold. After having had Sasuke checked out, the man had simply disappeared. Naruto had gone to visit some of his friends in the hospital, namely Chouji, where Shikamaru was spending most of his time too.
Naruto didn't have much longer to wallow in his funk, as a taller man's hand settled on his shoulder. Turning to face the man, Naruto couldn't help but to 'Urk' in annoyance.
"What do YOU want, closet pervert?"
The man recoiled as if he'd been struck, but recovered with a simple act of pushing his glasses with his fingers.
"Ahaaha... You seem to be looking for someone, Hatake-san. I presume?" A smirk appeared on the man's face as Naruto's eyes shot wide open.
He gave a pleased and curt 'hah'. He replaced his hand on the short genin's shoulder and gave a confident smile.
"You see, Hatake-san deemed it necessary to work with Uchiha-kun for the entirety of the month, so he left as soon as possible. This of course leaves the obvious issue of your training, so he contacted me to take over your training as soon as possible." The man gave Naruto a confident smile. Naruto responded with a flat look and began to turn to leave.
"Naruto." The seriousness in the voice froze the genin, whose eyes widened as he tensed.
The man clad in standard black ninja garb sighed and looked eye to eye with Naruto who still stood still.
"You will be facing a very dangerous opponent in one months time. As much as you belive me to be incompetent and foolish and weak... You must trust me on this. You NEED my help."
Naruto opened his mouth to say something, but the tokubetsu jounin cut in. "Please. Not for my sake, but for your own. I am the best you will get. Let me at least try helping you."
Naruto frowned and shook off the hand on his shoulder. After a few seconds of grumbling and thinking, the genin nodded. Ebisu smiled and took a deep breath.
"Well then, Naruto-kun, let us go."
--oo--
Sitting down in Ichiraku, the somewhat awkward and reluctant new teacher-student pair ordered some ramen.
"Unfortunately, as your opponent is from another village, I am not too familiar with his style, nor his abilities. Indeed, the only thing I do know, is what Hatake-san indulged me with. He is vicious and strong." Ebisu eyed the still a little reluctant and quiet genin.
Ebisu leaned over the table and sighed. He knew what the boy was going through.
"Naruto..." He began, once again placing his hand on the boys shoulder. This this time boy flinched and their eyes met. "I understand how you must feel. While I was never cast aside in favor of another student, in my position as 'Elite Instructor' I often must help those who cannot turn to their jounin-sensei."
Naruto eyed the man suspiciously. Then he nodded and leaned back. "So what'll we do?". Finally feeling as if he was being accepted, Ebisu pushed his glasses with his finger.
"Well, first off. Tell me about your opponent. How he fights, what you observed, your thoughts on him and you how you perceive you chances against him."
"That's... Ehehe..." Naruto awkwardly scratched his hair and looked down. "Gaara... he's strong. He's crazy strong. He's almost untouchable, and even when you get close to him, he's tough... Bushy brows, who's crazy strong too, lost against him... and he's way stronger than I am."
"Bushy brows...? Ah, Lee-kun." It was a good thing, Ebisu had familiarized with the files of those who'd made it to the semi-finals. Indeed, he had himself noted the boy's impressive eyebrows.
"Do tell more..." Ebisu pushed up his glasses as he thanked the owner of the stall as his ramen was presented to him. It had been quite a long time since he'd last indulged in such frivolous activities.
Naruto thanked the owner and chef of the small stall with vigor and continued talking to Ebisu between bites.
--oo--
"Sand, huh... Hatake-san was right. You are facing a rather bothersome opponent..." Ebisu spoke, having finished his first bowl. Halfway through that bowl, Naruto had finished a somewhat detailed explonation of his opponent. After that the boy had concentrated on stuffing himself with bowl after bowl of ramen.
The bespectacled man ordered another bowl, giving an amused smirk to the genin who was well on his 6th bowl, he returned to his thoughts. Finally as the bowl arrived, the man sighed exasperatedly and turned to the genin, now on his 7th bowl.
"Naruto-kun. I have come to an conclusion of sorts." The blond stopped inhaling noodles to look at the man, who calmly began eating his second bowl. Between bites, he explained his thougths so far.
"Indeed, Lee-kun's physical abilities far surpass yours. However, I belive ninjutsu will be far more effective a mean to combat our enemy than Lee-kun's considerable skill with taijutsu. And as with all things, it is best to stay simple." The man nodded sagely to himself and turned to the blinking and confused blond ninja.
"We shall begin with working on your most glaring flaw, chakra control. At the same we shall work on a rudimentary defense against his sand attacks." The elite instructor could hear the genin weigh his words.
"What do you got against Gaara's sands? Some awesome jutsu?" Naruto turned back to his ramen with closed eyes. What could possible work against those crazy attacks that could come from any direction?
The elder man hah'd and leaned back taking a satisfying mouthful of ramen. He turned to the orange clad boy with a smile.
"Kawarimi."
--oo--
As crazy as it sounded, the kawarimi plan wasn't that bad actually, now that Naruto thought about it. Okay, thinking wasn't a good thing, right now, he noted moments before he fell again into the hot water he was so hard trying to stand on. With an annoyed growl, he crawled out of the water.
Ebisu was eyeing the three orange clad ninja now around him.
The original, now in pants only, was working on his chakra control with water walking. The two clones worked on kawarimi'ing each other. The idea was, one clone could always be standing back and getting Naruto out of a thight spot. Kawarimi was a useful technique, especially with being only a single seal jutsu.
However, often in the middle of intense combat, it could be somewhat difficult to kawarimi out of danger, also the range made it less than optimal in fights where there was no cover to hide behind.
Ebisu remembered this patricular trick when he tried to think of a way for Naruto to fight back against Gaara. He'd read about once, somewhere, sometime. The details were unclear in his head. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
They had been working on it for a few hours. Success had been rather mild, as Naruto struggled with chakra control, and his clones succeeded in getting the E-rank jutsu to work once every 5 times. Not particularly good odds, but they had a month, right?
--oo--
Naruto sighed and pulled himself up from the water while shaking his head wildly to dry his hair. Then he blinked as he scanned the area. Ebisu was down on the ground. In his stead stood a large and colorfully dressed man with long and spiky white hair. The guy was in a heated argument with his two clones.
Naruto heaved himself out of the hotspring and approached the trio with an annoyed expression. One of the clones turned over to him and let the other one take his place in arguing with the strange man.
"Hey hey, boss, this guy was peepin', and then when Ebisu went to be all white knigth n' shit, so this guy just knocked him out like nothing! And he's now calling himself a super pervert. Fuggin' freak!" The clones was rather annoyed. Naruto sighed and let the two clones dispel. The whole argument popped into his head as he blinked. That was new.
Shaking his head to clear his head, he faced the now rather serious looking man.
"Oi oi, what the hell. I'm training here and you just show up and ruin everything." The man scanned Naruto from head to toe with a distant gaze. Then he chuckled and crossed his arms.
"Training? Can't be too serious, when you are just working on Kawarimi, of all things!" The man erupted in a boisterious laugh.
"Tch..." Naruto wasn't too comfortable with just working on a E-rank jutsu, but it seemed like the smartest plan so far. "Just go away you peeping tom. I don't need any distractions, with my fight against Gaara and all, I need all the training I can get."
The man's eyes momentarily widened as he looked at the bare-chested boy. Gaara, Sand's Jinchuuriki?
The tall and built man sized up the still annoyed Naruto with a calm gaze. "You intend to face the Jinchuuriki of Shukaku with just Kawarimi and some chakra control techniques?"
The tone of voice indicated that the man had completely forgotten any previous arguments.
"Yeah, what's it to you, old man?" Naruto stared back with the exact same intensity as the taller man. He had no idea what a 'jinchuuriki of shukaku' was, but that was obviously some kind of foreign word for 'crazy person' or something, this guy was obviously not from Konoha.
The man stared silently for exactly three seconds, then he exploded into a boisterious laugh. The man patted Naruto's shoulder with enough force to have been a kick from Lee, almost toppling over the orange clad genin.
"I see! I see! You've got guts, kiddo! How about this, you leave your incompetent teacher there, and come with me. I'll show you how to fight against a crazy kid like that." The man obviously was a lot more confidant, and he had taken out Ebisu rather easily. Though it was rather suspicious that this man would suddenly be so interested.
"Why're you so into teaching me, all of a sudden?" The man grinned and set his arm around the genin's shoulder. He pointed at Naruto's stomach. Where the seal would show up if he used chakra. Naruto's eyes widened and he jumped back from the man with a growl.
"Hey hey... I made a promise to a Hokage, that's all. To look after you and make sure you didn't die too soon. You can trust me. Don't you know who I am?!" The man hopped on his geta sandals surprisingly energetically as Naruto shook his head. Redoing his earlier introduction(which Naruto remembered for some reason, despite having spent most of it underwater.), the Sannin grinned.
"I am of the Legendary Three Ninja trained by Sandaime Hokage himself! From Mount Myoboku, the invincible Toad Sennin, and author of the best-selling novel series, Icha! Icha!" Punctuating every word with a clack of his geta against the ground and a headbang that made his hair spin. The man seemed to enjoy his introduction. "I. am. Jiraiya!"
Finishing his flashy introduction, the man hopped and let the introduction hang in the air.
Naruto shrugged to nobody in particular as he watched the man who stood up straight again and walked up to him. The blond ninja stared at the white haired tall man for ten seconds. Then he finally shrugged again, giving up. The man grinned and motioned for Naruto to come closer.
"Hmm, hmm, let me prove just how good I am at teaching..." The man grinned slyly as he let his left hand move behind his back. Blue chakra flames licked his fingers as he prepared the Five Elements Unseal.
Naruto, untrusting as he was, hesitated to approach the still suspicious looking man. He took a step closer, despite his caution, Naruto was unable to react as faster than he could follow, Jiraiya had slammed his hand into Naruto's gut, forcing all the air out of the boys lungs and sending him gliding to the edge of the water.
"HEY! What the HELL! You ASS!" Hands already in the familiar cross seal, Naruto prepared to attack the still grinning man. "Hey, hey, take it easy. I just hit some relaxation points to help you out, is all...".
"AND HOW THE HELL IS SUCKER PUNCHING ME SUPPOSED TO HELP ME?" The blond tensed to jump forward, three clones behind him having popped into existance.
"Just try the water walk now." The man's unshakable confidence made Naruto hesitate. There was some hidden meaning with that gut punch, just now. Eyes narrowing, Naruto straightened up, still ready to pounce at the taller man.
Leaving the duty of watching the man to the clones, Naruto eyed the water's edge with trepidition. He hated the searing hot water by already. Taking a careful step onto the surface, Naruto's eyes shot wide open.
It... it was so easy all of a sudden. Like he had missed some elementary concept earlier, and just realized it. He laughed as he hopped on the water's surface for the first time.
"Haha!" Turning to the grinning man, Naruto blinked. "What the heck did'ya do? This is way too easy all of a sudden!" The man nodded sagely and motioned for Naruto to listen.
"Why don't you try making your clones do that kawarimi trick now? Who knows, it might work!" Naruto blinked at that and nodded. One of his clones preformed the ram seal...
And WHOOSH, he had switched places with the clones. The clone laughed in surprise and jumped on the water gleefully. Naruto blinked as he took a deep breath and concentrated on his chakra. It felt lighter, more responsive... Like he'd been trying to suck it through a straw just now a few minutes earlier.
"Well, You see? These simple little things won't do you any good in the long run. I have a few ideas on how to work on you. Are you willing to listen to me, Naruto?" Not even paying attention to the fact that the man somehow knew his name, Naruto nodded eagerly.
"Very well, meet me at the north gate in 15 minutes. I need to finish up some things here. We'll pick up your training from there." Jiraiya crossed his arms with a grin, and watched as the boy dashed off.
He lazily looked at the man lying on the ground, eyes already wide open. "Well, Ebisu. Seems like I'm taking over. You can tell Kakashi I took his little problem." He spoke solemnly. The bespectacled man nodded and got up. "He'll be in far more capable hands with you, Lord Jiraiya." The taller man laughed weakly as he left waving lazily to his fan-who-refused-to-aknowledge-it.
He'd been away from his godson for way too long. He needed to do some serious work on the boy, if he was going to face Gaara, of all people. Jiraiya only wondered why Sarutobi hadn't bothered to contact him about this before. Jinchuuriki vs. Jinchuuriki... It was going to be big.
He grinned, the kid was so much like his parents, it was funny to watch him. His father's swagger, his mothers tongue and his appearance a mixture of the two in a way that just tickled his humor. And orange? This kid was gonna be real fun, Jiraiya decided.
--oo--
"Well, let's get started, then."
The duo stopped their trekking, having arrived by a small river some ways away from the village. The stream was rather shallow, as the river suddenly got a lot wider for a portion, and then narrowed back to a deeper stream.
It looked to be knee deep at the widening part. The odd shallow part went on for around 40 meters in width and went of for at least 60 meters before it became deep again. Noticing Naruto's confused gaze, Jiraiya explained.
"Another student of mine and I made this a long time ago... You might have heard of him. Namikaze Minato." Jiraiya grinned and eyed his new student.
After getting no noticeable reaction from the boy, Jiraiya sighed. "The Fourth Hokage? Ring a bell?" Naruto's face lit up at that. The toad sage laughed weakly and scratched his head. "Well, anyhow." He motioned for Naruto to sit down next to him as he rested against an old tree.
"The basic idea of working on kawarimi was not too bad. However it still leaves you very much lacking in both defense and offense. So, tell me boy," There was a glint in the old sage's eye, "how much do you know about Shunshin?".
"That thing Kakashi-sensei uses to disappear sometimes? Yea, I know it. Kinda." Naruto nodded to himself.
"Well, it's not as much a mysterious technique as it seems, really." The toad hermit leaned back and looked to the sky.
"It is merely a burts of speed that comes from having mastered chakra explusion from your feet. The reason it is not often used in combat or in anything else than short distance travel is simple." Jiraiya looked back down to his pupil.
"First off, you can only move in a straight line. In a fight, moving in such a predictable way will often be the death of you. Certainly, you can keep the bursts short, and move in different patterns, but that will only make the second issue that much more troublesome." The sage leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"You burn through chakra quite fast, when using shunshin rapidly. The longer the distance you wish to travel, the more you chain shunshin's, the greater the chakra burn. You can quite easily end up ripping your tenkutsu in your feet apart if you work at it for too long." The toad sage hopped up and walked to the waters edge.
"However, seeing as you both lack speed, and have more than enough stamina, I think we should work on you learning shunshin." The man grinned and let the information sink in.
"Okay... how're we gonna do that, eh?" Jiraiya's grin became even wider with that.
"We are going to make you play tag." Before Naruto could begin to question the logic behind that, Jiraiya bit his thumb and followed through with a set of hand seals and slammed his palm on the ground.
Naruto, having all but forgotten the whole 'you'll play tag for training', gawked as a small orange frog wearing a HAKAMA, of all things, lazily looked around.
"Ara ara, Ji-chan..." The toad spoke. All neural activity stopped when Naruto realized the toad spoke.
"Hello, Mitsune-san, how are you?" The sannin conversed with the toad like it was en everyday occurence.
'Wait... Kakashi's dog could talk! Okay! Calm down! Caaalm down. Act natural.' Naruto stepped closer to the toad, who noticed the stiff boy awkwardly raising a hand and going "Y-yo! 'sup?"
The toad stared for five seconds, then it sighed. "Ji-chan, you do know I have things to do at home... As much as I love your company..." The toad let the statement hang in the air.
"Ahaha... But you see, this is important. This boy needs to learn how to chain-shunshin." Those words made the toad perk up and eye to boy a second time.
"Hmm... I see... Well, I don't see how a game of tag could hurt. I might even enjoy it." The toad winked at the clearly disturbed boy, was the toad flirting with him? The toad hopped onto the water surface with ease and motioned for Naruto to come.
The blond blinked and looked at Jiraiya who nodded.
"Naruto, this is the first part. You need to learn how to optimize your chakra when using it to move. You will simply chase after our dear old Mitsune-san here until you can keep up with her." With that, Jiraiya ignored the the boy, pulling out a notebook and beginning to scribble notes into it. Naruto looked back a forth between the old man and the toad acting like she was the hottest piece of ass since roasted donkeys. He sighed and hopped onto the water and crouched toward the toad.
Jiraiya scoffed as he turned around. This could take a while, after all.
The idea was simple. Force the student to use chakra to keep up with Mitsune, who is a rather swift and agile toad, while working on their stamina and chakra control. The combination of constant chakra usage, running around and trying to even follow the toad would leave most out of breath in a few minutes.
A Jinchuuriki on the other hand... Jiraiya laughed to himself.
Once they could adequately see and react to the toad, while keeping up with those speeds, they would begin the second stage. At the second stage the student would no longer be allowed to stand on the water's surface, instead they would have to stand on the bottom. The added resistance of the knee high water would force him to learn how to use chakra optimally to boost his steps. Leading to the natural evolution of a shunshin from mere chakra enhanced jumps.
After the boy had learned how to shunshin with this crash course Minato had invented, he would make the boy learn how to chain those shunshin's. This would just come down to having all the toads gang up on the boy in order to force him to learn how to dodge and keep moving.
Brutal on the body, horrendous on the chakra reserves, inhuman on the tenkutsu points in the legs.
If he mastered this exercise the Yondaime made, the boy would have at least doubled his leg strength, tripled his chakra reserves and his tenkutsu in his feet would make Hyuuga faint.
That is, if the boy could make it.
--oo--
Holy crap, the boy didn't just make it.
Regular speed, which came from merely using minute ammounts of chakra to enhance muscles to work harder, the boy was awful with and as such, quite sluggish with.
Shunshin speed, which came from forcing a relatively huge burst of chakra out of ones feet to propel forward, on the other hand... oh boy. He was Minato's boy alright.
It had been a week since they began with this training, and the boy still could barely follow the toad with his eyes, but when he caught a glimpse, he'd move at speeds far beyond of a genin with less than a year of experience under his belt.
Well, his 'shunshin' speed wasn't exactly stuff of the legends. Nor was the maximum distance anything to brag about... However, the boy could already chain like nobody's business. He would barely be out of one semi-shunshin and he was already half into another in the direction he guessed the toad had gone. To be able to do three in a row was quite the feat.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, the sannin stood up and walked over to the water's edge. "Naruto! Hey! NARUTO!" Catching the boys attention he winced when the boy stumbled in mid-dash and fell head first into the water.
Getting up, groggily shaking his head, Naruto eyed the white haired pervert. He knew the sannin was a pervert, but the man sometimes just left and came back giggling after hours of what he called 'research'.
"Yeah. What?" Wincing to himself as his legs stung as they finally got a chance to relax for a second. It had been like this the past few days or so. He'd stop his mad 4 hour dashing around for a minute and his legs would scream bloody murder for an hour, and then he could walk again somewhat alright again for the rest of the day. Next day he'd be almost back to perfect shape and it would start all over again.
Jiraiya motioned him to walk over to him, making Naruto sigh. He winced and forced his legs to obey. Slowly making it to the sannin, Naruto sat down next to him and began rubbing his sore legs. The toad hopped lazily next to him and eyed his legs funnily. He swore he was going to make that cocky toad regret messing with him so much, one day.
The toad hermit eyed Naruto and scratched his jawline in thought.
"The pain is that bad?" The sannin grumbled in deep thought as Naruto nodded.
"Well, it's alright, you been eating like I told you to?" The blond nodded again, grumbling himself. Why did he have to drink half a gallon of milk and eat 6 eggs every day? It made him feel quesy having to drink so much milk. As much as he liked milk, he was beginning to grow a little tired of it.
"Good, you need all the protein you can get... Well, it's alright if we take a three day break from your training." Jiraiya nodded sagely, ignoring the look of pure joy on the boys face. He knew the boy was getting worn out, and even with the kyuubi's chakra working, he was nearing his limits. Only anger at the ever snarky Mitsune-san kept the boy on the move during their sessions.
"We'll let you rest your legs for three days. At same time, we will work on an offensive strategy for you. After we've gotten that down, we will move onto the secod stage of shunshin training. I think you're ready for the real thing." The sannin nodded, pleased with himself as the boy was positively giddy.
"Jutsu! Jutsu! New Jutsu!" The almost dancing-in-joy boy settled down as the sannin shook his head.
"I won't be teaching you any jutsu, not while you are still concentrating on the shunshin. We'll take an idea from an old friend of mine... Back in the day when I was in a three man team, one of my teammates was extremely low on chakra. He was a ninjutsu specialist, so to put it simple, he was fucked. With me and our third teammate fighting our own desperate battles, he improvised. In the end, he came our damn rescue." Jiraiya began as he leaned back, his eyes closed while reminiscing with a placid smile.
"He was faster by a great deal than they were, but they had numbers and they were armored. Taijutsu wouldn't simply cut it. So he came up with a rather crazy idea... He incorporated taijutsu with an age old ninja piece of equipment in a way nobody had before even considered." Jiraiya laughed as he remembered the remains of the forest where this had happened.
He missed Orochimaru sometimes so damn much it hurt.
Jiraiya couldn't help but to grin as he let his eyes settle on the boy.
"Naruto, tell me, how do you feel about learning a taijutsu-style that centers on slapping people with explosive notes?"
--oo--
Naruto was ready. He knew he was ready.
He was also late, very much late.
The three weeks had whizzed by way too fast for his liking, he'd spent most of it running around in a pond or making paper notes. But he felt ready. He'd even bought this kickass leather-belt-strap thingy he had around his waist for the six scrolls he had made with the perverted hermit teaching him.
Jiraiya had called it a modified rock climbing harness. It felt comfy and it was pretty good for holding his waist pouch, his knee pouch and his new scrolls. The scrolls contained lots and lots of explosive notes he had made in the past two weeks. He had lost count once he was somewhere around a hundred of the smallest notes.
He'd never really thought about sealing as a useful thing until Jiraiya gave him a crash course. The things one could do with some chakra and time...
"Hold it!" the voice broke Naruto out of his reverie and dash.
"Huh? Hey, move it, I'm late already as it is..." Naruto glared at the man standing outside the door to the Chuunin exam finals.
"No ticket, no entry..."
"Oh come one, I'm fighting in the damn tournament, just let me in."
"Sure, pal. I've never seen you before, buzz it."
Naruto just sighed and gathered some chakra. Before the man could continue his whining, Naruto had disappeared in a blur. He'd jumped straight up and climbed the whole way up along the outer wall of the building.
"Ah! They're still there!" He wasn't too late, yet. He jumped off and began running to the center of the stadium. With a soft thud, he landed in the middle of the arena. The referee gave him a bored look while chewing on a senbon needle.
Naruto grinned and waved at the people who bothered to notice his arrival. Basically, Shino and Shikamaru. Still, they were cool enough.
"Well, now we're just missing one person. Better. I guess." Naruto blinked at that and furrowed his brow.
Neji, check. Gaara, check. Gaara's sister, check. Shino, check. Gaara's brother, check. Sasuke...
"Wait, where's Sasuke?"
"Tch... this is way too troublesome..." Shikamaru muttered, lazily eyeing the orange clad genin he'd known for quite a while. What was the deal with the scrolls?
"Uchiha Sasuke has yet to arrive. Though, he won't be disqualified until his match actually begins..." The man shurrged and looked at a watch and then eyed the crowd. He smirked and returned his gaze to the competitors. "You kids ready for this? This is pretty big, eh?"
Shikamaru sighed muttering his catchphrase. Neji had yet to even open his eyes. Shino didn't move or do anything to indicate he cared, or was even alive. The sand trio all looked anxious. Gaara had been patiently waiting for a month, and his siblings sure as hell didn't want to be anywhere near him right now.
"Hey hey, Gaara!" The shaking red head turned his gaze upon the trash he would squeeze dry in a matter of minutes.
"You ready to get your ass whooped, huh?" The sand siblings tensed at that. What idiot taunted Gaara?!
Gaara gave him a flat look and turned back to stare at the ground. Temari and Kankuro shivered, this could only mean 'mother' was being especially vivid... For Gaara to not lash out immediatelly meant he was going to be savoring the konoha ninja's death.
All the genin assorted noted that the arena had gotten surprisingly quiet all of a sudden. It could only mean the Hokage was getting ready to begin the tournament.
Naruto closed his eyes and nodded to himself. Reviewing the past month to himself. Speed and power. He had the means to defend, and he had the means to attack. Jiraiya told him to begin with some Kage bunshins to prod the relative difference in speeds between him and Gaara's sand. The clones could only handle one shunshin, but that should be enough for a rough estimate.
Opening his eyes, he noticed that the other had already left, leaving him alone with the shivering and slightly shaking red head.
'Time to rock.' He nodded to himself and took a comfortable stance with his arms crossed.
--oo--
"Do you think he's got any chances?" Shikamaru muttered. Talking was troublesome, but a dead acquaintance was a lot more troublesome. Shino hmm'ed quietly and kept walking in a brisk, yet relaxed pace.
"If he is still at the same level as he was against Kiba... I doubt it. Though there is something off about him right now..." Shino spoke quietly, almost to himself.
Surprisingly, their senior joined the conversation. "I doubt Uzumaki will make it. It is his fate to lose here. He is outmatched in ways he cannot even comprehend." Neji walked two steps behind them, not even bothering to make eye-contact with the two rookies who turned around to listen to him.
"Mmm... But that Naruto, it's like he's overflowing with confidence..." Shikamaru eyed the lone standing orange figure. Shino nodded, either to himself or to acknowledge the statement, as a bug landed on his shoulder.
"Not only that, he has somehow increased his chakra significantly... The way he is casually bleeding chakra is making my destruction bugs nervous..." The silent genin furrowed his brows and let the bug creep in under his collar.
The two other genin acknowledged that with a silent nod as they continued to walk to the competitors' lounge.
A few paces behind them, the sand siblings pondered about Gaara's stability nervously while looking back and forth to the Hokage's personal area and Gaara.
Would Gaara really follow the plan? He'd been on edge the whole month.
--oo--
"This shall prove to be quite interesting, won't it, Hokage-dono?"
"Hmm, what is it, Kazekage-dono?"
"Oh, the two hidden villages clashing with their jinchuuriki... I feel quite confidant in the training of our weapon..." The Kazekage smirked behind his coil, the Hokage just knew it as he sighed.
"Uzumaki Naruto is a shinobi of Konoha. I have full confidence in him." The elderly Hokage gave his peer a warm smile. "Now let us sit back, and watch the new generation test their mettle against each other, shall we?".
The Kazekage nodded somewhat lazily and turned his gaze to the arena. This would prove to be interesting indeed, seeing the Sands living weapon against the soft and weak jinchuuriki of the greatest tailed beast...
Orochimaru almost cackled, holding himself back only because it would ruin his cover.
--oo--
Sakura sat down with a huff. Where was Sasuke? She eyed her rival, who was raging at her fat teammate for eating so loudly and for getting his chips on her pants. Some way off she could see Hinata and Kiba. She could also hear the murmurs among the crowd.
Nobody really expected anything out of this fight. It seemed Gaara was somewhat famous already among the crowd, while Naruto had his fame as a dumbass trickster weighing him down.
This was just the warm up for the crowd until the real show began.
Not even she could see Naruto winning this one. The odds were just too stacked.
--oo--
"...Begin."
With those words Naruto hopped back, turned around and began running away from the red head. Gaara let his gourd open up, not even bothering to move a muscle as a trickle of sand began to float and spiral around him.
The crowd was silent, if only because they weren't expecting much. Maybe a 15 minute slaughter followed by the long awaited Uchiha Genius versus Hyuuga Genius main fight. 'To hell with that.', Naruto mentally noted as he gathered some chakra and created fourteen clones.
The clones divided into five groups and dashed off, Naruto joining one of the groups himself.
The front group of three clones went for their kunai pouches, pulled a handful of shuriken and threw them at the impassive red head. As expected, the sand moved to block the incoming projectiles. The three divided up and surrounded the sand ninja.
'Good, he can't see us yet!" The front clone grinned as he pulled a kunai and exploded into a dash to rush toward the receding wall of sand that still blocked Gaara's field of view. With a overextending jump thrust with the kunai, the grinning Naruto stabbed between two waves of sand.
The clone poffed out of existance as the sand automatically grabbed him and crushed his extended arm.
The other two took this momentary shift of attention and at the same time burst toward Gaara's unprotected back with kunai in hand. Both met the same fate as they got caught in a wave of sand.
Gaara was still standing silently, with his arms crossed and eyes closed. He didn't even bother counting anymore on how many people died thinking they could somehow slip through his defense.
Gaara could barely get his clothes on after a bath, how did they expect the sand to react to anyone moving toward him with a sharp knife in hand?
--oo--
Naruto, the original, was running along with a bunch of clones around the sand user.
He pulled another tag from his left thigh's uppermost scroll. It was a rather cool scroll, the majority of the lenght was used for the seal that contained the tags, while the first sixty centimeters were dedicated to a custom seal of Jiraiya's. There was always a tag ready to be pulled out from the closed scroll, like it had been wrapped almost completely inside it. When he pulled the tag out, another tag replaced the drawn one.It was like a toilet paper roll! Or a tissue box! Only the paper could be used as a lethal explosive. Awesome.
He was handing the tags to his clones, who jumped and switched places with some of the other groups. By now, three of the original five groups were now armed with two explosive seals each. These were the bomber/assault squad.
He reached down for the second scroll and pulled two seals and wrapped them around a kunai and handed it to one of the clones. Repeating this a couple times and handing the clone a bunch of kunai, he stopped running.
The clone with the kunai continued running and dashed to the last group and dealt them the kunai.
'Okay, checklist. D squad got wiped out like nothing. Normal attacks are useless, like I knew already. A, B, C, assault squads are ready with their c-types.' C-type notes as he had dubbed them after their ranking, had actually a very long and boring name. They were the run of the mill boom-stickers. Not much power, but relatively cheap to buy and very easy to make in great numbers.
Hell, even genin were allowed to keep them on hand in unlimited numbers. They were small square shaped notes, often used in the hundreds or thousands to make any decent damage.(1.)
'And E-squad is standing by with B-type note kunais ready. Good. Let's see if I can make a dent in this guy.' B-types were the best known type of explosive notes. Rectangular and packing a lot more power, these babies were used often by wrapping them around kunai or tying them with a string to the ring of the kunai.
He also had a handful of what he called A-notes. Though these weren't really A-class in terms of damage, since he hadn't used any elemental chakra to load them up. Jiraiya just told him to work with these for now, so he just shoved them full of raw chakra. Made a big boom, much wider than a couple B-notes did, though the damage was still pretty much the same.
The scrolls on his left thigh were what he called 'dispencer' types, with the tissue-box mechanism of easy and quick access. The ones on his right thigh on the other hand were 'scatter' scrolls. The two top ones were filled to the brim with C-types, giving them enough boom to make a pretty crater, while the bottom one was a filled with B-types. He didn't have enough time to make a A type one, and the only differnece would be in how big an area it would affect.
Still, they were pretty good aces to have in your sleeve. Naruto grinned as all his clones came to a halt. A-C squads in a triangle around Gaara, Naruto himself standing much further away. E-squad was standing by the walls of the arena, all ready to move at a moments notice.
Taking a breath, Naruto eyed his opponent. He was shaking, himself, too. He'd worked on this formation for a couple of nights with a lot of help and criticism from Jiraiya. He had the means, Jiraiya said. But those words gave little confidence to Naruto as he stared at his bloodthirsty opponent, still calm and collected.
--oo--
"What the heck is that Naruto doing? Why doesn't he just charge like he always does?!" Sakura blinked, fuming as she turned to Ino and Chouji. Both shrugged and continued watching the stand-off between the red head and the multiple blonds. Neither had yet to make a move.
In the comptetitors' lounge, Shikamaru for once seemed curious. Naruto thinking ahead and using tactics? UNHEARD OF. Plus, he'd been doing nothing but running around with his clones while his three first clones had been ripped apart like nothing.
"Tch... I hope I don't need to fight that guy later on... He'd be way too troublesome..." Speaking to no one in particular, Shikamaru slumpped his shoulders as he sighed exasperatedly. Shino nodded next to him and furrowed his brow silently.
Neji was fighting the urge to activate his byakugan to check what Naruto had passed on to his clones, but resigned to closing his eyes with the thought, that Naruto's fate was already all but history already. With a scoff he leaned against the wall and reviewed his own condition and techniques.
The sand siblings watched quietly. Neither making a single move, as if it could trigger the end of the world. Hell, Gaara was already a bomb normally, but a month of nothing but sitting around had made him even more than a little crazy than usual.
Up in the Hokage stand the two kages watched intently. Sarutobi didn't have the eyesight to see what happened closely, but experience and his knowledge of Naruto all pointed to Naruto having a plan the hyperactive ninja would describe as "AWESOME!".
Kazekage seemed quite pleased with how things were going. Sarutobi was quite sure the Kazekage expected his prized weapon and son to crush all opposition in this tournament with ease, thus showing the superiority of his ninja to the many potential clients watching.
The kazekage smirked as Orochimaru was laughing on the inside. With the Five Elements seal disrupting the boy's chakra flow, those clones were hardly more than an annoyance to Gaara. The boy had gotten a little bit faster, but hardly anywhere near what would be required to slip past Gaara's 'absolute defense'.
This would prove to be a suitable appetizer to the main dish, the destruction of Konoha.
--oo--
Naruto rubber his shoulder and took one last deep breath, taking a step forward as he dramatically pointed his finger at Gaara. He'd always wanted to command other ninja like this, sure they were just clones, but it still felt awesome.
"SQUADS A, B AND C! RUSH 'IM!"
The front man of Squad A exploded into a dash and threw a handful of shuriken as a distraction as he began collecting his chakra. Various projectiles hit sand and were swallowed up into the sands.
The red head still not allowing any emotion to show on his face, stared at the head on approaching orange ninja.
Almost sighing he raised his hand, "Sabaku..." he began, only to blink as the rushing ninja blurred out of his vision.
Before he could find the ninja again, he felt three impacts hitting him in the midsection. Looking down, he saw three grinning boys having elbow charged him, somehow having gotten past his defense. They grinned, one even gave him a raspberry as they poofed out of existance.
Gaara snarled.
It had barely even hurt him. His armor of sand already in place, having taken the brunt of the assault. The cracks already restored. He looked up, only to blink as another grinning blond was mere inches from his face. This one punched him in the face, while another did a diving kick to the back of his knee and the third roundhouse kicked him in the ribs.
They poofed out of existance and Gaara struggled for a second to regain his balance. He snarled again. Mother was howling for blood for this insolence.
Naruto was still standing in place, mirroring Gaara's original cross armed stance with a grin. He didn't know why really, but with each wave of clones disappearing his grin grew wider and wider. He could almost swear he felt a flicker of sadistic amusement run through him for some reason.
The three clones by the walls had thrown their kunai already and were ready standing by in case of Naruto needing back up. E squad was the extra, anyhow.
The last clones of the assault squads readied their shunshin, each with a face-splitting grin.
Gaara snarled as he tried to make his sand capture the approaching clones, only for them to disappear from sight, again. The impact came from below, lifting him up. Another one followed. Lifting his gaze upward as he was being lifted off the ground, he could see the blue heel of the sandal before it smashed in his face.
Hitting the ground with a low thud, Gaara screamed. Furious did not even begin to describe him as he stood up, holding his cracking face as sand floated to repair the damage.
'He's still just standing there... mocking me... I'll... I'll...'
"I WILL KILL YOU-!!"
--oo--
The crowd sat by watching in silence. Unlike before, a great many watched on the battle with great interest. Uzumaki Naruto was faring quite well, the ninja among the crowd had decided.
Sakura could only gape as she witnessed Naruto's clones somehow disappear and reappear within Gaara's defense and then hit him. Ino and Chouji also couldn't help but to stare on, unblinking.
"Incredible..." A familiar voice muttered behind them. Sakura blinked and turned around. "Lee!" Her voice caught Ino's and Chouji's attention as well.
"Indeed, Lee. Even if he can use ninjutsu, to have mastered shunshin this well in a mere month..."
"Yes, Gai-sensei... Naruto-kun is truly a surprising ninja." Lee nodded and turned to his idol.
"Yes, we must witness the flames of his passion as he faces this terrible enemy." Gai nodded and watched on intently as the last wave of Narutos finished their attack on Gaara. "He has gained great speed through learning shunshin... It places a great strain on him, and while it does allow him to attack and defend himself, he lacks the overall power you possess, Lee." Lee blinked at that and gripped his fist.
"What do you mean, Gai-sensei?" Gai sighed and placed his hand on his dear pupils shoulder.
"While his initial strikes hit hard, his clones cannot deal long term damage onto Gaara. Indeed, only his kicks seem to be worth the effort. His punches do not have the solidity to damage Gaara enough. As it is, I fear Naruto-kun will lose." Gai sighed and closed his eyes. No matter how hard his Eternal Rival trained his pupil, a month simply wasn't enough.
"If Naruto could only deal with that armor of sand, somehow..." Sakura muttered as she clenched her dress.
Their reveries were broken as a massive explosion rocked the arena and the shockwave met with the surprised crowd.
"What!" Ino and Chouji both stood up, as did a great many others in the crowd. Sakura grabbed Ino by the shoulder. "What, what happened? What did I miss?".
"That Naruto, once all the clones were gone, he did some handseal and Gaara... just exploded...!" Ino didn't even turn to face Sakura, she dared not miss a second of this fight.
--oo--
"Hahahahaa..." Naruto grinned as he felt the all to familiar chakra resonance in his legs. Time to fly. Without even a handseal, Naruto burst into motion, Shunshin'ing toward the cloud of sand and dust.
Eighteen C-tags on his body, three kunai with two B-tags on each in his tightly packed sand gourd... Gaara sure as hell wasn't expecting that.
Having already exploded into the familiar world of in-shunshin where all was a mere blur of colors and undesribable shapes, his eyes tried to compensate for the massive speed. Failing that, Naruto just relied on his instincts as he rammed his knee forward. Feeling an impact he grinned as he felt his senses working normally again.
'Gotcha.'
The red head, now barely standing, sand armor desperately trying to come back into place, winced as he took the impact on his chest. He was forced to take a step back to prevent falling over again. He'd barely made it back up when the knee had hit him. Gaara's sand was all over the arena after the explosion, there had been barely enough to recreate the armor before the knee had impacted.
Naruto grinned wickedly as he could feel his blood pumping. He still had the lead, he was still in control of the flow.
Left jab, left jab, right straight. He could feel the sand crumpling away with the two jabs. The Straight had hit home.
Pulling back his right fist from the powerful straight, he drove his left hand in a hook into the red heads temple. The sand ninja winced and for a moment saw nothing but stars. Still driving forward his momentum, Naruto moved to uppercut at the off balance Gaara.
Noticing the large movement involved in the uppercut, the red head jumped back, rolling away, out from the dust and sand cloud settling down.
Barely having time to stand up, the orange ninja was upon him again. He moved to lift his hands to cover his still vulnerable face, but Naruto's two right jabs set him off balance again. Naruto, shifting his weight, reared his left arm for a massive punch.
--oo--
"He used explosive tags to compensate for his lack of power...!" Gai was an elite jounin. You don't very often manage to surprise an elite jounin.
Konoha's #1 Most Surprising Ninja, indeed. Kakashi's nickname for the boy was most fitting.
His eyes shot wide open as the sand ninja rolled out of the settling cloud dust moments after Naruto had blurred inside.
"He's going for a haymaker!" He couldn't believe it as the blond attacked the redhead again. This was no taijutsu, it was brawling, plain and simple. No ninja would even use a maneuver like the haymaker, no matter how awesome and powerful it may be. It simply left you way to open, and was too slow.
--oo--
Naruto grinned as he reared his fist back and put every fiber of his being into this strike, with a mighty sound of flesh against flesh, Naruto slapped Gaara on the cheek with the force of a cannon. The strike almost forced the crazy genin to topple over as he saw stars again.
Naruto's roll ended here, however, as enough sand had come back to Gaara. With a movement of his hand the sand instantly grabbed the blond ninja and held him tight. The orange clad ninja yelped in surprise and tried to wiggle out.
Gaara took his sweet time as he recovered his balance. Chuckling with murderous intent as he stood up, face to face with this annoyance. They were equally tall, and both seemed to prefer their clothing rather bulky and covering, the redhead noted chuckling as he eyed the blond ninja.
Gaara snarled as he slowly lifted his palm to shoulder height, with a simple act of closing his palm he acted to crush the boy. The crowd collectively gasped at the words "Sabaku Sousou--!!"
Gaara snarled and laughed. He'd killed the pest, he'd killed the pest, there would be blood and mother would be joyous and praise him!
Except there was no blood. Only a few wisps of smoke escaped his desert coffin. Gaara's eyes widened as he could feel his mothers rage ascending to yet another level.
Across the arena, Naruto was laughing.
"Boy, that kawarimi came in useful, huh." Naruto laughed weakly again as he looked at the fuming boy in the middle of the arena. Giving a whistle, his hands moved to the serpent handseal once again.
Mouthing the word 'Boom', Naruto grinned. Another second later, he was hit with the shockwave of the blast.
He'd slapped an A-note onto Gaara's face with that last attack.
He tried to peer through the second cloud of smoke, sand and dust that had kicked up today for any signs of the red head.
Sure the A-note had a little bit more punch to it. But it wasn't that strong, not with just raw chakra. There was a limit to how effective just shoving chakra into a note could be.
A veritable eternity went by as the cloud finally began to settle down. Naruto swore he could hear a snarl from somewhere.
He blinked, and then his instincts scremed at him to duck. Before he even hit the ground, he could feel the memories of his last two clones return to him. All Kage bunshin squads were down. Rolling on the ground to the left, Naruto got up on his feet and gathered chakra.
With a burst he was in motion, barely having time to register another tendril of sand moving to intercept him as his blurred vision settled down, Naruto crouched for another shunshin.
Shunshin after shunshin, everytime he stopped, a tendril of sand shot out or lashed to where he stopped.
'Well, If I can't stop. Let's just keep goin' then!'
--oo--
The crowd stared on in awe as Naruto's second explosion rocked the arena. When they opened their eyes, the silence was almost deafening.
Then when the tendrils began hunting Naruto, murmurs of "Yellow Flash" and "More like orange flash" ran through the crowd as Naruto expertly dodged and weaved through tendril after tendril of deadly sand missiles. Some of the more experienced ninja among the crowd scoffed at those claims. They could do shunshin-chaining, too! And if he was still leaving a trail to follow, then he was far too slow for the nickname. The Yondaime earned the nickname because he could shunshin over battlefields in a single move, leaving a trail of corpses.
Sakura could only stare as Naruto, her silly little old Naruto, her teammate for half a year, her loud admirer for years since the academy days was doing things she never thought possible of him.
Next to her, Gai was feeling a lot less impressed and a lot more worried. Naruto as well on his 6th shunshin already. Chaining shunshin's was considered crazy and dangerous for a reason. After 5, most Jounin preferred to stop, even if it meant risking getting hit. The strain on one's legs was huge.
--
Six. Dodge a tendril, hop forward and roll, prepare the chakra. Seven.
'crap crap crap... my legs are burning up already...' Swaying to the left and hopping over a low sweeping tendril, Naruto prepared the familiar cross seal.
Sixteen clones poofed into existance as Naruto shunshin'ed out of the way as another wave of tendrils hit the spot he'd occupied a few fractions of a second. Thirteen of the clones died, a fourteenth followed as he ended his eighth shunshin in a row.
Gritting his teeth as his legs burned, Naruto spun on his heel to face his opponent. His eyes registered four spear-like tendrils shooting toward him.
One of his clones was in a good position, and kawarimi'ed with the orignal, leaving the tendrils to hit the clone.
'I gotta finish this already. Three more and I'll drop from my legs giving under...' Gritting his teeth, Naruto reached for his right thigh and pulled the two top scrolls out and grabbed them. With a flick of his thumb he opened both.
Okay, here's the plan. Dash in real close, drop the two scrolls and activate them, jump over the fucker, run like hell, blow it all up, go on a date with Sakura-chan. Awesome plan.
Before the mass of sand could shoot another wave of tendrils, Naruto activated his shunshin again. The world became a blur. Stopping in front of the sand veil, he dropped the scrolls, pulling them open as he let them roll open on the ground. Still sliding forward, Naruto gathered his strength and hopped over the wall of sand.
Unfortunately for him though, a hand shot up and grabbed him by his new fancy waist harness. Before Naruto could react, he'd been pulled down to the ground. The world went dark as sand surrounded him. Before the redhead could squish him, the surrounding air began exploding, hundreds upon hundreds of small notes exploding, one after another.
The redheads sands reacted automatically and hardened into a a dense sphere.
--oo--
"Ouuuch myy heeaad!" Naruto whined as he sat up. Wait, why was his back wet.
Oh, he was in some kind of... sewer?
'What the hell?'.
He could hear some kind of roaring. Grabbing his head as he tried to cover his ears, Naruto winced as the the walls shook and the water rippled with every sound. A wave of crimsom fire licked the walls, consuming everything in sight.
A wave of pain flooded through his mind as everything went black again.
His hand shot up to familiarize with the dark surroundings... only to meet with soft flesh. Someone's skin. And was that... a breast? Wait wait wait... where the hell was he? And who was on top of him?!
'Think Naruto, what the heck's goin' on?'
--oo--
"Hyuuga Neji...! I'll make you pay--!!"
With those words, fist raised and aimed at the branch member of the Hyuuga clan, Naruto had sworn to avenge one Hyuuga Hinata.
Except, things weren't just going his way that day
--oo--
"Aaaand, Blondie, you're last." The constantly coughing and seemingly sickly man made it to our protagonist who was antsy to pull a number.
"...I got a 1."
"Alright, well then." The man turned to face the Hokage and assorted jounin in the spectators balcony.
"First fight, Uzumaki Naruto versus Gaara of the Desert.
Second fight, Uchiha Sasuke versus Hyuuga Neji.
Third fight, Temari versus Nara Shikamaru.
Fourth and final fight, Aburame Shino versus Kankurou." The man pointedly coughed and turned to face the crowd of antsy genin standing in the beaten and battered hall. Gaara and Lee had done a number on the stone floor and wall.
On the balcony, the Hokage took a step forward and eyed the crowd. With a light cough he silenced the young ninja. "You have one month to prepare and rest for the finals. Do your best."
One blond ninja, dressed in orange scoffed as he processed the information. He had to face the red head with a penchant for massacre. Even as dense as he was, Naruto could see he would need to do some serious training for this one.
--oo--
So, Naruto needed some serious training. Time to find his sensei.
Except the tall, lazy and habitually tardy man had disappeared, along with Sasuke. It was almost as if the man had done his best to make sure he wouldn't have to face his pupil. That was a week ago.
Grinding his teeth, Naruto left the hospital, where Kakashi's trail had gone cold. After having had Sasuke checked out, the man had simply disappeared. Naruto had gone to visit some of his friends in the hospital, namely Chouji, where Shikamaru was spending most of his time too.
Naruto didn't have much longer to wallow in his funk, as a taller man's hand settled on his shoulder. Turning to face the man, Naruto couldn't help but to 'Urk' in annoyance.
"What do YOU want, closet pervert?"
The man recoiled as if he'd been struck, but recovered with a simple act of pushing his glasses with his fingers.
"Ahaaha... You seem to be looking for someone, Hatake-san. I presume?" A smirk appeared on the man's face as Naruto's eyes shot wide open.
He gave a pleased and curt 'hah'. He replaced his hand on the short genin's shoulder and gave a confident smile.
"You see, Hatake-san deemed it necessary to work with Uchiha-kun for the entirety of the month, so he left as soon as possible. This of course leaves the obvious issue of your training, so he contacted me to take over your training as soon as possible." The man gave Naruto a confident smile. Naruto responded with a flat look and began to turn to leave.
"Naruto." The seriousness in the voice froze the genin, whose eyes widened as he tensed.
The man clad in standard black ninja garb sighed and looked eye to eye with Naruto who still stood still.
"You will be facing a very dangerous opponent in one months time. As much as you belive me to be incompetent and foolish and weak... You must trust me on this. You NEED my help."
Naruto opened his mouth to say something, but the tokubetsu jounin cut in. "Please. Not for my sake, but for your own. I am the best you will get. Let me at least try helping you."
Naruto frowned and shook off the hand on his shoulder. After a few seconds of grumbling and thinking, the genin nodded. Ebisu smiled and took a deep breath.
"Well then, Naruto-kun, let us go."
--oo--
Sitting down in Ichiraku, the somewhat awkward and reluctant new teacher-student pair ordered some ramen.
"Unfortunately, as your opponent is from another village, I am not too familiar with his style, nor his abilities. Indeed, the only thing I do know, is what Hatake-san indulged me with. He is vicious and strong." Ebisu eyed the still a little reluctant and quiet genin.
Ebisu leaned over the table and sighed. He knew what the boy was going through.
"Naruto..." He began, once again placing his hand on the boys shoulder. This this time boy flinched and their eyes met. "I understand how you must feel. While I was never cast aside in favor of another student, in my position as 'Elite Instructor' I often must help those who cannot turn to their jounin-sensei."
Naruto eyed the man suspiciously. Then he nodded and leaned back. "So what'll we do?". Finally feeling as if he was being accepted, Ebisu pushed his glasses with his finger.
"Well, first off. Tell me about your opponent. How he fights, what you observed, your thoughts on him and you how you perceive you chances against him."
"That's... Ehehe..." Naruto awkwardly scratched his hair and looked down. "Gaara... he's strong. He's crazy strong. He's almost untouchable, and even when you get close to him, he's tough... Bushy brows, who's crazy strong too, lost against him... and he's way stronger than I am."
"Bushy brows...? Ah, Lee-kun." It was a good thing, Ebisu had familiarized with the files of those who'd made it to the semi-finals. Indeed, he had himself noted the boy's impressive eyebrows.
"Do tell more..." Ebisu pushed up his glasses as he thanked the owner of the stall as his ramen was presented to him. It had been quite a long time since he'd last indulged in such frivolous activities.
Naruto thanked the owner and chef of the small stall with vigor and continued talking to Ebisu between bites.
--oo--
"Sand, huh... Hatake-san was right. You are facing a rather bothersome opponent..." Ebisu spoke, having finished his first bowl. Halfway through that bowl, Naruto had finished a somewhat detailed explonation of his opponent. After that the boy had concentrated on stuffing himself with bowl after bowl of ramen.
The bespectacled man ordered another bowl, giving an amused smirk to the genin who was well on his 6th bowl, he returned to his thoughts. Finally as the bowl arrived, the man sighed exasperatedly and turned to the genin, now on his 7th bowl.
"Naruto-kun. I have come to an conclusion of sorts." The blond stopped inhaling noodles to look at the man, who calmly began eating his second bowl. Between bites, he explained his thougths so far.
"Indeed, Lee-kun's physical abilities far surpass yours. However, I belive ninjutsu will be far more effective a mean to combat our enemy than Lee-kun's considerable skill with taijutsu. And as with all things, it is best to stay simple." The man nodded sagely to himself and turned to the blinking and confused blond ninja.
"We shall begin with working on your most glaring flaw, chakra control. At the same we shall work on a rudimentary defense against his sand attacks." The elite instructor could hear the genin weigh his words.
"What do you got against Gaara's sands? Some awesome jutsu?" Naruto turned back to his ramen with closed eyes. What could possible work against those crazy attacks that could come from any direction?
The elder man hah'd and leaned back taking a satisfying mouthful of ramen. He turned to the orange clad boy with a smile.
"Kawarimi."
--oo--
As crazy as it sounded, the kawarimi plan wasn't that bad actually, now that Naruto thought about it. Okay, thinking wasn't a good thing, right now, he noted moments before he fell again into the hot water he was so hard trying to stand on. With an annoyed growl, he crawled out of the water.
Ebisu was eyeing the three orange clad ninja now around him.
The original, now in pants only, was working on his chakra control with water walking. The two clones worked on kawarimi'ing each other. The idea was, one clone could always be standing back and getting Naruto out of a thight spot. Kawarimi was a useful technique, especially with being only a single seal jutsu.
However, often in the middle of intense combat, it could be somewhat difficult to kawarimi out of danger, also the range made it less than optimal in fights where there was no cover to hide behind.
Ebisu remembered this patricular trick when he tried to think of a way for Naruto to fight back against Gaara. He'd read about once, somewhere, sometime. The details were unclear in his head. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
They had been working on it for a few hours. Success had been rather mild, as Naruto struggled with chakra control, and his clones succeeded in getting the E-rank jutsu to work once every 5 times. Not particularly good odds, but they had a month, right?
--oo--
Naruto sighed and pulled himself up from the water while shaking his head wildly to dry his hair. Then he blinked as he scanned the area. Ebisu was down on the ground. In his stead stood a large and colorfully dressed man with long and spiky white hair. The guy was in a heated argument with his two clones.
Naruto heaved himself out of the hotspring and approached the trio with an annoyed expression. One of the clones turned over to him and let the other one take his place in arguing with the strange man.
"Hey hey, boss, this guy was peepin', and then when Ebisu went to be all white knigth n' shit, so this guy just knocked him out like nothing! And he's now calling himself a super pervert. Fuggin' freak!" The clones was rather annoyed. Naruto sighed and let the two clones dispel. The whole argument popped into his head as he blinked. That was new.
Shaking his head to clear his head, he faced the now rather serious looking man.
"Oi oi, what the hell. I'm training here and you just show up and ruin everything." The man scanned Naruto from head to toe with a distant gaze. Then he chuckled and crossed his arms.
"Training? Can't be too serious, when you are just working on Kawarimi, of all things!" The man erupted in a boisterious laugh.
"Tch..." Naruto wasn't too comfortable with just working on a E-rank jutsu, but it seemed like the smartest plan so far. "Just go away you peeping tom. I don't need any distractions, with my fight against Gaara and all, I need all the training I can get."
The man's eyes momentarily widened as he looked at the bare-chested boy. Gaara, Sand's Jinchuuriki?
The tall and built man sized up the still annoyed Naruto with a calm gaze. "You intend to face the Jinchuuriki of Shukaku with just Kawarimi and some chakra control techniques?"
The tone of voice indicated that the man had completely forgotten any previous arguments.
"Yeah, what's it to you, old man?" Naruto stared back with the exact same intensity as the taller man. He had no idea what a 'jinchuuriki of shukaku' was, but that was obviously some kind of foreign word for 'crazy person' or something, this guy was obviously not from Konoha.
The man stared silently for exactly three seconds, then he exploded into a boisterious laugh. The man patted Naruto's shoulder with enough force to have been a kick from Lee, almost toppling over the orange clad genin.
"I see! I see! You've got guts, kiddo! How about this, you leave your incompetent teacher there, and come with me. I'll show you how to fight against a crazy kid like that." The man obviously was a lot more confidant, and he had taken out Ebisu rather easily. Though it was rather suspicious that this man would suddenly be so interested.
"Why're you so into teaching me, all of a sudden?" The man grinned and set his arm around the genin's shoulder. He pointed at Naruto's stomach. Where the seal would show up if he used chakra. Naruto's eyes widened and he jumped back from the man with a growl.
"Hey hey... I made a promise to a Hokage, that's all. To look after you and make sure you didn't die too soon. You can trust me. Don't you know who I am?!" The man hopped on his geta sandals surprisingly energetically as Naruto shook his head. Redoing his earlier introduction(which Naruto remembered for some reason, despite having spent most of it underwater.), the Sannin grinned.
"I am of the Legendary Three Ninja trained by Sandaime Hokage himself! From Mount Myoboku, the invincible Toad Sennin, and author of the best-selling novel series, Icha! Icha!" Punctuating every word with a clack of his geta against the ground and a headbang that made his hair spin. The man seemed to enjoy his introduction. "I. am. Jiraiya!"
Finishing his flashy introduction, the man hopped and let the introduction hang in the air.
Naruto shrugged to nobody in particular as he watched the man who stood up straight again and walked up to him. The blond ninja stared at the white haired tall man for ten seconds. Then he finally shrugged again, giving up. The man grinned and motioned for Naruto to come closer.
"Hmm, hmm, let me prove just how good I am at teaching..." The man grinned slyly as he let his left hand move behind his back. Blue chakra flames licked his fingers as he prepared the Five Elements Unseal.
Naruto, untrusting as he was, hesitated to approach the still suspicious looking man. He took a step closer, despite his caution, Naruto was unable to react as faster than he could follow, Jiraiya had slammed his hand into Naruto's gut, forcing all the air out of the boys lungs and sending him gliding to the edge of the water.
"HEY! What the HELL! You ASS!" Hands already in the familiar cross seal, Naruto prepared to attack the still grinning man. "Hey, hey, take it easy. I just hit some relaxation points to help you out, is all...".
"AND HOW THE HELL IS SUCKER PUNCHING ME SUPPOSED TO HELP ME?" The blond tensed to jump forward, three clones behind him having popped into existance.
"Just try the water walk now." The man's unshakable confidence made Naruto hesitate. There was some hidden meaning with that gut punch, just now. Eyes narrowing, Naruto straightened up, still ready to pounce at the taller man.
Leaving the duty of watching the man to the clones, Naruto eyed the water's edge with trepidition. He hated the searing hot water by already. Taking a careful step onto the surface, Naruto's eyes shot wide open.
It... it was so easy all of a sudden. Like he had missed some elementary concept earlier, and just realized it. He laughed as he hopped on the water's surface for the first time.
"Haha!" Turning to the grinning man, Naruto blinked. "What the heck did'ya do? This is way too easy all of a sudden!" The man nodded sagely and motioned for Naruto to listen.
"Why don't you try making your clones do that kawarimi trick now? Who knows, it might work!" Naruto blinked at that and nodded. One of his clones preformed the ram seal...
And WHOOSH, he had switched places with the clones. The clone laughed in surprise and jumped on the water gleefully. Naruto blinked as he took a deep breath and concentrated on his chakra. It felt lighter, more responsive... Like he'd been trying to suck it through a straw just now a few minutes earlier.
"Well, You see? These simple little things won't do you any good in the long run. I have a few ideas on how to work on you. Are you willing to listen to me, Naruto?" Not even paying attention to the fact that the man somehow knew his name, Naruto nodded eagerly.
"Very well, meet me at the north gate in 15 minutes. I need to finish up some things here. We'll pick up your training from there." Jiraiya crossed his arms with a grin, and watched as the boy dashed off.
He lazily looked at the man lying on the ground, eyes already wide open. "Well, Ebisu. Seems like I'm taking over. You can tell Kakashi I took his little problem." He spoke solemnly. The bespectacled man nodded and got up. "He'll be in far more capable hands with you, Lord Jiraiya." The taller man laughed weakly as he left waving lazily to his fan-who-refused-to-aknowledge-it.
He'd been away from his godson for way too long. He needed to do some serious work on the boy, if he was going to face Gaara, of all people. Jiraiya only wondered why Sarutobi hadn't bothered to contact him about this before. Jinchuuriki vs. Jinchuuriki... It was going to be big.
He grinned, the kid was so much like his parents, it was funny to watch him. His father's swagger, his mothers tongue and his appearance a mixture of the two in a way that just tickled his humor. And orange? This kid was gonna be real fun, Jiraiya decided.
--oo--
"Well, let's get started, then."
The duo stopped their trekking, having arrived by a small river some ways away from the village. The stream was rather shallow, as the river suddenly got a lot wider for a portion, and then narrowed back to a deeper stream.
It looked to be knee deep at the widening part. The odd shallow part went on for around 40 meters in width and went of for at least 60 meters before it became deep again. Noticing Naruto's confused gaze, Jiraiya explained.
"Another student of mine and I made this a long time ago... You might have heard of him. Namikaze Minato." Jiraiya grinned and eyed his new student.
After getting no noticeable reaction from the boy, Jiraiya sighed. "The Fourth Hokage? Ring a bell?" Naruto's face lit up at that. The toad sage laughed weakly and scratched his head. "Well, anyhow." He motioned for Naruto to sit down next to him as he rested against an old tree.
"The basic idea of working on kawarimi was not too bad. However it still leaves you very much lacking in both defense and offense. So, tell me boy," There was a glint in the old sage's eye, "how much do you know about Shunshin?".
"That thing Kakashi-sensei uses to disappear sometimes? Yea, I know it. Kinda." Naruto nodded to himself.
"Well, it's not as much a mysterious technique as it seems, really." The toad hermit leaned back and looked to the sky.
"It is merely a burts of speed that comes from having mastered chakra explusion from your feet. The reason it is not often used in combat or in anything else than short distance travel is simple." Jiraiya looked back down to his pupil.
"First off, you can only move in a straight line. In a fight, moving in such a predictable way will often be the death of you. Certainly, you can keep the bursts short, and move in different patterns, but that will only make the second issue that much more troublesome." The sage leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"You burn through chakra quite fast, when using shunshin rapidly. The longer the distance you wish to travel, the more you chain shunshin's, the greater the chakra burn. You can quite easily end up ripping your tenkutsu in your feet apart if you work at it for too long." The toad sage hopped up and walked to the waters edge.
"However, seeing as you both lack speed, and have more than enough stamina, I think we should work on you learning shunshin." The man grinned and let the information sink in.
"Okay... how're we gonna do that, eh?" Jiraiya's grin became even wider with that.
"We are going to make you play tag." Before Naruto could begin to question the logic behind that, Jiraiya bit his thumb and followed through with a set of hand seals and slammed his palm on the ground.
Naruto, having all but forgotten the whole 'you'll play tag for training', gawked as a small orange frog wearing a HAKAMA, of all things, lazily looked around.
"Ara ara, Ji-chan..." The toad spoke. All neural activity stopped when Naruto realized the toad spoke.
"Hello, Mitsune-san, how are you?" The sannin conversed with the toad like it was en everyday occurence.
'Wait... Kakashi's dog could talk! Okay! Calm down! Caaalm down. Act natural.' Naruto stepped closer to the toad, who noticed the stiff boy awkwardly raising a hand and going "Y-yo! 'sup?"
The toad stared for five seconds, then it sighed. "Ji-chan, you do know I have things to do at home... As much as I love your company..." The toad let the statement hang in the air.
"Ahaha... But you see, this is important. This boy needs to learn how to chain-shunshin." Those words made the toad perk up and eye to boy a second time.
"Hmm... I see... Well, I don't see how a game of tag could hurt. I might even enjoy it." The toad winked at the clearly disturbed boy, was the toad flirting with him? The toad hopped onto the water surface with ease and motioned for Naruto to come.
The blond blinked and looked at Jiraiya who nodded.
"Naruto, this is the first part. You need to learn how to optimize your chakra when using it to move. You will simply chase after our dear old Mitsune-san here until you can keep up with her." With that, Jiraiya ignored the the boy, pulling out a notebook and beginning to scribble notes into it. Naruto looked back a forth between the old man and the toad acting like she was the hottest piece of ass since roasted donkeys. He sighed and hopped onto the water and crouched toward the toad.
Jiraiya scoffed as he turned around. This could take a while, after all.
The idea was simple. Force the student to use chakra to keep up with Mitsune, who is a rather swift and agile toad, while working on their stamina and chakra control. The combination of constant chakra usage, running around and trying to even follow the toad would leave most out of breath in a few minutes.
A Jinchuuriki on the other hand... Jiraiya laughed to himself.
Once they could adequately see and react to the toad, while keeping up with those speeds, they would begin the second stage. At the second stage the student would no longer be allowed to stand on the water's surface, instead they would have to stand on the bottom. The added resistance of the knee high water would force him to learn how to use chakra optimally to boost his steps. Leading to the natural evolution of a shunshin from mere chakra enhanced jumps.
After the boy had learned how to shunshin with this crash course Minato had invented, he would make the boy learn how to chain those shunshin's. This would just come down to having all the toads gang up on the boy in order to force him to learn how to dodge and keep moving.
Brutal on the body, horrendous on the chakra reserves, inhuman on the tenkutsu points in the legs.
If he mastered this exercise the Yondaime made, the boy would have at least doubled his leg strength, tripled his chakra reserves and his tenkutsu in his feet would make Hyuuga faint.
That is, if the boy could make it.
--oo--
Holy crap, the boy didn't just make it.
Regular speed, which came from merely using minute ammounts of chakra to enhance muscles to work harder, the boy was awful with and as such, quite sluggish with.
Shunshin speed, which came from forcing a relatively huge burst of chakra out of ones feet to propel forward, on the other hand... oh boy. He was Minato's boy alright.
It had been a week since they began with this training, and the boy still could barely follow the toad with his eyes, but when he caught a glimpse, he'd move at speeds far beyond of a genin with less than a year of experience under his belt.
Well, his 'shunshin' speed wasn't exactly stuff of the legends. Nor was the maximum distance anything to brag about... However, the boy could already chain like nobody's business. He would barely be out of one semi-shunshin and he was already half into another in the direction he guessed the toad had gone. To be able to do three in a row was quite the feat.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, the sannin stood up and walked over to the water's edge. "Naruto! Hey! NARUTO!" Catching the boys attention he winced when the boy stumbled in mid-dash and fell head first into the water.
Getting up, groggily shaking his head, Naruto eyed the white haired pervert. He knew the sannin was a pervert, but the man sometimes just left and came back giggling after hours of what he called 'research'.
"Yeah. What?" Wincing to himself as his legs stung as they finally got a chance to relax for a second. It had been like this the past few days or so. He'd stop his mad 4 hour dashing around for a minute and his legs would scream bloody murder for an hour, and then he could walk again somewhat alright again for the rest of the day. Next day he'd be almost back to perfect shape and it would start all over again.
Jiraiya motioned him to walk over to him, making Naruto sigh. He winced and forced his legs to obey. Slowly making it to the sannin, Naruto sat down next to him and began rubbing his sore legs. The toad hopped lazily next to him and eyed his legs funnily. He swore he was going to make that cocky toad regret messing with him so much, one day.
The toad hermit eyed Naruto and scratched his jawline in thought.
"The pain is that bad?" The sannin grumbled in deep thought as Naruto nodded.
"Well, it's alright, you been eating like I told you to?" The blond nodded again, grumbling himself. Why did he have to drink half a gallon of milk and eat 6 eggs every day? It made him feel quesy having to drink so much milk. As much as he liked milk, he was beginning to grow a little tired of it.
"Good, you need all the protein you can get... Well, it's alright if we take a three day break from your training." Jiraiya nodded sagely, ignoring the look of pure joy on the boys face. He knew the boy was getting worn out, and even with the kyuubi's chakra working, he was nearing his limits. Only anger at the ever snarky Mitsune-san kept the boy on the move during their sessions.
"We'll let you rest your legs for three days. At same time, we will work on an offensive strategy for you. After we've gotten that down, we will move onto the secod stage of shunshin training. I think you're ready for the real thing." The sannin nodded, pleased with himself as the boy was positively giddy.
"Jutsu! Jutsu! New Jutsu!" The almost dancing-in-joy boy settled down as the sannin shook his head.
"I won't be teaching you any jutsu, not while you are still concentrating on the shunshin. We'll take an idea from an old friend of mine... Back in the day when I was in a three man team, one of my teammates was extremely low on chakra. He was a ninjutsu specialist, so to put it simple, he was fucked. With me and our third teammate fighting our own desperate battles, he improvised. In the end, he came our damn rescue." Jiraiya began as he leaned back, his eyes closed while reminiscing with a placid smile.
"He was faster by a great deal than they were, but they had numbers and they were armored. Taijutsu wouldn't simply cut it. So he came up with a rather crazy idea... He incorporated taijutsu with an age old ninja piece of equipment in a way nobody had before even considered." Jiraiya laughed as he remembered the remains of the forest where this had happened.
He missed Orochimaru sometimes so damn much it hurt.
Jiraiya couldn't help but to grin as he let his eyes settle on the boy.
"Naruto, tell me, how do you feel about learning a taijutsu-style that centers on slapping people with explosive notes?"
--oo--
Naruto was ready. He knew he was ready.
He was also late, very much late.
The three weeks had whizzed by way too fast for his liking, he'd spent most of it running around in a pond or making paper notes. But he felt ready. He'd even bought this kickass leather-belt-strap thingy he had around his waist for the six scrolls he had made with the perverted hermit teaching him.
Jiraiya had called it a modified rock climbing harness. It felt comfy and it was pretty good for holding his waist pouch, his knee pouch and his new scrolls. The scrolls contained lots and lots of explosive notes he had made in the past two weeks. He had lost count once he was somewhere around a hundred of the smallest notes.
He'd never really thought about sealing as a useful thing until Jiraiya gave him a crash course. The things one could do with some chakra and time...
"Hold it!" the voice broke Naruto out of his reverie and dash.
"Huh? Hey, move it, I'm late already as it is..." Naruto glared at the man standing outside the door to the Chuunin exam finals.
"No ticket, no entry..."
"Oh come one, I'm fighting in the damn tournament, just let me in."
"Sure, pal. I've never seen you before, buzz it."
Naruto just sighed and gathered some chakra. Before the man could continue his whining, Naruto had disappeared in a blur. He'd jumped straight up and climbed the whole way up along the outer wall of the building.
"Ah! They're still there!" He wasn't too late, yet. He jumped off and began running to the center of the stadium. With a soft thud, he landed in the middle of the arena. The referee gave him a bored look while chewing on a senbon needle.
Naruto grinned and waved at the people who bothered to notice his arrival. Basically, Shino and Shikamaru. Still, they were cool enough.
"Well, now we're just missing one person. Better. I guess." Naruto blinked at that and furrowed his brow.
Neji, check. Gaara, check. Gaara's sister, check. Shino, check. Gaara's brother, check. Sasuke...
"Wait, where's Sasuke?"
"Tch... this is way too troublesome..." Shikamaru muttered, lazily eyeing the orange clad genin he'd known for quite a while. What was the deal with the scrolls?
"Uchiha Sasuke has yet to arrive. Though, he won't be disqualified until his match actually begins..." The man shurrged and looked at a watch and then eyed the crowd. He smirked and returned his gaze to the competitors. "You kids ready for this? This is pretty big, eh?"
Shikamaru sighed muttering his catchphrase. Neji had yet to even open his eyes. Shino didn't move or do anything to indicate he cared, or was even alive. The sand trio all looked anxious. Gaara had been patiently waiting for a month, and his siblings sure as hell didn't want to be anywhere near him right now.
"Hey hey, Gaara!" The shaking red head turned his gaze upon the trash he would squeeze dry in a matter of minutes.
"You ready to get your ass whooped, huh?" The sand siblings tensed at that. What idiot taunted Gaara?!
Gaara gave him a flat look and turned back to stare at the ground. Temari and Kankuro shivered, this could only mean 'mother' was being especially vivid... For Gaara to not lash out immediatelly meant he was going to be savoring the konoha ninja's death.
All the genin assorted noted that the arena had gotten surprisingly quiet all of a sudden. It could only mean the Hokage was getting ready to begin the tournament.
Naruto closed his eyes and nodded to himself. Reviewing the past month to himself. Speed and power. He had the means to defend, and he had the means to attack. Jiraiya told him to begin with some Kage bunshins to prod the relative difference in speeds between him and Gaara's sand. The clones could only handle one shunshin, but that should be enough for a rough estimate.
Opening his eyes, he noticed that the other had already left, leaving him alone with the shivering and slightly shaking red head.
'Time to rock.' He nodded to himself and took a comfortable stance with his arms crossed.
--oo--
"Do you think he's got any chances?" Shikamaru muttered. Talking was troublesome, but a dead acquaintance was a lot more troublesome. Shino hmm'ed quietly and kept walking in a brisk, yet relaxed pace.
"If he is still at the same level as he was against Kiba... I doubt it. Though there is something off about him right now..." Shino spoke quietly, almost to himself.
Surprisingly, their senior joined the conversation. "I doubt Uzumaki will make it. It is his fate to lose here. He is outmatched in ways he cannot even comprehend." Neji walked two steps behind them, not even bothering to make eye-contact with the two rookies who turned around to listen to him.
"Mmm... But that Naruto, it's like he's overflowing with confidence..." Shikamaru eyed the lone standing orange figure. Shino nodded, either to himself or to acknowledge the statement, as a bug landed on his shoulder.
"Not only that, he has somehow increased his chakra significantly... The way he is casually bleeding chakra is making my destruction bugs nervous..." The silent genin furrowed his brows and let the bug creep in under his collar.
The two other genin acknowledged that with a silent nod as they continued to walk to the competitors' lounge.
A few paces behind them, the sand siblings pondered about Gaara's stability nervously while looking back and forth to the Hokage's personal area and Gaara.
Would Gaara really follow the plan? He'd been on edge the whole month.
--oo--
"This shall prove to be quite interesting, won't it, Hokage-dono?"
"Hmm, what is it, Kazekage-dono?"
"Oh, the two hidden villages clashing with their jinchuuriki... I feel quite confidant in the training of our weapon..." The Kazekage smirked behind his coil, the Hokage just knew it as he sighed.
"Uzumaki Naruto is a shinobi of Konoha. I have full confidence in him." The elderly Hokage gave his peer a warm smile. "Now let us sit back, and watch the new generation test their mettle against each other, shall we?".
The Kazekage nodded somewhat lazily and turned his gaze to the arena. This would prove to be interesting indeed, seeing the Sands living weapon against the soft and weak jinchuuriki of the greatest tailed beast...
Orochimaru almost cackled, holding himself back only because it would ruin his cover.
--oo--
Sakura sat down with a huff. Where was Sasuke? She eyed her rival, who was raging at her fat teammate for eating so loudly and for getting his chips on her pants. Some way off she could see Hinata and Kiba. She could also hear the murmurs among the crowd.
Nobody really expected anything out of this fight. It seemed Gaara was somewhat famous already among the crowd, while Naruto had his fame as a dumbass trickster weighing him down.
This was just the warm up for the crowd until the real show began.
Not even she could see Naruto winning this one. The odds were just too stacked.
--oo--
"...Begin."
With those words Naruto hopped back, turned around and began running away from the red head. Gaara let his gourd open up, not even bothering to move a muscle as a trickle of sand began to float and spiral around him.
The crowd was silent, if only because they weren't expecting much. Maybe a 15 minute slaughter followed by the long awaited Uchiha Genius versus Hyuuga Genius main fight. 'To hell with that.', Naruto mentally noted as he gathered some chakra and created fourteen clones.
The clones divided into five groups and dashed off, Naruto joining one of the groups himself.
The front group of three clones went for their kunai pouches, pulled a handful of shuriken and threw them at the impassive red head. As expected, the sand moved to block the incoming projectiles. The three divided up and surrounded the sand ninja.
'Good, he can't see us yet!" The front clone grinned as he pulled a kunai and exploded into a dash to rush toward the receding wall of sand that still blocked Gaara's field of view. With a overextending jump thrust with the kunai, the grinning Naruto stabbed between two waves of sand.
The clone poffed out of existance as the sand automatically grabbed him and crushed his extended arm.
The other two took this momentary shift of attention and at the same time burst toward Gaara's unprotected back with kunai in hand. Both met the same fate as they got caught in a wave of sand.
Gaara was still standing silently, with his arms crossed and eyes closed. He didn't even bother counting anymore on how many people died thinking they could somehow slip through his defense.
Gaara could barely get his clothes on after a bath, how did they expect the sand to react to anyone moving toward him with a sharp knife in hand?
--oo--
Naruto, the original, was running along with a bunch of clones around the sand user.
He pulled another tag from his left thigh's uppermost scroll. It was a rather cool scroll, the majority of the lenght was used for the seal that contained the tags, while the first sixty centimeters were dedicated to a custom seal of Jiraiya's. There was always a tag ready to be pulled out from the closed scroll, like it had been wrapped almost completely inside it. When he pulled the tag out, another tag replaced the drawn one.It was like a toilet paper roll! Or a tissue box! Only the paper could be used as a lethal explosive. Awesome.
He was handing the tags to his clones, who jumped and switched places with some of the other groups. By now, three of the original five groups were now armed with two explosive seals each. These were the bomber/assault squad.
He reached down for the second scroll and pulled two seals and wrapped them around a kunai and handed it to one of the clones. Repeating this a couple times and handing the clone a bunch of kunai, he stopped running.
The clone with the kunai continued running and dashed to the last group and dealt them the kunai.
'Okay, checklist. D squad got wiped out like nothing. Normal attacks are useless, like I knew already. A, B, C, assault squads are ready with their c-types.' C-type notes as he had dubbed them after their ranking, had actually a very long and boring name. They were the run of the mill boom-stickers. Not much power, but relatively cheap to buy and very easy to make in great numbers.
Hell, even genin were allowed to keep them on hand in unlimited numbers. They were small square shaped notes, often used in the hundreds or thousands to make any decent damage.(1.)
'And E-squad is standing by with B-type note kunais ready. Good. Let's see if I can make a dent in this guy.' B-types were the best known type of explosive notes. Rectangular and packing a lot more power, these babies were used often by wrapping them around kunai or tying them with a string to the ring of the kunai.
He also had a handful of what he called A-notes. Though these weren't really A-class in terms of damage, since he hadn't used any elemental chakra to load them up. Jiraiya just told him to work with these for now, so he just shoved them full of raw chakra. Made a big boom, much wider than a couple B-notes did, though the damage was still pretty much the same.
The scrolls on his left thigh were what he called 'dispencer' types, with the tissue-box mechanism of easy and quick access. The ones on his right thigh on the other hand were 'scatter' scrolls. The two top ones were filled to the brim with C-types, giving them enough boom to make a pretty crater, while the bottom one was a filled with B-types. He didn't have enough time to make a A type one, and the only differnece would be in how big an area it would affect.
Still, they were pretty good aces to have in your sleeve. Naruto grinned as all his clones came to a halt. A-C squads in a triangle around Gaara, Naruto himself standing much further away. E-squad was standing by the walls of the arena, all ready to move at a moments notice.
Taking a breath, Naruto eyed his opponent. He was shaking, himself, too. He'd worked on this formation for a couple of nights with a lot of help and criticism from Jiraiya. He had the means, Jiraiya said. But those words gave little confidence to Naruto as he stared at his bloodthirsty opponent, still calm and collected.
--oo--
"What the heck is that Naruto doing? Why doesn't he just charge like he always does?!" Sakura blinked, fuming as she turned to Ino and Chouji. Both shrugged and continued watching the stand-off between the red head and the multiple blonds. Neither had yet to make a move.
In the comptetitors' lounge, Shikamaru for once seemed curious. Naruto thinking ahead and using tactics? UNHEARD OF. Plus, he'd been doing nothing but running around with his clones while his three first clones had been ripped apart like nothing.
"Tch... I hope I don't need to fight that guy later on... He'd be way too troublesome..." Speaking to no one in particular, Shikamaru slumpped his shoulders as he sighed exasperatedly. Shino nodded next to him and furrowed his brow silently.
Neji was fighting the urge to activate his byakugan to check what Naruto had passed on to his clones, but resigned to closing his eyes with the thought, that Naruto's fate was already all but history already. With a scoff he leaned against the wall and reviewed his own condition and techniques.
The sand siblings watched quietly. Neither making a single move, as if it could trigger the end of the world. Hell, Gaara was already a bomb normally, but a month of nothing but sitting around had made him even more than a little crazy than usual.
Up in the Hokage stand the two kages watched intently. Sarutobi didn't have the eyesight to see what happened closely, but experience and his knowledge of Naruto all pointed to Naruto having a plan the hyperactive ninja would describe as "AWESOME!".
Kazekage seemed quite pleased with how things were going. Sarutobi was quite sure the Kazekage expected his prized weapon and son to crush all opposition in this tournament with ease, thus showing the superiority of his ninja to the many potential clients watching.
The kazekage smirked as Orochimaru was laughing on the inside. With the Five Elements seal disrupting the boy's chakra flow, those clones were hardly more than an annoyance to Gaara. The boy had gotten a little bit faster, but hardly anywhere near what would be required to slip past Gaara's 'absolute defense'.
This would prove to be a suitable appetizer to the main dish, the destruction of Konoha.
--oo--
Naruto rubber his shoulder and took one last deep breath, taking a step forward as he dramatically pointed his finger at Gaara. He'd always wanted to command other ninja like this, sure they were just clones, but it still felt awesome.
"SQUADS A, B AND C! RUSH 'IM!"
The front man of Squad A exploded into a dash and threw a handful of shuriken as a distraction as he began collecting his chakra. Various projectiles hit sand and were swallowed up into the sands.
The red head still not allowing any emotion to show on his face, stared at the head on approaching orange ninja.
Almost sighing he raised his hand, "Sabaku..." he began, only to blink as the rushing ninja blurred out of his vision.
Before he could find the ninja again, he felt three impacts hitting him in the midsection. Looking down, he saw three grinning boys having elbow charged him, somehow having gotten past his defense. They grinned, one even gave him a raspberry as they poofed out of existance.
Gaara snarled.
It had barely even hurt him. His armor of sand already in place, having taken the brunt of the assault. The cracks already restored. He looked up, only to blink as another grinning blond was mere inches from his face. This one punched him in the face, while another did a diving kick to the back of his knee and the third roundhouse kicked him in the ribs.
They poofed out of existance and Gaara struggled for a second to regain his balance. He snarled again. Mother was howling for blood for this insolence.
Naruto was still standing in place, mirroring Gaara's original cross armed stance with a grin. He didn't know why really, but with each wave of clones disappearing his grin grew wider and wider. He could almost swear he felt a flicker of sadistic amusement run through him for some reason.
The three clones by the walls had thrown their kunai already and were ready standing by in case of Naruto needing back up. E squad was the extra, anyhow.
The last clones of the assault squads readied their shunshin, each with a face-splitting grin.
Gaara snarled as he tried to make his sand capture the approaching clones, only for them to disappear from sight, again. The impact came from below, lifting him up. Another one followed. Lifting his gaze upward as he was being lifted off the ground, he could see the blue heel of the sandal before it smashed in his face.
Hitting the ground with a low thud, Gaara screamed. Furious did not even begin to describe him as he stood up, holding his cracking face as sand floated to repair the damage.
'He's still just standing there... mocking me... I'll... I'll...'
"I WILL KILL YOU-!!"
--oo--
The crowd sat by watching in silence. Unlike before, a great many watched on the battle with great interest. Uzumaki Naruto was faring quite well, the ninja among the crowd had decided.
Sakura could only gape as she witnessed Naruto's clones somehow disappear and reappear within Gaara's defense and then hit him. Ino and Chouji also couldn't help but to stare on, unblinking.
"Incredible..." A familiar voice muttered behind them. Sakura blinked and turned around. "Lee!" Her voice caught Ino's and Chouji's attention as well.
"Indeed, Lee. Even if he can use ninjutsu, to have mastered shunshin this well in a mere month..."
"Yes, Gai-sensei... Naruto-kun is truly a surprising ninja." Lee nodded and turned to his idol.
"Yes, we must witness the flames of his passion as he faces this terrible enemy." Gai nodded and watched on intently as the last wave of Narutos finished their attack on Gaara. "He has gained great speed through learning shunshin... It places a great strain on him, and while it does allow him to attack and defend himself, he lacks the overall power you possess, Lee." Lee blinked at that and gripped his fist.
"What do you mean, Gai-sensei?" Gai sighed and placed his hand on his dear pupils shoulder.
"While his initial strikes hit hard, his clones cannot deal long term damage onto Gaara. Indeed, only his kicks seem to be worth the effort. His punches do not have the solidity to damage Gaara enough. As it is, I fear Naruto-kun will lose." Gai sighed and closed his eyes. No matter how hard his Eternal Rival trained his pupil, a month simply wasn't enough.
"If Naruto could only deal with that armor of sand, somehow..." Sakura muttered as she clenched her dress.
Their reveries were broken as a massive explosion rocked the arena and the shockwave met with the surprised crowd.
"What!" Ino and Chouji both stood up, as did a great many others in the crowd. Sakura grabbed Ino by the shoulder. "What, what happened? What did I miss?".
"That Naruto, once all the clones were gone, he did some handseal and Gaara... just exploded...!" Ino didn't even turn to face Sakura, she dared not miss a second of this fight.
--oo--
"Hahahahaa..." Naruto grinned as he felt the all to familiar chakra resonance in his legs. Time to fly. Without even a handseal, Naruto burst into motion, Shunshin'ing toward the cloud of sand and dust.
Eighteen C-tags on his body, three kunai with two B-tags on each in his tightly packed sand gourd... Gaara sure as hell wasn't expecting that.
Having already exploded into the familiar world of in-shunshin where all was a mere blur of colors and undesribable shapes, his eyes tried to compensate for the massive speed. Failing that, Naruto just relied on his instincts as he rammed his knee forward. Feeling an impact he grinned as he felt his senses working normally again.
'Gotcha.'
The red head, now barely standing, sand armor desperately trying to come back into place, winced as he took the impact on his chest. He was forced to take a step back to prevent falling over again. He'd barely made it back up when the knee had hit him. Gaara's sand was all over the arena after the explosion, there had been barely enough to recreate the armor before the knee had impacted.
Naruto grinned wickedly as he could feel his blood pumping. He still had the lead, he was still in control of the flow.
Left jab, left jab, right straight. He could feel the sand crumpling away with the two jabs. The Straight had hit home.
Pulling back his right fist from the powerful straight, he drove his left hand in a hook into the red heads temple. The sand ninja winced and for a moment saw nothing but stars. Still driving forward his momentum, Naruto moved to uppercut at the off balance Gaara.
Noticing the large movement involved in the uppercut, the red head jumped back, rolling away, out from the dust and sand cloud settling down.
Barely having time to stand up, the orange ninja was upon him again. He moved to lift his hands to cover his still vulnerable face, but Naruto's two right jabs set him off balance again. Naruto, shifting his weight, reared his left arm for a massive punch.
--oo--
"He used explosive tags to compensate for his lack of power...!" Gai was an elite jounin. You don't very often manage to surprise an elite jounin.
Konoha's #1 Most Surprising Ninja, indeed. Kakashi's nickname for the boy was most fitting.
His eyes shot wide open as the sand ninja rolled out of the settling cloud dust moments after Naruto had blurred inside.
"He's going for a haymaker!" He couldn't believe it as the blond attacked the redhead again. This was no taijutsu, it was brawling, plain and simple. No ninja would even use a maneuver like the haymaker, no matter how awesome and powerful it may be. It simply left you way to open, and was too slow.
--oo--
Naruto grinned as he reared his fist back and put every fiber of his being into this strike, with a mighty sound of flesh against flesh, Naruto slapped Gaara on the cheek with the force of a cannon. The strike almost forced the crazy genin to topple over as he saw stars again.
Naruto's roll ended here, however, as enough sand had come back to Gaara. With a movement of his hand the sand instantly grabbed the blond ninja and held him tight. The orange clad ninja yelped in surprise and tried to wiggle out.
Gaara took his sweet time as he recovered his balance. Chuckling with murderous intent as he stood up, face to face with this annoyance. They were equally tall, and both seemed to prefer their clothing rather bulky and covering, the redhead noted chuckling as he eyed the blond ninja.
Gaara snarled as he slowly lifted his palm to shoulder height, with a simple act of closing his palm he acted to crush the boy. The crowd collectively gasped at the words "Sabaku Sousou--!!"
Gaara snarled and laughed. He'd killed the pest, he'd killed the pest, there would be blood and mother would be joyous and praise him!
Except there was no blood. Only a few wisps of smoke escaped his desert coffin. Gaara's eyes widened as he could feel his mothers rage ascending to yet another level.
Across the arena, Naruto was laughing.
"Boy, that kawarimi came in useful, huh." Naruto laughed weakly again as he looked at the fuming boy in the middle of the arena. Giving a whistle, his hands moved to the serpent handseal once again.
Mouthing the word 'Boom', Naruto grinned. Another second later, he was hit with the shockwave of the blast.
He'd slapped an A-note onto Gaara's face with that last attack.
He tried to peer through the second cloud of smoke, sand and dust that had kicked up today for any signs of the red head.
Sure the A-note had a little bit more punch to it. But it wasn't that strong, not with just raw chakra. There was a limit to how effective just shoving chakra into a note could be.
A veritable eternity went by as the cloud finally began to settle down. Naruto swore he could hear a snarl from somewhere.
He blinked, and then his instincts scremed at him to duck. Before he even hit the ground, he could feel the memories of his last two clones return to him. All Kage bunshin squads were down. Rolling on the ground to the left, Naruto got up on his feet and gathered chakra.
With a burst he was in motion, barely having time to register another tendril of sand moving to intercept him as his blurred vision settled down, Naruto crouched for another shunshin.
Shunshin after shunshin, everytime he stopped, a tendril of sand shot out or lashed to where he stopped.
'Well, If I can't stop. Let's just keep goin' then!'
--oo--
The crowd stared on in awe as Naruto's second explosion rocked the arena. When they opened their eyes, the silence was almost deafening.
Then when the tendrils began hunting Naruto, murmurs of "Yellow Flash" and "More like orange flash" ran through the crowd as Naruto expertly dodged and weaved through tendril after tendril of deadly sand missiles. Some of the more experienced ninja among the crowd scoffed at those claims. They could do shunshin-chaining, too! And if he was still leaving a trail to follow, then he was far too slow for the nickname. The Yondaime earned the nickname because he could shunshin over battlefields in a single move, leaving a trail of corpses.
Sakura could only stare as Naruto, her silly little old Naruto, her teammate for half a year, her loud admirer for years since the academy days was doing things she never thought possible of him.
Next to her, Gai was feeling a lot less impressed and a lot more worried. Naruto as well on his 6th shunshin already. Chaining shunshin's was considered crazy and dangerous for a reason. After 5, most Jounin preferred to stop, even if it meant risking getting hit. The strain on one's legs was huge.
--
Six. Dodge a tendril, hop forward and roll, prepare the chakra. Seven.
'crap crap crap... my legs are burning up already...' Swaying to the left and hopping over a low sweeping tendril, Naruto prepared the familiar cross seal.
Sixteen clones poofed into existance as Naruto shunshin'ed out of the way as another wave of tendrils hit the spot he'd occupied a few fractions of a second. Thirteen of the clones died, a fourteenth followed as he ended his eighth shunshin in a row.
Gritting his teeth as his legs burned, Naruto spun on his heel to face his opponent. His eyes registered four spear-like tendrils shooting toward him.
One of his clones was in a good position, and kawarimi'ed with the orignal, leaving the tendrils to hit the clone.
'I gotta finish this already. Three more and I'll drop from my legs giving under...' Gritting his teeth, Naruto reached for his right thigh and pulled the two top scrolls out and grabbed them. With a flick of his thumb he opened both.
Okay, here's the plan. Dash in real close, drop the two scrolls and activate them, jump over the fucker, run like hell, blow it all up, go on a date with Sakura-chan. Awesome plan.
Before the mass of sand could shoot another wave of tendrils, Naruto activated his shunshin again. The world became a blur. Stopping in front of the sand veil, he dropped the scrolls, pulling them open as he let them roll open on the ground. Still sliding forward, Naruto gathered his strength and hopped over the wall of sand.
Unfortunately for him though, a hand shot up and grabbed him by his new fancy waist harness. Before Naruto could react, he'd been pulled down to the ground. The world went dark as sand surrounded him. Before the redhead could squish him, the surrounding air began exploding, hundreds upon hundreds of small notes exploding, one after another.
The redheads sands reacted automatically and hardened into a a dense sphere.
--oo--
"Ouuuch myy heeaad!" Naruto whined as he sat up. Wait, why was his back wet.
Oh, he was in some kind of... sewer?
'What the hell?'.
He could hear some kind of roaring. Grabbing his head as he tried to cover his ears, Naruto winced as the the walls shook and the water rippled with every sound. A wave of crimsom fire licked the walls, consuming everything in sight.
A wave of pain flooded through his mind as everything went black again.
