"That was hands down the most lame fight I have ever seen." Noboru casually says to Sasuke. "Couldn't you have done something showy? I mean come on! All you did was reflect the sun into his eyes to catch him in your genjutsu! How do you expect to get a promotion like that?"
"Because my Kage was watching me." Sasuke eloquently sums up. Orochimaru may have been interested by Sasuke's fight, but he was captivated by mine. "He knows the true value of a genjutsu and I used one so convincing that my opponent surrendered."
"So your saying that the genjutsu you used was impressive?" Hiro asks. He's being a bit more timid after I chewed him and everyone else here out. "It didn't look impressive."
"It was." I insert myself into the conversation. "To be able to convince a target that they're doing actions while they're not is very difficult. Not only that, but every person reacts to things differently. For instance, how someone perceives pain."
Hiro and Noboru at looking at me with blank stares. Even the other gennin around us are intently listening in.
"Here's an example: When Lee broke my arms." I start to explain since these idiots didn't understand what I meant. "Usually that would be excruciating pain, pain so strong that you'd be floored while wailing for your mommy. But to me? That was nothing. The difficulty in genjutsu is accurately fooling the senses. If I didn't know I was caught in a genjutsu and my arm broke but it felt like it was the worst pain in the world I'd know something was up. I'd know I was in a genjutsu simply because that's not what a broken arm should feel like to me."
"That's a... morbid example." Noboru carefully says. I think he doesn't want to get on my bad side. "Couldn't you have done a sight example instead? Like the color blue was off or something?"
I offer up a shrug. "I'm intimately familiar with pain. It's a major part of my training."
"I bet that's why she's so good at healing herself." Leiko tauntingly says. "What? Are you not good enough to dodge your sensei in training?"
"No." I growl out. She's pissing me off, why would she try to belittle me? We're talking about Sasuke of all things! I was explaining how awesome his genjutsu skills are! How did this become about me? "No I am not."
"And neither is anyone here." Sasuke menacingly adds. "Not even Lee at his peak with all the Gates open. Now stop insulting my teammate."
"Whatever." Leiko turns her back to us.
Is... is she jealous of me? Could it be that she thought she was the biggest baddest girl here but my fight is making her feel unsure of that?
"Our next fight will be between Gaara of Sunakagure!" Eito's booming voice interrupts my train of thought.
Gaara rises up and starts walking to the field.
"Win one for Suna, will ya?" Kankuro chipperly says.
"Win the whole thing for Suna is more like it." Temari adds before shooting me a worrisome smirk. "Make sure to put Green in her place. Do it for your big sister."
Well that's not concerning at all.
"And his opponent will be..." Eito's voice drowns out all other. Please be Leiko, please be Leiko! I want her out of this already! "Noboru of Iwagakure!"
"Aw shit!" Noboru hisses out. "I don't want to fight this guy!"
"Just avoid his sand and you'll be fine." Sasuke irritable demands. He makes it sound so simple, just avoiding the sand won't win him the fight. "Now get out there already."
I'm pretty sure Noboru is screwed. Hell I don't even know if I can beat Gaara while I'm handicapped. Pfft who am I kidding, I might not even be able to beat him if I could use everything. There's still a long list of people I can't defeat, but it's rapidly shrinking with each passing day.
Noboru heads out to the field, he's a little paler that usual and his hands have a nervous twitch going on.
At the very least this fight will be quick.
...
Gaara vs Noboru
Gaara is standing with a look of utter boredom on his face. He would rather be anywhere else, he knows that these Exams are just a formality for him to go through to get a promotion.
Noboru, on the other hand, looks scared out of his mind. It's obvious he's heard stories about Suna's bloodthirsty jinchuriki and I'd even wager that he saw Gaara in action during the first two parts of the Exams.
"Fighters ready?" Eito lazily asks.
"Yes." Gaara drones out.
"Y-yes." Noboru stutters.
"Begin!" Eito leaves in a swirl of grass.
Noboru wastes no time in putting a lot of space between himself and Gaara. "Okay. Okay I can do this. It's just a gennin. I can do this."
Gaara slowly reaches up and uncorks his gourd. Sand billows out and swirls around him. Then he sends a literal wave of it towards Noboru.
There's no hope for him to dodge.
"I really hope this works!" Noboru yells out as he unfurls one of the scrolls on his belt. He holds it out in front of himself to intercept the sand that's flying at him. "SEAL!" He roars.
A large amount of smoke fills the area around Noboru. What could he have possibly unsealed that's that big? A giant wall of metal or some other kind of a defense? A shield maybe?
"Interesting." Gaara monotonously says.
Once the smoke clears we see a peculiar sight. Noboru has his arms fully extended still holding the seal that he whipped out. His eyes are scrunched closed as if he was expecting to be hit with Gaara's attack regardless of his defense. Speaking of the sand, a rather large portion of it is missing. Almost the entire wave that Gaara sent at him is gone.
Noboru cracks open one eye to take in his surroundings. "Holy shit that worked?!"
He sealed away Gaara's sand in a storage scroll. That's actually a brilliant idea, it's way better than just getting his sand wet to slow it down. If the sand is sealed away how can he attack? There's just one small problem with Noboru's plan.
A deep, low, grinding noise rises up from beneath the field, it's out of the normal hearing range but with my enhanced hearing I can pick up the low tones of stones and earth being ground down. Gaara is making more sand to replace what he lost.
Gaara stares blankly at the surprised Noboru. "This is your one and only chance to surrender."
Noboru laughs. "Why would I do that! I just got rid of your biggest advantage! That was almost all of the sand you had! Now all I have to do is knock you out or get you to surrender!"
Big mistake. Very big mistake.
Noboru charges at Gaara, holding a seal in each hand. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that they're chakra suppression seals. His plan is to block Gaara's access to chakra. It's not a bad idea, but it's not going to work.
"Sand Binding Coffin." Gaara blandly raises his open hand up as sand explodes out of the ground beneath Noboru and instantly encases him completely.
"PROCTOR I SURRENDER!" Noboru instantly shouts with wide terrified eyes. He knows exactly what could happen next. "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
"Winner by forfeit, Gaara of Sunagakure." Eito shoots Gaara a scathing look. "Release him."
"Of course." Gaara's sand drops Noboru and flies through the air back into his gourd. "I was never going to crush him. I am here representing Suna, my home. I will not bring her dishonor."
"Yeah sure. Where was that attitude six months ago?" Eito mumbles out. "Anyways, back to the tents with you both."
Gaara walks back to the rest of the gennin while maintaining his composure, yet there is still a feeling of angry bloodlust coming off of him. He want to lash out at Eito for his crass and brazen comment but knows that he shouldn't. He's not the Gaara of Shippuden yet, but neither is he the Gaara of the invasion. He's still transitioning between the two.
Noboru, on the other hand, looks incredibly relieved to have lost. He slowly walking back, almost as if he's in shock that he's not horribly disfigured or maimed from the thirty second fight.
"You alright there?" Hiro says as Noboru sits down in his chair while still contemplating howhe's alive.
"Surprisingly yeah?" Noboru squeaks out. That's not embarrassing at all. "I thought for sure this was it for me. Hell even my sensei told me that if I fought Gaara I should just surrender instead of fighting and live to try again."
"Then why did you fight?" I ask. If it was okay with his sensei to just toss in the towel why didn't he?
"Because I needed to show that Iwa is not cowardly. I faced down a jinchuriki as a gennin when I could have just surrendered. It shows that even facing insurmountable odds Iwa is still willing to give it a shot." Noboru explains as he attempts to stop his hands from shaking in the aftermath of his adrenaline rush.
"I can't fault you for that. It is very important to realize that we're a representation of our villages right now. People are going to assume that we embody everything about our villages, they'll think that all the shinobi are like us." I say.
"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure you gave us a bad reputation." Sasuke sarcastically cuts in. "I mean come on, I know that Otogakure is becoming known for it's weird and unique shinobi but you turned a lot of heads with your stunt."
Did Sasuke just make a pun? Holy shit he did! Talk about out of character!
...
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