Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

Chapter 33

.

.

All men are brothers, like the seas throughout the world; So why do winds and waves clash so fiercely everywhere? ~ Emperor Hirohito

.

.

The match between the winner - Shikamaru - and Kankurou was supposed to be next, but said Sand shinobi forfeited with some bogus claim of knowing he couldn't win.

"What the hell?" Chouji asked, summing up the feelings of most of the crowd.

"You don't come to the Chunin Exams to quit before you even enter the ring," I muttered, narrowing my eyes. "And he's got pretty much the best spot of them all - an opponent who's already fought. Something is up."

"You think?" Kiba asked warily.

Kotetsu and Izumo shifted uneasily. Just a little, but I noticed it.

They know.

"I could just be paranoid," I said. "But something's been off this whole Exam."

"Tell me about it," Chouji agreed, casting a furtive glance around. "You think its… like the Second Exam?"

You think its Orochimaru?

"Could be," I said. I bit my lip. Could I say more than 'something is fishy'? I had no more evidence.

Akamaru barked something.

"Keep your nose to the ground," Kiba translated. "And be on look out."

"Sounds like good advice to me," I said.

The crowd was starting to get restless again, jeering and yelling as the minutes dragged on and the next match didn't start.

What are you waiting for, sensei? I wondered.

Hayate coughed before raising his hand. "The time limit has expired, so I'm officially calling this match-"

There was a spike of chakra and a gust of swirling leaves in the arena.

"Sorry we're late. You wouldn't believe the traffic."

I slapped my face. "Sensei!" I groaned in exasperation.

Someone chuckled. "Such a hip and cool entrance, my Eternal Rival. Forcing us all to wait for you like that…"

I looked up. "Gai-sensei. Lee. You made it!"

"Yes," Lee confirmed. "It looks like we came just in time. I heard… that Naruto beat Neji. Is it true?"

"Yeah," I said. "It was an awesome match. I'm sure Naruto will tell you all about it later if you ask him. Do you need a seat?" I asked belatedly, taking in his injured appearance.

We shuffled to create space for him when another familiar voice cut in. "There room for one more?"

"Ino!" Chouji said happily. "You're not hurt?"

She looked a little battered, and had bandages all over, but Ino wore bandages as a fashion statement anyway so it didn't look as severe as it could have.

"Battered and bruised," she replied cheerfully. "And I have a killer headache. Other than that, it's just my pride. I heard Sasuke was fighting though, so I had to come upstairs."

"I'm surprised the medics let you out," I commented.

She winked. "Our little secret, yeah?"

I was glad to see that she was in good humour even after her defeat. I'd been worried that it would make her depressed. The bench was getting a bit crowded, so I guess it was a good thing that Gai-sensei was content to stand in the isle where he was soon joined by Kakashi-sensei.

"What's up with Hinata?" Ino asked, eyeing her where she was propped up against Kiba's side.

"She had a flare up," I explained. "The ANBU back there, the one in the cat mask, healed her, but she hasn't woken up yet."

I caught Kakashi-sensei's eye, and my fingers curled gently into the hand sign 'person; suspicious' used to identify potential enemies. I hoped he believed me. I could have further identified him as Kabuto but I wasn't sure if Kabuto had been officially linked to Orochimaru.

"Hi, there," Kakashi-sensei said with a flick of his fingers that conveyed 'acknowledged'. "Sorry about that. You must have been worried."

"Does this look like my worried face?" I asked flatly. Okay, so I was worried but I had been doing a fairly good job keeping it tamped down, and not seeming high-strung - teasing Kiba, commenting on the matches, petting Akamaru - and now that he'd brought it up I was aware of just how worried I really was. Not about them being late, no, but all the same…

He chuckled uneasily, scratching the back of his head. "Mah, mah, don't be angry. I wasn't going to let Sasuke be disqualified."

Which was probably as much confirmation as I was going to get that he had been hanging around.

I huffed. "Please tell me that you at least saw Naruto's match. He did really well."

There was a minute widening of his eye. If I'd had more facial expression to study, I might not have even noticed it but since it was the only indicator I had, I did. "He beat Neji, did he?" he asked, deflecting my implied question.

"Beat him," Kiba scoffed. "Naruto owned him. The match was a complete domination. I don't feel so bad about losing to him now."

Lee stared at him in round eyed surprise.

We were cut off as Hayate, finished recapping the rules for Sasuke, called the match start. No one wanted to miss this. There was still water trapped in the craters, which would give Sasuke an advantage if he could force Gaara into them. If.

"Begin."

I curled my hands into fists, knuckles going white from the tightness of my grip.

Don't you dare get hurt, Sasuke.

The match hadn't even started and Gaara already looked like he was in pain. That couldn't be a good sign. Not at all.

"Here it goes," Sasuke said, sending shuriken spinning towards Gaara with a quick flick of his wrist. They were stopped easily by Gaara's sand shield, which morphed into a sand clone.

Sasuke charged forward with a bout of taijutsu that was very nearly too fast to follow. Having volunteered as Sasuke's sparring partner, I knew exactly what that sand clone felt like as he battered it around, destabilising it and reducing it back to sand. He hadn't touched Gaara yet, but it was clear it wouldn't be long before he did.

"Incredible," Gai-sensei said. "He's almost as fast as Lee's normal speed."

"It is almost a mirror image of my own Taijutsu," Lee added. I couldn't tell whether he was upset about that or not, and I didn't take my eyes off the fight.

Sasuke darted in, a blow landing firmly across Gaara's face, before darting back out of range.

"So that's your sand armour, huh?" He said almost conversationally. We couldn't really see from up here, but I imagined there were pieces of sand cracking off Gaara's face.

Gaara didn't reply.

"I'm going to tear off all your armour," Sasuke said.

Sasuke ran circles around him, literally. He forced Gaara's sand defence to form a constantly moving circle in anticipation of his movements… then cleanly dove over it to attack Gaara in the centre. He hammered blows home, cracking the sand armour before flipping back out of the danger zone.

Gaara sunk to one knee, breathing heavily. He almost sounded like he was moaning in pain.

"It sure looks like it takes a lot of stamina for him to maintain that speed," Lee commented.

Down in the arena, Sasuke was panting. He burned a lot of chakra forcing that speed, which was one advantage I had over him.

"What kind of training did you do, to get to that level in a month?" Gai-sensei asked.

"Hmm?" Kakashi-sensei murmured casually. "Oh. Sasuke had copied Lee's taijutsu with his Sharingan, so I merely had him imagine Lee's movements… and then copy it. Sasuke mastered that taijutsu only because he knew Lee. Of course, he still had to work very hard to master it."

I blinked. I had thought Kakashi-sensei had copied it and then got Sasuke to copy from him… because otherwise, that sounded like a hell of an exploit. Then again, was that really Sharingan? Imagine how someone fights, then fight like it. Of course, the perfection with which he was pulling it off was almost preternatural.

"What's more interesting, though," Kakashi-sensei said, faux casually. "Is that nine times out of ten, Shikako can still beat him in a race."

I could feel the shock from those around me.

Thanks a lot, Kakashi-sensei.

"What? You thought I was just going to take the month off or something?" I retorted flippantly. I'd gained efficiency at chakra enhancing more than increasing my base speed but I had eventually managed to created a prototype air resistance seal to replicate the effects of weights. Those losses Kakashi-sensei was talking about was when I had decided not to cancel the seal before racing. Since Sasuke had worn his weights, I considered it a more accurate comparison.

He wasn't wearing them now, of course, since the whole point of building speed was to use it against Gaara.

"But… if Lee couldn't…" Chouji said uncertainly, taking the conversation back to it's starting point. I thanked him silently. "Then how could Sasuke…?"

"He learnt other things, too," Kakashi-sensei confirmed. "Just watch."

"What's the matter, Gaara? Is that all you've got?" Sasuke taunted, dodging in and out of waves of sand. Gaara's offence was pretty lacklustre, probably because he was hunched over clutching his head.

"I'll…" he dragged out, voice raspy. "I'll kill you… your blood…"

His sand began creeping back to him, withdrawing and forming a cocoon. Sasuke tried to attack, only to stop suddenly, as the smooth outside protruded into spikes, nearly stabbing him through.

"The sand has covered his entire body," Lee said in awe. "Is that another layer of his defence?"

Sasuke tried to attack the ball, leaping at it and coming from all sides, but it shot out spikes every time he got close. It was too slow to hit him, but only just. He was using his Sharingan to avoid them, and his movements were jerky as he had to readjust quickly.

"Hmph," he snorted, unimpressed. His hand retreated into his pouch before emerging with a familiar scroll. He flicked the catch open, gripping the leading edge firmly in one hand before throwing the bulk of the scroll high over Gaara's orb of sand. It wasn't a fancy throw, like Tenten might have done, but a straight line over the top.

Then Sasuke flared his chakra into it and a wave of water came thundering down.

Kotetsu made a sound of surprise. "Another water scroll?"

"Yeah! Go Sasuke!" Ino cheered. "You show that creepy guy!"

I, for one, just waited to see what the outcome would be.

It wasn't as good as I had hoped - which would have been complete and utter destruction - but the shell of sand was cracked and only moving sluggishly to repair itself. It was clearly waterlogged. Sasuke tried another taijutsu barrage, but there wasn't an clear access to Gaara himself and he retreated up the wall.

Then he started gathering chakra.

"But… it can't be," Gai-sensei muttered.

"If you wondered why I always insisted on training Sasuke myself, now you know," Kakashi-sensei said calmly.

It clearly wasn't easy for him to use the jutsu. The slow speed of it's activation, the bleeding of wasted chakra - though it did make an impressive lightshow, it was excessive - the grunts of effort, the distance Sasuke had had to retreat… they all told a story.

"I… don't understand," Chouji said, frowning at the arena. "What is it?"

"It's a jab," Gai-sensei explained. "But this jab is a jab like no other. It's the only weapon in Kakashi arsenal he didn't copy from someone else. The secret of the jab is in the speed at which it is delivered and the ninja's ability to focus his chakra at the point of impact. Once these two elements - speed and focus - have achieved certain levels, the chakra actually becomes visible and gives off that distinctive sound that you hear. Like birds chirping. It is this sound that gives the technique it's name; Chidori. One thousand birds. Also known as the lightning blade. It got that name because Kakashi once used it to cut a bolt of lightning in half before it could touch the ground."

That was a story I wanted to hear, sometime.

"Yeah, right," Ino muttered, disbelieving. "These old guys and their war stories."

"Regardless, it's a technique of unimaginable power, requiring almost inhuman levels of speed and chakra. It is a dangerous technique. Not to be taught lightly."

"Yeah, you're one to talk," Kakashi-sensei shot back at the implied criticism. "Right, Lee?"

"So it's like the Third Raikage's Hell Stab," I said. It was a pretty famous technique, actually, since none of the Raikage were the type to quit the field once they became Kage like the others tended to do. Right up until his death, there was always the fear of having to face him on the field. That, and Kage were so famous that there was a wealth of information on their techniques.

Kakashi-sensei's face was absolutely deadpan. "No."

Gai-sensei laughed heartily. "She has you there, Kakashi. It is true that there are similarities between the two techniques, but there are also large differences." He didn't go on to explain the differences, though.

Which was fair enough because Sasuke had started running, so I probably wouldn't have listened anyway.

I held my breath as Sasuke got closer and closer, blurring as he dodged the spikes of sand that tried to slow him down. His arm shot out and buried itself in the sand.

There was a moment of silence.

Then, Gaara's scream echoed hoarsely through the stands. "Blood! It's my blood!" He sounded more terrified than angry.

I had to bit my lip and swallow against the bile that tried to rise in my throat. He was, at this point anyway, crazy and psychotic. He was dangerous.

But that terror…

He sounded like a child.

Twelve. He's only twelve.

I couldn't, couldn't, look away as Sasuke fought to pull back from the orb of sand, fighting his arm back out. It grasped after him, unwilling to let him go.

The sand that shot out after him was formed differently. No longer free floating, but a bestial looking arm, shot through with purple. The beginnings of his transformation.

My teeth clenched together so hard my jaw ached.

Then the orb collapsed, the sand raining down around Gaara and pooling at his feet. He was clutching his bleeding shoulder, and his breathing was raspy and loud.

Sasuke was crouched down, watching him and favouring his left arm. Clearly the Chidori hadn't been without cost.

They watched each other, a serious and deadly standoff across the arena.

And then the white feathers began to fall.