Fights Three and Four

Kakashi sat in his box watching the first two fights attentively. Next to him were the again retired Sandaime Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi and the Kazekage of Suna. Of course there were also two body guards for each kage. The participants were the best of the new generation from Konoha. There were of course still deficits that needed to be worked out, but considering that all three teams that had passed the second exam from Konoha were the three rookie teams it spoke a clear language. Konoha's upcoming youth was stronger than all previous years.

Sakura had performed great against Kiba. She had come a really long way since he had taken her on his team. The former fangirl could now truly be called a proud kunoichi from Konoha. The training she had done with Shizune had brought her a major step forward. Kiba was strong, but he needed to plan his battles better and not let himself or Akamaru open for sneak attacks. He wouldn't get promoted this time, but there was a lot of potential for the future. Kurenai could train her team more till the next exams and then the promotion was a serious possibility if his improvement kept on.

Sakura was a definite chunin candidate. She had planned properly, not let her opponent use his strengths against her and taken out his partner early on. She hadn't dragged the fight out for a long time, but countered her opponent's strengths in smart ways before landing the decisive blow. If tasked to lead a team she would find ways to keep them out of danger until they could succeed with little to no loss.

In the second fight it showed that the academy needed to give fangirls a harder time and ensure that they at least needed to build up physical strength. Ino had come around from what Asuma had told him, but contrary to learning jutsus if you have enough chakra, you didn't get over years of neglecting physical working out, not to mention dieting, in a few months. Ino was the one that had had most problems with the resistance seals and had progressed slower than her teammates. Kakashi had seen the same with Sakura, but his merciless attitude and training regime had got her farther than Ino had come. Not to mention that Naruto and Sasuke were training nuts and Sakura had to push herself more to not fall too far behind them. Shikamaru and Choji weren't as ambitious and therefore they progressed slower.

Not to mention that Ino had the problem that Hinata's taijutsu style was hard to go up against. There was a good reason that the Hyuga clan was feared. Ino's strategy had been a sound one and it might have worked if not for Hinata's jutsu and trickery. And seeing how Hinata had managed to combine water manipulation with a new gentle fist technique was inspiring. Hinata had used her advantages well and acted when she saw an opening. He didn't know that Kurenai had taught her to combine genjutsu with gentle fist, but it was a great technique. He could only hope that the Hyuga clan would see it similarly. Hinata deserved to be praised for that fight.

"Your genin seem to be really good this year, Hokage Sama." The Kazekage complimented. "I wouldn't have expected to find this many strong kunoichi in particular."

"Thanks, what can I say; this year's candidates are very good. I'm of course especially proud of my own student Sakura." Kakashi replied with an eye smile.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what the other two can do. If you saw fit to reveal Naruto Namikaze's heritage you have to be convinced that nobody could kill the boy easily. And the reputation of the Uchiha clan will be tested for the first time in years again." The Kazekage mentioned.

"That's true, but I'm sure that Naruto and Sasuke are up to the challenges before them. I hope that your son Kankuro is well-prepared. Sasuke really wants to get to the finals to fight against Naruto." Kakashi revealed.

"He would have to beat Gaara too first and that is a very difficult task. Gaara is the best genin we have in Suna." The Kazekage boasted.

"We'll have to wait and see then." Kakashi stated. "What do you think about the promotion prospects of the first four?"

"The Inuzuka boy and the Yamanaka girl aren't ready. While the girl had some good techniques and ideas she lacks stamina to get her safely out of a mission that got difficult. The Inuzuka boy needs to get more control over his temper before he can be trusted with leading a team. The Haruno girl and the Hyuga girl meanwhile are ready, I think. Both showed a good level of skills, some of them unique even in case of the Hyuga girl I think. And they planned properly to win their fights with little injuries on their parts. Of course their next fights will also be interesting to see as the opponents in their first fights were the ones they could prepare for best. The following ones will show how well they really prepared and how they react to surprises." The Kazekage answered.

"That about mirrors my thoughts." Kakashi said and then they stopped talking as the third fight was about to start.

Kankuro knew that he was at a disadvantage. He couldn't really reveal too much about his abilities before the invasion started, but he had been ordered to weaken the Uchiha. So forfeiting wasn't an option. He was only glad that he didn't get the Namikaze boy as his first opponent. That one was strong, there was no question. After the information had been officially confirmed and revealed new orders had come in. Gaara was to take him out as soon as possible. And if Temari won her fight she had the same orders that Kankuro had; weaken her opponent.

It wasn't a good situation. He knew that he was stronger when he could act from the shadows with his puppets, but he could hold his own in a fight. The one problem was that his opponent was an Uchiha and had the sharingan. He couldn't fully concentrate on his puppets. Sasuke Uchiha would know soon how he used his puppets and try to find ways to stop him. And sadly he had no information to go by about the true strength of the other boy. Well, his best bet was poisoning him early on to make him weaker and slower.

The proctor gave the signal to start and Kankuro let Crow fire a poison gas bomb. To his surprise not only did his opponent avoid the cloud completely, but was quickly onto him. There was one disadvantage that all puppeteers had to get around, which was that they weren't exactly strong in taijutsu and had little ninjutsu in their repertoire as they needed their fingers to control their puppets. And right now he wasn't good enough to control more than one puppet efficiently. He was working on two at the same time, but he hadn't perfected that yet. Against an opponent that was this fast he was in big trouble.

Sasuke didn't need his sharingan at the moment. He knew about the basic abilities of puppeteers thanks to his training over the last month. Yamato had put him through the grinder and had not only taught him some very useful techniques to improve his arsenal; he had also drilled him on strategy and efficiency. Puppeteers were dangerous if they had a high number of puppets out and could keep in the background. And you had to look out for poison as they made their disadvantage in taijutsu up by weakening their opponents and most of the times killing with one hit. But if you had an open field a fast opponent was far superior to them. And one thing Sasuke had learned over the month was combining the speed he had trained months to gain under Kakashi sensei with jutsus. He hadn't learned to do it with high-level ones, but low and middle level ones were absolutely possible. So when the poison gas bomb flew towards him he was already moving.

"Fire release: Phoenix flower jutsu." Sasuke exclaimed and shot one middle sized fire ball after the other at Kankuro and his puppet.

They rained down at his opponent from all sides and he was hard-pressed to defend against them. Sasuke kept his barrage up for twenty seconds before getting some distance between him and his opponent.

He hadn't thought that it would be this easy to win, so he was on guard. What he saw made him look again. There was a heap of ashes and Kankuro next to it on the ground. Weren't puppets made with fire resistance seals? Naruto had put those on all of their clothes just for training. After all, it was a major disadvantage if you caught on fire. And the fireballs weren't that strong. If the puppet had been burned a bit and would be blacked now he could understand it, but this reeked of a trap. He activated his sharingan to see if Kankuro had used a substitution and was hiding somewhere.

His suspicion was proven right when he couldn't see chakra in Kankuro's body. So Sasuke was on guard when Kankuro tried to pull him under the ground. Sasuke knew that trick from Kakashi sensei so he jumped up into the air and directly fired another fireball at the point where Kankuro was in the ground. He couldn't break the ground to force his opponent out, but he could make it massively uncomfortable for him to stay down there. Soon enough Kankuro jumped out from the ground and Sasuke went after him. Kankuro had put his puppet away to manage to underground hiding jutsu and was now open to attack.

Sasuke landed some devastating combos on the black-clad boy and finally kicked him into a tree in the arena. Kankuro fell to the ground, breathing hard and blood coming from his mouth. Hayate appeared next to him and checked him.

"Kankuro is unable to continue. Winner is Sasuke Uchiha." He announced to the cheers of the audience.

Kakashi was very pleased how easily Sasuke had taken out Kankuro. From what he had seen Kankuro had at least suffered a few broken ribs and that would make him incapable of participating in the upcoming invasion. Not to mention that as the son of the Kazekage he would make a valuable hostage after it. He would have the medics sedate him, supposedly to make the healing process easier. Right now they were carrying him out of the arena while Sasuke gave a short wave to the spectators while walking back to the competitors' box.

"An impressive fight, Kakashi." Sarutobi said.

"Yes, your student showed great skill. Kankuro will have to become a lot better until he can fight on that level." The Kazekage said frowning.

"Ah, thank you. I'm proud of him. He showed good strategy and power. It's promising for a possible promotion." Kakashi told them.

"Indeed." Sarutobi agreed. "Your students seem to overall dominate their fights."

"Well, I trained them really hard since I took the team. They all learned a lot." Kakashi said proudly.

Naruto and Sakura congratulated Sasuke to his performance.

"You really showed them how it's done." Sakura said.

"Yes, good work." Naruto complimented.

"Thanks, but he wasn't that strong. I hope my next opponent is stronger. I really want to get a good idea where I stand." Sasuke told them.

The other two nodded, knowing that it was true. With just one puppet Kankuro wasn't as dangerous as a puppeteer could truly be.

Choji stood opposite of Gaara, not really sure how to go about this fight. He had no idea of what Gaara was capable of, but he was determined to do his best. Ino had already lost her fight to Hinata and team seven's members had both won their matches. He wanted to at least not shame his team and sensei. His opponent looked bored at having to fight him. The proctor gave the signal to start and Choji found himself directly activating his family's jutsu. The only information that he had been able to get about Gaara was that he was dangerous and had no qualms with killing his opponents. Kiba had warned him about that as team eight had seen how Gaara had coldly dispatched of a team from Ame.

So not getting caught in his techniques was vital. Choji expanded his body and went into his human meat tank to get a hit on Gaara before he could act. To his surprise he found himself stopped by some kind of wall. He tried again twice from other directions, but every time he was stopped. He knew he had to change plans, so he rolled away and then returned to his normal form. Gaara simply stood in his former position, not really doing much.

"You don't satisfy mother." Gaara said darkly.

Choji had no idea what this was about. Was Gaara mad? What had his mother to do with anything?

Around Gaara there were tendrils of sand hovering. So probably some sand jutsu had stopped his attack. Well, sand wasn't a normal jutsu base. Probably he had kneaded a lot of chakra into it to let it react like it did. It was too bad that he didn't have any jutsus that drained chakra from a place. So what could be done against sand in general?

Before he could think things through he had to dodge an attack from Gaara's sand. He ran away, now happy that his team had got the resistance seals after a month of training as otherwise he knew he wouldn't have been able to avoid getting caught in the sand. The main question now was how could he hit Gaara?

His strongest taijutsu move had been blocked and he needed time to get it ready. Time he suspected he wouldn't have against this opponent. He knew a few ninjutsus, his element was lightning, but they were still too weak to have a real chance against Gaara it seemed. Still, he wanted to do his best, so he would see where he got. He made two clones on the run and hoped that Gaara would at least fall for them a moment so that he could ready his jutsu. He better tried his better one first. It would cost a lot of chakra, but he knew that with this opponent he wouldn't have a chance otherwise.

"Hiding among clones won't save you. I'll quickly dispatch you." Gaara said.

Choji meanwhile was farthest away from Gaara compared to his clones and managed to get the handsigns done.

"Lightning release: Lightning arrow." Choji exclaimed and fired an arrow of lightning at Gaara.

He hoped it would hit, but there was a good chance as Gaara hadn't moved from his position at all during their fight. A wall of sand quickly intercepted the arrow and there was no damage done to Gaara at all. Choji cursed under his breath. He had expected a bit more effect. From the information he had got from Asuma sensei earth jutsus were inferior to lightning jutsus. But obviously sand was either different or Gaara's jutsus were at a much higher level than Choji's. Well, sand also turned to glass if it was heated massively or turned to mud if you drenched it in water. The problem was that Choji had neither in his arsenal. There was no way that a weapons barrage would get through that sand either and he only had two explosive tags on him. He wrapped one around a kunai handle and then tried to mix it unnoticed under a barrage of his weapons. Sadly Gaara still didn't need to move as his sand intercepted everything Choji threw at him. The bomb hit and exploded, but in the end there was no damage to Gaara.

Choji raised his hand.

"I forfeit. I can clearly not get through the defence he has. Trying that at my current level would be stupid." Choji declared.

"Winner by forfeit: Gaara Sabaku." Hayate announced.

There was little applause from the ranks. While Choji had shown a few good techniques, there had been no real action.

Kakashi knew that Choji had made the right decision. Gaara was far above his level and Choji lacked a good way to get through that defence. He also didn't have help in the fight that could make up for Choji's problems or distract Gaara for Choji to get a god hit in. That sand defence was really something else.

"I was sure this fight would go like this." The Kazekage said smugly. "Gaara is simply the best genin we have."

"Well, his defence with the sand was very impressive, but he didn't show a lot to work with to decide if he deserves to become a chunin." Kakashi stated.

"Oh, don't worry about that, he will do that later. No insult to one of your village's clans, but the boy wasn't advanced enough to go up against Gaara. And the Akimichis mostly excel at taijutsu if I remember correctly. A pure taijutsu fighter or one with a few jutsus to support him has no chance." The Kazekage declared.

From what they had seen that statement certainly rang true. But Choji deserved some positive comments in his file for judging a situation properly and retreating as long as he still could. He also seemed to have learned a bit of strategizing, perhaps from hanging out with Shikamaru a lot. With a bit more time Choji would make a good chunin.

TO BE CONTINUED...