Chapter 144

'Hehe,' Naru-nii laughs. 'I have faith in you,' is all he answers before leaving and Naruto smiles. He didn't need more than that. No accurate fortune could possibly be better than feeling Naru-nii's faith in him. The way Naru-nii just gets him, is patient, and always believes in him, fills him with confidence. There's no better inspiration and Naruto strives every day to get to that point faster… to make Naru-nii proud.

After an immensely satisfying dinner with three people he cherishes, Naruto gets ready to meet Tenten-chan, her father and her sensei in Training Ground 3. Though reeling from dispelling so many clones, some time to heal and food helped to reduce his head pain to a mild headache that's gradually going away.

"Here comes a worthy opponent, Tenten-chan!" Until that moment, Naruto had forgotten how weird her sensei was, but Naruto couldn't say he disliked the man. He just had too much positive energy not to like. "We haven't formally been introduced, Naruto-kun. I am Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey, Maito Gai!"

'Huge eyebrows!' Naruto mentally yells, before calling out his own, "my name is Uzumaki Naruto, the future and greatest Hokage there'll ever be!"

"Oh!" Guy calls with tight explosive fists as he shouts to the night sky, "let the power of our youthful lives explode!"

"Sensei…" Tenten mumbles embarrassed and Kurenai mumbles an equally embarrassed, "Naruto, don't- don't encourage this."

Kurenai greets her fellow Jōnin-sensei, laying out the rules of the challenge. "Should Genin Tenten win, Kubikiribōchō will be hers. Should genin Naruto win, Tenten is to be his personal shopper covering seventy-five percent of all his market needs-" Kurenai puts her hand up, cutting Naruto off before he can assert how little he cares about that. "However, rather than covering his market expenses, Naruto would prefer you never challenge him for Kubikiribōchō again. He's explained his reasons and I find them to be sound."

"What reasons!" Dānyī calls, eying Naruto with a curled lip of disgust. Though Tenten seems mildly startled, she smiles and shrugs as if fine with the amendment while her father continues, "my apologies, Kurenai-san, but I find it incredibly unprofessional to change the wager after it was agreed upon. This is unacceptable and an affront to good business relations!"

"I see," Kurenai coldly states, taking a firm stance over the shorter weapons merchant. "Well, as Naruto doesn't even want this to happen, you are more than welcome to leave."

Dānyī then asserts, "if we leave it's because he broke the rules of the wager and should forfeit Kubikiribōchō as recompense."

"You have two Jōnin who would disagree with you," Kurenai counters with an edge without actually confirming with Guy-sensei. "And if you truly feel slighted, you are more than welcome to take it up with Hokage-sama, as the civilian council will have no say in this wager between active Konoha shinobi. So what'll it be, Dānyī-san?"

Dānyī huffs and turns in acceptance. Unsealing the great buster sword from a flashy orange and blue scroll, Naruto hands Kubikiribōchō to Guy-sensei before he and Tenten-chan walk to the middle of the field.

"You know if you want to practice with it, I don't mind," Naruto begins to express to her when they are alone in the middle of the grass field. The night air whips around them and Naruto adds, "but I can't let you have it."

Smirking, she responds, "that's nice of you, but once I beat you, I'll practice with it whenever I want."

"End it quick, Ten," they hear Dānyī yell, before Guy-sensei calls out, "begin!"

Tenten hops back a fair distance as he hears the rubbing metal of shuriken, making Naruto hear Kurenai's voice in his head asking him what she's been trying to beat in his head for the past three weeks, 'did you analyze? Is the attacker long range or short-to-mid range? Does the attacker want to trick you?'

'Long range,' Naruto thinks as he dodges shuriken she accurately shoots to keep him from closing the distance. When she lands many paces away, she immediately takes out two scrolls. Unfurling them so they spin around her, she unseals a multitude of projectile weapons—to his evident surprise—before sniping him with pinpoint accuracy. Whipping out his kunai, Naruto dodges and parries a hail of sharp weapons being perfectly shot at his chest. Even as he runs to the side, she's perfectly marking him and going all out from the very beginning. Without the time for Kage Bunshin, Naruto sprints for the nearest tree while parrying her attacks with his kunai.

Ducking behind a tree that's quickly stuffed with the puncturing 'taps' of at least twenty weapons, he calls out, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" and fifty clones armed with kunai billow out from behind the tree, sprinting around to catch her from multiple angles.

Though not necessarily surprised by his shadow clones, having already seen them on the waterfall, watching them try to outflank her from the left and the right all with kunai felt very different. Feeling the pressure, Tenten pops a squad of clones automatically as she easily punctures them repeatedly with her pinpoint accuracy. Though she questions why his clones haven't sniped her with their kunai.

One clone unseals a Fūma shuriken and tosses it to another clone right before she pops him. In one motion, the Naruto clone catches and throws the larger shuriken perfectly at Tenten-chan before that clone is popped as well. Tenten smiles as she dodges the large weapon while simultaneously decimating his clones, calling out, "you're going to have to do a lot better than that-" until she hears a pop behind her. Rotating her head to the extent of her neck's range, she's surprised to see the Fūma shuriken was a henge of another clone before it launches a non-lethal kunai strike right to her thigh.

It cries out, "gotcha!" making her smile confidently as she narrowly avoids a major injury. Though the kunai cuts into her leg a bit, it's not deep enough to hinder her attack and she pops that clone as well before returning her lethal focus to the original…

…Who she had no idea was thrown in the air by his remaining clones and coming down on her, fist cocked, just as her face turns to him. Naruto lands a powerful, gravity-assisted punch across her lovely cheek, spinning her whole body twice before she hits the grass floor face first. Tenten-chan is knocked out with one, brain-rattling, punch before landing sprawled on the floor.

"Winner, Uzumaki Naruto," Guy-sensei calls.

"Fuck!" Dānyī yells. "He cheated! That damn demon cheated!"

"Dānyī-san, calm yourself," Kurenai orders him as Guy checks on his student.

"Why!" He yells, "he obviously can't be trusted! There's no way he could've won!"

"Regardless of your daughter's impressive mastery over weapons, Naruto located and exploited her weakness of multiple fronts of attack," Kurenai states. "He did not cheat."

"I agree," Guy states as he carries Tenten over to them with Naruto beside them.

"She's crazy accurate," Naruto proclaims, extending his arms to look at his torn jumpsuit.

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