Chapter 215: Old Work, New Students

Naruto could barely look at anyone after his victory.

He recovered quickly enough to keep watching the matches as if the humiliation belonged to someone else. The people around him still offered disapproving looks whenever he moved too close. Only time could bury what the arena had smelled.

Hyūga Hinata versus Hyūga Neji came next.

The match placed two branches of the same clan against one another. Neji was stronger than the opponent Tonbo remembered. Additional training and Battlefield Simulation had deepened his combat experience. Hinata had changed as well. She entered afraid but determined to win and change herself.

Tonbo's brutal illusion training had killed her more than a hundred times in a single day. Repeated death had forced her to find courage beneath panic. Naruto's encouragement strengthened what the experience began.

Gentle Fist met Gentle Fist.

Hinata's will made her advance after strikes that once would have broken her confidence. It could not close the distance in skill. Neji controlled the exchanges, shut down her chakra points, and mocked her belief that determination could alter the destiny he assigned her.

She changed the angle of her palms and forced him to defend twice, a result that would once have seemed impossible. Neji answered by reading the next sequence through his Byakugan before she completed it. His fingertips struck shoulder, elbow, and chest. Each contact removed another part of Hinata's ability to circulate chakra.

Naruto shouted from the gallery whenever she staggered. Hinata used the voice to stand again, but courage could not reopen the points Neji closed. Her final approach ended when her leading arm failed to answer her command.

Tonbo watched with rising irritation. Fanaticism had made Neji inflexible even while training made him stronger.

Hinata fell. She was carried from the arena while Neji returned to his team without expression.

Chōji displayed far more strength than the foreign spectators expected, but Dosu's sound techniques defeated him. Lee and Gaara then produced the most violent fight of the preliminaries.

Lee cast aside his weights and drove through Gaara's automatic defense. He opened the gates, moved faster than the sand, and forced Gaara to feel blows that almost no opponent had delivered. Gaara endured until Lee's body failed beneath the cost of his own technique, then crushed his arm and leg.

The weights broke the arena floor when they landed. Freed from them, Lee vanished from ordinary sight and struck Gaara before the sand completed its first response. The armor hidden beneath Gaara's clothes cracked under repeated blows, but every gate Lee opened tore more fibers within his own body.

Gaara replaced himself with sand during the first finishing attempt. Lee recognized the failure, adjusted, and attacked again. His experience kept him in the contest longer; it did not change the fact that Gaara could rebuild protection while Lee possessed only one body to spend.

Battlefield Simulation offered little advantage in a direct contest pushed to its absolute limit. There was no hidden route or unfamiliar tactic for experience to solve. Lee wagered his body against Gaara's defense and lost. Even Tonbo felt excitement at the spectacle before the extent of the injuries became clear.

The preliminaries ended after Lee was removed for treatment. Hayate announced the structure of the next stage and dismissed the surviving candidates.

Two days passed.

Konoha grew more crowded. Daimyō, guards, merchants, and agents with private objectives filled the streets before the finals. Defense patrols increased with the traffic, while shops earned more in a week than during ordinary months. Ichiraku was so busy that Tenyu and Maki spent their free day helping Teuchi and Ayame.

Tonbo worked there before leaving for an appointment at a training ground behind a fountain.

Sakura and Kakashi were waiting.

"Tonbo-sensei, you are late like Kakashi-sensei," Sakura complained.

Tonbo laughed. "My father-in-law's shop was overwhelmed. I helped and lost track of time."

Kakashi explained the arrangement. "Sakura's training is yours for the next month."

"Do not worry. It is rare to see you so dedicated to a student."

Kakashi would train Sasuke himself while the cursed seal was managed. Ebisu had been assigned to rebuild Naruto's foundations. Sakura's talent lay in chakra control and genjutsu, subjects for which Tonbo was the obvious specialist.

Kakashi left the two of them together.

"I invited the daughter of my former superior," Tonbo said. "Competition should give both of you motivation."

Ino arrived at a run and stopped when she saw Sakura.

"Forehead."

"Ino-pig."

Tonbo smiled. "You are comrades. Learn to get along."

Both girls turned away. "Who wants to get along with her?"

Their rivalry suited his purpose. Tonbo believed young kunoichi often trained less relentlessly than boys because marriage and children eventually pulled many of them away from active shinobi work. Sakura wasted time imagining Sasuke, and Ino divided hers with the Yamanaka flower shop. By placing them together, Tonbo expected each to deny the other any excuse to relax.

He did not share the reasoning aloud. Telling either girl that he expected marriage to weaken her ambition would turn the first week into an argument about him. Letting Sakura see Ino progress faster, or Ino hear Sakura complete an exercise first, would produce the same effort without the lecture.

The first exercises attacked fear and concentration.

They balanced above the sea while waves struck beneath them. A fall without Tonbo's intervention could drown them. They crossed darkness so complete that every sound became a possible attack and held their chakra steady while terror narrowed their thoughts.

Tonbo's shadow clones controlled the separate scenes, but Sakura and Ino did not know where rescue waited. Salt water erased their footing, cold pulled at their muscles, and darkness denied them the visual checks used in ordinary control practice. The point was not comfort. It was holding a chosen chakra output while the body screamed that survival required panic.

"Why are we training above the sea?" Ino cried. "If we fall, we die."

"I will save you."

"How does darkness train concentration?" Sakura asked.

"By making you maintain it when your body wants to abandon every other task."

Their screams followed each new trial. Tonbo called them foundational exercises and demanded that they overcome them.

Afterward he brought them to an ordinary forest clearing.

"Now we train chakra control. Better control will strengthen your ninjutsu and reduce waste."

Sakura and Ino demonstrated tree climbing and water walking with confidence. Both stood steadily upon disturbed water.

"Our control is already excellent," Sakura said.

"Should we not learn something else?" Ino asked.

Laughter came from nearby. Tenyu, Maki, and Kawabe Jun had joined Tonbo after the Academy closed.

"That is only the beginning," Tenyu said. "Konohamaru would laugh if you called it mastery."

The two older girls glared at him.

Tonbo supported the children. "Your current control is introductory."

Neither believed him.

"Show them," Tonbo said.

Tenyu and Jun sat facing one another. Maki extended chakra from both hands without forming seals. Lines appeared between the boys and assembled themselves into a three-dimensional shogi board. Tenyu and Jun shaped their pieces from chakra, each figure lifelike despite having no solid substance.

Maki maintained every square at a separate height. The boys changed shape and location without allowing one piece to blur into another. A moment of excitement shifted the pressure of their chakra, yet the board survived the correction.

The board remained stable while they began to play.

Sakura and Ino stared with their mouths open.

"Their talent is no lower than yours," Tonbo said. "They also began serious control training earlier. This is the level you will learn to reach."