Behind the Waterfall

#28 Beginning

"Welcome Everyone." The Hokage's voice was projected through the whole arena.

"Today we watch these genin try to prove themselves to earn their promotion to chunin. They have already shown their skills in three previous stages of these exams. Here they will fight against each other in a one versus one knock-out tournament. I will leave the explanation of the rules to the two proctors of this stage; Naruto Uzumaki and Fuu." The old greeted everyone as he explained the premise of the exams. A flash cut through the arena at the mention of Naruto and Fuu as the noise from the stands rose.

"Silence!" Fuu's voice cut through the stadium. The pair stood in the middle of the arena again. Hanabi noticed a few murmurs around the participants but no one dared to say anything as Naruto's blue eyes stared right at their section.

"As the Hokage already explained, this will be a knockout tournament. There are only two rules; no jutsu outside of the fighting area and follow our commands. If you do not follow these rules, you will be punished." The green haired girl said, her gaze following her boyfriend's as her words were mostly meant for the genin.

"You will be allowed to have major injuries treated by our medic nin, however there will be no replenishing of your chakra. As such any sort of pills or seals that can replenish your chakra are not permitted for the duration of the tournament. We have already determined the first matches, we tried to make the matches so that you are pitted against someone with a similar skill set as your own for the first round, of course there will be matches where that is not totally possible, but we did our best. After that you have to adapt to your opponent." Naruto continued. This got a few wide eyes from the genin, Hanabi was shocked as well. It had been her understanding that you could use stuff like food pills to replenish your chakra so that you could be at your best in every fight. She saw her sister watch the blonde proctor with tears in her eyes as the boy took his partner's hand and they disappeared in another flash. The younger Hyuuga wanted to confront her sister about it, but quickly spun around as the two proctors appeared behind the genin.

"Ino Yamanaka and Shikamaru Nara, you two are the first fighters. The tournament will start in ten minutes." Fuu announced, before another flash enveloped the pair and a moment later they were nowhere to be seen. Looking for her sister, Hanabi saw Kiba's angry look as he turned away to speak to his other teammate, Shino. When her eyes found Hinata she saw what had made Kiba upset; Hinata was still looking at the place where Naruto had stood, a frown on her face as she was totally ignoring Ino who was trying to speak to the purple haired girl.

"Tsunade! Didn't expect to see you here." The blonde woman rolled her eyes as she heard her teammates voice. She really was not looking forward to seeing the white haired sannin again, his constant advances towards her and other women were the main reason why she had stopped contacting him.

"Jiraiya." She replied with a court nod. Her former teammate took his seat on the other side of the Hokage.

"What have I missed?" He asked, looking at the arena.

Tsunade looked down as well as Hiruzen filled her teammate in on what had been happening the last year, at least the stuff that he hadn't already known from their frequent correspondence via Jiraiya's spy network. Naruto and Fuu were casually walking across the arena with their arms linked, idly chatting. The blonde woman felt a pang in her heart seeing the young couple laugh without a care in the world, she had once been like that. Wiping away a tear she shook her head, clearing her mind of these sad memories. Focusing on the other people with her in the closer proximity of the Hokage she scoffed. Word had traveled fast about the supposed son of Minato Namikaze having returned to Konoha. Although it was nothing more than an unconfirmed rumor at the time, there had been quite a few high ranking people that had sent messages that they were coming to the finals to 'watch the genin compete'. Everyone knew that they were only here to see if the rumors were true. The booth that was usually reserved for the Hokage and two guests at most was packed. Other than her old teacher there were two other kage present; the Raikage A and the Kazekage Rasa, other than that there was the Daimyos from Fire and Water country. Out of all these foreign leaders there was only one that really had any believable interest in the finals, that was the Kazekage since there was still a team from his village in the competition, also that team happened to have his children in it.