Son of the Sannin(Back)

Preliminaries, Part I

Authro's note: And now we reach the preliminaries. At least, the first half. I've seen some fics in which the authors barely touch the "unimportant" fights and focus on the ones they deed important (like those involving Naruto, Sasuke, Gaara, maybe Sakura and Hinata...). I'm not going to do that, since that's so lazy, even Shikamaru would disprove. While not all the fights will be equally long, I tried to make them exciting and meaningful to some degree.

And as much as I'd like to ignore it, I know that AT LEAST one of the fights just in this part only is going to be controversial. Still, I hope the review section isn't on fire after this chapter. Still, I'm sure you'll enjoy this chapter:

"By the way, let me introduce you the lovely proctor of the third and final phase of the exam, Yugao Uzuki" Jiraiya motioned to the purple haired woman, wearing the usual Konoha uniform as opposed to her ANBU gear. Jiraiya looked at Haku. "But I'm sure that some of you already know her."

Yugao took a step forward. "Alright, I'll be the referee during the fights, both now and during the actual finals. The fight will end when one of the combatants is knocked out, gives up, dies, or I declare a winner. Any questions?"

Sakura raised her hand. "What happens if it's a tie? Like a double KO?"

"In that case, there is no winner and both combatants are eliminated," was Yugao's answer. Sakura looked uneasy. "Anymore questions? No? If that's the case, let us being."

Everybody watched the screen as it flashed names at an imperceptible speed. After no less than thirty seconds, it finally revealed two names.

Tenten VS Omoi

"Alright, everybody but Tenten and Omoi, to the stands! Tenten and Omoi, get over here!" Yugao called.

While Tenten and Omoi got ready to fight, the Genin sat on the stands on the left side, where they were joined by their respective Jonin-sensei. Jiraiya and the rest sat on the stands on the opposite side. The stands were elevated several meters in the air, to both give the spectators a better view, and to protect them from any stray attack.

"Tenten is so lucky! I wish I was the first one to fight!" Lee pouted.

"Don't worry Lee, you will have your chance! Now Tenten needs you to cheer her on!" Gai replied.

"Right! Come on Tenten! Blind everybody with your flames of youth!"

Tenten smiled awkwardly at Lee's overly enthusiastic cheers. She then glanced at Tsunade, who was watching the fight about to begin. A painful memory from the previous year resurfaced once again...

FLASHBACK

Tenten was in a classroom inside Konoha's Hospital, alongside other ninja, studying under Tsunade to be a medic-nin. All of her classmates were already adults, her being the only Academy student. So far, medicine proved to be harder than she had expected, but she had a good feeling about the last test she took.

That is, until Tsunade show her the results of that test.

"What?" Tenten asked, disheartened.

Of the fifty questions the test had, she only answered eight correctly.

Tsunade sighed. She didn't like what she was going to say, but she had to. For the girl's sake, at least.

"Tenten, this is the third test you fail in a row," Tsunade began.

"I know! But don't worry, I'll work harder to make sure I pass the next one!" Tenten was quick to answer.

Tsunade sighed once again. "It's not just the matter of failing. I mean, on this test, you only got eight questions out of fifty right. That's not even a twenty percent," Tsunade held up a hand when Tenten was about to protest to silence her. "Tenten, don't you think that maybe medicine isn't for you?"