The device whirred back to life. Everyone watched the ominous orange screen, knowing that they could be next, and that they might be the one to draw…

"Gaara of the Desert…"

All but one person desperately hoped that if they were named, it would be as his partner.

"and Uchiha Sasuke…"

That one person punched the wall in frustration.

"versus…

"Tsuchidō Sera…"

Three people went pale. The rest let out sighs of relief.

"and Dosu Kinuta."

Sasuke brightened up considerably.

-o-

"Are we still in Exam Stage Two?"

Silence.

"I guess we must be. Oh, well. So that Bloodline Limit of yours, does it really let you see chakra and copy techniques like Kakashi the Copy Ninja?"

Silence.

"That must be amazing. I've always wanted to see chakra with my own eyes. What does it look like?"

Silence.

"So what's it like living in Leaf? I've lived all my life in a desert, so being surrounded by trees all the time makes me feel a little claustrophobic."

Silence.

"Have you ever been to a desert?"

Silence.

"I bet your chakra tastes very interesting."

A disturbed look.

Silence.

-o-

"So, Tsuchidō, was it?" Dosu studied the girl in front of him with a little apprehension. Experience told him that the small, cute ones were generally the deadliest. "Want to play rock-paper-scissors to decide who has to fight the red-haired kid?"

"No way. You Sound ninja always cheat."

"Huh. How'd you know that?"

"I didn't until just now."

Dosu blinked a couple of times. He liked this one. He hoped he wouldn't have to sacrifice her to get what he needed out of this match.

"Let's talk for real now," he said. "With that gourd, the redhead's obviously a ninjutsu specialist, and I can tell you all about the Uchiha. If we want to win, the key will be…"

-o-

Sasuke tuned out Gaara's blathering and watched his opponents' lips, paying attention to every last bit of their discussion and preparing counter-plans. It would be a tricky battle, especially since Gaara was an unknown quantity to both sides, but he couldn't do what he was doing and talk to Gaara at the same time, and in any case the little poser seemed like he would be useless as a planning partner.

Tempting though it was to focus on taking out Dosu and leave Gaara to his fate against the Hidden Grass girl (or maybe even help him on his way), the fact remained that if Sasuke were ever to have a chance of fighting Gaara himself, he'd need to suck it up and help him get through this fight and to the Finals. It was obvious from looking at Gaara that the rumours about him were absurd exaggerations—the feeble-looking, immature loser had probably been carried through the exam by his more impressive teammates. Whereas if Rock Lee's inane ramblings were to be believed, until she was outnumbered, Tsuchidō Sera had held her own against Hyūga Neji, whose reputation as a powerful dōjutsu user made him sound nearly as strong as Sasuke himself.

Besides, there was the honour of the Uchiha to consider. What would Ita—what would his father have said if he'd heard that Sasuke had betrayed an alliance, even an alliance of convenience, purely because of his personal feelings? The Uchiha were keepers of a tradition of cool-blooded, clear-headed rationality as old as the shinobi world itself, of passion firmly and unyieldingly guided by eyes that perceived and comprehended all before them. Sasuke's vengeance against Itachi was firmly within the bounds of that tradition—defeating him was the only way to find out the truth about that night, and to eliminate a major threat to Leaf and the wider world. Those were his reasons, with emotion being a strictly secondary motivation. The same could not be said for his desire to take Gaara down a peg or two, no matter how much the little poser might objectively deserve it.

The barriers went down.

Sasuke's heart stopped. His hands were in the Dispelling Technique position before he knew it, but the scene before his eyes did not change.

The Sharingan never lied. The Sharingan could not lie. It was beyond deception, beyond illusion, even (with sufficient training) beyond genjutsu. That unchangeable truth was one of the foundations of the Uchiha Clan. And if what Sasuke was seeing was real…

They'd all been right to be afraid of Gaara.

On the other side of the arena, collars of sand coalesced around Tsuchidō and Dosu's throats, and began to constrict, slowly, inexorably, with a careful precision that did not leave the tiniest gap for the ninja's desperately clawing fingers.

"Well," the monster addressed Sasuke, "which one would you like to fight?"

Sasuke did not look at it. He did not want to see what the Sharingan might show him.

With a very controlled hand movement, he pointed to Dosu.

"That one."

The monster turned its attention from him and to Tsuchidō.

"Please surrender. I'm not allowed to kill you right now, so I'll have to do other things if you don't."

Her collar loosened slightly.

"I surrender!" she shouted hoarsely. "I surrender! I surrender! I surrender!"

-o-

Fate was smiling on Dosu for the second time in his life. Not only was he alive and in good shape, but he was being given another shot at Uchiha Sasuke.

Despite his failure, he would get another chance to gauge the target's abilities. He had been dreading telling the Master that in his one fight with the Uchiha, the brat had spent most of it helplessly lying on the ground, only to then take Dosu and Zaku out in seconds thanks to their own mistake. The Master had perfect control of his emotions, so he wouldn't yell or kick Dosu or throw things at him, but his look of gentle disappointment pierced straight to the heart, and then who knew how long it would be until the Master trusted Dosu with another important mission?

Also, Dosu outright hated the Uchiha. It was bad enough that the brat had been born into a ninja clan, with wealth and power and a Bloodline Limit and a silver spoon in his mouth the size of a spade. Dosu could have chalked that up to the general injustice of life and moved on. But then he, who already had everything, had attracted the Master's attention as well. Dosu and Kin were survivors who'd fought and begged and stolen and sold things that should not be sold, all to live long enough for that moment of grace when the Master noticed them and offered his hand of salvation. And then the Uchiha had strolled in and claimed the same grace as if it was owed to him.

But it wasn't too late. An overwhelming defeat here might be enough to prove once and for all that the Uchiha was an unworthy weakling and a waste of the Master's time (which could then be lavished on his worthy servants). Besides, while he could not kill or maim the Uchiha, or do anything else that might reduce his value to the Master, there were no such limitations on pain, and the powers bestowed on Dosu had some fantastic applications in that area.

For a few seconds, they merely stared at each other. Dosu inwardly savoured the anticipation, while doing his best to pretend that Gaara's technique had left him shaken and defenceless (as if that had been Dosu's first time being nearly choked to death). The Uchiha, meanwhile, seemed like he was trying to suppress his fear of Dosu and gather the resolve to attack, clearly knowing that his previous victory had been nothing but a fluke.

Finally, the Uchiha charged, his eyes glowing red. Just before he got in range, Dosu swung his arm up.

The blow went wide, and the Uchiha gave him a self-satisfied smirk. Then the wave of sound from the bracer hit him. He stumbled back, his sense of balance disturbed, and fell to the floor.

Dosu moved in to take advantage.

The brat quickly grabbed and threw some shuriken. Though they all went hopelessly wide, they kept Dosu out of melee range just long enough for him to stumble to his feet, leap back, and make a few seals in mid-air.

"Fire Element: Great Fireball Technique!"

Of course, with his inner ear disturbed, the Uchiha couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, and Dosu gleefully twisted the knife deeper by dodging almost in slow motion.

"I've been waiting for this!" Dosu roared.

"You mean to get your ass kicked?" The Uchiha sneered. "I'll be happy to oblige!"

Once again, he closed the rest of the distance between them, and tried to grapple Dosu in order to deny him the free movement of his arms.

He wasn't fast enough. Dosu swung at him with both arms, and the combined sound wave made the brat stagger and fall backwards even more violently than before.

As his target lay curled on the ground, Dosu pulled back one arm for a brutal finishing punch.

Slam!

Instead of, as he'd eagerly anticipated, the Uchiha's face, Dosu's fist met the hard stone floor. The Uchiha had managed to roll to the side at the last second with unexpected agility. And wait, Dosu wondered in that same instant, why were his hands together in a—

The explosive tag on the floor went off.

Dosu's bracer was blasted to smithereens, and as he stumbled back, he could only thank his lucky stars that it hadn't been his hand. Still, that pair of bracers had been a gift from the Master, worn by Dosu alone out of all the Master's servants, and though the Master always said that a tool was worth no more than the use it could be put to, to Dosu its destruction was an act of sacrilege.

"You little son of a bitch," Dosu snarled. "I'm going to rip your arms off and beat you to death with them!"

"It's a good start," the Uchiha smirked. "But I'll need a bigger handicap before a loser like you has a chance against me.

"So, you still brave enough to face me without your Death Knells?"

Dosu reluctantly reached into a pocket, turning at an angle to conceal the motion. Flashbang grenades were neither cheap nor common, which was why ordinary ninja were usually stuck using smoke bombs. And while Hidden Sound undeniably had the best technology, the Master was subtle in his punishments when he felt a servant had wasted valuable mission gear. Dosu, only recently literate, could already see the stacks of paperwork in his mind's eye. The bracer was bad enough already; he would have to make this one count.

Dosu ran at the Uchiha, the grenade concealed in his hand.

The brat reacted quickly, drawing and throwing a collapsible Fūma shuriken in one swift motion.

Fortunately, Dosu's intensive training had covered many such tricks. Rather than ducking under the shuriken, Dosu dodged to the left—thereby avoiding the second shuriken of the Shadow Windmill. Both shuriken buried themselves deep in the wall behind him.

Deciding he was close enough, Dosu threw the flashbang into the air without breaking stride. He had time to see the Uchiha throwing another Fūma shuriken, attempting the same pointless trick a second time. This time, there was more space to dodge right.

The thunk of the two shuriken embedding themselves in the wall came a fraction of a second before the flashbang went off.

Immune to deafness through the Master's extraordinary modifications, and able to navigate by sound alone, Dosu would have no trouble finding and taking down the stunned brat and teaching him the full meaning of—

Two lines of ninja wire caught him across the chest, making his own momentum throw him down. Before he could get up, a completely un-stunned Uchiha walked up to him and held a kunai to his throat.

"I—I surrender!"

The Uchiha smirked and took out his earplugs.

"What?! But I—"

"I let you hit me the first time for real to make you think I was vulnerable."

"But when—"

"While the Great Fireball Technique was obstructing your vision."

"But you—"

"Any Uchiha worth his salt can read lips. And I practised keeping my voice at the right volume with Naruto."

"But the—"

"Ninja wire tied between the two sets of Fūma shuriken. I got it ready while you were reeling at me blowing up your arm."

"But—"

"Oh, come on. I just covered my eyes when I saw the bomb coming with the Sharingan."

Dosu decided to keep his mouth shut.

-o-

Meanwhile, Naruto was still beating himself up over the Kabuto thing. He wasn't completely stupid, so after Kabuto was done debriefing him and had got him to call in Sasuke, Naruto had gone straight to the examiners to check Kabuto's cover story. Yes, Anko had told him, "dear little Kabuto" was an infiltration specialist jōnin; yes, he was here on an official mission; and yes, any further questions would take Naruto above his clearance and result in some special Anko-brand discipline, however had he guessed, and hey, where was he going?

So now he'd made an idiot out of himself in front of a jōnin who'd been assigned to watch him throughout the exam, making it clear that he was neither quick-thinking nor perceptive nor possessed of the capacity for rational analysis. And what was Naruto doing right now? Oh, yes, being evaluated for promotion.

Given his state of mind, it was with some relief that Naruto spotted a distraction in the form of a tired but satisfied-looking Sakura.

"Congratulations on making it to the Finals!" he exclaimed with what he hoped came across as more enthusiasm than disbelief.

But Sakura gave him a cold look.

Oh, that.

There really was nothing for it, Naruto realised. He'd been thinking about this earlier, during the majority of Stage Two, which was to say long periods of uncomfortable silence punctuated by bursts of excitement. Sakura was wrong—there was no doubt about that—but on reflection, maybe he could have handled things in a way that didn't hurt her feelings? Treating someone badly just because they happened to be wrong had an unpleasant feel of Hyūga Hiashi about it.

Besides, in a way he'd been wrong as well. Not in his assessment of the situation and the right way to proceed, which had been rock-solid, but in the fact that he hadn't even thought about communicating with her. If he'd only been better at talking to people instead of making assumptions, then maybe the whole thing with Sasuke might never have happened…

Naruto took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"I'm sorry I underestimated you earlier."

"You should be," Sakura told him with an unsympathetic hardness in her voice.

"Actually, I'm just sorry in general," Naruto said. It wasn't easy. Naruto had always hated apologising, not so much to the general population (that was merely part of the pranking process, at least if he got caught), but certainly to the few people whose opinion mattered. It felt like every apology diminished the person he was to them, and made them see him more like everyone else did, which is to say as someone who should be sorry just for existing.

"I know how important it is for teammates to talk to each other," he went on, "and I should have talked to you before making a decision."

"Wow," Sakura's tone softened. "That almost sounds like you get what you did wrong, and may try to do better next time. I can't believe I'm saying this, but there might be hope for you yet."

"Anyway, congratulations," Naruto decided to change the subject.

Sakura gave what a sight-impaired, terminally naïve person might conceivably have interpreted as a modest shrug. "I told you I rocked tests."

"So how'd you do it?"

"Oh, I fought my dark side in a literal battle inside my own mind, and then saved Ino by discovering the power of my true self. She couldn't not let me win after that," Sakura replied nonchalantly.

Naruto grinned at this. "Not bad for a beginner, but couldn't you make it a little more plausible?"

"Like it or not, it's the truth, Naruto," Sakura boasted in a smug voice that Naruto vaguely recognised as an exaggeration of his own, shortly before Ino's wrathful fist descended right on top of her head.

"Ow! What was that for?!"

"For making up stupid lies," Ino stated with just that little bit too much emphasis. "Now come on, the cafeteria's going to close if we're late."

-o-

As soon as Naruto heard that Hinata was in Itama Tower's field hospital, he ran like the wind, causing loose objects to be displaced in his wake, and sensible people to take shelter until he'd passed. He didn't even care that he was missing the results for the latest battle—Hidden Grass ninja Kagami and Kabuto's teammate Tsurugi against Rock Lee and Hidden Sand's Kankurō. (He later learned that it had been a foregone conclusion—Tsurugi had some kind of anti-taijutsu ability that completely shut down Lee, while Kankurō obliterated Kagami with puppet-based artillery that there wasn't enough room to dodge).

"Hinata! Are you OK?"

Hinata, lying in a hospital bed, gave him a smile. "Thank you for coming, Naruto. But I'm fine, just tired and a bit paralysed. It'll wear off eventually. If it was anything really serious, they'd have taken me to the General Hospital."

"What happened? Was it Neji's bad breath? Were you overwhelmed by his total lack of social skills? Or did his aura of stupidity melt your brain?"

"Um, Naruto, he's right there across the room."

"I know."

Neji was equally bedridden, but taking it with none of Hinata's relaxed grace. The look on his face was one of mixed contempt and self-pity, as if he had not only discovered that there was a fly in his soup, but also that he was in Ishikawa's Fly-in-Soup Speciality Restaurant, and there were no other sources of food within a hundred miles.

"Uzumaki, would you come over here for a moment?"

Naruto reluctantly obliged.

"It has come to my attention," Neji quietly admitted with the expression of someone chewing something extremely unpleasant (possibly a fly), "that you may not be the despicable, treacherous, filthy worm that I initially believed you to be. I am thus offering you a ceasefire until you either reveal your true colours or convince me of your worthiness to be by Lady Hinata's side."

"Sure, whatever," Naruto said. "Shake on it?"

He offered his hand.

"Uzumaki, you do realise I can't lift my arms right now?"

"I know."

-o-

The various genin, including Hinata (being supported by Naruto, to her delight) and Neji (being supported by a chattering Rock Lee, to his distress), watched the display screen like hawks. There weren't many combinations left, and whatever came up would give them a good chance of guessing the rest.

"Yoroi Akado…

"and Akimichi Chōji…

"versus…

"Aburame Shino…

"and Fūma Ginpachi."

"Aw, hell yeah. Chōji, you can finally witness the true power of the Ginpachi!"

Shino had a bad feeling about this.

-o-

"So, Yoroi," Chōji said. "What can you do?"

"I'm Kabuto-sensei's greatest taijutsu fighter," Yoroi said with a quiet pride that implied a lot of faith in his team leader. Chōji wondered exactly what the relationship between those two was. After all, Kabuto was Yoroi's teammate, not his instructor.

Yoroi hesitated, giving Chōji a measuring look.

"I can also absorb chakra on contact."

Chōji stared. He'd never heard of an ability like that. If it was as strong as it sounded…

"Yeah," Yoroi went on, that pride in his voice growing slightly. "As soon as I get within melee range, the fight's over.

"How about you?"

"I'm an Akimichi," Chōji said simply. "Our speciality is using chakra to transform our bodies. Bigger, stronger, tougher, that sort of thing."

"Huh. Right, so Kabuto-sensei told me all about these guys, and I've got a few ideas on how to take them down."

"Me too. Shikamaru was really helpful. So listen to this, and let me know what you think…"

-o-

"You're in luck, Aburame. You get to fight alongside the Ginpachi."

"Err, as you say. So about our strategy—"

"Don't worry, got you covered. I'm not sure about that Yoroi guy, but Ametatsu and I researched the hell out of Chōji after our last battle ended in a draw."

"I was going to suggest that—"

"Oh, one thing. We fight as a team, but in the end, Chōji's mine. We good on that?"

"I don't think that will be a problem, but we will need to coordinate our actions carefully. Why? Because—"

"So here's what I came up with, with a little help from Ametatsu…"

-o-

Team Earth, Wind and Fire wasn't Hidden Grass's Ino-Shika-Chō. Not yet. The Fūma Clan was out of favour for stupid political reasons, Ametatsu's dad was an asshole who couldn't see what was right in front of his nose, and it didn't take a genius to guess why Sera wouldn't talk about her circumstances. It had come as no surprise to anybody when some waste of air up in the Emerald Circle decided to match the shuriken specialist with users of utility and battlefield control ninjutsu respectively, deliberately dooming them to a lifetime of obscurity as a specialised support squad.

But they hadn't reckoned on the Ginpachi.

Sure, your typical shurikenjutsu user was a support type, providing covering fire and driving enemies into position, gradually wearing down their defences in order to create an opening for the team's hard-hitters. But the Ginpachi was born to be the star of the show. Let lesser ranged fighters spend their battles backpedalling away from enemy attacks until their tougher teammates came in to bail them out. The Ginpachi faced his foes head-on… and won with style.

Akimichi Chōji was the kind of man who dared to push his stomach to its limit in order to gain true bodily strength. The Ginpachi knew that he'd try to close the distance without a moment's hesitation.

"Human Bullet Tank!"

Chōji rapidly inflated to twice his size and curled up into a ball, which started vertically rotating very fast as if spun by invisible hands. The "tank" rolled at the Ginpachi with extraordinary speed.

Of course, the Ginpachi knew the calibre of his opponent. He'd been saving a really rare technique just for this.

"Wind Element: Slicing Wedge Technique!"

The horizontal cutting edge of wind did nothing to harm Chōji. In fact, the way it slid under his spinning form only accelerated him further. But Ametatsu, who had originally thought up the idea, loved turning weaknesses into strengths… and strengths into weaknesses.

The technique really was wedge-shaped, and that meant a ramp in mid-air that launched Chōji way above his original target. He crashed violently into the wall, sending shards of rubble flying everywhere. The impact broke his concentration and he reverted back to his human form, which hit the ground hard.

The Ginpachi never missed an opening. As soon as he confirmed that Chōji had fallen for his trap, he ran straight to the other side of the arena, restoring the distance he needed for his next move.

"Fūma-style Shurikenjutsu: Blade Rondo!"

A storm of Fūma shuriken flew towards Chōji, too heavy to block, and too widely spread to evade. Once again, the Ginpachi's powers were about to end a battle before it had even begun.

It occurred to him to wonder where Chōji's teammate was, right as the piece of rubble behind him transformed back into Yoroi, grabbed him and began to drain his chakra.

-o-

In targeting Ginpachi, Chōji had been manoeuvred into a corner, and the incoming shuriken left him with only one direction to flee. But as he turned around…

"Venom Tide!"

Chōji had always paid attention to his fellow genin, and as such he was well aware that Shino had no need to call his attacks. After all, the whole tradition was at its core a way to enhance focus (and thus strengthen chakra flow). The Aburame, who saw themselves as organisers rather than initiators of their particular brand of ninjutsu, had no need of such things, and nor did their "partners". Knowing Shino, he probably just wanted to try out something that everyone else seemed to have such fun doing.

But this knowledge did not help Chōji, who was now trapped between two walls of stone, one approaching wall of shuriken, and one approaching wall of what were almost certainly venomous insects.

Then again, running from danger had never been the Akimichi way. He took a wide stance, his centre of mass close to the ground.

"Partial Double Size Technique!"

Chōji's arms swelled to many times their natural size.

(Fortunately, the Akimichi were not exhibitionists, and the special fabric that his costume was made of stretched to accommodate the transformation. This was true even of his bracers, as they were only painted to look like steel, and were in fact made of very thick leather made with secret Akimichi tanning arts.)

One arm rose up to block the Fūma shuriken with a bracer in a single sweeping movement. The edges still got through, painfully, but most of the impact was safely absorbed.

Chōji's other arm struck the insects with a devastating backhand, crushing most of them against the wall. Of course, a few still managed to sting him, but his technique temporarily expanded and strengthened everything he needed to function at his new size—his bones, his muscles, his bloodstream, his blood cell count… On that scale, the dose wouldn't be enough to make him blink.

The true power of the Akimichi techniques was nothing to do with increased durability, strength or reach. It was the fact that they were able to make the square-cube law their plaything.

-o-

Meanwhile, the Ginpachi was drained nearly dry. Fortunately, Yoroi's movements had slowed down a lot once he started using his overpowered ability—converting somebody else's chakra into your own was probably a massive strain on your chakra system. And the Ginpachi, with his painstakingly cultivated bulk, was able to exploit this and twist around just enough to form a couple of seals.

"Wind Element: Nova Thrust!"

It was a terrible technique, the kind you only taught a genin if you never expected him to amount to anything in the first place. It had barely two metres' range, its characteristic moment of silence completely telegraphed it, and its pushing power wasn't even enough to knock someone down.

But with insight born of a hundred unsuccessful strategy games with Ametatsu, the Ginpachi could turn any weakness into a strength. Precisely because it was a technique you'd only teach to a beginner, the Nova Thrust had a minimal chakra cost and only two hand seals needed to use it. It was as if it had been specially created for this very moment.

Yoroi staggered back as the pulse of repelling force disrupted his balance. The Ginpachi never missed an opening, and he immediately thrust a kunai at Yoroi's unprotected chest.

But Chōji, the very definition of a hard-hitter who bailed out his more fragile comrades, was just close enough to dive in to save him. Grabbing Yoroi with a giant hand, he quickly spun around…

…and threw him straight at Shino.

-o-

Shino's eyes widened as Chōji's human missile flew at him too fast to dodge. Then, as Yoroi hit him, Shino dissolved into a swarm of bugs.

"It is a curious fact," the real Shino observed from a safe distance, "that people unconsciously flinch away when they look at an almost-human figure whose uncanny valley is filled with insects. It makes for very convincing clones."

Then the bugs reassembled around Yoroi and began to drain his chakra in a clear case of poetic justice.

Chōji dispelled the Partial Double-Size Technique in order to reach into a pocket and pull out a soldier pill. The universal antivenom slowed the effect of many natural poisons, including those that inflicted paralysis, nausea and disorientation. It didn't last long, or he'd have taken it at the very beginning, but with Ginpachi visibly lacking the chakra to use the Wind Element again, and Shino the only real threat left, it would last long enough to end the battle.

He charged at his defenceless opponent.

-o-

Yoroi, meanwhile, seemed less inconvenienced by the chakra-draining bugs than Shino had expected.

"Nice try. Except I can absorb chakra right back—with my entire body."

Slowly, ponderously, he began to walk towards Shino. With every step, more bugs fell to the floor.

Buta real star didn't leave the stage in mid-show just because he was out of chakra.

"Absorb this!" the Ginpachi roared.

"Fūma-style Shurikenjutsu: Bountiful Rain!"

A stream of kunai soared towards Yoroi in an elegant arc, high enough over the battlefield that Chōji couldn't have intercepted them even if he'd been fast enough to use his technique. Was Yoroi going to turn off his ability in order to dodge, and get drained to a husk by the insects, or would he rather stay in place and be skewered?

Yoroi took a third option.

Still filled with the Ginpachi's superior chakra on top of his own, he sent it all to his feet in a super-enhanced jump, twisting in mid-air to end up standing on the ceiling. The Ginpachi didn't have time to re-orient himself and launch a new technique before Yoroi closed in on him. With another powerful leap, touching off the ceiling and combining chakra acceleration with the force of gravity, he slammed into the Ginpachi at incredible speed. Everything went dark.

-o-

While the merits of the Aburame techniques were many and varied, Shino was forced to concede that they had one significant weakness—even the biggest swarm of insects was ineffective at obstructing kinetic force. Chōji, whose combat style revolved around applying unnerving amounts of kinetic force to his opponents' anatomy, would definitely be aware of this.

"Human Bullet Tank!"

Shino hurriedly raised his arms as he signalled to his more specialised partners. If he'd guessed the contents of the Akimichi antivenom incorrectly, he was about to find himself spread finely across a broad two-dimensional area.

"Malign Growth!"

(Creating original and evocative technique names was more difficult than Shino had anticipated. Next time, he would have to prepare a list in advance.)

A cloud of insects briefly enveloped Chōji, a few of them successfully delivering their payload before they were cast off by his angular momentum.

Suddenly, Chōji swerved to the side as his perfect spherical shape distorted. The Human Bullet Tank technique dispelled itself as Chōji's body deformed, bulging protrusions all over his limbs and torso rendering movement increasingly difficult. Better still, any rapid growth technique would only aggravate his condition.

"I surrender!"

The other two genin, still on their way out, regarded Shino with an unreasonable but sadly familiar reverent horror, and even the judge shuddered as he watched Shino administer the cure.