[Finally, a normal ninja fight]
[Real talk, the stuff Hanabi pulls is more villain than the actual villains]
[Lmao, even the villains watched and went "okay THAT'S the real villain"]
[This time it's a normal fight.JPG]
After surviving the gauntlet of the first and second rounds, the audience was finally getting a normal fight.
Except Hanabi figured the audience was about to be let down again, because this match wasn't a normal fight either. Neji and Lee were both taijutsu-type ninja, so there'd be no flashy special effects to gawk at. A spectacular taijutsu brawl, though? That, they'd get.
"At last—at last—at LAST! At last the time has come for me to live by my ninja way! Neji, I've wanted to fight you for as long as I can remember! Come on—let our youth burn bright!"
And with that, Lee… whipped out his nunchaku!
"Wait, you're allowed to use weapons?!" Naruto was floored.
"They're just ninja tools. What's the big deal?" Sasuke said, unimpressed.
"The Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist is a terrifying art that can seal off the flow of chakra. So I have been devising tactics to counter you for a long time now."
[I always thought Lee's outfit looked super familiar, and now that the nunchaku came out, that déjà vu is hitting way harder]
[I TOLD you—turns out it really is Lee]
[Lee oh Lee, so you really were Lee all along]
[This one genuinely counts as an homage, right]
Neji and his team's instructor, Might Guy, knew how to use nunchaku—but Hanabi hadn't expected Guy to have taught Lee the nunchaku this early.
It seemed the power-boosted Neji really was putting more pressure on Lee than he had in the original work.
Neji, for his part, looked indifferent. He simply settled silently into his opening stance.
"Come."
"Then—here I come!"
Lee closed on Neji in an instant.
"Leaf Whirlwind!"
A single kick—easily blocked by Neji. But Lee followed up at once with the nunchaku, a forward strike chained into a reverse strike.
Gentle Fist didn't fear close-quarters combat. But once Lee had a weapon in hand, the situation began to shift.
The nunchaku came whirling at Neji like a cyclone.
Neji dodged clear, using nimble footwork to close the gap fast.
"Eight Trigrams: Mountain Crusher!"
Neji thrust out a single palm, fast as lightning.
Gentle Fist had the word "gentle" in it, but that didn't mean it lacked power. If anything, it was because it was the "gentle" fist that it could push force to its absolute limit.
Sensing the incoming strike, Lee raised the nunchaku in his hands and blocked Neji's palm firmly in front of him.
The two of them darted back and forth across the exam hall, every movement showcasing their utter mastery of taijutsu.
"So fast…!" Sasuke had to activate his Sharingan just to keep up with the two of them.
This fight didn't rely on eyesight alone—it ran on experience, on stance, on a feel for everything around them.
Both of them knew the other's combat patterns intimately. You attack, I defend, blow for blow—a thrilling thing to watch—and yet neither had taken a single injury.
"This boring probing should just about be over now," Neji said.
Off to the side, Guy wore a gratified expression.
"Neji, hard work can defeat genius too. I will prove it!"
"Youth is meant to erupt! Lee, take that thing off!" Guy bellowed.
"Are you sure?!" Lee lifted his head. "Isn't that something I'm only supposed to do to protect someone precious to me?"
"No problem—I give you permission!"
"Yosh!"
Lee sprang up onto the statue in one bound, then pulled the weights off both his legs.
"So it's that reckless brand of training," Kakashi said, scratching his head.
But he immediately thought of Sasuke and Naruto.
"Wait, no…"
Hanabi had prepared weights for Naruto and Sasuke too.
And the weight of them was honestly terrifying.
"It's just a little extra weight. What good does that do?" Kankuro was standing beside Naruto at that moment, and that one line rubbed Naruto the wrong way.
"Weights aren't as simple as all that!"
Naruto wasn't having it.
He had weights of his own, after all.
"Listen up. A ninja's taijutsu needs chakra to reinforce the body—it isn't pure physical strength. Strengthening the body through so-called weights is nowhere near as good as strengthening it through fine-tuned chakra control… tch, seriously, why am I standing here giving some brat the beginner lecture."
Kankuro turned his head away, displeased.
And at that exact moment he caught sight of Lee's weights hitting the ground.
"BOOM—!"
It was as if two bombs had gone off.
"Ah…" Kankuro's eyes went wide.
"Just a little extra weight, huh…" Naruto sniggered, looking for all the world like a smug little brat.
"Weights like that—no way!" Kankuro froze.
"Why not?" Sasuke chimed in too. "And you said it yourself—chakra control. Because you're carrying weights, your body's mass and the distribution of your center of gravity end up different from normal. At that point you have to keep adjusting with chakra to bring yourself back to your original level. And that's a chakra training method in its own right."
"You say that like the two of you have firsthand experience… wait."
Kankuro looked at Naruto and Sasuke.
—These two couldn't actually be wearing weights too, could they?
With the weights off, Lee's speed rose countless times over.
Even Neji seemed reduced to passive defense.
Lee's attacks came on endlessly, like a rising tide—and yet Neji blocked every last one.
"Neji-nii-san…" Over on her side, seeing Neji forced onto the back foot, Hinata couldn't help but start to worry.
"It's no use, Lee! Even with your speed jumped up that much, you're still no match for me!"
Lee circled Neji, raining down attacks—but to a Neji with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision, it amounted to nothing at all.
Rock Lee's nunchaku spun into motion, tracing line after line of light through the air, while Neji used the power of Hyuga Gentle Fist to unleash a chained sequence of palms, the sound of them splitting air rolling through the whole exam hall like thunder.
Neji looked, to all appearances, like he was on the losing end.
But Hanabi was perfectly calm.
Because Neji's defense against Lee had, up to this point, been nothing but ordinary taijutsu—not his signature techniques.
"Hanabi, Hanabi, is your big brother on the losing end?" Naruto sidled up in front of Hanabi.
"What do you think?" Hanabi shot back.
"Um… Neji's… winning?"
Naruto scratched his head.
"Hm?" Naruto's answer caught Kakashi's attention. "Naruto, what makes you think that?"
"Because, see, Bushy Brow's chakra has been churning the whole time, going pew-pew-pew. But Neji's chakra is like a rock—super solid? So why's Neji on the losing end? I don't get it."
Neji's chakra was rock-steady.
And it was precisely for that reason that Neji's apparent disadvantage on the floor had Naruto so baffled.
"Naruto's chakra sensing has already reached this level? The Nine-Tails? No—could this be the… ?"
Kakashi had formed a certain guess.
"Neji-nii-san." Hanabi called out as well. "You should take yours off too!"
That's right—Neji had weights on as well.