Naruto: The New Sealmaster

Shimura Tetsuo vs Kazuto

Aoshi spared a glance at both contestants as they saw the announcement. Tetsuo seemed completely emotionless, as if he couldn't care less. Kazuto, though. He was brimming with excitement! He knew who Tetsuo was, he knew what he had done. He looked Aoshi straight in the eyes with absolute sincerity and nodded. He would do his utmost to beat Tetsuo, to get him out of the tournament.

Aoshi had to get a final word in though. He knew what kind of person Tetsuo was.

"Remember that nothing is more important than you staying alive."

For a split second he seemed dismayed, but quickly realised it was just Aoshi warning him for his own good. He nodded.

Kazuto took out his bo staff and used it to throw himself over the ledge down to the arena. He landed in a meditative pose, balancing on top of the standing staff with one foot.

What a show-off he is. Aoshi couldn't help but chuckle.

Tetsuo didn't care. He slowly walked down the steps and appeared on the opposite side of the battlegrounds.

"Begin!"

It all happened very quickly. Kazuto barely managed to get down on the ground before Tetsuo had pulled out a katana and burst forward with incredible pace. He most likely used the shunshin since a fraction of a second later he had swiped his sword across Kazuto's neck, completely decapitating his victim.

Everyone was stunned. To think a Konoha genin would act like that in a qualifier to an exam, to another Konoha genin no less. Tetsuo absolutely went in to murder Kazuto. There was no camaraderie, no mercy, nothing of the sort.

Luckily, before anyone managed to exclaim anything, the decapitated body burst into smoke and was replaced with a sliced bit of wood.

"Are you shitting me Tetsuo!? This is just a duel, you sadist prick!"

Kazuto was furious. Had he been a fraction of a second slower then he'd be killed. Tetsuo almost killed his friend, but now he almost killed him as well. There was no holding back in this fight anymore. He raised his staff and pointed it towards Tetsuo, inviting him to try it again.

Tetsuo clicked his tongue and raised his sword. Then he burst forward once again, this time Kazuto faced him head on.

The two were clearly good with weapons, rather evenly matched in that department, but Tetsuo was faster. Kazuto was mainly on defence, but that worked out fine for him. Every strike with the katana was swayed off course by his bo staff. Every now and then he would jump backwards and throw some kunai in Tetsuo's general direction. So far, none of them had hit him. Finally, exhaustion seemed to catch up with Kazuto and Tetsuo sliced his head off once more. This time, most were ready for him to substitute away. Low and behold, a moment later there was a log with plenty of explosion tags attached to it right in front of Tetsuo.

A massive explosion caused dust to cover the grounds and nobody could see what was happening. When the dust cleared, Kazuto was smirking on one side and Tetsuo held his singed arm. Aoshi could clearly see what the next step would be, but it seems Tetsuo had missed it. Kazuto made a simple hand seal and it was only now that Tetsuo looked around him.

All those kunai Kazuto had thrown while defending himself earlier were gathered in the very spot he now stood. And they all had explosion tags on them. And all tags were now lit.

Another explosion, even larger than before, now covered the grounds and all that could be heard was an angry shout from Tetsuo.

The next moment, both sides fired a jutsu towards the other at the same time.

"Fire release: Great fireball jutsu!"

Tetsuo's fireball was, however, about double the size of Kazuto's so he had to run away as quickly as he could. That didn't stop him from getting slightly burnt though, and Tetsuo wasn't finished.

"Fire release: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"

Aoshi recognised that jutsu. It was a technique which required intense control and plenty of power. It was specifically made to not be a wide attack but to reduce a single target into nothing but ash, leaving nothing behind to even recognise that it had been a person. With enough control, the bullet could even follow the target if it tried to dodge.

Kazuto also knew what kind of technique this was and if Aoshi hadn't been his teammate and friend, he knew he would have died right there and then. He slapped his pouch and used two separate storage seals. Dodging wouldn't work. He doubted even the replacement technique would be enough, so he could only use Aoshi's old tactics. One of the seals released an insane amount of mud and the other a slab of rock which was placed as a shield right in front of him.

The dragon struck. The mud was filled with water so it did have a slight effect on the fire bullet but not enough. It soon went dry and stale, and once that happened the bullet flew right through it and hit the slab of rock through the mud.

Since it wasn't a straight hit, the force was evenly distributed over the slab. If not, then it would have burst and Kazuto would have been sliced to pieces by rocks. But the rock was slowly heating up and melting. Kazuto knew that the time was limited and remembered what Aoshi told him. He raised his hand and shouted.

"I forfeit!"

In a fraction of a second, three jounins appeared in front of Kazuto and fired water bullets to counter the fire. Three probably weren't necessary but better safe than sorry. The fire was neutralised and the winner was announced. That wasn't all, though. The third hokage himself stood up to make an announcement.

"Kazuto, you may remain a moment longer."

Everyone looked at him confused, wondering what was up. Nonetheless, they cleared the grounds from weapons, mud and rocks. Finally, Kazuto was alone down in the arena. He was exhausted, burnt and a bit dismayed at his failure, but he bowed deeply to his Hokage.

"In light of this battle, I must say that you have made your mother proud. It seems you have managed every step necessary to carry my name and I will make it so."

Kazuto looked up at Hiruzen with surprise and excitement as Hiruzen threw him a new scroll which he caught with reverence.

"From today on, you will be named Sarutobi Kazuto. A name you inherit from your mother's side, and a name you showed that you deserve to carry. Make us proud, my boy, and rise even higher next time."

Hiruzen wore a gentle grandfatherly smile when he looked down at the new member of his clan. Kazuto met his gaze with absolute adoration.

"We will talk further in my office after the preliminaries are finished, but you should get ready for some tough tutoring sessions by the clan. And get ready to move out of your current accommodations as well."

He bowed down as deep as he could.

"YES HOKAGE-SAMA!"

With that, the surprise of the day was over. Lots of gossip spread around the room as people tried to make sense of what just happened, and why. Why would the hokage do such a thing, in front of the public no less? Many had difficulties wrapping their heads around it but two people couldn't care less as they jumped on their teammate.

"Congratulations Sarutobi-san!"

Aoshi used a fake formal voice for that last bit to joke around but he knew how massive this was for someone like Kazuto. The next fight was between Sakura and Ino but nobody in Aoshi's team could be arsed to watch it since they were just making plans and talking excitedly about what to do now that Kazuto was a Sarutobi. To start with, the scroll he received was clearly a summoning jutsu. He had gotten his own monkey summon! He didn't dare use it until talking to the hokage later, but it was still a topic of excitement in the team. Monkeys made for very strong summons, especially physically.

Ino and Sakura somehow both lost and the next fight was announced. This was once which Aoshi wanted to pay attention to though.

Higurashi Tenten vs Temari of the Desert

He and Temari shared a wide grin and they shared a high five.

"Give her hell! No sand bitch is going to beat our very own Tenten, is she?"

"Damn right! Let's see if what I learned will be useful.."

He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently for a few seconds before pushing her towards the staircase down to the arena.

The two girls were of a similar build, perhaps there were a bit more muscles on Temari. Neither looked to be taijutsu specialists and as soon as the fight started, that became clear. Tenten tentatively threw shuriken and kunai at the other girl who waved them off with a massive fan she had on her back. Temari was obviously a wind specialist, that much was clear when you saw her using that fan so easily. Almost anything you threw at her would be simply blown away, and that was proven to be correct in the next few moves.

Tenten showed off her incredible scrolls with weapons and her excellence in using them but one by one, her attacks were waved off. Finally, Temari seemed to have had enough and blew Tenten away. Although Aoshi trusted his friend to have a plan, it hurt him to see her gliding across the ground scraping her skin on various weapons lying on the ground. Temari just smirked as the dust went down on the other side.

"Time to end this."

And then she blew the largest whirlwind so far which carried Tenten far up in the air but as soon as it was going to scratch her skin, she popped away. It had just been a clone, a basic clone. Not even one with any kind of substance. Another pop was heard and one of the large scrolls Tenten had used earlier transformed into Tenten herself.

"Phew! That was a close one, wasn't it? Now let's try some more explosive options.."

Temari just laughed when she saw Tenten bring out weapons with explosive tags attached. As if those would work any better when she just blew the weapons back before they could explode. As soon as Tenten threw her weapons, Temari smirked and got ready to wave them off. If she waited for them to be activated, she knew that they'd blow up in Tenten's face quite literally instead. Then it happened, the tags sparked and Temari waved her fan with a semi powerful wind technique. One thing she forgot to do, however, was to keep an eye on her opponent. Because Tenten quietly spoke out the very next second.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"

The fireball which flew out of Tenten's mouth wasn't enormous. It was about the size of Temari though. What was interesting, was what happened as the fireball hit the wind wall travelling towards Tenten. It grew. Not just a little, more than double the size. And the intensity increased considerably as well. Temari, who was arrogantly not looking at her opponent, almost missed what was happening but she felt the air grow hotter and reacted on impulse.

The sand bitch made a jump, as powerful as she could, as she saw what was in front of her. That fireball would surely have ended her, at least her career, if she hadn't reacted. And the sad part was that even though she had reacted, she knew it was too late. To her, the fireball travelled in slow motion towards her. She could see clearly the way her own wind had increased the intensity, she could see how the flames danced and finally she could do nothing when the more intense parts of the technique hit her legs.

Temari cried out in pain. Aoshi didn't like seeing others in pain, especially not someone his own age, so he was very happy when her jounin sensei jumped down from the platform to catch her before she reached the ground and hurt her legs even more.

"Winner, Higurashi Tenten!"

The konoha genins cheered exuberantly as Tenten walked back towards the staircase to join them. Temari on the other hand, was taken care of by the medic nins and quickly taken to the emergency room. Perhaps she'd curb that arrogance in the future, Aoshi thought.

But enough thoughts had been spared for a sand kunoichi, his best friend came up the stairs and all he could do was envelop her in a tight hug.

"I knew you could beat her, Ten-chan."

She smiled and leaned into him.

"Couldn't have done it without you, you know? You're the one who taught me that last jutsu."

He chuckled and they let go of each other.

"I didn't teach you to abuse her arrogance though, that was all you."

It was at that moment her team and sensei came running in yelling about YOUTH and talking about how proud they were, aside from Neji of course. That little piece of….That guy was still as cold as always.

Speaking of cold. Aoshi spared a glance over towards the other Sand ninjas. Understandably, considering the team were all siblings, they looked rather furious at him and Tenten. Of course, that Gaara kid looked like he had some underlying issues and judging from the chakra signature Aoshi was sensing from the red-head, the issues were tremendous. He was sure they would try to take their anger out on their next competitor, but luckily some others had their fights first.

Shikamaru faced the sound kunoichi next. The battle was rather interesting. Neither side used particularly strong techniques but Kin's sound based genjutsus were intriguing. The most interesting part was seeing how the Nara speciality worked though. The shadow seemed to be easily controllable. He did wonder what the limits of it was, there was always a limit. Perhaps the chakra amount put in decided it, but more likely it was the size of shadow available. If that was the case, he wondered why the Nara's didn't learn any of the Akimichi techniques to increase their shadow size..then again they seemed to always hang around each other anyway. But concerning the battle, Shikamaru easily triumphed over the kunoichi. He realised how her genjutsu worked and then put her in a shadow bind, only to use it to slam her head into the wall. Well done, Aoshi thought, And his team clearly agreed with him.

The next battle might be more interesting, simply because he had no idea what would happen.

Uzumaki Naruto vs Inuzuka Kiba