Naruto: Ren the Sealmaster

"Good fight." Ren said as Hinata came back from the arena.

"I just wish he would pull the stick out of his ass." With a small, fed-up sigh, Hinata replied before she unceremoniously snuggled into Ren's side.

Ren was about to reply, but his words were halted when the proctor announced the next fight.

"Next match, Sabaku no Temari versus Tenten! Come to the arena, please!"

Ren's eyebrow raised at that. Another canon pairing pretty much confirmed that the picks were, in fact, not random at all. Because if they were, the chances that they would be the same as in the anime were nonexistent.

The upcoming match almost made Ren wince when he considered the matchup.

If there was one thing the Suna War Fan users were known for, it was that thrown projectiles did not work against them. That was a universal truth hard learned throughout several wars. It wasn't a question of skill. Their fighting style and techniques were simply a hard counter against anybody overly reliant on thrown weaponry.

Not to mention, Tenten was a civilian-born ninja. The seventeen-year-old Tenten might be a few years older than her counterpart in canon, and that meant, a slightly more skilled, but she hadn't received that much more training. She was still only a year and a half under her Jonin Instructor. Her skill set was more or less the same as it was in canon.

Temari, on the other hand, was the daughter of the Kazekage. 

The eighteen-year-old Suna girl was heavily trained in her chosen ninja path by some of the best instructors her village could provide. Having three more years of training under these circumstances made a huge amount of difference.

Temari was a genin in name only. That was true even in canon. The girl had dispatched Tayuya, a low-level Jonin, with one attack. Sure, it was done in tandem with her summoned creature, and Temari ambushed Tayuya with a surprise attack, but she still destroyed a significant part of a forest with that one technique. She cut through the thick tree trunks, slicing them like bread, with barely any effort, and that was just a few short months after the Chunin Exams.

The girl had at the very least the firepower of a Jonin back in canon, even if she wasn't on that level just yet.

And her loss against Shikamaru? Well, it's not as if she could have shot her strongest wind attack at him, could she? The Chunin Exams might be a competition where lethal force was allowed, but blatantly killing the heir to the Nara clan would still have caused massive problems.

Ren reckoned Temari got enough political training to understand that simple thing.

Unfortunately for her, the Suna War Fan users were not exactly trained for non-lethal take-downs. They specialized in extremely sharp, wide-area-of-effect wind techniques that absolutely slaughtered their opposition.

Something she definitely could not have used against a lazy-looking bastard like Shikamaru in fear he would be accidentally felled like wheat under a scythe. That left the girl only with low-level concussive blasts of wind. The only time she used anything remotely sharp was when Shikamaru was in hiding behind a tree and thus had only a minuscule chance of being hit by her technique.

And that was fifteen-year-old Temari. A girl with three years less training than the one standing in the arena right now. Ren would not be surprised if the current Temari were a Jonin-level combatant by now.

Unlike civilian ninjas like Tenten, Temari's training was definitely not delayed by the new reforms that had the academy graduation age pushed to sixteen years of age. She had gotten her training regardless. Her father would not have it any other way. She was heavily trained since she was a little kid to represent Suna as one of its kunoichi and showcase its strength. The same could be said about her brothers, though...

Ren glanced at Gaara, and a truly helpless smile appeared on his face.

He would bet that the three years older Gaara was also massively more powerful than his genin canon version. And that brought the realization that the canon events were irrevocably fucked in this timeline. With stronger antagonists, the victory of heroes was no longer a certainty. Ren doubted things would go the same as in canon.

For all he knew, Gaara might just flatten his opposition.

If the boy already knew the Grand Sand Burial Technique, the one he used against Kimimaro... and used it in the middle of Konoha? A shudder went down Ren's spine at that thought.

He couldn't help but give the fired-up Lee a short, pitying look.

In Ren's mind, there was no doubt that Lee would be paired against Gaara if this match-making trend continued. Lee might be Guy's apprentice, but he was also a civilian orphan ninja who could not do genjutsu or ninjutsu.

That's the information that whoever did the match-making would possess.

Gaara, on the other hand, is a sand user who absolutely crushes into bloody chunks anybody who engages him in taijutsu. He was the son of Kazekage, and Konoha needed him and his siblings in the next phase of the Exams. They could not have only Konoha ninjas pass the preliminaries. That would show blatant favoritism and would not be good for Konoha's image.

Thinking from that perspective, was it any wonder that the heavily-trained Kazekage's children were paired with civilian orphan ninjas whose specialties they heavily countered?

The match started, and Tenten predictably opened by throwing several probing kunai at Temari, only for the blond-haired kunoichi to position the metal part of her closed fan in front of her body, blocking the projectiles with contemptuous ease before she tauntingly raised her eyebrow at Tenten, an amused smirk playing on her lips.

Temari opened her mouth, probably to mock Tenten, when one of the blocked kunai behind Temari, still spinning in the air on its way toward the ground, suddenly sharply changed its trajectory and flew at the girl's back, causing her eyes to widen in alarm as her instincts flared.

"What the-!" Temari exclaimed as she barely managed to duck under the knife, instinctively lashing out with her massive war fan and swatting it out of the air on reflex, but not before the kunai managed to slice through one of her hairbands, releasing one of her four ponytails and making her look silly.

Absolutely annoyed as hair fell in her face, Temari was suddenly way more wary of Tenten, causing the naive Konoha kunoichi to grin as if that was a good thing for her.

Ren gently put his hand on Ino's head, calming the surprised girl down when he recognized she was silently getting riled up at Tenten showing her new ability. He was also slightly surprised by Tenten's basic gravity manipulation through the Earth Release. He didn't think she would have gotten to that point with the Training Scroll just yet. But it only showed that his investment in the girl was not misguided. She must have sunk countless hours of training into that skill to be even just this good with it.

"I tweaked the Training Scroll to focus only on attaining gravity manipulation, Ino." Ren fondly admitted, causing Ino to settle down but still sulking, as he watched Tenten in the arena whip two scrolls from her pouch while Temari snarled at her, swiping her hair out of her face before she opened her fan.

Most people who could manipulate gravity were masters at Earth Release because, well, it just made sense to start with basics and work up from there. It's how ninjas were supposed to learn. Start from the basics, learn more advanced stuff as you progress, and get better with your element.

But Ren wanted to try a simple experiment.

Nowhere was it written that a person can't learn an advanced application first. He removed all parts of Earth Release training that didn't pertain to the Earth chakra coating and gravity manipulation from the Training Seal he had given Tenten.

Ren smirked. enjoying the slight widening of Hokage's eyes when six shuriken started to float around Tenten, madly spinning. The old coot recognized what she was doing and how advanced it was.

In Tenten's case, mastering the Earth Release would be redundant. She was not going to use the typical Earth Techniques often. She needed something to enhance her projectiles since that was the whole focus of her fighting skills. In Ren's opinion, imbuing her earth chakra into her weapons and using that to manipulate the gravity affecting them, moving them around however she willed, was what the girl required.

She didn't need to learn how to make soil into mud and then turn it into stone. That would not help her at all with her chosen path. Becoming a master of Earth Release was unnecessary for her.

The reason Ino and the Hokage were surprised was that the number of living people advanced enough with the Earth Release to affect gravity with it could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.

And thanks to Ren's Training Scroll, Tenten now belonged to that very limited circle. Sure, her skills with it were shit for now, but the fact she managed to get there without mastering the Earth element first, made this experiment a very successful one.

Ren could not be more delighted. This proved his Training Scrolls could make history.

Tenten started her attack anew, as a veritable hail of weapons burst from the now-opened sealing scroll, and Tenten started hurling them at Temari with practiced ease. At the same time, all six spinning shuriken took off in different directions, zooming and looping around the walls, floor, and ceiling of the arena, intent on encircling and shredding the Suna kunoichi to shreds with a pincer attack while she was preoccupied with blocking the head-on assault of projectiles.

The sharp and deadly weapons neared Temari, who had impassively stood in the same place since the start of the match, making her snort.

She casually swung her fan with a bored expression, and a blast of heavy wind swept through the arena.

Every weapon in the air, alongside the six spinning shuriken coming at Temari from her blind spots behind her, was repelled, swatted from the air like flies by the concussive force of wind that blew around the Sand kunoichi.

That stopped Tenten short for a moment, her confident grin slipping from her face, as she stared at her opponent in disbelief, her brain trying to comprehend how easily one of her best attacks was countered...

Unfortunately, that momentary, split-second distraction cost Tenten heavily.

Temari was no longer playing around. She was forced to acknowledge that Tenten could pose a danger to her if she was careless. And that meant she could not act arrogantly, giving the Konoha girl the time to freely show off her skills.

Before Tenten managed to get out of her shocked stupor, Temari swung her war fan again, causing a controlled burst of wind to hit Tenten like a truck before the girl could react.

Tenten's feet left the ground, and her body, spinning almost as fast as her shurikens had previously, uncontrollably sailed through the air until she hit the wall behind her with a loud snapping crunch, her body nearly flattening against the wall.

Ren winced at the crunch coming from Tenten's body, recognizing that the girl was going to have an extended stay in the hospital after this. Only breaking of multiple bones could produce a sound like that, and her landing was quite brutal.

In fact, Temari's wind technique was still keeping the body of the already unconscious girl suspended against the wall, pressing into her.

A second passed, and the wind technique finally ran its course, causing Tenten's body to start falling toward the ground when Guy appeared under her, catching her in his arms with a conflicted expression as the proctor called the fight, declaring Temari as the winner.

Guy looked at Temari, who defiantly stared back, slightly surprised when Guy only gave her a silent, unhappy nod of acknowledgement, before disappearing with Tenten in his arms.

Temari's eyebrows furrowed, but then she simply huffed in amusement before she turned around and fastened her fan on her back before she started walking out of the arena with her hands preoccupied with her hair as she started to undo her three remaining ponytails, making her sandy blond hair fall on her shoulders before she quickly bound it in one ponytail.

Ren watched her retreating figure. "That girl is definitely a Jonin-level combatant." He mumbled to Ino, who nodded. He could even feel Hinata's nod on his shoulder.

Temari was no Kakashi or Guy. But the fight was very telling. Despite how easily she lost, Tenten showed chunin-level potential. These spinning shurikens and a hail of thrown weaponry would have gotten even some experienced chunin. It was a quick, omnidirectional attack. These were extremely hard to stop.

Unfortunately for the girl, this shit was rigged, and she was pitted against her natural counter.

"Next match, Yamanaka Ino versus Sakura Haruno!"

The proctor proclaimed, and Ren snorted, putting the previous fight out of his mind. Another important clan heiress against a civilian ninja. Who could have predicted that, right?