Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Toriko.

GSAMNC

From Exams to Battlefields

Previously on Gourmet Shinobi: A Much Needed Change;

When the dust cleared, Sakura was still on her toes and ready if Shino will just pop out of that dust cloud to strike at her again. But he never did and instead everyone saw that Shino was not moving from the crumbled ground. Genma hurried to check the vitals in case there was another death,

However, "Winner by defeat, Sakura Haruno!" Everyone let loose of a sigh of relief that they didn't know they held on. Thank god there wasn't another defeat after the first one. Sakura left the battlefield after everyone cheered her on, even louder than her Saundo Bazūka. It was a huge step in her career as a real Kunoichi after being the one everyone looked down on the most except for Naruto; Sakura silently thanked the blond for the chance to change her life for the better. But now everyone saw what she can really do, Sakura's life is doomed to be a lot more interesting and dangerous.

"Nice Sakura-chan." Naruto said, "You used very little of what you can do, leaving everyone unaware of your true power. But did you have to use your Sandā Noizu technique? Shino was about to forfeit." Sakura laughed nervously while scratching the back of her neck,

"I guess that I did get carried away. I just wanted to end my first match in the finals to 'go out with a bang'." Sakura said while everyone felt a short sweat-drop; seriously, Sakura was acting more like Naruto the more she remains behind around him.

"Anyways, we need to focus on the upcoming matches. Let's go." Naruto sad and Sakura nodded. The next match was Shikamaru versus Temari and yet it only proved to be a little anticlimactic. Especially when Shikamaru was only seconds from winning, he forfeited instead. And the fact that he had a good reason, no energy to fight anymore, still didn't make the aftermath feel any better.

And so came the match so help the mood recover. It was the next pair that was decided a month ago. The match between Naruto's 'other girlfriend' and one of the three Shinobi from Suna. "Will Hinata Hyuga and Kankuro of Suna please enter the arena?"

XXXXX

Hinata sure was passive and yet ready for her match but Kankuro was not. He hadn't budged from his spot when he was told that he was up. And then looked at the bandage at his back, 'I can't let everyone see what I can do!'

"Proctor, I will too ref-!" Kankuro shouted until he felt a hand around his mouth. He turned, following the arm that was connected to the hand, to see a familiar blonde. And Naruto looked a little pissed off,

"If you dare to forfeit on my girlfriend's match in the finals then you can say that to your brother for not buying enough time for his opponent to finally show up." Naruto spoke in a threatening tone. "How about it? Is there enough man in that cat suit and under the make-up to give up now?"

Kankuro looked to the left, away from Naruto, to see Gaara with a murderous look on his face indeed. As if daring Kankuro to do what the puppet master with paint on his face to forfeit and possibly ruin his brother's match with Sasuke. The very thought sent shiver down his spine. "I didn't think so." Naruto said after waiting a good couple of minutes, "Now get out there!"

Kankuro cried, not only from the threats and glares, but also for feeling like an arrow fired from a bow, right into the sandy grounds of the arena. 'Damm blondes! Why did my sister had to be one? I could have complained instead!' Kankuro thought to himself and dusted off the dirt.

"Both fighters ready?" Hinata nodded and Kankuro mumbled a reply. "Begin!" Genma announced and blurred out of sight like Hayate during the Preliminaries.

"I don't want to fight a girl but I am not a gentleman." Kankuro said, trying to be threatening. "So I am going all out!" Kankuro then took out three scrolls, each with a label in Kanji; they said 'Crow', 'Salamander', and 'Black Ant'.

The one that came out of the Crow scroll resembled a three-eyed, four-armed humanoid with jagged teeth and spiky brown hairstyle protruding from the top of its head and framing the sides. The one from the Salamander scroll truly did resemble a salamander with its shape in a reptile body with four legs, a large mouth showing off its teeth and a simple tail at the back. And the one from the Black Ant scroll has a much longer head than Crow with a bucket-shaped face sporting two sharp red horns and six arms; its facial features include three eyes similar to Crow, with a dark disheveled hairstyle. Its overall body-frame somewhat resembles a large barrel.

"Let's see if you can face off against these three at the same time!" Kankuro shouted but,

"Doku Hō!" Kankuro saw that a large ball of purple poison was heading his way and was about to hit the bundle on his back. And for some reason, Kankuro moved to dodge that instead of moving his puppet to block it. It must be because some of the poison had gotten onto a few spots on the puppets and the wood begun to dissolve!

"Are you trying to kill me?!" Kankuro said but Hinata, with her purple glory, didn't say a word. Just aimed at both him and his three puppets.

"Poizun Raifuru!" Hinata then spun her arm while shooting out smaller but faster bullets of poison that covered a greater range than the Doku Hō technique. And Kankuro's puppets had gotten slightly more poison on themselves.

"Fine then!" Kankuro finally realized that Hinata is not for making jokes and just wants to fight to win. "Go!" Kankuro called out for his Black Ant and Salamander puppet to attack with blades and fire respectably. But when Hinata moved to dodge them both, she found herself in a trap.

The body of the Crow puppet was hidden under the dirt of the arena and caught Hinata herself. And outside, everyone was in awe and fear to see the head and arms of the same puppet, hovering above the body. "Kurohigi Kiki Ippatsu!" Kankuro shouted when everyone saw blades on the stumps of both the arms and the head of the Crow puppet.

Kankuro thought that he had Hinata only to see the wood of his puppet fully dissolve with poison sipping out, like blood from a deep cut. Even the blades were ruined, rusted beyond use. "Sorry about Poizun Dōru-chan, she always falls apart when trapped and pierced like a pin cushion." Kankuro shivered and found himself unable to move when he felt a ghostly hand that stank of boiling venom on his shoulder.

"B-but…but…" Kankuro tried to move but the most he can get out of his mouth was a shutter; he couldn't believe that he was fooled and that he was scared stiff.

"And don't you worry about your poor Black Ant and Salamander, I have took care of them." That same voice made Kankuro try to move his eyes and saw that his remaining puppets were nothing but rotting wood and rusting metal, completely useless. "Now it is your time."

Kankuro suddenly felt like he was in a pile of animal dung with some rotten fish to go with it; the smell was awful. And then he saw something of a terrifying ghost with a pan filled with some kind of sauce boiling above a purple fire. Then the giant, ghostly being removed the pan from the fire and tilt it, drenching Kankuro in the poison.

"Poizun Nabe." That voice spoke eerily calmly about the puppet master being covered from head to toe in lethal and stinky poison. Kankuro couldn't take the smell and pain and passed out. While he believed to be at the mercy of a ghostly giant with a taste for cooking poison, he was actually being covered in venom after being paralyzed by a sneaky Hinata.

And before anything else can happen to the puppet master, Genma appeared. And this time, the proctor had to be extra careful since Kankuro is pretty much covered in poison. Then he cleared his voice, "Winner by disable, Hinata Hyuga!" Everyone cheered for the exciting match while Hinata gladly removed her poison from Kankuro's body.

It will just take a little while longer to get the kinks and the numbness out of Kankuro's system. Still, as the official loser, Kankuro couldn't do much in what is left of the finals. All he could do was hope that this will both spare Kankuro of any possible punishment from Gaara and something about 'a plan into fruition'. But it was all not to be.

XXXXX

As when a fellow moments had passed,

"I am sorry folks!" Genma said from looking at his pocket watch. "Sasuke Uchiha had been given a good half hour and he still hadn't arrived! He is officially disqualified from the Finals and any chance of the promotion is squandered." Predictable as possible, the audience booed at the announcer doing his announcement. "And none of that! Hokage's orders! No more freebies and extensions this time!"

Genma shouted with a little KI that he gained from his area as a high ranking Chunin. The audience just gave up before they lose their voices and their patience. And the same can be said about some of the Shinobi and Genin. Kankuro was especially miffed, he gave up his tactic and fought a poisonous princess to avoid death by his brother, for nothing!

Then again, there was the 'Kazekage' within the Hokage stands that was feeling the burning anger himself. 'What is going on? Gaara was supposed to fight Sasuke which was to end with the distraction!'

"Easy Kazekage-kun, we will have to keep the Exams going despite this development. Your youngest will have someone to fight with, to satisfy his bloodlust." Hiruzen said while successfully hiding his smirk. 'That was a wise move there Naruto. Now we know where he is for sure. You better beware Orochimaru!'

Too bad for a certain snake with a mask and hat on his head, that warning never came to his ears. And the 'Kazekage' then moved as fast a blur and held Hiruzen at the tip of a kunai! This alerted the ANBU and then chaos followed.

The civilians and guests of Konoha all panicked, making the Shinobi's job of maintaining order twice as difficult. And when things looked bleak, feathers started to fall seemingly from the sky. And when the general populace and nobles saw those feathers, they all fell into a deep sleep. The same could be said about most of the Shinobi as well.

"This is the Nehan Shōja no Jutsu!" Kakashi shouted, thanking his strong will and iron-clad mind that he gained through his experience as a Jonin, as that allowed him to endure the powerful illusion technique. "Come one, pull yourself together!" Kakashi tried to get at least the Genin back on their feet as well as some of the stronger willed Chunin; the other Jonin can handle this technique on their own.

"We got it Kakashi." The Cyclops Jonin turned to see a certain blonde or two with most of the Genin, managing to remain unaffected. "Just help the others here in the village, you can handle the numbers. But we just saw Gaara fleeing with his team, they are trying to escape!"

Kakashi eye smiled, "Then you know what to do." Everyone present nodded. They needed to go after the Suna team so they won't get away. "Then do it!" Kakashi said while surprising everyone by defeating a Suna Jonin with just a single stab, while remaining eye-smiling.

XXXXX

"Stop Sasuke!" The last remaining Uchiha groaned and not for the pain rushing around his right shoulder. It was because he tried to get a head start on Gaara, after finding out that his match had been cancelled. And Kakashi actually arrived with him as soon as the invasion started so no one saw Sasuke coming. Too bad, the ambush that he used didn't given him a better chance against Gaara.

"Stay out this Dobe. I have this." Sasuke said, stubbornly, while ignoring that he was losing his steam and that he couldn't feel his right arm. And because of that, Naruto was able to easily knock him out once the Uchiha had turned his back on the blonde.

"No you don't. You lost so it is my turn to fight Gaara." Naruto said, letting Sasuke take a nasty fall for the latter's punishment for pushing himself too far. Seriously, Naruto could get blamed for this by the village for 'letting the precious Uchiha die'. And all Naruto is to the Uchiha is being on the same team.

"And what makes you so sure that you will do any better against me than your prodigious teammate?" Gaara said while trying to catch his breath. The only thing that Gaara was inflicted at all in his 'battle' with Sasuke was simple and slight chakra exhaustion.

"It depends on what you call 'prodigious' about him…" Naruto said and Gaara couldn't help but nod at the cold hard truth. "But I know that you have something that was supposed to be unleashed in the middle of the village. I am making sure that even out here, the Spirt of the Sand won't harm anyone!"

This time, Gaara was wide-eyed. How did Naruto know about his burden, his curse, his prisoner from within? "I don't know where you get all this but you are going to die before you ruin my purpose!" Gaara shouted and sent a couple of waves of sands at the blonde who barely budged from his spot.

"Your purpose?" Gaara turned to see another blonde, on another branch and on another tree. Then the Suna redhead turned to see that it was only a Kage Bunshin that he killed. One that was cleverly placed. "And what does that have to do with this fight during an invasion? Don't tell me that you live for things like these?"

"Silence!" Gaara shouted, controlling slightly more sand that time but felt the same thing when he killed the first Kage Bunshin. "Arrgh! Why aren't you fighting me for real!?"

"It is just my hunting method." Gaara tried to find the latest Naruto but to no avail. "I don't waste my time and risk breaking my neck because my latest prey is an unknown. And what better way than to kill my prey than this?" Gaara was getting angrier by the very word; he was used to be the one that was the predator rather than the prey like back home. But there was no trace of a predator left today in Gaara.

"I don't care! Just fight me! Make me feel alive when I kill you! With that, no one will ever ignore me ever again!" Gaara started to rant like a mad man until his old reflexes came in to block something that he never encountered before.

"Fōku!" Gaara heard Naruto's voice and know that the blonde had somehow gotten behind and was actually pushing him away with his strange technique! "Naifu!" Gaara suddenly felt afraid when his sand shield, both of the them, were easily cut in half; and all he could see from his position, dislodged in a tree trunk, was Naruto with his left arm in a downward posture. And that was before, "Furaingu Fōku!"

Suddenly, Gaara felt some kind of stabbing pain like no other and it also felt like it was something shot out of a cannon. "Furaingu Naifu!" Then came something warm and wet like water that Gaara felt after some intense pain had cut through his torso, clean.

"Blood…?" Gaara finally saw what was trickling down his body and realized whose blood it was. "It is mine! It is my blood! MOTHER HELP ME!" Gaara shouted before he started to change and morph into some kind of creature made from sand. And he looked somewhat like the mythical tanuki creature. "Now I will kill you!"

Gaara, in a somewhat demonic tone, shouted out and tried to move at Naruto. But instead found something preventing him from doing so. And not just the feet, but his arms were bound by something unseen but strong. "I told you, this is how I hunt my prey. And when my prey can't escape, it fights like a corner animal. So this is how I am going to fight you Gaara."

"In that case…" Gaara said, knowing that he couldn't move and can't fight back against Naruto's invisible attacks. "Tanuki Neiri no Jutsu!" Gaara then nodded off, dozing but that was what the redhead had in mind. And this caused his body to be fully consumed in sand and grew in size.

"I am free!" A fully demonic voice was soon heard in the air, scaring off all the birds and any other wild animal from the spot in the forest. But Naruto wasn't even flinching,

"I guess that you are the Sand Spirit, Shukaku." Naruto said, trying to get a good glimpse of the huge creature from on top one of the tallest trees in the forest.

Shukaku is a sandy-brown coloured tanuki, with black markings all over its face, body, and tail. He had a jagged, concave mouth with no tongue, and the sclera of its eyes are black, with yellow irises and pupils that each takes the shape of a black four-pointed star with four black dots around it.

"And you are the one who is trying to kill my container! Are you trying to kill me too!?" Shukaku shouted down. "Never mind, just die!" But when Shukaku tried to land a right strike, he suddenly lost his balance. And the ground looked like it was containing something round, and it was unearthing itself.

"What the hell is this!?" Shukaku shouted as the ground got unearthed to reveal some kind of creature that looked like something out of a kid's picture and brought to life. "What the fuck is that monster!?" Naruto chuckled at how hypocritical this sand spirit can be.

"It is my proxy and the one I asked to help us if something like this ever happened." Naruto said, jumping from his tree branch and onto the creature's head. "Meet my Octomelon."

[Octomelon, Octopus-Watermelon and Mollusk Fruit Beast. Capture Level 265.]

The Octomelon has the basic form of an octopus, but is exceedingly huge, making it easily the size of a small mountain. Being that it is both a beast and a fruit, its skin is striped with the similar pattern of a watermelon's rind. It has eight long and thick striped tentacles, two large eyes and a small tube-shaped mouth. It has a large hollow protrusion on its belly where the mouth usually is on most octopuses. The belly growth also appears to have numerous tiny holes in it that appear to resemble windows and a large hole on its bottom where the beasts can enter through.

"Don't think that a giant watermelon of a freak is going to beat me!" Shukaku shouted but was greeted with chuckling from the blonde.

"Oh I think that my proxy is going to beat a giant sand rat of a freak! GO!" Naruto shouted before the Octomelon shot a blast of some unknown energy that hit Shukaku hard.

"So it's on? So be it!" The giant sand spirit then charged with his powers turning the ground beneath him into desert sands.

End of Chapter 9

*This one took months to get done! It was worse than all the other chapters I remember, struggling to write. I am just glad that I could actually get it done!*

Techniques:

Sandā Noizu – Thunder Noise

Doku Hō – Poison Cannon

Poizun Raifuru – Poison Rifle

Kurohigi Kiki Ippatsu – Black Secret Technique Machine One Shot

Poizun Dōru – Poison Doll

Poizun Nabe – Poison Saucepan (Personally Made)

Nehan Shōja no Jutsu – Temple of Nirvana Technique

Kage Bunshin – Shadow Clone

Fōku – Fork

Naifu – Knife

Furaingu Fōku – Flying Fork

Furaingu Naifu – Flying Knife

Tanuki Neiri no Jutsu – Feigning Sleep Technique