Needless to say, SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN FULL EFFECT.
I'll kick this one off with a Crowning Moment of Awesome from Team 8, by S'tar'kan. The moment I'm referring to is Naruto's battle with Neji in the Chuunin Exams. While Hiashi comes across as more of a prick than he does in canon in this fic, Neji is as much of an ass as he's ever been. But Hinata is more than just a background character in Team 8, as Naruto being placed on her team instead of Team 7 elevates her to the roll of main character and gets her a buttload of slow-but-steady character development. By the time she's reached the Chuunin Exams she's taken a few levels in Badass by training with Naruto (who in turn is training with Might Guy and Rock Lee), but she still gets the worst matchup possible by pairing her against Neji. Her somewhat less-inevitable beatdown is nearly ended by a fatal blow, which prompts Shino of all people to do this:
Shino watched the rest of his team leave. While he might have preferred to follow them, it would serve no logical purpose. Also, there were still several shinobi present in the room that possessed unknown capabilities. He could best serve his team by staying and making careful observations. He had qualified for the next round, and he had little doubt that Naruto would as well, so any information he might glean could prove vital.
But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Maito Gai had removed Hyuuga Neji from the room, which was fortunate. There were several individuals present that did not appreciate his actions, and candor required that he admit he was one of them. It would not do for them to begin the next set of matches before the preliminaries concluded, as he doubted that such eagerness would be appreciated by the examiners.
Glancing around, he noticed that both Rock Lee and Tenten were staring at him. Looking down, he realized that there was a fine spray of aspirated blood across the front of his jacket. Hinata’s blood. He looked back up.
“What variety of flowers would be appropriate?” he asked in the calmest, most matter-of-fact tone of voice he could muster.
“What?” Tenten asked, rubbing a bruise on the side of her head that she’d sustained in her loss to Temari. To their credit, both of them appeared upset with the outcome of the last match, but Shino still had a point to make.
“For your team mate’s funeral,” he clarified.
Lee paled.
And this pales in comparison to the actual battle. It's one thing for Naruto to battle against someone who believes he'll never amount to anything and prove him wrong, but it's completely different when Naruto just wants to beat the ever-loving tar out of him for nearly killing Hinata. Now it's personal, and S'tar'kan makes it that way by having Naruto utterly humiliate Neji by beating the Hyuuga genius in a taijutsu match using the skills honed from countless hours of sparring with Lee and Gai. The result is an Oh Crap moment from Neji when Naruto blows open his closed tenketsu points with a chakra pulse and proceeds to beat him like a drum.
“Is that what you think?” Naruto gasped out as he painfully climbed to his feet.
He was rewarded with the barest flicker of doubt within the white eyes of the Hyuuga genius. “Don’t you realize this is futile?” Neji asked. “You’re just going to get hurt worse if you continue.”
“Do you think I can just walk away from this after what you did?” Naruto demanded.
“After what I did?” Neji shot back. “Do you know what they did to me?” Neji’s normally restrained voice grew rough with uncontrolled emotion. He swiped the mud from his forehead. “This seal controls my fate, just as it did my father’s. He died in place of the clan leader to keep the peace with Kumo.”
“I know about that,” Naruto replied, narrowing his eyes. “Hinata’s father killed the man who kidnapped her, but is it her fault that happened? Maybe her father should have disabled him instead of killing him. Maybe it would have been better if we went to war with Kumo if they are going to do things like that. But the only thing Hinata has to do with your father or your seal is being born.”
Naruto straightened and took a deep breath. “But you refuse to see the truth of that. So I’m going to have to beat it into you.” He let out a harsh cry as he surged his chakra.
Uzumaki Naruto was used to re-opening his tenketsu. Doing that was a normal consequence of sparring with Hinata. But he’d never had to open all of them at once. In doing this, he discovered two things.
One, it hurt like hell. Normally, he was used to a small twinge in his chakra coils from the back pressure. This felt more like someone rammed a utility pole through them.
The second was that pushing out that much chakra all at once, when it was suddenly released by the points opening, was pretty noticeable. Hayate, who’d been edging closer, obviously wondering if he needed to stop the fight, was bowled over. Neji, who was standing a lot closer, went airborne.
Of course, the Hyuuga managed to control his descent, landing lightly on his feet. But when he turned to face Naruto, his expression was clearly shocked. “That’s impossible,” he whispered. Fortunately, Naruto could read lips.
“Just as impossible as fighting against fate,” Naruto said as he closed in again, “Just as impossible as fighting a Jyuuken user hand to hand.”
This has to be one of the most satisfying and entertaining chapters in any fanfic I've ever read.
Well? Who's next?