The explosion suffices to knock them out of their attack.

The one on the left poofs into a whimpering Akamaru, slightly singed.

He'll close with Kiba, then, aiming to go for limb-disabling slashes.

Kiba pulls out a pair of brass knuckles and they scrap for a bit, but with Akamaru down his heart doesn't seem to be in it anymore.

Naruto is very durable so probably wins out on any test of endurance.

"Feel like surrendering?" he asks after he's dealt Kiba a few more blows, more seriously, than Kiba's dealt him.

"Aagh!" Kiba dances back and makes a noise of frustration. "...Fine. I give."

"It was a good fight, though!"

"...Yeah." Seal of reconciliation?

Seal of reconciliation!

Hinata quietly offers Naruto a jar of salve for his bruises.

Next up is Rock Lee and one of the Hidden Rain shinobi. Lee dances agilely through the hail of needles they summon from their umbrella to close and put his devastating taijutsu to good use.

Naruto smiles, thanks Hinata, and says he hopes Kiba and Akamaru heal well.

Lee is really good at taijutsu, Naruto got lucky going against Kiba...

Hinata blushes fiercely.

After Lee's match, Elieyha and one of the two left from Kabuto's squad are called. He displays an uncanny ability to bend and twist his body, but it doesn't help him escape the grip of the sand she controls without moving a muscle. She stands dispassionate in the center of the floor as he is molded into new and unfortunate shapes like some kind of putty. When victory is called, she drops his remains on the floor and walks off, the smallest uptilt visible on the edge of her mouth.

What the fuck, she didn't need to do that - 

He doesn't even have time to tease Naruto about being oblivious to Hinata's crush before he's flipping straight to deeply unhappy.

The Sand's jinchuuriki is as callous as reported.

There's a brief pause while the floor is cleared for the next match, which will be Shikamaru and one of the Waterfall kunoichi.

Shikamaru's one of the odder ones. Smart, but puts in a suspiciously accurate bare minimum of effort. Not very powerful, most likely.

Shikamaru complains about having to fight a girl. Ino smacks him and he mumbles an apology. He ambles down to the floor Kakashi-style.

His opponent prefers to stay at range and fights with water jutsu. Shikamaru dodges and muddies up the water left over on the floor until she scoops it up for a technique, then uses the shadow it casts to lengthen his own and force her to surrender with Shadow Possession.

Well that was... Kind of boring, but he can see the threads of what Shikamaru was doing... Much better than Naruto at just using his environment plus a limited selection of techniques and turning his opponent's techniques against them, Naruto needs to work on that...

Also yeah girls: no less terrifying than guys; Shikamaru's sometimes weirdly stupid for such a smart guy.

Next is Kankuro and a shinobi from Rain. They both use poisoned weapons, but Kankuro is able to take the win by having disguised himself as his puppet and ambushing the other when they thought they had won.

After that is Sugira and the other remaining member of Kabuto's team.

He'll have to keep the puppet trick in mind, though he doubts the boy will use the same thing in the finals as he did in the preliminaries.

He steps into the arena. (He's hoping to keep this to his sword, and not reveal any of his spells...)

His opponent, Yoroi, doesn't speak, but immediately drops into a fighting stance with a chakra aura crackling around his hand.

Sugira's fine not talking.

He rests his hand on his sword-hilt, and raises an eyebrow at his opponent. He's not going to be the one to close, here, and he suspects his opponent needs to be in melee.

Which, of course, means Sugira's safest bet is sticking to ranged attacks. Mild ugh, but not too bad - and having a sword gives him a massive advantage if his opponent does manage to close.

He murmurs the incantation for Expedited Retreat, having memorized it stilled though he still hasn't figured out silented, and then opens with throwing a set of shuriken - mostly to test his opponent's reaction time - then immediately going on the move, circling around. He's faster than most genin who aren't speed specialists, even before doubling his base speed...

Yoroi's reaction time is pretty good, but he's a bit slower than Sasuke. This frustrates him.

Sugira has no particular problem zooming around and throwing lots of weapons, though he only has so many on him, not possessing space folding powers yet. He'll keep up the running around and raining down pointy hell in assorted creative patterns until he runs low or Yoroi seems tired, then pretend to be getting tired himself and slow down.

Yoroi seems like he has the stamina to keep dodging and trying to intercept Sugira until he runs out of weapons.