Preliminaries Logistics

Introduction Post/Prompt

The Chūnin Exams - Stage 2.5: The Preliminaries
Bruised, battered and exhausted, the trials of the Forest of Death lie just behind you. You now stand beneath the tower at the centre of the zone. It has been five days since the beginnings of the second stage, time enough for many of you to rest but not to fully recover from worse injuries - those who do not stand amongst you now have either failed to reach the objective, or arrived too late and were presumably turned away.

Before the arrayed crowd of Genin is a gathering of senior ninja - primarily the Jōnin that have led your teams this far - with a scattering of masked Anbu operatives about the space. The air about your mentors is a mixture of pride and anxious anticipation, as if to signal that you are not out of danger yet.

The room itself is a large, empty space of stone overseen by a balcony-like walkway and terminating in a large statue of two armoured hands making the symbol of unity. A room like this, so far from any real population, could only have a few purposes - one in particular does not sit well.

For a third time, it is a masked Anbu that arrives to announce the next step of the Exams, walking between the arrayed Genin and Jōnin. His voice is that of an older man - not ancient, but wizened enough to be far past his prime.

"Greetings, all. It is with heavy heart that I must inform you the Hokage herself cannot be here to congratulate you, nor take you through the next stage, as is custom. In her place, I will act as proctor and judge."

A moment of silence as the tension rises. Judge of what? Surely the Tournament would not be so soon - many of you remain injured, tired and depleted.

"What an astounding generation you all make. Compared to what we had expected, over twice the number of you have made it this far. To each and every one of you, I offer my admiration for your efforts. However - there are simply not enough spaces within the Tournament for all of you."

Whispers and worries begin to grip the crowd.

"We have a precaution for events like this. The Preliminary Tournament."

"Unlike the previous stages, this one is rather simple. I would not wish to worry you with any complications so suddenly."

The Anbu points to a large screen behind the statue.

"Each Genin will be paired with another at random. The pairs will engage in one-on-one battle until one side surrenders or otherwise can fight no more. Those who are victorious in their round will go through to the Tournament. Those who are defeated will fail the Exams."

He eyes the Genin carefully as they process the information.

"You are permitted to use any force you believe necessary to disable the other party, but may only utilize your own abilities and equipment you have with you. Outside help - save from that granted by chakra-bonded animals, will immediately disqualify the beneficiary as I see fit."

Worry nearly erupts outright into anger, fear or battle-lust. After all that effort in the Forest, they want you to brawl with each other like warriors.

"I am aware that some of you possess great injuries and other doubts that you can win. If you wish to back away now, you will not be judged for it and will be escorted back to Konoha immediately. Otherwise, I wish you luck."

Explanation

What Are The Preliminaries?

In the original canon of Naruto, any Chūnin Exams that saw too many teams pass the Forest of Death would house a Round 2.5 in the form of a Preliminary Tournament. The Preliminary Tournament consists of randomized 1v1 matches between two Genin - each Genin would usually only have to participate in one match. This ensured that at least half of the candidates were eliminated - even more if draws resulted from simultaneous grievous injury or death.

The rules of the Preliminaries are simple - an all-out brawl until one side is determined no longer able to fight by the Proctor. This could be through a total exhaustion of chakra, unconsciousness, crippling wounds or death. Once the Proctor determines that one side is incapable of fighting, they are eliminated - aggressive action taken before the match begins or after the Proctor makes their announcement of victory is strictly forbidden and results in disqualification. Outside assistance from others also disqualifies the receiver of the assistance, as determined by the Proctor - an exception is made for ninja animals, puppets and other allies deemed 'bonded,' to the user via their abilities. Equipment, regardless of its source, is also permitted in the Preliminaries providing it does not overly channel assistance from others (such as receiving chakra from a chakra receiver, etc.)

In the mycoag, we are also using the Preliminaries as a convenient narrative excuse to eliminate inactive builds. If your build is eliminated during the Preliminaries, that does not mean they are dead, gone, or unable to participate in later stories, but they will not be taking part in the Tournament.

Who's Fighting Who/Who Wins?

General agreement is that any active build will win their fight, meaning either your build will face an inactive build or NPC and win in order to make it to the tournament. Inactive builds, consequentially, will lose to one of the active builds (since we have more active than inactive).

As for who's fighting who, the current order of priority is;

• 1. Any anon writing a fight gets to claim the participants, writing an active build beating an inactive build or NPC
• 2. Any anon(s) calling dibs on a fight that won't get a writeup, this is to allow for some thematic matchups that might be left behind if there's not enough writeanons present/active
• 3. Random allocation

Active/Inactive?

As covered in >>92769412 and >>92829224, you have until 25/05/2024 to respond to the thread explicitly telling us that you are active. If you do not by the deadline you will be considered inactive for the Preliminaries and Tournament (within reason, if nobody writes you losing and you turn up midway through the Preliminaries we can obviously make accomodations). This is to make sure that non confusion occurs from the brackets and means writeanons do not need to worry about keeping up with the thread to finish their written fights.

At present the activity of Jonin characters has no effect on the Preliminary/Tournament brackets. Though you are still free to write anything involving the Genin, other Jonin, SoL and other things involving the Jonin builds, it is not currently necessary to declare them as active or inactive.

Claimed Fights

Active/Inactive Build Lists

Active

Active But Eliminated

Inactive