Naruto Repurposed

Chapter 12

Chunin Exams II

Anko had all those genin who passed the first stage, follow her to Training Ground 44, also known as the Forest of Death, an immense fenced off training ground that covered 20 km across it in every direction. She described the second stage as a survival exercise that would have a five day time limit for each team to reach the central tower, roughly 10 km from every gate entrance. Each team would be given an Earth or Heaven scroll, and were tasked with presenting both scrolls at the central tower before the time expired to pass onto the third and final stage of the exam.

Many complained about the lack of time to prepare, and were simply laughed at by the purple haired tokubetsu jonin, who had absolutely no sympathy for anyone who didn't come to these exams fully prepared for any eventuality. She passed out release forms as well, for everyone competing to fill out to absolve Konoha of any guilt, as there would be several deaths since anything goes once inside the Forest of Death. There was also a weird encounter where Anko threw a kunai at a boasting Kiba cutting his cheek and getting behind him easily, talking about how the arrogant were usually the first to go, before being "handed" back the kunai by the disgustingly large tongue of a creepy looking Grass kunoichi.

After turning in their release forms, Team 7 was given an Earth scroll which Naruto offered to hide among his many storage scrolls, and they made their way to their assigned gate to wait for the exam to begin. Since there were 22 teams and 44 gates into Training Ground 44, there was an empty gate between each team to help spread everyone out, and therefore they had to wait a good twenty minutes for the chunin proctors to ensure that each team was at their starting point at the opening whistle. Once the whistle sounded and the gates sprung open, Team 7 rushed into the Forest of Death to be met with an eerie silence that muffled any outside noise as they entered a thick forest well known for containing some of the deadliest creatures known.

"How do we want to do this?" asked Naruto as they all entered and found a nearby clearing to get a plan in place before rushing off.

"We should go after that Suna team that is off to our left," spoke Sasuke with an excited gleam in his black eyes, "they didn't look like anything special."

"Sounds good," responded Naruto after Sakura nodded along with her crush, before he paused a moment and spawned a good hundred clones to spread out and start searching the area around them and act as a first line of defence, "my clones will keep a perimeter."

Then the group started heading north west towards where they expected the team on the left to be, while also angling a bit towards the center of the area in case they tried to make a run directly for the tower. After a few minutes, Naruto asked to stop for a quick bathroom break, and when he went behind a tree and out of sight from his teammates spawned another couple hundred clones. He added them to the mix in hopes of getting a better idea of what and who was around them in case they needed to go after another team to find the Heaven scroll, and wanted to make sure he had plenty of clones acting as their perimeter.

It took an hour until they picked up the trail of the team from Suna they were after, as the forest was just that large and the Suna team were heading in the opposite direction from them and moving cautiously. Sasuke didn't want to waste any time planning an assault, and when he realized how close they were, went charging in like an idiot leaving his two teammates to scramble in order to catch up to him. Naruto entered moments after Sasuke arrived, and already the area was scorched by the aftereffects of one of his many fire jutsus, and Sasuke was trying to single handedly fight a pair of larger boys in taijutsu while their female teammate was sending occasional kunai to help protect them.