Showing True Skill
It was nine thirty and team seven stood outside of the academy building. Their strategy was to not give too much away about their abilities, but also not shrinking away from a conflict if provoked. Though they would avoid unnecessary fights. Intimidation worked mostly much better than wasting energy before a test. They walked up two floors and found a big group of people trying to get past two other genins that seemed to block the room, trying to keep the competition out.
Naruto signalled the others quickly to ignore the whole thing and walked on.
"Why would they put such a stupid genjutsu on the door?" Sasuke asked. "It was too easy to spot."
"Yeah, I mean, everybody with a bit of common sense should know that room 301 was on the third floor, not the second." Sakura agreed.
"I guess it is the first obstacle in the exams. Noticing the genjutsu. After all, if a ninja can't spot something as obvious as that he doesn't deserve to become chunin." Naruto stated and got nods from his teammates.
They proceeded to the real room 301 and opened the doors. They noticed that a lot of genin had already found their way here and were now trying to intimidate the opposition. Not that it would work on team seven. The killing intent of the other participants was pathetic compared to what they had dealt with in their training.
Over the next half hour more and more teams trickled into the room. Kiba caused a little commotion greeting teams seven and ten loudly. Naruto could only shake his head. Kurenai still didn't manage to calm the boy down. He had thought that after the 'wake-up call mission' that he had performed against the other rookies they would work more on their flaws. Okay, perhaps it was just Kiba. He could sense that Shikamaru was much more serious than before and was observing the competition. Seemingly he had realised what being unprepared and not thinking about every little clue could cost you.
Shino also was aware of his surroundings and Hinata seemed to have grown more confident and determined again. She had got away lightly during the mission and had even managed to escape a trap. Though he had to admit she looked good in tight clothes. Though no spandex like the ones he had put into all the wardrobes in the Hyuga compound that day to force her to wear it to the meeting. That the other Hyugas had to run around in them before they could get new clothes was only an added bonus. It had improved their security measures next to the ones that the Hokage had ordered all clans to set up. Naruto had to grin about that. He liked being allowed to prank some stuck-up people to point out flaws in their security measures. While everything going on in the village had been kept a close secret, the clans didn't like to have flaws pointed out. It damaged their standing.
Concerning Kiba's behaviour, well, at least he wasn't an easy target to take out. An older genin called Kabuto came up and told them to be quieter. He then offered, as a veteran of the exams, to give them a little head up with his ninja info cards which reacted to only his chakra. Naruto's eyes narrowed. Nobody would willingly give up valuable information in a test that was meant to be a competition among all the teams taking the test. Sharing with your teammates, okay, that was normal, but with people he didn't ever meet before, even if they were from the same village? He would have to keep an eye on this Kabuto Yakushi. He knew that he was on the list of suspected spies based on some irregularities in their files. Danzo had said that Kabuto had been recruited by ROOT when he had been younger. But there were some holes in his reports. Those could have been caused by Kabuto simply having to be careful while being deep cover but it could also mean that somebody else had got to him and turned him into a traitor.
Ino took the chance as did Kiba to get more information. Thankfully nobody asked about his information. It would be nice to keep a little surprise for later. He only interfered when the team from Oto attacked Kabuto. No matter how suspicious the guy was, for now he was a Konoha shinobi and that counted higher than shinobi from other villages. So three quick senbons later the Oto Shinobi experienced the same feeling that Sakura and Ino had had the day the genin teams had been announced. Five minutes of being paralyzed.
"I don't know what your sensei taught you, but it is unwise to attack a ninja from another village before the real test for your promotion has even started. Especially when there are many more ninjas from the village of the ninja you attacked. That doesn't show chunin qualities in my eyes." Naruto stated calmly.
Many now looked at him with interest. He simply needed to flare his killing intent a little to make sure they knew not to mess with him. His tactic was intimidation right now. Not searching attention, but using it when he had it anyway to his advantage. Thankfully the attention was soon turned to the front of the room where the proctors had appeared. The Oto genin only unfroze once it was time to draw numbers to determine the seat assignments for the written test that they had to do. The threw Naruto glares but kept quiet.
The proctor Ibiki Morino gave them the rules for this test and Naruto had to hand it to the man, he was good at what he did. His intimidation methods worked really well. Naruto had a look at the questions that needed to be answered and immediately noticed that they were far above genin or chunin level. Probably Sakura and Shikamaru were the only ones capable of answering these questions right now. Which meant that this test had a hidden meaning. Probably information gathering. Well, that was coincidentally just his specialty. That and taking out competition. Naruto produced four already transformed shadow clones seal- and smokeless and set them to work. The easiest way was turning them into flies. One found a planted chunin in the room and watched from the shoulder and dispelled after memorizing the answers.
The other three were doing a bit of sabotage. After all, if you burned or shredded somebody else's test, that team was unable to continue. And retaliation was hard in this setup. So using some basic techniques like the one to start campfires or basic wind manipulation, Naruto disqualified seven teams. It added to the stress level of the others in the room. Ibiki seemed to be strangely pleased. Finally the forty five minutes until the last question was asked were over. And of course they got a new set of rules that increased the massive stress-level again.
Confronted with the choice to take the question and risk staying a genin for the rest of your life if you answered wrong or quitting together with the rest of your team and try again in six months Naruto was surprised how many weak-willed candidates had survived this far. Once one had broken there was a stream of others following behind. Naruto could only shake his head, especially at the foreign candidates. Promotions were handled by each village individually and many ninjas got their promotions in the field. There simply was no way that with an average of eight to ten finalists in each chunin exam the villages could cover their need of qualified soldiers. The exams were just the best opportunity to show off the abilities of the ninjas in a village.
After some, for most, nerve-wracking minutes there were no more that wanted to quit. Naruto had been sure that neither Sasuke nor Sakura would bail out. They were ready and they were the students of the next Hokage. No way that they would quit over something they were sure they could pass. Ibiki tried one last time to get more people to give up, but realized that the rest would take his question. He declared that they had all passed and listed the reasons why the test had been built like it had been. Naruto had to admit it was a good way to filter those of weak determination out. He could also see that Ibiki was keeping a close look on him. Did he figure out that he had been behind the sabotage? Well, no matter, team seven was going into the second round now. Now he only needed to make sure that each of the interesting remaining candidates got a seal that let him listen into their plans. He simply loved fuinjutsu.
Naruto signalled his two teammates that he needed to talk to them before going into the next test. So they used the time they had to get to training ground forty-four to discuss a few things.
"Okay, I think the next part is survival against the other teams. I already sent some disguised shadow clones out to tag the interesting candidates with listening seals. That way we get an advantage." Naruto told them.
"Good thinking, Naruto. So we probably will be able to know the other teams' plans, if they target us directly and if they do we can turn them against our attackers." Sasuke analysed.
"Yes. Now we need to ensure that we can identify each other in case we get separated in a fight. Take these." He said and handed each a small seal tag. "Put them on a part of your body and the seal will connect to your chakra. Best would be a part that can't be seen by any others. So under your sleeve or pants leg is a good place for example. The seal tags are connected and will last two weeks. We will get a tickle if another of the seal tags is close by. This way nobody can pretend to be us in the forest."
"Wow, that's really neat." Sakura said impressed. "Where did you get them?"
"It's a joint work between me and Dark Phoenix that the Hokage ordered. We are sure that they will work, but this is also a test of the range they have. If they are good enough the ANBU will get equipped with them for their missions next. I got permission to test them in the chunin exams as it is the perfect opportunity to see how different chakra signatures around influence the seal." Naruto answered.
"You are working with Dark Phoenix?" Sakura asked surprised.
"Yes, I do. But don't ask me about his identity, I don't know, he is always disguised. But it's nice to work with another seal master." Naruto replied.
"So you were evaluated as a seal master?" Sasuke asked.
"Yes. Jiraiya Sama confirmed my level when he tested me. Sealing is an art that is in my blood as an Uzumaki, but my father also had a huge talent in the area. So it's not that surprising that I took to it like a fish to water during my academy time. I spent a lot of my free time learning fuinjutsu." Naruto confirmed.
Sasuke and Sakura took the information and knew that it was important to keep it a secret. While it would come out sooner or later anyway now that Naruto was revealed as the Yondaime Hokage's son, the longer it was a secret just which level he had, the better it was for missions and the village. They then reached the training ground where a lot of other teams were already assembled. The proctor, Anko Mitarashi, had left an impression after crashing through the window of their test room at the academy. That she wore really revealing clothes did the rest for at least the male participants of the exams.
Once the time for assembling was up Anko started telling them how the second test would work. They would get one of a set of scrolls each and would have to fight for the other one over the time limit of five days in the Forest of Death. Doable. They were all given waivers to sign to free Konoha from the responsibility if any of the participants died, which they would. This was probably the most dangerous part of the exams. The finals were controlled by a refereeing jonin who would step in if things were clear, which would reduce the death toll somewhat. After all, there were many noble guests watching them every time and putting them off their lunch wasn't good for business. Naruto signed his quickly, followed by Sasuke and Sakura. He took the three waivers and got a heaven scroll. He went over to his team and they went to the gate that they had been assigned.
Naruto quickly took out an empty scroll and let Sasuke put a genjutsu on it to make it look like their real scroll. Sakura was given the fake scroll while Naruto sealed the real one into a storage seal on his belt. Nobody would find it there as the ink wasn't visible on the black belt at all. They quickly discussed their strategy with a few hand-signals. When the signal to start the second round came over loudspeaker they jumped into action. Their plan was to find a secure location, listen into the teams that Naruto had put listening seals on and then get as many scrolls as they could. The more scrolls they got the less teams could pass. And this was their chance to prove themselves to their sensei.
Orochimaru didn't know whether to be annoyed or amused. He hadn't managed to find team seven to test Sasuke like he had planned. But what he found were several beaten teams, some dead, some barely alive and some simply knocked out. They all had lost their scrolls and the traces of the fights indicated a vastly superior team taking them out in quick fashion. As the trail of beaten teams was the same as team seven's he could safely assume that Sasuke was more than worthy to get his cursed seal. The interesting part was that each time when a team was beaten many trails left from the position so it made it more difficult to find the real team. If only he could catch the boy. But the team moved incredibly fast for genin. It was difficult to keep following them as he had to avoid using too much of his chakra and alerting the proctors to him. He had infiltrated the exams with a lot of trouble and had only managed to sneak in because one of his hidden entrances was outside the newer barrier. He was sure that he could solve that problem until the planned invasion now that he was aware of it.
It was exciting. It was much more enjoyable than he had thought chunin exams could be for him. It was so much more rewarding to fight worthy prey. Because that was what Sasuke was to him; prey. He wanted Sasuke's body to get his sharingan. But for the boy to come to him, he would need to place the curse seal on him. After all, he was a known traitor to Konoha and without an incentive it would be too far-fetched to get Sasuke to comply. And the information his spy Kabuto had given him on Sasuke told him that Sasuke's ultimate goal was getting revenge for the Uchiha massacre by killing his brother Itachi. Now there was only the problem of finding the boy.
"We are being followed by a Kusa kunoichi." Naruto informed his teammates.
"Why would someone from Kusa try to get to us?" Sakura asked.
"No idea. But something is off. We should distract her and get a good distance between us." Naruto said.
"I agree. How about you make some shadow clones again and let them transform to look like our team? Let her think that we simply employ our normal tactic of spying ahead to find teams to take out and then beating them in a quick fight. Nobody would be able to distinguish them from us at a distance. And once they are all taken out we can be far enough away. Perhaps even at the tower." Sasuke suggested. "I mean, we have now collected about seven scrolls, five of them are heaven scrolls like our own. That means that from the ten scrolls of heaven we have six. That reduces the number of teams that can pass down to five overall. And a little bit of fighting would be nice. After all, our promotions depend on showing off our skills to the proctors."
"Alright. I guess that would be the best course of action. Shadow Clone jutsu." Naruto said and fourteen teams of clones appeared. Two of each team transformed into Sasuke and Sakura and then they took off in different directions.
The original team took a detour to the tower to not tip off their pursuer of the real team. If all went as planned they would be safely at the tower before the Kusa kunoichi could determine which team seven was the real one.
Orochimaru was getting frustrated. He had finally caught up to Sasuke's team and involved them in a fight, only to find out after five minutes of fighting that he had been fooled by shadow clones. All three were clones. But thanks to the clones being really good at dodging and ranged attacks it had taken him too long to realize that. The team was really good. From one point he had seen that they had split into many teams, probably all but one being shadow clones. Sadly you couldn't say which team was a decoy team. So he had followed one that was going in the direction of the tower while sending two earth clones out after two other trails. This was costing too much time. But it still was intriguing how well the clones fought. Just who was the creator of them? Sasuke, the blond boy Naruto or the girl Sakura? He suspected Naruto as he was rumoured to have the biggest chakra reserves in his class, but Kabuto had been unable to procure much information after the Sandaime had tightened security in the village.
And most of his other spies had been caught before. Kabuto had to lie low for a while to not compromise his position and his ability to fulfil his duty in the planned invasion. So the main idea was having Kabuto collect more information during the exams to give to him, but from the looks of it the last information that Kabuto had been able to send out, which had been directly after the confirmation which teams had passed the real genin tests, were massively outdated concerning team seven. He also wondered who had been chosen to succeed his old sensei as Hokage. He didn't think that Jiraiya wanted the job and Tsunade had left the village years ago and didn't want to come back at all. Well, he would find out during the finals. No matter whom the old fool had chosen, he wouldn't be a match for him.
Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura reached the tower having to fight one team that had set up an ambush, getting another earth scroll, and entered. They had only spent about a day in the forest and had surely decimated the competition. Twenty teams had passed the first round; five at most could pass the second one thanks to them collecting so many heaven scrolls. It would be four interesting days in the forest. After all, by limiting the scrolls, they would put other teams under more pressure. And to be honest, the teams that they had taken out weren't anything impressive. An Ame team had tried to fool them with illusionary clones, but Sasuke had easily seen through them and Naruto was completely immune to genjutsu on that level. Sakura had simply dispelled it as genjutsu was one of her strengths. He also had easily sensed where the real ones were hidden underground. By flooding the clearing they were fighting in Naruto had the perfect base to send lightning into the ground, driving the three out for Sasuke and Sakura to knock them out.
An older Konoha team was embarrassingly easy to knock out with a genjutsu by Sakura. They simply fell asleep and team seven took their scroll. Now they found themselves in a room with some kind of poem hanging high on one wall. After deducing that they had to open the heaven and earth scrolls now, they took two and Naruto immediately recognized a summoning array in them. They threw them away and were ready to take on whoever was summoned if that was part of the test as well. Thankfully it turned out to be Kotetsu who was greeting them to tell them that they had passed their test. His face when they handed over two more earth scrolls and five more heaven scrolls was priceless.
"How the hell did you collect so many scrolls in such a short time?" He exclaimed shocked.
"The competition consisted of wimps." Sasuke simply stated getting a nod from Naruto. "It was too easy to take them out. We had perhaps one interesting fight for a scroll among the eight teams we beat. One from Taki had a few interesting techniques. But we still had them beaten in two minutes."
"But the one Kusa team had an interesting collection of poisons with them that I took for studying them. Next to a few weapons I liked." Naruto stated.
"Yes, we would have been here even faster if you and your clones hadn't robbed all teams we came across blind." Sakura commented.
"There is no reason to leave your enemy with anything that you could use much better than them. And dead ninjas have no need for weapons, scrolls and money." Naruto declared. "And there are no rules in this round. I can do whatever I want in the forest."
"I guess you have a point there. Did you by chance come across some medical scrolls?" She admitted.
"Don't know. I haven't had a closer look. If I find one you can have a copy." Naruto agreed.
"Thanks. Studying more about techniques that other village might know could be interesting." She said happily.
Kotetsu sweat-dropped. Kakashi sure had a weird team.
Naruto continued to write down all information that his listening seal gave him. So he overheard the Oto team complaining about being unable to find team seven to kill Sasuke as Orochimaru of all people had ordered them to do. The Kusa kunoichi turned out to be Orochimaru and fought against Anko Mitarashi, the proctor for this round. He immediately sent a clone transformed into a bird to the Hokage to tell him about it so that Anko could get backup. Kabuto was a spy he found out when he met with Orochimaru in a deserted part of the forest and got new instructions. It seemed that they had messed up some plans by taking so many scrolls and reaching the tower early on. Something about a curse seal. He would have to investigate that more. Otherwise there were some intense fights going on. The team of Gai, Kakashi sensei's self-proclaimed eternal rival, had problems finding a heaven scroll. At the moment there were three teams already at the tower. Team eight had trapped another team using Shino's connection to insects, in this case giant leeches, to get an earth scroll. They had come in after the Suna team with Gaara on it that had broken the previous record. So now only two more teams could pass.
So the teams that got a heaven scroll at the beginning would be the ones that most likely made it through if they didn't get caught by stronger teams. Well, he could probably send a group of his clones into the forest again after the round was over. With so many teams being desperate for a scroll there would be heavy fights and many deaths, which again meant that he could collect a lot of useful things afterwards.
Naruto, disguised as Dark Phoenix, stood in the Hokage's office talking about how they could stop Orochimaru's plans. Naruto had been called as he was the village's only seal-master that was currently present. Jiraiya was out to investigate a rumour as Naruto was in the exams. As Naruto wouldn't return to his official residence, which he used to meet with Jiraiya as he had no intention to tell him where he really lived, he didn't trust the man that much, until after the second round there was more than enough time to check with one of his informants. Kakashi, Anko and Ibiki were the other ones present. Naruto had passed on the information that Kabuto was indeed a spy and worked for Orochimaru as well that the Oto team was under his command. It was worrisome, but for the moment they couldn't do anything. Anko had told them that Orochimaru had threatened to attack if they cancelled the chunin exams.
Naruto promised to upgrade the security seals on the village walls immediately after he finished with the second exam. Ibiki would take Kabuto into custody with Kakashi and Gai's help. No matter how good Kabuto might be, against the future Hokage and two high-class jonin he wouldn't have a chance. Naruto also gave them a new seal that he had developed to test after the exams. If it was placed either on the head, the spine or the heart of someone, it would shut down the chakra circulation of said person immediately, which would make everybody it was used on pass out. He had only tested it with Tora so far, as he said with Naruto's help, a comment which only Kakashi and the Hokage understood, he admitted sheepishly.
The other ninjas sweat-dropped at that comment. Though Kakashi could understand it. He had been really sadistic having his team catch that cat so often in the beginning. Nonetheless they agreed to try the seal with Kabuto. They all knew that Dark Phoenix was a genius with seals and if he thought they would work there was a high possibility that they did. And Tora was no normal cat.
"I can also report that Naruto Namikaze's test of the identification seals in the Forest of Death was successful. He contacted me after he and his team reached the tower. They work within a distance of three hundred metres to inform you that an ally is close by and you can tell who it is within twenty metres. I suggest placing those seals on all our ninjas for the finals. Well, the chunin, jonin and ANBU at least. I don't think it would be wise to include all the genin. They aren't trained to retain information under pressure long enough and we can't risk anything of our plans getting out beforehand." Naruto said.
"You are right. I also want those listening seals on all ninjas. That way we can manage to have an idea what is going on in the parts of the village. Orochimaru won't concentrate on one part; he will attack in several places at once." Kakashi said, looking over a map of the village. "The main gate, the southern wall, perhaps from the top of the Hokage Monument, inside the arena and we should look out for underground attacks."
"Can't we use something to inhibit underground movement?" Anko asked.
"We could place special wires underground that would send chakra disrupting waves out. That way no earth user could get into the village undetected, but for this to work the attackers would have had to start their work already. From the outer edge of the barrier to the village's walls there are several kilometres to be covered. No way that that wouldn't have been noticed." Ibiki said.
Naruto nodded, knowing that Danzo would have noticed immediately. His ROOT bases used tunnels like that after all. And he had bugged the tunnels without ROOT knowing. He could listen into what was spoken in the secret base any time he wanted. There was after all no reason to fully trust Danzo. And his listening seals wouldn't be influenced by a standard privacy jutsu. You needed to know which frequency was used to disable them and finding the exact one would take time or a major coincidence.
"So we can safely assume that the attacks will concentrate on areas above the ground. Nonetheless I would like to have the immediate area around the walls protected like Ibiki said. It will prevent attempts to dig under them and bring them down that way." Kakashi pointed out. "We also need to find out how Orochimaru got in with us having the barriers changed already."
"We will set a team to both of that after we take out Kabuto. We can't risk him informing Orochimaru." Ibiki said and got nods.
The Sandaime let Kakashi lead the meeting. He was the next Hokage and this would soon be completely his responsibility. He and Danzo had done their part as far as they could and taken out all spies that they knew about. Jiraiya had changed the way the barrier worked like Naruto had proposed which would warn them of large groups attacking immediately and thanks to Naruto's new invention of flying backpacks they had an eight person strong unit to fend off aerial attacks. The things the boy could do with seals and ingenuity didn't cease to amaze him.
TO BE CONTINUED...