Disclaimer: Hey everybody, I still don't own Naruto.
Chapter 2 Test Time
Naruto was exhausted. Fighting a Hyuuga at taijutsu tends to do that to people, and Hinata was no exception. Kurenai had decided to start the test off with an evaluation of their taijutsu. Much to Naruto's dismay and joy no chakra was allowed. This meant no clones, and no painful chakra laced juuken strikes. Although by the bruises starting to heal on his arms, he would have lost a lot earlier in a real fight.
"Good job Hinata. You have good grace and flexibility. That probably helps a lot with your families juuken." Kurenai's analytical eyes turned to Naruto. After a moments pause to gather her thoughts she said, "You seem to have no style or technique, and by 'seem' I mean you have none at all. Don't let that get you though, I'm sure your talents lie elsewhere and your unpredictable moves almost let you get her a few times." The disappointment in Naruto's eyes almost touched her, but she needed to be brutally honest with him if he wanted to become an elite ninja- let alone survive, so she quickly added, "There is no shame in having a girl be the taijutsu specialist in a squad, especially a Hyuuga." This managed to calm him down.
"Now While you both catch your breath we will test for your elemental affinities." Before she could so much as reach into her bag to get the chakra paper Naruto had started to ask questions.
"Are you going to teach us how to use elements? Or some awesome jonin jutsu? OOH! Maybe some secret team move Hinata and I can do together, like a massive fireball!" As he continued to describe some of the awesome, obviously destructive, and blatantly dangerous techniques he yearned for, Kurenai couldn't help but admire how fast he recovered his breath from a tough spar.
'Is that just who he is or is that a gift from his curse?'
"No, I will not be doing any of those things. Elemental manipulation is very difficult and only taught to genin with amazing predisposition or potential, such as a bloodline. I do encourage you to work on it alone as a meditation if you want. I really want to know what jutsu would work best for you, what type of ninja you each will become, and how you will work together in the future based in all of it. Elements can tell a lot about a person." She continued to search through her bag and give each of them a piece of paper. "Channel your chakra and your element will be obvious."
Hinata and Naruto both channeled chakra into their papers. Through the vantage of byakugan Hinata saw the paper turn her chakra a deeper blue as the paper started to drip water into a growing puddle at her feet. Naruto's turned green as his paper turned into a pile of confetti. "Isn't the paper supposed to just get damp for a water type?" Hinata asked as the puddle continued to grow.
Kurenai could barely hide her surprise, Hinata had the most powerful water affinity she had ever seen, not that it was so common in Konoha or that she had seen any particularly strong water types. "You have a strong water alignment Hinata, it makes sense with your natural grace and style of combat. You even have pretty good wind one Naruto, that's the rarest one in our village."
Naruto was ecstatic, he had the rarest element, he was special. 'You're very special indeed. What would Hinata do if only she knew.' The nagging voice in his head had almost disappeared when he first became friends with Hinata. He just couldn't keep his mind away from dark thoughts when the Kyubi was involved.
Kurenai noticed Naruto's sudden yet subtle shift from joy to melancholy. She decided it was time to continue and keep his attention. "Okay then, here I have some more chakra paper to find out your secondary affinity. It works by feeding growing the trees to not react with a certain element of chakra. Hinata's can't react to water and your's won't react with wind Naruto," she said as she handed them each a new piece of paper.
Hinata saw flashes of blue and green as they used their paper, the same as before only reversed. Naruto's paper was wet while hers had become the thin pieces of confetti. "I guess that you two should work together on wind and water, and I'll help where I can." Kurenai said, impressed at the compatibility the two had. Wind was rare and water was somewhat common, but to have two people with both as their two strongest elements on a team? That was a dream come true, they had great potential together.
"Okay, now that you've had a chance to catch your breath let's see just how good you are with chakra." Before Naruto could get too worked up she added, "Let's see how much you have and how good you're control is." She took out a small device with a small screen and an indentation.
"So we put our finger in the hole and it can tell us how much chakra we have?" Hinata thought out loud. She usually kept her thoughts to herself but around Naruto she loosened up and voiced her observations in case he didn't understand, in this case he hadn't.
"That's right, this is a chakra sensor I borrowed from the academy. The average civilian has a reading of about 10, an academy student has 30 and seasoned genin about 50, most mid-chunin have at least 100, and most jonin have at least 170. I have about 150 which is all I need with my control and being the resident genjutsu specialist." She held the machine out to Hinata, who put her finger inside.
63 came flashing up on the screen. Hinata was surprised that her levels were above many genin older then her. Apparently using juuken fighting all the time had increased her reserves greatly. "Nice job Hinata! That's great." Naruto couldn't help but grin at her success.
Naruto eagerly put his finger into the device to get his number. His number surprised everyone but Hinata who literally saw his reserves on a daily basis.
300 came up on the screen. Kurenai was shocked. The boy who got the lowest scores in his class had more chakra then many jonin. That was not normal, either he really was a complete idiot or the academy was staffed by complete idiots. "Well, that's a pleasant surprise, the machine can only read up to 300, so for all we know you could be higher. Can I see each of you do the leaf holding exercise?"
The two genin bent down to grab a few leaves. Hinata could stick almost a dozen on the skin of her arms at once, again thanks to endless practice with her juuken.
Naruto got two to stick to his hands. That made sense. For younger people with high reserves chakra control was harder. It was easier for Hinata who learned good control at a young age and kept it as she gained larger reserves. Naruto would have to learn good control which would be difficult, but not impossible.
"Okay, Naruto I want you to keep working on this until you can do three leaves on each hand or arm. Hinata you have great control." As Kurenai spoke Hinata couldn't help but blush. Only Naruto had complimented her on anything before.
"Naruto, do you have trouble using or dispelling genjutsu?" She already knew the answer to her question, but wanted to know how viewed the situation.
"Yeah, Hinata tells me that when I try to use small stuff I overload it, like a water balloon being overfilled. And I guess that I'm not very good at dispelling it when I can't use it," he managed chuckle slightly and rub the back of his head as he spoke.
"If you improve your chakra control you won't have those problems. You'd be able to keep from overloading and with so much chakra and halting your own flow for even a second is difficult without good control. You could hit two birds with one stone." She knew that the ability to remove his deficiency would excite him about chakra control.
"G-gomen sensei, I should have realized that earlier." Hinata hung her head in shame. She had failed to really help her friend at all, she should have done more research into the topic, maybe if she hadn't spent so much time studying the two seals.
"There's no reason to apologize Hinata. They don't really teach much about genjutsu at the academy. I'll remedy their mistakes later. I want to see all of your best ninjutsu skills now, even the destructive ones Naruto."
She had just opened the floodgates of mayhem. Before she even finished Naruto had switched places with a log behind him and transformed into a log himself. She addressed the log in front of her, Naruto I didn't say to begin yet. I want to see you use jutsu as well as any other skills you have to see if the two of you can catch me. Seeing as I'm not really here, you might want to start your search." Kurenai let her illusion fade into gentle breeze carrying hundreds of cherry blossoms through the air. From her vantage in the trees, Kurenai got a good look as both logs turned into Naruto. 'I forgot he knew shadow clones, that could make this tricky.' her thoughts were cut short as Hinata threw a kunai into the tree right next to her.
"There she is Naruto!"
Kurenai had been on the run for a few minutes now... not that she was trying to fight back yet. Hinata had some pretty good aim, she probably worked hard on it to get the best advantages out of her bloodline. Naruto was quite annoying with all of his clones though. He would make a dozen more every time he lost sight of her and have them spread out until Hinata could flush her out of hiding or point out her location.
Ironically it was like a fox hunt, only the orange-clad boy that detained the fox played the part of the hounds. In fact the humor of the situation made Kurenai give out a small laugh, alerting the boy of her location yet again. As she cast another illusion to distract them she transformed into a clone of Naruto's, joining the hunt for herself.
'That ought to take them some time, my illusions can even trick Hiashi's byakugan,' she couldn't have been more wrong. Hinata understood Naruto better then anybody else in the village. Within a minute of her transformation Kurenai had been pegged by a blunt kunai in the leg, just enough to dispel her transformation.
Kurenai held up her hands, "Stop. Very good Hinata, how did you know I was a fake clone?"
Hinata pressed her index fingers together, a sign of how nervous she was. With a meek voice she said, "Well I realized that there were more clones then Naruto had made, a-and I spent a little time to see which one acted different. One was carrying itself like a girl, but I wasn't sure so I used a practice kunai just in case."
Kurenai mulled over the results of all of the tests she had given. "I think that you two will make an excellent team. With enough training you could be better then many three-man squads out there. Tomorrow we will begin working on your training as well as your missions. Remember to work on your chakra control and you two should probably read up on element training. You are dismissed for the rest of the day."
The second she had started to say dismissed Naruto had grabbed Hinata's hand and started running off towards town. "Ichiraku Ramen, here we come!"
A.N. I finished another chapter. I wrote most of this the day after I posted the first chapter and decided to wait for a few reviews before posting to see if it was worth it. I may not have gotten reviews yet (which can change) but I got enough people favoriting me, my story, or adding my story to their alerts. I will try to get a chapter out every week or two, or longer as I plan on making my chapters lengthier. Thanks for all those who have read! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns message me or put it in a review.
