Chapter two is brought to you by the crappy writing of others pissing me off enough to do something good.
Chapter Two: Really? Really? No One Knows Me?
Marley stood before the Hokage, Senjuu Tsunade, and the famed Toad Sannin with a straight face in respect for the siuation and he set down the duffle bag he was carrying to stand perfectly at attention.
"Do you have any aptitude for chakra manipulation?" Tsunade asked after looking over the blonde young man for a couple minutes.
In response Naruto pulled the equivalent of a stopper off his chakra core and flooded the room with such a high amount of raw chakra that the ANBU assigned to watch over the Hokage fell from the rafters unconscious due to asphyxiation.
Tsunade, breathing a little harder herself, motioned for him to cut it out and he did.
"You've obviously got the capacity, but let's see if you have the skill. Jiraiya, take Marley out to training ground twenty three. I'll see if I can round up some people to suitably test this punk."
As Tsunade stood, Marley frowned and asked, "Um... how will this test work?"
Tsunade said, with a straight face, "Well, I go get the strongest in our village in the fields of hand to hand, ninjustu, and genjutsu, and have them fight against you. If you do well enough, or even win, we give you the shinobi rank we think you deserve."
Marley scratched the back of his head in confusion, "Isn't that a little reckless? I mean, putting someone you just met with a skill set you have no way of knowing up against your strongest in the major fields of shinobi specialty? For one, my set could be different enough that your people wouldn't be able to handle it and come out seriously injured, which would be bad for your mission quota. Two what if I was a spy? I wouldn't even have to win, I'd just have to get your people to draw out their best techniques and save enough energy to run like hell to tell who ever I report to.
So Wouldn't it be safer to just test me like you do your lowest rank ninja and have me gradually climb through the ranks gaining the clout necessary to be a respected ninja instead of some fouled up mock test where if I do well enough I'll be given instant access to village secrets?"
Tsunade, Jiraiya, and the four ANBU who had by this time regained consciousness just stared dumbly at Marley, trying to find out if he was making a valit point or not.
Seeing the rather vapid looks on the faces of his elders Naruto just sighed and said, "Well, let's go to training gound twenty three, Mr, Jiraiya."
Thirty minutes later found Naruto standing in front of a crowd of civilians and shinobi, facing an opponent he recognized quite easily. Uchiha Sasuke.
The young man with black hair wore the easily recognizable vest of a jounin ninja of the leaf.
He had already faced off against the best taijutsu user in the village, Maito Gai, proving to have chuunin level hand to hand skills, but above jounin speed and strength, and the genjutsu specialist, Yuuhi Kurenai, proving to have absolutely no talent in creating illusions though he was perfect for dispelling them with the amount of chakra that flooded from him when he popped the cork on his core.
Now all he had to do was beat the villages ninjutsu specialist, Uchiha Sasuke.
"Um... Why is have the civilian populace watching this match? And for that matter why are all the major clans and their heirs here? Shouldn't they be out doing stuff more important than watching a test match to provide rank?"
"What's the matter? Afraid to be beaten to a pulp infront of a crowd?"
"No, I accept that, as you have been training to be a ninja from ninja since you became a gennin, that I will most likely lose and even expect it against the Sharingan eyes since you'll be able to copy my techniques in an instant, I'm just wondering why the majority of the village populace is here watching this fight when they should be out doing something more important to help keep the funds up."
"You would think that, but truthfully the majority of the village funds come from D-rank missions, that's why it's mostly chuunin and above watching the match. See the high rank missions pay so much because they are usually suicide missions, infact the clients usually only pay half the stated price, because the mission will be fulfilled but the team enacting it dies, so it's not counted as a complete sucess so the client is given back half their money. For anything less than the higher A-rank mission we're actually spending more than we get," Sasuke explained surprisingly amiably.
Now Marly was scratching his head with one hand and asking, "And why the hell did you just explain to a stranger the financial workings of your village? I only asked why the ninja weren't doing something more important. You could have said something like this is a slow time of the year or something and, not yet knowing otherwise, I would have believed you."
"It is beneath the Uchiha clan to lie," Sasuke explained, regaining his arrogant drawl.
"You're a ninja. It is your job to to cheat, kill, and lie."
Ignoring the blonde Sasuke started the match by preparing a fireball technique.
Marley, as he had been since walking into the village, found himself disappointed with the speed of the technique and the execution.
A large fireball that could be seen for miles around at night flew at Marley at a somewhat quick pace. Marley stepped around it, at admittedly uber fast speeds, and with another burst of speed appeared before Sasuke and squeezed his nose.
"Beep beep!"
Marley quickly flipped away before Sasuke could retaliate and landed facing his opponent.
"What the hell was that?"
"Me exploiting a rather large opening in your defenses in a manner that I felt lightened the mood."
"Don't do it again," Sasuke commanded. Marley shrugged noncomitally.
This time Sasuke used an earth technique. Marley dodged again and again squeezed Sasuke's nose.
"Beep beep!"
This time Sasuke jumped back and glared at the blonde, activating his Shanringan.
"Do not Do that!"
Sasuke, trusting his eyes to help keep Marley from doing such a ridiculous thing to him again, charged up his favorite technique, the Chidori.
Marley just grinned.
Sasuke charged at ultra high speeds, aiming for the upper right shoulder so he wouldn't kill the guy.
The Uchiha gaped when, just as he was about to stab the blonde idiot, he disappeared. All his eyes were good for was tracking the chakra trail left be hand.
The chidori sputtered out as his eyes followed the trail as it moved around him in a nearly perfect circle till he was facing forward again, where Marly grabbed his nose and squeezed it.
"Beep beep!"
"God damnit would you stop doing that and use a fucking technique!!" Sasuke shouted, growing as angry as he'd ever been.
Marley just grinned his serene smile and said, "I am using a technique."
"What is it called? What does it do? What are the hand signs?"
"Well, in reverse order, it doesn't have any hand signs, it's more a chakra control technique than anything else, it uses my chakra to exagerate my bodies movements without actually channeling chakra into the muscles wich can damage them. The name actually had a bit of a story behind it, bu for now it's just called Speed Star."
"Why didn't you call out the name of your technique?" Sasuke, forgetting his anger over the nose beeps, demanded.
"Because then you would know a technique was being used and move to counter it. The point in a battle between shinobi is to win, not trade technique names."
Tsunade stepped forward, "Why haven't you used any of your other techniques? this battle was to prove your knowledge in that field."
"Because you don't really need to battle to demonstrate techniques. I thought that you meant I was to show the effectivity of my battle tchniques," Marley was finding more and more disappointment in the judgement of the Greatest Shinobi Village on the mainland.
"Fine, you pass this test now demonstrate your other techniques for us."
Marley noticed that Sasuke still had his Sharingan active and was watching his hands intently. He shrugged and went through the four techniques, besides Speed Star that he knew. Assuming that they would also want the names of the techniques Marley shouted them out as they were accustomed.
"Nani Yarou!?" The first technique had six hand seals and seemed to do nothing until Marley sneezed. Three trees, a squirrel, and two blue jays blew up, and half the audience's female occupants found their bras had dissintegrated. The other half were kunoichi who used rapping that turned into leather bodices after the technique.
The name of his technique was echoed by most of the people observing it.
"Koo-koo-kaBOOM!" Now Marley exaggeratedly gathered some saliva and spit it about thirty yards from himself where it proceeded to expode with more fource than three exploding tags.
"Crack, snapple, pop!" Marley pulled his fist back and hit the ground with everything he had causing a thunderclap. The ground shook and cracked creating a breaking granite sound. The crag seemed to flow over to another tree that then blew up with an exagerated pop.
"Kagebunshin no jutsu!" And finally Marely made seven copies of himself.
"That's all I really know," Marley said scratching the back of his head, "To be truthful my Nani Yarou!? technique is a little unreliable because you can't predict it's activation medium and the collateral damage is never the same."
Tsunade glared at him, "Where did you learn the Shadow Clone?"
Now Marley was sure he'd be spotted for who he was and simply grinned, "Oh about four years ago some guy tricked me into stealing a scroll. While I was waiting for him to meet me I read the scroll and learned the Shadow Clone."
There! He could see him out in the crowd. One man recognized that story. Was that Iruka sensei?
Everyone else just looked clueless and a few seemed to be familiar with the story, but unable to connect the dots.
"Whatever, We'll have your rank and headband for you tomorrow, be at the Hokage tower at noon," With that the busty blonde walked away, the majority of the people following, all except one man.
"Naruto!" He was tackled in a hug by his favorite teacher.
"Hey, Iruka-sensei," He greeted happily staring down at the now shorter man with a brotherly love in his eyes.
"What happened to you, Naruto? Kakashi said in his report that you died of your wounds, walking away into the night so your team mates wouldn't have to see your rotting corpse in the morning."
"And you believed that, Iruka-sensei?"
"Not for a friggin' minute, but no one would listen to a 'lowly chuunin'," Iruka made air quotations.
Naruto was suddenly not disappointed by at least one of the people he used to know and he was glad it was the one he was closest with.
"Well, actually it went like this..." As they walked slowly to Iruka's house, Naruto regaled Iruka with the tale of where he went what it was like there, and the T-shirts they sold. Told him of them calling him Marley. Told him of Izzy.
"Wow, sounds like you got yourself a winner there Naruto. Where is she? I'd like to meet the girl who finally captured my students heart," Iruka said as he opened the door to his house and let Naruto inside.
Naruto grinned widely as he thought of his dark skinned sweet heart, "She'll be here in a couple days and she'll love to meet you too, Iruka. But shouldn't you be going to tell the Hokage about me actually being Naruto and not Marley?"
Iruka just huffed and said, "That lush is probably already asleep on her desk, if she wasn't she'd just say I was hoping it was you and that you were a bastard for taking advantage of my grief," He took an exaggerated thinking pose and a nasaly voice as he said, "Yes, it quite obvious that even though everything about you resembles Naruto in every way, the fact that one man reported you dead without spotting a corpse means that you can not be you no matter how much like you you appear to be," He relaxed his stance, "If the dumb fucks of this village can't get their heads out of their asses and see what's right before them, why should I bother with them when I have better things to do with my time."
Naruto laughed out loud and said, "Yes, I think Izzy will love meeting you."
+--- End Chapter Two---+