AN: Moving right along, Kuraito still hasn't been informed of his kekkai genkai. Hayate is still going to be a proctor for the prelims. And... Eien has a new technique revealed in this chapter. I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, they all belong to Kishimoto-san. Kuraito Eien and his abilities/techniques are mine.
"Open up, Kuraito!." Naruto pleaded, banging on the bathroom door.
"Go use the other one!" Kuraito responded. "This one is going to be heavily fumigated after I get that poisonous milk you tricked me into drinking..."
"But we only have two, and you keep the one in your extension trapped..." Naruto said, a dejected look crossing his face.
"Either man up and face my morning gauntlet, or quit your bitching and wait!" Kuraito yelled through the door. "I'm almost done any *urghk*" There was the sound of vomiting from inside the bathroom. Kuraito stalked out, shirtless and looking more tired than Naruto thought possible.
"Bro, you don't look so good..." Naruto began before having to duck under a powerful kick Kuraito had aimed at his head. Kuraito's leg crashed into the wall, leaving a small hole and multiple lines of cracks.
Kuraito grinned evilly, his eyes shadowed. "Your retribution begins now, Uzumaki." He looked up, his eyes glowing with a maintained chakra surge. "You gave me spoiled food, against my warnings. I believed you when you said it was safe..." Kuraito's chakra became visible at that point, a dark blue laced with pure white, swirling like a vortex around the vengeful youth.
Naruto gulped nervously. "Uh, Eien-otouto, can't we discuss this peacefully?" He seemed to shrink to a miniscule size as he made full eye contact with the icy blue gates into Hell that were known as Kuraito's eyes.
"Nope." Kuraito pulsed his chakra and directed it toward Naruto, forcing him to relive the last two hours from Kuraito's viewpoint. 'Thank you, Anko-imouto.'
As Naruto squirmed on the floor from the torture technique wracking his brain, Kuraito cooked breakfast. He prepared a very large bowl of ramen for his roommate, who was finally recovering from the genjutsu.
"Bastard..." Naruto groaned.
"What's that, baka?" Kuraito said, still preparing breakfast. "You want another trip under?"
Naruto paled and shook his head violently.
"Thought not. Now," Kuraito tossed a large bowl of still hot ramen onto the table. "Eat, before I change my mind." He sat down on the other side of the table, his own bowl in hand. "Don't those chuunin exams start today?"
"Yeah," Naruto said in between bites. "Kakashi-sensei said he was considering signing Team 7 up. What about you?"
"Hayate-sensei is a proctor, but he said that the ojii-san recommended that I be signed up." Kuraito finished his ramen and stretched. "I really don't want to, but I think Asuma-san is signing his genin squad up. I'm not getting upstaged by Shikamaru."
Naruto scratched his head in confusion. "How would Shikamaru show you up? He doesn't do anything."
"Be that as it may, Hayate-sensei is making me do it anyway." Kuraito tossed his bowl into the sink and started strapping on his gear. "Oh, and Naruto?"
"Yeah, Raito?" Naruto said, curious.
"I spiked your bowl, the bathroom should be cleared out by now." Kuraito began to laugh as Naruto sprinted for the bathroom. "We need to be there in six hours, I'll see you at the first test."
"I'm going to destroy you when this is done!" Naruto yelled from his kneeling position.
"Remind me why I agreed to this?" Kuraito said as Anko prodded the interrogation subject again.
"It was either this or buy me dango for a week..." The snake mistress grinned evilly as she prodded a particularly sensitive area on her victim. "Don't even try to deny that you're enjoying this as much as I am."
"Oi, watch where you put those needles." Kuraito pulled a single needle away from the victim's genitals. "I swear, if I wasn't here, you would have castrated this poor bastard several times over."
The captive Oto nin started screaming so loud that the Hokage came down to see what the ruckes was. Five minutes after the man's screams ahd begun, Kuraito was busy chasing Anko's snakes away from their captive.
"What is going on here?" The Sandaime walked in as Kuraito impaled another snake with a large curved knife. "And why is the Eien boy here, Anko?"
"Lost," Kuraito stabbed another snake. "Another bet," He drew a second, identical knife and beheaded two more snakes. "Against Anko-imouto."
"You should probably get to the first part of the exams, Kuraito" He waved the boy off. "And you, Anko, should start cleaning this place up." He stared at Anko until her eyes dropped and her snakes retreated.
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
"Oh, and Anko?" Sarutobi said as he was walking out the door. "Don't kill too many of the candidates this year."
Kuraito wandered Konoha until he came across a recovered Naruto, who was playing with the Hokage's grandson, Konohamaru. He snuck up behind the oblivious blonde and grabbed him around the waist from behind. "Dead in seven ways, baka."
Naruto paled to a near white. "That wasn't very nice, Kuraito." He rubbed his midsection,
"Oh, quit complaining." He looked at Konohamaru, who looked like he was about to fall over from fear. "What's got you looking like Naruto when Teuchi-san closed Ichiraku's for a day." He grabbed Konohamaru's chin and examined him from head to toe. "You don't seem to be injured or damaged.
Konohamaru began screaming and ran. He continued to run intil he slammed into a person in black clothing. Konohamaru fell over and looked up at the person, who he identified as a Suna shinobi.
The Suna nin picked Konohamaru by the collar of his shirt. "Well, what do we have here? Some brat who doesn't know how to look where he's going. I think I'll teach him a lesson."
Kuraito rounded the corner as a blonde Suna kunoichi said "Put him down, Kankuro. We don't need to be causing trouble while we're here."
"Good idea," Kuraito said as he walked towards the Suna shinobi, his hands poised to draw his knives if need be. "Put the kid down."
"Do you have any idea who you're messing with?" The male Suna nin asked, still holding Konohamaru.
"Do I look like I care, Sand-maggot?" Kuraito scowled and looked up, revealing his icy blue eyes. He stared a the other shinobi coldly.
The Suna nin identified as Kankuro visibly paled and released Konohamaru. "Uh, listen, I didn't mean to cause any trouble. We'll just..."
"You coward." A voice from the tree above Kuraito said, a gravelly tone to it.
"Gaara..." the two Suna shinobi paled, both looking lethally frightened.
Naruto finally walked up behind Kuraito. "Is there a problem here? He held an equally cold expression as Kuraito.
"These three were just leaving." Kuraito said, moving Konohamaru to a safer position behind himself. "Either that, or they were about to give me a morning warm-up."
"Um, we'll just be leaving." The kunoichi said.
Kuraito walked in without greeting anyone. He sat down and propped his feet up on the able in front of him. He closed his eyes to slits, watching every person in the room until Naruto barged in. As soon as everyone in the room began disrecting their killer intent towards the hapless blonde, Kuraito released a wave of his own KI, causing several of the other candidates to pass out.
Despite the obvious fear that many of the other male ninja were displaying towards this newcomer who had the KI of a jounin, many of the kunoichi in the room were staring at Kuraito like his fangirls. Ino was in fact trying to push her way to Kuraito's table when the proctor walked in.
As Kuraito felt the presence of a jounin, he opened his eyes again to regard the new occupant of the room. Ibiki Morino stared at Kuraito with what appeared to be a lethal intensity that would put most other jounin into a babbling state of incoherence. Kuraito just waved and put his feet down like Ibiki was nothing more than a teacher at the Academy.
*Flashback*
"AAAAAaaaaggggh..." The subject of the latest interrogation screamed as Anko twisted some of his nerve endings with her chakra.
Kuraito was sitting off to the side, reading "The Art of War", occasionally glancing up to take note of how much blood was on the floor so that he could adjust his position accordingly. He turned the page and was about to begin a new chapter when he felt a paralyzing wave of killer intent roll into the room. He looked up to see a man with a large scar across his face and a bandana-style hitai-ite. The man looked at the Eien boy for a brief moment and looked away towards the prisoner just as quickly.
"Oi, nee-chan, I think your boss is here to take over." Kuraito said, returning to his book to finish the first section regarding enemy manipulation.
"Hey, kid." The man said in Kuraito's direction. "You Anko's follower or something?"
"Nope," Kuraito said, giving the scarred man a bored look. "I'm here to get some entertainment that doesn't involve watching my roommate take out twenty bowls of ramen in a single sitting. Plus," The man began to scream again. "The background noise is somewhat soothing when I get back to my book." He closed the volume, standing. "Why do you ask?"
The man smiled coldly at the prisoner but spoke to Kuraito. "Good," he said. "My name is Ibiki Morino, and I will be your guide into Hell this afternoon. You, boy, will be helping me get some rather important information out of our guest here."
"Will there be blood involved?" Kuraito asked, moving to leave.
"You scared of it or something?" Ibiki asked him.
"No, but last time Anko-nee-chan got carried away, I couldn't get my favorite shirt clean until I blasted it with bleach." Kuraito held out a section of his shirt for Ibiki to see. "This is the same shirt."
"Hahahaha!" Ibiki laughed with a bit of an insane air in the room. "I like you kid. Don't worry, my methods are much more physically clean and do a bit more damage to the mind."
Kuraito saluted Ibiki. "You had me at 'clean', sir." He stowed his book away.
*End Flashback*
As Ibiki explained the rules of the test, Kuraito thought of his experience after having first met the head of the Interrogation Corps. The man may have a lot of field experience, but Kuraito noticed that Ibiki Morino was predictable in his methods of turning a person's natural intincts to survive against themselves.
"The last question will be given in the last ten minutes of the exam." Ibiki finished. "Now, begin."
As the test progressed, Kuraito foiled multiple attempts that the other genin made to extract answers from his paper, as he threw senbon needles just next to the ears of the genin who were foolish enough to get caught.
The ten minute mark neared and Kuraito had already finished his test, while Naruto was nowhere near done: not one answer graced his paper. 'Now for Ibiki-san's little twist.'
"Now for the final question. This question is different from the others in that you may choose to accept it or not." Ibiki said seriously.
"Who cares?" One genin piped up, standing. "Just give us the..."
"Sit down." Ibiki commanded. "This question is different because if you choose to not answer it, you may come back and take the exam again next year. However, if you choose to answer it and get it wrong, you will be barred from any following chuunin exams."
"What?" Almost everyone yelled simultaneously.
"That's not fair! There are people here who have taken the exams more than once and failed, but they came back."
"I wasn't the proctor at those exams. This year you just got unlucky." Ibiki made eye contact with Kuraito at that point, exchanging a knowing glance that lasted less than a fraction of a second.
Several of the genin around Kuraito stared incredulously at the unfazed Eien boy. He stretched and yawned as several people in the room raised their hands in surrender to Ibiki's ploy. Inside, Kuraito was cackling with glee at the sight of more than a dozen genin failing to see through the interrogation specialist's trick. Outside, he was as impassive and cold as the moment he walked into the room.
The stream of people exiting the room ceased after Naruto slammed his hand on the table in front of him, "You think that something like that is gonna scare me away? Well guess again. I'll take your question and I'll get it right!"
"And if you get it wrong, you'll be a genin forever." Ibiki said, looking a bit unnerved by Naruto's newfound courage.
"That doesn't matter! I'll still become Hokage!" Naruto yelled again, giving the rest of the room a surge of bravery to face Ibiki's final question.
Less than half of the original group was left as Ibiki made a final survey of the room. "That's it? Well then..." He paused. "You all pass."
Another chorus of disbelief resounded in the exam room as everyone attempted to process this new information. Kuraito was barely containing his mirth as Ibiki surveyed the room, taking in the shock of his latest victims.
The entertainment was cut short for the two pschology experts as the wall to Ibiki's right exploded. Through the hole, walked Anko, a psychotic grin plastered on her face that sent shivers down everyone's spine but Ibiki, who regarded the Snake Mistress and simply said, "You're early, Anko. You ruined the effect."
