AN: Here's the next chapter, and a word of warning (well two words of warning) about the story from this point that unexpectedly occurred due to the fact that I basically let the story write itself:
1. A cannon character will die in this chapter; I didn't plan it that way that's just how the story flowed out onto the keyboard.
2. Jiraiya will be a prejudice asshole in this; that also wasn't intended but just how the story flowed.
Last Time:
"Very well then, since there is an odd number one person will fight twice. If that person wins only one of their matches they will still pass. The first match will be randomly determined and displayed on this board."
A large electronic board rose up behind a stone statue of two hands in the traditional chakra gathering seal. The names of all genin present flashed across the board before landing on…
Now:
"Would all except Uchiha Sasuke and Hyuuga Neji ascend to the balconies while these two fight?" the tauren proctor "asked" in a tone that brooked no argument.
"This will be an interesting match Kakashi-san. Last year's rookie of the year against this year's rookie of the year. Byakugan against Sharingan. However Neji-kun's flames of youth will be enough to win the match for him!" a jounin in green spandex, apparently the Hyuuga's sensei, shouted.
"Hmm, you say something Gai?" Kakashi responded while putting his porn away.
"Curse you and your hip attitude Kakashi!"
"I mean no offense, Gai was it? Anyway, I think that your student is in for something that he won't be prepared to face with Sasuke," Naruto said as the proctor began the match.
"And just what is it that you think that my rival is unprepared to face?" a mini-me of Neji's sensei asked.
Naruto looked at the clone through the corner of his eye and responded, "Someone who even with all of his tenketsu sealed will still be able to fight in addition to will not slow upon having their insides turned to scrambled eggs."
Gai's clone's and Gai's eyes widened upon hearing that while looking at Kakahsi to see if Naruto was bluffing. Kakashi just shook his head to show that Naruto was telling the truth. One thing that they had discovered was that the Plague seemed to work around chakra (which made sense because chakra allowed undead to function without certain body parts, like eyes or a lower jaw) and having training in chakra made the Plague stronger. In this case it simply made Sasuke harder to kill than any other Forsaken minus Zabuza.
Neji was noticing this as every strike towards Sasuke's organs weren't affecting him. It was with immense frustration that he did something that he would never have normally done, he diverted from Jyuuken. Using the little bit of Goken that he knew, Neji delivered a kick to Sasuke's face with enough force to both break his neck and turn it one hundred eighty degrees.
The force was also enough to send Sasuke to the floor, where he decided to play around with his opponent. He acted like the broken neck killed him when in actuality it only made everything look weird.
"He was fated to lose. You may call the match now," Neji said as he started to walk away.
"Hey Sasuke, quit playing dead and kick that asshole's ass!" Naruto shouted down into the arena.
"Naruto-kun, I'm sorry but only one of the Forsaken could have survived that," Gai said, thinking that Naruto wasn't realizing that his teammate was dead.
"I'm well aware of that, Neji didn't kill Sasuke because he's already dead."
"Go and ruin my fun dobe," Sasuke called out as he stood back up to where is face was looking behind him and the back of his duck ass hairstyle was pointing in the same direction as his chest.
Sasuke grabbed the sides of his head and with sounds that are too disturbing to describe turned it around so that he was looking forwards. Obviously, a number of the shinobi were freaked out when an orc rouge near the genin turned to Kakashi and asked, "When did he contract the Plague?"
"On our mission to Wave Country. The client had lied about the difficulty and who was after him. It turns out that the Scourge attempted to gain a foothold there. The tycoon in charge of everything there and all of his forces ate grain that had been infected. Fortunately we had backup and the people of Wave Country decided to fight back. There were a few casualties and Sasuke was bitten by our client who had drunken infected sake. Out of all the forces that the tycoon employed only one became a Forsaken along with Sasuke," Kakashi responded.
Hearing what Kakashi was saying, Neji started to sweat. The Jyuuken was less effective against the Forsaken then it was the living. And even if he did seal away all of Sasuke's tenketsu he would still be able to fight. In addition one orc had asked a question that practically shattered the view of the Jyuuken being enough: if the tenketsu only allowed chakra to be moved out of the body, then what stopped it from being used inside the body? The fact was that no one had really thought about that, or if they did they didn't discuss it.
It was at that point Sasuke activated his own doujutsu, the Sharingan, and charged. Drawing a kunai as he charged, Sasuke flashed through a few one handed hand seals (something that he had been experimenting with ever since he saw Haku do the same thing) and blew out a few fireballs at Neji. Sasuke had a plan to deal with Neji, but he had to be careful with it. One of the advantages of Jyuuken was that each strike used only a little chakra, less than an illusionary bunshin took. Sasuke had to find a way to get Neji to use more chakra. Otherwise the match would go on forever.
As Neji dodged the fireballs with a bit of a flourish to show off, Sasuke reached into a pouch and pulled out a vial with a green fluid in it. At the same time he pulled out a dagger that had been a gift to him around a year ago. Sasuke popped the cork off the vial and jammed the vial into a space in the handle of the dagger before sealing the dagger shut. Drawing another dagger, this one being one that he himself bought off of a troll that was one of the first to come to Konoha, Sasuke charged at Neji with one dagger in each hand. The dagger that had the vial within it started to leak the green fluid in slight amounts while the other glowed flame red and left a trail of fire.
Naruto raised an eyebrow upon recognizing the way that Sasuke was moving.
"Since when did Sasuke get training from a rouge?" Naruto asked out loud.
Hinata chuckled before stating, "You do realize that with Sasuke having training as a rouge makes it so that our team is the least shinobi-like of Konoha. You're more of a mage than a shinobi, I'm more of a shaman than a kunoichi, and Sasuke from the looks of it is half shinobi and half rouge."
"What was in that vial that Uchiha-san placed within his dagger?" the kunoichi on Neji's team asked.
"Odds are some kind of poison, what kind I have no idea. I'm not good with most poisons. Pure magical ones I know a bit about, but none of those have a liquid form," Naruto answered the girl's question.
Sasuke meanwhile, was slashing at Neji with both daggers. Neji knew enough to know that the odds were that the non-glowing and dripping dagger was the more dangerous one and took great care to avoid it over the fire enchanted dagger.
Then Sasuke did something that caught Neji off guard, Sasuke opened his mouth as wide as he could and leaned forward as if to take a bite out of him. Sasuke's plan was for Neji to panic so that he could slash him with his poisoned dagger. Instead Neji did something that no one expected; he started to spin on his heel and with a shout of "KAITEN!" turned into a spinning dome of chakra.
Sasuke was sent flying to the side and in his surprise lost his grip on his daggers which were sent in different directions. Sasuke's surprise didn't last long, and after a moment of examining the still spinning dome, he flashed through a few handseals and let loose with one of his favorite fire jutsus: "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"
Neji had started to slow down, but upon hearing that Sasuke was starting up a jutsu that large sped back up. Then he realized his mistake, the spinning kept the fire out, but also created a tornado within the fireball that increased the heat and thus, started to cook Neji. Sweating profusely, in part due to the heat and in part due to realizing that he was running low on chakra, Neji called out over the roar of the fireball, "I FORFIT!"
Upon hearing that, Sasuke cut off his fireball and retrieved his daggers before heading back up to the balcony with his teammates. Naruto nodded to Sasuke before glancing back at the proctor waiting for the next pair of genin to fight.
"The next match will be between Windrunner-Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura. Would the two come down to the fighting arena," the proctor said in the same tone that made it so that no one would argue with.
Naruto descended to the arena after accepting the good lucks from his teammates. Naruto was not entirely sure what to expect from Sakura. When he had left with Master Lintheion he had a crush on Sakura and therefore didn't feel that he could judge from those memories and he hadn't seen her since the day that the teams were assigned. Considering that her sensei was one that was known as the Genjutsu Mistress, it was a safe assumption that she had plenty of genjutsu to use. That didn't worry Naruto. He may not have the same mental abilities as a priest, but mages as a whole were second only to priests and warlocks at throwing off harmful mental powers used against them.
"Begin," the proctor called out.
Sakura flashed through a few hand seals and whispered the name of her genjutsu under her breath low enough that Naruto couldn't hear it. Naruto smirked and started to charge up a frost spell when he heard something burst out of the ground behind him. Jumping to the side so that he wouldn't lose sight of Sakura, Naruto turned to see an undead pulling itself out of the ground. Naruto's eyes narrowed; this was either a genjutsu or Sakura learned necromancy, and he wasn't willing to risk the second option.
Finishing gathering the energy needed for his spell, Naruto held his hand up and whispered, "Blizzard."
The shards of ice slammed into the numerous undead pulling themselves out of the arena floor. However Naruto's eyes narrowed when he saw more undead pull themselves out of the ground than were destroyed. With a growl, Naruto sent a Frostbolt at Sakura, if this was a genjutsu odds were that in order to be of this magnitude it would be disrupted if Sakura had to break her concentration. When she dodged, Naruto began to think that perhaps it wasn't a genjutsu.
"How did you learn necromancy Sakura?" Naruto asked, to which his only answer was a dark smirk.
Naruto sighed before flying backward as he was tackled. The crowd gasped as the ghoul on Naruto bit down on his shoulder. Unnoticed to anyone, Lintheion chuckled. As the proctor prepared to call the match, Naruto started to laugh.
"Nice trick Sakura. Creating images that had sound, touch, and smell. That would fool almost anyone. Except there was one thing that you weren't able to take into account: I've already felt what the Plague is like!" Naruto called out while standing up, ignoring the now weightless ghoul on him.
"What is Naruto talking about?" Kiba asked in confusion.
"When Master Lintheion and I were in the Ghostlands I was bitten by a ghoul. I then did something that was thought to be impossible, I completely resisted the Plague. All those years ago when the Kyuubi attacked the village he didn't die but was instead sealed into an infant. While I was traveling Kalimdor and Lordaeron Master Lintheion and I discovered that the Kyuubi's 'chakra' was actually the same Rage that warriors of the Horde and Alliance use. The Kyuubi however uses his Rage completely differently than warriors do. Apparently the fox didn't like the thought of his host being undead and somehow burned the Plague out of my system.
"Your mistake Sakura was assuming that the Plague didn't cause the victim to feel anything, and now that I've caught onto your trick, you're going down."
Naruto then formed a cross seal and whispered, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu."
The first time that Naruto used this jutsu he created a sea of blondes. Now he had enough control that he only filled the majority of the arena, which was still a huge improvement. Assuming that they were simple illusionary clones, Sakura glanced around while dismissing the majority of the clones. She tensed her body when all began to charge up the Arcane Missiles spell. Simply thinking that only one was real, she dodged the first batch and, thinking that the rest were illusions, was hit with about fifty missiles. Fortunately for her, Naruto toned down the strength of the missiles so she wasn't killed. Despite that, she would still be in the hospital for several days at the very least, most likely a few weeks.
"Winner: Windrunner-Uzumaki Naruto," the proctor declared as Naruto ascended the stairs and Sakura was taken away by medic-nin and a troll priest.
The names of the screen flashed through names again before stopping on two once again.
"Hyuuga Hinata and Inuzuka Kiba please come down to the field."
Hinata raised an eyebrow at her opponent before shrugging and doing so. Odds were from the way that he was acting he was assuming that because she was a girl he would automatically win. She would have to be cautious about the rifle on his back though, with the way that the younger generation had been infusing with the Horde since their arrival a year ago, it was possible that he had some hunter training.
"This will be a piece of cake Akamaru! Not only is she a girl, but she's a shammie to boot!" Kiba shouted, not noticing the winces in the crowd.
"Begin!" the proctor called out, just before bolts of electricity and fireballs from a totem slammed into Kiba.
Hinata was quite frankly pissed off at Kiba's words, both about her being a girl and his slur on shamans. Had Droga never shown up she probably would have tried to ignore Kiba's words, but some of Droga rubbed off on her. And one thing that everyone who knew her would say about Droga, insult her or shamans in anyway and you had better pray that she killed you fast. Needless to say Kiba was lucky that Hinata left him relatively unharmed. Kiba was unlucky that one of Hinata's fire totems seared his Kiba Jr. nearly beyond recognition.
"Winner: Hyuuga Hinata."
The remaining matches were for the most part, unexciting with the exception of the match between Lee and Gaara.
The match started out with Lee pressing a few spots on his spandex before there was a poof of smoke followed by Lee running at Gaara with what us fantasy geeks call a HFPOM (Huge Fucking Piece Of Metal) in the shape of a two-handed sword with various runes running down the side. Lee then shouted: "Dig agh nagri: Fatofsan Flak! (1)"
The sword then seemed to both burst into flame and emit freezing cold at the same time The two swirled together without mixing just as Lee slammed it into Gaara's shield. To the surprise of everyone from Suna, the blade cut through the shield like butter, causing Gaara to half-panic and move as fast as he could to get out of the way. He was half successful: instead of getting decapitated, he received a long cut along his forehead that began to bleed metaphorical rivers of blood. Gaara, having never been wounded before, paused and wiped at the blood on his forehead and whispered, "What is this sensation? Am I bleeding? My blood, MY BLOOD!"
Lee, recognizing that if this went on he wouldn't have another chance, reversed his swing to bring it back around while Gaara was distracted and confused. Gaara's distraction at the shock of being wounded cost him – his life. Lee's blade once again sliced through the sand like butter and this time Gaara was too distracted as the blade severed his head from his neck.
Lee leapt back and placed the tip of his sword into the ground and kneeled before bowing his head and whispering, "May your soul find peace and glory with the ancestors," before standing up and resealing his sword. The Suna shinobi were in shock. Gaara had been killed? By a genin who according to their information couldn't use chakra? Perhaps they should stay out of Orochimaru's invasion if the greatest weapon of Suna was slain by someone who couldn't even use chakra.
Naruto had been selected to go against Ino, but she forfeited as soon as she saw who her opponent was. Anyone would could survive the bite-transferred Plague wasn't someone who she wanted to fight.
After the final match all those who passed went down to the arena and took a slip of paper out of a helmet to determine who would be facing who:
Naruto vs Shino
Lee vs Temari
Hinata vs Tenten
Sasuke vs Kabuto
Kankuro vs Shikamaru
All of the genin were told that the final matches would begin in four weeks and they were to use that time to train for their opponents. Before leaving, Naruto walked over to Lee and asked, "I'm curious how your sword was able to cut through that sand shield. From my guess it would be enough to stop nearly anything if the shield got in front of it."
Lee gave a slight smile before responding, "The answer involves one word: physics. The cold first freezes the sand before the heat heats it back up melting the sand, but not enough to truly be noticeable. I am also interested in your combining shinobi jutsus and your magecraft. I look forward to us fighting in a month's time."
Naruto returned the nod before he turned away to go. His hearthstone was fully charged but it was considered rude to hearth away in the middle of an arena. Before leaving the arena, Naruto turned and saw Lee talking to a man who looked like an older version of him and an orc in heavy plate armor. Naruto resisted the urge to sweatdrop, was every genin in Konoha getting training from members of the Horde?
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Later that day Naruto was taking a break at the hot springs along with the rest of Team Seven. Naruto and Sasuke were on the men's side while Hinata was on the women's side. Naruto glanced at Sasuke before noticing something on the Forsaken shinobi's shoulder.
"You're rotting," Naruto bluntly stated while pointing to the part of Sasuke's shoulder where there was a patch of skin starting to flake off.
Sasuke looked at the spot and reached up before tearing the flap of skin off, showing the discolored muscle underneath and remarking, "So I am."
"Some of the Forsaken that I've talked to mentioned that once becoming undead they were no longer bothered by the thought of their bodies rotting. Apparently that's true with you as well."
"Yup, the bright side is that once my jaw falls off I won't have fangirls chasing after me anymore."
Naruto dramatically placed a hand on his chest and half-shouted, "Hell must be freezing over, the one and only Uchiha Sasuke made a joke!"
"Hey you two keep it down, I'm trying to research!" an older voice whispered to them from the fence dividing the men and women sides of the hot springs.
Both boys froze and glanced over at the older man who appeared to be looking through a hole in the wall while writing on a notebook. Knowing that their teammate was by now in the hot spring, both of the genin were understandably pissed off. Naruto charged up a small amount of fire mana and sent it to the man's notebook while Sasuke got out and charged at the man. The man glanced at Sasuke before there was a cloud of smoke and a large tongue shot out and slammed into Sasuke, pinning him to the wall of the building where the men changed.
The smoke cleared to show a large toad and the man crying over the ashes of his notebook. The toad said around its tongue, "Jiraiya, there's something funny about the way this boy tastes. Tastes almost like a two month old body."
"Hey Sasuke, I wonder if toad summons can contract The Plague," Naruto remarked with a smirk as he got out of the spring, causing both the man and the toad to freeze while Sasuke adopted an evil grin on his face. Leaning forward, Sasuke opened his mouth wide and swiftly bit down on the tongue holding him in place. The toad shrieked in terror before disappearing back to the summon realm with the old man suddenly appearing next to Sasuke and examining him.
"A little gray-skinned, slightly glowing eyes, muscle showing at one spot, yup you are undead alright," the man declared before wincing as Sasuke's foot met the man's groin.
"Only one person alive summons toads and I have to admit that I'm underwhelmed. Jiraiya of the Sannin bested by a genin, and peaking on women to boot. Normally I would just send you over to the women's side so they could beat the crap out of you. But since our teammate was over there," here Naruto cracked his knuckles and whistling a specific pattern.
Sasuke reached down to Jiraiya's neck and pressed a pressure point that sent the pervert into la-la land. Meanwhile on the women's side Hinata heard Naruto's whistle and recognized the Horde code that translated to: 'Hinata, meet Sasuke and I at the bell training grounds.'
That basically meant for her to meet the boys at the training ground where they tortured Kakashi the day that they became genin. She got out of the hot spring and went into the women's side of the building and got dressed before heading over to the training grounds. When she got there both Naruto and Sasuke were glaring at an old man with long spiky white hair with his feet and hands tied together along with his fingers, indicating that he was a shinobi. In addition there were two scraps of paper on hisarms that were a combination of Horde seals and shinobi seals. The Horde had seals that blocked mages and the like from mana, and by combining those seals with shinobi seals they developed an equivalent for chakra.
"Okay so what did the old man do?" Hinata asked as she walked up to the boys.
"He was peeking on the women in the hot spring," both boys said at the same time, causing a fire to light up in Hinata's eyes.
"So what shall we do with the pervert?" Hinata sweetly asked.
"I'll have you know that I'm not a pervert! I'm a Super Pervert!" Jiraiya proudly declared.
"Interrogation tactic #9?" Naruto calmly asked the other two.
"Which one is that?" Sasuke asked in an eager manner that caused Jiraiya to start to sweat.
"Wasn't that the one that Ibiki guy asked if he could use and called it a stroke of genius?" Hinata sweetly questioned.
"Yup!" Naruto answered before finishing the polymorph spell that he had been charging.
With a poof of smoke Jiraiya was turned into a sheep by the mage/genin before being stuffed into a sack and taken off into the forests surrounding Konoha. Throughout the night people of Konoha could hear the screams of pain of both sheep and man. Ibiki and Anko were weeping at the beauty of the screams; they could tell that anyone subject to whatever the poor soul was being subject to would confess any and all secrets that they knew.
The next day, a severely bruised, burned, frostbitten, electrocuted, cut, and, most of all, pissed Jiraiya was in front of his sensei's desk demanding: "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THOSE KIDS? THEY TORTURED ME LIKE IT WAS SOMETHING THAT THEY DID EVERYDAY! AND WHO TAUGHT THEM THE METHODS THAT THEY USED?"
"Nothing they just hate perverts, they don't, and no one," the Sandiame answered in order of the questions.
"And who developed those jutsu that the blonde and the Hyuuga used? I didn't recognize them and they must not use very much chakra for me to not feel them using it."
The Sandiame's eyes narrowed slightly as he answered, "They weren't jutsus. Naruto is mostly a mage while Hyuuga Hinata is more of a shaman."
"What? How's that possible? There's no way that anyone from the Horde could stand up to a shinobi so why are they learning from them?"
At this point the Sandiame was narrowing his eyes even further at the apparent prejudice of his student and growled out, "Despite the fact that they do not use chakra they are not inferior to us. There are plenty of them that have defeated our shinobi and those of other villages before."
"Bah, the other villages must not have been prepared for them to fight differently and I'm sure that those of our village didn't want them to be totally humiliated. There is no way that even their leaders could stand against you or I if we wanted to get rid of them."
"Jiraiya, for your sake I hope that you snap out of your prejudice soon. Nearly every member of the Horde here not of a shinobi has been to a place where I would die within the first ten yards of entering."
"Oh stop being modest, there isn't any way that any of them could stand against a Konoha shinobi…" Jiraiya paused upon seeing his sensei shaking with rage.
"Get. Out. NOW!" Sarutobi shouted in rage, forcing chakra and killing intent into his voice.
Needless to say Jiraiya got out of there. Sarutobi sighed before glancing up and asking, "How long have you been there?"
The hidden ANBU blinked before Irertne stepped out of the shadows with the closest he could get to a grin (missing a lower jaw remember) as he answered, "I was here before he was. I must say that I expected more from him."
"How many times could you have killed him?"
"Since he walked in…about 58 times in painful ways and at least a hundred in painless ways counting all of my poisons. For claiming to be so good he sure did suck at detection."
"Don't forget that rouges hide in different ways than shinobi are used to looking for. I'm sure that the only reason that I noticed you was because you wanted me to."
"You are right. That prejudice asshole of a student of yours could use some humiliation. Perhaps cutting his belt strap as he's hopping across roofs. No too mundane. Or," at this point Irertne started to mutter to himself, thinking of "pranks" to play on Jiraiya.
"While some of those would be amusing, I didn't ask for your aid for that reason."
"Right sorry, what is it that you need?"
"Orochimaru will probably attack during the finals of the Chuunin Exam. I would like you and a few others that you would be willing to trust with this to try to find any weaknesses in Konoha's fortifications. Upon your completion find someone else that you trust to find ways to fix them and ask for their aid. I will give you permission to improve our defenses in any way that you can."
"Understood. I will start immediately and leave the pervert's punishment for afterwards."
At that point Irertne vanished, causing the Hokage to sigh and the ANBU to look around to try to find out where the rouge went. Sarutobi knew that the ANBU wouldn't find him, rouges were better at sneaking and the like than shinobi were due to the fact that they were more specialized than shinobi. Shinobi were basically a combination of hunters, priests (medic nins anyway), and mages that used a different source of power than all three. The last fact was the reason that shinobi couldn't sense the chakra of the other members of the Horde (it was still hard to think of Konoha as part of the Horde since it was a stronger and closer alliance than any sinobi village had in the past and as the saying goes: old habits die hard), without training the other members of the Horde had almost no chakra. Even civilians had more chakra than Rexxar had. Though part of that may have had something to do with the fact that the people of the Elemental Countries had practically been bred to have larger chakra coils while the other races had never even touched it. They never used it so it had little use. In fact some of the Hyuuga had been surprised to find the occasional orc, blood elf, or tauren without any chakra coils whatsoever. For some reason all trolls and Forsaken had chakra coils but even shinobi who trained to the point that they could sense chakra simply sitting within a civilian's coils couldn't feel it.
The Byakugan told Hyuuga sparring with Forsaken and Trolls what they were for, but even seeing it reacting to the racial stimuli (for Forsaken simply moving and existing, and for trolls their chakra was the source of their regeneration) they couldn't feel the alien chakra. Sarutobi suspected that the reason that shinobi had trouble sensing chakra from the other races of the Horde was because shinobi were used to sensing human chakra and they simply weren't trained to sense the chakra of other races.
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1: "Burn and freeze: Frost Flame" in Orcish, now it isn't like a zanpakto from Bleach those words simply activate the fire and cold enchantments
