Ibiki felt like slamming his head against the wall. Instead, he remained outwardly calm as he gave the speech he'd planned out when he learned that he was going to be an exam proctor this year. When he'd created the rules for this phase of the exam, he had had children aged six and up in mind. He hadn't pictured this happening in a million years...
They hadn't been caught cheating, and they hadn't quit, therefore answering the tenth question correctly at least, so they passed. Of course, the reason they passed had been because they were too young to understand what was going on, but according to the rules of the exam, he couldn't fail them on those grounds.
In the middle of the speech, Mitarashi Anko came flying through the window. Her loud and extremely flashy entrance startled the remaining teams out of the state of mind he'd been carefully cultivating. Continuing after this point now that the mood had been broken would be useless.
Anko turned to the students, apparently prepared to say something intimidating that would have them eating out of her hand. He knew the instant that she had caught sight of Team 7, because she suddenly started laughing her ass off.
After Anko choked out her instructions between fits of laughter, everyone filed out of the room, leaving him behind to gather the exam papers. As expected, those that belonged to the members of Team 7 were covered in a wide variety of scribbles and doodles. He didn't even want to know what the Uchiha had done to their son to make him not only stay on the paper, but draw so neatly as well. The desks surrounding his teammates' exam papers were covered in scribbles in pencil and crayon respectively, and he had a sneaking suspicion that that kid from Iwa had been sharpening Naruto's pencil during the exam just to spite them.
Hinata briefly wondered whether she should have helped Sasuke and his teammates down to Training Ground 44, but decided that since his team had passed the first portion of the Exams, it was the proper thing to do. When she heard the instructions, she was relieved. Nobody in their right mind would allow Team 7 to sign, much less turn in a waiver to get a scroll.
Team 7, unable to go any further, would be safe, and Ko who had escorted her down here would take them home where they belonged now that their little adventure was over.
Sasuke was still having a hard time believing that he had passed the first phase of the Chunin Exams, but here he was waiting for the second phase to start. When he saw how far he'd already come in the guise of a two year-old, he came to the decision then and there that he was going to go forward, and he wasn't going to let his teammates ruin it for him. When the woman who was passing out the waivers came by, he held his hand out and prepared to yell at her until she gave him his team's, but much to his surprise, she gave them to him without any prompting. Making his teammates randomly scribble on their forms while he rather clumsily wrote his name on his had been rather easy. Turning them in however had not been so easy.
They had only gotten their scroll after the crazy lady who gave them the forms said something about bragging rights and how they could retrieve them after half an hour since they would have long since lost their scroll by then. When the proctors had handed him the scroll, he had tried to put it in Sakura's lunch bag since she was the more responsible of his two teammates who each had bags, but because of the sandwich stealing incident, she wouldn't let him anywhere near it. He was forced to put it in Naruto's froggy backpack instead.
It would turn out - in his opinion at least - to be one of the best decisions he ever made.
When it was time, he randomly picked an unoccupied gate, and ushered his teammates towards it, getting bit by the Pink Menace for his troubles. After a nearly interminable wait during which several teams had incredulously stared at them the time finally came and the gates opened. Once inside the forest, he hadn't been able to get his team to go more than a hundred feet no matter what he did, including stealing Sakura's juice and running.
Compared to how the team used to be when they were all twelve, this team sucked ass.
Orochimaru couldn't help but laugh as he watched the little Uchiha child imitate his older counterparts, and eventually bully his teammates into following him into the "Forest of Death". Sasuke was a little mini-adult, just like his father had been at that age. Babysitting little Fugaku had always been something of a trial in patience.
Sakura was...well, Sakura. The civilian born Ninja had the fiery temper that went with her "Will of Fire" that he remembered from when they grew up together. Seeing the girl who'd once used Jiraiya in a game of catch with Tsunade like this was odd to say the least. He'd pretty much lost touch with her by the time they'd become Jounin, and therefore hadn't paid much attention when she'd been de-aged the first time, or the second, or the third for that matter.
The Jinchuriki looked so much like his father, but from all he'd heard and so far witnessed, Naruto was truly his mother's child, bright, brash, and bold to the point of fearlessness. Considering the child's similarities to his mother, he was glad he'd been out of the village while the boy had been growing up and returned only after he'd become a toddler again. He didn't think he'd be able to survive another generation of that family having a crush on him. While most of his former fangirls had been persistent, Kushina had been...something else. He didn't know what he would have done if little Minato hadn't caught her attention and eventually snatched her away from him.
He decided to keep an eye on the three until the proctors came to retrieve them, because it wouldn't do to allow the Uchiha child's eyes to be damaged or destroyed. His plans for Sasuke may have been put on hold for another decade or so, but they weren't completely foiled. The Mist team that had taken the next gate over arrived fifteen minutes after the teams had entered the forest. As they approached, he decided to remain out of sight and observe since he would easily be able to get there in time to kill them before they did any serious damage. As he watched, the leader of the team of Mist Genin confidently ambled over, picked Naruto up and pulled his frog shaped backpack off of him before dropping the small child on the ground. That proved to be a near fatal mistake, as he almost immediately found himself confronted with a very angry red eyed toddler with claws and fangs.
The child shrieked "Mine! Mine! Mine!" and promptly started shredding everything on the Mist Genin that he could reach, flesh and the bottom of the Mist Genin's pack included. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, especially considering how close the toddler's arms were to a certain piece of vital anatomy, the Mist Genin dropped the scroll and Naruto's bag and ran for it. His frightened teammates weren't very far behind.
Team Ten watched as the Mist Ninja ran for it, not even noticing that their scroll had fallen out of their leader's shredded pack along with several other items, and landed next to Naruto who was now rather defensively clutching his frog shaped backpack. Sasuke stood nearby looking rather stunned by what had happened, and Sakura sat nibbling on some carrot sticks she had been keeping in her bag.
Ino and Chouji simultaneously turned to each-other.
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" they said simultaneously.
"Use Naruto to try to take over the world?" Chouji asked.
"What?!" Ino said when she finally processed Chouji's answer.
"Uh, I mean bait?" Chouji said hastily.
"Yeah, bait." Ino confirmed.
"Troublesome." Shikamaru muttered as he joined his teammates in scooping up Team 7, squashing the numerous plans for world domination in which using Naruto would be a viable option that had started forming thanks to Chouji's obsession with Saturday morning cartoons.
Taking over the world would be far too much work, and ruling the world afterward would be far too troublesome for his tastes.
Edited 8-30-12
