Flash of Red and Black

Chapter VII

It was much more fun to look for cheaters than it was to take the crazy-hard test. I had a henge as I sat there on the side of the room, of course, so no one in the room knew who I really was. So that only added to the entertainment of staring the genin down.

Since the proctors were all the same for the first Chuunin Exam during my time as Hokage as they were during my own Chuunin Exam, I decided to sit in on it, but with a different point of view this time. That was one nice thing about having a rotating set of proctors. There was always a chance that you could sit in on the exact same series of tests but in a different way. Of course, not everyone could since the same group would only rotate in to proctor a test a few times, so if you took the test with one set of proctors, but it was the last time they were proctoring a test, you wouldn't be able to join into the same test with a different role. Still, I got lucky and was able to stare down a row of nervous genin while mentally chuckling the whole time. After twenty minutes, I finally managed to catch one poor kid from Kusa enough times to kick him and his team out. Still there were at least double the number of teams participating this time than there were when I took the exam, so even if we failed over half of them, there would be even more chuunin hopefuls left at the end of the first exam than there were when I participated.

After another half hour, with two-thirds of the teams left, Ibiki started the last question. Half of the room opted out of the final question, so by the time Anko came busting in, there was still one third of the original group left, which was much more than what was left after my first round.

I joined all the other shinobi in picking up the tests, but once the last of the genin had left, I let go of my henge, surprising everyone left in the room.

"Nice job on the first test, Ibiki! I don't care what anyone says, you have not lost your touch. I would have been freaking out just as much as last time," I said, grinning at him as I handed him the papers I'd collected. He laughed a bit and accepted them before I disappeared and reappeared at the site for the training school.

"Ino! It's looking pretty good!" I called as I walked over to her. Everyone was apparently taking a break from building, but it was looking more and more like a proper building every day.

"Hey, Naruto! Thanks. How are the genin looking? Anyone promising?" she asked. I may not have told the proctors that I would be sitting in on the test, but I did mention it to my friends since I knew they'd be curious. (And everyone knew that Ino would be the fastest way to spread information aside from sending out ANBU, so I just left it to her to spread the knowledge to everyone else.)

"Too early to tell yet, but there were more left this time than back when we took it. Then again, there were over twice as many teams from the start too. And Ibiki is just as scary as ever."

"What about Konohamaru's team? Did they make it through?"

"Of course! Who do you think they are?" I said, grinning. They'd hardly even flinched at Ibiki's threats which made me pretty proud of the group.

"Anyway, is there anything that I can help out with here? It'll be at least another few days before anyone shows up after getting through the newly re-created Forest of Death, so I've got plenty of time to help out here."

"Alright. We'll all get back to work then. You can help with the heavy-lifting," she said, smiling at me. I nodded, making about thirty clones, and we all got to work doing anything that Ino instructed and helping out the others where possible. But I and my clones left the greenhouse work to the medic-nin. I didn't know much about the herbs, and I didn't want to get a crash-course by accidently smelling something poisonous, 'tebayo.

After a few hours, I hopped down from the roof and went up to Ino.

"Well, I've got a few stacks of paperwork left to do in my office, so I'd better get back to it. Use my clones as much as you need, though. These will last another couple days, so feel free to work them through the night too. The sooner this is all done, the better," I said, giving a smile before disappearing to my office to start on paperwork. After another hour or so, though, a knock came from my door. I called for them to come in, and I recognized the woman as the head of the intelligence department.

"Hokage-sama, we have finished translating the documents that you brought us last week. It was a code that we hadn't encountered before so it took us a while, but these are the results," she said, handing me several scrolls. I called an ANBU to send for Shikamaru again before I turned back to the serious woman in front of me.

"Well, do you have any opinions on the contents?" I asked as I began to examine the first scroll.

"The first few scrolls appear to be thorough observations and data on Orochimaru's experiments during his time in Konoha, and the others seem to be information of the same kind on similar experiments after he left. Some of the names may jump out at you, sir. In the later scrolls, there's mention of using the Shodaime's DNA and Uchiha Sharingan to recreate certain ocular jutsu."

I hid my surprise and nodded before dismissing her just as Shikamaru walked in. Once the door closed behind her, I turned to him.

"Please tell me you heard that."

"Just a bit, but it sounds like these scrolls have information on Danzo and his dealings with Orochimaru, maybe even after Orochimaru left the village."

I nodded before calling another ANBU to summon Sai. I continued looking over the scrolls and handed some to Shikamaru for him to look over too until Sai showed up.

"Sai, I want you and Shikamaru to review these scrolls that came from one of Orochimaru's hideouts. Shikamaru, you update Sai on the mission that led to getting the documents. Head to the Archive Library and start to work. I'm sending Shikaku to join you too since he will remember things surrounding when Orochimaru was forced to leave the village. I leave it to you three. Keep me updated," I said before dismissing the two and sending my orders to Shikaku.

I stared out the window for a while after they left and wondered what the Sanin could possibly be up to. After thinking on it for a while longer, though, I shook it off. He probably wasn't planning on crashing the Chuunin Exams again, but as long as he was still alive, I knew that he wouldn't be up to anything good. And I had my brightest people working on figuring out just that, so there was no need for me to try to reason out something beyond my reasoning abilities. Instead, I decided to get back to doing what I knew I could do, which in this case was paperwork. It seemed like there was constant ebb and flow of how much paper filled my office, but no matter what, the top of my desk was barely visible, if at all.

By the time the light coming in from behind me was dimming, Kakashi appeared in the room for the first time since he came back from his ANBU mission.

"I heard Konohamaru made it to the second stage."

"'Course he did! Who do you think he is?" I said, smiling up at him. I still felt a little awkward after yelling at him for the first time in what was really a very long time, but he seemed as relaxed as always. Kakashi gave his typical eye-smile.

"Well, since your kagebunshin are hard at work today, maybe you should get some rest so that you don't tire yourself out," he said, still smiling. I gave a little smile back and stood, ready to follow him home. I hadn't seen him at all since he came back from the mission. I wasn't too concerned since I figured that he was probably just sleeping it off at his apartment, but I did miss seeing him, even if I was busy too.

Once we got to my place, I could already tell that he'd planned it out. Again, I smelled some delicious food. I walked in and saw the Kakashi that was cooking disappear and the Kakashi that walked me back picked up what his bunshin was doing.

"It's almost done. You can go ahead and sit," he said as he resumed his work. I smiled and was about to do as he suggested, but instead I went over to him and hugged him from behind as he continued cooking.

"I'm going to keep sending bunshin out with all my ANBU teams," I said, and I felt him nod against the side of my head.

"I'm not going to let anyone know which one it is, though. And the henge will be different every time too." Again, he nodded. "And I'm going to make sure that everyone gets home safely every time." Another nod. "I know that I can trust you all with your job, but I can't keep myself from worrying unless I know that I have a way to help you all in case something doesn't go as planned… Or at least, I can't keep myself from going crazy with worry. I'll still worry no matter what," I said, mumbling against his shoulder towards the end as my face got warm.

Finally, Kakashi set down what was in his hands and turned around to hug me back.

"I know. I'm sorry for making you worry more than necessary. But I'm glad that you're working hard to make sure that we're all safe, even ANBU on missions."

"It's my job to keep everyone safe," I said, giving a little shrug, but he hugged me tighter, knowing that it was much more than that.

After a couple more moments like that, he let me go and told me to go sit again as he finished up cooking and handed me a plate. I dug in instantly, happy to have Kakashi's cooking again. If I had a choice between never eating Kakashi's cooking again but being able to eat Ichiraku every day for the rest of my life or the opposite, I would honestly have to choose Kakashi's food. (But it would be one the most painful decisions ever, dattebayo.)

After another three helpings, I was totally stuffed. Once everything was cleaned up and we'd both taken a bath, we headed off to bed, and I slept better than I had in a while.

oOo

On the morning of the fourth day of part two of the Chuunin Exam, I headed to the Jonin Standby Station to watch and wait for the first team to arrive at the tower. Everyone greeted me when I showed up, and I questioned them about their teams. After a few hours of learning about the strengths and weakness of each team and each genin, the first team arrived. I was surprised when it wasn't Konohamaru's team, but they showed up shortly after. I watched a few more teams arrive, but then I headed to the training school to check up on Ino's progress again

She was happy to see me and hopped down from where she was at on the roof, now nailing on the shingles. The building was close to being complete and it seemed that it mainly just had interior work to be done aside from the furnishings and other details. I was glad to know that all was going according to plan, and this time I left her another ten bunshin to help out before I let her get back to work. Then I headed to my office and summoned Sai, Shikaku, and Shikamaru to update me on their findings from the data from Orochimaru's hideout.

"Have you guys figured anything out?" I asked once they arrived in my office shortly after I summoned them.

"Well, as for Danzo, it seems that he helped keep the Sandaime in the dark about Orochimaru's experiments when he was still in Konoha. The data brought back from the recent mission suggests that in exchange for hiding it from the Sandaime by giving him a lab within Root, Danzo was able to take advantage of the experiments. So we were able to piece together something, but not much," said Shikaku with the other two nodding in agreement.

"Right, well, something is better than nothing. Keep at it. Anything on Orochimaru? Or where he might be headed?"

"Some of the data on the more recent versions of his experiments were incomplete, but that's probably because Sasuke took him down before he could be could finish. So now he may have been trying to move the data and everything at that base so that he could continue the experiments, or there's just something here that we haven't figured out yet since the security that surrounded obviously held a purpose," Shikamaru said, sounding frustrated to not be able to figure it out.

"However, some of the more recent data, though still before Sasuke worked with Akatsuki, has references to subjects and bases located in the Land of Waves and the Land of Water. So, if Orochimaru was moving out of the base here in the Land of Fire first, then maybe there is still some connected information left in those bases."

"Great work. I'll send another team out immediately. You all can go back to work, then. I'll let you know if anything comes up. Keep me informed," I said, dismissing them. I immediately summoned a team of three ANBU and of course added my own ANBU-henged bunshin. Once the team was assembled, I gave out orders.

"Fox, Dog, Rabbit, Frog, you're going to the Land of Waves to sniff out Orochimaru's hide out. It may be active. If it is, sit tight and let me know. I'll send back up. You will trail the hostiles, but do not engage them. I want to know where Orochimaru's new hideouts are. Fox is team captain. You leave in three hours. Dismissed," I said. Again, I was nervous sending a team out, but it needed done. I shook the feeling off and assembled another team to perform the same mission in the Land of Water, but I also told them to expect back up from Kiri. Once they left, I sent our fastest bird with a message to Mei letting her know the basic of the situation and requested that a Kiri ANBU team join the one from Konoha for the mission. I knew that my team alone could handle it, especially with my bunshin with them, but another team would ease my worries some, not to mention it could help set a standard for the villages working together more often.

I sighed once the team left before getting up and disappearing to my house just in time to catch Fox packing up his gear.

"Was there something else?" he asked, pausing his actions to look at me in the doorway of the bedroom.

"Yeah," I said before walking over to him and pulling off both his masks.

"Be careful. If you decide to do something reckless, send Frog. And keep an eye on Dog. He's new," I said, staring at him intently.

"Got it."

Then I kissed him before hugging him a little too hard.

He hugged me back for a while, but eventually he stepped away.

"It'll be fine. I'll make sure of it. But I need to get ready, and you need to get back to work. I'll see you in a couple weeks," he said before giving me another kiss, but then he pulled his masks back on and returned to gathering his things.

"See you," I said before disappearing to my office again. Really, I wanted to go to a training ground and try to wear myself out that way since there were still several hours before the second part of the Chuunin Exam would end, but I knew that I couldn't risk exhausting myself when I had my clones out with the ANBU teams. I was already using more chakra than Shikamaru would approve of since I had those other ten clones still helping out with the training school. So instead, I decided to bury myself in paperwork for the next several hours until morning arrived again and I would be needed to congratulate everyone for making it through the second stage. Really, we were probably going to have another preliminary stage since there would be so many teams passing the exam. (Honestly, I was hoping there would be one. I was looking forward to seeing everyone's skills, especially the improvements in Konohamaru and his team.)

Finally, several hours after the ANBU teams left on their mission, Raido showed up.

"Hokage-sama, the last team arrived at the tower. Twelve teams successfully completed the second round. The other twenty four are being treated at the hospital. Most were simply knocked out for opening the scroll. The rest had minor injuries. Haruno-san already has a team of medic-nin assembled at the tower for the preliminaries, should you decide to have them."

"Let's go then! Also, Raido, you can drop 'sama' when you're talking to me. You were part of my dad's personal guard too, right? Let's get drinks sometime and you can tell me about him, okay?" I said, smiling at him before heading out, Raido following behind after giving a short nod.

"Everyone! Congratulations on making it this far. But before you can go any further, we're going to have to have a preliminary round since so many of you made it through. Genma, I leave it to you to explain," I said. Once Genma started explaining in the same way that I first heard back when I was a genin, I looked over the group. Most of them looked pretty tired since they only just emerged from the Forest of Death, but none of them took the chance to opt out of the preliminaries, which made me smile.

Once all the explaining was out of the way, I made my way up to the rafters with the rest of the group to make room for the two genin to battle. Between each match, I would speak to the different jounin-sensei around the room, but I was mostly interested in the matches, especially when Moegi came onto the floor. She and her teammates were better-rested than some of the other contestants since they arrived at the tower the day before, so she looked like she was in better shape than the girl from Kumo that she was fighting.

Even so, the Kumo girl put up a good fight. The match was mostly taijutsu, but once it became obvious that both genin were wearing down, Moegi pulled out a few shuriken from her pouch. I smiled then, knowing what she was probably going to do since she'd been taught by a weapons master for the last month, but I watched intently still, not wanting to miss it.

Moegi threw the shuriken and dashed in at her opponent immediately. The Kumo girl dodged and then readied herself for an attack, but by then it was already done. Moegi pulled on the wire that she'd attached to the shuriken, and they returned in the direction they came, tangling the girl in the wires while also giving her several harsh cuts from the shuriken. When it was evident that she couldn't move anymore, Genma called the match in favor of Moegi and a medic-nin took away the Kumo girl to heal her up.

Moegi returned to the viewing area to watch the next match, and from across the room I gave her a nod and a small smile. Still, it was probably going to take more than that once the finals came around, and I planned to pair her up with Tenten and maybe even Hinata or Shino during that time so that they could polish her up even more for the next stage. But as it was, I would let her enjoy her current victory as I watched her sit down on the edge of the balcony so that she could still watch the matches while resting.

A few more matches went on before Udon's name came up for his fight. Again, I watched intently and was pleased that Udon's match also went well. It was mostly taijutsu, but he did use some ninjutsu, and even though the jutsu was weak, the timing was good enough to overwhelm his opponent. I smiled again when Udon won, and I could really tell that Lee was not only a splendid ninja, but also a splendid teacher.

Again, a lot of really great matches went on and then finally Konohamaru's name appeared for the final match of the preliminaries, and Konohamaru was totally ready. Once he was on the floor, he immediately was in position and ready to go. The fight lasted a while with all ranges of techniques, but Konohamaru landed crippling blows on his opponent from Kiri throughout the fight, mainly with taijutsu, while Konohamaru was fast enough to just block or dodge well enough to avoid a bad blow. In the end, his opponent collapsed from exhaustion while he looked like he could go another round or two. Apparently Choji was going to make a great teacher someday too since Konohamaru's endurance and strength had obviously increased aside from having a higher level of taijutsu from a technique standpoint.

Once all the matches were finished, I congratulated all the winners again and let them know that the finals wouldn't be for another month so that they would have some time to rest up and work on some new skills. Once that was done and most of the teams had left, I went over to Ebisu and his team to personally congratulate them for passing.

"Great job. You really learned a lot in the past month, huh?" They all nodded in response, but were pretty tired out so they didn't say much.

"Well, you can work with Tenten, Lee, and Choji again if you want over the next month, but remember that the three of you will be opponents in the finals, so you might not want to fight each other too much. You'll probably want to have a few surprises after all."

They glanced at each other nervously before nodding again. I smiled and waved to all of them before disappearing to talk with the three that would be teaching them over the next month. After that, I attacked paperwork some more before finally feeling tired enough to go to bed, but my house still felt pretty empty without anyone else in such a big place.