Disclaimer: If a person is not Kishimoto, then that person does not own Naruto. I am not Kishimoto. Therefore, I do not own Naruto.
Got the modus tollens, now for the modus ponens.
Shinigan
Chapter 9
They arrived at the test building, one of the auxiliaries off the Hokage's Tower, at half past eight that morning, half an hour before the time indicated on the paperwork. The building was three stories tall and had windows all in rows along the sides, in standard office building style, but it was still dwarfed by the Tower next door to it. The team walked in through the main doors into a high-ceilinged atrium with a balcony running around the wall a floor above. Naruto glanced around, looking for a staircase, and indicated a door in one corner.
Sakura had her entry form out and was reading it. "We need room 301, that'll be on the third floor," she said, following the other two to the door. It led to an echoing stairwell, lights running up and down the bottoms of the flights above to give them light. As they trooped up the stairs, however, Naruto felt a sudden sense of minor disorientation come over him—he felt a little strange—it passed.
He opened the door at the top of the stairs, a sign to the side saying 'THIRD FLOOR'. Both Sasuke and Sakura walked through, but Sasuke was glancing around nervously. He apparently felt something wrong. Naruto had learned to trust Sasuke's instincts—he had sure enough found out enough times that he couldn't trick him—and reminded himself to stay on guard as well.
They walked down the hall toward a crowd of people. There was a clamor as of many voices speaking frantically, and Naruto frowned. Would that be normal for the sign-in to a test? For that matter, why were so many people hanging around outside the door?
Both questions were answered when Naruto saw the door itself. Two rough-looking older genin had planted themselves in front of it, and someone Naruto didn't know had just fallen back away from the door, his face red as if from a blow. One of the two had just knocked him back; the other one looked around with a mildly sadistic grin.
"Hey, don't be mad!" he said, his tone of false pity. "We're doing you kids a favor. People die in these exams. There's no way you're ready yet! Just go home and do your stupid D-ranks like good genin!"
Naruto scowled, fumed, and prepared to storm forwards and introduce the bullying seniors to his fists, but Sasuke's hand on his arm stopped him. "Wait a moment," he said, a frown on his face, his eyes red and black. "There's something wrong. There's a genjutsu on this whole floor—we're actually on the second floor, it caught us when we went up the stairs."
Naruto straightened and looked at the other boy quizzically. "Huh? Oh! That's...really weird." He formed a half-ram seal in front of his face and spiked his chakra, forgoing the usual verbal exclamation to avoid attracting attention. With a strange jerk, he felt something shift, and looking back at the room, he saw that the marker above it now read 201, instead of 301. He glanced at the crowd around the door.
"Must be part of the exam." Then a grin came over his face, and he spoke while suppressing laughter. "So those two bullies are just keeping people out of the trap? Hah. Idiots. They think they're so much better."
Sasuke shook his head. "They're not what they seem. I think maybe they're under henge. Maybe they're proctors who are part of the trap?"
Realization came over Naruto's face. "Oh! So it's a what-do-you-call-it, a honeypot. Take up people's time here, and anyone who gets distracted enough to miss the actual start time upstairs gets disqualified."
Sasuke nodded. Sakura, behind him, had long since broken herself out of the genjutsu, and turned back to the stairwell with an inquiring look at the boys. Sasuke made as if to follow her, but Naruto waved for them to stop, and turned back to the crowd. Sasuke looked at him, confused.
"What are you doing? Just leave them there. It's part of the test, no point breaking it."
Naruto sighed. "Few friends I saw. Don't want to just leave them." He walked towards the crowd, aiming for Tenten and her teammate Lee, who he saw at the fringe of the group. Coming up behind her, he laid a hand on her shoulder, and was rewarded by a remarkably quick turnaround and a kunai in her other hand.
She relaxed when she saw him, and grinned. "Hey, Naruto-kun! You taking this test, as well?"
Naruto nodded. "So, I think you might want to do a dispel right now," he said, not giving any further details. Tenten frowned at him, but did it, sharply muttering "Kai!" under her breath. She glanced around, startled, then laughed.
"Hah. Part of the test?"
Naruto nodded. "So we figure."
Tenten turned to Lee, beside her, and yanked him around so that he faced her. He took a breath, visibly about to start in on something involving youth, but she preempted him by shoving a half-ram in his face and hitting him with a dispel. He jumped, looked around, then recognized Naruto.
"Ah! It is you, Naruto-kun! I take it that you are also planning to compete in this youthful endeavor?"
Naruto nodded, suppressing his still-instinctive reaction to anything Lee did, which was basically akin to that of a rabbit which got in the way of a kunai. After seeing some of Lee's practices and contrasting his competence as a shinobi with his...creative affect and image, he had come to the tentative conclusion that he acted so strange specifically in order to mess with people, and he was damned if he would do just what Lee expected him to. "Come on. Don't make a lot of noise." He beckoned them towards the door, where Sasuke and Sakura were waiting impatiently. They followed him to the stairwell, and Tenten made a double take at the sign by the door on the stairwell side, which now read 'SECOND FLOOR'. She laughed rather self-consciously.
"We should have waited for Neji, he wouldn't have gotten fooled. Oh, well. Thanks for the tip, Naruto-kun. I guess we'll go downstairs and find him."
Naruto nodded and waved them goodbye as they turned to go down the stairs. Team Seven continued up the stairwell to the next floor, which was actually marked as the third. When Sasuke tried the door, however, it was locked.
He frowned. "Why is the door locked? Is it a test of our lock-picking abilities?"
Naruto shook his head, pointing at the keyhole, which had a thin circle of intricate characters around it. "I wouldn't try it, Sasuke. Standard security seals, they'd zap you good."
Sasuke nodded. "Which doesn't help much."
Sakura had been staring at the door with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Um, I would guess that it's to reinforce the genjutsu downstairs. So anyone who counted more carefully and missed the sign would think they had gone too far, and go back down. I bet that if we were still under that genjutsu, this would say 'roof access' or something."
Sasuke glanced at her measuringly, then nodded. "Makes sense. Is there another stairwell, maybe?"
"Let's see," said Naruto, turning around and leading them back down.
XxXxX
The atrium was as empty as it had been before. The hallway that provided access to the remainder of the first floor was across the empty space from the door to the front stairwell, and Team Seven moved toward it in unison without any need for indications. They were stopped midway by a shout.
"Uchiha Sasuke! Will you listen to me?"
They turned as one to look up at the balcony, where the boy in green who Naruto had gotten out of the genjutsu was standing with an intense look on his face. Sasuke replied, bemused. "Um, sure?"
The other genin—Lee, his name was—leapt over the railing of the balcony and dropped gracefully to the floor some way off. "Uchiha Sasuke!"
"You said that," he pointed out, diverting an apparently forthcoming rant from Lee. The green-clad genin stopped, then shook a fist at him, shouting. "Augh! You are almost as cool and hip as Gai-sensei's eternal rival, Kakashi! I disparage your attitude!"
Sasuke glanced aside at Naruto, who was unabashedly amused. "Is this guy for real?"
"He is," said Naruto. "And yes, this is the way he acts all the time."
Sasuke shook his head. "What is it that you want, Lee?"
"Uchiha Sasuke!" he shouted again, causing Sasuke to roll his eyes. "You are renowned as a genius among your generation!"
"Well, yes?"
"I want you to fight me! I will prove for once and all that the genius of youthful hard work is superior to the genius of...genius!"
What? Sasuke was about to reply when Naruto spoke up. "Really, Lee, do we have to do this now? We're going to be late."
"Ah, I respect your youthful determination to arrive on time for the Chunin exam, Naruto-kun! But I must prove the superiority of the genius of hard work!"
Naruto rolled his eyes, and turned to Sasuke. "You may want to pass on this one, Sasuke. I'm pretty sure you can't beat him, and he's liable to beat the crap out of you proving it."
Sasuke stared at him. "Naruto, are you sure you're not just in some sort of trauma-induced denial from our last twenty or so spars? Or have you just forgotten them?"
Naruto waved his hands theatrically. "Details, details. Dratted cheater eyes," he muttered under his breath. "But really, even with the Sharingan you probably can't beat him in a spar. You could probably catch him with a fireball, but that's more serious than I think we want this to get."
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Dobe, the only people I'm confident could beat me in taijutsu right now are jounin. Or maybe Hyuuga. You think this kid's that good?"
"He's older than us, you know."
"Details."
"And no, I don't think he's as good as a jounin, but I do think you're an arrogant bastard with too good an opinion of yourself, and he's good enough to beat you pretty easily."
Sasuke smirked. "Prepare to be amazed."
He turned back to Lee, who had been watching the byplay. "Sure, I'll fight you. Shouldn't take too long."
Lee smiled, showing far too many teeth. "Indeed I believe you are correct, but I have the impression that you are expecting a different outcome from me!" He planted his feet, taking a stance which Sasuke had never seen before—it was certainly very different from his own Uchiha taijutsu, or the bastardized Academy style that Naruto used—and made a come-hither gesture with his right hand. Sasuke smirked and took his own stance, activating his Sharingan. The world slowed itself down, and Sasuke charged in slow motion, his eyes giving him plenty of time to ensure that each step was precise and measured, defended against any quick tripping or sweeping techniques that an opponent might attempt. He let fly a testing punch, intending to analyze the way this strange opponent blocked and perhaps take advantage of an opening in the defense. The punch moved in slow motion, as usual, aimed just precisely at the other genin's solar plexus. His block began, and Sasuke had a perfect view of the other boy moving with truly uncanny speed to block the punch straight down before Sasuke could retract his arm and retaliate with a punch at his sternum. It was too fast. Sasuke could not block it, and he had barely begun to fade backwards and minimize its effect when it landed. It hurt, far more than any blow anyone had ever landed on him since his eyes had activated, and he stumbled several steps back, sputtering to regain his breath, and watched Lee recover in slow motion. All the while, the uncanny grin never left his face.
"Are your eyes helping you, Uchiha Sasuke?" said the boy. The Sharingan did nothing to improve or analyze what he heard, and it was an extremely strange effect to watch his lips moving in effective slow motion while he heard his voice at normal speed.
He shook it off. "I suspect I would do worse without them." He would have to watch this one carefully—he was even faster than Naruto was when he pulled out the stops and used his strange demon-induced boost. Stronger, too, if that punch was any indication. Deciding that caution was indicated, Sasuke took a defensive stance and let Lee come to him. Lee deduced his intentions in only a few seconds, and his grin grew wider, if that was possible.
"You are on the defensive! I have gained the advantage through the power of my YOUTH!" With that, he charged in, again far faster than Sasuke could begin to react to. He saw the punch coming almost a second before it hit, and launched himself backwards, but still took the end of the blow, which caught his unbalance and knocked him over. It took a quick backward roll to regain his equilibrium, which found Lee standing again in his stance, still with the same grin on his face. Sasuke was dead certain, with the speed that the genin had demonstrated, that had he wished to press his advantage and utterly destroy him while he was off-balanced, he could have. He ground his teeth. He's PLAYING with me!
He took up the stance again and blew a deep breath, forcing himself calm. All the kami knew that getting angry had never done anything helpful when he was surrounded by grinning Naruto clones. Then he focused on Lee again, just in time to see him begin another charge.
This time, Sasuke had a plan. He was dodging aside even as Lee began to move, and though Lee adjusted slightly, he had no Sharingan to increase his perceptions; he was in many ways moving too fast for even himself to track. Sasuke still took a punishing blow to the chest, made worse by his own positioning, but he dealt in return a hard strike to the side of Lee's head, lent extra force by the velocity of Lee's charge. Sasuke fell over sideways in an undignified heap, but managed to keep an eye on Lee, and saw him do much the same, sliding along the floor almost ten feet with his momentum.
Of course, he immediately bounced up as if the strike meant nothing. As Sasuke got to his feet rather more slowly, he saw that Lee's omnipresent smile had finally been wiped from his face; he had on quite a serious expression, albeit one made comical by his ridiculous eyebrows. It did not take much of an effort for Sasuke to avoid laughing; the memory of this shinobi's ridiculous speed and strength was fresh.
"The Sharingan is indeed a powerful weapon!" said Lee, in the same sort of perpetual shout that he had been using throughout their encounter. "To land such a strike on me with only that level of speed! I can see why you are hailed as a genius! But now I will show you the genius of hard work!"
Sasuke did not have much time to wonder what he was talking about before Lee brought his hands together before his chest, though not in any seal that Sasuke had ever seen. "Kaimon: KAI!" he barked. Then, something happened—his movements became different somehow, his stance both tensing and relaxing at the same time. And this time, when he charged at Sasuke, he was moving at least three times as fast as he had been, almost fast enough to blur even with the Sharingan; certainly Naruto and Sakura would see only a flash and wonder what had happened.
He could do nothing before Lee ended his motion just in front of him, ducked low on one foot, and slammed a very painful kick into his stomach, one which launched him into the air on a trajectory to peak around the level of the balcony and crash to the ground twenty feet away. Of course, he could land safely easily enough, but it appeared that his opponent had no intention of letting him. Lee had jumped himself just after kicking him, and flew behind him on a parallel trajectory. "Kage buyo..." he murmured, almost to himself, as they peaked, and the bandages bound all around his hands seemed to come to life and started snaking around him in a most unpleasant fashion. "Omote renge!"
Sasuke was not certain what was about to happen, but he was more than sure that he wanted no part of it. Just before the bandages tightened around his hands, he formed a ram seal and focused, and in a sudden jerk of motion he was elsewhere.
Having been upside-down when he initiated the shunshin, and not having the time to adjust his orientation as well as his location, he ended up twenty feet away, six above the ground, and head pointed straight down. He just managed to curl around and land on his back, breaking the fall, and he decided to just lie there for a moment, nursing his stomach, which, judging by how it currently felt, would be one large bruise in a few hours.
He heard a thud as, apparently, Lee also landed. It occurred to him that Lee might not consider the match over, and he struggled to his feet. It seemed that he need not have worried. Lee was currently involved in a confrontation, if you could call it that, with a...giant technicolor tortoise.
Ooookay...
Things made slightly more sense when he noticed the Konoha forehead protector dangling around the tortoise's neck, indicating that it was some sort of summon. Of course, this did not answer the questions of who had summoned the tortoise, where they were, and why Lee was cowering like a penitent in front of it.
As he watched, a man appeared on the tortoise's shell, a man who might have been Lee's clone, if older. Unlike Lee, he wore a standard flak jacket over his green jumpsuit, and he jumped down from on top of the tortoise with the sort of grace you would expect of a taijutsu master. He seemed to be scolding Lee about something; Sasuke could not hear him properly, but the word 'lotus' seemed to come up a lot, along with much ranting about youth. Then Lee, at a word Sasuke did not hear, stood up straight in an attention posture, and the stranger—his jounin-sensei, maybe?—struck him across the face hard enough to send him to the ground. Sasuke jumped at that, but what happened next was far more surprising: Lee jumped up from the ground, and both shinobi started hugging each other, tears streaming down their faces, repeating the same words over and over.
"Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
"Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
This went on for far longer than it should have. Sasuke, baffled, glanced aside at Naruto and Sakura, who were staring at the scene. Naruto had a look of horrified fascination on his face.
"I was wrong," he muttered, apparently unaware that he was speaking. "He doesn't do that just to mess with people. There's someone else."
At long last, the two broke up, and both turned to Team Seven, who were standing near each other, staring open-mouthed. Lee stepped forward and spoke to Sasuke.
"Yosh! Uchiha Sasuke! I must thank you, for you have revealed to me a weakness in my ultimate technique! I will train until my bindings wrap an opponent too quickly for them to form seals, and if I cannot do that I will do five hundred pushups with each hand, and if I cannot do that I will do a thousand squats with each leg, and if I cannot do that I will climb up and down the Hokage Mountain three times with only one arm!"
Sasuke stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Right. I think I'll be working on my sealless shunshin."
"YOSH! I congratulate you! You have learned of the genius of hard work! I will fight you again when you have done that, and we will compare the flames of our youth!" Lee made a thoroughly ridiculous pose, one hand extended in a thumbs up while the sun glinted off his teeth, then ran off, presumably in search of the stairs up.
Sasuke shook his head, bemused, as the older man approached them.
"I believe you are the team of my hip rival, Kakashi?" inquired he, and received nods from Naruto and Sakura. "Wonderful!" he continued. "Uchiha Sasuke-kun, I must apologize for my student. He seeks to stoke the flames of his youth by becoming a genius of hard work, but occasionally they overcome him and he loses sight of his priorities. He should not have used that move on you in a spar."
Sasuke did not reply, but instead looked thoughtfully after Lee. "He's strong."
The man grinned, uncannily like Lee, and nodded. "He is a genius of hard work! But unfortunately I must be going now. I hope to see you again!" He shunshinned away.
Sasuke looked over at Naruto, who looked to be suppressing a grin. He sighed resignedly. "Just say it."
Naruto snickered. "Okay. You an arrogant bastard with too high an opinion of yourself? Totally vindicated right there."
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Whatever, dobe. We'd better get going, we're going to be late."
Naruto nodded, and all three trooped over to the hallway.
XxXxX
Kakashi was waiting for them outside the actual Room 301, which was accessible through the stairwell at the back of the building. He grinned at them in his trademark mostly-obscured way as they came up.
"Good to see you all. You're almost late."
"We had a bit of a delay," said Naruto, grinning. He had seen Lee practice with his team a few times over the month that he had known them, and it was absolutely priceless to see Sasuke cut down to size. It had, safe to say, been slightly frustrating to learn that Sasuke's Sharingan made him basically unbeatable in taijutsu, even when he drew on the Kyuubi's boost as far as he could without actually forming a chakra shroud.
Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "I see," he said neutrally. "Would this have anything to do with the fact that Sasuke looks as if he's been punched rather hard by someone?"
Sasuke gave Kakashi a minor glare, but Naruto was impressed. None of Sasuke's injuries were visible, and as far as Naruto could see he was moving normally. "It would," said the Uchiha flatly, declining to say more.
Kakashi smiled again. "Very well. Can I see your forms, please?"
Each of them handed Kakashi their filled-out entry form—Naruto had to dive into one of his scrolls to retrieve it. Kakashi glanced them over.
"These seem to be in order. Go on in, everyone's waiting."
Sasuke smirked in his infuriatingly understated way, Naruto grinned broadly, and Sakura smiled. Naruto led the way through the door.
The room beyond was full of people. Alarmingly enough, Naruto at first glance saw no one else their age; the average person in the room might have been sixteen or seventeen, with many older than that. Most of them looked rather rough.
He glanced around again, and saw some familiar faces along the wall off to the side. Shikamaru and Chouji stood there alongside the marginally annoying fangirl who they had been teamed with, and there were Kiba and that Shino kid in his sunglasses and coat.
And Hinata.
Naruto faltered as he saw her, then continued. They had not sparred during the month since that day; she had never been the one to take that initiative, and Naruto could not bring himself to ask. They were as friendly as ever when they met in passing, and it was even something Naruto missed—but whenever he thought to do it, his mind shied away from the idea, throwing up echoes of the rolling thunder of explosions and malicious red claws.
She smiled timidly at him, but there was confusion and sadness in her eyes. His return grin was just a bit more hesitant than it should have been, and he cursed himself in his mind.
His near-brooding was interrupted by the blonde fangirl launching herself off the wall where she was leaning and grabbing tightly onto Sasuke's arm, babbling all the while about how long it had been since she had seen him (by Naruto's count, it had been sometime last week in the street) and how lucky they both were to have run across each other here (Sasuke's expression of bare tolerance spoke eloquently to his opinion, at least, on the matter). Naruto rolled his eyes and ignored her, until Sakura, walking on his other side, snapped. She dived across his path to latch onto Sasuke's other arm.
"Ino-pig! Don't chase Sasuke like that! He doesn't need someone like you dragging him down!" she said, in the angry shriek that Naruto had desperately hoped she had gotten out of the habit of using. Ino was obviously just about to fire back, holding possessively to Sasuke's arm on her side, when Sasuke turned an actual scowl on Sakura and did something quick and intricate that left both their grips broken and Sasuke standing about half a pace ahead of them. He turned about and glanced at her with contempt.
"You know, you were a lot more tolerable when you weren't doing that," he said, every inch the aristocratic Uchiha. Sakura and Ino gaped at him as he turned and leaned against the wall between Naruto and Shino.
"Wow, he's never done that before," murmured Ino to herself. Naruto rolled his eyes inwardly.
"Hey, Naruto," said Kiba, coming around in front of him. Naruto gave him a lazy wave.
"Yup?"
"You doing this thing too?"
Naruto looked pointedly around the room. "Why else would we be here?"
Kiba grinned in his trademarked Kiba-like way, eager and just a bit feral. "Sure you can hack it?"
Naruto grinned back. "Think you can, dog-boy?"
The dog on Kiba's head barked indignantly, while Kiba took offense. "Hey! No insulting Akamaru! We'll just see how well you do here!"
"So we will, I guess," said Naruto. Kiba muttered under his breath and went back to stand with his team.
"You people might want to keep it down a little," said a new voice. All nine of the rookies looked up, to see an older boy, perhaps seventeen, silver-haired with a Leaf hitai-ite and large round glasses, though unlike Shino's they were clear glass. He continued, apparently unaffected by the sudden suspicious gaze of the nine genin. "Most of the people here don't like it much when rookies get in. If you draw attention to yourselves, you might cause yourselves problems later on."
There was silence for a moment before Naruto broke it. "If anyone has a problem with me, they can take it up with me and see how well they prosecute it with a broken face," he said, not shouting, but not bothering to keep his voice down. "Same goes for everyone here." Several of the other genin, notably Sasuke and Kiba, nodded emphatically.
The older boy pushed his glasses up his nose. "An admirable attitude, but perhaps not the easiest one to take." He smiled. "Perhaps I'll help you out a bit. Is there anything you'd like to know?"
The rookies shifted, glancing at each other. Sasuke and Naruto in particular caught each others' eye. What's his game?
Kiba spoke up. "Know about what?"
"Oh, anything. The exam, the nations, the other participants. Just ask, and I'll probably know something about it." He pulled a deck of cards from a holster on his leg and played some tricks with it, shuffling and reshuffling the cards. Naruto caught a glimpse of some of their undersides; they were all blanks.
"I've keyed these cards to my chakra so that they only reveal their information to me," the boy said. He picked up a card and did something to it, and a map with associated graphics appeared on the blank face. Naruto, watching carefully, noticed tiny seals flickering over the card in the instant that the map appeared. Interesting. How is that done?
Sasuke looked at him levelly. "I wonder...show me what you have on Sabaku no Gaara and Uzumaki Naruto."
The boy put the card with the map away and did his little shuffling routine again, pulling out two more cards. "You have names? Too easy." He activated both cards in sequence. "Sabaku no Gaara. Son of the Yondaime Kazekage of Sand. This is his first Chunin Exam, just like you guys, if I'm not mistaken." He glanced over the information. "Various missions...oh, isn't that interesting, he has a B-rank mission while still a genin. And according to this, he has never once been injured on a mission." There were a few scattered gasps of surprise; Naruto was not one of them. That guy had certainly had the attitude to go with the sort of genius who never got hit.
The other boy grinned. "But enough about him. Uzumaki Naruto." He exposed the other card. "Not much information about him here...surprising, considering he's a Leaf-nin. I usually have quite a bit on them. Made genin as last in his class, due to a technically failing score on the ninjutsu exam. Thoroughly unexceptional, at first glance. The usual scattering of D-ranks, along with one C-rank. But if you look a bit more closely, you find that the record of that C-rank has been marked secret as secret gets. And there's rather a number of secrets around him. Another oddity...apparently, some fifteen special sessions of the Konoha village council were immediately followed by decrees relating to Uzumaki Naruto. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, eh?" He adjusted his glasses again and glanced around with a sly look. Naruto stared back at him.
"Any other requests?" the boy said, sounding bored. Sakura hesitated for a moment, then spoke up.
"What villages are attending the exam, and how many teams from each?" she asked. The older genin raised an eyebrow and pulled out another card, which proved to be his map again.
"An interesting question. Not immediately relevant to the pursuit of combative goals, but very useful to one who seeks to obtain a view of the big picture. You are an interesting thinker, genin-chan." The symbols on the map flashed, each one displaying numbers next to it, and the boy read them off, offering some interesting commentary on each of the villages. Apparently, relatively few teams had come from Kumo this year, and even fewer from Iwa. The boy noted that the parents of this generation of Iwa genin would have grown up during the Third Shinobi World War, and quite possibly told their children horror stories of Konoha no Kiiroi Senkou. It was after his discussion of Otogakure no Sato, who had only sent one team this exam and never any before that, that something interesting happened.
Three shinobi walked forward, all in drab colors and gray sleeves, all wearing a hitai-ite that Naruto found unfamiliar: a single musical eighth note. The two whose faces were exposed hung back a bit, flanking the large, intimidating third, who had bandages covering all but his left eye.
"We don't like your attitude, punk," said the bandaged one. "Otogakure no Sato is not a minor or an insignificant village."
The Leaf genin put his cards away and stood. "Well, I'm sorry if I've—" he began, but he was cut off.
"Save it!" the Oto genin barked, and lunged for him with a punch.
Naruto tensed, but held himself back; Leaf genin or not, this boy had his own agenda, and seeing how he—and the Oto shinobi—fought could only be a benefit. The silver-haired boy dodged backwards, and successfully avoided the strike. He had just begun to grin in triumph at the masked genin when his grin turned to a look of horror, his glasses cracked, and he fell to his knees in pain.
The masked Oto-nin's bandages moved as if he had grinned himself. "Don't talk down on us, Leaf-nin. Major village you may be, but none of you fools can take us one-on-one." He and his two companions retired back into the crowd.
Sakura had moved forwards and knelt by the boy's side. "Uh..ah, are you all right? I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"I'm fine," the boy said, with slight strain in his voice. "It's Yakushi Kabuto. Thank you."
Naruto turned to Sasuke with a questioning look. As he had expected, the Uchiha's eyes were red.
"He did something with that big metal gauntlet of his. I guess the relevant information is to beware near misses with that thing, or proximity to it at all."
Naruto nodded, but Kiba pushed forward beside them. "Something else," he said, shaking his head slightly. "It's kinda sound-based. Messed me up a little, my hearing's better than yours, and Akamaru is even better than that." The dog on his head was whining in protest.
Sasuke nodded. "Good to know. Thanks. Might want to tell the others, careful of the gauntlet."
Kiba nodded and moved back.
It was about then that there was a sudden great cloud of smoke at the front of the room, punctuated by a crackle of pops, and there were suddenly a line of shinobi standing there, all of chuunin rank or higher. The one in the center wore a hitai-ite that covered his entire head and had a pair of deep scars cutting diagonally across his face; he took a step forward and shouted loudly across the room.
"All right, you brats, listen up! My name is Morino Ibiki, and for the next few hours I rule your lives! So pay attention!"
The genin around the room snapped to varying degrees of attention, and the man grinned thinly.
"All right! You will find each of your names written on one of the desks up here! You will sit at the desk that has your name on it! Don't try anything cute like moving names around—you have been placed precisely where we want you! Jump to it!"
There was a flurry of motion as everyone moved at once. It took several minutes to resolve. Naruto found his seat quickly; he was at the back, between two people he didn't know, one an older Leaf-nin, one a Suna-nin, though not one of the three that they had confronted a week beforehand.
As the commotion died down, the chuunin who had shunshinned into the room alongside Ibiki moved along the rows, handing out sheets of paper. Ibiki warned them from the front in the same barking style not to turn the papers over until told; Naruto left his well alone.
When the papers had all been distributed, Ibiki barked out another diatribe about the points to be scored, and warned them firmly against attempting to cheat. Naruto flipped his test over with the rest. He was not hugely enthusiastic about taking a written test, but he knew that he wasn't as bad at them as he had been; he knew a lot of little random facts, anyway, from reading in the Archive, and hoped he could at least figure out the rest.
His hopes were quickly dashed. Only three of the nine problems were even remotely comprehensible, and the one he felt most sure in being able to answer, which involved solving a cipher of unknown algorithm, he knew darned well was an advanced problem, one which ordinarily would have been studied by a jounin or special jounin specializing in information control. How the hell am I supposed to get this? He ran over the scoring system in his head. Only a zero lost...and you could be eliminated mid-test with your team if you got caught cheating so many times that you lost all your points. He glanced back and forth at the walls, where two lines of chuunin sat with clipboards, malicious grins on their faces, occasionally tapping their pencils or marking something on their boards.
He bent his head to the solving of the cryptanalytical problem, hoping that he could at least avoid a zero. It took him only a few minutes to write the standard matrix for analysis of such ciphers, at which point he ran the ciphertext through it and stopped, stumped. There should have been some sort of pattern, one that might have suggested further avenues of approach; instead, it was just more gibberish. He mentally upped his estimate of the difficulty of the problem. Maybe Sakura could do it...she was always the books person.
At that point, one of the watching chuunin called out a number, sounding bored. "Number fifteen, you're out. Numbers...twelve and seventy-three, out."
Three genin stood, walking to the back of the classroom, two shooting dark looks at the third. Naruto saw that they were from Iwa, and wondered if any of that low-represented village would make it through at all.
He stared at the codes problem for a while, then shook his head; he wasn't getting anywhere. In an attempt to clear his mind, he flipped the test sheet over and started scratching out a seal he had been studying in the Archive a few days before, seeing if he could recreate it from memory.
XxXxX
Sasuke glared down at his paper. One problem, asking him to compare the advantages and disadvantages of some fifteen katon ninjutsu in a certain combat situation, had been easy. The rest...were impossible. And he knew katon ninjutsu; that was his thing, that was his legacy from his destroyed clan. He knew quite well that no one else in the room would have been able to answer that question, not unless they were disguised jounin or very experienced chuunin. Is it impossible?
He flashed back to another test, also to determine if they were to gain a rank, though there the consequences of failure were much greater. He had taken the test at face value, and Kakashi had kicked the crap out of him. It had taken the dobe to point out that the test was, in fact, impossible as presented, and they needed to work outside the suggested rules in order to pass it. Is this the same thing?
If we cheat, then we lose points...that's very strange, certainly that wasn't what we did in the Academy. Iruka would have kicked you out for cheating once—that's it!
He glanced quickly around. Of course. You were meant to cheat, and the few who had already been eliminated just weren't good enough at it. What could he do?
His neighbors, who were the only people whose papers he could actually see, were both as stumped as he. However, there was someone two rows ahead who was writing vigorously. Sasuke couldn't see his paper, couldn't see what question he was answering, but he could easily see his hand doing the writing...got it.
Sasuke flipped his paper over and, with a minuscule flow of chakra, activated his bloodline. His eyes turned red, and the world slowed itself. Positioning his hand over the blank backside of the paper, he turned his eyes on the hand of the person writing, and let them direct his hand, not mediating the actions at all, but merely mimicking. Kakashi had warned him sternly against doing this in battle—that was a trap that far too many Sharingan users fell into, to let the godlike speed and imitation power of the eyes make them complacent, and if a decent ninjutsu user caught them mimicking blindly, it was trivial to make an intentional mistake that the user would survive but the copier wouldn't. Here, though, it was just what was needed. Sasuke watched as his hand, entirely on its own, copied out a lengthy analysis of the likely responses of the Godaikoku to a certain provocation carried out by the minor village Ame, and how such a provocation could lead to a Fourth Shinobi World War. It was rather interesting, if dry.
Several minutes later, the genin he was copying from stopped writing and moved his hand off to one side. Sasuke reasserted control over his hand and flipped the paper over, finding out which question fit that answer, and copied it out, this time in his own handwriting. The copy on the back of the page was a perfect imitation of the other genin's test, handwriting included. They could probably figure out how I cheated if they look at the tests later...but I don't think they will, it's a matter of getting the info, not concealing how.
He finished copying it out and activated his eyes again, looking around for another answer to copy.
XxXxX
Naruto finished up the seal and looked at it closely. It looked about the same as it had in the book—he was drawing it in pencil on mundane paper, so of course it would be a little different, but he couldn't see any obvious disconnections. He hesitated for a moment before powering it—mistakes involving seals often had unpredictable and problematic consequences—but decided to go ahead. It was just a listener seal for communication techniques—it couldn't go that far wrong.
As he ran chakra into the seal, it glowed and reformed itself, flowing into an unbroken ring around its empty center. So far, so good. Then, as it listened to the subtle chakra flows that all communications jutsus or seals used, tiny swirls formed in the center, moving lazily to reflect the background chakra sources of humans moving around and using jutsu.
There was something else there, though, and Naruto frowned. There was a carrier wave somewhere, a pretty strong one, which implied that he was right in the middle of a communications network—but why? Was someone using it to cheat? He stared at the seal, concentrating on it, and saw a tiny burst of activity along that carrier wave. Then it disappeared again. Huh?
He kept staring at the seal. Ordinarily, looking fixedly at a small piece of sealed writing on a piece of paper for more than a minute at a time would have been considered boring; Naruto did not consider it so. This was a more interesting mystery than that cipher problem. There had been several more bursts of activity over the same wave, but Naruto could not see any difference between them, nor divine the pattern in their timing. What's going on? If someone's cheating with this, they're doing it really subtly.
He was about to try something else when he saw a change. There was a burst of activity like any other, then a longer one in two parts, different from any that he had seen before. As he watched, the same two-part burst repeated itself twice more. Then his reverie was broken by one of the chuunin proctors.
"Number twenty-three, gone," said he. "Numbers fourteen and fifty, gone." The three genin trooped out with the same sort of resigned anger that Naruto had seen in all the failures, but Naruto was wondering about that seal. He had seen a unique transmission over that carrier wave just before the chuunin called someone gone. Are they the ones using it? He glanced around the room, looking at the chuunin specifically. There didn't seem to be anything odd happening...but how did they know to kick someone out after cheating five times, if different proctors caught the different times?
Naruto quickly scratched another seal below the first. The first was the very basic all-frequency receiver seal for communications; it was basically a toy for learners, and never used for anything else. This was a more specialized one, one that communicated between two different seals what was written on either, about the simplest communication seal that was actually good for anything. He wrote two of them, writing the frequency specifier carefully identical on each, and activated them both.
There was another burst of activity on his listener seal, this one on a different frequency, as the two communicating seals activated. Naruto doodled idly on one, and saw the image transferred instantly to the other, and the carrier wave on the new frequency burst into furious activity. He stopped, grinning, then made a single tick-mark on one of the seals. It created the same sort of transmission as he had been seeing on the original frequency, and he grinned even more widely. This could be interesting.
He messed around with the frequency specifiers on his seals until he had found one that would cross across with the carrier wave that the proctors were apparently using, then made as if to begin something else. He was stymied, however, by the fact that he was out of paper. He looked around frantically, and noticed that the older Leaf-nin on his left had yet to write anything on his test paper at all. He rolled his eyes. Idiot. In a single motion, he reached over, stole the other genin's paper, and switched it with his own.
The other genin started in surprise, then turned to glare at Naruto, apparently averse to make any sort of loud noise lest he be marked off for cheating. He gesticulated wildly at the two papers, demanding implicitly that he return them.
Naruto ignored him, instead flipping the other genin's blank test over so that he could use the back. On this one, he sketched the seal large, encompassing almost the whole of the paper; the chuunins' papers probably used the whole sheet, and this would be the best he could do without resorting to fancier seals that he couldn't do without looking in a book.
The Leaf-nin beside him was still angry, and his wild gestures were distracting. Finally, when he attempted to snatch the paper back, Naruto blocked his hand down into the table—it was ridiculously easy; what was this person doing in the chuunin exam with only that level of speed?—and, turning to him, spoke silently, enunciating clearly so that the other boy could read his lips.
"Deal with it. I'm using this."
The other genin wrenched his hand away and looked at Naruto's paper. On seeing that it was actually more filled out than his own, he looked at Naruto again, this time with deep confusion.
Naruto tuned him out and continued drawing the new seal. This one was more intricate, and he checked it several times before powering it. Then, taking a deep breath, he hit it with chakra.
The borders of the seal slithered together, and lines began drawing themselves in the center. Naruto wished he hadn't given away the paper with his listener seals—he would be willing to bet that the frequency had gone crazy. As he watched, the apparently random lines appearing in the center of the seal began to join, forming text, two lists down the length of the page, each with a blank space besides. Naruto watched until the text stopped changing, then looked it over.
A list of participants...and those ticks...
Each entry—just an anonymous number—had a box next to it, with varying numbers of tick marks in it. Several of the entries also had small X's on the other side of the names, and a significant number of these had five ticks in their associated box. In fact, everyone with five ticks had an X, though many without did as well.
As Naruto watched, a tick drew itself in the box of a number—thirty-three—that already had four ticks in it. Now having five, an X was drawn next to the number, then, after a slight delay, next to the numbers twenty and forty-one.
As Naruto processed this, he heard the voice of one of the proctors, calling someone out again. "Number thirty-three, gone. Numbers twenty, forty-one, gone."
Naruto jerked up, staring at the chuunin who had just spoken, as the three shinobi, including the Suna-nin who had been on Naruto's other side, stood and stormed out. The target of his gaze was oblivious, but went back to scanning the room, looking for inept cheaters.
Naruto glanced at his own number, number forty-two. There was a single tick there—probably from his blatantly stealing another examinee's test paper.
A wicked grin grew on Naruto's face. His seal could transmit, as well as receive. I could spoof it, but only to cut people out who shouldn't be...nah, that's too mean. But I can mess with the proctors something fierce. He picked up his pencil again and wrote in the seal, above the two lists and between them.
Hi there!
Nothing appeared to happen, though he would have sworn he saw one of the proctors twitch. After a moment's delay, words appeared just below his.
Cut it out. That's not what this is for.
No! Naruto wrote back, and grinned.
The same hand wrote beneath him again, just a little bit hurried. Who are you, anyway? Do your job. Naruto grinned. They thought he was one of the proctors! Heh.
I am doing my job. That's precisely what I'm doing.
Who are you? Quit joking. This isn't what we're here for. Naruto thought he knew who was writing—only one of the chuunin around the room was writing anything in sentences. He wrote back.
It's precisely what I'm here for. I suppose you are here, in the third seat from the east end of the northern row, in order to watch and make sure the little cute genin don't cheat?
He was rewarded by said chuunin jerking in his seat and looking around rather frantically. Naruto kept from bursting out in laughter with an effort. Uzumaki Naruto, fuinjutsu prankmaster regretfully in retirement on the Hokage's order, still had it.
Who are you? What are you doing with one of these papers? wrote back the chuunin, his hand this time a little shaky. Naruto looked at the proctor, and saw him glancing around every few seconds, paranoid. He grinned.
You don't need to worry your head, I'm not trying to infiltrate the test or anything stupid. What nefarious things could I get up to with one of your communications papers, anyway?
Identify yourself!
A few others had gotten in on the game by now, and there was a visible air of tension in the room as the chuunin glanced at each other. Someone else wrote in small writing in one corner. Can we stop messing up the papers, please?
No. wrote Naruto in equally small handwriting right below it, then went back to the original conversation. I hereby identify myself. I am the person writing this message right now.
That's a very helpful introduction, I'll have to remember that, wrote someone else, apparently of a sarcastic temperament.
Happy to have been an inspiration to you, Naruto wrote back beneath that one. Before anyone could respond, he drew an arrow indicating number forty-three, his Leaf-nin neighbor, who did not have any tickmarks in his box, probably due to not having written anything. This guy's an idiot, in case you were wondering, you should really just cut him out on general principles.
His original interlocutor wrote directly underneath that. Are you an examinee?
Good guess! I wonder if you'll ever find out, Naruto wrote in return. The paper was getting rather crowded by now; he selected an unused corner and drew a grid three by three. Anyone for tic-tac-toe?
At this, he swore he saw three of the chuunin suppressing laughter. The first one to write him—Naruto had identified him by location—gritted his teeth and wrote directly above the board. Stop playing around. Then scribbled over it.
That wasn't very nice, wrote Naruto. At this, the proctor's head snapped up, and he scanned the room, as if looking for the culprit. Naruto tried very hard to look like an innocent genin examinee who knew nothing about seals or communications whatsoever, no sir, though it took quite some doing to hide his grin.
The game was interrupted by a bell, which was taken by the proctors with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Naruto glanced at the clock and saw that the forty-five minutes allotted them at the beginning was up. He turned his test over, hiding the seal, leaving only a blank test. Glancing quickly at number forty-three beside him, he was glad to see that he also had his test face-up, hiding his original seals. He made a face to see that the other genin hadn't written anything on this test either; it was blank except for Naruto's own early work on the cipher. His own grave, I guess.
The examiner, Ibiki, was standing at the front, looking solemn. "All right! You've had your forty-five minutes to spend on the first nine questions. I will now introduce the tenth question." There was a shuffle as everyone perked up. "However, there's an unusual rule associated with the tenth question, that I'll explain first. At this time, anyone who wishes to decline to take the question may raise their hands, and they'll be out of the exam. Of course, this will also disqualify your teammates, so you'll all get to go home."
"Why would we do that?" yelled someone in the mildly-reduced group.
Ibiki smiled thinly. "If you choose to take this question now, and you fail it, then you lose the right to participate in Chuunin exams for the rest of your life."
This precipitated an outraged flurry, which Ibiki waited out. Then he spoke again. "So, who's for it? If you raise your hand you just get to go home now and try your luck in six months. Stay here...who knows what could happen. Anyone?"
There was a pregnant silence before someone—Naruto thought it was another Iwa-nin—raised his hand, all the while making loud comments about how Konoha was insane. His companions gave him dirty looks as they all three left the room.
That precipitated a flood. Only perhaps a quarter of the seats were empty after the test of cheating acuity, but now teams left and right stood to leave. By the time the flow stopped, only a third of the seats were still full.
Ibiki made several more threatening comments, and a few more teams left, then there was a long silence.
"Anyone else?" said Ibiki. "Going to take the smart way out? You know the risk you take by remaining."
Naruto figured that then was the time to speak. "You know," he said, pitching his voice so it carried, "you're trying awfully hard to make us quit out of this. Why? Do you have to personally administer the test or something? Making it easier on yourself?"
That bought a snort and a stare from Ibiki. "Hardly. I'm doing you punks a favor."
Naruto remembered the two disguised proctors saying something very similar downstairs, outside the genjutsu trap. "Oh, really? I love how much you care about us, Ibiki-san."
Ibiki gave him a glare. "Either quit or shut up."
Naruto merely grinned.
No one else quit after that, and eventually Ibiki apparently got tired of psyching them out. "All right, then. The tenth question. For the final of the written test of this year's Chuunin exam, everyone here passes."
This, predictably enough, brought an outroar. Naruto had been partly expecting something like it, after making the connection between Ibiki's behavior and that of the proctors downstairs, but it still took him slightly aback. It was that easy?
Ibiki then launched into an explanation of how shinobi didn't have the option of turning down missions just because there was a chance of death, which, when he articulated it, left Naruto with a severe case of 'obvious syndrome'. Given that the question had cleaned out a good majority of the room, however, it was apparently not nearly as obvious to some.
As Ibiki wound up his explanation, during the course of which he had for some reason found a pretext to take off his hitai-ite and reveal a truly impressive network of scars, Naruto's glance flashed to the window. Just as he saw it, the window exploded inward, and four kunai flashed out. Naruto was halfway into a reflex to duck and cover when he noticed that, firstly, none of the kunai were aimed at anyone in the room, and secondly, they were attached to each other by some sort of large sheet.
The mystery was solved a few moments later when the kunai landed, extending a large, banner-like sign that read 'Anko Mitarashi' in huge letters. In front of it stood a woman with hair somewhere between purple and brown, wearing a mesh top under a tan overcoat, making a pose matched in ridiculousness only by something that Gai or Lee would do.
Ibiki was not fazed, but merely chastised the woman on her earliness. Naruto was still calming his breathing, and missed some of the woman's talk, but got the gist of it: show up for the second stage of the exam, the next day, at Training Ground 44. Great, it's in that place? Wonderful.
They were dismissed minutes later, and found Kakashi waiting for them outside. He raised an eyebrow.
"You passed. I was hoping you would."
"Of course we did, sensei, because we're awesome," Naruto said.
Kakashi's face crinkled up. "Indeed. Well, you'd best be ready for the second phase tomorrow. You should get home. Make sure to get plenty of sleep."
XxXxX
Morino Ibiki had gathered up the test papers long ago, and also heard the report of several variously outraged or amused chuunin proctors. He stared down at two of said test papers, both of which had still-running communications seals on them, and shook his head wordlessly.
After finding the papers, he had asked if any of them had seen anything unusual at number forty-two, and heard that he had received one mark off for blatantly switching papers with the Leaf-nin next to him. That examinee had been eliminated during the psychological-torture part of the Exam, and had apparently never written anything on either of the papers he was given—the handwriting on the half-completed ciphers problem matched that which had tormented the proctors later on. He had checked out who had sat at that number, and found—of course—that it was the same dratted kid who had called him out during the final elimination stage, leaving him with probably one-and-a-half times as many to pass as he should have had.
He shook his head again and laughed. I think I'm going to tell the Hokage about this, he should get a kick out of it.
XxXxX
It ended up coming out in a social meeting between the jounin-sensei whose teams were taking part in the exam. All four Konoha rookie teams that had entered had passed, counting Gai's team because, though not technically rookies, they were quite notably younger than the usual entrants. This led, naturally, to some bragging among and around said jounin-sensei, which was what they were doing in one of the various lounge areas when Ibiki found them.
"Kakashi-san, Uzumaki Naruto is yours, right?"
Kakashi nodded. "Did he get your attention?"
"Called me out when I was trying to intimidate the last few into quitting. Said something about how I was trying so hard to get them to quit, he wondered if I had to personally administer the test to each one who didn't. No one else quit after that."
Kakashi and Kurenai laughed, and Asuma grinned. Gai became teary-eyed.
"Yes! To so inspire his compatriots! You should be proud of your student, Kakashi! Even under the influence of your hip attitude, he has discovered for himself the power of youth!"
Kakashi turned absently to look at him. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
Everyone else just rolled their eyes at the byplay.
Ibiki nodded. "Yeah, funny, but there's something else. For some unfathomable reason, he was playing around with communications seals during the test, and managed to break into the papers we were using to coordinate between all the proctors. Kind of freaked some of them out with refusing to tell them who he was—he had one thinking he was some sort of infiltrator."
At this, everyone looked at Kakashi, who glanced around. "What? Yes, he's good at fuinjutsu. Not my doing, you'd have to blame Hokage-sama for that. It's not like those papers are secured against anything in particular, anyway."
Ibiki nodded. "True enough...but that's quite impressive, knowing so much about it as a genin. That's his specialty, I guess?"
Kakashi grinned under his mask at this. "Not really, actually."
Everyone there was taken aback. "So, what does he specialize in?" said Ibiki dryly.
Kakashi turned the page of his book. "Heavy combat."
XxXxX
The Hokage, when he heard about it, could only laugh and laugh.
XxXxX
A/N: A chapter. Calloo callay. This one was quicker—I was actually interested in what I was writing, because I've been thinking this bit through since I began the fic. Most of last chapter was improv-on-the-spot.
The idea of the chuunin proctors using connected papers to communicate comes from 'The Mind is a Delicate Thing' by Gallyrat, which is an excellent fic. Anyway, they would pretty much have to be, or something similar, and since Naruto is a fuinjutsu guy...yeah. Fun.
For some reason, I find writing Lee to be the funnest thing I've ever written. Sasuke's reaction is especially fun.
Also, if anyone is too horribly confused by the fuinjutsu references in the previous chapter, or feels like reading my attempts at worldbuilding on Kishimoto's, then I've put up a story that will explain how I'm interpreting various aspects of the Narutoverse. Unless noted, this will probably hold over all my Naruto stories, once I actually get around to writing more of them.
So yeah. See you next time, where they meet in the forest and we get another fight scene. No idea how long it'll take; I probably neglected more of my homework than I should have this week writing this chapter.