Chapter 10
Quest 36:
Try Not to Overkill...

When the Sandaime entered the Forest of Death after the the second part of the chunin exam had concluded -with only five teams passing- hr had to admit to himself that the carnage he saw was unparalleled in recent times. Not even the famed graduation of Momoichi Zabuza matched the horror that made his Anbu's flinch and squirm.

Hell.

It was the only word that could truly describe the scene.

Dead and dying teenagers were all over the forest. There were even some of Konoha's own genin teams among the casualties involved.

"...And this is why Uzumaki brat is to be feared," Anko muttered as she looked about. "This is just ridiculous. Even Orochi-teme has done less..."

"H-Help..."

The ninjas turned towards the source of the pleading voice and frowned.

It was a genin from Kirigakure.

Konoha ninjas looked upon the genin with pity, but it was the Hokage who moved to assist the dying boy. He brought up the child, perhaps 14 years of age, 15 max, and set the boy on his lap.

The genin was missing his left arm, and his right leg was torn off right below the knee. Blood was still seeping out of the wounds from both places as well as numerous cuts and bites the boy had suffered.

"Hello," the Hokage began, calmly, soothingly, yet firmly.

"H-Hi, Hokage-sama..." the genin, recognizing the hat that the old man had on his head, gurgled even as blood trickled out of the corners of his mouth. "...Will I live?"

The Hokage stared at the long trail of blood that the boy had created with his crawl. It was a miracle that none of the forest's usual denizens came upon him smelling the blood.

But the trail...

It was too long. Too messy.

Too much blood.

He shook his head.

"I-I see..." the genin muttered as his breathing became haggard. "M-my third exam..." he whispered.

The Hokage merely nodded.

Then he slowly let the boy down unto the ground. "He's gone," the Hokage said as he walked away.

Even back in the Second and Third Great Wars, Hiruzen never liked seeing children dying. He especially hated it when he saw his comrades or himself having to kill children.

His heart ached, as a result, when he realized that this was Naruto's work.

This massacre.

This atrocity.

Because they couldn't protect him from those damnable assassins of the Hanzo, who kept coming at him. Jounins of their village couldn't fight against the heavy hitter kage-leveled fighters of the Hanzo, and after realizing that Naruto could take care of himself, they just let it occur, only watching from a long distance.

And because they let it happen...

"Naruto..." he muttered quietly. He waved his hand, and all of the ninjas in the area around the Hokage left, leaving the old man to his thoughts.

Naruto, on the other hand, was still giddy about the two new level-ups that he had earned from all those traps. He had his Stat Page out in front of him in his team's waiting room while slurpping from a bowl of ramen.

"No, no , no. I got enough strength-"

And he was debating with himself on what stat to improve.

Sakura, on the other hand, was thinking to herself.

'Okay, both Sasuke and I know that what Naruto did back there in the forest was greusome and immoral... But we're ninjas now. We're meant to do things like that... But how can I? I can't even hurt anyone properly even if it was to save my own life...' she scratched her head in irritation. 'Damn it, this sucks...' Then she cleared her thoughts. 'I should ask Naruto for training.'

"Naruto."

The team turned towards the voice of their teacher, who stood in the doorway into their private room.

"Yeah?" Naruto said.

The jounin-sensei mentioned for Naruto to follow him with his hands. Naruto grumbled before he finished his ramen bowl and followed after Kakashi, who disappeared behind the wall.

Sasuke, while this was happening, was brooding, which he hadn't done for quite some time. 'Dobe hadn't been in the village proper for the last month, so I couldn't train with him, and during that time, he got good enough to lay waste to the entire chunin exams. How did he get stronger? I know that his training, his power, and the assassination attempts must have helped-' He stopped his own train of thought. 'A grave situation. A life-or-death situation!' Sasuke smacked his own forehead, drawing an odd stare from Sakura. 'That's what this was about! Naruto has been constantly fighting for his life!'

"Sakura," he called out to his teammate.

"Y-Yeah?" Sakura replied. While her mind was forming plans and thinking of ways to become stronger, her body had yet to overcome the horror she heard when she was travelling with her teammates in the forest. "Wait, are you thinking about training?"

The Uchiha blinked. "How did you know?"

Sakura let out a nervous chuckle. "I-I was thinking the same thing..." she fidgetted a bit before speaking again. "I mean look at us and then compare us to Naruto. He's so ahead by himself. Yes, those traps were meant for his would-be assassins, but if the traps were obvious and of low quality, they wouldn't have killed this many genin... And look at us. We just benefited from Naruto's expertise.

"I need to get stronger. I really do." She looked at him with eyes filled with fire. "This isn't about feeling pity about myself or me ... t-trying to get your attention, Sasuke-kun," she said firmly. "I want to do my share of work in protecting Konoha. This is my home."

Sasuke stared and blinked at her for a few seconds before bursting into a fit of laugh.

Sakura blushed and shrunk a bit in embarrassment.

"That's exactly what I was thinking."

Sakura looked at Sasuke, confused.

"You know about my clan's massacre, right? And who did it?"

"Y-Yes..." Sakura knew that Uchiha Clan's massacre was a nerve for Sasuke. For him to bring it up...

Sasuke turned his body to face her across the room. "Would you believe me if I told you that I forgave my brother?"

That made her eyes widen.

"W-Wh-"

"...This is a S-rank secret, so do you want to hear it?"

Sakura bristled unintentionally. An S-rank secret? She nodded.

Sasuke's grin became a sad smile.

"My family ... my clan tried to raise a coup."

Naruto, while his teammates were solidifying their resolve to become stronger, was being interrogated by his own teacher.

So far, he had explained that the blade demon he had killed had been cleaned up by Danzo, that he had no affairs with Danzo, that [Aegis Shield] was a side creation of using the [Aura Armor], and that he was perfectly fine.

"What makes you think that I'm not?"

Kakashi felt a cold sweat trickle beneath his mask.

Only a month ago, Naruto had been traumatized by his first kill. It took a lot of convincing from Kakashi to open up and confess how horrible Naruto had felt after killing.

But now...

Naruto was enjoying killing.

This was one of the results he wished hadn't been the consequences of Naruto killing and being chased to be killed.

Usually, when people get involved in any business that involves ruining lives, there are phrases that they go through, before, during, or after their time as a life ruining businessmen -ninjas are also businessmen; they take money to do jobs, MONEY.

First, the first kill and trauma. This was the starting point of it all. Situation differs between people, and they kill under those situations. Kakashi doesn't even remember his own first kill. He was in the middle of the Third Ninja War, and he had been sent into a battle in the forests on the outskirts of the province that Konoha was in. There, he set up explosive tags, all of which went off. To this day, he still didn't know how his first kill or what nationality his victims were of.

Second, the choice. This choice was mostly subconscious. Within their own minds, people begin to change their perspective about killing. The process isn't that well known in a warfare-focused civilization as theirs, but this was the second phrase.

Third, the action. They verbally or physically show how they came to deal with killing.

And lastly, the result.

This was where Naruto and many other ninjas were at. They were at ease with killing, to a point where a few like Naruto had begun to enjoy it.

"Naruto... You're right now enjoying killing others."

Naruto gave Kakashi a confused eyebrow raise. "Ain't that our job? To kill?"

Kakashi frowned. Yes, that was true, but still... "It's wrong-"

Naruto cackled.

'Uh oh,' Kakashi thought.

From the result that was being involved in the killing business, there were four main paths.

First path: absolute rejection. They choose to never kill or be involved.

Second path: grudging acceptance. They accept that it is part of life.

Third path: bloodlust pleasure. They enjoy killing.

And the fourth path: total change. These people were changed extremely by their first kill and the following kills to the point that they could be labelled as a new person.

At least, this was what he could deduce from Naruto's behaviors.

"Naruto, after the chunin exam, take a month or two break with sparse training," he told the blonde boy.

The boy gave him a confused look. "Why? I need to train to become stronger so that I can protect my own village from those damn ninjas and assassins."

Kakashi eye-smiled. "I know, Naruto. I know. But if you don't rest and allow the village to let it work with you, remind you that you are not a killing machine trained for the use of higher-ups, but a person like everyone else in the village."

"Okay..." the boy understood the logic, however descriptionless it had been. Basically, it was good for his mental health.

The jounin gave the blonde a wave before disappearing. But after he vanished, Naruto's face crunched.

Kakashi never explained things like that before. The jounin never talked to him or his other two teammates with detail. Sure, he talked a bit about a jutsu or two, but that was to be expected from the man known as "Copy Cat Kakashi" or "Sharingan Kakashi."

'Guess my mental health needs more attention,' he thought before he walked back towards his team's room.

On the fifth day, the last team to enter the tower was the Kumo team with 'Crazy J.' J had this big fat smile on his face, though. Almost as if he had enjoyed a nice walk in a pleasant park. Of course, only his two teammates knew that J had thoroughly observed and took note of Naruto's traps. Even some the traps, even they were amazed of. Like a mini version of the old warmachines like the twenty five crossbow bolt firing, trap rigged weapons.

Of course, J took one such weapon and was currently in a deep discussion with Naruto.

It was still a good hour before the meeting and tournament, so the two genins dicussing weapons and traps left their teammates to entertain themselves.

"So..." Sasuke and Sakura gave the only girl of the Kumo genin team their attention. "How did you guys meet your teammate?"

Sasuke thought about it for a while. "We started the academy together."

"Oh..." she replied with a nervous grin. "Kind of normal start, huh?"

Sakura scoffed. "If you call painting the Hokage Monument by himself in broad daylight and wearing orange, sure, call him normal." She then giggled. "Aside from that little bit of his oddity, yeah... he was normal like us."

The boy of the Kumo genin team shrugged. "Tenzinamo Reisu of the Tenzimano Clan," he said as he extended his hand out to Sasuke, who stared at it for a second before taking it.

"Uchiha Sasuke of the Uchiha Clan."

"...How are you guys sane?"

"Come again?" the girl in the Kumo genin team frowned.

Reisu glared at the two Konoha genins. "You didn't see any of the things that his trap, did you?"

The girl flinched and then shivered, casting Naruto several fearful glances.

"No..."

"Che," the boy spat the sound before turning around and leaving the group. "Crazy Konoha..."

Sasuke frowned as did Sakura.

Why did he have such an issue with what Naruto did in the exam? Sure, his traps killed a lot, but...

While this was going on between the four of the two teams, J was just grinning at what he was disassembling, while Naruto watched over his shoulder. They were playing and acting around like two good friends would or a pair of goody-good sibling.

"Man, you really outdone yourself, Naruto-man!" J said as held up a small wooden framed three cubed seal matrix. "Four seals... Storage, compression, firing, and repeat. Such a simple work of seals to make such a silent killing trap. I thought most of the weapons out there were spring-based."

Naruto cackled a bit. "Springs make too much sound. I found out about that when I was setting one up in the Forest beforehand. I was setting up a trap for one of the larger spiders in the Forest -"

"You mean the human head sized or the human whole sized?"

"-the whole sized. Those things got good hearing too. The moment the spring rang for half a second, the monster jumped out of the way and dodged it. It was ridiculous..." Naruto shivered a bit. "Had the entire Central Spider Hoard Nest chasing after me."

"Hoard nest?"

Naruto nodded. "The spiders in this forest have a hierarchy of some sort. The biggest and the baddest of them, size of a elephant and speed of a jounin, has their 'Nest.' There are fourteen such nests in total, the central nest having the largest leader. Then below the nest leaders are the guards and the females. Guards don't really do guarding; they're closer to hunters. Females are there to lay eggs and make sure that the mate of her choice stays on the top of the hierarchy. Thankfully, these spiders only lay one to three egg per year, and half of the newborns die within the first year."

"Damn. Kinda cruel," J said as he finished assembling the rest of the multi-crossbow. "So how did you come up with these seal sequence? They're not in a straight or the circular pattern taught in Kumo."

Naruto grinned. "They teach sealing arts in Kumogakure?"

J nodded. "All from a single Uzumaki mid-level scroll of sealing, though Kumo's best sealers still can't understand the highest seal in that scroll." Then he stopped and turned around to Naruto. "You said you were a Uzumaki?"

Naruto nodded, but shrugged his shoulders. "Eh, finders keepers. I got better stuff to work with anyway."

"Like these traps?" J asked. "But compared to your former clan's seals-"

"I mean something like this," Naruto said as he opened up his 'visible-to-me-only' inventory page and reached in. To J, it looked like Naruto's hand opened up a ripple in the air and disappeared into it. He watched in amazement as Naruto's hand pulled itself out of the space distortion and brought out a handheld object with it.

The object's main body was a white ovullar shape. It looked like slightly elongated egg with three prongs attached at one end of it. On the side of the device was a set of words.

'Aperture Science Portal Gun' (1 point for whoever knows this)

"Not this," the blonde boy said as he put the object back into the distortion and pulled out a blue toolbox. "Yup, here it is..." he said as he set the toolbox down. He then pressed a button on the side of the toolbox...

The top of the toolbox opened by itself, and the lower part of the box split off, revealing a round and blue metallic container within the box. The round metal container shot out two legs from where the first leg holding the box off met the round container. Then the third leg, which the container had been on skid backward. Then the blue container swiveled around til it was facing away from Naruto. Then it jerked backward, and a rectangular box came out from beneath the round container along with a nozzle at the end of the box along with a blue light. (1 point for whoever knows this)

"This guy is the best..." Naruto grinned maniacally. "Heavy caliber, three prong stand sentry gun. It fires ten rounds per second, able to easily rip through any human body within a second. Properly tested against one of the iron shell turtles found on the furthest coast of Mizu no Kuni, producing only successful kills, though slightly messy. Thought it ain't designed by me, I built it, and I love it."

J had sparkling eyes. "What else can it do?!"

"It has Hummingbird Tracking System Version 5.32. The software was made for computer virus program strain, but a little tweak allowed me to do this."

Naruto reached into his distortion and pulled out a bowling ball. He tossed the bowling ball into the air, and immediately, the turret whirled its head around towards the bowling ball and began firing.

The ceramic bowling ball blew up like a TNT.

"The original design for the Sentry Turret had it use piercing rounds, but I changed mine with a Hybrid caliber, a combination of piercing and explosive round. The bullets are also made to catch any jounin-level ninjas before they can shunshin."

A second after he said that, remnants of the bowling ball struck the floor next to the turret.

It oddly reminded everyone in the room of a crushed human head under a elephant foot.

J's eyes lit up with awe and respect.

The jounins and the Hokage who just came in to listen to the description were pale. If that turret can truly do such a thing to a jounin before they can even dodge, then there were sure to be changes around the ninja world.

"The best part about this is that I can command it with a single mental command."

'Crudd...' Every participating genin thought.

Gaara merely narrowed his eyes. 'Can that thing pierce through my shield?'

"Line up genins!"

So far, there had been five battles. Sasuke had fought some Suna genin and won. Sakura fought against Tenten and got her ass kicked. Ino went and fought Temari, who didn't have much defense against the Yamanaka family's mind control jutsu, and lost, due to lack of physical training. J fought Shino and won, thanks to a paper array of lightning seals that zapped any and all bugs that entered its radius. Chouji lost against Neji, and Hinata won against Shikamaru due to her fast reflexes and speed.

That left...

Naruto.

Lee.

And Gaara.

"One of you will either have to pass," Hayate said as he reached into the box where the contestant names were originally pulled from. He shuffled in there a bit before pulling out two pieces of papers.

"Naruto and Gaara."

Lee wailed in dejection.

"Well, this is going to be interesting," J grinned as he watched both contestants step down to the ring below. "I hope Naruto wins, cuz I won't be able to win against that Suna Psycho."

"Hnn."

"... Hnn?"

Sasuke gave J an irritated glare. "Hnn."

"Hnn."

Sasuke just ignored the weirdo. 'Is the ninja world filled with weirdos like him and Naruto? If so... I better start thinking about retirement soon... Did I have this thought before?'

"Are both of the contestants ready?" Hayate asked the two genins.

"Sure," NAruto replied while Gaara remained silent.

"Hajime!" Hayate shouted and jumped out of the stage ring.

As soon as he was out of the ring, Naruto pulled out a ... joystick.

Gaara's eyes narrowed. "What is that?"

"This?" Naruto grinned as he took the handle of the joystick and pushed it towards Gaara. Suddenly, there were multiple red dots that appeared all over Gaara. "My win."

Peep.

Everyone in the room blocked out their eyes and ears as it exploded from within with thunderous sounds and lightning flashes. From multiple corners of the stage ring, lightning shot out and struck where Gaara had been standing. They didn't stop. Metal canisters were bouncing away from those centers of lightnings.

Danzo, who had been watching from the shadow, gawked. His Uchiha eyes were barely tracking those "bullets" of Naruto's. When they struck, they exploded like a exploding tag. And those turrets were firing so much of them each second, faster than an entire squadron of ninjas can pull off with throwing their kunais with notes attached to them. This ... This was the revolutionary invention. With this machine alone, Danzo already recognized that exploding tags were obsolete.

"My god..." he heard Hiruzen whisper as he watched the arena start to get heavy smokes of all shades of grey and black fill it in. Those explosions weren't just for show.

"Indeed," he whispered back.

Then it stopped.

Everyone was quiet. They watched the now smoke filled stage as three turrets slowly came into reality as their invisibility ran out of battery. "Che," Naruto grumbled as he quickly made three shadow clones that went off and grabbed the turrets before stuffing the turrets back into Naruto's pocket dimension. Those turrets ran out of bullets to use, which is why they stopped firing -making any caliber of hybrid bullet is a long task, and he only had few days to prepare within the tower to prepare- so they were now useless. "Stop hiding behind that thing and come out, Sabaku no Gaara!" he growled out.

Naruto was irritated. Yes, he was irritated. He had heard of Gaara's Ultimate Defense. While he understood that sand was a very quality material for any ninja to use in large quantities, he didn't think that Gaara would be able to make a barrier between himself and whatever Naruto threw at him. It was especially for this kid that Naruto developed the hybrid, heavy-caliber rounds.

As the smoke cleared up, everyone gawked at the round and beaten up, supposedly round ball of sand. Large parts of it were turned to glass from the superheat of continuous explosions, rendering the sands useless for Gaara to use.

Lee gawked. "How?!"

Naruto frowned. "Damn. Ultimate Defense thing wasn't a joke. It really is a Ultimate Defense..." Gaara's shell broke apart, and within its space stood Gaara. He was hunched over, and breathing heavily. "But the shockwaves and the vacuums from the explosions did get to you, huh?"

"What is Naruto talking about, Asuma-Sensei?" Shikamaru asked. While the boy was a genius and a particular observer, he hadn't had much interaction with explosive tags or explosion in general to know about any explosion's details.

"Explosions, Shikamaru," Asuma began, drawing others' attention around him as well. This involved other village's genins and jounin teachers. "Are result of chemical bonds rapidly broken down and then remade. The components of an explosive goes off, and uses the air as one of its ingrediants to violent react. However, since it uses air, the space in which the explosion occurs leaves behind a vacuum, a no-air zone. Once this occurs, all the air surrounding that zone rushes back in, creating a brief but heavy pressured environment. So when Naruto's ... turrets shot and all those explosions occurred, Gaara was stuck inside his sand ball. I'm guessing that the sand ball needs to let air through, and because of that, Gaara is in that situation," he said as everyone looked to Gaara.

"Gaara, thanks to his sand, was saved, but once the explosions started to go off, all the air surrounding the explosion, including those within Gaara's sand ball, were all sucked away into the vacuum space created by the explosions. And since the explosion wasn't temporary but continuous, Gaara was cut off from his supply of oxygen, leaving only what he breathed out, carbon dioxide, left in that space, since it isn't used in the chemical reaction that was the explosons surrounding him... As far as I can describe it, he has medium carbon dioxide poisoning... Maybe even heavy poisoning if the space was limited to his personal size only."

Gaara glared at Naruto, and then the red haired boy suddenly grinned manically.

Naruto frowned, and he took a step forward...

Crunch...

He froze and his eyes widened.

"SHIT!" Naruto growled as he immedaitely crossed his fingers, and used Shadow Clone technique, filling the entire arena with smoke.

Everyone saw Gaara's hand shoot up, slightly towards Naruto, and suddenly sands swirled all around the arena.

That was all the audience saw before the arena was completely covered up by Naruto's clone technique side-effect white gas.

Then they heard many popping noises before the smoke themselves cleared.

Naruto was standing behind Gaara with a odd-looking weaponry in hand and Gaara had three sand arms coming out of his gourd pointing at him.

"DRAW! *COUGH COUGH COUGH* *HACCCCKKK* Too much smoke..."

The two of them stopped and glared at Hayate, who began to back away a bit.

"But I was having so much fun..." Naruto replied sarcastically as he withdrew his stick shaped weapon.

"You are worthy of having your blood spilt."

"...Negative wisdom."

"Blonde..."

Naruto turnedh is glare from Hayate to Gaara. "Ginger."

Gaara gave the boy a insane grin before withdrawing his sand. "The longer it ferments, the better the taste is..." he spoke before walking back up to the audience platform.

Naruto just gave the ginger the birdie to the boy's back.

"Alright, can we have all -cough- of the winners down for a new drawing of the future matches?" Hayate said.

Naruto stood next to J and Sasuke. Neji and Lee stood side by side, to Sasuke right. Tenten, Temari, and Hinata stood next to Lee, and Gaara stood left of J. There was also a Kumo genin and a Iwa genin that stood right of Tenten and Hinata.

"Alright, *cough* go ahead and draw the papers from this box," Hayate said as he tapped the box in front of him.

J was the first to go up. He stood there for a second, just staring before he fished out a paper.

"Uchiha Sasuke."

Hiruzen raised an eyebrow. Usually, the contestants were given a number. 'I guess the proctors decided to change the details a little, huh?'

J walked back and gave the Uchiha a grin that clearly said: "Pshe... easy win."

The Uchiha just glared.

Tenten walked up and drew a paper.

"Sabuku no Temari."

Neji walked up. "Uzumaki Naruto."

Many people flinched.

The random Kumo genin, not J, walked up. "Gaa- I forfeit."

"Forfeit, it is..."

The Iwa genin walked up. "Hyuuga Hinata."

"*cough* Alright, these are the match pairings..."

Uchiha Sasuke vs Crazy J
Sabaku no Temari vs Tenten
Hyuuga Neji vs Uzumaki Naruto
Gaara passes
Hosakawa Hyuuga Hinata

"We will have the last part of the Chunin Exams in the Leaf Stadium exactly a month from now on. Your teachers will be given a week advance warning before the final part. *cough* Genins... *cough* good luck."

Hello, guys. Arms of Lonlienss, or AoL here.

So this is the latest chapter, and I've included new references to more games. If you got the reference for Team Fortress and Portal, you did well. If you didn't, then oh well. As well as Portal reference.

Anyway, perhaps the topic of this A/N: Naruto and guns.

TF2's turrets will continue to make appearance, but it will not evolve beyond the second stage. Why? The third stage involves rockets, and I don't want this ninja world's technology to jump that high. Then of course, there is the portal gun. Portal gun exceeds rocket tech, what gives for no rockets then? Well, portal gun can be explained with seal functions, though it'll have to be too advance for almost all seal masters out there.

As for the Hanzo group...

Well, they're gonna start moving soon...