What? It's only called 'The forest of death.'
Ten years earlier
"Those two little shits!" A younger Morino Ibiki slammed a pair of exam papers onto the table and collapsed into his seat with a sigh.
Nobody else in the staffroom bothered to ask which two 'little shits' he was referring to.
"Am I to assume Neji and Itachi passed the written exam?" Asked the third Hokage, smiling benignly.
"Passed?" Ibiki growled. "They picked it apart!"
"Did you do the one where they were supposed to cheat?" Asked one of the other proctors.
"Oh yeah. But they..." Ibiki swallowed. "Okay, so they didn't leave their seats for the entire exam. I know they didn't. And no dojutsu use either. But then I collect in the papers at the end of the exam...First of all, both got all nine questions correct. The Hyuuga wrote down on the back all the ways he'd caught the other participants cheating. The ones we didn't catch. And the Uchiha wrote down blackmail material on both me and every other proctor in the exam!"
There was a pause. Suddenly everyone in the room darted at once towards the two papers.
Hiruzen flicked his finger from his own seat, and they went up in a burst of flame. "Gentlemen, please. Ibiki, do you have any particular comments moving on to the second portion of the exam?"
"Handicap them." The head of T&I demanded. "Poison them, forget to give them a scroll, send them in late. For the love of Kami, at least split them apart. Otherwise they might get bored, and then it's very possible nobody else will make it to the third stage."
Outside, in the streets, Itachi and Neji were walking home from the exam. "So..." Itachi began. "Bear with me, but I think we were supposed to cheat."
Present day
The next morning, all the remaining genin had congregated outside outside the forest of death. Many had been slightly put off by the fact that 'The Forest Of Death' was actually its name, but team seven had eventually agreed that it was just ninja being melodramatic as usual. It would be deadly, probably, but nothing to be overly concerned about.
"Pack check." Sasuke called. "Week of food rations?"
"Check." Both his teammates echoed him.
"Medkit?"
"Check."
"Sleeping bag?"
"Check."
"Assorted murder tools?"
"Check." "Damn right check."
"Compass?"
"Check."
"Uh..." Naruto shuffled through his bag. "Funny thing..."
"Here." Hinata fished one out of her own bag. "I brought extras just in case."
"Thanks, Hinata! You'd make a great mom!"
She choked, putting a hand to her mouth and going red.
"Yeah, we're basically Naruto's parents. Civilian twelve year olds can't be worse than him..." Sasuke zipped his bag up and shouldered it. "At least we've all got food. I'm almost surprised they didn't tell us 'not to eat or we'll throw up'. Still not over that shit."
"Were you able to get any information on the forest from your family?" Hinata asked, recovering.
"Tried." Sasuke huffed. "But I couldn't get a word in edgeways."
The night before
"He was amazing!"
"Stop."
"And then he went 'apologise to the librarian for me' in this action hero voice,"
"Stop."
"-and then one of the shadow clones they'd hidden threw those kunai and-"
"STOP." Sasuke buried his head in his hands. "Itachi, you're embarrassing me."
"But you were so cool!" Itachi gushed. "Casting the great fireball with a clone of a clone? Under a transformation technique?"
"I can manage about eight from full to empty chakra." Sasuke admitted.
"See this is the thing! I'm proud of you."
"No, you're mocking me!"
"Dad, Sasuke did good, didn't he?"
"By your age the great fireball's chakra cost was negligible." Fugaku replied, disinterestedly. "He has a lot of progress to make."
"See?" Sasuke exclaimed.
"Don't listen to him." Itachi replied, with a bit more ardour than a casual dismissal should have warranted.
"Sasuke has passed the first stage of the exams." Fugaku stated. "That is all that matters. And he will pass the second and third with just as much success, if he is a true Uchiha."
"But we'll be proud of him no matter what, right?" Said Mikoto, giving her husband a significant glance.
"Hmm." Replied Fugaku, noncommittally.
"Of course we will." Itachi filled in, shooting his younger sibling a smile. "Not that I doubt you, of course."
Present day
"Family, I swear." Sasuke shook his head in despair.
"Yeah, family. Totally get you." Naruto grumbled.
"Truly, they cause me much trouble." Agreed Hinata.
"Okay, that was insensitive." Sasuke admitted, before frowning. "What exactly did you two do last night?"
"Sat alone in my flat." Naruto replied.
"Sat alone in my house." Hinata answered.
Sasuke gave them concerned glances. "Wait, what do you normally do when I leave?"
"Wait for you to get back." Naruto sighed.
"Okay, wow, do you guys like, want a hug?"
"Feeling prepared, fellow ninja?" Said an older genin, with odd grey blue hair, walking up to them with a smile.
"We're confident we will survive the forest." Hinata replied, voice polite but eyes wary.
"The forest, perhaps. But what about the other competitors?" Said the newcomer. "Name's Kabuto. And I can help you with the latter, if you'd like."
"You're offering info on the other competitors?" Sasuke caught on.
Kabuto nodded. "I have data cards. One on each of the competing genin. If you like I can show you a few."
"What's the price?" Sasuke asked.
Kabuto shrugged. "No price. This is free info."
"That's incredibly suspicious." Sasuke deadpanned. "Why would you give us correct information for free? We're in competition."
"Well, let's look at the info I have on you." Kabuto shuffled through his cards. "You've done an A-rank already, two of you have bloodline limits, and one of you doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's the nine tails fox. Quite frankly, you're a team I'd be glad to have some rapport with."
"You look older than most of the genin here." Hinata mentioned. "How many times have you attempted the exam?"
"Seven."
She rolled her eyes, which looked a little weird with her blank white orbs. "Little fish swimming with the sharks." She declared.
"What?" Naruto looked at her.
"He's bargaining for our favour so we'll help him win." Sasuke explained. "You two extort him as much as you want, no offense but Uchiha honour says I can't associate with him." He turned around as his teammates started quizzing Kabuto about his cards, and immediately jerked backwards, as a face pressed towards his.
"Lee?" He asked.
"Sasuke!" Rock Lee shouted, despite being a matter of centimetres from Sasuke's face. "I must defeat you!"
"...More than usual?" Sasuke asked.
Team Seven's daily training with team 9/Gai put Sasuke into frequent sparring with Lee. The bushy browed genin treated every fight like a duel for the fate of the earth.
"Indeed!" Lee nodded. "I have encountered the most beautiful girl in the world!"
"Really?" Sasuke asked. "Good for you. Some lady from one of the other hidden villages come to visit?"
"No." Lee shook his head. "Haruno Sakura!"
There was a pause. Sasuke tried not to snort. "Sakura?" He confirmed. "With the pink hair and red dress?"
"Her exactly!" Lee confirmed. "She is a divine vision of perfection!"
"I mean, she's not bad." Sasuke shrugged. "How does that relate to me?"
"You have stolen her heart!" Lee leaned back only to point a finger into Sasuke's face. "She is infatuated with you!"
"That is true." Sasuke agreed.
"If I am to claim her love for myself..." Lee explained, in his own way. "I must defeat you in combat!"
Sasuke sighed. "Lee, I don't think that's how it wo-" He stopped to think about it. "You want to date Sakura?"
"Yes!"
"Which would, logically, get her to stop bothering me?"
"That makes sense to me." Lee nodded.
"Lee." Sasuke put a hand on his shoulder. "My friend. I wholeheartedly support your endeavour."
"You do?!" Lee's eyes went wider than usual.
Sasuke nodded. "Absolutely. I think you'd be perfect with her. In fact, tell her I said that."
"I will!" Lee shouted. "Thank you for your approval, friend Sasuke! But I must still defeat you and Hinata and Sai in the finals as you are all my rivals!"
"Depending on how sucky this next round is, there might not even be three rounds." Sasuke mused, but Lee had already gone. He sighed.
"Alright guinea pigs- I mean, prospective chunin!" Anko's voice carried out over the clearing. "Get separated into your teams, we're starting!"
Chunin helpers came around to each team, discreetly handing them all a scroll, which Naruto snatched and started examining.
"You will notice that your scroll is either inscribed with the symbol for heaven or the symbol for earth!" Anko told the crowd. "That's important. You see, in order to pass, you must reach the tower in the centre of the forest of death with both a heaven and an earth scroll. And yes, that means you must get the correct one from your competitors."
The teams started eyeing each other nervously. Without speaking, Naruto handed the scroll to Sasuke.
"You can see which scroll everyone has, right?" Asked the Uchiha.
"Get me a pen and paper." Replied the Hyuuga.
An hour or two later, when all the teams had been arrayed around the circular woods, the call was given to open the floodgates, and more than three dozen genin launched into the forest of death. Twenty minutes after that, a certain grass ninja had murdered both his teammates, spared a laugh for how unobservant they were, then began hunting. An hour and ten minutes after that, the three sand siblings had murdered a full team, taken their scroll, and beaten the exam in record breaking time.
Five or so hours after that, team seven stopped to rest.
"Nobody." Naruto grumbled, helping to set up camp. "Nobody to fight. We've been looking all day!"
"Everyone from Konoha knows who we are and what we can do." Sasuke mused. "And with Kabuto trading around peoples' information, even more will be clued in. It's possible people are avoiding us."
"We have enough of a reputation that people are scared of us?" Naruto asked, a smile coming over his face. "So that's like...actual respect, right?"
"False respect." Sasuke corrected. "Us for our names, and you for your, uh, 'tenant'. Actual respect is for who you are, or for what you've done."
"You get that from Itachi?"
"...yeah."
"Well, I need to take a leak." Naruto walked off into the forest with a wave. "Don't go taking out enemy teams without me, okay?"
"Sure."
"We'll try."
For a while there was quiet in the camp.
"Did you notice that?" Sasuke piped up.
"How happy he looked at the slightest shred of respect?" Hinata confirmed.
"Uh-huh." Sasuke sighed. "Anyone with any manipulative intent could have him wrapped around their finger in a day."
"I won't let that happen." Hinata vowed.
Sasuke looked at her sidelong. "Out of curiosity, do you ever try to hide the fact that you're obsessed with him?"
She went red. "I..."
"Don't worry about it." Sasuke stretched. "Shame. I'll just have to tell my parents marrying you isn't really an option."
"They...you...what?"
That conversational time bomb was interrupted by Naruto's return.
"I'm back, guys." He waved. "Did I miss anything?"
"Not much." Sasuke stood and walked over to him. "You got anything to report?"
"While I was on the toilet? Sorry, nah." Naruto shrugged.
Sasuke smiled at him. There was an odd glint in it. "My bad, that wasn't what I meant. Let me rephrase." In a split second he had a hand grabbing Naruto by the lapels, a kunai held to his throat and both Sharingan active. "What are your teammates planning?" He asked, politely.
Naruto gulped, and his transformation technique dispelled. The grass ninja that replaced him, who Sasuke only recognised by headband, didn't look any less terrified. "I was meant to surprise attack you, then they would jump down and finish you off. We were then gonna hunt down your other partner together."
"These will be a squad that don't know all about our visual jutsu then." Hinata casually remarked, getting to her own feet in no hurry. "The other two are a hundred metres out, in the trees. Drop your new friend and follow me."
"Roger roger." Sasuke agreed. He looked back at his captive and grinned. "Sleep." The Sharingan assisted genjutsu, point blank against an afraid target, met nearly zero resistance. He crumpled in Sasuke's hands.
Naruto wandered back into the camp, and his two teammates hardly even looked up. "Sorry that took a while." He apologised. "I thought it was only a leak, but then it wasn't, and I needed to make a hole and, well, you don't wanna know."
"We really don't, no." Sasuke shuddered.
Naruto stopped when he reached the centre, looking down. "Uh, guys? Who are they?"
Sasuke glanced across at the three unconscious, tied up forms on the clearing floor. "Oh, them. Grass team. They attacked while you were out. Had another heaven scroll though, so we aren't out of the woods yet. Literally."
"And I would like to mention, we did think about how you would be sad if we didn't include you." Hinata hurried to add. "But we only had a few seconds before they realised we'd taken out their first member, so...I'm sorry."
"S'fine." Naruto waved it off, stomaching his disappointment. "But as payment I'm not taking middle watch, I'll do first or last. Last time I had to wake up in the middle of the night then go back to sleep was on the wave mission, and the day after was horrible."
"Actually." Hinata raised a hand. "We may not even have to do that." She straightened to a kneeling position and bit at her own finger, drawing blood.
"Uh, what?" Naruto looked at her sudden self harm with some concern.
She pulled a scroll of some sort out of one of her pouches, smeared the drop of blood to it and calmly stated "summoning jutsu." With a poof of smoke, there was suddenly a small animal in the clearing.
"Hello mistress!" The owl cooed, at a surprisingly high pitch. "What do you need?"
"Is that an animal summon?" Sasuke leaned in, impressed.
"Yes!" Said the owl. "I am Kudos of the owl clan. You are the mistress' teammates? It is a pleasure to meet you all!"
The way it emphasised the 'coo' in Kudos, Naruto knew that name had to have been deliberate. It was about the same size as a regular owl, but was not a normal colour. It's plumage was assorted shades of navy blue.
"Summoning technique?" Naruto had never heard of it before. "It lets you have a pet?"
"Not a pet." Hinata explained, as Kudos looked offended at the thought. "It lets you summon spirit creatures from whatever animal you have a summoning contract with. They may look real, but they're actually made entirely out of natural energy. The owls have been the signature family of the Hyuuga clan for generations, something about the big eyes and 360 vision must have seemed like a resemblance."
"The Uchiha don't have anything like that, but Itachi does have a thing for crows." Sasuke added. He eyed the bird critically. "She doesn't look much like a combat summon."
"He." Kudos replied, indignantly. "And no. My primary use is reconnaissance, patrolling and guarding."
"That's why you're here." Hinata addressed it directly. "Kudos, can you watch over us while we sleep? If anyone comes, or the people who are tied up wake up, give out a really loud screech, okay?"
"Absolutely!" Kudos responded. He stretched out an impressive wingspan for his size, and with a few beats climbed into the air, finding a perch up in the trees above them.
"Regular owls can see and hear things hundreds of metres away." Hinata explained. "Summoned ones are even better. We'll be safe without taking watch."
"That's awesome, Hinata!" Naruto exclaimed with his usual zeal. "You're the best! I'm almost tempted to join the Hyuuga clan just to get this summoning thing!"
The implications of that sent Hinata into another blushing and coughing fit.
"There are other animals, Naruto." Sasuke sighed. "And as impressive as the technique is, couldn't Naruto just make a few shadow clones and have them take watch all night?"
Hinata blinked.
Kudos cooed above them.
"Right, we should probably do that too."
"I love you guys but sometimes I want to kill you both. Goodnight." Rolling his eyes, Sasuke crawled into his sleeping roll.
*chanting* "New Abilities! New Abilities! New Abilities! Yes, I know that officially there aren't any Owl summons, but if there's hawks snakes toads and slugs I don't see why there shouldn't be, especially with how well they fit with the Hyuuga. More on that next chapter. Now, let's see, what happens in the forest of death...oh. Oh.