chapter 25

conversations

After explaining just what the cursed seal did to him, it hadn't taken much persuasion to convince Sasuke to let the Sandaime, who had been waiting for them at the tower, put a suppression seal on it.

While that was going on, Kakashi drew his blonde student aside. "We got your message. Kabuto being a spy came as a huge surprise to us, but he's somewhere in the middle of the forest right now, so we can't really do anything. Now, I want to know everything that happened in there."

Naruto gave a summarized description of team 7's time in the Forest of Death, making sure to include all the important details, as well as all the information he had learned by interrogating the Sound genin. The only new information was that Orochimaru was planning an invasion of Konoha sometime during the exams, but they weren't important enough to know any specifics.

After giving his report, he had a question. "Kakashi-sensei, what's going to be done?"

"Good question. Well, Orochimaru has made it clear that if we interfere with the exam in any way, bad things will happen, and we don't know enough of his plans yet to do anything about them. Currently, we have two options: we can interrogate Kabuto, or we can watch him. While the first has the potential to get us more information, it is also not very likely to succeed, as experienced med nins can commit suicide quite easily after capture. That reminds me, I'll definitely need to find Sakura a new instructor."

Naruto was surprised. "Wait, he was the one teaching her healing jutsu?! What were you thinking?!"

The grey-haired jonin gave one of his lazy eye-smiles. "Well, before now, we had no reason to suspect him of anything, and he is the adopted son of the head of Konoha's medical program."

There were a few seconds of silence as the blonde digested this information and decided on his next question. "Umm, sensei, I was curious, what teams have passed so far besides us and team 10, and what are we supposed to do for the next four days?"

"Well, to answer your second question first, there are rooms here to sleep in, as well as training areas, and a cafeteria. The examinees can do whatever they want except leaving the tower and trying to kill each other. As for the teams that passed, all of your graduating class that made genin are here, as well as a team from Suna, one from Ame that, interestingly enough, has two kunoichi, and another Konoha team a year above you guys."

It didn't take much thought to figure out who the other teams were. "Thanks, Kakashi-sensei! If you don't need anything else, I'm gonna get going now."

He shook his head. "No, that's all. You're dismissed."

And Naruto went off to explore the tower.

It didn't take long before he ran into someone. Specifically, Gaara. The Suna redhead saw him and stopped in the middle of the hallway. His bright green eyes stared at the orange-clad genin intently, and a killing intent that made the passing chunins freeze and tremble in fear filled the passage. Naruto stood there, unfazed, staring right back. "Do you want something?"

"I will kill you, Uzumaki Naruto."

"No you won't." As if to prove his point, he unleashed his own killing intent, raising it to slightly surpass Gaara's.

The Ichibi jinchuriki broke away from the piercing blue eyes and continued down the hall, the killing intent dissipating in his wake.

One of the chunins turned to whisper to his friend. "W-what the hell was that?"

Thanks to his advanced hearing, Naruto heard the man clearly and decided to answer him. "Konoha isn't the only hidden village to seal demons into kids and treat them like shit, apparently." And with that, he too walked away, leaving the two chunin to think over his words.

When the blonde found Hinata-chan, she was in the cafeteria eating lunch with Kiba and Shino. He crept up on the pale-eyed girl in an exaggerated fashion, hoping her teammares wouldn't betray his presence. Fortunately for him, Shino was his usual outwardly expressionless self, and Kiba and Akamaru proved themselves capable of holding back their mirth temporarily.

He put his hands over the Hyuuga's eyes, knowing full well that the gesture, and even the sneaking, would be pointless if her byakugan were active. "Guess who?"

Apparently, she was in a teasing mood. "Hmm... Ino?"

He grinned from his position kneeled down behind her. "Nope, but the hair and eye color are close."

"Oh, then it must be Naruto-kun!" He removed his hands as she turned around and kissed him right on the mouth. Akamaru and Kiba burst out into barking and laughter respectively, while Shino just raised his eyebrows.

When the two finally broke apart, she was the first to speak. "When did you get here? What happened? Are you all right? I would have thought your team would have gotten here on the first day."

"Whoa, slow down, Hinata-chan! One question at a time! Going out of order, yes, thirty minutes ago, we ran into trouble."

Kiba decided to make himself heard. "Oh yeah, speaking of trouble, thanks for the warning, man. We probably wouldn't be here now if it weren't for that."

The blonde became serious temporarily. "What happened?" he asked, echoing the earlier question of the girl now hanging on to his arm.

Shino chose to speak for his team. "We trailed the Suna team for twenty three minutes. Had it not been for your advice, we would likely have attacked. After those twenty three minutes, they met up with an older team from Ame. The red-haired boy seems to have chakra-infused sand in his gourd that automatically protects him from all attacks. After proving that his opponents were unable to harm him, he surrounded one of them in sand and crushed him. The remaining two genin gave up their scroll, which the Suna team did not need. Then the red-haired boy crushed them with his sand as well."

A disgusted expression crossed Naruto's face. "That kid has some serious mental problems. But enough about that, let's eat! Do they have ramen?" In an instant, he had reverted to his usual childish, energetic, ramen-addicted self.

It turned out they did have ramen. One hundred thirty three bowls later (he was hungry), the blonde was off exploring again, hoping to find the girl from Ame who had been drawing pictures during the first exam. Amazing how someone so loud could be so hard to find.

Unfortunately, someone else found him before he found her. "Naruto-kun! Your flames of youth are burning brightly this day! Would you agree to a friendly spar with me during our springtime of youth?!"

Seeing Lee, he broke out into a wide grin. A spar would be fun indeed. After accepting, the two genin headed off to the nearest training room.

"We should probably keep it light, Fuzzy-brows. After all, we wouldn't want any bad injuries with the third exam coming up."

"Yosh! Good thinking, Naruto-kun. However, you proved during our last fight that I cannot defeat you with a handicap, so out of respect to your youthfulness, I will remove my weights." Saying this, he reached down and pulled up his orange leg-warmers, revealing large metal weights wrapped around his ankles.

When the blonde saw the sizable craters they made on falling to the floor, he grinned. "This'll be fun! I should probably deactivate my own weights, too." A moment of concentration later, his body felt lighter than air. "All right, let's go!" And the two genin became blurs of orange and green.

Naruto stayed mostly on the defensive, using his high reaction time to counter his opponent's attacks. When he did attack, he made sure to hold back to keep from causing serious injury to his large-eyebrowed friend.

Lee pressed his advantage in skill for all it was worth, sliding in under the blonde's defenses to deliver strong blows to his chest and stomach. When the younger genin went on the offensive, he concentrated on dodging; even when blocked, the blows had enough strength behind them to be quite painful.

"Naruto-kun, how is it that you have such impressive speed and strength, yet your taijutsu is so...lacking?" asked Lee, while throwing a flurry of punches towards his opponent's chest.

The orange-clad genin dropped to the floor and tried a leg sweep at the other boy's feet. When he jumped, Naruto used his other leg to launch himself into the air and changing the leg sweep into a kick to the stomach. "Not rally sure. My body can't seem to adapt to any sort of style, and I've tried every one I could get my hands on. So I settle for just working on speed and strength and fighting by instinct."

Lee landed on his feet several yards away and dashed back in. "That seems strange, but I can confess that your way of fighting is quite effective. It allows for you to be completely unpredictable and to do things your opponents will not expect, like that last hit."

They continued like this for fifteen minutes, trading blows and light conversation, until the green-clad genin was out of breath. "Thank you for the spar, Naruto-kun."

"No problem. It was fun." The blonde smiled at his friend, before both went their separate ways.

"OI! Mister 'I'm not gonna lose to anyone!' Yeah, I'm talking to you, can you hear me?!"

He had finally found the loud kunoichi. Or more precisely, she had found him.

He turned to face the approaching girl. "Of course I hear you. People in Kumo can probably hear you."

"Hey! You were louder than me during our shouting match!"

"SO?! I can at least talk at a normal volume!"

"HEY! JUST BECAUSE I CHOOSE NOT TO DOESN'T MEAN I CAN'T"

"OH YEAH?! THEN WHY DON'T YOU?!"

"BECAUSE THIS IS SO MUCH MORE FUN!"

"I'M NOT SURE I BELIEVE YOU!! PROVE IT!!"

"There. Happy now?"

"YE- yeah. Actually, you're right. That was kind of fun." A small smile spread across Naruto's face on realizing just what had been going on, and it soon broke out into full-blown laughter, which the kunoichi soon joined in on.

Once both had settled down, the blonde spoke. "You know, I'm kind of at a disadvantage here. I mean, you know my name, but I don't know yours."

The hazel-eyed girl scratched the back of her neck sheepishly. "Oh, I'm Haruhi. But if you want, you can call me Haru-chan, Naru-kun."

He frowned. "I have a girlfriend."

She looked embarrassed. "Oh, I didn't mean like that. I just figured we could be good friends."

"All right. That's fine with me, Haru-chan. How did the exam go for you?" She seemed to be a genuinely nice person, even if there were several questions he had about her, not the least of which were the excitement he saw in her eyes whenever she looked at him and the drawing of the two of them on her paper test.

"Oh, it was all right. My regular teammates... aren't here, so I had to be paired with a bastard and bitch who required some, um, convincing, to keep from doing stupid stuff, but we made it through quickly. How about you?" Sadness and anger raged through her when she mentioned her normal teammates.

The blonde decided on an honest but ambiguous answer. "It didn't go so well for us. There were some complications when a snake bit my teammate."

Surprisingly enough, she let out a burst of killing intent at the reference to Orochimaru, showing that she had somehow understood what he meant and making him even more confused. "Anyway, I need to get back to my teammates before they go kill someone. It was nice to meet you properly, Naru-kun."

As she walked past, she slipped a piece of paper into his hand. Naruto pretended nothing had happened as he casually headed to his room. On arriving there, he checked to make sure he was completely alone and that the place was secure before looking at the paper.

It was blank. Examining it closer, however, he felt a slight current of chakra running through it. Channeling a bit of his own chakra into the paper, a message appeared, written in letters of chakra:

"Meet tonight midnight tower roof. Let no one know."

Less than a second later, the paper burned to ash.

Naruto found slipping out of the tower fairly difficult, ironically enough because of the increased security his own information had caused. Had stealth not been one of his specialties, he doubted he would have made it. He made sure to leave a kage bushin in his bed in case anyone checked on him.

Arriving at the top of the tower dressed in all black, everything but his blue eyes covered, he saw her waiting for him, clothed similarly.

Haruhi immediately got down to business, talking in a quiet whisper. "Glad you could make it, Naru-kun. I'm sure there's lots of stuff you want to know from me, so start asking and I'll answer what I can."

He wasn't quite sure where to start, so he chose the most recent question. "How did you know I was talking about Orochimaru earlier today?"

"We knew that bastard was here and interested in your teammate, and about the cursed seal, seeing as our master," she spat the word as though it were a vile curse, and the anger and hatred flowing through her was intense, "practically invented the thing."

Now the blonde's interest was really piqued. "Master?"

"His name, his real name, is Kazama Arashi. I'm not from Ame, nor are my teammates, it was just the easiest place to set up identities from, since some of his people are pretty powerful there. You know who he is. He's using this exam to set up a... test for you and the Suna boy, so he can estimate how powerful you'll both be when it's time to come after you."

It didn't take much thought to figure out the only person who could be so powerful, cause so much hate in someone, and had an interest in himself and Gaara. Naruto barely had the sense to keep his killing intent in check at the thought of that man... Kazama Arashi. It was much better having a name for him.

"What did he do to you?"

"Oh, not much. Just killed my dad, aunt, brothers, and the rest of my clan, made my cousin's life a living hell, and put my mom under an extremely powerful mind-control jutsu."

"Yup, that sounds like the bastard, all right. So, just what kind of test does he have planned for us?"

"Well, apparently, the next exam consists of one-on-one matches, and he's going to manipulate it so that you guys fight two of us. Sandy will have to kill Hikaru, that black-haired whore. And you'll be up against me and Sora at different points throughout the exam. Please do me a favor and make sure the bastard dies."

The mention of one-on-one fights reminded him of her drawings. "By the way, I saw what you did for the first exam. What was that about."

In an instant, her emotions changed from barely-restrained anger to pride. "The most fundamental teaching of my clan is to find the joy in a good battle against an equal. Have you ever experienced it, Naru-kun? The sheer excitement and happiness of not knowing, or even caring how it turns out, just enjoying the chance to push yourself to your limits and beyond against someone else who pushes back just as hard? There's nothing else in the world quite like it.

"I still remember all the fights with my brothers and friends, and even sometimes enemies. Those drawings were from those fights. All my life, I've been unnaturally talented at figuring out the power levels of others with a good bit of observation, in fact, I think it might be some kind of new bloodline limit. And you and I are perfect equals in overall fighting ability. Perfect equals. Hell, we're even near-identical in personality. So when we fight, it's going to be the most amazing experience of my life. And that's why I'm going to ignore that I'm doing what that bastard wants and fight you as a friend, with a smile on my face. I hope you can do the same."

As she talked, the rush of emotions flowing through her was so strong as to almost be overpowering to the blonde. Thinking back to his own life and the battles he had been in, he couldn't help but agree with her. "Sure thing, Haru-can. Let's make that last picture of yours into a reality. We'll have a good fight of friends and equals, holding nothing back. But let's be sure to end it without death. I wouldn't want to kill such a great friend." He grinned and chuckled quietly at this last statement.

In response, mirth shone in her hazel eyes, and she couldn't resist teasing him. "Oh? You certainly sound pretty confident of yourself, Naru-kun."

"Of course. I already said I wouldn't lose to anyone in this exam, and I never take back my words, that's my way of the ninja."

"Then what about that snake back in the forest?"

"Oh, that? That um... er... uh... That doesn't count as a fight. I threw myself in knowing I had no chance in the hopes that Sakura and Sasuke-teme could get away. Didn't work, but it's the thought that counts, right?"

"Heh, I guess. Anyway, we should probably be getting back. Oh, by the way, how the hell did you manage to spy on me during the first exam?"

Now it was Naruto's turn to tease. "No way. If we're that equal, there's no way I'm gonna tell you my secrets. Night, Haru-chan." And with that, both snuck back into the tower and returned to their rooms, where they soon fell asleep, still thinking about their talk.

Naruto woke up, fully refreshed, after five hours of sleep. Because of the Kyuubi, he only needed half as much sleep as an ordinary person to get the same effect. On waking, he went down to one of the training rooms and did some light training for a couple hours until other people started to wake up. At that point, his sensitive nose and grumbling stomach forced him to the cafeteria, where they unfortunately did not have ramen for breakfast.

While there, he saw Ino, and the two struck up a conversation. "Hey, Ino. Good morning."

The blonde kunoichi looked up from her carefully-selected food. "Oh, hello, Naruto. Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah, thanks for asking. I've been up for an hour or two now, though, and I just came from my morning training." He walked over to the buffet and started picking out his breakfast.

She was surprised. "Morning training? During the middle of the Chunin Exams? Isn't that a bit... much?"

The whisker-marked boy grinned at her. "Nothing too serious. Besides, we've still got three days left till the end of the second exam. I'm not going to get stronger by wasting that time sitting around doing nothing."

"I see your point. I only wish Shikamaru and Chouji were as motivated as you are." She sighed at the thought of her lazy and overweight, respectively, teammates.

"Oh, don't worry about them. Shika may spend most of his time cloud-gazing, but he's got enough sense to make sure his skills stay up to par. And I've seen Chouji training a lot; he just prefers to do it alone. Probably to be sure no one can make fun of him." He sat down across from her with a plate carrying far too much food.

"You know, Naruto, for someone so concerned about always being at your best physically, you sure don't eat very well. All that ramen can't be good for you." Looking more closely at what he had picked out, Ino noticed that it was, in fact, fairly healthy food, though the amount was several times larger than what a person should eat.

"Hethhhh, don' inthult rahen!" he retorted through a mouthful of food, before swallowing. "Really, though, don't worry about it. I have an abnormally fast metabolism. Also, Ichiraku-ojisan gives me his special 'health ramen' that he invented just for me. It has all the nutrients and calories I need in one bowl, and it's delicious, too."

"Yet you still manage to have twenty bowls of the stuff every time we all go out to eat there. Not to mention how much meat you eat whenever we go for barbecue." She smiled at him.

Naruto grinned and scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "What can I say? I love the stuff, and like I said before, my metabolism is unnaturally fast. As for the meat, lots of protein is needed for building muscles. How else d'you think I got these?" He pulled up his shirt sleeve and flexed his biceps, the girl across from him blushing involuntarily at the muscle's size and tone.

"You know, Naruto-kun, if Hinata saw you without a shirt on, she'd probably die of a nosebleed." Both broke out into laughter at the mental image.

When they settled down, the two blondes resumed talking, interspersing their comments with bites of food, or sometimes in the boy's case speaking while he ate.

On returning to his room, Naruto found Sasuke sitting in his bed, his face in its normal "thoughtful" expression.

"Hey, teme, how're you doing?"

"Better than yesterday, dobe."

"Good, I'm glad."

When the Uchiha stayed silent, he took it as his cue to speak again. "You know, if you still want to have a spar, I'd be up to it."

The dark-haired boy stayed silent for several moments, as though debating something internally.

Finally, he spoke, slowly and hesitantly. "Naruto... Thank... Thank you."

Blue eyes stared into black. "What for?" He could have been asking what he had done that merited the thanks or which of the many things he had done he was being thanked for. Naruto himself wasn't quite sure which of the two he meant.

"For... for everything. Saving my life back in the forest, warning me about the seal, and... and being my friend, my closest friend."

The blonde could tell that his teammate was feeling sad, shameful, and guilty, and close to tears as he talked. "No problem. Friends are there to help each other, after all."

The Uchiha's mood brightened, and he even cracked a small smile. "Heh. So dobe, is that offer of a spar still open?"

Naruto smiled back. "Sure. Let's head downstairs."

The following days all mixed together in the blonde's mind. He spent his time being with his friends and training, trying to relax for the break they had earned between the exams. On the fourth day, Kabuto's team arrived, and he made sure to avoid the glasses-wearing traitor as much as possible.

Then finally, the morning of the last day of the exam, the Oto genin came to the tower. Wen they saw Naruto, he gave them a predatory smile, and all three cringed in fear, remembering just what he had done to them in the forest.

A couple hours later, there was a call for all the genin to assemble in the main room. Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke walked in together as a team, feeling prepared for whatever was to come.