The matches here are occurring in the opposite order from canon, with two substitutions in the roster: Hinata for Neji & Sakura for Kankuro.

Kankuro grumbled. Sure, withdrawing before the end of the exams was part of the plan, but not being able to compete in a single match in the third round because that damn kid got his puppet smashed? At least they were going to get to conquer Konoha and kill that brat's family in the line of duty and also bloody revenge!

Below him in the combatant stands, Gaara and Temari were powernapping, the sealwork built into her fan keeping it blowing cold air over the two of them. It was getting hot out here, and intelligent husbanding of resources like sleep was a Chuunin trait.

Back in town, bringing Kakashi his munchies and more 'incense' to burn at the grave marker for Obito as part of her training (running errands for her teacher established that she was a good, obedient sort of student that wouldn't perform unethical experiments on clanless academy students no matter how much they begged or turned puppy dog eyes on her), Sakura was equally annoyed. She was going to be fighting a clan heir who keeled over unconscious at the sight of Naruto's Reverse Harem no Jutsu. A civilian with no family defeating a clan heir? Of course hurting Shino's chances of advancement would get taken out on her, maybe not so much by the Aburame as by the people with ideas about clan privileges. She couldn't even take advantage of Uchiha privileges because Sasuke couldn't trade favors for the benefit of a secretary, and if she wanted to be clan matriarch then she darn well needed to make it very clear that she'd established her own reputation. If she was the only member of her team that didn't pass the exams?

Sasuke reached up to take another cup of shaved ice from Haku and resisted the urge to show weakness by pressing it to his forehead. Maybe he should pick a color other than black for his blindfold and outfit. Even adding more red or some other color would help a little with the heat that came from standing in the sun.

A drop of sweat gathered on his cheekbone and rolled down.

Alright, that was it. He leaned over the banister, glad he could slam his hands down on it now even though it didn't have chakra to sense. Thankfully, the air around it was coming from the battleground. "Alright, you two!" he bellowed. "Stop f-" Flirting. "Knock it off! Some of us have meetings to get to!"

The first of the exhibition matches, and it was already three hours past noon? Sure, Naruto and Hinata would get extra marks for showing off, since that was the entire point of the Chuunin Exams, to show how ready to be chuunin the participants were and to get clients for Konoha, but they all knew that Naruto was just a chakra whore and Hinata was radiating enough love power he'd already had to duck inside to reapply sunscreen. Sure, he wanted his minion and the person people thought was going to be the next matriarch of the Uchiha Clan to pass, but enough was enough.

Hinata and Naruto moved in, but not for the kill. It would be obvious to the kages and other high-ranking ninja here that the two were conferring amid the seething mass of clones. Tsunade's slug summons might be able to regulate the chakra in a shadow clone so that a single hit didn't disrupt them, but Hinata had figured out how to set off chain reactions that left several staggering away, limbs dissolving into fireflies as chakra flaked away.

So, after the two of them demonstrated their fighting prowess and ability to handle endurance matches, they were conferring and making an intelligent decision as teammates?

Sasuke rolled his eyes behind the blindfold. Maybe how blatantly the two of them were checking off all the qualities required in chuunin would get points taken off? Sasuke and Hinata didn't need to worry: their promotions were mere formalities now that they'd made it this far, but Naruto and Sakura had spent some time conferring while Naruto had his shadow clones train and Sakura was late for her training with Kakashi, whatever he had to teach her.

A Naruto came flying out of the scrum and hit the wall, staggering around dramatically before reaching up to the heavens, doing everything but saying, "Oh, I am slain!" before keeling over.

Wait, did Sasuke actually smell blood? Naruto must have used some medical jutsu to produce it without breaking the skin and warned Hinata in advance, he told himself. Naruto wouldn't have wanted to risk Hinata rushing over to comfort the boy who was not her fiancé.

With people afraid of the Kyuubi's host, Naruto showing that he knew his place would be far more reassuring than a victory. They wouldn't want to reward him for his strength: they'd say he was just handed it by, oh, being a demon.

He only listened with half an ear as Hinata was declared the winner, time for Sasuke to fight Gaara.

It was still possible for him to die if he did something stupid, but Gaara wasn't going to try to kill him. Not when that would cut off Gaara's supply of sleep. That was a problem.

Gaara knew jack about how to subdue people without killing them, a huge hole in his capabilities that Sasuke was going to have to fix immediately. To skilled ninja, it would be obvious that Gaara didn't know what he was doing, and beating a half-trained kid didn't exactly take a chuunin.

As Temari carefully poked Gaara awake with an extendable pole, Sasuke consoled himself with the knowledge that he'd be going up against Hinata in the second round, and someone working on blind fighting who was far from an expert against someone with the Byakugan? He'd have to break out the toads and other impressive jutsu to stand a chance, and everyone would know it, so he'd be establishing that Hinata wasn't a pushover while reminding everyone of the Fourth Hokage and Jiraya. He was aware that the pride of the Uchiha meant that he should feel bad about leeching off of other people's reputations, but he was a ninja. Quick and dirty was the way to win, and he needed a reputation and fast for the clan's survival.

Under the circumstances, the only way to capitalize on this match was with speed, and the contrast with the match before it would make that even more effective. The strategy Sakura gave him for dealing with Gaara's sand the first time they met him should do well enough.

"Begin!"

Sasuke started forming the Snake seal.

As anticipated, Gaara's sand was more interested in intercepting as much of the sake as possible than attacking the bartender. Then Sasuke followed it up with the Grand Fireball no Jutsu, leaping back to avoid the spreading molten glass as the alcohol burned and melted the sand, blue flames mixed with the biju's chakra tinting the arena an unearthly color like that of a swarm of ghosts that Sasuke didn't see because he was wearing a blindfold.

There came a great rumble that quickly became a roar: "You. Burnt off. My booze!"

Orochimaru leaned forward avidly, glad that he'd gotten the message out not to have Shukaku's appearance be the signal for the start of the invasion after Gaara unleashed it so casually in the Forest of Death. "That's my" victim's "boy!" he cheered when Gaara, or rather Shukaku, forced Sasuke to summon the Boss Toad.

In any summon battle, he rooted for Manda and whoever was fighting Gamabunta. Forcing the head of the Uchiha Clan to burn off all his chakra sustaining such a powerful summon would leave him in need of assistance… No, he'd be fighting his fiancé in the next match, and the Uchiha Clan's jutsu tutor after that: they would make sure he kept up appearances, if they were ready to make Chuunin. Still, fighting a biju would weaken Gamabunta. It was a pity Tsunade's student hadn't summoned the Boss Slug in his previous match: the Hyuuga had quite a few techniques developed for disabling summons, and obviously the girl had adapted one to deal with those durable shadow clone chakra constructs. That would have left the Boss Monkey as the only powerful summon with a summoner with the chakra to handle it in Konoha, and Orochimaru already had plans for that in place.

Gamabunta was limited by the size of the arena, while Shukaku had gone utterly berserk, charging up Gamabunta in order to grab the Uchiha and wring more sake out of him. Sasuke was trying to placate the biju using that sake-summoning Sharingan technique, but unlike his minion Naruto he wasn't made of chakra.

The Old Fool looked like he wanted to do something, but until one of them actually breached the sides of the combat area, for the fight to shut down would be considered the fault of at least one if not both the combatants, and he had his Uchiha and the village's reputation on one hand and the son of an ally he didn't want to offend on the other.

In the end, both boys were disqualified by mutual knockout: chakra exhaustion and alcohol poisoning. The blond minion, who had managed to make himself even more amazingly useful somehow by convincing Tsunade to teach him, barged in and insisted on using his slugs to transfer chakra to the Uchiha and leech poisons out of the demon vessel.

Fortunately, Sarutobi wasn't looking at Orochimaru when both of them winced, remembering what Tsunade did to the first person her sensei allowed her to interrogate after she found out that the slug contract included leeches.

A reviewer mentioned that it was odd to see Naruto throw the match, given how determined he always is to win. Naruto is determined to win here, it's just that his win condition here is "Operation Get All My Precious People To Pass The Chuunin Exams With Me." It's a good thing that he's not advancing and can focus his attention on strategy for something other than the next fight, because Gaara just put on a very poor showing, losing control like that, and Naruto is going to have to go bribe and blackmail up some votes so he can still pass.