A lot of times missions have secondary objectives, or the mission is to do A not for the sake of doing A, but to cause B for the purpose of C, and since ninja are supposed to be sneaky, a lot of the time they're probably supposed to seem to be doing A for the purpose of not-A.
In the series, Sakura's a test-taker, with strategies that are good for that… and she probably doesn't want to see this isn't that kind of test. Naruto's used to being made to fail tests and Sasuke isn't interested in the exams other than as a means to an end and doesn't put much thought into it because of that. So they've all got tunnel vision that means that they're missing that the purpose of the Chuunin Exams is to show that they've got what it takes to be chuunin. Their goal is not to solve math problems, or survive for a week in the forest while getting scrolls, or to win the generic shonen tournament, it's to demonstrate that they deserve to be Chuunin. Commanders of small units of less-trained ninja who need someone with experience who can look out for complications even in combat to look after them.
Naruto sucks at working with others due to a complete lack of experience with working relationships of mutual benefit. It's not his fault he completely lacks the skillset, since he never had a chance to learn it, but he still lacks it at that point.
Here, though, Naruto's used to working with small children, and there's a reason one of the subcommanders of D.D.D. in Log Horizon was a kindergarten teacher. He and Sasuke know how to keep groups of sneaky little ninja under control and make them do their (home)work instead of running around setting fire to unauthorized things (or at least if they do it then they'd darn well better make sure there are no witnesses and it doesn't cause a problem for the clan/mission). Hinata's less on the discipline and more on the bribery, but ninja in Narutoverse are mercenaries that do missions for pay, so motivating troops with actual incentives is not a bad strategy. Sakura just unleashes Inner Sakura to threaten them with graphic violence – very inventive graphic violence, thanks to reading all those scrolls – so they think she is the coolest. Even if she is a total jutsu geek.
Firehedgehog requested more kitty!Naruto for her reviewer giftfic, but I seem to have gotten my muse back when it comes to the Chuunin Exams, so it may be a bit before… actually, why don't I have it happen in the course of plot.
"Hey, old man!" Naruto said happily as he climbed up and plopped himself down as though he owned the kage's box. It was only a matter of time!
"Naruto, how did you get in here?"
"With Chuunin-like ninja skills!" the blond said, radiating cheerfulness. "By which I mean a cunning combination of stealth, bribery and my incredible original jutsu!" Hint hint.
"Yes, Naruto," said Sarutobi almost dotingly, and his former student could translate that into, 'Yes, my adorable little ticket back to retirement and digging my toes into the sand while admiring minions bring me drinks with fruit in them.' "What is it?"
And Naruto had even brought him a drink, Orochimaru saw, seeing the deliberately cute child proffer a bottle. Yes, he was definitely keeping the blond, as a trophy of his victory over Konoha. Minions were easy to find, but intelligent minions that weren't afraid to anticipate your needs were a treasure.
It certainly hadn't hurt the genin's chances of getting past two kages' security that the stadium was still recovering from the onslaught of Shukaku's biju chakra. Many of the civilians had run screaming, hence the current intermission while the spectators were rounded up since showing off was much of the point of the exams, and even the majority of the ninja had left logs or clones in their place while they went to get a stiff drink now that the threat was over, especially those that remembered the kyuubi attack.
If people thought you were weak, more of them would attack you, and eventually one of them would get lucky. Ninja knew never to let anyone see them have a flashback, or any other sign of PTSD. It was a reason that therapists had never gotten very far in the ninja world, after seduction specialists stopped filling that role. Sympathetic conversation was a part of the job for a high-level companion, and if that sympathetic conversation just happened to be on topics that a fellow ninja would understand very well, like having to kill some kid who didn't realize how outclassed they were, well, seduction specialists had to cut a lot of idiots, if they did missions in areas where the civilians didn't assume that anyone in the profession, but especially the streetwalkers, was at least as deadly as a genin medic nin.
The people who knew how to put you back together just knew how to take you apart. The people who knew how to inflict pleasure could inflict terrifying amounts of pain, which was why interrogation used to be nearly the sole province of seduction masters.
The difference between being killed by a mugger and being killed by trying to shoplift from a Konoha prostitute was that your family would be sent a very large bill for the professional's participation in your incredibly stupid personal fantasy afterwards.
That was the law. Not because of actual rape attempts: for most of Konoha's history, the Uchiha police force had a waiting list for who got to cover the Vice Beat. Before the massacre, Konoha's red light district was one of the safest places on the Shinobi Continent, to the point that renting a room there was commonly and only half-jokingly known as a relatively inexpensive way to obtain A-ranked bodyguard services.
The fact that women could go to hotel rooms with people they'd just met at a bar in the certain knowledge that if their partner tried anything they hadn't agreed to and wouldn't take no for an answer assistance would arrive within seconds of the scream or pulse of panicked chakra meant a lot more of them did, so Konoha was known as one of the best places for easy, stress-free casual sex on the Shinobi Continent.
Which was only fitting for a village built around a temple dedicated to sacred exotic dancing.
Since people having to be afraid of rape meant less sex for everybody, even the hard-line ('human rights? What are those?) traditionalist ninja had never seriously challenged the law that said that the attempted rape of a civilian within the village was a death penalty offense. Putting the 'civilian' in there allowed the ninja clans with breeding programs to move to Konoha without worrying that the law would be applied to them.
Because of this, attacking prostitutes was one of the few forms of so-called 'Konoha Suicide' that generally was, in fact, suicide. Many ninja were painfully aware of how many enemies they had, and how important their physical conditioning was. A lot of them couldn't bear the thought of growing decrepit, old, helpless, and ninja also tended to fantasize about their perfect, glorious deaths, just like Hinata dreaming of saving Naruto.
If you couldn't die saving a loved one, or the village, then dying of sexual exhaustion in someone else's bed was generally considered a fairly decent way to go. If the ninja hadn't saved up and didn't have the money to hire a genjutsu specialist to return them to their lost youth and stamina for one last glorious night, they were sometimes desperate enough to see attacking a very fit young woman showing a nice amount of skin, who might crush their head between her thighs as better than being killed slowly by an enemy or dying alone.
During one of the village's periods of peace, civilians seeing fights with fatalities in the Red Light District had threatened to ruin its reputation as a safe place and threatened the village's tourist industry and plentiful supply of hot foreigners looking for a place where they could have all the sex they wanted without having to worry about the sex they didn't want. That was when the mandatory fine was added to the death sentence for rape, and those who went in clearly intending suicide could get imprisoned 'until they paid the fine' so there was some humiliation in there to discourage the ones wanting a quick death that supposedly established that they still had a sex drive when they died.
Uchiha loved the Vice Beat. Ninja from other villages especially seemed to often end up pain kinked, and then there were the ones raised to think of themselves as tools in the service of their clan or client. Konoha's BDSM whorehouses did a roaring business, and Shunshin no Shisui had gotten so good at the body flicker by getting in good with the dominatrices at one of the larger locations, becoming their requested police representative and trying to supervise them having sex with foreign ninja in up to two dozen rooms at once without missing any of the good- he meant the important bits.
That was how he'd learned the importance of protecting precious people, even if they weren't Uchiha. Yes: he would protect Konoha with his life, because it contained his precious people. Sexy, sexy, playfully sadistic precious people.
It was a solemn duty: the village had to be sure that nothing too bad happened to guests from other villages for liability purposes, of course. Then there was the matter of keeping an eye on the foreign ninja present in Konoha, not just the clients but the ninja that came with them to stand guard and ensure that the dominatrices didn't try to extract information from their comrades. Then there was protecting the dominatrices from the threat that the foreign ninja might try to put them under control so they could extract information from other clients.
Other villages often put their sex workers under mind control jutsu so that other ninja couldn't: Konoha just kept a very close, personal eye on the safety of its professionals. Generally a red eye with spinning tomoe.
Orochimaru abducting civilian tourists to serve as surrogate mothers for some of his bloodline experiments was still an S-class secret for a reason. Letting it slip to an outsider was punishable by death, just like revealing that Naruto was the kyuubi's host.
However, the fact that the rape laws were more loopholed when it came to ninja kept ninja, even those who completed academy training without officially graduating, from entering Konoha's sex industry, except for genjutsu users acting in support roles without having sex with the clients. This was not an accident or oversight, and there was a reason besides personal enjoyment that the Uchiha kept such a close eye on the profession.
Destroying the Uchiha had damaged Konoha's reputation. The ANBU and others called in to patrol the area had tried their hardest, but they didn't have the institutional experience and a few widely publicized incidents had caused a massive reduction in the village's visitors. Those who remembered the glory days were almost desperate to restore the Uchiha clan and their police force before they became too old to take advantage of it when things finally got back to normal.
Orochimaru almost had to wonder if that was Danzo's intention. Even though he harvested orphans and children put up for adoption, visitors that came to Konoha introduced civilian genes into the village's gene pool and could potentially remove valuable ninja offspring from the village, even though that was generally the last thing any of them wanted to do, and one of the things they'd come to Konoha with its medic jutsu and advanced birth control to avoid.
Well, soon he too would be dead. So many things to look forward to.
"You see, Gaara is just pretending to be totally incompetent and untrained, with no tactical skills whatsoever. Promoting him will show Suna that you see through the ruse, while everyone else will just think that it's a political promotion and praise your acumen." Naruto looked at Orochimaru, supposedly Gaara's dad, for support. "Everyone knows that a ninja village wouldn't let a demon vessel go untrained and then send it out where just anyone could capture it, or secure its undying loyalty with a better seal that would let it sleep. You wouldn't really just let Jiraya walk off with Suna's weapon, even if you're cleverly making sure that your village is underestimated, right, old man?" Naruto gave the Kazekage his best prankster's smile. "And you don't even have to give away your plan, because people will think the old man had to promote Gaara, because he had a mutual knockout with the Uchiha, and not promoting the Uchiha clan head?" Of course that wasn't an option, not unless Sasuke did something incredibly stupid. "Not promoting the person that knocked him out would make it look like Sasuke lost to a genin!" Demon vessel or not.
"Your teammate's promotion is likely safe, Naruto," the Hokage told him, tapping his fingers against each other. "How many jutsu is Sakura at now?"
"I don't know, she's been all weird since she started training with Kakashi. Different weird."
"It's wonderful to see the two of you so determined to follow in my footsteps." Naruto as Hokage, Sakura as the next Professor, master of a thousand jutsu.
Translation: the old man was the patron of the two clanless members of Team 7, and would take it as a personal favor if they were the first team since the Sannin to all pass the Chuunin Exams on their first try. He'd be willing to trade the Kazekage's help with that for help passing Gaara, and Temari as well if she needed it.
However, something like that would dramatically increase Konoha's prestige: the Elemental Countries and their clients would be watching the new Golden Trio. Meaning that the representatives of other ninja villages would be trying to make sure that at least one of them didn't get promoted.
Naruto and Sasuke had both put on impressive performances, but Sasuke was the one that lost, while Naruto had surrendered obviously enough that even the civilians could see it. The civilians from outside Konoha that didn't know that Naruto was the Kyuubi vessel.
It all depended on Sakura's showing, Orochimaru knew. Civilian-born ninja were expendable (see him). If she did poorly, all would be well from the perspective of the other villages. If she did better than the Uchiha? If they could force the head of Konoha's hated Uchiha Clan to fail his first Chuunin Exam?
However, if they couldn't make that happen, then passing ninja from as many other villages as possible would prevent Konoha from being the only village to have any ninja pass this Chuunin Exam, and Gaara and Temari were the only non-Konoha ninja to make it to the finals. Making the Fourth Hokage's student's team's feat seem less impressive by trying to argue for some of the ninja eliminated earlier would also be a good thing, and if they kicked up a fuss, trying to convince people that Konoha had arranged the preliminaries to eliminate teams from other villages?
Of course the village that held the exams was going to rig them, that was a given, but Konoha marketed itself as the ethical alternative to all those other inhumane ninja villages.
The two remaining matches in the quarterfinals were Sakura, a civilian, against the heir of the Aburame Clan, and the Kazekage's daughter against the heir of the Nara. If the fangirl somehow managed to win both her match and the next one, then not promoting her would be an insult to the prestige of two of Konoha's major clans and its ally.
Of course the Hyuuga heiress would be skipping the semifinals, since the match that should have produced her opponent was a mutual knockout, meaning that she would have time to rest and observe her opponent while Sakura would be fighting her third battle in a row when they fought.
Orochimaru considered the other options. Relations were always rather cool between the Aburame and the Hyuuga: the Hyuuga, who prized vision (it was how they marketed themselves) said that anyone who would give it up, and let bugs eat their eyes? While the Aburame, who kept hives and mounds and colonies of all sorts of insects, had views on the subject of family hierarchies and over the decades both clans had spent in Konoha, the Hyuuga had picked up on the fact that the Aburame had a sort of cool contempt for them, although normally it was overshadowed by the Inuzuka's more open feelings of disgust for the other clan.
The Nara tended to weigh in on whatever side would keep the peace, although Orochimaru had reports of them favoring the younger, smaller clans. The Ino-Shika-Cho combination teams, in particular, allowing the heirs of minor families the benefit of Nara leadership and giving them ties of gratitude and camaraderie with the Nara. It wasn't as though the Nara didn't have a large power block of their own, but having younger, less lazy clans with less to lose take point in council sessions…
The Snake Sannin preferred his clanless dictatorship model, obviously, but the Hokage so far had tried to set things up so that Konoha would run itself as much as possible so they weren't bothered more than they had to be, and clans were pre-existing power structures that could be hijacked for this purpose, like the Uchiha-dominated police department. After the Kyuubi attack forced the surviving clans to turn their focus inwards, Sarutobi must be drowning in paperwork, which neatly explained why he was going to the trouble of raising a successor just in case one didn't show up on their own. Of course Orochimaru wasn't even considered.
If he wasn't a ninja and therefore an utterly selfish conniving snake, he would have thought to himself 'she doesn't take after you, old man, she takes after me,' and started rooting for the civilian, just remembering his own Chuunin Exam, and all the people who made those calculations about how he and Jiraya were expendable, and 'Shouldn't you want to hide your true power? You are a ninja' that was really 'You shouldn't outshine the clans, it makes the lesser clan members question why they're being forced into breeding and training if an outsider whose family didn't have to go through all that can outdo Senju and Uchiha.'
Young genius or not (and Konoha prized its geniuses: even the ones that didn't come from clans were ways for clans to avoid inbreeding without allowing in weak genes), Orochimaru was an orphan with no choice but to wear whatever his sponsors dressed him in. He'd hated those useless butterfly clothes the way he assumed Naruto must hate orange.
"Where is Sakura, by the way?" Orochimaru's teacher wondered.
"Training with Kakashi. She's going to be pissed she missed Sasuke's match."
"Sasuke's match?" Naruto didn't think that his teammate didn't care about him succeeding in the Chuunin Exams, did he?
"Well, it wasn't like there was any suspense in mine, and we figured that Kakashi was going to keep her late." So no, Naruto wasn't hurt that Sakura hadn't made it. "But Sasuke got knocked out! She's going to do something nasty to Kakashi for not letting her be here when her teammate got hurt."
"Yes. Her teammate," Sarutobi said with just a hint of emphasis and a twinkle in his eye. "Have I mentioned how wonderful it is to see the youth embracing the Will of Fire? I'm glad your and Hinata's teamwork is likely to survive being paired up in the matches, and I'm sure it will continue to grow stronger."
The Kyuubi vessel looked shifty. The old man patted him on the head.
"It's getting near the time the next match should start, but why don't we prolong the break so that those affected by the biju chakra can finish getting their drinks. Is that acceptable?" Sarutobi asked, turning to the other Kage courteously.
There was no need to ask him, not when this was Konoha's facility, but the 'Kazekage' simply lifted his own jar of Eight Purification Sake in a salute to them both and took a swig.
Alcohol intensified emotions, and right now his predominant emotion was knowledge of his inevitable victory. It was hard to want to ruin Sarutobi's day early in such a petty way when he was looking forward to Sarutobi's blood all over the leaves. Let the old man enjoy his dreams now, it would make crushing them all the sweeter.
"Hey," Naruto said, nudging the Sandaime. "Old man, is it okay if I stay here for the rest of the exams today?"
The Hokage looked around them, at the ninja that remained in the stands and the ones that were still returning. "Yes, why don't you stay with me for now."
The last time biju chakra flooded the village was the Kyuubi attack. Orochimaru had looked forward to reviving the terror of that day, but since the inhabitants of the village were fool enough to blame their savior, it wasn't safe to be Naruto, not at the moment. Anyone who touched him in the Hokage's presence was a fool that should be removed from the village, especially the ranks of its ninja.
If this was Sound, Orochimaru would have told the blond to get lost and go practice his killing on anyone that attacked him, but his teacher was always soft.
Sasukemuse is 'Oh no you don't, that's my trophy blonde!'
And of course Naruto would have to look down at himself to check before asking, "Don't you mean trophy blond?"
After being told that Orochimaru was an orphan, I really have to wonder what a 'verse where Orochimaru was Naruto's mentor, Tsunade was Sasuke's (both from major founding clans that don't have many members left) and Jiraya was Sakura's would look like. Besides utter crack, of course.
Orochimaru's sponsors intended to marry him to Tsunade and use him to make themselves powers behind the throne while strengthening that bloodline. Because of that, his deportment instruction was rather… tilted. As in, he was acting like the male version of a cock tease, coming on to every single female ninja of his generation even though he had no interest in sleeping with them. If Orochimaru ever finds out that the reason female ninja kept flirting with him was because he started it by flirting with them, Just As Planned, Sasuke is going to have serious competition in his quest to murder Danzo.
That's why he's still annoyed that Jiraya and Tsunade had no sympathy. They thought he knew what he was doing so they were like 'Dude, if you want girls to stop following you, you could stop leading them on.'