Chapter Thirty: Chunin Exams
How could Rin refuse the Hokage's request to be head of medical services during the chunin exams when Kakashi had been the one to volunteer her? Without her consent, Rin might add, but when she confronted Kakashi about it, he simply said he wanted to spend more time with her.
How could she refuse?
So Rin didn't and found herself roped into the preparations for the chunin exams. From travelling to Suna to deliver the news about Konoha hosting a nation wide chunin exams, to being the Suna's ambassadors during their stay in the village, to having to be on standby during all phases of the exam, to having to attend every single meeting held for the chunin exams even if it had nothing to do with her.
Kakashi had it easy. All he had to do was nominate his genins and hand them the application forms.
Luckily, Rin dipped out of the meeting before the Hokage could ask her to conduct the preliminary test on the rookie genin. Besides, it was fairer to the genins that Iruka was left with the task as Rin was sure all of them would fail if she was the one conducting the genjutsu.
Let it be known that Rin Nohara didn't cast half assed genjutsus, genin or not.
As a form of payback, Rin dragged Kakashi along as she played host to the Kazekage, his two bodyguards, and Baki, the jonin instructor for the sand genin team. The genin team had wandered off on their own.
The Kazekage didn't seem particularly interested in listening to what Rin had to say, often deflecting to his bodyguards to answer her politely. Konoha and Suna weren't really allies, the Kazekage had only gotten himself in the Third Great Ninja War because Iwa was encroaching on their land. Beyond that, Suna kept to themselves, while Konoha never particularly reached out to establish relations with them.
That had been on Minato sensei's to-do list, but when he died, talks of establishing relations between the villages died.
Rin politely excused herself from the group when a medic nin came to retrieve her for an emergency at the hospital. Kakashi shot her a glare, having seen right through her trick, but he did nothing to verbally protest as she followed after her henged clone. Once the two of them were out of sight, Rin high fived her clone before allowing it to dispel.
Now let's see how Kakashi liked serving as Suna's ambassador against his own will.
Rin couldn't wait until the Kazekage went back to his own village, the first day of the exams. At least the Kazekage wouldn't come back for another month to watch the final round of the exam.
For the first day of the exam, Rin served as one of the many proctors to catch the genins cheating on the written test. It was boring and tedious. Did she mention that it was boring?
Her only source of entertainment was to watch Ibiki use his scare tactics to intimidate the genin, but that quickly ran out.
Kakashi's genins were here somewhere, but Rin didn't particularly care to find out where. They weren't in her row. Besides, she knew they would pass even if Naruto didn't know how to answer a single question. All they needed was courage and Naruto didn't lack it in the slightest.
Tick, tick, tick. Rin lazily called out a number from her row, eliminating a kid who had tried to cheat by peering over at his neighbor's paper multiple times.
When Ibiki called time for the tenth question, Rin disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving her clipboard behind.
"How did those brats do?" Kakashi asked as Rin appeared in their apartment. He didn't even look up from the page in his book.
"I wouldn't know," Rin responded. "Pulled a page from your book and left the exam before it finished. Thanks for volunteering me by the way, I didn't know being the head of medical services meant I would get roped into doing the menial tasks as well."
Kakashi shrugged. "I just wanted to let you feel my pain at having to do D rank mission all over again. Now you can understand the pain."
Rin shot him a side look. "That's your fault for taking on a team of genin."
He was slightly miffed at the jab. "It's not my fault they had to decide to show teamwork. Believe me, it would have been the last year that I was going to leave my name on the list."
Anyone could see right through Kakashi's act. He wanted a team, even if he would deny it to his dying breath. "Yeah right. Remind me to never take a genin team."
Said genin team successfully made it to the second stage of the exam.
In preparation for the second stage of the exams, Rin had gone through the Forest of Death and placed one marking every half a kilometer, in case of medical emergencies. If the nature of the second exam held true, then there would definitely be a need for her to go out on the field. At least Rin wouldn't be bored this time around.
As a form of congratulations for passing the first exam, Kakashi gave all three of them sensei's three pronged kunai. The only difference was that he replaced the sealing formula for his own use. Of course, Kakashi neglected to inform them of the true use of the kunais, leading to Naruto scoffing at the weird weapon, Sasuke's reluctance to carry around the thing. Sakura was the only one who wordlessly took the weapon.
One day, when Naruto knew the true origin of the weapon, he wouldn't call it weird.
All of the jonin senseis retreated to the operating room, to view the grainy footage.
Anko kept the atmosphere light by roping other jonins into placing bets on which genin team would reach the tower first. Naturally, each jonin sensei was inclined to bet on their own team, but couldn't help but acknowledge that the sand team, in particular, was tearing through the forest at a rapid rate.
Kakashi declined to place any bets, already set on the idea that his team wouldn't finish the exam first. To emphasize his point, a finger pointed in the direction of the screen, where Naruto had just been ambushed on his way to relieve himself.
Rin had left the room twice, one to administer an antidote for a genin who had stupidly decided to eat some poison berries, and two, to save a group of genin from death after their encounter with the sand nins. Both groups were disqualified from the second round of exams and were directed to the exits.
She flashed back to the operating room, making almost every jonin in the room flinch save for Kakashi and Anko.
"Yondaime's handy technique, huh?" Anko commented. "Maybe with you around, no one will die in this round."
Right as she finished speaking, all of the screens of the cameras blacked out. Anko cursed, spitting out the dango stick in her mouth as she ordered the technicians to figure out what was wrong. As if things couldn't get worse, Genma burst into the room, announcing that they had found a dead body belonging to a Grass nin near the edge of the forest.
Rin sensed a malicious spike of chakra, belonging to a very familiar man. She focused, trying to pinpoint his location. Her eyes snapped open in shock after realizing who the dead snake was targeting.
"Kakashi, dead snake attacking your students."
Before any of the other jonins in the room could ask the two of them what the hell was going on, Kakashi had flashed out of the room. Rin followed a second after him.
"Take me to the body," Anko ordered Genma, brushing aside the bottom of the trenchcoat to reach for a kunai. "The rest of you, get those cameras working again."
The first thing that Kakashi saw was an elongated neck heading straight for Sasuke when he landed. His gut instinct was to grab Sasuke by the back of his shirt, hauling him out of Orochimaru's range. Rin landed next to him on the forest ground a moment later, taking the boy off of his hands, while also retrieving Naruto, who had been pinned to a tree by the fabric of his jacket.
With both boys in hand, Rin moved to get them away from Orochimaru, shouting at a frozen Sakura to get moving. Scrambling to her feet, Sakura ran after Rin.
"Report," Rin ordered a still trembling Sakura while her hands began to glow green. Naruto was already healing, due to the Kyuubi's chakra, but she needed to fix the seal on his stomach again.
With a quivering voice, Sakura proceeded to recount all of the events to the best of her abilities. Their battle sounded so reminiscent of Kakashi and Rin's own encounter with Orochimaru a decade ago, having been caught in his paralysis genjutsu.
"He's after Sasuke," Sakura revealed. "I don't know why, but he kept saying something about taking his body and the snake man was implanting ideas of achieving more power into Sasuke's mind."
Just as Itachi predicted, Orochimaru was after him.
After fixing Naruto's seal and fixing the worst of Sasuke's wound, Rin pressed a few healing crystals into Sakura's hand.
"Go and take your teammates to safety. Kakashi and I will handle the rest."
Leaving a stupified Sakura in the clearing, Rin teleported back to Kakashi's side, just in time to grab Kakashi out of the way of one of Orochimaru's snake summons. Rin didn't spot any wounds on Kakashi, but she gave him an antidote for Orochimaru's poison anyways.
"What a cute scene. The two terrified Anbu kids are all grown up now." His abnormally long tongue darted out of his mouth to lick his lips.
"I think you'll find that we aren't the same scared kids anymore," Kakashi stated, brandishing the sword from his back. Lightning chakra crackled along the length of it as Kakashi teleported to the marking he left on the snake, cleanly slicing the snake's head in half. The summon puffed out of existence.
Just as Rin felt Orochimaru molding his chakra to cast a genjutsu, she beat him to it, placing a triple layer genjutsu all around him. Orochimaru was rapidly breaking through the layers, but that was just enough time for Rin to reach him, chakra scalpel already in hand. Right as he broke through the last layer, the palm of her hand touched his hand, imprinting her marking on there. Her bare hand then caught the sharp edge of the sword that came out his mouth as her hand sliced deeply into his left arm.
Orochimaru stumbled backwards, gripping his bleeding arm.
"I already sliced through all of the major tendons in your arm," Rin told him. "You can't win."
Orochimaru hissed in pain. "You'll pay for this." Before either of them could blink, Orochimaru was gone.
There were no traces of his chakra signature anywhere in the village.
"His scent completely disappeared," Kakashi said as he hopped onto the branch next to her. "We should have killed him when we had the chance. He's going to come back again."
"If we can even kill him," Rin responded wryly. "We're a lot stronger than we were back then, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet."
"How are my students?"
"They'll live. I healed their life threatening injuries, but didn't have time to heal the rest. Besides, it'll give them an unfair playing field if I healed them all the way, right?"
Kakashi snorted in amusement before the two of them flashed to the Hokage's office to report their findings.
It was in that moment that Sakura envied Rin sensei's healing capabilities. The most that Sakura could do was to drag her teammates to a nearby cave to take shelter. Making use of Rin sensei's healing crystals, Sakura snapped one in half, allowing the healing chakra to seep through Sasuke's body. A thorough check over of Naruto revealed that his wounds were completely healed.
Sakura felt utterly useless. She was a genjutsu type, but she had frozen stiff in the snake man's genjutsu. If it hadn't been for Sasuke, Sakura had no doubt that she would be dead already. And the snake man's summons? It was Naruto who took care of them all, while her brain was screaming at her to retreat.
That was the textbook answer to her move in that type of situation, but neither Sasuke or Naruto gave up, despite being severely outclassed. Sakura stayed too, but for what? To scream at Sasuke that the snake man was coming at him from behind and to pin Naruto to a tree with a measly kunai?
No amount of textbook information would have, could have, prepared her for that situation. And now Sakura was at a loss as to what to do.
With both of her teammates unconscious, they were easy pickings as she was the weakest member of their team. However, one glance at her two teammates, Sakura felt a flare of determination rise up within her.
She was going to give it her best shot. The least Sakura could do was to stall for time until her teammates woke up.
The textbook answer to what to do in this type of situation told her to set traps and even douse the area with a couple of genjutsus to mask their presence. Sakura didn't know any genjutsu, so she stuck with doing the former, spending a good part of the next hour rigging traps all around the cave.
Right as she finished setting her last trap, she felt three chakra signatures heading straight for them.
The first Sound nin stepped into the clearing, tripping over one of the wires. As the nin caught his footing, a large log came swinging at him. Shouting at his teammates as a warning, Dosu dodged, mentally scoffing the lame attempt to catch them off guard. While Dosu was busy smirking, Sakura tossed three shurikens from the trees, jamming them into the holes in his arm guards.
Sakura quickly moved away. Kin sunk three senbons in the trunk of the tree, letting out an annoyed tsk that the kunoichi had gotten away so quickly. Grumbling in anger, Dosu plucked out the shuriken in his arm guard.
Her green eyes didn't miss the movement. So that's the source of his jutsu.
Cutting the wire attached to her next trap, Sakura unleashed a rain of kunai down at the three nin. Zaku hopped in front of his two teammates, holding out both of his arms to launch a stream of air pressure, knocking back all of the kunai while Dosu sent a high pitched sound along with Zaku's attack. Sakura clasped her hands to her ears at the screeching noise, forcing herself to keep one eye open to watch as her kunais failed to hit its mark.
Her eyes widened when three senbons came her way, two piercing her arm and another in her leg. The pain snapped her out of her stupor and Sakura forced her aching body to move as Zaku aimed his hands in the direction of the cave.
Throwing herself in front of the cave, Sakura slowly formed the hand seals, slamming both hands into the ground just as Zaku unleashed his jutsu once more. A frail earth wall came up to shield the three of them from the worst of the attack, doing its job in diverting the sound waves off to the side. Running up along her earth wall, Sakura used a boost of chakra to propel herself to the other side.
Hands forming the signs for a substitution jutsu, Sakura slipped back into the trees as Kin threw two kunais at her replacement. A puff of smoke revealed the replacement log. Zaku spotted her coming from above.
Sakura's hands moved once more to perform the substitution jutsu, but didn't bother to complete the last sign. Throwing her arm in front of her face, shuriken buried its way into her arm and leg. Zaku's focus wasn't on her anymore, but looking around for her real body.
Until a drop of blood fell onto his face.
Right as Zaku faced upwards once more, Sakura was on him, jamming two kunais into the hole in his arm. Channelling chakra to her arm, the boost of strength was enough for her to embed the kunai completely into the tunnel, even tearing through some of Zaku's skin. Zaku yelped in pain, backing away from her.
Sakura ducked the three senbons from Kin, but failed to realize Dosu's presence behind her. He kicked her square in the back, making her collapse face first in the dirt as his foot came down to clamp on top of her head.
"You'll pay for what you did to Zaku," Dosu hissed. "Kin."
As Kin raised her senbons once more to pierce Sakura's vital points, her green eyes noted a flash of orange and blue. The blue flashed in front of her, knocking all of the senbons off course, while the orange mass went to tackle Dosu. Feeling the pressure off of her head, Sakura rolled out of the way, clutching her bleeding forehead.
Dosu attempted to send another sound through the air, but with Sakura's warning, Naruto effectively countered it with a wind jutsu, sending the sound back to Dosu. Grimacing as he stumbled backwards, Dosu raised his arm guard to block against Naruto's kunai, but was too slow to prevent the Naruto clones jumping on his back, holding his limbs in place.
Meanwhile, Sasuke performed a fire jutsu, forcing Kin to jump into the air. Following her into the air, Sasuke kicked her higher, wrapping his arms around her before whirling the two of them on the descent below. Kin's head smashed against the earth and the girl fell unconscious.
Zaku's hoarse cry drew Sasuke's attention onto the man. Zaku struggled to get to his feet, his useless arms swaying in front of him.
"Stop!" Dosu shouted. "The scroll is in my weapons pouch. Let us go."
Clone Naruto dug into Dosu's weapons pouch, pulling out an Earth scroll. Nodding to Sasuke and Sakura, Naruto cautiously released Dosu, allowing him to leapt over to Kin, then to Zaku. Grabbing both of his teammates, Dosu fled into the safety of the forest.
"We got the scroll!" Naruto announced, holding the scroll victoriously in the air.
Sakura pushed herself up from the ground, yanking the senbon and shurikens out of her flesh. Reaching into her weapons pouch, Sakura retrieved the last healing crystal, snapping it in half and allowed the soothing healing chakra to close her aching wounds.
"Can you walk?" Sasuke asked her.
With a grimaced smile, Sakura hopped to her feet. "Yeah. Let's head to the tower."
They were the fourth team to make it. When Kakashi heard about it later from Anko, a proud smile graced his features.
At the end of the fifth day, all twenty one genins stood line by line as they awaited for the Third Hokage to appear. While the rookie nine greeted each other, the rest of the teams chatted amongst each other in soft whispers.
The jonins were starting a running bet on how late the Hokage was going to be, since Kakashi was last seen in the Hokage's office.
When Hiruzen did appear, only ten minutes late, Asuma clapped Kakashi knowingly on the back. Kurenai muttered a sarcastic congratulations for being early, by Kakashi's standards. Kakashi took it all in stride, even tossing a "thank you" to Kurenai.
No one missed Anko's snickers or the amused look on Genma and Raidou's faces. From besides them, Rin shot them a glare, motioning for them to hush as the Hokage began his usual spiel on the importance of being a ninja.
At the end of his spiel, Hiruzen officially began the preliminary matches to narrow down the number of fights in the final stage.
Twenty genins - one had dropped out - was a record breaking high for the third stage. It was the first time that they had this many, but then again, it was Konoha's first time hosting an international chunin exam.
Hayate remained down on the floor as proctor, with Sasuke and Yoroi as the first match. The rest of the genins and their respective jonin instructors filed up the steps to the stands. Anko, Genma, and Raidou joined the Hokage, flanking him on both sides. Rin had chosen to follow Kakashi and the rest of his team to the stands.
It was a clear division between nations. All twelve Konoha genins on one side of the stands, while the other eight from various countries were on the other side. Rin caught Baki's eyes and she flashed him a courteous smile and mouthed "congrats" for his team making it through. Baki didn't return the favor.
"Ano," Sakura began, catching both Rin and Kakashi's attention. "Who was that snake man in the forest?"
"Yeah," Naruto piped in. "What happened to him?"
"And why was he after Sasuke?" Sakura proceeded to add.
"His name is Orochimaru," Kakashi began, as Sasuke's battle began. "He's not your opponent, so if you ever see him again, throw the special kunai that I gave you. Now, don't you want to watch Sasuke's fight?"
That had done the trick in getting the two genins to turn back to the battle, watching it with earnest. When Yoroi pinned Sasuke down to the floor, Naruto began to shout all kinds of insults at Sasuke. To an outsider, it was confusing, but to Team Seven, they understood.
Naruto was fueling Sasuke on.
In the next moment, Sasuke was seen to be kicking Yoroi off of him, sending him flying across the arena. Crossing the area to catch Yoroi as he fell, Sasuke followed it up with another kick, this time pushing him into the air. As Yoroi's body sailed across the air, Sasuke flashed behind him. One hand grabbed the back of Yoroi's shirt, while a leg went up to kick him in the face, but was blocked by his arm. Unbothered, Sasuke swung his other hand, meeting its mark on his head. His body began to fall; Sasuke followed his move by sending a foot crashing into Yoroi's torso right as his back hit the floor.
Knock out.
"Less than three minutes. You have some impressive genin, Kakashi," Gai commented as he stepped closer to Team Seven. "Although your boy did copy one of Lee's moves."
Kakashi cocked his head to the side. "Hmm, did you say something?"
That earned a reaction out of Gai, who began to yell how "cool and hip" Kakashi was, much to the Rookie Nine's dismay. Team Gai could only shake their heads at their sensei's antics, while Lee started shouting how youthful his sensei was.
Sasuke returned to the stands right in time to get in the thick of the commotion.
The second matchup was announced: Zaku against Shino.
A pained look was written all over Sakura's face.
"A nasty encounter in the forest?" Rin inquired. Sakura nodded, then proceeded to explain to them in great detail about what happened in the forest.
"I think they're the snake man's underlings," Sakura confessed. "They were after Sasuke the entire time, not the scroll."
"I see."
"What does he want from me?" Sasuke demanded as the third match was announced. "What do I have that's so valuable?"
"Well, he's after your Sharingan. And of all of the people who have it, you are the most vulnerable," Kakashi answered. "But don't worry. We killed another man in the past who wanted to steal Sharingans too. We'll do it again."
The unmentioned name popped into both of their heads. Danzo.
"Besides," Rin added. "Kakashi and I fought Orochimaru once a while back. We're prepared this time."
That was enough to ease Sasuke's worries. The conversation died down as the fourth match was announced: Sakura vs Ino. Sakura's eyes widened, eyes flickering to Ino who confidently strode down to the arena.
"Good luck, Sakura." Rin nudged the pink haired girl towards the stairs. Absently, the girl nodded, as her feet carried her down to the arena below.
"Oi, Kakashi, your genin doesn't stand a chance against mine," Asuma called. Kakashi didn't look a bit ruffled at the comment.
"You know, Sakura's abilities remind me a lot of Rin's, so we'll see how she turns out in a couple of years."
Much to Team Asuma's surprise, the girl managed to pull a win. In the beginning, it seemed that Sakura and Ino were evenly matched. Towards the climax of the fight, Ino had tricked Sakura, rendering her unable to move as she used her clan's jutsu to possess Sakura's mind. Sakura had been on the verge of announcing her defeat when Naruto's loud shouts of encouragement helped Sakura to push Ino out of her mind.
Then Sakura proceeded to catch Ino off guard with a simple earth jutsu, to manipulate the ground making it move. While Ino was caught off balance, Sakura pushed chakra to the soles of her feet, boosting her speed before landing a hit on Ino's face, sending her flying into the wall with enough force to knock the other woman out.
After Hayate announced Sakura as victor, Sakura promptly passed out on the floor from chakra exhaustion. Their respective senseis went down to retrieve them as Hayate announced the fifth match.
A quick check determined that they are both fine.
"Just chakra exhaustion," Rin announced to the worried boys. "They'll be up in a bit."
The fifth match ended quickly. Rin went to Tenten, healing the fractures on her spine bone. In three minutes, the girl was up on her feet again with a thank you.
The sixth match had been interesting to watch, simply because it was Shikamaru. And watching the Nara clan outwit their opponent was always entertaining because just when everyone thought the Nara was going to lose, they pulled a fast one over everyone's head.
"Just like his father, huh?" Kakashi murmured to himself. Seeing his son in the arena below reminded him how old Kakashi was getting. It seemed like not too long ago when Fox, his Anbu captain, was announcing his retirement because he had a kid on the way. And now said kid has grown up…
The seventh match was Naruto vs Kiba, much to the former's excitement. He hopped over the railing, landing and bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet.
The match began and it was beginning to seem like Naruto was going to lose. Kurenai even mentioned that much to Kakashi, who tossed back a wait and see type of response.
And of course the "number one unpredictable hyperactive knucklehead ninja" had a few tricks up his sleeve and managed to turn the tables on Kiba, effectively taking the win.
"Three for three, not bad," Kakashi commented lazily as Naruto returned to the stands. He didn't bother to return Naruto's high five.
Eighth match. The Hyuga cousins. As the match progressed, Naruto swore up and down that he was going to change Neji's mindset and his ridiculous notion of fate. When Hinata was announced to be the loser, Naruto declared that he would get revenge for Hinata.
Rin teleported down to the Hyuga heiress' side, and began initial treatment for her wounds while the other medics brought over a stretcher. Behind her, the other jonin senseis were holding Neji back from landing another hit on her.
The ninth match was nothing noteworthy. Choji had given his best effort but that hadn't been enough to pull him through to the finals.
The tenth match however had everyone's attention, especially when Lee was able to land a hit on Gaara, even with his impenetrable sand defense. That had angered the beast inside of Gaara, leading to the loud voice screaming in his mind to kill the boy.
The sand wrapped around Lee's leg, crushing it into bits.
Lee was the second to be rushed to the hospital while the Hokage wrapped up the preliminaries, finalizing the matchups for the third round, and announcing that it would commence in a month's time.
Gai rushed to the hospital immediately after the conclusion of the preliminaries, demanding to know Lee's current condition. His two teammates followed after their sensei, concern etched all over Tenten's face while Neji remained apathetic.
"If he ever wants to be a ninja again, he'll need another surgery on his leg," Rin explained as she allowed the three of them into Lee's hospital room. "The first one was successful in stabilizing his condition. However, the chances of success for the next surgery are astronomically low, so I'll need some time to do some research to increase his chances."
And Rin did plan to use the following month in between the second and final round of the chunin exams to do just that.
Until a pink haired girl ruined all of her plans by asking Rin to take her on as a student.
How could she refuse?
A/N: Hi again!
Chunin exams was fun to write, but like the last arc, I glossed over the events that remained the same (mainly the preliminary fights). Not sure why Kabuto doesn't exist here, I lowkey forgot he participated in the exams until I was editing the chapter lol. It's been way too long since I've watched Naruto lol, might start rewatching during quarantine if I get bored enough (though I don't think I will because I'm busy writing :P).
No curse mark Sasuke this time mainly because of Itachi's tip off so they were more alert this time around. Besides, Sasuke's not too hell bent on revenge this time around; he's actually surprisingly normal? haha
I couldn't find much on exactly which villages participated in the original chunin exams (I'm wagering that only Sand - out of the other 4 Great Nations - participated since they only showed 2 Kages during the final round), but I'm going to run off of the assumption that all 5 villages received an invitation, but not all decide to participate. You'll see why next chapter, since it features an old friend. :)
Next chapter is called The Final Round. Features part 2 of the chunin exams (and things that you probably anticipate to happen).
Thank you for reading! Until next time!
-MM