Chapter Thirty One: The Final Round
When all three of his students made it to the final round, Kakashi couldn't help but to feel proud of them. But when all three of his students came to him for training for the upcoming exam, he was at a loss. Logically, there was no way he could teach all three of them, not unless he dedicated himself to solely teaching which was impossible. There were still missions that he needed to take, that needed his skillset.
And by teaching all of them at the same time, would reveal their skillset to each other, when they would inevitably be pitted against each other in the later rounds.
Sasuke against Gaara. Naruto against Neji. Sakura against Kankuro.
Kakashi knew exactly what he was going to teach Sasuke to help him against Gaara's impenetrable shield of sand, but he was at a loss as to what to teach Naruto and Sakura. The most he could teach Sakura at this point were more earth style jutsus or genjutsu if she was interested, neither of which would be very helpful against a puppet user.
Rin was more suitable to teach Sakura to utilize her excellent chakra control to her advantage and Kakashi even told her as much.
"Can you ask for me?" Sakura requested. "I want to learn under her guidance, but I'm scared that she'll say no."
To which Kakashi responded with, "She'll only say no to those who don't have the determination or courage to learn."
Later that night, Rin would inform him that his student sought her out at the hospital and that she had taken on a genin student, despite saying she never would.
Finding a teacher for Naruto was harder. Kakashi supposed that he could teach Naruto the Rasengan or how to control the Kyuubi's chakra, but there happened to be a more suitable teacher in town. He wasn't hard to find; he was at the hotsprings like always.
"Yo."
That had been enough to scare a Sannin level ninja, making Jiraiya jump backwards with fear etched across his face. When he noticed that it was only Kakashi and not an angry woman who caught him peeking, Jiraiya relaxed, only marginally.
Kakashi found it amusing that a shinobi of his caliber could only be off guard when peeping on women.
"Long time no see, Kakashi. Did you need something?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Kakashi didn't hesitate to say. "Naruto needs someone to train him and I decided that you would be the perfect candidate."
"Whoa, whoa," Jiraiya said, holding his hands out in front of him, palms facing towards Kakashi. "What makes you think I'll agree?"
"Well I'm sure Sensei will be disappointed that you won't lend a helping hand to his son," Kakashi tried.
"You're his sensei. Why don't you teach him?"
Kakashi shrugged. "Well my hands are tied. All of my genins made it to the next round, you see. I mean if you don't care about Sensei's wrath, then I guess I can tell those women that you've been peeping at them."
To emphasize his point, he pointed a finger in the direction of the window sills, where Jiraiya had been trying to take a peek with his binoculars.
"Fine, fine. You win this one, Hatake."
A day before the third exams, important people from all over the world filtered into Konoha, including many Daimyos and the Kages from the other villages, even if there were no genins from their villages participating.
It was a momentous day. It was the first time in a long time that all of the Kages were gathered together for one event.
Sakura noted the special visitors around the village, but didn't pay much attention to any of them, until she accidentally ran into one, in her haste to deliver the documents on hand to the hospital. When she looked up, her green eyes widened as she took in the red undershirt topped by a brown version of their flak jacket.
Iwa. Konoha's enemy during the last great war.
"Sorry," Sakura apologized, bowing her head to the Iwa nin.
"Watch where you are going next time, gaki," the Iwa nin spat.
"Kitsuchi, stand down," the Tsuchikage ordered. Kitsuchi did as his leader asked, retreating to stand beside the Tsuchikage.
"Thank you, now if you'll excuse me…" Sakura never did finish her sentence because the Tsuchikage's attention was no longer on her. Instead, his eyes were looking at something over her shoulder, leading his two guards to follow his line of sight as well.
Sakura did the same, whirling around to see what was so interesting and found that the Tsuchikage had been staring at Rin and Kakashi, who were casually walking down the street side by side. Rin was saying something, nudging Kakashi lightly on the shoulder, before pointing straight in their direction. Recognition flickered in Kakashi's eyes.
The two of them stopped in front of the Iwa trio plus Sakura. Sakura took the opportunity to reposition herself behind Rin, clutching the medical documents tightly to her chest as she waited to see how the events would play out.
"What a pleasure to see you again, Tsuchikage sama," Rin greeted. Sakura couldn't tell if the woman was being sarcastic or not.
"Likewise," Onoki responded. "It seems the two of you have been doing well since our last encounter. How are the other two kiddos doing?"
"Well I'm sure you've already heard all about it," Rin answered without missing a beat. "You'll have to ask them yourself since we've haven't seen them in a while. Five years to be exact."
Way to keep it vague. Sakura gained nothing from the conversation although it did peak her curiosity at how Rin and Kakashi met the Tsuchikage in the first place. Perhaps during war? And who were the other two people that the Tsuchikage mentioned?
"Well I suppose I did get my wish on meeting you under more pleasant circumstances again. This is my son, Kitsuchi. This is Rin; she was the one who saved your brother's life."
Rin and Kakashi exchanged one those knowing looks. The one that Sakura had seen multiple times and it seemed that they did it when they were recalling something only the two of them knew about. Or when they were seemingly sharing an inside joke.
Sakura hated being left out of the loop, but if the hospital gossip was accurate, then the two of them had history since the age of nine. Then again, the hospital had a lot of gossip concerning her two senseis, so Sakura wasn't quite sure what to believe anymore.
"Pleasure to meet you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to train my student for her upcoming match tomorrow."
Onoki waved her off. "Of course it's not a problem. Just remember my offer of hosting your wedding in Iwa is still open."
Rin laughed. "And the venue? In the holding cells in your village?"
"Of course," Onoki responded without missing a beat. "That's the place where it all started, right?"
Sakura was extremely mind boggled at how her sensei could so casually banter with the Tsuchikage like they were old friends. Even as Rin dragged her along to the direction of the hospital, Sakura's mind was still reeling from their encounter with the Tsuchikage and his envoys.
She had been so lost in her own thoughts, Sakura didn't realize that she had arrived at the hospital until she was already inside of Rin's office. Kakashi sensei was nowhere to be seen at this point and Rin was currently taking all of the documents out of Sakura's hold and passing them off to one of the medics in training to file.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Rin commented. "Tell me, what's eating at you?"
"You...the Tsuchikage." Oh gosh, Sakura couldn't even form proper words at this point.
"We have history way back in the day," Rin merely said. "I would tell you, but it's classified. Interested in diplomacy?"
"Ehh, no no. Nothing of that sort. Say, can you teach me…"
For someone who was supposed to be on standby during the matches to give medical treatment, Rin was doing a poor job. One, she wasn't even in the arena. Two, she was going to be extraordinarily late at the rate she was going, even more so than Kakashi.
But it wasn't her fault that everything seemed to be working against her this morning. First, it had been an emergency at the hospital that sent everyone into a frenzy. It had been the combination of a Feudal Lord's heart failing, a nurse administering the wrong shot to another patient, and to top it off, one of the medical interns misplaced all of the patients' files. With most of the higher ranking medical staff in the stadiums for the chunin exams, the moment it happened, everything fell apart.
And Rin had been the one they had called on to fix the situation, thinking that she would be more lenient than the head of the hospital. They were wrong. No matter what level of the hospital they were in, every staff member could hear every word that came out of Rin's mouth, with clarity. Most of it had been curse words. Some of it was orders. The worst of it was when she ranted about the incompetence of the staff and issued suspensions to all of the staff involved. The medical intern was never to be seen again.
By the time that Rin left the hospital, everyone could practically see the smoke coming out of her ears. No one dared to utter a word until she was at least a kilometer away from the hospital, to which everyone let out a relieved sigh.
No one had anticipated that Rin would inherit her shishou's temper from her usual interactions with them, but of course, it was always the nice ones that were a ticking time bomb.
The second had been when Raidou found her on the way to the chunin exams arena, informing her that they had progressed to the second match already and Kakashi and Sasuke were nowhere to be seen. If Sasuke didn't make it in time for his match, he would be automatically disqualified.
Rin didn't see how it was her problem that Kakashi was late, thereby dragging his student along with him, but Rin sent Raidou along with the promise that she would retrieve Kakashi. And she really intended to, until her search for Kakashi's chakra signature led her to sense Orochimaru's chakra signature. In the village.
Abandoning all thoughts of finding Kakashi, Rin sped across the rooftops of Konoha in the direction of the Forest of Death. Using Hiraishin to get there faster briefly crossed her mind, but she needed to conserve her chakra in case a fight broke out. If Orochimaru was in the village, then a fight would undoubtedly break out.
Rin could only hope she would make it in time.
Two kunai with explosive tags dispelled the large snake summon that appeared in the clearing close to where Orochimaru had attacked Team Seven last time. As the large summon disappeared into a puff of smoke, Orochimaru's chakra signature died down until it was a mere flicker.
Chakra suppression?
She didn't have time to finish her train of thought as Rin was forced to dodge, the blade of Orochimaru's Kusanagi slicing through the air besides her. The action forced her off of the branch and Rin barely had time to land on the ground when Orochimaru followed up with a fire style attack. Rolling out of the way, Rin launched three senbons at him and felt for the familiar tug of the mark on Orochimaru.
But it wasn't there. And despite using his chakra, Orochimaru's signature was still faint.
A clone! Rin barely managed to escape the slew of snakes that came out of his sleeve unscathed.
"Where's your real body?" she demanded. Her chakra scalpel sliced through another snake summon the moment clone Orochimaru summoned it.
"Kukuku, so you've figured it out, huh? Very impressive, but regardless, you'll be too late to stop it."
"Stop what?"
"An invasion of the Leaf of course," Orochimaru answered. Evil laughter followed his declaration. "A Suna and Oto joint invasion. Isn't that brilliant?"
Her eyes widened. Rin made a move to leave, but clone Orochimaru stopped her attempt by engaging her in hand to hand combat. While Rin matched his blow for blow, her mind was trying to pinpoint where his real body was.
Like a blinking dot in her mind landscape, she latched onto the marking that she had planted in their last battle. Throwing one last punch at clone Orochimaru, Rin allowed Hiraishin to carry her across the village. Her feet didn't even touch the rooftop when a man with white hair and blue armor darted in front of her in a blur of blue, thwarting her attempt to slice off Orochimaru's body.
Whirling around to catch her balance, her foot kicked at the man, who easily caught her foot with both hands. Channeling chakra to the bottom of her foot, she allowed her chakra to travel through the man's hands. One hand formed the tiger seal, making the man's hands blow up into pieces of paper while her other hand sliced cleanly through Orochimaru's left arm as his Kusanagi sword pierced straight through her stomach.
Grabbing the sharp end of his sword and yanking it out of Orochimaru's grasp as he stumbled backwards from the pain, Rin teleported both herself to Hiruzen's side with the sword still embedded into her torso. Dropping to her knees from the exertion and excruciating pain, she began to send healing chakra to her abdomen as her hands rummaged in her weapons pouch for the antidote for Orochimaru's poison.
"Rin!" the Third exclaimed as he saw the woman collapse by his side. One eye was fixated on the three reanimated Hokages, while one was focused on helping the healing woman to her feet.
Shodaime. Nidaime. Yondaime. Fighting Minato alone last time had already been hard enough, but to fight against three Hokages at once? No wonder Hiruzen had been fighting a losing battle.
"Forgive us," Hashirama said with a sad smile on his face. "We are not in control of our own actions. Please stop us."
"Rin, you need to leave," Hiruzen urged as she pulled out Kusanagi from her stomach. "If you stay, you'll die."
"And you'll die if I do," Rin countered. "There's no way you can fight all three Kages by yourself. Besides, you'll need my help to take down the Yondaime."
Minato smiled. "You've grown up."
Faster than the eye could follow, Rin and Minato both tossed their respective weapons. The three pronged kunai for him, a senbon for her. In the next moment, they both teleported to their weapons right before it reached them. With the Kusanagi sword extended outward, it sliced through Minato's torso as they passed each other.
Rin caught her senbon midair, launching at Tobirama who was located in her seven o'clock direction. He jumped out of the way, stopping his jutsu. In the next second, Rin teleported to him, bringing down the sword on him. Tobirama blocked it with his armor with enough force to knock the blade out of her hands. Completing the hand seal, a large torrent of water surrounded them. Scaling up the wall of water, Rin channelled chakra to her feet and sent it into the water, adding wind nature to the mix. The water froze over, stopping Tobirama's attempt at executing another water jutsu.
A flash of yellow appeared and she ducked. Minato's kunai slashed against the ice wall behind her instead. Quickly forming the seals, she manipulated the ice, sharp shards of ice sticking out along the wall. Minato was quick to get away before he was stabbed.
Hashirama's wood style technique forced Rin to retreat, ducking and dodging as the trees attempted to trap her. She tossed three senbons in various directions as she backflipped along one of the branches of the tree, to avoid another branch that had attempted to curl around her ankle.
Hiruzen's groan diverted her attention for a split second. That was enough for an unsuspecting branch to wrap around her ankle, pulling her down into the canopy, while three more branches wrapped around her other limbs, rendering her unable to move. Rin attempted to break free of her holdings by concentrating her chakra to her arms, but the wood immediately sucked away from her chakra.
She fell limp in her holdings, panting heavily as her eyes slid over to the Third Hokage who was in the same predicament, except worse. His chakra levels were low, lower than she had ever felt it being.
Orochimaru appeared in their line of sight, flanked by the three dead Hokages.
"A valiant attempt to stop me, sensei," Orochimaru said, chucking to himself. "But I'm afraid you are getting too old for this. Even your little Anbu kunoichi held her own against the Kages better than you did, but unfortunately, it's the end of the road for you."
"Even if I die," Hiruzen responded through gritted teeth. "Konoha will persevere. You'll never be able to extinguish our Will of Fire."
"Is that so? What will Konoha do when their leader is dead, huh? Won't it just be like the Yondaime's death all over again, with the village in chaos?"
"You're the one who killed the Yondaime," Rin hissed.
"Of course I did," Orochimaru snapped back. "I was supposed to be elected Yondaime, not the stupid Yellow Flash. And I would have been the Godaime if it hadn't been for you two! You, for exposing all of my research and you, for not stepping down as Kage. And both of you will die today!"
Orochimaru's tongue stuck out and he pulled out another sword from his mouth. He charged towards Hiruzen, blood dripping from his left arm with every step he took. Rin broke out of her captivity by teleporting to her mark on Hiruzen. Left hand reached in her weapons pouch, flinging a three pronged kunai straight at Orochimaru. Her chakra scalpels cut through the limbs of the trees, freeing the Third as a clang of sword sounded behind her.
Flashing to Kakashi, Rin covered his back, blocking a blow from Minato and Tobirama.
"You're late."
"Maa, some Oto jonins held me up." Pushing Orochimaru back, Kakashi advanced on him, while Rin forced Minato to retreat, but managed to stay on Tobirama, sticking an explosive tag against his arm. She allowed it to explode, jumping on him to slap a counter seal against his forehead while his body formed.
The tag fell off, fluttering to the ground as Tobirama's half formed body sent a forceful kick into her stomach. Flying backwards a couple of meters, Rin managed to twist her body mid air to land on her feet, kunai ready to block Minato's next attack.
The counter seal didn't work! The one that she had spent the last decade trying to create in anticipation of fighting Orochimaru again...it didn't work.
How were they going to seal the Kages?
Rin vaguely registered the Third Hokage creating three shadow clones as Minato continued to back her into a corner. Flashing out of the way, Rin allowed Minato's Rasengan to crash into Hashirama's tree. Racing to cover Hiruzen's back, she saw Tobirama's hands clap together.
Then it went dark.
An undetectable presence knocked Rin cleanly off of her feet. Her fingers wrapped around the kunai, the sharp edges slicing through her palms as she took another hit in the shoulder.
"Shiki Fuujin," came the Third's voice. Rin gasped, having read about the technique among the Hokage's archives. Pushing herself to her feet, Rin teleported to the Sandaime's side at the same time Kakashi did. The three of them stood back to back in a triangle formation.
"Hokage sama," Rin murmured.
"Can you detect them?" Kakashi asked.
"No," Rin answered. "This jutsu is obscuring my senses."
"Don't worry," Hiruzen said. "I'll end this for once and for all."
Just as quickly as the darkness had fallen upon them, it retreated, revealing all three of Hiruzen's shadow clones in front of each of the reanimated Kages. A phantom hand emerged from Hiruzen's stomach, pulling at the souls of the three Kages.
"Thank you," Hashirama said as Hiruzen sealed him away. Tobirama apologized for causing him trouble while Minato muttered something about it being the last time. All three of Hiruzen's clones dissipated into a puff of smoke.
"Teleport me…" Rin understood, placing a hand on Hiruzen's shoulder. She teleported him to Orochimaru. A phantom hand emerged from Hiruzen's real body, grasping onto Orochimaru's soul. The two of them exchanged words, but Rin and Kakashi were too far away to hear.
Kakashi's chakra levels were disturbingly low as he crumpled to the ground, panting from exhaustion. Pressing her hand to his shoulder, Rin poured one reservoir worth of chakra into his body.
"You didn't even use the Mangekyo this time, baka."
"Hiraishin takes a lot more chakra than I anticipated," Kakashi retorted as the two of them watched Hiruzen finish yanking out Orochimaru's soul. Orochimaru's body crumpled to the floor while Hiruzen shot the two of them one sad smile, words forming on his lips as the Death Reaper finished sealing away all five of their souls.
I'll leave the future to you.
The barrier around them fell, allowing the Anbu to enter. The Sound Four quickly retreated upon seeing the death of their leader. The Anbu captain nodded at Rin and Kakashi, picking up Hiruzen's body while the other burned Orochimaru's with a fire style jutsu.
Pulling each other to their feet, Rin and Kakashi stared out at Konoha, the puffs of smoke in the air as Orochimaru's snake summons disappeared. Forming the hand sequence for a summoning jutsu, Rin slammed her hand down to the ground as the black markings began to criss cross her entire body. A large version of Katsuyu appeared and Rin ordered for her to split and use her chakra to heal the injured.
With his newly acquired chakra, Kakashi teleported to his students, only to find that the three of them had already taken care of Gaara. Picking up his three unconscious students, Kakashi carried them to the hospital, which was a complete mess. The upper level of the hospital had been destroyed in the attack and it seemed like there was no one in charge. Injured shinobis were left wherever there was an open spot on the floor. There was no semblance of order as the medics ran around to retrieve the necessary supplies or just continued to heal the injured one by one.
It wasn't until Katsuyu's appearance did the hospital snap into shape as Katsuyu relayed the situation to Rin, who snapped out orders through the correspondence. Leaving his three students in Katsuyu's hands, Kakashi took off into the village.
At this point, word had spread to the Oto shinobis that Orochimaru was dead, leading to their hasty retreat. Upon seeing Oto's retreat, Suna had opted to do the same, knowing that their manpower wasn't simply enough to take out Konoha without Oto's help.
Kakashi showed no mercy on the straggling Oto and Suna shinobis, ordering them to either be killed or taken to Ibiki for mind torture. He spent the rest of the time helping the others, bandaging the wounded and carrying them to the hospital.
All of the well abled shinobi gave a moment of silence for their fallen comrades.
The death of their Hokage weighed heavily on their minds and hearts as an emergency council was organized to propose a new Hokage to the Fire Daimyo. All of the clan heads were present save for the Uchiha, as were the two Konoha elders, along with the Anbu commander, Wolf. Jiraiya, surprisingly, had shown up. Shikaku wagered his appearance was so that the council couldn't nominate him as Hokage, as they had tried in the past.
Following Rin's departure from the Anbu, she had earned a permanent position on the council as a representative of Konoha's medical department as well for her and Kakashi's service as the Hokage's right hand man for international diplomacy. Their absence wasn't overlooked by the other council members.
"Where's Nohara and Hatake?" Homura questioned, eyeing each individual in the room.
It was Jiraiya who gave him an answer. "They send their apologies for being unable to make the meeting. Rin is currently tied up at the hospital as part of the recovery effort and Kakashi is assisting her."
"I see, in that case we will begin without them," Wolf said, starting the meeting in the Hokage's stead. "I'm sure that you've already heard about the Sandaime's passing. If anyone would like to recommend a suitable candidate for Hokage, please speak up now."
As expected, Jiraiya's name was the first one that was mentioned. Jiraiya promptly rejected the nomination.
"I recommend either Rin Nohara or Kakashi Hatake," Shikaku stated. "They are named to be Hokage sama's successors in case of his unexpected death."
"They are still young," Koharu protested.
"The Yondaime became Hokage at the age of twenty one, five years younger than both of them," Shikaku countered. "I believe their years serving as the Yondaime's personal guards and as the Sandaime's envoys is enough experience for them to take the Hokage position."
"If I may interject," Jiraiya said. "Both of them expressed to me that they do not want to become Hokage unless there is no one else. I nominate Tsunade."
"Will she be willing?" Inoichi questioned.
"I'll convince her. In the meantime, I nominate Shikaku to serve as interim Hokage until I bring Tsunade back."
The council was in unanimous agreement.
A/N: Hi again!
Wow brings back memories of their mission gone wrong in Iwa haha. I know Iwa participating in chunin exams wasn't canon, but in this version, Iwa and Konoha have a good political relationship (see Team Ro's mission in Iwa where Rin saved Onoki's son). Orochimaru is successfully killed this time around; it seems like there's not much that can kill him. I remember him fighting against Naruto after the Kyuubi took over and somehow he survives that too lol. Guess all the immortality research came in handy.
Exciting news to share! I finally posted the new story (the AU story that I previously mentioned). It's called In the Name of War and it's Kakashi centric with a good amount of Rin, Obito, and Itachi. I would appreciate it if you took the time to check it out and I hope you'll enjoy that one as much as this story, if not more! :)
Another thing: we will be entering Shippuden territory since the arc to bring Tsunade back to the village will follow canon (minus the fight vs Orochimaru) and Sasuke doesn't turn evil lol. The next chapter is an interlude and it's pretty short, so I'm probably going to post that early in the week so there's an actual chapter on Friday. Now that I finished (mostly) writing the other story, I'm going to come back and finish this one haha.
Well as always, thanks for reading! Until next time!
-MM