Well, well, well. Look what we have here.
Chuunin Exams: START!
By the way, I don't respond to many reviews, but I do read absolutely every single one, so just know that if you've ever left a review on this story, whether good or bad, you've had an effect on the final product in some way, and that I superdy-duperdy appreciate all of them. Thanks for all the support!
Without further ado, blah blah blah, you get the point.
Chapter 11: Frustration with the Way Things Are
"Uhm… Sensei?" The blonde-haired child spoke curiously, sitting down at the foot of Kakashi's bed with his teammates, and generally trying to create as much ruckus as he could. "What're the Chuunin Exams?"
The man coughed violently, hacking into his own sheets as he desperately tried to pretend he hadn't heard that. It had been his idea to simply not tell his team about the exams, and hope they'd miss the cut-off point for entering.
"Naruto, you didn't know?" Sakura spoke out, standing and picking up a magazine from beside his bed, flipping it around a bit before settling on a specific page. She pushed it up into her teammates face and gestured towards it. "The Chuunin Exams are a bi-annual event, held by each village on a rotating schedule, open to all other villages. The Leaf Village is hosting this year."
"Oh, seriously?" Naruto peered a bit skeptically at the article, reading for just a moment, before he let out a small "Huh."
There was a small bit of silence as the boy continued to read, accompanied only by the soft ticking of a clock on the opposite wall, before, with a gasp, Naruto turned back towards the three of them.
"Wait a second, that means we get to compete, right!?"
Kakashi coughed awkwardly, not quite sure how to disappoint the boy without… well… disappointing the boy.
"Obviously not, doofus," Sasuke spoke up, lightly smacking the boy on his shoulder, before pointing down at the words on the page. "It says right here we'd need a Jonin Sensei, and ours is out of commission."
"Aww, what!?" The blonde fell backwards, scrunching down onto the mattress beneath him and letting out a long, pained whine. "But I wanna'!"
"Did you not hear me earlier, it's bi-annual." Sakura sat back down on the bed, just beside Naruto and Sasuke. "You'll get another chance in a couple months, and you'll get to have a lot more training going into it. Hell, I don't even know if we'd be ready for it if we took it now."
"But wouldn't that be half the fun?" Naruto spoke up, holding his arms wide around him. "I mean, it's like… like we're the main characters or something."
Naruto made a serious face, parodying a character one might read about in an ancient tale.
"Caught with their backs against the wall, can our heroes defeat the world's strongest ninja, and rise to the rank of Chuunin!?" He finished by raising his hands into the air and taking a very dramatic action pose.
Sasuke chopped him on his forehead a second later, and the boy gave a small "Ow" as he let his arms fall back onto the bed.
"I really was planning on letting you all take them, though," Kakashi spoke up, closing his Icha-Icha book and setting it on his bedside table. "You've all exceeded my expectations; I really didn't think you'd have that much of a problem with the exams."
"Really?" Naruto looked over to him, eyes sparkling.
"Really." He smiled back at the boy, and watched as his face lit up, looking back towards the other two and smiling a bit embarrassedly.
He'd noticed that the boy never really took compliments well, and whether that was a result of his upbringing, or just a small personality quirk, he didn't think it to be all that important. It was endearing, at the very least.
"So, wait." Naruto spoke up a second later, scratching his chin. "All we'd have to do to compete is get a Jonin Sensei?"
"Er…" Kakashi didn't really know how to respond to the look of raw mischief on the boy's face, like he'd just thought of the world's most amazing prank. "I suppose?"
Naruto's eyes widened, and he looked suspiciously like a certain nine-tailed fox himself as he chuckled, rubbing his hands together in a way that made him look a bit like an evil genius.
"I don't much like that expression." Sasuke spoke, eyes narrowed in a suspicious way. "What are you planning?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing…" Naruto slid off of the bed, took calm, careful steps towards the door, and gave them a shit-eating grin of frankly epic proportions. "I've just got an idea is all."
And with that, the boy closed the door behind him, the sounds of his footsteps echoing into their room for only a second or two longer before they too faded.
"Why does he only ever look like that when he's trying to do something stupid?" Sakura sighed, massaging her temple with her fingers, making small circles. "I swear, enemies would run the hell away if they saw him look like that in a fight, but noooo, it's all screaming and shadow clones!"
"I don't think they'd run," Sasuke spoke, grinning as he twirled a pencil in his fingers. "They'd probably just laugh at him, and then all of a sudden they'd find themselves caught in a 30-layer trap."
"Yeah, that sounds about right." The girl laughed as she said it, leaning back onto the bed with a sigh. "The only reason we know to avoid him when he's like that is experience."
"What do you guys mean?" Kakashi leaned back into his pillows, trying to get comfortable as he listened to his students talk.
Sakura grinned, as did Sasuke, the two of them sharing a small look before giggling a bit.
"Everyone thinks Naruto's this dumb oaf, but he's actually pretty smart, he just doesn't apply any of it to things that don't interest him." Sasuke raised his arms up, in a 'what can you do' gesture. "I mean, who else could figure out a way to set up an entire scaffold rigging on the Hokage Monument, and make it so that he could paint all four of the faces, in just a few days?"
Kakashi laughed just thinking about it, the boy must have thought long and hard about it, slaving away in a notebook somewhere as he came up with plans. Or, perhaps he was more like himself, and things just came naturally to him, perhaps Naruto was better on the fly.
"That does seem a bit ridiculous."
"Oh, but it doesn't stop there!" Sakura spoke up this time, groaning as she massaged her face with her hands again. "When we were trying to figure out a way to get back at you for leaving us on the training field for 3 hours, and telling us not to eat anything, it was Naruto who came up with the idea to set all of us up as his clones!"
"I mean, honestly, if he'd applied that level of intellect to class, he probably could've been a top student or something!" The pink-haired girl sighed, smiling a bit even still. "If I'm being honest, though, I just don't think that would've worked."
"What wouldn't have worked?" Kakashi asked.
"Naruto as some genius." Sakura spoke, looking towards Sasuke and smirking, holding in her laughter. "I mean, could you imagine Naruto as some broody edge-lord like him?"
"I resent that." The black-haired boy spoke out quietly, looking a bit annoyed at his teammate, who rolled with laughter as she fell back onto the bed. "Oi!"
Kakashi himself smiled as he looked upon his students faces, as they argued incessantly about this and that, he could tell that they all truly cared for one another.
They sat for a while after that, doing various different things. Kakashi himself took to rereading his favorite chapters for the umpteenth time, going back through them with a fine-toothed comb to try and find anything he'd missed.
He was just about to give up and try to find something else to do when the door was practically kicked down, and Naruto entered the room, dragging a disgruntled-looking Zabuza behind him.
"Ta-Dah!" Naruto exclaimed, gesturing towards the confused looking assassin with both of his hands.
"Er… what?" Sakura spoke, scratching the side of her head.
"That's my question as well!" The Mist ninja said, as he pulled his arm free from Naruto's. "You said there was a situation, so what the hell are we doing here!?"
"Well, there was a situation, though it perhaps wasn't as serious as I made it sound…" Naruto rubbed his chin, looking down at the floor. "But that doesn't matter!"
"Uhm," Zabuza exclaimed, looking for the second time since Kakashi had met the man completely lost for words. "It kind of does matter!"
Naruto continued on like the man hadn't spoken at all.
"I found us our Jonin Sensei!"
A strange silence once again descended upon the room, and Kakashi looked around to see his students with confused, yet curious looks on their faces.
"Wait, really?"
"No! Not really!" Zabuza shouted, looking down towards Naruto with an annoyed expression. "I never once agreed to that!"
"Eh, semantics." The blonde boy waved his hand, as if to dispel the man's paltry argument.
"It is very much so not Semantics!"
Kakashi was desperately holding in a laugh, trying not to crack and have the assassin from the mist murder him.
"I'm not going to be your babysitter," The demon of the mist exclaimed, standing over Naruto, and casting a shadow upon him. "Find someone else, because I'm not doing it!"
/-/
"So, I agreed to be their Jonin Sensei." His master spoke, as Haku aimlessly poked and prodded at the flowers on the wall.
"Oh? I wouldn't have thought you'd want to do that."
"Well, I obviously don't want to, but the Hokage said that if I did, then he would reduce my wait-time to be able to take on missions to the end of the Chuunin Exams, instead of the usual 6 months for defectors."
"Why is it 6 months?" The ice-user felt like asking, not really seeing too much of a point in a wait at all.
"It's because of spy's and their ilk." Zabuza commented, leaning against the doorway behind him. "basically, having six months to be able to tell if someone's a spy among hundreds of ninja in the village to keep an eye on them is a lot better than immediately sending them out on missions, where only a handful of other's can watch them at any time."
"Oh, OK." Haku realized the point now, it was just a security measure. The leaf village was just being as careful as it could be. Still, if they were so paranoid, why open their borders to defectors at all?
Zabuza massaged his temples, groaning aloud as he looked around the shop.
"Brat, could you at least try and be subtle about this?"
"W-what are you talking about?" Haku felt a bead of sweat slide down his face. "I'm just picking some flowers!"
"The same flowers? For twenty minutes?" His master shot him an unimpressed look, as he pointed towards the front desk, where a certain blonde-haired girl sat, looking bored as she clicked the back of a pen over and over. "In direct line of sight of your crush over there?"
Haku coughed and hacked, sputtering out denials as fast as he could.
"I-I don't like her, I'm just here for the flowers!"
Zabuza gave him a deadpan expression.
"Honestly! They have an incredibly impressive selection!"
His master looked to be barely registering what he was saying.
"I-I'm being completely serious! I really don't like her like that!"
"So you admit you do like her?"
"W-What!? No! I-I said that I don't like her!"
"Why preface that statement with 'like that' then?"
"Because I- That is to say…. I'm…"
Zabuza sighed, giving a small groan of pain as well.
"Goddamn puberty."
"What the hell is this puberty thing anyways!?"
The entire shop went silent, and Haku realized with a pale face that he'd just screamed that quite loudly.
"Ask someone else."
"W-What? But why?"
"Kid, I do an awful lot for you," Zabuza kneeled down in front of him, and gave him a completely honest look. "But I absolutely refuse to give you the talk."
/-/
A boy's body hit dirt at breakneck speeds, a small crater forming around him as he groaned out in pain, before sitting up a second later.
An outstretched palm was all he could see, poised to strike him once more. The boy already knew the words that would come from his master's mouth before they were spoken.
"Winner, Neji!" Guy Sensei shouted loudly, raising his left arm, and pointing it towards the Hyuga, who stood out of his crouch and walked over towards his other teammate, TenTen, leaning against a wooden log a way's away.
Lee pounded his fist into the dirt as he got up, feeling more than a little aggravated with himself.
He'd never beaten Neji, and he knew he never would. Well, that wasn't true, with the work he was putting into his current fights with the boy, he knew he'd never defeat him. Lee knew he could beat the boy, but that battle was reserved for a more serious occasion, one where others would watch and see that hard work could truly defeat genius.
An occasion like the Chuunin Exams, for instance.
He'd unleash the Forbidden Jutsu his master had taught him, he'd take off the weights that he always wore, and he'd show the world the true power of effort!
He walked over to his master and teammates, who were all taking drinks out of their flasks and talking neutrally.
It was strange, though, because it seemed like everyone was talking a bit more forcibly than usual, making small talk for the sake of it.
Team Guy had never had a truly friendly relationship. He'd have likened it to more of a working relationship, where everyone knew it'd be easier to get along than not to.
TenTen made an absent comment about the upcoming exams, which seemed to pull Neji's attention towards her, and he idly spoke about their team's chances, or, more than likely, his own.
"It's obvious we'll be the victors; we have destiny on our side after all." Neji gave a small chuckle, as if he was above it all. "Just follow my lead in the earlier stages, and I'll win us the knockouts for free."
"Don't get overconfident, Neji," Guy Sensei said, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Being sure of one's self is good; but underestimating one's opponent can only lead to failure."
"Is it truly underestimating them if I am giving them the benefit of the doubt?" Neji scoffed, flicking the man's hand off of his shoulder and walking away from them all. "They simply have no hope against me, it's not terribly hard to figure it out."
Their teacher sighed as the boy walked out of earshot, leaving to go and train himself even more. Despite his proclamations that the weak could never overcome the strong through training, Neji seemed to be fairly hypocritical in continuing to train despite that.
Lee felt that perhaps he should have pointed that out, but he didn't particularly care either way. It honestly made him feel a bit better about his internal dislike of the boy whenever he was rude or mean to them all. It helped to make him feel justified.
And that internal dislike made him feel disgusted with himself. Neji had had just as tough a life as any of them, and the things that had happened to him were no better than what had happened to himself.
It was as he was agonizing over this and that that Guy Sensei walked over, and sat down next to him, smiling up at him with a small sparkle on his pearly white teeth.
"Learn anything, Lee?"
"From that fight, Guy Sensei?" He looked back towards their small arena, the hole in the ground into which Neji had launched him, and admitted. "I shouldn't try and come at him from below, Neji's Byakugan gives him a full 360-degree range of vision, thusly an attack from any angle might as well be an attack from the front."
"Meaning?" Guy smiled up at him to show him that he was on the right track, but having to say what the both of them already knew didn't make him feel much better.
"Meaning that I simply have to work on my fundamentals more, there's no real trick to beating him." He looked towards the edge of the horizon, where he could just make out the figure of Neji disappearing over the top of it. "The only thing that can defeat him is skill."
"Unfortunately for you," His teacher spoke out, standing with a small smile. "You're correct."
Guy Sensei looked back towards the third member of their team, who was reading a combat manual about one of her new tools.
"And what about you, TenTen, you lost to both Lee and Neji today, what did you learn?"
Lee winced, knowing that the girl had always struggled to take wins off of either of them, her strategy of sticking in one spot and throwing out attacks from it was highly effective on a battlefield for instance, but against just one other ninja, far faster than you?
It was more like suicide.
"I didn't learn anything today, Sensei." TenTen admitted with a frown, though she covered it a second later with the fakest smile Lee had ever seen. "I have to be more agile in order to deal with faster opponents, which directly counteracts my style of being an immovable fortress."
"You could do to be more versatile, TenTen." Their master spoke up, as he walked over to the girl and gave her a pat on the back. "It isn't your fault that you're pitted against two of the fastest ninja in the leaf village, but it is your fault that you refuse to learn to fight against those who counteract your style. On the battlefield, such straightforwardness could get you killed."
The girl gave a small growl, but took a deep breath, calming herself down as she looked up towards her teacher.
"Then, Sensei, what would you have me do?"
"Learn to use each of your weapons, or, hell," Guy picked up a crescent shaped blade from the ground, a small sickle, and handed it to TenTen. "Learn to use just one of your weapons in your offhand as a defensive measure."
Guy took the small sickle in one hand, flipped it around a few times, and tossed it to the other, effortlessly wielding the weapon.
"Teach yourself some mild hand-to-hand combat, and learn specifically how to disengage from an opponent with superior speed than-"
"You think I haven't tried that!?"
The sound of birds flapping off in the distance was the only sound in the clearing for quite a while. Both Lee and Guy stood silently, shocked that the normally quiet and friendly TenTen would yell with such vitriol.
"I'm just not that good at it, Sensei." TenTen let out in a sad voice, covering her face with her hands. "I'm no prodigy with this stuff, OK? I tried to learn how to use a weapon in my left hand, but by the time I draw it, my chakra points have already been shut down by Neji, or I've already taken a kick to the stomach from Lee, or some other kid has cast a Jutsu on me!"
The girl balled her fists, striking the earth she sat upon with all her might.
"I'm not fast enough, or I'm not strong enough, or I'm not versatile enough!" She stood up, not quite screaming at them, but certainly talking a lot louder than she usually did. "I can't even beat a kid who has no chakra at all!"
No one spoke, and even nature itself, usually uncaring to the plights of man, seemed to stand in perfect stillness for just a moment. The world was completely quiet as Guy reached his hand out to the girl, who batted it away.
Lee had been wrong, earlier, because he could say with fair certainty that the smile the girl wore now was the fakest smile he'd ever seen.
"Sorry, you two, I don't know what came over me there." TenTen gave a quiet, mirthless laugh, as she walked over to where she'd been sitting before and grabbed her bag of tools, along with her massive weapons summoning scroll. "Th-that was really weird, huh? Me of all people, right?"
"TenTen, are you-?"
"Well, then," The girl in front of them looked to be trying desperately to get the two of them to forget they saw anything at all, waving forcefully at the two of them with her left hand as she slung the large weapon's scroll along her shoulder. "I suppose I'll talk to the both of you later."
The girl took a step backwards, then another, and gave them another mirthless laugh. It cut off about halfway through, giving way to a small squeaking sound. A second later, TenTen turned around and fled, running away from their clearing and into the forests beyond.
Guy seemed to be completely spent, falling to a heap on the ground, letting out a long, pained sigh.
"Hey, Lee?"
"Yes, Sensei?"
The man gave him a sad smile, that looked so terribly foreign on his face.
"Where did I mess this up?"
/-/
"So, you see…" Zabuza spoke with a red face, looking truly mortified as he spoke the next words. "When a boy and girl… love each other, or something…"
Haku gasped, desperately trying once again to escape the rope he'd been tied down with. His master had suddenly started talking about this stuff after they'd left the flower shop, saying that it was for 'Haku's own good.'
He didn't believe that bullshit for one second! This stuff was horrifying!
When he'd tried to run away the first time, the man had tied him to a chair, forcing him to listen to his insane babbling.
"Master, please, whatever I've done to deserve this, I apologize!"
"He has to take out his-"
"Why!? What did I do!?" Haku struggled horribly against the ropes, biting down on them with his teeth. "What have I done!?"
"And put it in her-"
"Master, I'm begging you," Haku screeched out. "At this point, I'd rather you just kill me!"
"No, Brat," Zabuza spoke, completely serious, despite his pale, and yet still flushed face. "I can't do that."
"Why!? Why the hell can't you do that!?"
Zabuza looked him dead in the eyes, the man's face for the first time what Haku could call a demon.
"Because that would be too easy." He spoke, even past the shaking of his lips. "For the both of us."
/-/
A loud scream emanated from the depths of the women's bath, as all of the patrons ran towards the changing room, holding towels up to their bodies to cover their private areas.
"Hey, wait!" A voice called out as an old, white haired man waded through the water, chasing after them. "Come back!"
He was hit in the face a second later by a small washing bin, and then another, before, with a chorus of "Get out, pervert!", a bombardment of items began to make their way towards the white-haired old man.
He let out a small yell as he ran away, nearly cresting atop the surface of the water as he jumped the bamboo fence separating the male and female baths, and then the next fence that led out into the village.
As he landed upon the stone road below him, he got a pretty good look at his outfit.
Or in this case, lack thereof.
"Mommy, why isn't that man wearing any clothes?"
"Who's that, Dad?"
"Is he a pervert?"
"Why yes, dear, he is!"
The old man took a look around, and then, with a teary face, ran away into the streets, screaming back towards all who had seen him…
"I'm not a pervert! I was doing very crucial research!"
"Like anyone would believe that, you pervert!
"Damn creep!"
"Pedophile!"
He felt a small, angry tick on his forehead.
"Hey! That's just rude!"
It was a shame, because he'd been fairly sure that hiding himself inside of one of his frogs and telling it that he was on a highly secret espionage mission, and that, at all costs, he couldn't be seen, had been a pretty good idea.
It was a shame, then, that once the frog had realized what he'd been trying to do, he'd immediately spat him out.
Directly into the middle of the women's bath.
It'd been even more of a shame that his clothes had still been in the frog's mouth.
"I'll get you all for this, if my name isn't Jiraiya, the Gallant Toad Sage, I will have my revenge!"
"Revenge for what? Getting caught!?"
"Get the hell out of here, you damned creep!"
"Who the hell would say his name at a time like this!?"
Jiraiya gave an annoyed yell, running away from the horribly rude people yelling at him, even if it probably wasn't their fault he'd been next to naked only a few feet from them all, they could've at least been a bit more understanding about it all!
"Dammit, I knew I should've just ignored that old man's summons!"
Jiraiya looked behind him, where a massive cliff face gave way to four carved stone faces.
"All the hot springs in this crappy village are separate bath!"
/-/
A small, pure white snake slithered out from under a dislodged brick, sliding it's way onto the palm of it's master, who communicated with it very briefly, obtaining the information he needed, before it entered into the man's sleeve.
"Well, well, it appears my old teammate is going to be in Konoha as well." The man laughed shrilly, walking just behind the three kids who would be masquerading as his students. "What a touching reunion that will be."
Zaku, Kin, and Dosu walked slowly, not quite trying to avoid the man, but certainly not trying to attract his attention either. He'd saved them all, rescuing them from horrid lives, but that didn't mean they had to trust him completely. They were loyal to a fault, but even they could see what he was capable of.
"Seems to be in a good mood today." Zaku spoke absently.
"Mhm." Kin gave a small noise of acknowledgment, but just like their other teammate, Dosu, she stayed mostly silent.
Zaku sighed a bit sadly. He was a cold guy, he knew that. He'd killed people, a lot of people, in his life. But he'd just been doing what he'd had to do to survive. Life wasn't kind for a kid on the streets, especially not one as young as he'd been, in as poor a country as he'd lived.
But even he felt a small, silent desire for something, someone, to interact with.
"You know, we'll probably have a day or two before the Exams start," He noted as he rubbed his chin. "You guys want to do anything when we get there?"
His teammates gave him an odd look, like he was a bit crazy, before their eyes widened slightly, and a clammy albino hand came to rest on Zaku's shoulder. He looked back to find their master standing just behind him, wearing a small smile on his face.
"I'm afraid there won't be much time for anything extra, we'll have to go through leaf's customs first, and that could take upwards of 2 days on its own." He pressed down just a bit harder with his hand, and Zaku felt a small jolt of pain run up his right arm. "Why, had you planned on doing anything?"
"N-No sir." He laughed nervously, trying to ignore the hissing of the snake from earlier as it slithered within his master's robes.
"Hm, well, that's fine too, I suppose." The man gave a smirk at that, before falling back to his previous position, just a few paces behind them.
A chill ran down Zaku's spine as he touched the place Orochimaru's hand had been just a few seconds ago, and he swallowed on nothing as he kept monotonously walking forwards.
His teammates never spoke to him, they never spoke to each other, and he never spoke to them. That was how it had always been, and how, he had a sneaking suspicion, Orochimaru wanted it to stay. If they weren't friends, then there was a much better chance they'd come to him with any information they learned about each other.
But am I satisfied with that?
It was a simple, treacherous thought. Did he want to go behind his master's back to start making petty little friendships?
No.
Going behind Orochimaru's back sounded like the beginning of a horror story, one that would be punctuated with his painful death. He didn't have any inclinations that he was somehow stronger than the man, if he even was a human anymore.
Sometimes, when he felt the cold, clamminess of the man's hands, or the dead yellow irises that swam around his slit eyes, he couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, that thing wasn't too human at all.
A few hours of walking later, they stumbled out of the forests and onto a small path. Looking to his right, Zaku found a massive wall obstruct his vision, and knew immediately that this must be Konoha.
"Well, I suppose we've arrived." Their teacher morphed his appearance slightly, taking on a much more colorful face, and donning his Sound Jonin outfit. "You all know the plan from here. Act naturally. Remember, we haven't done anything to warrant suspicion."
As the three of them stepped towards the gate, though, it was hard to miss the final words that came out of that man's cold smile.
"Well, not yet, anyways."
End Chapter 11
The beginnings of a lot of plot threads for our next arc. I'm trying to make it so that even the most minor of characters in the original story (i.e. TenTen, The sound trio) have more to do.
A few of them will have a looooot more to do, so stay tuned for that I suppose.
I've got the Chuunin exams very loosely planned out, which is to say I have a few cool ideas and not a lot else, but I know how I want them to end, so I should be able to guide myself towards that with some more planning.
Nothing else to say, have a great week!