:0:Hidden Spirits: Village Hunting Side Effect:0:
A Naruto Fan-fiction - Sequel from 'Hidden Spirits'
By: Climax
Disclaimer for ALL chapters: Do not and never own Naruto. Except this story plot, idea, and my own characters I create on this story.
Scroll 9: The First Phase of Chuunin Exam! The Battle of Cook!
"YEAH! THIS DAY IS THE BEST!" yelled a blonde ninja. It didn't take a long time for him to receive some hissing sounds which ordered him to quiet, reminding him that he was still in a hospital and hospital needs silence.
His just (yesterday) recovered body didn't prevent Sakura from smacked his head as hard as possible.
"Ouch! Sakura, can you please be gentle to my fragile body?" whined him.
Sakura gave him a deadly glare. "JUST which part of your body that is fragile? I doubt it's the head."
":cough: Can you two please be silent? Other patients need that…" came a manly voice from behind them.
Sakura immediately turned to her sweet stance. "Oh, I'm apologized for my and especially my friend's behavior. He has just released from his 'caged' state so he is overreacting."
The doctor laughed slightly. "Don't worry about that. I know what it feels like when you are hospitalized. But ironically I ended up being the one who works in this place. Say, why don't you two come to my office and have some tea? My regular patient hasn't been around yet so I feel a bit uncomfortable having tea without anybody around."
Naruto grinned. "Well I'm sorry, but we have to train ourselves because the chuunin exam is going to be held two days from now. So we—" before the blonde could finish his sentence, everybody could hear something growled. The doctor smiled with amusement.
"If I'm not mistaken, that growl came from that hungry stomach of yours." Naruto smiled sheepishly and Sakura could only sigh: "A ninja should not be easily read."
"Ah! There you are!" came a familiar voice of an archer.
"Oh, the plain paper. What is your business?" asked Naruto colder than he intended to.
"Why are you sounding like I'm your foe? I just come here to company Mayu. She said she wanted to see you but we didn't find you in your room so we've been looking for you." Just as the archer finished his talk an orange hairy thing came out from his behind.
"Naruto nii-san! Are you okay? Are you hurt?" the girl called Mayu immediately blabbering like an older sister who concerned his little brother state.
Naruto gave the girl a grin that would settle even Konohamaru's worrying state. "I'm okay and I was hurt."
"That's our Naruto nii-san! I've been planning to teach you about how to cook when you are recovered! Your cooking skill is rated 1 of 100! What if you were in a forest and there were nothing like restaurants? You are a ninja and cooking skill is very important for your body health! And before you say it, I receive to refusal!" with that, she took Naruto's arm and drag him out of the hospital. The remaining three could heard Naruto's yell of disagree became more faint and faint and finally missing.
"Wow, that loudmouthed ninja sure has got a rival." The doctor said in an amazed tone.
"Nah, Mayu always like that, more than lusting to share her incredible cooking abilities. Well, it's more likely she wants to be a superior in something," said Rhaera.
"I know that feeling. So, are you going to have tea with me but without that blonde?" the doctor asked to Sakura.
Sakura seemed unsure. "Well…"
"We don't need that. Mayu will come and drag us any minute—no, any second now," the green haired archer interrupted Sakura.
"Rhaera nii-san! Let's go and cooking together with your other teammate!" Mayu's voice came as soon as Rhaera stopped talking. Sakura and the doctor sweat-dropped.
Rhaera made a 'see-what-I-mean' face and sighed.
"Speaking of the demon…"
It was quite a sunny day despite the gloomy mood of the participants of the chuunin exam. Especially team seven's. Mayu had taught—no, tortured them in Naruto's small kitchen (well, if it was REALLY a kitchen) for two days. They had met the other teams like Kiba's team, Neji's team, and the Ino's team. But those teams didn't get a success to cheer them.
"I.won't.see.ANY.kitchen.utensils.anymore," Sakura swore and the other boys silently copying her. They laid their head on the table of the exam's waiting room. Anyone who was stupid enough to command them to cook would end as a horrible corpse for sure. Oh, but at least, no cooking in a ninja styled exam, not in Konoha, not in other place and time as well.
But they were wrong.
Shikamaru, with his usual lazy expression (which made the participants who didn't know him unsure if he was the examiner, as well shocked the ones who know him VERY well of HOW could he participate such a troublesome job of examiner) stood lazily in front of the genins, and talked as lazily as a human could. I doubt he was even a human. A cat would suit him the best. Lazy and sleepy, but when he was needed, he was so fast.
":cough: I believe all of you want to do this exam as fast as possible. But before that I need your cooperation to be silent or I won't start the exam."
Immediately the room became silent on Shikamaru's words. Despite his laziness and doubtful appearance, Shikamaru still got quite a charisma of a chuunin. Well, if Naruto was not mistaken.
Once the room was silent, Shikamaru continued. "As you can see, I'm your first examiner. The name is Nara Shikamaru. Well, there is no need for a proper introduction and talks. I'll be as direct as possible. The first test of the chuunin exam is…"
Everybody gulped. Was it a paper test? Was it a battle test? Was it a survival test? But none of those expectations were near enough to the truth.
"…cooking test!"
Everybody fell to a completely muted state. The team seven's hands that had been laid on the table were beginning to form a crack on the table part where their palms on. And that cracking sound was the only sound that was produced on the silence.
Sakura became aggressive — a lot more aggressive than she ever had. She lifted the heavy and big table with ease and threw it to the shadow user as strongly as she could.
"DON'T JOKING AROUND!" she yelled. Shikamaru didn't dodge the flying table. The shadow did the destruction for him. The table broke into pieces, showed how powerful Shikamaru was as a chuunin.
"I'm not joking around. By the way, whatever things or curses you throw to me won't change the fact that the Godaime no Hokage has agreed." To proof his words, he showed a paper with writings on it and the Hokage's seal was on its bottom right.
"Give me that!" shouted Naruto as he sprinted towards Shikamaru. Shikamaru dodged the tackle attack.
Shikamaru clicked his tounge. "Don't waste your energy. Even if you destroyed this one, I still have ten more on the Hokage's secret place."
"Then come here and let me kill you! And why the heck we should have a cooking test?" shouted the blonde ninja furiously.
"Sorry, I can't do that. Even this life is so troublesome I still respect my life. To answer your question, Tsunade and I decided that cooking is a skill that is so important but it's rare to find a ninja with a great cooking skill. And another thing, if you kill an examiner, you are banned from any ninja exams forever. Remember that," Shikamaru said as he shoved the paper to his pocket.
"I never heard that kind of rule!" yelled Naruto.
"Well, you did — just now."
"Well, why don't we settle this quickly? Cooking is fun anyway…" every heads on the room turned to the speaker who was brave (or foolish) enough to say 'cooking is fun'. It was a red haired boy we know as Kinjiya Hayame.
"What?" Hayame asked innocently — unaware of the bloodlust glare that other participants gave to him.
"Nothing."
They lied, of course.
"Hey you two come here and see this," said Sakura. Naruto jumped down from a tall tree's branch and landed right beside Sakura. Meanwhile Rhaera appeared from nowhere.
"What are these, Sakura-chan? I mean, why are you calling us? They're just mere mushrooms, right?" asked Naruto.
Rhaera sniffed the smell and smirked evilly. "I got what you are meaning, Sakura. And that's a brilliant idea."
As always, Naruto didn't get what his two teammates said. "I don't get it! Tell me!"
"You are totally clueless, are you? Don't you find that these mushrooms are familiar?" asked Rhaera.
Naruto's brows furrowed in thought. Yes, they did look similar. But when did he see them?
"Do you remember when we were searching for food in the forest with Mayu?" Sakura tried to remind his slow brain.
"Don't take that! That kind of mushroom is dangerous!"
Naruto remembered what Mayu said. "Ah, I remember that. Sakura, are you intended to insert that mushroom to our going to be cooked food?"
Sakura smiled proudly. "What could be better? Shikamaru said that we can obtain cooking materials from this forest and he is going to be the one who taste the food, right?"
"I doubt it's only us that intended to poison him…" said Naruto.
"Yeah, that's it! Naruto, you are brilliant!"
Naruto blinked, totally confused by Sakura's exclamation. "Huh?"
"The real purpose of this test! To poison without known!"
"I… don't… get it…" Naruto tried his best to think.
"Do you think WHY Shikamaru make us want to poison him? A lazy ninja like him won't endanger himself unless he need to! Don't you see that there are medic ninjas accompanying him?" said Sakura excitedly.
"Uh…" Naruto still didn't understand.
"In another word, to win we MUST poison him without he or another medic ninja realized that we poison him until he exclaimed our triumph. Sounds simple but complicated, isn't it?" explained Rhaera.
Naruto nodded in understanding. "Ohh… I get it. Why don't you explain in a simpler sentence, Sakura?"
"I already had, but I assume simple for average people is complicated for you," said Sakura tiredly.
"So? What should we do? We know that Shikamaru isn't stupid and he isn't Chouji, he cannot hold a large number of foods not to mention their poison…" asked Rhaera.
"I get it. That means we should make him sure enough to eat our food and fast enough to cook it before he's full. But how can we cook something that's fast to serve but also can insert something that's slow recognized as a poison?" Naruto tried to think. But apparently cooking and poisoning weren't his area of expertise. "GGAAAHH! I don't know!" he scratched his head with frustration.
"What do you think, Sakura?" asked Rhaera calmly.
Sakura snickered. "Hmph. You guys really don't get it, do you?"
Naruto and Rhaera dumbfounded. "Huh?"
"This is…" Sakura took out a foldable fan from nowhere and posing a samurai like pose before shouting, "THE ART OF CULINARY!"
Naruto almost swear that he did see a Sakura (cherry) tree blossoming in the background behind Sakura with the petals flew around by wind. Meanwhile Rhaera was thinking that he got flu so his nose was not working well since this was autumn and there was NO WAY that he could smell a cherry blossom smell in AUTUMN.
"I think the second Mayu has born," said Rhaera.
"Yeah," answered Naruto as he continued to watch Sakura dancing in a sea of cherry petals.
World was crazy, wasn't it?
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest…
Itachi displayed a blue colored lizard in his hand to Hayame. "How about this? Its liver is delicious if you fry it and it contains some essences that will make the one who eat it suffer from a horrible symptoms that includes pain like your body is stabbed, some 'strange things' appear on your skin, hallucination, then—"
"NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! It's too horrible!" shrieked Hayame in fear. He did sound like a girl.
"Then how about this one?" asked Kisame, threw a man sized squid in front of Hayame. "Squid is a popular food in Kirigakure. But when they reached this size they are poisonous. They will cause a drowning like symptoms, blindness, and smarting eyes."
"The symptoms are okay, but… NO! SEARCH ANOTHER ONE!"
"Why!" asked a patience losing Kisame.
"Its eyes, its tentacles… they are disgusting! No one would want to eat it!"
"Come on, boy! Our jury is a shinobi, not a chef! He won't be picky about what our food materials from!" said Kisame furiously.
Hayame wasn't loose yet. "But lords are! What if you wanted to poison your target that is a lord? What's the use of the poison if the target didn't even eat the food?"
"You are too picky," commented Itachi coldly like a mother scolding her child for not eating carrots.
"Hey! In the rich men community, I'm in the 'least-picky' category! You should meet one the lords of Water country! He didn't like meat because he feels that he is eating a corpse when he consumes it!" said Hayame.
"Now you destroyed our appetite," said Kisame with many hints of resentfulness in his voice.
"Whatever. You shinobis aren't got a good taste of food anyway. Let's find another material."
A few minutes later…
"How about this one?" asked Itachi, handing a cauliflower. "This may not poisonous but if we mixture it with some special ingredients it will cause a great and awful stomachache."
"Hmm…" Hayame looked thoughtful. For a moment, Itachi and Kisame's hope were raised. It wasn't hurt to hope or maybe yes, but… they have given up on hoping a long time ago and so be it — in this case and forever.
"No."
"Now what?" Kisame almost whined.
"I hate cauliflowers." Hayame said simply.
Itachi and Kisame eyed him. "Now that is picky," said Itachi.
Hayame ignored him and gave his reason. "They look mossy and I hate moss. I feel like I'm eating moss when I eat it. That's a real disgusting taste and feeling."
"COME ON, it's not you who's going to eat it!" said Kisame, almost screamed.
"I hate moss, I hate looking at it, I hate smelling it, I hate eating it, I hate TOUCHING it," Hayame stated as if he was saying: "no negotiation after this".
Finally, Kisame reached his limit.
"Let me grill him." He said as he rolled up his sleeves and prepared his beloved Samehada.
Itachi put his hand on the shark-man's shoulder. "Don't. We are not ordered to and he isn't a fish."
Kisame gave up. He knew better than to mess with an Uchiha Itachi. "How come we stuck with this boy in the first place anyway?" now he really whined.
Itachi shrugged. "I don't know. A destiny maybe?"
"Needs a very big and powerful destiny maker to perform this miraculous meeting…"
"You can say that again…"
Ended on: February 21st 2005
R and R, PLEASE!
