Chapter Thirteen - Chunin Exams IV
"Idiot, you said your family are sensors, right?"
Naruto stopped on a branch and looked at Sasuke as he landed to his left while Sakura stopped on his left. "The last time I brought that up was in the Academy. I'm surprised you even remember what I said that day."
"So you can sense chakras as well," Sasuke said as he ignored the surprised statement. "Can you sense anyone nearby?"
Naruto narrowed his eyes as he focused on sensing out into the forest for any considerable chakra signatures. As he expanded his search, he could feel Hinata's chakra, Shikamaru's chakra, and he could even feel the Kumo team's chakra. They were all far away, so he settled on the team that was about three hundred yards away.
"Three hundred yards northeast, they're alone and not moving anywhere," Naruto pointed in the direction. "I think they're bunkering down."
"Good, then we will have the surprise," Sasuke nodded his head. "So long as they don't have a sensor as well, we should be able to catch them without them being aware."
Naruto nodded his head in understanding and said, "follow me," before he jumped in the direction of the team.
It wasn't long until they neared the team Naruto sensed and they stopped on a tree a bit away so as to scout first. They found three shinobi from Kirigakure setting up traps around the ground floor of the small clearing they were in. One of them is setting up bags inside the roots of the large tree, and while unpacking he set aside a white Heaven scroll before putting it in another bag.
"That's the scroll we need," Sasuke muttered as he watched with his Sharingan activated.
"They look average, and I don't sense anything extraordinary about them," Naruto told the raven with closed eyes. "One of them has earth chakra, and the other two have water."
"Hn, those two may be a problem for me," Sasuke admitted as even a low or moderately-skilled water jutsu can cancel out his fire jutsu. Until he learned lightning jutsu, he was screwed. "I can handle that earth user more than anything."
"I'm proud, Sasuke, you're admitting your faults and thinking for what's best of the team," Naruto teased.
"Shut up, idiot. Let's get this over with fast. I wonder if we can set a record for how fast we finish."
Naruto snickered quietly as the cocky teammate was back and he looked back at Sakura with a smile. "Keep the scroll safe, Sakura-chan."
She nodded, but the feeling of how useless she was came up and bubbled in her throat like a bad heartburn. Kami, why didn't she do what her dad said and sign up and learn the elective courses in the academy? At least the medical classes so that she can patch up her teammates after a fight! She's just a glorified cheerleader.
Naruto motioned to the earth chakra shinobi for Sasuke to go to and quietly jumped to a tree closer to his own target. The Kirk shinobi he is near is a little older than him, maybe Haku's age, with dark brown hair and green eyes. He is wearing bandages around his head and his neck, a black headband loosely hanging around his neck.
"Oi, Hikari, who's gonna go hunt for some food? I'm starving!"
The teen rolled his eyes at his teammate in the tree roots shouting about hunger while he and their third teammate are setting up traps. He just shouted over his shoulder, "If you're so hungry, why don't you be useful and go get it yourself!"
Naruto chose that moment to drop on the boy, only making a subtle amount of noise from the impact, and stabbed a kunai through his neck. He used his body weight to push the boy's face in the ground so he wouldn't be heard, carefully watching to see if either of the others heard. Sasuke used his ninja wire to wrap it around his target's neck and immediately pull him further up into the trees to not alert the one in the roots.
"Fuck you, Saruko, I pull my weight!"
Naruto quickly dragged his target's body into the bushes, just in time to avoid being found as the last teammate crawled out of the root tunnel. He looked around in confusion, slowly standing up and dusting off his pants.
"Guys?" He walked towards while moving his head around. "Come on, guys, this isn't funny!"
"I think it is."
"AH-!"
Naruto stabbed his kunai into the boy's neck before he could scream for too long, cradling his body as he carefully set him on the ground. He pulled the kunai out and wiped the blood on the light blue vest that his second target wore as Sasuke and Sakura dropped into the clearing.
"That wasn't nice, Naruto," Sakura told the blonde with a frown. "You didn't have to do that when you were going to kill him."
Naruto shrugged as he pocketed his kunai and Sasuke went to retrieve the Heaven scroll. "I thought it was funny."
"You weren't laughing."
"I was on the inside," Naruto cracked a smirk at the girl. "Cheer up Sakura, it's the Chunin Exams. Have a bit of fun."
"Easy for you to say, you can protect yourself," Sakura frowned to herself.
Naruto sighed and nodded his head. "Okay, fair enough. At least you know you are not up to par, so that allows you the chance to correct that. You can take the time to train yourself in what you want to be. What do you want to be?"
"I," Sakura struggled with speaking as she looked at the dead nin's body. "I want to be a medic-nin like Tsunade was in the Second Ninja War. It… it used to be my dream when first entering the academy."
"What changed?"
Sakura glanced at Sasuke, who is looking over the kunai and shuriken native to Kiri from the corpses, and Naruto knew what she meant but she told him anyway. "I used to be friends with Ino. We shared a similar dream to be strong kunoichi, and she was the only one to not make fun of me for having a large forehead as a kid. But then we had a crush on the same boy and we became rivals and focused solely on being pretty for something like that. I forgot what I joined the Academy for."
Naruto just listened to his teammate and waited until she was finished. "You still can do what you want to do. It is never too late to change."
"Aww, isn't that adorable!"
Naruto turned around while unsealing a kunai from his pouch, Sasuke jumping up from what he was doing with his Sharingan activating. Sakura was horrified that they didn't hear the team approaching and just stared at the three new enemies. Two are boys and one girl. Naruto recognized Karin hiding to the side and judging by how shaky she was and how disheveled her teammates are he knew immediately she had just healed them with her chakra. His grip tightened in anger, and his eyes focused on the two cocky teens.
"We're sorry for interrupting such a heartwarming moment," the same boy with a bandana headband mocked, "but we need your Heaven scroll."
"How about no," Naruto and Sasuke answered together, causing the two foreign boys to glare at them.
"It wasn't a question," the Kusa-nin with a regular headband shouted before going through hand seals. "Fire Style: Flame Bullet!"
"Wind Style: Wind Slicer Technique," the headband shinobi shouted as well.
Naruto chuckled and went through a few hand seals before slamming his hands into the ground with pulsing Earth and Water chakra. "Wood Style: Northern Shield Wall!"
Rapidly, a smooth wooden wall rose from the ground and easily took the brunt of the supercharged Fire attack that had blended with the Wind technique. The front of the wall facing the two Kusa-nin is decorated with rounded shields of foreign origin with a spherical center jutting out of each wooden shield. They are painted already with dual-colored schemes ranging from black-blue, red-purple, and green-orange.
Sasuke seized the surprise of their two enemies and went through his own hand seals before jumping above the wooden wall. "Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
A gigantic ball of fire, about ten feet in diameter, raced at the team. Karin had run to hide as soon as she saw her teammates go through hand seals, so she was able to watch as the fire consumed them with an infernal scream. As the fire slowly went away, she saw nothing left of them after the attack and it scared her how easily the raven-haired boy's technique had killed them. What did they train these Konoha-nin in?!
Naruto took his hands out of the ground, his technique crumbling into splinters without the stream of chakra keeping it together, and he whistled. "Nice job, Sasuke-kun, I don't think they're getting up from that."
Sasuke grunted, taking the compliment for what it was instead of getting annoyed with the boy's teasing jokes. He turned to Karin, his Sharingan eyes easily taking in her shaking figure. "Are you holding onto their scroll?"
Karin shook her hand with her hands up. "N-no, Kasu-san had it! He insisted!"
Sasuke grunted and turned away, no longer having a need to talk to the girl.
"Be nice to girls, Sasuke," Naruto lightly admonished his teammate with a smirk. "Karin-chan is my cousin!"
Sasuke gave a glance to the girl, making her blush at the red and black eyes peering at her over his shoulder. "No wonder looking at her gives me the same headache I get while around you."
Naruto blew a raspberry at the boy before approaching Karin, glancing over the arm she still held onto before looking into her red eyes. "I can send you home if you want to leave and rest now. With your team dead, no one would doubt you died with them so you won't have to worry about Kusagakure coming for you. There's no reason to stay here if you don't want to."
Karin nodded but didn't look up to meet his sight. "I don't want to go to Uzushio alone."
"I have a seal in my home you can go to. Just stay there, do not leave, but feel free to eat what you find and take a shower." Naruto looked over the girl's body to see she was dirty and bruised. "I will let Hokage-jiji know about you as soon as my team and I reach the center so he doesn't think someone broke into my home. You don't plan on leaving after I get you out, will you?"
Karin looked up at the blonde and saw his eyes staring down at her seriously, no longer bright as if he was joking anymore and she knew then and there that she truly had nowhere to go but with him. She nodded slowly, hugging her legs to her chest. "I won't leave."
Naruto nodded and pulled out his seal ink and set out to write the small transportation spell. It was a circular array that was large enough to encompass a single person and only lasted for one use before the seal would fade, but the receiving destination seal was like the Flying Thunder God seal and would not fade. The seal in his home is at the front door at the landing of his stairs. When he was done, he brought her into the circle, making sure she didn't scuff the seal and then gave a smile. "Goodbye, Karin-chan."
He activated the seal and she was gone.
"Alright, let's go already," Sasuke said out loud to get his team's attention. "We have our two scrolls, we can make it to the center easily if we head there without stopping."
"Yes," Naruto and Sakura nodded their heads and were prepared to jump into the trees.
Suddenly, a large gust of wind knocked everyone off their feet and sent them flying. Naruto was blown away from his team by the wind and he had to raise his hands to protect his face from the whipping leaves and branches he would hit in his uncontrollable course.
Meanwhile
"Hokage-sama," an Anbu appeared in front of Hiruzen with a bow. "There is something you have to see immediately."
Hiruzen noticed the urgency in the operative's voice and nodded his head, getting to his feet as the Anbu appeared behind him to put their hand on his shoulder. They disappeared in a swirl of leaves and when his vision returned to normal he noticed they were now in a clearing near the Forest of Death, the location of the second part of the Exams. He noticed five other Anbu operatives standing nearby with cloaks on, and near them were Anko and Ibiki.
"I'm telling you, this is him! He is the only one who can do this!"
"Calm down, Mitarashi-san," Hiruzen called out as he approached them. "What is the matter."
"This!" Anko thrust her hand out to the other side.
Hiruzen walked up and looked down where she pointed and noted the three Kusa-nin bodies laying haphazardly in the hole. They were deformed, almost as if they were dehydrated of their bones and muscles, yet not a single physical mark marred them. He understood now what had Anko all upset and shouting, as this is the work of Orochimaru's body-mimicking technique. It sapped the data contained inside the muscles of the victim and killed them for it to perfectly transform the individual to the point it can be seen as a more advanced Henge jutsu.
"We have no confirmation that it is Orochimaru or someone that works for him but," Ibiki paused as he stared at the bodies with an analyzing stare. "This team is confirmed to be in the Forest currently."
"Hm," Hiruzen thought of why his student would risk being found. He had no doubt that his student wants to kill him, so why would he be in the Forest if he did not properly dispose of the bodies?
Shing
Everyone heard the sound of sliding metal and turned to find a barrier rising inside the Forest. Light blue in color of chakra, it is capped with a red swirl that can be seen on Konoha ninja vests, the symbol of Uzushiogakure. Hiruzen's eyes widened and turned to shout at his Anbu. "Get to that barrier now! I want everyone on alert! Ibiki, notify the Jonin and Anbu commander! I want this area on lockdown immediately!"
When he got everyone to confirm his orders, he took off into the forest ahead of his Anbu. Even as he ran faster than them, his body felt stiff from age and constant office work. But his grandson is in danger. He will not fail him! I'm coming Naruto! Hold on!
Shortly Before
"Lightning Style: Heavenly Dragon Thunderbolt!"
Naruto quickly gathered an immense amount of chakra into his right hand before thrusting it forwards and a bolt of condensed lightning shot out and struck the gigantic snake that tried to eat him. The bolt left a sizzling black hole through its mouth and head and the animal fell to the ground dead, and much to his surprise - but also unsurprised as at this point he can't expect anything else anymore - it exploded in the trademark desummoning smoke. Which confirmed that he and his team were indeed attacked by an enemy and not some unnatural wind gust.
I have to find them before something happens. Naruto jumped into the trees and followed the faint chakra he recognized as Sasuke.
A snake summon is the trademark of Orochimaru. You have to be careful, kit. He is not a joke and if you overestimate yourself you will be killed.
I know that Kurama but I can't just leave them to fend for themselves if it truly is that bastard! They may be annoying but they are still my teammates and I will protect them no matter what!
I know, kit.
Kurama has spoken in just above a whisper that Naruto didn't really hear him with his heart beating so loudly in his chest. He is concerned for his team as they flared occasionally, signaling them either attacking or defending themself but considering it is Orochimaru that had somehow gotten in these Exams he knew it was the latter. But the man that he sensed was just toying with them, barely making a ripple of energy in whatever he was doing.
Just wait! I'm almost there!
"Mass Shadow Clone Technique!"
Over one hundred clones spawned mid-jump and they all continued on without hesitation and with their numbers they swarmed the clearing they sensed their teammate in. He landed in front of Sasuke and Sakura, the boy being looked over by the pinkette, and he stared at the Sannin in front of him. Parts of the Sannin's skin is a waxy, burnt casing that did not match the pale color of the man's skin tone underneath and Naruto was pretty sure it is whatever disguise he was using to not be detected by any of the proctors. He still wore the Kusa outfit, which is accented by a purple rope obi that matched the similar makeup he wore.
"Naruto-kun," Orochimaru grinned creepily as he took in the blonde teen. "It's good to see you finally. You look so much like your father."
"What are you doing here, Orochimaru," Naruto asked. He would not rise to whatever games the man wanted to play. "Why are you attacking us?"
"I'm sorry, Naruto-kun, but I want Sasuke and, well, you were in the way." He paused to look beyond and into the scared Sharingan that hesitantly watched the interaction. "If you will be so kind as to move out of the way, I will finish what I came to do."
Naruto just watched the man before glancing back to look at the shaking Uchiha and bit his lip. Kyuubi?
Kit?
I need to go third-tail.
The silence was all he got but he soon felt the chakra flooding his system. This will be a first for them, as he had begun maintaining constant rational thought while in the second-tail form about a week ago. He knew there was no way with how he was currently that he would be able to even keep the Snake Sannin's attention for long without something else boosting his power. The second tail would be beneficial as he would be able to control himself much better but the third tail gave a considerable boost as Kurama's chakra had boosts in threes. The third, sixth, and ninth tails will hold the most considerable power spikes with the others just granting extra occasional abilities.
"Sasuke," he got the boy's attention through his strained breathing. "Run as far as you can."
As soon as he said that, he shot off at the Snake Sannin, his body covered in a blood-orange cloak of Kurama's chakra. His skin began peeling, mixing his blood with the chakra, and it slowly blended into a red hue. It was horrifying to the Uchiha and Sakura as they just watched their teammate disappear forward and punch Orochimaru with a gigantic chakra fist.
"Do not look back and run!" Is all they heard as the blonde and Sannin disappeared into the thick forest.
The chakra cloak is practically solid as Naruto's fist didn't have to touch the Sannin whenever he struck the man continuously, not taking a single moment until he was sure they were far enough away from Sasuke and Sakura. He could barely match the man with this tail number but the experience gap and his inability to properly control himself will be what hold him back. But he doesn't need to beat the man, he just needs to prevent him from getting to Sasuke and Sakura even if it means burning himself out in this form.
Naruto followed after the Sannin's body that was punched to the ground below, but while the Sannin landed with a crater-sized impact the blonde landed on his hands and feet only twenty yards away. He took the moment to charge forward, his right hand extended to his right as it began collecting and rapidly spinning chakra inside the cloak until an orb formed in his palm. Purple from the black orb being tainted by Kurama's red chakra, the spinning orb has three rapidly rotating white discs around it like Saturn's rings.
"Rasenringu!"
Naruto slammed his hand into the center of the crater without any hesitation or confirmation that the man would be there, and the impact of his modified jutsu caused a massive black explosion to expand the crater nearly triple. Multiple trees were knocked over with their roots completely jutting out from the power of the jutsu used. He jumped back and used the sliver of rational control he had and stomped his heel into the dirt before he intoned, "Grand Scheme Seal Array!"
Black seal markings rapidly expanded and within a fraction of a second, one hundred yards around Naruto in a circular ring was covered in the connecting seals. A blue chakra barrier shot up through the trees, bisecting any branch it came into contact with before it capped itself to prevent any exit from over the surrounding barrier.
It shimmered and an explosion came from his left, letting him know that he made the barrier just in time to prevent the Sannin from escaping. However, before he could run after the man he lurched forward and began coughing and gasping for air until, with a rough cough, he let out a clump of red viscous blood that had gathered in his chest. He didn't have long now until he could no longer maintain the three-tail form and he would pass out from extreme pain and fatigue.
"Why do this to yourself."
Naruto looked up and saw Orochimaru looking at him with annoyance and disappointment, which is a weird sight as he is covered in scorch marks and his clothes are tattered from trying to escape the seal array. He chuckled, however, and forced himself to stand straight to look the man in the eye. "Because I won't let you get away with whatever you came here to do. If I can make you waste your time or," he began hacking more blood, "prevent you from doing anything at all, then I did my duty as a shinobi of Konohagakure."
"Then you will die as just another puppet of the village!"
Naruto held up the rabbit hand seal as the man jumped to attack him. "Grand Scheme Array: Et Tu."
Orochimaru struck his hand through Naruto's chest, glaring down at the boy with a sneer as the seals surrounding them began burning orange. He did not feel any success or satisfaction at this, in fact, it was quite the opposite. He thought the boy would not be a problem, not because he wasn't strong but because he showed to not be a naive child that blindly followed others. He was resourceful and confident, and he would think over an order given and maybe even refuse it if he did not feel it was right. That kind of independent thinking is what Orochimaru valued, and he did not find that in any others with the exception of the Sound Four whom he personally trained.
He is startled as, instead of a look of pain or shock, Naruto looked at him with a smile on his face. A damned smile! The boy grabbed his sleeve weakly before his arm fell to the side as he lost all strength. However, as Orochimaru watched the chakra cloak fade and red eyes turn to faded blue, he felt a weird pain in his chest. Not that occasional chest pain one gained out of the blue but genuine pain.
Looking down at where he felt the pain originating, he found a large red spot under his clothes in the same spot as where he pierced the Uzumaki. "W-what did you-?"
He gasped out as blood trickled down his mouth, his hand sliding out of the lifeless blonde as he fell back with a dull thud. He landed on the ground with barely a whisper, his mouth moving as he tried to speak and formulate some kind of rationale for what just happened to him. No matter what, he could not understand anything. He did not understand any of the seals, any of the goals in mind when sacrificing himself in a losing battle. A battle that they both knew he would not win!
As the seal barrier began crumbling, there were only two bodies let in the devastated clearing in the forest.
Neither moved.
Neither breathed.
All fell quiet.
Ahahaha so this is the chapter that I will not be able to post due to enjoying my Thanksgiving break. But, it seems I may have ended the series prematurely hmmmm. Our blonde has a plan, doesn't he? He surely can't die like this?
NinjaFang1331: Thank you :D
iamshinydragonmist: Hmmmm ;D
InfinityMask: We can only hope
