CRITICAL AUTHOR'S NOTE:
I NOW HAVE A TVTROPES PAGE! You can thank AO3 user Supermage for it! Go search it up, it's small still, but I'm sure you guys can expand it rapidly! Now I wonder how long it'll take for Henshin Hero Academia and Getting Anywhere to get pages? Or maybe even my Youtube channel, or the whole Envoy of Kairos brand…
Chapter 32
First Round, Third Degree
The moment the international collection of genin heard the buzzer, they set off to work, scattering to the winds. Most teams took to the surrounding woods, others went for the sides of the building, a few jumped tot he roof. The dumbest of them charged the guards at the front to force their way in, but that resulted in swift defeats and a pile of unconscious bodies being carted away.
Naruto of course left a clone to enjoy the show.
The real Naruto was with his team, out in the woods as he giggles maniacally every few minutes. "Ah, so glad I planted henged clones everywhere to watch the fools running into my traps. Their screams are beautiful."
Sakura rolls her eyes. "We get it, you're a sadist. So, where's the nearest one you found that you didn't rig?"
Suddenly, Yoko pops up from beneath a rock, pushing the full weight of the hollow, but still weighted boulder with little issue thanks to all her biju chakra enhancements. "Right here. Spacious one, too. You'll need to crouch or crawl for a good deal of it, but it's better than most of them."
Sasuke hums. "Good rock, must have used earth jutsu to hollow out most of it while keeping the surface intact. Impossible to tell that way without going out of your way to move it. Even has some moss growing on it for good measure…"
Sakura hums and nods. "It's impressive, I'll give it that. Now, let's get moving." She pauses at the sound of Testuma screaming in rage across the testing grounds. She sighs contently. "Ok, I'm starting to see what you get out of this."
Sasuke huffs. "I got it immediately, but now I gotta see the results for myself."
Off to their southwest, Shikamaru pauses as he finds an entrance that's marked with fox tracks, and that alone is suspicious, but beside them, deeper in the hole, is a spiral. He hums and backs away. "Another of Naruto's, but he seems to have a system. The spiral's pointing in the same direction as the last one. They've gotta be pointing at the nearest one that's not trapped."
Ino hums. "That's a pretty good system. Let's move then, gotta get in there fast." She peeks around as they turn and run. "Seems to me like they told us less entrances than there are, though. Just twenty-two seems a bit few, with a second elimination inside."
Chouji huffs. "A trick to get us fighting, probably. But fighting during an infiltration mission is pretty dumb, especially with a payload."
Shikamaru nods. "Trying to psyche us out." His eyes dart to the south as he hears a bit of yelling and a sudden clash, followed by some anbu rushing that way. "Anyone who fights has a chance of getting ambushed by the guards, and then both sides lose. They're weeding out the hotheads."
Chouji chuckles. "Good thing Kiba has Hinata and Shino to keep his head level."
Across the testing grounds, a powdery explosion goes off in one of the tunnels, followed by a long string of cursing all the way through it and into the building. Suigetsu bursts into the room in a flailing mess of limbs as he scratches at every inch of his liquifying form. "That blonde motherfucker is dead the moment I get my hands on him!"
Haku giggles as she steps though. "I warned you, Suigetsu. Naruto didn't have to tell me he was pranking the exam to know he would. You should have been more careful."
Choujuro sighs and hangs his head. "That stuff is inside you too, isn't it?"
"H-hey, I reflexively liquified, thinking I was gonna get blown up! How was I supposed to know I'd get filled with a soluble itching powder?!" He takes a moment to chug water from the sealed bottle on his belt, his biomass increasing for a moment before he ripples violently, concentrates those ripples towards his left hand, and fires a mass of foggy water against the wall. He pants and hunches for a moment, then spits out a bit more of the same substance. "Ok… ok, I got it."
Choujuro grumbles as he examines the mess from afar. "So that's how you dealt with the purging squads' poisons."
"Yeah, came in handy pretty often. Now where the fuck are we?" He uprights himself and peers around the room, where Haku is already inspecting instructions written on the wall of the otherwise barren concrete room.
"It seems the next stage will be… unique. Suigetsu, you should pull yourself together. Look natural, and not… drippy."
"Why'zat? What's it say?"
"One of us needs to memorize what's written on the scroll we smuggled in, then we destroy the scroll, and trade the reader with the other team's for an interrogation test."
Somehow, Suigetsu almost became the palest person in the room. "Oh shit, you're sending me, aren't you?"
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"It just makes sense." Chouji shrugs. "I can take the most hits, and my recent training gave me the best pain resistance. I can hold out more than long enough for Ino to break whoever we get, and we'll be done in no-time."
Shikamaru sighs and rubs the back of his neck. He was never the kind to like risking any pieces. Defensive strategy was his forte, and having to throw someone to the lions didn't sit well at all. "Can't argue those points. Alright, we'll be sure to make it quick. But you should go in with a backup option to fight back if they go too far."
Chouji chuckles as he pulls a small water balloon, already filled, from his pouch. "Oh, I've got somethin for that."
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Omoi attempts to open and read the scroll, but Karui smacks him upside the head and takes it herself. One quick read and a lightning jutsu to burn it finishes the process. "There's no way in hell we're letting them interrogate your neurotic mumbling ass."
Atsui snorts. "Seriously, you're not so hot in this field, man. Help me do the interrogation, your psychotic breakdowns will probably have them begging us to release them in minutes."
Omoi can only hang his head in shame, knowing them both to be right.
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A pair of doors opens into a small room with a clear red line painted down the middle and a locked steel door on the remaining interior-facing wall. From one end emerges a creepy but otherwise unassuming team from Amegakure, in tight pale spandex suits and respirators. From the other, Team Seven steps out and slowly hands over Naruto in exchange for an Ame nin none of them will ever bother recalling the name of, not that they'd ever need to.
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Tenten smirks as they stop on the other side of the door and a chakra suppression seal is pressed to her forehead. Her arms are tied quickly, and they get to work disarming her, only to find hidden pocket after pocket and seal after seal in her clothing, much to their horror as larger and more intimidating implements of pain and murder are unsealed.
The moment her kanabo is unsealed and lands upright, she kicks it into one of their knees and breaks it with one swift move, then grabs a kunai between her toes and chucks it at the other to hold them off long enough to cut herself free. She sighs and stretches as she stands. "Ya know, if you were gonna do this right, you wouldn't have been too squeamish to just strip me when you found all those seals." She hefts the kanabo over her shoulder and twirls a kunai in her free hand. "Maybe this village really is getting too soft."
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Shino sits bound to a chair with his coat off, while the Taki shinobi not preparing tools inspects him. "Hey, what the hell is up with all the holes on this guy?"
Shino hums. "Would you like to find out?"
Their screams can soon be heard in the neighboring rooms for a few brief moments, until their chakra is sucked dry.
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A pair of Konoha shinobi are, frankly, stumped. Their interrogation target has proven immune to everything and just seems to be toying with them. Attempting to place a seal on her head resulted in it blowing up. Trying to cut her triggered a blast that flung the kunai from their hand. This small, pale, bald, frail Iwa girl is just sitting there, tied down, with a gentle smirk on her otherwise impassive face as tool after tool is exploded on contact. She hums as one attempts to punch her, only to blast his hand back as well. It's not a particularly strong one, but enough to hurt for certain. "Wow, you really didn't put your back into that one, did you? Well, try it again, I'm sure you're better than that."
Hibiki would dream of their screams of rage and pain that followed for a few weeks, and sleep blissfully.
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Naruto chuckles as he sits bound to a chair. Not feeling his chakra flowing properly thanks to the seal on his forehead is an… ddd experience, to say the least. He was certain for any normal person, this seal would have stopped them in their tracks. In his case, it's more like his chakra 's motions changed from a natural breeze to a thick oil. Testing his limits with it, he finds he can still manage to feel the proper flow in his handsigns and his jutsu should work, although it's sure to be inefficient and messy.
Not that he needs it. He's got better plans.
"Ya know, these knots aren't half bad…" He hums as he shifts. "For having been tied by a pair of two-fingered toddlers. Did Mizuki teach you? He was terrible at these."
"Shut the fuck up already." One of them holds a kunai to Naruto's throat. "The only word I wanna hear from you is the password." He presses just hard enough to draw some blood. "Speak too much, and this just might sink deeper."
He shrugs. "My own teammates have tried harder to kill me. Quick tip for you guys: never threaten a fangirl's crush's junk. One stray trap, and I swear I saw my life flash five separate times. Halfway through the third, I realized I had a couple stalkers I never noticed before." Just as his captor promised, the wound gets deeper as he talks, but it's manageable, especially once his healing kicks in. It's barely working now thanks to the seal, but it's still helping a bit and dulling the pain.
The other captor grumbles as he starts searching Naruto's hoodie, pausing as he finds a scroll in there. "The hell you got sealed here, Uzumaki?"
"Oh, so you DO know who I am! Oh, and that one's just some rations for if the exams took too long. Ichiraku's, still piping hot."
The two incompetent nin do at least know Naruto's reputation for spending far too much time at Ichiraku's and believing ramen to be the food of the gods. If anything could convince him to give up, it'd be threatening to eat or waste his ramen in front of him-
The moment they open the seal, Yoko leaps forth from it and pins one to the floor before firing some fox fire from her tail to burn off the seal on Naruto's forehead. He sighs and forms a handigns, filling the room with clones. "Really, this is just amatuer. I'm not even using my good material on you guys! No wonder they need a double elimination round."
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Haku hums ot herself as she prepares a few more tools. "Here we are… You know, I've taken quite some time to decide whether steel or ice senbon are better for interrogation purposes." She stops before Karui with a smile. "Have you any guess which?"
Karuo huffs as she squirms against her bindings. "Like I give a shit."
"Oh, but you should!" Haki holds up her fight hand, full of steel senbon, and generates ice ones in her left. "You see, the steal ones, though always needing to be meticulously cleaned, make the subject last far longer!" She giggles. "Ice senbon melt and leave frostbitten open wounds, which bleed profusely when the subject moves and cannot be so easily healed, even with iryojutsu. I like to reserve them for later, and stick them in the most fascinating places. Have you seen what happens when frostbite strikes a joint from the inside? I've seen people lose fingers so easily that way."
Karui begins to sweat. "N-No way in hell are you a genin…"
"Oh, I am. I never had any chance to develop any rank until recently, but now that Zabuza-sama and I have returned home under our new kage, I thought it best to earn the rank befitting my talents."
And now Karui is sweating bullets. Having been trained by the best and most chaotic swordsman in all of Kumogakure, she's heard more than enough regarding every known member of the Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shū, and Momochi Zabuza, as one of the last surviving members and most prolific to ever wield Kubikirihōchō, stands above most. She was always told an encounter with him is an automatic flee-on-sight order, especially with the beef much of Kiri has had with Kumo over the years as the one nation to combat them most.
All she can think as Haku approaches with her first senbon, preparing to slip it in with the innocent curiosity of a toddler squishing an ant, is that her team better hurry the hell up with whoever they're interrogating. She doesn't know what's up with the cowardly boy in the corner avoiding even glancing at the interrogation, but maybe it's a sign that this girl is the only hardcore one on this team?
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Suigetsu bursts into rapturous laughter. "Holy shit, is this really all you two have?!" He bares shark fangs from beneath his dripping hair as he stares down Omoi and Atsui. "One dedicated swordsman who can't manage to do much of anything to me, and a clueless dipshit with nothing but fire jutsu?! You guys are fucked!"
Atsui scowls. "Shut the hell up! We'll get you to talk soon enough!" he stabs down into Suigetsu's arm, but it liquifies and passes through harmlessly.
Suigetsu sighs and shakes his head. "Really, man, this is pathetic. Even with my chakra sealed, my body's automatic response to trauma is to liquify. You can stop me from using jutsu, but you can't stop my body from doing what it just naturally does. Maybe if ya went for my head near the seal, sure, but you won't get anything out of me if you kill me." He starts to chuckle. "Besides, even if ya could hurt me, you sure as shit can't do enough to make me squeal."
Omoi starts to pace and mumble. "But if we fail to make you sing, we'll fail exams, Yugito will abandon us here, we'll have to become nukenin, we'll end up picked off by jonin wanting intel on our sensei-"
Atsui facepalms and groans. "And why, exactly, do we have no chance?"
Suigetsu's grin slowly grows unnaturally wide and feral. "I survived the purges by running for my life, for days on end, full of weapons and hemorrhaging water from wounds left by far more dangerous people than you. And I did the same when Orochimaru's goons were after me. Sorry, kiddies. You're fucked."
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Ino sighs as she kicks over her victim's chair and walks out to the meeting room. "Really, that was a cakewalk. We need more psychology classes in the academy."
The gentlemen she tipped over whines and shudders.
"Don't be such a bitch. Come on, Shika, let's pass this already."
The laziest shinobi in Konoha shrugs and follows her out as Ino recites the password. "Dart incident." With a buzz, the doors all open, including the one to the opposing team and Choji.
Choji groans softly as he looks up form his chair, covered in cuts and bruises. "Ok... I'm alive. Did we win?"
Ino huffs. "Of course we won. Now can you boys untie him so we can get moving, or will we have to make you?"
The two opposing konoha shinobi look to one another, before deciding it best not to be sore losers against the next generation of Ino-Shika-Cho and quickly cut Choji free. He sighs in relief and squirms his way out. "Thanks, guys. Better luck next time." He limps just a bit on the way out, but quickly takes a bag of chips from Shikamaru and digs in as Ino heals a few of his wounds on the way out.
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"I think that went well." Hinata smiles serenely on her way out of the testing chambers, with Kiba and Shino in tow.
Kiba side-eyes her a bit as Akamaru hides deep in his hood. "Maybe you shouldn't have spent so much time training with Anko-sensei."
"Hm? Oh, I suppose her teachings did help, but my clan does excel in this field as well. Particularly when it comes to efficiency. We're excellent at causing a great deal of pain and instilling fear without a drop of blood shed. Most excellent when dealing with high-priority targets that need to be sold back to their villages after."
Shino adjusts his glasses. "That is… quite insightful. For a clan that publicly prides itself in combat expertise, that is a formidable secondary skillset."
Another door opens ahead of them as team seven steps out. Yoko immediately steps up for pets and to converse in beast-speak with Akamaru, while Naruto grins at the sight of them unharmed. "Yo! Easy for you guys too?"
"Indeed." Shino demonstrates by commanding a few of his kikaichu to buzz about. "It's rather difficult to interrogate someone when you're unconscious."
"Ah, yeah, I get that. I took my time knocking my two out, though. I needed a warmup after escaping those ropes."
Sasuke rolls his eyes a bit, but can't keep the smile off his face. "Meanwhile, we prodded straight into our victim's head almost as easily as Ino. Kaka-sensei taught me a good hypnotic suggestion jutsu for my sharingan, and pairing that with Sakura's medical training and natural sadism got it over with quickly."
"I'd argue the sadism, but…" Sakura sighs. "Yeah, you're right. I blame our sensei, they made us crazy."
"Nah." Kiba cuts in. "Naruto made us crazy."
Naruto bows, arms spread. "Thank you, happy to be of service."
Hinata can't keep from giggling, but despite how observant she's always been, she fails to see the short-lived blush on his face.
They're all soon interrupted as Suigetsu kicks open his door and walks out, still dripping, with his usual grin. "Too damn easy!"
Choujuro stumbles out, hunched slightly as he inspects the door. "I-I don't think it's very smart to damage Konoha property like that, Suigetsu…"
Haku shakes her head as she leads an injured Karui out, already performing some basic iryojutsu on her. "I did my best to make these wounds painful, but superficial. You should be fine in a week, but some of them may scar if you're not careful."
Atsui pulls Karui away from Haku with a huff. "We've got this, just go on with the exam, damnit. And don't think we won't catch up to you at the next one! We're the hottest team in all of Kumo, and don't you forget it!"
Karui huffs and shakes her head. "Cool it, Atsui. We lost, deal with it." She grumbles. "He is right about one thing though, Haku. We'll be coming for you one day, to settle this score."
Haku only flashes her usual gentle smile. "Well, I look forward to it. I'm sure you're all far better in a fight than interrogation. I'm sorry the cards fell as they did, but we should all make the best of the outcome, hm?"
Naruto raises an eyebrow. "I didn't know you play cards."
She turns and stares him down for a moment. "Haven't you already seen my impeccable poker face? Besides, I needed to do something to pass the time, traveling with tou-san and those appalling Demon Brothers. It also earned us a fair few hussles without any bloodshed or anbu attention."
Karui's jaw drops. "Hardcore."
Shino raises an eyebrow. "Your poker face is indeed impressive, Haku-chan. But we will have to see how you fare against myself and my family. We're among the greatest experts in the art of the bluff in the entire village."
"Is that an invitation?..." Haku's taken aback for a moment, her poker face almost shattering.
"Indeed. We had planned to run a game the day after returning from the second stage of the exam, whenever that will be."
"... Very well." This time her smile is… softer, somehow. Something in her eyes makes it far more believable. "I look forward to it. For now though…" She turns to face down the hall. "I believe it best we move on and find out what the second exam is."
Another door bursts open nearby, revealing Gaara stepping out shrouded in freshly-stained sand. "Ugh… Why must nobody take my jutsu seriously?" He inspects the blood for a moment. "I don't think they'll be able to use that hand for much for some time."
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A.N.: Finally, I'm back, and this chapter I feel is a pretty big upset compared to most chuunin exams. A little action, some psychology, some flirting, really a bit of everything without making this round overstay it's welcome. So, for now, I'm gonna get to work on mapping out round 2, expect that in another month. In the meantime, go check out Henshin Hero Academia and Getting Anywhere, or go check out and expand the Konoha's Fatal Joke TVTropes page!