Naruto X
AN: Readers. It's time.
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Team 7 had gathered together and was walking down a hallway towards the room they were told to gather at and to their surprise, Kakashi was waiting at the door for them. "Hello team. I'm glad to see all of you here." He said, getting confused looks from his students.
"Of course we'd be here. We wouldn't miss this for anything!" Naruto said, getting nods from his teammates which made the jounin smile. "Well that's good. Because if even one of you did not want to enter, then I couldn't allow you to continue." He said, making the genin look at him in shock.
"What? It's a team effort after all. Anyways I'm sure all of you will be fine. Go make me proud team." He said and vanished in a swirl of leaves. The genin nodded at each other before walking into the room.
That was when they noticed the room was full of various other genin. Naruto blinked as he glanced around before turning towards Sasuke. "Didn't the flyer say to go to room 304?" he asked, and the Uchiha gave a small nod. "Your point?" he asked before Naruto pointed to the sign.
Sasuke stared at it and narrowed his eyes. The sign said 304 on it but Naruto was acting like this was wrong. Trusting his instincts, the boy gave a look at Sakura who also nodded and they went up the stairs where there were two other genin blocking the door from another set of genin who were trying to get in.
Naruto grabbed Sasuke and Sakura by the arm before going on the opposite side and was waiting for the guards to be distracted by the other genin before he quickly tugged them through the doorway and pulled them down the hall towards the stairs.
"Naruto, what's the rush?" Sakura asked as she was dragged by the boy. "Simple. We don't reveal that the sign was under a genjutsu and we leave those unable to sense that behind, reducing the number of people participating. Then while that other team was distracting the guards, we slip in and get to the correct room without drawing any attention to ourselves." He said, and the girl gave a nod of realization. Even Sasuke gave a small grunt of approval. The less competition the better it was for them.
That was when they entered the real room 304 and once they opened the door, Sakura and Sasuke suddenly felt killing intent flood over them and paused as they entered the room. Naruto was unfazed by it and continued walking in as if nothing had happened.
"SASUKE-KUN!" a voice rang out and Ino tried to latch onto Sasuke but the boy had moved out of the way and glared at the girl. "Troublesome, so you guys made it?" another voice said as Shikamaru and Chouji walked up.
"Well it looks like the gang's all here." Kiba said as him and his team walked up to join the other genin. Naruto glanced at each of them and smirked as he scanned all of them. They hadn't changed much, if at all from the academy, team 7 was going to walk all over them.
Then he began to scan other occupants of the room and frowned. Some of these guys were really strong, in fact a few of them didn't even read as genin if the data he was acquiring was to be believed.
Speaking of not supposed to be a genin, one such person had approached them and was offering them advice and help. Naruto narrowed his eyes and scanned the man again. Kabuto, took the exam seven different times, is apparently a medic at the hospital but shows to be stronger than a jounin in some cases. There is no way he should have failed seven times.
That was when Kabuto revealed his ninja info cards and that got Naruto's attention. Turning to Sasuke, he gave the black haired boy a nod and began to move to the back of Kabuto while Sasuke stepped up to the boy. "I want information on Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno and myself." He said, making the boy smile. "Well you know their names, that's not very challenging." He said as he flipped through his cards and put them down.
"Let's see, Sakura Haruno. Genin under team seven, leader is Kakashi Hatake, has done thirty D rank missions and one A rank mission. Specializes in a defense oriented taijutsu style and genjutsu." He said, making the girl frown.
"Next is Sasuke Uchiha. Huh, also on team seven, no wonder you knew the names already. Same missions, same sensei. Has learned a specialized taijutsu style from Kakashi and Might Gai, also specializes in fire style jutsu." He said before flipping down Naruto's card which was strange in the fact that the image changed if moved from his normal look to his armored look, which immediately raised some alarms.
"Finally we have Naruto Uzumaki. Same team, sensei, missions. No information on his training, but apparently cannot use chakra and hides under an illusion. During his A ranked mission he had killed Zabuza of the mist, the demon brothers, a random hunter ninja working for Zabuza and a small army of bandits along with Gato of Gato corporation.
Has shown the ability to use fire, but is not known how considering his lack of ability to use chakra and has abilities not known to man that can apparently kill instantly." His speech was interrupted when he felt something press into the back of his head and he heard a humming noise.
"You know too much." Naruto said as Sasuke and Sakura pulled out a kunai and stared hard at the man who was sweating bullets at this point. "I-I don't know what you're talking about…" Kabuto said, not feeling brave enough to look behind him. His information seemed a bit off however, he expected the boy to be bragging heavily about his mission and cheering like an idiot. Now he was being held up and pressed for information.
"Here's the deal, we never spoke a word about what happened on that mission and when we did, we lied about the details. But here you come, a complete and total stranger having all of this information that nobody else should know. Now I want to know your source." Sasuke said as Naruto pushed his buster gun into the back of the man's head to further the point.
Kabuto let out a nervous laugh. "I honestly have no clue what you mean, all of my data comes directly from the public mission logs. You can't lie on those reports." And suddenly there was the sound of something being fired and Kabuto was missing his head, causing wide panic and a few screams as Naruto stared down at Kabuto's body. "Our mission didn't have paperwork." He said, just as a group of ANBU entered the room surrounding team 7 and a man wearing a leather jacket and a bandana entered the room. "You three. With me. Now." He said and the ANBU warped them all out of the room, leaving a lot of confused and worried genin behind.
When team 7 finally settled from the sudden warp to another location, which seemed to be a simple room with a single door, said door opened and the man from before walked in and suddenly Sakura and Sasuke felt a huge amount of killing intent which made them step back momentarily, Naruto however could not feel it and wasn't effected at all, which made the man narrow his eyes on the boy.
"So, would you mind telling me why you immediately killed a fellow genin of the leaf in cold blood? We find that highly treasonous and could have you killed immediately in return." The man said and Naruto grumbled but stepped forward.
"He knew way too much about all of us. We hadn't said a word regarding the issues of our mission and what we did tell people, we lied about. He had information on who we encountered, what happened during that mission and what we even did and claimed that the files were public information." He said, making the man turn towards the other two genin.
"I-It's true…" Sakura spoke up before shrinking back at the man suddenly turning to glare at her. "We never officially did any paperwork regarding that mission and we hadn't spoken a word to anyone. There was only one person who asked about the details of our mission and that was our old teacher Iruka. We lied to him about the details of the mission though and that was that. Kabuto even knew information about Naruto that we only just learned a few days ago." She said and the man gave a small nod.
"And what's to say he wasn't in the area when this big reveal had happened?" he pressed and Naruto immediately dropped his illusion and stepped up to the man, causing the ANBU to tense. "Because we weren't even in Konoha when it happened." He answered back. The man studied Naruto for a moment before turning to the ANBU and gave a nod, they calmed down and he turned back to Naruto.
"My name is Ibiki Morino. I'm in charge of the torture and interrogation department. I know when someone is lying to me and you three…are telling the truth." He said with a sigh as he closed his eyes and with a snap of his fingers, the corpse of Kabuto was brought into the room by two ANBU members.
"Every village has its spies. Some go to various lengths to fit in, unfortunately he chose a very poor time to try and win some favor, especially when the individuals he is talking about are as secretive as you three." He said as he turned towards the dead body and gave a grunt.
"A shame, he was one of our medics. Probably had a share in some of the delayed recoveries I would assume. But that's the price we pay, you never know who you can trust in this business, but sometimes we have no choice." He said as he turned to the three and gave them a smirk.
"Good job. Probably would have been better to capture him than kill him but what can you do. You three will be paid handsomely for rooting out a spy." He said and the ANBU vanished out of the room, some of them taking the body with them.
"And best of all, you made one hell of an impression on the competition. Now go and finish the rest of your examination and show those punks how real Konoha shinobi do things." The man said as he walked out of the room. The three genin shared a victory smirk between each other before walking out after the guy.
Once they got back to the main room however, the other genin were giving them wary glances, even the other rookies were staying away from them and Ibiki let out a cough. "Alright you brats, the first part of the chuunin exam begins now. Follow me." He said as he walked back through the door, immediately all the genin followed after and once they had made it to another room.
They were stopped by a jounin holding a box and told to line up and draw numbers. The number they picked would be the seat they had to go to and once all of the genin were seated, Ibiki stood at the front of the room and explained that they would not be taking a written test. Each team had a total of a hundred points to start and for each question they answered right, they would get ten points, but for every question wrong, they would lose ten points. If they were caught cheating, they would also lose ten points, but if they got caught three times the entire team would be disqualified. They had one hour to answer nine questions before the tenth one would be made available for answering.
Naruto narrowed his eyes in thought. That almost sounded like they wanted them to cheat, and then it hit him. That's why there were chuunin among the genin in the lobby! That's why they were disguised, this was a test on information gathering and though the test was painted as a simple written exam, the real purpose was to gather intel without being discovered, and what better way to make sure some of the intel was available then by having the answers hidden amongst the crowd.
It was brilliant really. Thankfully he had figured the purpose out, even though he had every intention of cheating in the first place since he didn't understand over half of the questions on this test.
The robotic part of his brain had figured out some of the questions and he didn't need to cheat for everything, but thanks to his digital eye, he was able to quickly write down the answers, and that was when he noticed something odd, there was reflected light on his paper and he looked directly up, only to see a set of mirrors attached to the wall and a pair of brown eyes looking back at him.
He blinked. She blinked. His eyes went up and saw her forehead protector before he leaned back a bit and let the mirrors have full view of his paper. The girl smiled and she quickly went to work on copying his paper.
While this was happening, he was doing a scan on the people in the room out of boredom more than anything when he noticed something odd about one of the supposed jounin in the room. They weren't even human and they were covered in an illusion.
Narrowing his eyes, he changed his vision to the energy sensor and saw strands of chakra flowing from the jounin to one of the genin in the room. He blinked, how on earth did he even get that set up? Just as he was thinking that, the boy asked if he could be excused to use the bathroom and the 'jounin' cuffed him and escorted him out.
Naruto just shook his head before he had a realization, what would he do if his teammates could pass? Slightly worried, he began to mentally go over how he could possibly help them when an idea formed.
The room was then filled with a humming noise that was getting louder and louder, causing everyone to look up in confusion, Sakura and Sasuke however had widened their eyes. What the hell was Naruto up to now?
The only thing they heard was a weird buzzing noise and the next thing Sasuke knew was his hand and pen started to write the answers on their own. He blinked in surprise before calming down and allowing this to continue until all the answers were written down and once that was finished, Naruto, who was sitting in his chair completely stiff and unblinking, suddenly blinked and looked around.
He had used the phantom double power to help Sasuke but thankfully Sakura was smart enough to answer everything on her own and he hadn't needed to help her. At the end of the hour, Ibiki cleared his throat "Alright pencils down. Before we begin, I will give you the option of backing out or answering the tenth question. If you choose to answer the question, you will continue the examination." He said and some girl with four ponytails spoke up. "What kind of stipulation is that? Of course we'll take the question." She said and his smile picked up. "Yes but here's the catch, if you don't answer the question correctly then you not only fail the exam but you will be exempt from taking it ever again." He said as a look of horror spread amongst all of the genin.
'This doesn't seem right. Kabuto's profile said he took the exam seven tim-' and suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by Kiba. "Yeah but there was someone who said they took the exam multiple times before!" he countered, making Ibiki turn towards him. "Well I wasn't in charge then. I am now. Tough luck." He said.
'Okay so that rules that out. But then again, I doubt his jurisdiction holds weight in other villages. So why is he trying to fri-oooooh. You sneaky bastard.' Naruto thought as he sat back in his seat.
"So the choice is yours, back out and all of your team backs out, but stay and risk the chance of never becoming a chuunin ever again." He said, and one by one, hands rose and teams were leaving the room.
After about five minutes, Ibiki grinned and looked around the room. "Anyone else going to leave?" he asked. Seeing nobody else raise their hand, his grin got bigger. "Well then for those of you who stayed congratulations. You've passed the first portion of the test." He said getting mass confusion from a lot of genin in the room, Naruto quickly turned to look at the window when he heard a warning signal come in from his digital eye and suddenly a smoke bomb smashed through the window and when the smoke cleared, there was a huge banner hanging on the wall that said 'Anko Mitarashi' and there was a purple haired woman in a trench coat standing on the desk in front of the banner.
"Anko. You're early." Ibiki said from behind the banner. "Oh, am I?" she asked before she looked at the crowd and whistled. "Damn Ibiki. Thirty eight teams made it, you're losing your touch." She said and he grunted. "Or we have a large potential group of individuals." He said and she simply smirked.
"It doesn't matter, I'll cut them down by half at least." She said and a few genin had worried looks on their faces. "Alright brats, follow me to the next area." She said and immediately flew out the window, leaving a bunch of confused genin behind which made Ibiki sigh and shake his head.
"Training grounds 44. Directly east of here, giant forested area with a fence, you can't miss it." He said and the genin got up and quickly left the room.
-Training ground 44-
Once all of the genin gathered together, Anko was going over the details of the test, but Naruto was doing a scan and quite honestly he was glad he did. Suddenly a kunai came flying by him and he grabbed it, blinked at what he had done and noticed that Anko looked annoyed at him dodging the kunai before walking over to him.
It was then he leaned in began to whisper to her, her eyes widened in shock before she gave him a nod, took the kunai from him and walked away with a neutral expression on her face before she continued explaining the rules.
Once that was done, she told them to send a single person into the nearby tent to get a scroll. There were two scrolls, one for heaven and one for earth. A team needed both scrolls to make it to the next part of the test and immediately everyone understood what she meant when she said she would cut their numbers down by half.
As the genin were going in, team seven huddled together. "Guys, there's a lot of strange things going on with this test." Naruto whispered to his teammates, who blinked at him and gave a nod.
He then gave a small glance towards the team from Grass. "Those three are not actually grass ninja, in fact one of them is Orochimaru of the sennin. The team from Sunagakure, the boy with the gourd has strange energy radiating off of him, not to mention the boy in the black suit uses a puppet of some sort. Then there's the team from sound. All three of them are cyborgs."