CHAPTER TEN – Present day, Human world, Village of Konohagakure: Forest of Death
(The page releases a torrent of dust as it is turned)
Wind roared past a mountainous figure as trees seemed blurs of existence to a dashing Naruto. In full fox demon form at fully one hundred percent of his power, the young youko could very well see as far away as a mile into the forest, and hear everything at immensely amplified volume. He heard the shouts and yells of fighting genin as well as complaints but pushed all aside and focused on his main target coming closer into his field of vision. The form of Orochimaru, disguised as Naruto's human form started out as a mere dot in the distance, albeit a rapidly growing one. Trees rattled and leaves fell in swarms under the weight of a charging fifteen hundred pound demon kitsune leaping from one tree to another. His eleven foot tall frame burst through the trees he couldn't leap off of. He HAD to get to the bastard serpent before innocent lives were lost.
"Guys? Don't you know it's me?" Sakura and Sasuke stood on edge as their unknown enemy strolled seemingly happily towards them. Perfectly mimicking all the emotional gestures without being the slightest bit obvious, Orochimaru pulled off a Naruto that would convince all who weren't the utmost suspicious of all they saw. He tried to step close but Sasuke threw a kunai at the feet of the imitation.
"Don't! I can't trust it's you, Naruto," he firmly stated. He wanted to believe it was his friend and former comrade, and every common-sense neuron fired a message of that sort, but being emotional sometimes meant death. He could not trust even the most convincing thing. He was a ninja; any expert jounin could pull such an act off.
The disguised Orochimaru shook his head with a hurt look. "All that time, you and me," he looked at the pink-haired kunoichi to more effectively fake the proof, "and you too Sakura! All that time we spent on missions, like the bridge builder? All the things we talked about?" He cocked his head to the right slightly. "You can't trust ME?" Some faint resounding taps intensified into thuds. By the time they further intensified into booms, all four looked to the right of Orochimaru.
KAPOW!
A large bushy tail smacked right into the torso of the snake ninja, viciously blasting him through a massive tree. Team Seven looked at the massive kitsune. Sakura seemed at first afraid, but when it hit her she smiled. "NARUTO!" Sasuke grinned. Save us at the last minute from an impostor, nice one Naruto. Only Torijiro seemed on edge.
"This is...Naruto?" He raised an eyebrow. He had heard that the honorable son was a fox demon, but hadn't believed it. "Hey, if you're Naruto who's...that..." A pale-skinned, dark-haired, eye-shadowed freak of a human being—if he could be called that—stepped out from the wrecked remains of a gigantic piece of lumber. The enormous kitsune stared him down with penetrating red eyes of fury. Orochimaru, his twisted self in all its trueness and appearance, looked into the hate-filled eyes of Naruto and felt no fear whatsoever.
"You've come here to stop me?" The serpent ninja let a mild laugh. "I find it so funny. You think you've got this nice bead on things. I have a higher allegiance."
"You can take your higher allegiance and cram it. You're going to die here and NOW." Naruto's booming voice came as the signal for team seven to book. With them gone, the fox demon could focus on his main enemy. Orochimaru looked somewhat disdained, having lost his chance to mark Sasuke, but couldn't think of such things. He had a massive fox demon staring him down, and he had to stay alert lest he be killed quickly.
Before the blonde kitsune had a chance to move, the snake ninja bit his thumb and drove a blood-covered hand into the ground, summoning a gigantic snake by means of kuchiyose no jutsu. Orochimaru guided his snake from atop its head as it lunged for Naruto. Fangs of the large serpent drove deep into the fur of the blonde kitsune, causing a loud roar. Naruto responded with a furious swipe with his claws, throwing the snake off balance a bit and allowing for the powerful fox demon jaws to clamp on part of the neck of the snake, and tear a good sized piece of flesh off. A tail smash blasted Naruto into a large tree, bending the large slab of standing wood almost to the snapping point. A second tail swipe threw him several hundred yards to his left.
Naruto recovered soon enough to jump, with the large snake's jaw eating dirt a millionth of a second after his prey would've been there. The blonde kitsune wrapped five tails around its neck and launched it smoothly into the forest canopy, buying himself at least some time. Orochimaru landed on the back of Naruto, and drove his ninja-to into the upper back of his opponent. A loud roar of pain resounded through the forest, and instinctively the blonde kitsune knocked his foe off him with one swish of a tail. I have to stop this damn giant snake, Naruto thought. The fucker poisoned me with his bite.
The snake came crashing down about a hundred yards from Naruto. The proximity forced him to dodge the moment the snake began moving. A long, flowing battering ram the snake seemed, with its jaws wide open as it plowed through several large trees like they were nothing. The serpent's long end tail wound itself around the blonde kitsune's long torso and in a seamless offensive, slammed him viciously into the ground, throwing dirt into his face and staining his fur to a dirty shade of yellowish brown, and then flung him like a balled wad of paper into a group of gigantic trees. Standing up Naruto instantly got sandwiched against the tree with the first tail smash of the snake, and pushed through the tree upon the second. He wrestled his massive frame to a standing position and readied himself for the third tail strike. The large end of the serpent sailed through the air like a flying bird.
Naruto put more weight on his back legs, and snatched the large tail out of midair with his front paws. Gritting his fangs he dug his claws into the flesh and tensed his arm muscles. He aimed for the largest section of an enormous rock formation far to his left. In one swift display of unbelievable strength, he chucked the summoned snake into the rocks, causing the entire structure to come down on the beast. Naruto began to rest.
But he wouldn't be given long. The rock ruins shifted and exploded, releasing the cut and slightly injured snake. Flowing through the forest faster than Naruto had seen before, the snake opened his mouth and pounced on the fox demon.
"YES!" Orochimaru screeched, watching the snake.
"AAARrrrrrrgggghh!"
Naruto, utilizing what strength he could, brought both front paws down on the lower jaw of the snake, and bit into the upper jaw. A single roar of power and Naruto jerked his head to his right, tearing the head of the giant serpent in half. Orochimaru prepared to leap into the trees and escape when the largest of Naruto's nine tails wrapped around his torso. "You are going to die here!" Gritting his teeth, the blonde kitsune squeezed, crushing many of the serpent ninja's bones with the first pull, biting into the left arm of Orochimaru and spreading his own fox demon venom into him.
"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" The teeth-grinding yell of sheer agony from Orochimaru came almost as a signal; a mysterious figure landed on the neck of Naruto, and threw an unidentifiable mixture into his eyes.
"Aarrrgh! I CAN'T SEE!" Naruto blinked repeatedly as he reverted back to human form to more adequately wash out his eyes, and the figure grabbed the snake ninja, hoisted him onto his right shoulder, and took off leaping from tree to tree. "GODDAMMIT! I'M GOING TO GET YOU!"
Someone had saved Orochimaru from the wrath of Naruto. Finally wiping the powdery mixture from his eyes in human form, Naruto's demon blood had completely counteracted the poison . Fucking gunpowder and salt, Naruto realized. It wasn't meant to blind me at all; it was just fucking GUNPOWDER AND SALT! Summoning a new set of clothes with his magic, he leapt into the trees, a good bead on the enemy did he have. He had about three minutes before he caught up to them, he estimated.
"Th..ank you for...rescuing me..." Orochimaru feebly uttered. "Wait...stop. That bastard Naruto poisoned me."
The figure turned to Orochimaru, frightened. "You've been tainted with fox demon venom! There's no cure for that!"
"Tell...me, is...Kabuto...here?"
"Kabuto's right next to me," the figure said. "He caught up to us a few steps ago. Look, whatever's gonna happen we have to get it done NOW. Naruto'll be on us in a matter of another minute!"
"K...Kabuto," Orochimaru weakly groaned, "you have...to give me your body. It's the...it's the only way I'll make it." The figure set down Orochimaru and watched as he utilized his last bit of strength to transfer into Kabuto. A snake-like black aura ejected from the mouth of the dying snake ninja and consumed the glasses-wearing jounin. A shout of pain came from Kabuto as his consciousness and body were taken over by his master. As the medical nin's flesh became pale, and the tell-tale face coloration of Orochimaru appeared, he turned to the figure.
"I can go from here," Orochimaru said. "I don't care how you distract them, distract them." The figure nodded and Orochimaru, in a new body, took off.
Naruto could sense ANBU charging up behind him, several hundred yards back. He could see a vague outline of the battle scene up ahead. As he got closer, he saw a familiar figure awaiting him. Stopping upon arrival, he squinted in confusion. "Father?" The Yondaime stood over a corpse. A freshly dead ninja garbed in Akatsuki robes had recently had his neck snapped. "What're you doing here?" The ANBU continued past them.
Yondaime motioned with a twist of his head the dead person behind him. "I heard there was some trouble with Akatsuki going on so I paid a visit. Took a little detour to get straight to the problem. This is the Akatsuki bastard sent behind to slow you down."
Naruto bowed his head. "I'm sorry I couldn't get Orochimaru..."
Yondaime shook his head. "Don't worry. If we can't get him, we'll try again next time. Son, you defended those that were precious to you! I'm proud you put your life on the line to defend our village. But just go on to the tower and we'll take it from here."
"You sure?"
He nodded. "Yeah, go on."
Inside the tower, the various teams collected for the next part of the chuunin exam. Several from Konoha, and many from the other villages all had gathered for what promised to be a hellacious battle for young ninja supremacy. The jounin that had been assigned to watch the fights in the next part of the exam all gathered in a line behind the third Hokage, who had been asked to sit and oversee the combat while the fourth tried his hardest to catch up with Orochimaru and the various akatsuki who served him. Naruto stood and scanned over the teams to see if anything stood out of place that would require his attention.
"Let me explain one thing before you meet your proctor for this part of the chuunin exam," the aging former leader of the village elaborated. "This exam is a replacement for all-out war between the villages."
Inevitably, one genin in the front row asked the obvious question. "What do you mean, it's a replacement for war?" The third smiled, for this question he had awaited.
"If you look back in the long and complex history of the five shinobi nations, all the allies now at one point or another were mortal enemies," he continued, "and it became evident at some point that the wars that were going on were not conducive to the continued well-being of the world. Therefore, the battlefield transformed into a slightly less-grand scale. The chuunin selection examination.
"Here, nations can fight one another on a level with much less bloodshed, and display their strength. Here, nations' fates are decided without tremendous loss of life, and it gives potential to allow changes in society. If one village is less powerful than another, the superior-looking village will gain and the inferior-looking will lose. So there is, in fact, much more on the line than your victory or defeat here."
A ninja popped in out of a cloud of smoke, and bowed to the third Hokage. "Forgive the interruption, Hokage-sama, but if you don't mind I shall take it from here." The sickly looking Hayate turned to the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am Gekkou Hayate, and it is my job to oversee this stage of the exam. Here, you shall engage one another in one on one combat. While it is my responsibility to ensure that the matches don't result in blood baths, it is your responsibility to know when to surrender to avoid getting killed. That being said, it requires a great deal of skill to exercise control in combat. If you can soundly defeat your opponent without murdering them, it is a display of talent. We shall begin!" The large screen flashed two names. KUZAKU TORIJIRO versus INUZUKA KIBA
Torijiro looked up at the screen and identified his name, the looked over the room at his fellow Konoha ninja. The young man with his puppy tucked comfortably inside his shirt grinned a victory smile as he clenched his fist at the pretty-boy who had replaced Naruto on team seven. Two puffs of smoke later and the combatants were in the middle of the large ground floor level, ready for battle. "You'd better be ready," Kiba announced, "Akamaru and I, we're gonna completely annihilate you!"
"Ready? Begin!" Hayate shouted, dropping a raised hand for effect. Naruto looked on as his replacement dodged a combined attack from both Akamaru and Kiba. The master fed his battle partner a soldier pill, and the dog made use of human mimicry technique to combine his attack and be twice as effective as either of them alone. Torijiro barely dodged a second attack and landed on his feet. The medium-dark haired genin, garbed in black shirt and pants bit his right thumb enough to draw a bit of blood and slapped a spot down on the ground an instant before leaping above yet another attempt by Kiba. When his attacker and the mimicking puppy landed two separate kicks on him, he dripped a bit more blood from his thumb and countered with a upwards kick to the face of one of his opponents. Doing a flip leap off the shoulders of the other, he landed a few feet away.
"Is that all you can do?" Kiba shouted. "Run away like a scared chicken?" He flung himself at Torijiro and at the same time, Akamaru synchronized so they struck him from opposing sides and nearly drove the wind out of him. He managed to drip some more blood and land several punches to each of his foes and escaped their grasp again. Kiba, in an amazing display of speed, materialized immediately in front of where his enemy landed and swung a roundhouse, which Torijiro barely ducked below. The other opponent came flying in and Torijiro sent him off with a standing super kick, who landed upside-down on his hands and bounced to a standing position.
Torijiro grinned, and Kiba attempted to wipe the grin off with a vicious open palmed strike to the face. With his left hand the prettyboy pushed the strike to the left of him and spun into a sweep kick which the dog lover bounced above. He splattered a bit more blood on the floor and stood up. When his opponent swung at him, he simply grabbed Kiba by the coat and pushed him backwards. "You idiot!" Sasuke shouted from the stands. "What was THAT supposed to do?" Kiba seemed to be wondering as well, as he charged for his opponent who arrogantly strolled back a few steps.
Except he slammed into an invisible barrier and fell backwards on his butt. Confused, Kiba leapt for his foe again, and met the same fate. "Didn't you see the blood trail on the ground, Kiba?" Torijiro explained. "Makes a perfect circle." Torijiro made a few hand signals and the blood circle moved backward, tightening.
Naruto folded his arms, impressed. Blood Circle Chakra Barrier no Jutsu? Impressive. I didn't think any humans knew that one. Kiba certainly was a fool to fall into it. This left Torijiro an excellent opportunity, which he took full advantage of, with a powerful combo which he ended with a violent roundhouse kick. As Kiba was ejected from the circle by the force of his opponent's kick, he landed several inches from the wall, and in a poof of smoke, turned back.
Back into Akamaru.
Surprised at the turn of events, Torijiro barely turned around fast enough to get punched square in the face by the real Kiba, and land a few feet away. He clenched his fist as he forced himself up. Dammit! he knew. That was my ONE secret weapon, and I wasted it on that fucking mutt! He knew he was in trouble, as that took a lot of his chakra. The two began trading blows, although Torijiro had used up almost all of his chakra.
Naruto glanced at Hayate. The two jounin stared into each other's eyes for a moment, as both knew the inevitable result. The sickly-looking proctor raised his arm. "The victory goes to Kiba, as Torijiro does not have the chakra to finish the combat!"
The member of team seven shot a look of shock and anger at the jounin. "What the hell are you talking about? I can still fight!"
Hayate shook his head. "I see you've used up too much chakra to do much good against an opponent who still has a significant amount of his power and endurance left. I'm doing you a favor and declaring this match over."
The prettyboy collared the proctor with his right fist drawn behind his head. "How dare you do this?"
Naruto rolled his eyes. "TORIJIRO!" The shout from up in the stands caught his attention. "You did a good job, and you perfectly utilized a powerful jutsu which, if had been better strategized, would've won you the fight."
Torijiro let loose of Hayate and looked up at his superior. "What did I do wrong that turned the tide?"
"You got arrogant. You made an assumption which turned out to be wrong. Hayate did you a favor and ended the match while you can still stand. You had more chakra than Kiba to start with, and you had superior speed. If you had gotten him and Akamaru into the circle instead of kicking one of them away—and hoping you got the right one, which you didn't—you'd have won. Now get your ass up here." Disheartened by his loss, the genin complied. The screen flickered a moment and displayed a new set of names: HYUUGA HINATA vs. HYUUGA NEJI
Something about the shy, nervous girl caught Naruto's attention. He had never really noticed her before. Somehow, though, he saw through the shivering fear she displayed, standing opposite her older cousin. He saw pain in her stance and her posture, in her past she had suffered at Neji's hands. The thought of that made Naruto just a little bit peeved.
"You can't win, Hinata-sama," Neji explained, perfectly assured of his statements as true. His tone held the pitch and volume of someone who believed truthfully in their own facts, and held power that caused her to quake. "You see, it is your fate that you are not to be a great ninja. On missions, you give in to fear and fail." He blinked only a few times, perfectly calm in a raging hurricane of powerful emotions only the fearful girl and her older cousin understood. "A tiger doesn't change its stripes, and I can tell you would've been happier staying at the genin level. Truth be told, you're only doing this so your teammates can take the exam."
"A...ac...actually, Ne...Neji nii-san, you're wr...wrong..." she stammered, "I...I took the...the test...of my own...will. I w...wanted to...change that ab...about mys...self."
He shook his head. "No, Hinata-sama. You're frightened. You can't fool these eyes of mine. Just now, you diverted your eyes from mine, you wanted to avoid my gaze because it reminds you of the simple fact that you can't win. That comes from past experience. Just now, I can tell by the direction you looked you were reminiscing of a previous encounter, in which you suffered." Just listening to the monologue of Hyuuga Neji made Naruto's fist clench and his blood boil.
"HINATA!" he screeched. "Beat the fuck out of this asshole! He's pissing me off, and you're the one who has to fight him! Don't take his shit! Knock his fucking lights out!" The angry battle cry of Naruto solidified something inside the spirit of Hinata. Her will hardened from willing to surrender into a desire to battle. Taking up stance, she swallowed her fear and pushed aside the past. Her byakugan revealed, she knew she had to do something.
"No, Neji-san, you're not going to scare me off," she reminded him, a remarkable display of willpower she needed to push aside her fear and speak plainly. "Regardless of outcome I can't let you beat me without a fight."
The battle began instantly after that. The two siblings, the latest combatants in a war that had raged on long before them, and would possibly rage on long after them, took to the gentle fist style against one another. The branch house of Hyuuga clan, several generations of vengeful hatred bottled up in one Neji, fired angry attacks at Hinata. The shy girl seemingly gone, replaced by a fire-born phoenix of main house pride, dodged as best as she could and traded blows in amazing style.
It would not take long, unfortunately, for the tide to take the turn many expected it to take. Neji, who excelled in all his ninja arts, stood at the positive end of a skill gap far too wide for the Hinata he currently fought—even though this Hinata had willpower and courage eons ahead of the old one—to bridge. As she aimed for his chest he landed a powerful blow which attacked her heart. Her mouth jerked open wide as a spurt of blood came out. Her entire frame racked with incomprehensible pain the likes of which she had never before felt. As one mass she crumpled to the ground, shifting slightly as though a collapsing tower. The torturer stood over her, a blatant look of nonchalantness on his face.
"Hinata-sama, you are indeed stupid," he rattled. "You were defeated the moment you challenged me. But now that you've tortured yourself, be at peace! You don't need to suffer anymore. Just accept that you are destined to be inferior."
"N...No...Ne...Neji...nii-san," she uttered, blood dripping from her mouth as she struggled with all her might to a standing position. "I can tell...it's y...you...even mo...re so t..than me...who is torn...torn between the...the confusing de...destinies of our cl...clan..." The air tensed up as everyone could sense something inside of Neji just snap.
In a single motion he grabbed her neck with his right hand and squeezed with all his might, shouting obscenities at her. Several of the jounin rushed to her aide, but Naruto was the first to arrive. "HEY! NEJI! The match is over!"
Neji stared into Naruto's eyes. "Oh! More special treatment for the main branch! You're just as bad as her! She deserves this fate!"
She DESERVES to suffer? Some part of Naruto that had just had enough of the bullshit, rushed to the surface. Naruto didn't even know what happened. In the blink of an eye, he was standing on the stomach of Neji, pounding the holy hell out of the Hyuuga. "YOU SON OF A BITCH! WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DO THIS SHIT?" A stream of obscenities came from Naruto's mouth as he went all out.
Hayate tackled him off of Neji. "Naruto! Calm down!" Rising like an angry bear, Naruto came to his senses, and looked around at what he had caused. "Get the medical team down here now! Hinata's going into heart failure, and Neji's gotten several broken bones and could even have internal bleeding!"
Naruto stood open mouthed at the injuries he had just caused. Neji had his own blood all over him. He began coughing up blood. "Naruto," Jiraiya uttered, approaching the jounin, "I'm sorry, but you're out of line. You interfered in a combat you weren't involved in, and Neji could die because of this. For now, you're ejected from taking part in proctoring this exam. Later on Yondaime-sama will need you in his office to discuss punishment options."