Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
AN: Like the last chapter of flames of war this chapter has been in the making for a very long time. All types of crap happened but now things have settled down. Thank you all for reading this, please leave some feedback! As a thank you to my readers I'm going to work on another chapter of one of my (3) stories as SOON as I post this (I post as soon as I'm done with one.), as I have more inspiration than I can hadle. (I could probably make 6 different fics with it)
jere7782: Well they were messing around with his life and students so its fine to force his will upon others in that situation. A good way to describe Naruto is a Kid with too much power.
Useful76: Definite won't be using the whole clan restoration thing. Besides it would suck because Hinata's Kids would be Ino's kids because of her bloodline, I think something like that would suck for the clan. Don't worry though Ino's is not out, but I have some different planned than most fics I see.
S-Wanderer999: You understand! I just cannot see Naruto as a happy child with a life like that.
"Talking"
'Thinking'
Chapter 11: Choice of Person
Hinata, Sakura, and Ino were standing in line to get there scroll for the second test. The first test had been a breeze for the three. Hinata used her eyes, Sakura knew the answers, and Ino copied Sakura. When they reached the small booth a Chunin gave them the earth scroll. After they received their scroll they were about to walk out but the Chunin handed them a second scroll, this one had the letter "B" on it.
"It's a mission scroll. Read it in the forest." The Chunin said.
Ino nodded and took the scroll then placed it with her stuff. They were a little confused as to why they would be given a mission during a test and a B-Rank one at that but they would just have to deal with it.
As they left the both only the Chunin saw a hand reach out from Hinata's shadow and give him a thumbs up, then sink back in.
Start of Second Exam:
The team ran inside the forest for five minutes before they decided to see what the mission scroll said. Ino removed it from her pouch, unrolled it and started reading.
Mission Rank: B
Details: Capture 1 foreign shinobi, unharmed if possible. Leave no witnesses. Once the prisoner is captured apply chakra to the seal on the bottom of this message and it will summon a large animal who will "eat" the Shinobi. Once that's done the animal will disappear. Once it's gone destroy this scroll and the mission will be complete.
Mission Leader: Shy Eyes
Note: Sorry for giving you a mission during a test but this something that needs to be done, and this exam is the best place for it. Spiral
"Shy eyes? Who the hell is that?" Ino Said.
"Baka, it must be Hinata. If you used your head a little more maybe you could have been the leader." Sakura sarcastically said
"Spiral must be Naruto-sensei." Hinata said before reaching out to grab the scroll from Ino.
"Ok, but why does he want us to capture someone? I though every village in this exam was an ally to Konoha." Ino asked.
"That part I don't understand. But who knows what he's thinking half the time." Sakura said.
"Ano, they may be allies but that doesn't mean we trust them or don't act against them. That's why we're doing it in here, where people will get killed and no one will get suspicions. We should get going and not talk about this, you never know who is around." Hinata told. Lucky for them the only other person around was an ally hidden in Hinata's shadow. Not just any ally, but Naruto, or rather a Kage Bunshin of Naruto.
The two girls decided she was right and they left their spot to continue the test and mission. Hinata was leading with Ino on the right and Sakura on the left both a few feet behind her. After running for about twenty minutes Hinata spotted a team from Kusa then stopped on a branch.
"I've spotted a team from Kusa, they are directly ahead of us, and are about one minute away. Also they look like they just finished a fight. I can't tell whether or not they have scrolls but we might as wel... wait. The girl is doing something odd." Hinata said.
Hinata could see that the girl putting her hand on a tree and then chakra flow from the tree into the girl. It also seemed whatever part of the tree she touched was rotting.
"Ok, the girl has some sort of weird ability so I think we should take her. Sakura, you launch a bird and we will follow it." Hinata ordered.
Sakura just nodded then took in a large breath then held her arm in front of her. She then breathed out a hot white flame that compacted into a ball above her arm. Once she was done releasing the flame the ball started to morph into the shape of a bird, once it was done, you could see a Hawk made of white flames standing on her arm. This Jutsu was called Honoo no Seimei (Flame's Life: temporary beings made of fire.). She then nodded towards the bird and it took off towards the Kusa Shinobi, with the girls not far behind it.
With Kakashi's Team:
Things have been going rather well for the guys; they had managed to nab the right scroll about 15 minutes into the exam. This is the reason they are sitting on the ground trying to decide what to do next. Shino wanted to head to the tower, Kiba wanted to take more scrolls, and Sasuke was getting annoyed at the person listing in on them. Of course the other two noticed as well but decided to wait until the person acted.
While waiting they decided to head for the tower, if they ran into anyone else on the way, they'd fight them. Once they got up to leave a large gust of wind flew towards them. Only thing the wind managed to hit was air as all three boys dodged it.
"Very impressive." Orochimaru said. He then noticed that they were spread pretty far apart from each other. He then pulled down the bottom lid of his eye and made eye contact with Sasuke to freeze him with killing intent. Once that was done he summoned two large snakes to take care of Kiba and Shino.
"What the fuck, who is this guy. He's got two different scents on him and he's really strong, but if he think this stupid snake is going beat me he must be stupid." Kiba yelled with the snake chasing him. He then ran all the way up a tree, and jumped even higher above it.
At the same time the snake chasing Shino managed to eat him, or rather a Bunshin made of flesh eating bugs, which were making quick work of the snake.
Once Kiba reached the max height of his jump, he did a few hand seals and performed JinjūKonbiHengeSōtōrō. The snake which followed him was now below the two headed wolf and had its head destroyed by a claw of the beast.
Sasuke couldn't help but to smirk, whoever the Kusa Nin is, she should have known better to look an Uchiha in the eyes. The moment it happened Sasuke put him under a Genjutsu, nothing special, just a 'You see what you want to see' Genjutsu. They are the hardest type to detect, because to see what you think you should.
Unfortunately for Sasuke his opponent was Orochimaru, so it wouldn't take more than a few seconds for him to realize what happened. Fortunately for them a few seconds was all they needed for Shino to place a swarm of chakra eating bugs on him. During that time Sasuke and Shino jumped onto the back of Kiba and Akamaru who had split into two smaller one headed wolves.
Shino had a bad feeling so he reluctantly pulled out a scroll from his jacket, unrolled it, adding some chakra to a seal on it and tossed it to the floor. He and his team took off towards the tower. Seconds later thousands of kikai, spiders, centipedes, and various other bugs flew out of the scroll and dashed towards Orochimaru who just smirked.
With Kusa Team
Fujishro Hideaki was the pride of his family. They were a small family in Kusa and he was the only one of his siblings to ever become a Shinobi bring pride and honor to their poor family. He planned to pass this exam and someday become a Jounin. He had known his 2 teammates for years and even had a crush on Sora, the Kunoichi of their team, even though she was from a new up and coming clan.
That's why he will continue to fight, even with his right arm burned and useless, flames creeping up the side of his cloths. Even with the other male on his team dead and girl bound, and unable to move because of her chakra being cut off. He will still fight.
So with a kunai in his hand he ran towards the person closest to Sora, who happened to be Hinata. When he was close enough he trust the Kunai in her head with all strength, chakra and whatever else he had. The moment of triumph was overwritten by frustration when the girl turned into a puff of smoke. When he was hit with 4 kunai in the back from the person he wanted to target his fight was over.
Ino looked to the captured girl who was looking at them with as much hate an anger as a person could have. "What are you waiting for? You killed my teammates you might as well kill me as well!" Sora screamed at them.
"We're not going to kill you. We have been given a mission a mission while this exam takes place, and we're going to use you to complete the mission." Sakura said.
"Then what are you going to do with me?" Sora asked.
"We don't know what he wants with a foreign shinobi but we're going to send you to him. We only picked you because I seen what you did with the tree." Hinata said to Sora.
"What!? Please just kill me. You're all girls as well, you know what will happen if I'm captured, especially you with the white eyes." Sora said pleading with the girls.
"What is she talking about?" asked Ino.
There was silence for a few seconds before Hinata spoke. "Captured Shinobi are often tortured for information, imprisoned, mistreated, and forced to give up information or die. For Kunoichi it's worse than that. It's a high chance they will be rapped either during torture and imprisonment. Ninja with bloodlines limit are guaranteed to be forced to have children or be experimented on. Most of the time they are assassinated by their home country before it happens. She has a bloodline limit unknown to Konoha" Hinata said.
While Ino knew of the dangers of being a Kunoichi but she never thought about Konoha doing such things, but now that's she thought about it: why wouldn't they. Being forced to have someone's children simply so they could have your bloodline in the family was not a life Ino would want or would force upon another person.
"Maybe we should find someone else. He's not looking for someone with a bloodline anyways." Ino said.
"Even if he didn't ask for one, if we have the chance to get one we should." Hinata said. She wrote something on a scroll blank, slipped it into a pocket on the girl then unrolled the mission scroll and applied chakra to the seal. Once the smoke cleared they could see a toad, one taller than them.
It looked around at them and then to the girl that was tied up. It tong shot out and wrapped around the girl and then pulled her into its moth, after that it was done so it disappeared. Hinata then gave the mission scroll to Sakura who burned it.
Hinata then jumped on a tree branch. "They had both scrolls we should hurry to the tower." She said.
"Hinata wasn't that a little too cruel? They were in no shape to fight us and you killed them so quickly." Ino said.
It was true that she killed the two guys quickly, the fight barely lasted 40 seconds, but she wasn't being cruel. After Sakura's flame bird hit Hideaki who guarded his face with his arm she hit the other boy in the back of the head with a lightning natured enhanced Juken strike that killed him instantly. During that time Sakura had caught and tied up the girl, Hinata then closed off a few important chakra points in her, after that the second boy attacked her. 'She didn't even do anything. Maybe I should suggest that they train with Anko for a while.' Hinata thought before leaving for the tower.
"Gah! What's wrong with her?" Ino said before jumping in the trees to follow her, with Sakura right behind her.
With Orochimaru:
Finally he was done killing all those stupid bugs! It had taken him about 5 minutes to do so as bugs continuously poured out so fast that for every 1000 he killed 5000 more took it place. He could only image how far Sasuke had gotten while riding on that damn dog, though it didn't matter he could still catch up to him if he didn't waist anymore time.
"Doton Hebi no Atsuryoku(Snake's Pressure)" A loud voice shouted out, one that he was familiar with. He then felt being constricted by a snake made of stone that quickly sprung from the ground. "When did you learn such a powerful Jutsu, Anko?"
"From a man far greater than you can ever hope to be." She made a laughing noise. "You know, maybe I should thank you for activating my cursed seal 2 years ago, because if you didn't I may never have gotten to know him. I may even have to thank you for giving me this seal, because if I didn't have it I probably wouldn't have survived when my own team tried to rape and kill me after that. But what I will thank you for is having the stupidity to come back to Konoha. Honoo no Seimei" She said before breathing out a large amount of white hot fire that came together and made a snake that shot towards Orochimaru. Once it hit him he and his immediate surroundings were burned into nothingness not even ash survived.
Clap. Clap. Clap. "An impressive display Anko, and if you hadn't talked so much it might have worked." He could see her getting angry and decided to keep at it. "I would like to meet this man you're so fond of." He said.
Anko smirked a bit then reached and pulled an odd kunai from her pouch. "If you want to meet him so badly them I guess I can call him here for you." She said before throwing the Kunai at Orochimaru. When he caught the Kunai he was surprised with a Rasengan to the stomach, sending him flying.
Not bothering to see where Orochimaru landed Naruto turned towards Anko and started speaking. "Anko, that was just a mud clone, he's long gone from here. Follow me to the tower. I'll have some clones searching for him as well." He then made the cross shaped hand seal and 500 copies of him appeared and scattered around the forest.
At Tower:
Despite leaving after everyone Naruto and Anko were the first one's at the tower and even though his team wasn't first they were only 5 minutes behind the Suna team but 3 minutes ahead of Kakashi's team. 'They would have definitely made it here first if not for the mission and or Ino asking questions. Everything Hinata did was the correct decision for a Shinobi. It seems Ino and Sakura still cannot kill unless they have too. They know they are stronger than most Gennin and they hold back because of that. That's not how you become a great Shinobi, that's how you die needlessly. I'm going to fix that soon.' He though.
End of Second Test (AN: Some fights are cannon and will be marked as so because I don't want to rewrite things you have already seen, and probably read a million times before. Some are too one sided for more than a brief explanation.)
After all of the teams arrived in the tower they were told they would be having a preliminary round because too many people passed. They moaned and complained but in the end they had to choice but to fight.
The first fight was between Sasuke and a guy named Yoroi who could drain chakra with a touch, too bad for him he was beating in less than 20 seconds by the Uchiha.
The second fight was between a guy named Yusuke (Shikamaru and Chouji's teammate) and Rock Lee, this fight was also over in less than 20 seconds.
The 3rd fight was between Shino and Zaku. (Same as Cannon: except he didn't pretend to have a useless arm.)
When Ino was called to fight Temari in the fourth round Naruto had to give her a little advice. "It's fine to hold back because you don't want to show off your skill but… if you hold back because you're afraid of hurting someone you will be the one who dies." Naruto whispered in her ear.
When the match started Ino threw five shuriken and kunai at Temari, they were all knocked away by her fan. Ino quickly came up with a plan and proceeded to carry it out. She threw more shuriken in an attempt to have them hit Temari from the sides. They were of course knocked away as well.
"It's useless you know. Give up while you still can." Temari said.
"Useless? I could beat you at any moment now. You're the one that should be giving up." Ino said.
Temari shook her head and then said "Well I was going to play around with you but you've gotten on my nerves. Kunoichi like you who worry more about their hair than skills piss me off anyways." She swung her fan and released a strong wind that hit Ino. When the wind hit her she burst into leaves. She then closed her fan and swung it upward and hit Ino, who was descending towards her with a kunai, in the stomach. Again Ino burst Ino leaves, this time she appeared below Temari and sweep kicked the Sand ninja off her feet before jumping back to where she first was.
When Temari was getting off the ground she didn't she Ino doing hand seals. In fact when she was off the floor all she could see was the many leaves that sprang from the floor and cut her before she fell right back down.
"Winner, Ino." The examiner said. The medics rushed to help the girl before she bled to death. Konoha shuriken did not make deep cuts, one of its weaknesses.
Ino ran back up to Naruto and gave him a hug. "How did I do sensei?"
"Hm, only Jutsu you displayed was Kawarimi and Konoha Shuriken, you also figured out if you threw those leaves from a distance they would be knocked away, so you used Kawarimi to spread them right below her. You did great." Naruto said.
The Fifth round was Dosu vs Tenten. This match was quick but both fighters came out injured. Duso managed to hit Tenten with his melody arm but not before she hit him with 3 kunai. While his leg was hurt, she couldn't move. She forfeited, knowing she couldn't fight any longer.
6th match Shikamaru vs. Kin (Cannon)
The seventh match was Kankuro vs Tsurugi (Cannon)
For the 8th match, Gaara vs. Sakura. Naruto had some advice to give her as well. "I know you want to hold back your powerful Jutsu for the finals but you don't have that option now. I've seen him fight in the forest and if you don't give everything you got, you'll die. You also have a time limit, we're in a building with other people watching this fight so I'll have to protect it, thus limiting you oxygen supply." She nodded nervously at him, though she was more afraid of using the Jutsu than facing Gaara.
Before the match started Naruto created 4 clones, they each went to a corner of the room and erected a barrier over the arena. "This room is really small so this is to keep the spectators safe." He said to the people who were wondering what he was doing.
When the match started she used KatonGoukakyuu no Jutsu and spit a large ball of fire at Gaara who made no move. When the fire hit Gaara and dissipated and there was no damage she knew Naruto was right. 'It's time for me to use the big stuff.' After a few hand seals she breathed in more air than her lungs should be able to hold and performed Katon: Karyuu Endan. Some of the people in the stands were surprised she could do such a Jutsu, considering its level and the amount of chakra it took to perform. She blew a stream of the hot flames at the sand for about 30 seconds before a tendril of sand burst from the ground below her and forced her to dodge it.
Gaara was pissed, his skin hurt, all of it. Even when surrounded by a sphere of sand the heat got to him and burned him a little. If it was not for his armor of sand it would have been far worse.
Sakura was getting worried, if Karyuu Edan didn't turn him into ash she only had one Jutsu that could hope to defeat Gaara, and she had to do it quick because she was not fast enough to continuously dodge the sand being shot at her. Another problem was because the oxygen level was at about 50 it was getting hard to breath and if she does this Jutsu it would only be active for 3-5 seconds. When she saw the giant wave of sand she knew she had no hope of dodging so she activated the seals that were on her exposed skin and clothes. An instant later her hair looked as if it was on fire, her clothes were on fire, and her skin looked to be glowing red.
Sakura then ran towards the wall of sand and when she reached it she was able to run right through it because all the sand that touched her melted. She pulled her fist back and swung at Gaara. The sand that protects him flew in between them but it met the same fate as the other sand. Unfortunately for Sakura when she got past the sand guard her Jutsu ended due to lack oxygen. Gaara didn't know why she stopped with the Jutsu and he really didn't care, using the opportunity given to him he sent more sand at her. Fortunately for the girl Naruto had canceled the barrier and grabbed Sakura before the sand hit her. "She forfeits." Naruto said before jumping to the balcony with Sakura.
"I could have won if I had more time." Sakura said.
"Hm, making excuses, you lost and that's it." Sasuke said.
"What's your excuse for having your Sharingan active? Just who's Jutsu are you attempting to copy, huh Uchiha? If you want a Jutsu so bad copy this." Naruto said before doing hand seals and Sasuke was mirroring him. Before the last two were completed a second Naruto grabbed Sasuke's hand. "I didn't know you were suicidal." Naruto said. At Sasuke's questioning look Naruto pointed to the clone that was doing the seals, it started to die then pop out of existence. "Be careful when you are coping Jutsu you know nothing about, you might accidentally kill yourself." Naruto said.
Now Sasuke was mad, he thought Naruto was actually going to teach him a Jutsu (actually he did teach him a Jutsu, just one intended for suicide.) but he just embarrass him in front of everyone and almost made him kill himself so he attempted to punch Naruto in the face only to realize 'I didn't reach him? That's impossible he was right in front of me, he never moved and I didn't take my eyes off of him!' Sasuke thought.
"Another Sharingan lesson, your eyes does not magically detect and cancel any illusion, the best way to put a Genjutsu on an Uchiha is to touch him and inject chakra for the illusion directly." Naruto said. Sasuke was about to try to attack him again, but before he could do so Kakashi stopped him. Naruto then went and continued talking to Sakura.
The next fight was between Kiba and Neji. It was not due to a lack of power or skills that Kiba lost quickly. It was merely a lack of information, attacking a Hyuuga with Taijutsu was not a wise decision. After charging at Neji with the intent of knocking him out quickly, Kiba was hit with a few Juken strikes that made him unable to stand. 'I'm going to get a rematch soon.' Kiba thought.
The Final fight was Hinata vs. Chouji. The Akimichi saw what Neji did to Kiba so he quickly went into NikudanSensha (Meat Tank) and tried to run Hinata over. It was pretty easy for her to dodge the attacks and after a while he got stuck in the wall. Seeing that he was stuck Hinata hit him with a palm strike, winning the match.
Now that the matches were over they were told that the final round would be in one month. They then pulled numbers out of a box so that they could determine who would fit whom in the final matches. The matches were:
Hinata VS Neji
Sasuke VS Gaara
Kankuro VS Shino
Ino VS Shikamaru
Dosu VS Lee
Naruto's House:
The preliminary had been over for about two hours, the girls were at Naruto's house discussing their opponents, well Ino and Hinata's opponents anyways. He could see that Sakura was a little depressed about her loss. "Sakura don't worry about it too much, you be a Chunin in no time." Naruto said. He would have told her most Chunin were promoted by other means but that could have hurt the other two girl's performance.
"Sensei, when are you going to start the training for the finals?" Ino asked.
"Huh? I'm not training you three anymore." He said before he left, he had more Jutsu to create.
