-1The Plan for Hinata Hyuga
A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers, you all rock! Due to the increased amount of reviews, even though a large portion was from one person (who is not so anonymous to me…), I was still amazed at it. Oh, and I am reaching the point where I can take the story in multiple directions, mostly ending with Hinata with either Kail or Naruto, so if you want to, people, you can give me ideas for the plotline. Here we go with a new chapter!
Disclaimer: The owner of Naruto is Masashi Kishimoto, I think, which is not me. I SHOULD KNOW!
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Chapter Nine: Chuunin Exams: Part One
I was still in shock over the surprising ease in completing the team of three, entering the contest, and starting the chuunin exams. Kara and Shiro had already decided to try and see what the competition was like, and left me behind, stuck in the crowd of ninja.
After a bunch of talking, a few minor skirmishes, and a bunch of ninja making themselves seem freakishly powerful, an annoying voice rang out above the crowd.
"I am Naruto Uzumaki, the next Hokage! Believe it!" Yep, Naruto's a freakin' idiot. At least he got struck over the head by some pink-haired banshee.
"Hey Sasuke, isn't that the kid you annihilated in that match?" Oh, when I find who started that rumor in battle, they are going down with little to no blood left in what one would not dare to call a body after I am done with it. I followed the voice to find Ino.
"Ino, what the hell are you doing spreading such blasphemy?" She giggled slightly and motioned to something behind her back.
"I found him Shikamaru! I told you he would take place in the exams, and that is twenty dollars you owe me!" I heard a small "what a drag" from behind her. So that is why she said that, to find me. "Yeah, I knew that saying that would cause you to come to me. So, how'd you get in? Don't you need a team of three?"
"Yeah, I got Shiro and Kara to join me. Shiro can't wait to be the skeleton out of someone, and Kara is just not really caring right now, she was more focused on trying to find a snack machine." She seemed to brighten up at the fact that I had made it in the tournament.
I suddenly felt a huge weight crush me in a bear hug of deathly proportions, it was Kiba. "So you made it, eh? I thought that Shino's plan to sign us up before you could would eliminate from the competition." I was going to kill Shino after this, and I thought he had the ability to not hate me, surprise there. (Note the sarcasm.) "Anyways, I hope that I get to fight you now, and I've been training."
I was about to retort smartly and tell him that no amount of training could help him and his lack of brains when I was sadly interrupted by the coughing voice of Gekko Hayate. "Everyone, the first -cough- part of the exams will -cough- start immediately. Go to the appropriate room, now, to -cough- be tested." 'Will someone just kill him already?' (A/N: How true is that, sadly. -Runs off crying-)
We, including Shikamaru, who looked like he was going to die of boredom, and Ino, who was busy rapidly spitting out exclamations involving Sakura and Sasuke, followed into the massive room. Little did we know that our wits would be tested not in a battle, but in a written test that was so boringly hard it could kill.
-Scene Change-
(A/N: Just to warn you, the exams may go by faster than one would think. Oh, and the questions for the test are totally made up by me, the almighty author.)
"Everyone take your seats. I will -cough- hand out the tests. Then, and only then will the true proctor -cough- appear." After the anticipated mass groan from everyone in the room, Hayate proceeded to hand out the test, which only held nine questions. Gekko then left in a puff of smoke, complete with him coughing like always.
"Great, nine questions that are exceedingly impossible, and we have a bunch of jounin staring holes through us. What could go wrong?" At least it wasn't me for once to spell out doom for the rest of the ninjas, instead it was some random ninja from the Village Hidden in the Mist. The answer to his overly cliché question was soon to follow, sadly it was in the form of our proctor.
Despite the appearance in overly dramatic smoke that nearly choked the rest of the ninja in the room, the proctor was very frightening in his appearance. "I am Ibiki Morino, the proctor of the first part of the exam: the written exam. There are a few rules…" After that, I tuned him out and looked at the test. 'Determine the sequence of these forgotten symbols of the ancients: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13.' I was doomed.
"YOU MAY BEGIN, and the tenth question will be given in fourty-five minutes." In an instant, four-hundred and seven pencils descended upon a multitude of papers, creating a sound akin to Kara's voice, grating and annoying. 'I wonder what the others are thinking about their tests? Let's check with a little jutsu, Mind Reading Jutsu!'
The flood of minds quickly dimmed down to about a few, but the easiest to pick out was Kiba's. 'Three times one, oh my gosh this is a hard test.' Wow Kiba, you're a living genius like Shikamaru. Let's try him now, then I'll have the answers. 'What a drag, hey Kail I know your there, here's the answers if you want them.' JACKPOT!
In about fourty minutes, I had finished the test and had read everyone's mind. Naruto's was as blank as his test, not surprisingly. Sakura's had all the answers and she had been possessed by Ino, who was thinking the scariest thoughts ever imagined, such as but not limited to killing Sakura on accident by jumping through the window. Kiba was still stuck on the three times one question and Shino was just thinking that his bugs would like the taste of my flesh. Then I was interrupted by a kid's voice.
"Hey, Morino dude I have to use the bathroom!" It was that weird puppeteer from Sunagakure, I read his mind and I was bombarded with about seventy thoughts by once, apparently it was some sort of defense from mind reading, odd. After he left, I was bored again and set to trying to read Sasuke's mind. All I got was the thought about 'being an avenger' followed by several 'Mwahahahaha' statements.
I looked at the clock and saw that it was actually a quarter to five o'clock. "Yes Kail, I know it is time for the tenth question." The whole class, now including the puppet master, seemed either shocked or bored to utter death. "The tenth question has a few rules regarding it, this question can fail your entire team if answered wrong and if you accept the question and get it wrong, you can never become a chuunin. Any of those who wish to quit, tell me now." This was followed by many random weak ninja quitting, causing their entire team to follow them out of the room.
Naruto was the only one who dared to break the silence, and right when he looked like he was raising his hand to quit also. "I will never quit, for I am the next Hokage. Believe it!" After about three seconds, I quit listening to the speech. However, the effects were immediate to those who actually listened, one could actually feel the enthusiasm in the air. "So I accept the question! Just what is it?"
"That was the question, whether you stayed or not. Those who stayed passed, those who left can build up confidence for next year. Good luck becoming chuunin, now for your next test. Anko?" As we looked around for the next proctor, a black cloak busted in through the window.
After we had all went into battle mode with stances ready, the cloak then unraveled to reveal a certain Anko Mitarashi, who was described by Kara as a living psychotic wannabe. However, Anko did not seem to be that at a glance, actually she looked very, um, nice. "Arriving, Anko Mitarashi! I am the proctor for the next exam, which will take place at this location." She chunked a load of maps at the class, then left.
'The Forest of Death, training area number fourty-four, that will be easy to get to.' I looked around for Kara and Shiro, but they had already left. "Wind Transfer Jutsu!" I felt the winds pick up around me, taking me to the destination of the exam.
At least they were supposed to, instead I hit the side of the Hokage tower. "What the hell? Stupid jutsu, wrong way!" Eventually, I got there just in time for the speech.
-Scene Change-
I arrived to see a stunned Naruto, who had a cut on his cheek, as well as the rest of the group, including Anko who was currently preoccupied with an evil laugh. "Okay, what happened?"
Thankfully, Anko repeated her little speech about the rules. "The teams will each enter through a gate, has to get both a heaven and earth scroll through any means necessary, and then get to the tower in the middle without opening the scrolls. Any questions?" She followed this with a crack of her knuckles, noting that if anyone spoke up, they would die. "GO!"
I watched as the separate teams each received their scrolls, then we were next. "Okay, we have our scroll, the heaven scroll. Shiro, did you note which teams had an earth scroll?" A small nod assured me. "Kara, we will need your abilities for a trap." Another nod came, followed by Kara raising her hand.
"I have a question, when did you become the leader of the group? I used to be a chuunin, so I am more eligible for leadership." She proudly stood, trying to say that she should be the leader.
Shiro answered for me. "Then do you already have a battle strategy? I think not. Did you immediately become leader just by talking? I think not. Are you an idiot? I think so." I smirked inwardly and started to focus as Kara started to yell repeatedly.
"Guys, we have to get to the tower as fast as possible, scroll or not." We instantly nodded in agreement and set off to the tower.
-Scene Change while Kara is still arguing-
We had arrived with few casualties, the only ones being my patience and I think I lost a few brain cells after smashing into several trees that 'came out of nowhere'. Surprisingly, we went so fast that we had made it to the tower in less than thirty minutes. It was now plan time.
"Kara, when a team attempts to come through the gate, we are going to beat the living hell out of them with jutsu. Shiro, set up that needle trap you told me about in training." My plan was guaranteed to get us a scroll, unless there was some overly powerful teams. The needle trap would alert us to anyone passing within seventy feet of the tower using bells and needles as alarms. After someone passed it, Kara would trap the enemy with water in our canteens, and I would steal the scrolls then proceed to disable the enemy ninja team. Absolute genius.
We waited a total of fifteen minutes until Shiro had set up the trap. He had even customized the trap so that the needles would pierce the enemy's body with a paralysis ingredient. That would ease up our job. Kara and me had taken a roost on the top of a tree in the range of the entire trap's alarm.
For a total of fifteen more minutes we had heard no one pass the trap, yet it wasn't even disabled. "They are taking forever, you would think that they would be able get the scrolls faster." Then the alarm went off, the trap had worked. "Come on Kara, we have a job to do!"
As we headed towards the alarm, we saw something very alarming. A huge mass of malevolent chakra was emanating from the area, and it smelt of blood. 'I am starting to think that this is not a good idea. The air reeks of death near here.' Then we saw the origin of the chakra, a sand ninja named Gaara no Sabaku.
His eyes were wide and bloodshot, looking akin to something like a demon. Even his teammates, including that evil puppeteer guy that scared the living hell out of me, were frightened of him. Then he looked straight at me. 'Oh, were so dead.'
Sand flew straight out of a gourd on his back, heading towards me at a speed similar to what one would consider mach one. "Die." That was the only word that came from Gaara's mouth. Kara instantly shot the sand out of the air with a blast of water in the shape of a dolphin.
To my surprise, the sand instantly started to waver in the air, slowly becoming similar to mud. The soaked sand was slowed down to the point where I could dodge the immense speed. 'Good job Kara, you just saved my life. I will buy you ramen later.' I dodged the blast of sand, yet the smell of blood was so intense that my vision began to waver.
"Oh no, Kara, take out his sand with your water, now!" I then felt an intense blast of wind strike my body. After I hit a tree from the force, I saw that the wind came from a giant fan on the female sand ninja's back. Then a puppet came towards me with a blade outstretched, I knew that the puppet was Kankuro's.
I flipped above the blade, landing on the puppet's head. I grabbed the puppet's back and channeled chakra straight into it, releasing it all in the process. The puppet exploded into a lot of pieces, yet the chakra strings were still attached. 'Oh no.' The separate blades flew straight at me, aimed for the heart.
A flood of senbon needles struck the arms, pinning them to the trees. Shiro had saved me. 'Great, ramen for everyone. I'm going to either be dead or broke by the end of the day.' "Thanks. Shiro, you get puppet boy over there. Kara, you get the demon kid. I'll take the girl."
I ran straight at her, ignoring the fact that her fan could generate wind. "Enveloping Cyclone!" She had me trapped in a rotating wind cyclone. Wind versus wind, this should be good.
"Wind Release: Inner Wind Flow!" I created a flow of wind going in the opposite direction of the cyclone's spin. It dispersed as expected, yet I met a fan to the face. The world started to spin, and I was out like a candle in the wind.
-Scene Change-
I awoke at the entrance of the tower. "What the hell happened here?" Shiro was battered with a bunch of bruises that littered his shoulders and all the way up to his head. Kara seemed to be out of breath and blood was splattered across her uniform's sleeves.
"That sand kid knocked you out, so we had to retreat. We left the scroll in the process, sort of to get them off of our trail. Sorry." Kara then added an awkward smile at the end, which revealed several teeth that were knocked out of place.
"So we have no scrolls, whatsoever? Well at least we are alive, and not too badly annihilated, right?" I smiled back, at least we still could get two more scrolls. The truth is that the trap was still intact and we could defeat the next people to come through the trap.
Luckily, right then the trap went off. "Kara, Shiro, let's take 'em down!" We set off in the direction of the alarm, which was only about a mile away.
-Scene Change-
It took about thirteen minutes to locate the cause. It was only a group of rain ninjas, and they didn't look anywhere near as tough as Gaara.
"Hey, you rain-nin, surrender the scrolls or die a painful death!" A 'yeah right' ensued, and the rain ninjas set into the most messed up battle stances I had ever seen. "You have got to be kidding me, that guy looks like an idiot."
The rain-nin ran at us in a hurried speed as if to strike first. A senbon needle rushed past, nowhere near the targeted area of my head. I instantly dispatched one of them with a simple kick to the nose, which probably either killed him or he would not be able to smell the flowers any time soon.
Shiro instantly disappeared into the ground, surprising the enemy ninja that was trying to kill him. "Behind you." A senbon needle struck the area on his neck as soon as he turned around, a paralyzing blow.
Kara summoned a puddle of water around the opponent, then imploded it, thus causing the opponent to choke into unconsciousness. "Easy as pie, umm, pie." Kara then proceeded to daydream about pie while I went for the scrolls.
"Well, there's the two scrolls, heaven and earth. Well at least that was incredibly easy, especially compared to the sand ninja battle." We all shook our heads and set out for the tower.
-Scene Change-
The trip took about fourteen more minutes, just breaking an hour in total time of travel. The entrance was incredibly glamorous, especially for being in the middle of a ninja exam. Gold and many other blindingly bright colors nearly killed my vision as we proceeded onward.
'Can someone please throw some black in here?' The colors of utter happiness continued onward until we reached a plaque, which held some words in what I believe was kanji. "Hey Kara, can you decipher that?"
"You can't even read kanji, that's a basic skill! Geez, such a kid…" As I was about to beat the living hell out of Kara, she began to read the sign, well at least it was more of a summary. "It says something about heaven and earth together will open the way, blah blah blah. I guess that means that we open them together."
As Kara began to open the heaven scroll, Shiro threw a senbon straight past her head. "Did you even consider that this may be a trap by other ninja? To get us to open the scrolls beforehand, it may hold undesired consequences." He was totally right, not only in the fact that Kara was an idiot, but also in the fact that some enemy ninja could have laid a trap.
"Well, then what do we do? Raid the tower for no reason, destroy other ninja out of boredom, lay down and die, or do we just wait for another team to try to open the scrolls? All of those seem like viable ideas to me." Kara was just attempting to be an idiot, but instead she came up with a good idea.
"Yes Kara, we are going to wait for another team, not die. If we observe the other teams, then maybe we will not fall prey to some unknown enemy trap." We all nodded in agreement with the plan.
-Scene Change-
Meanwhile…
Far away at the top of the tower was Anko Mitarashi, resident psychotic jounin. "Shouldn't we at least go down and tell them that it's not a trap? For being the third team in the tower they sure are dumb." The entire team of jounin sweat dropped at the simple fact.
Gekko Hayate, a.k.a. the coughing one, was the first to reply. "Actually, they are -cough- definitely the smartest team out of them all right now. Gaara's team -cough- just happened to have freakish amounts of strength, and Team Nuzashi of -cough- the rain ninjas just happened to find a group of ninjas incapacitated. I will go down -cough- myself and tell them the facts." With another lung-threatening cough, he got up and proceeded to go down the stairs.
-Scene Change-
Back with the trio of me, Kara, and Shiro, we were incredibly bored. Waiting for the next team was turning out to be the most boring event in the world. We had resorted to playing a version of pick-up sticks involving senbon.
Suddenly, a cough alerted us to the presence of a person. After nearly killing the person with a reaction involving several shuriken and kunai, we discovered it was only Gekko Hayate. "Can someone -cough- please get me down from -cough- here? Oh, and -cough- this plaque actually wasn't -cough- a trap. Congratulations, you -cough- pass."
We not only celebrated at the fact that we passed, but we also began to leave the room. The only thing remaining was to pass the preliminaries of the third exam, and then to pass the real test itself.
Actually, there was another thing remaining, and on a wall too. That just so happened to be getting Hayate… Whoops.
"CAN SOMEONE -cough- GET ME DOWN FROM -cough- HERE? Anyone, please?"
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A/N: I had fun writing the Gekko Hayate part of the chapter, MWAHAHAHA for keeping him on a wall. -avoids several thrown objects from Hayate fans- "Why are you trying to kill me, I am one of you!" Next chapter will be part three of the exams, and will be more action packed, if you like that. Also, another team will be involved in the exams, hint: they were mentioned earlier in the chapter. Remember that you can give me ideas for how to shape the storyline, for I am totally just writing on a whim here.
Reviews are the nectar of life, at least for us fan fiction writers. You would review not only for the story to continue, but for my life to continue as well! You don't want me to die, do you? REVIEW, OR THY LIFE SHALL BE IGNORED IN MY EYES, MWAHAHAHA!