Naruto awoke to a feeling of extreme danger, causing him to instantly roll out of bed and reach for his ninjato, reflexes that were the result of deadly days on the field. He was incredibly shocked when he did not have his ninjato in its sheath, but was able to palm a kunai quick enough to react to an attack.
His golden eyes took in the field around him, spotting the origin of the danger. It was Sasuke, covered in black tattoos and was dropping a brown haired boys arms down, having apparently just broken them. Sakura was soon wrapped around the boy, tears dripping down her face and mingling with her shorter hair as she said something, causing the boy to return to normal.
He ignored the group around him, as they were all Konoha genin with the exception of one sound Nin that was even now retreating, focusing instead on cataloguing what had happened to him. He had several superficial injuries that hadn't finished healing, and a mild case of chakra exhaustion. Now that he was fully awake and remembering, he was incredibly upset with the battle against Orochimaru.
While the man was not toying with him, in fact the man was using a great deal of his own skill, he had not been going all out. While Naruto believed he could match Kakashi when the two were at their best, the victory could go either way, and Kakashi would be the first to admit that he would be beaten by the Sannin, or any mid to high s-ranked ninja for that matter. While the man was good, there were quite a few better.
Beyond that, Naruto was still unable to use most of the abilities the hawks were attempting to teach him. Apparently the hawks had been wrong. It had not been laziness that stopped the shinobi from learning from the hawks, but rather the difficulty and time consumed in attempting to learn the techniques. Most shinobi were kept far too busy to spend the lifetime required to learn the abilities. Because of the lack of interest once they learned how much time was necessary, the hawks had grown complacent, such as when the sage had happily informed him of all the things the hawks would be able to do, praying that he would take the time to complete them seeing as how young Naruto was, along with his little Dojutsu.
In fact, he had tried the beginning stage of the hawk's sage mode. He wasn't in the mood to remember that, but that was actually how he got the scar down his front. His little joke with Kakashi about the others was actually accurate, having been given to him by enemies, but he had never been captured. Naruto could handle the kenjutsu techniques, in fact eagle dive was one of them, but the styles could only be learned with sage mode, and sage mode was impossible at this point.
Naruto got the feeling that all of the summons had a lot to teach their summoners, but needed the summoner young and adaptable to be able to master the techniques. As such, some of the best shinobi out there had found their summoning scrolls early, such as Jiraiya of the toads, Orochimaru of the snakes, and Hanzo of the Salamanders.
Back to the fight with Orochimaru, the man had indeed lived up to his title as one of the Legendary Sannin. It had taken continuous channeling of chakra to all of his limbs to keep up with the man, along with the pure drain of chakra that he had been forced to spend to keep his ninjato from being sliced into bits and pieces. That was all for naught though, as the blade had fallen to pieces right before Naruto passed out.
The only thing they had been somewhat equal in was jutsu, but neither one had turned it into a jutsu fight, focusing more on skill and speed the way a shinobi should, using jutsu only to complement their fighting.
That brought his thoughts to the end of the battle, and what Orochimaru had called him. Namikaze. There was only one Namikaze in all of Konoha's history, the man being an orphan who had chosen his own last name, the Yondaime Hokage. 'Why would Orochimaru call me that? Unless…well, it would certainly explain a lot. It would also explain why Kakashi told me to look for Jiraiya of the Sannin to answer my questions.'
Naruto resolved to get answers from the man as soon as possible, even if he needed to get his summons and track him down.
Naruto was jerked from his thoughts by his team coming back, and Naruto didn't even talk to them as they fled towards the tower, not stopping for anything. A brief conversation with Iruka, who popped out of the summoning scrolls, and they entered the tower, being forced to enter a set of preliminaries without the group having any time to rest.
~Break~
'Pathetic.' Thought Naruto as he watched the various fights. (All fights except for Naruto's are canon, as he's the only one who has changed) Each and every shinobi had so much potential, but wasted it by focusing on only one ability, and even then there was so much more that the genin could do with them.
The chakra sucker could increase his speed of performance, or make it so that any contact could suck chakra rather than only his hands. Naruto would hold judgment on the puppeteer, considering how short the fight was. Both Chouji and Shikamaru could do so much more with their family jutsu if only they learned some other things to compliment them. Ino and Sakura sucked, enough said. Sasuke had been unable to use his Sharingan for some reason, but Naruto got the feeling that Kakashi was fixing that. Temari was a one trick pony with her fan, and Tenten was even worse. Both Hinata and Neji were pathetic, seeing as all that they had were taijutsu, and even then it was only one style. At least Lee only had taijutsu through no fault of his own.
Of the genin only Lee and Gaara were truly skilled, Lee with taijutsu and Gaara with his sand. Of course, Lee could pick up a weapon as backup and Gaara could avoid the problem with his defense by mastering the elements involved.
Naruto was startled by a scream of joy from Kiba, causing him to look at the screen to see his name. Naruto wasn't ready to fight just yet, but moved down to the arena anyways.
The proctor looked at the two before asking "Ready?" to both. Naruto nodded silently, eyes already evaluating his opponent. Kiba screamed a yes, and with a "haijaime" the battle began. The boy put his dog on the ground and charged Naruto with a yell, only for Naruto's fist to be planted in his face and knocked the boy back.
Spitting blood from his now split lip, he leaned over, Akamaru hopping up onto his back, making a hand seal, or would of if Naruto hadn't stolen Akamaru from Kiba's back in a movement to fast for the boy to see. He knocked the dog out, placing him on the ground while Kiba tried to figure out where he had gone.
"Akamaru, can you smell him? Where is he?" "Right behind you." Kiba whirled around in shock, his lack of reflexes proving catastrophic as he took three heavy punches, cracking every rib, if not breaking one or two. Unwilling to give up, he stumbled back before crouching again, leaping into the trademark spin of his clan.
"Tsuuga!" 'Well, that's an interesting technique. I think I'll recreate it, considering how useful it could be.' Naruto thought as Kiba spun towards him. 'Unfortunately for Kiba, his rotation is rather slow, which will allow me to do this!'
"Doton: Doryu Heki! (Mud Slide Barrier)" He stomped the ground, causing a solid wall of earth to rise up, before spraying a great deal of mud onto the back of the barrier, making it much tougher than the original mud barrier would have been, giving it the hardness of iron.
Kiba slammed into the wall, the spinning ending almost immediately after contact, Kiba's head proving no match for the wall, knocking himself unconscious. Naruto ignored the proctor as he walked back up to the balcony, figuring out ways to recreate a better version of the Inazuka technique.
After a short while the pairings for the finals were set up, with Naruto fighting Neji Hyuuga, and then either Gaara or Sasuke, most likely Gaara. He looked at Kakashi, who had returned right before Naruto's fight, and the man handed him a scroll, telling him in a low voice that he was being forced to train Sasuke for his fight with Gaara. Naruto nodded understandingly, already planning on what to improve during the month.
AN: Alright, I believe I clarified a few things one of you readers asked about in this chapter, and Balatros I believe I answered yours as well, but I'll rewrite it down here as well.
Naruto is about the same level as Kakashi at his best, seeing as my Kakashi has a low-kage level of chakra and is a Ninjutsu and tracking specialist. A battle between the two would go either way in the long run, Naruto possibly winning because of his surprise tactics or Kakashi winning because of his own experience and skill.
It has been proven several times that Kakashi cannot match a Sannin or an Akatsuki member by himself, though he does give a good accounting, so while Naruto can hold his ground against one, he will wind up losing after a while, the only one he might win against being Hidan, because he's fast enough to avoid the scythe. Even then it's only a might.