Author's Note: Wow! Five reviews already! ^_^ As promised, here's Chapter Eight. The Chunin exam finally begins! Please let me know if you spot any errors. I thought I would have more time to proofread this. ^_^'
Disclaimer: Don't own much of anything. I make no money off this story.
Sandstorms and Falling Leaves
Chapter 8: Tests and Traps
Naruto met Matsuri and Manabu outside the academy where the first test of the chunin exam was set to take place.
"Alright, let's go!" Naruto bounced excitedly as he led the way into the building.
Ten minutes later the three genins stopped in confusion as they arrived back outside.
"Huh?" The yellow haired jinchuriki scratched his head. "We should be on the second floor...but this is where we came in."
"It's a genjutsu." Manabu told the blonde. He quickly dispelled the effect from himself.
"Oh yeah, I knew that." Naruto said sheepishly, doing the same.
Matsuri rolled her eyes and followed suit before the three tackled the academy building again.
Five minutes later, the group arrived at the correct room and were allowed inside by a beaming Rock Lee.
In the waiting area outside the exam room they got their first real glimpse of the other chunin candidates. There were fifteen squads participating in the preliminary exam. Naruto recognized a few of the leaf ninjas as having been at the academy with him, just a year or two behind his class. He eyed the squads from other villages nervously, thinking of the last chunin exam he had taken and the terrible attack that had come with it...of the loss of the third hokage and the start of Sasuke's descent into madness.
Then he glanced at Matsuri and smiled, thinking that even from that horrible tragedy, good things had happened. Konohagakure was stronger than ever because of the alliance with Sunagakure.
It seemed like an hour had passed before the classroom door opened.
"Take your seat as your name is called." The proctor commanded before proceeding to read off names from the list he held.
The list was alphabetical so Naruto found himself the very last one to be called; sometimes the name Uzumaki was inconvenient. He was jittery with anticipation by the time he got to his seat, so much so that he nearly missed his chair and only ninja reflexes kept him from landing in the floor.
At last all the chunin hopefuls were seated and the proctor explained the testing procedure.
"You will each be given a test with nine questions about the theory behind different kinds of ninjutsu. You will have one hour to complete the test. These four chunins will be watching for anyone attempting to cheat." He gestured at Iruka, Hinata, Shino, and Kiba who were holding the exam papers and waiting for the signal to pass them out. "Anyone caught cheating will be immediately disqualified, as will their squad." He paused to ensure he still had their attention.
"You may give up at anytime if you feel you cannot pass the test. However, you will also cause the other members of your squad to fail if you do so. At the end of the hour, those that remain will be given one final question to answer. Anyone who attempts the final question and gets it wrong will be disqualified and will not be allowed to retake the exam for at least five years. If your entire squad gets the question wrong, you will all be banned from the chunin exams for ten years. Any questions?" The room was silent except for a few nervous coughs. "Begin."
Naruto accepted his exam from Kiba, who grinned encouragingly at the yellow haired genin. The jinchuriki scrawled his name in the blank provided and then examined the test.
'On the provided diagram, draw and label the chakra network...triangulate the correct speed and trajectory at which a kunai must be thrown to hit the target presented in the diagram below...' Naruto frowned, this test was just as hard as the last time. Still, he had a lot more experience now, surely he could do something.
He glanced up as Hinata gestured and Shino and Kiba proceeded to remove several genins she had seen cheating. Their teammates followed them out in short order.
Resolutely, Naruto started writing. He wasn't sure if his answers were correct but at least this time his paper wouldn't be blank.
The hour passed with agonizing slowness, the number of squads dwindled as more and more people either cracked under the pressure and walked out or were caught by the watchful chunins.
Naruto was pleased that his squad was still in the running. The few times he dared to steal a glance around, Matsuri was hard at work on her paper, scribbling and rubbing out answers nervously. Meanwhile Manabu was by far the calmest of their trio, within half an hour the complex test was laying face down in front of the older genin while he waited for the last question.
'Well, no wonder. He probably has all this stuff memorized by now.' Naruto thought to himself before turning his attention back to his own work. Something about his chakra diagram didn't look right so he added some more loops to it just for effect.
Finally the proctor called time. "Pencils down. It is time for the last question. Once I present it to you, you are committed to answering it. Walking out will then be considered an incorrect answer. Would anyone like to leave now?"
Team members all around the room looked at each other nervously. One squad of very young genins stood and filed silently out. Naruto counted only eight squads left from the original fifteen, not counting his own.
"Anyone else?" The proctor asked. "No? Very well. The final question is this: What is the most important key to survival as a ninja? You have ten minutes."
Naruto blinked. That wasn't the sort of question he had been expecting. He thought back to all his missions over the years, all the fights he had been in. 'Being prepared is important...but it is possible to survive without supplies...' He pondered. 'Being strong is...no, because we beat enemies that were much stronger than we were sometimes.'
His mind wandered to his very first day as a genin, meeting Kakashi-sensei and taking his test, Sasuke sharing his lunch because he didn't want Naruto to be weak later when the team might need him, Kakashi popping up to announce they had passed. Blue eyes lit up in excitement and he hastily scribbled his answer on the blank lines provided for question ten.
The orange clad ninja sat back in his chair and eyed the clock. Four minutes left. Then he would find out if his squad had made it through the first test.
'And I'll know if my career as a ninja is over.' He thought nervously, remembering Tsunade's ultimatum.
The seconds ticked by. Naruto watched as his fellow hopefuls finished the exam. Some were writing rapidly, while others seemed to still be thinking. The latter group included Matsuri. A few, including Manabu, were finished.
With only a minute to go, Matsuri finally scribbled a few words and sat back, glancing around nervously to see who else was finished.
"Time." The chunins swiftly collected the tests and returned them to the proctor. The scarred ninja examined the first test for a few seconds. "If you fail, you are to exit at once. Goru Abara, Fail. Manabu Akado, Pass."
Naruto breathed a small sigh of relief. One down, two to go. The proctor continued to pronounce the results in a firm voice. Nine more people passed before he reached Matsuri.
"Matsuri of Sunagakure, Pass."
"Yes!" The young Suna ninja clapped her hands over her mouth in embarrassment at her outburst, blushing crimson but still managing to look pleased.
Naruto shot her a thumbs-up as her eyes passed over him. She replied with a grateful smile before turning her attention back to the proctor.
'Last one. Hope I don't blow this for all of us.' The jinchuriki broke out in a sweat as the proctor drew ever closer to his exam. A little over half of the group had passed the final question. Three squads had been disqualified, one had been extremely unlucky and all three members had failed.
Finally, the proctor reached his exam. The scarred face frowned, one eyebrow lifted in confusion as he scanned the unusual answers Naruto had penned for the first nine questions. Then he reached the final answer. One word: Teamwork. "Naruto Uzumaki, Pass."
"YES!" The blonde teen launched out of his seat and pumped his fist in the air. "We did it!" He grinned madly at his squad mates.
"The second stage of the exam will begin tomorrow at dawn." The proctor announced. "Dismissed!"
Naruto tried to go to bed early that night but his mind wouldn't shut down. He tossed and turned, unable to relax. What if he still wasn't good enough to pass the exam. He had made it so far the last time and still didn't make chunin.
Gaara's arrival interrupted his anxious musings. The redhead slid the window closed and crawled under the light blanket, curling up and snuggling into the yellow haired ninja's arms.
"You'll do fine. Go to sleep." She murmured with a small smirk, tucking her head under his chin.
Naruto grinned, wondering how she knew what he was thinking. "Thanks." He whispered back.
Breathing in the scent of the soft crimson strands, the leaf ninja closed his eyes and felt a sense of calm wash over him. 'Of course he would pass. He couldn't disappoint Gaara.'
Silently, a shadow flitted across the rooftops of Konoha. The figure slipped stealthily in through a window and padded across the darkened living room of the small apartment. Deftly avoiding the traps and alarms that were set to deter intruders, the assassin crept into the room where his target lay under a mountain of blankets.
'Of course, it must seem cold here at night after spending most of your life in the desert sun.' He reasoned as he approached.
A long thin blade appeared in his hand from a hidden sheathe. The tip glistened with poison in the faint moonlight filtering in through the curtains. The assassin raised the blade and brought it down on the sleeping form.
Only to realize his mistake a moment too late as the knife was ensnared in a sucking pile of sand where the occupant should have been. The would be assassin tried to jerk his hand back as the knife was swallowed up but the sand crept around his wrist as well and held him fast.
Gaara jerked awake, startling Naruto who was immediately alert upon seeing her expression.
"Someone just tried to kill me." The redhead said flatly, rising from the narrow bed and flitting out the window in a blur.
Naruto followed without question, correctly assuming the sand ninja had been alerted by some trap she had set.
The pair crossed the village via the rooftops, slowing only when they reached the building Gaara lived in. Silent hand signals passed between them and Naruto split off, scaling quickly down the side of the building to block escape via the window.
Meanwhile the redhead entered through the front door. She could see a couple of the traps in the living room had been expertly disarmed. She picked her way across the room easily, purposefully triggering a signal that would wake her sister if the blonde hadn't been incapacitated by the intruder. That thought made a cold knot of fear settle in her stomach and a flicker of fury bubble up in her mind.
The sand wielder slipped into the hallway, relieved to see Temari exiting her room with her close quarters fans in her hands. Gaara signaled the pigtailed blonde and the sisters moved toward the redhead's room with long practiced cooperation.
They took positions on either side of the doorway. With a tendril of sand pulled from a vase at the end of the hall, the younger sibling pushed open her door and flipped on the light. A kunai thudded into the wall across from the door. Crashing sounds from inside the room indicated Naruto's arrival had gone as planned and the Suna ninjas entered the room to find that the orange clad jinchuriki, all fifteen of him, had the assassin well in hand...at least the hand not caught in Gaara's sand trap.
The redhead might have found the sight amusing if she hadn't been so furious. "Who are you?" She demanded harshly.
"You should've stayed dead." The assassin snarled back, before he bit down on something. "This is just the beginning."
Within seconds he began to convulse and his eyes rolled back in his head. A trickle of blood ran from his nose and he would have collapsed had Naruto not held him upright.
The blonde dismissed his shadow clones and lowered the man to the floor with a grim expression. "He's dead."
Gaara looked at Temari and nodded, signaling her eldest sibling to bring in the rest of the Suna ninjas.
The pigtailed blonde darted away in a blur, leaving Gaara and Naruto alone with the body of the dead ninja.
"The Hokage will need to be notified." The redhead said flatly.
"I know, but I'm not leaving you until we're sure he was working alone." The blonde replied, eying her carefully. Gaara's eyes were riveted on the corpse, her face a carefully blank mask. Only her clenched fists gave any indication of her inner struggle. After a few moments he slowly approached the motionless young woman. "You can let it show you know, if you want to...I mean...if I were you, I'd be really pissed right now."
Gaara blinked, taking her eyes off of the body and locking them on Naruto instead. "I stopped being angry about people trying to kill me years ago. I got tired of being angry all the time." She shrugged, relaxing her tense muscles just slightly. "What bothers me is how close he got...He could have...What if he had tried to take out Temari first? He made it past all our regular wards and seals."
"So he was pretty good then." Naruto glanced back at the limp form before hastily looking away. "Thankfully just not good enough."
"You don't understand." The ex-jinchuriki shook her head vehemently. "Only a sand ninja would know how to avoid some of those traps."
"Oh..." Blue eyes widened in alarm. "So that guy...was from Sunagakure?" He asked in disbelief.
"It is a strong possibility." Gaara nodded. "He may be a rogue...I hope so." She grimaced. "Otherwise..."
"Otherwise, it means someone on the council wants you dead." Temari said bluntly as she returned with Kankuro in tow. "The others are combing the city for signs that our visitor wasn't alone."
Kankuro looked Gaara over before silently moving on, satisfied that his little sister was in good health. He started towards the body to examine it but stopped short as he spotted Naruto. "Hey, how'd the leaf get here so fast?" He asked in puzzlement.
Temari cringed and Gaara paled slightly. The leaf ninja in question felt a bead of sweat roll down his temple. Kankuro did not know about Gaara's sleeping arrangements.
Gaara stepped up and laid a hand on her elder brother's arm to get his attention, and to restrain him if what she had to tell him went over as badly as she feared it would. "He came with me when I felt the sand trap in my bed trigger. We were together when the attack occurred." She hesitated but decided full disclosure would be easier in the long run. "I've been sleeping with Naruto at his apartment."
"You've what?!" The puppetmaster shouted. "I thought we had taught you better! What were you thinking? I'll kill him..." He tried to turn towards the distinctly uncomfortable looking jinchuriki but Gaara's grip had turned to steel and he couldn't pull away without hurting either her or himself.
"We're just sleeping, Kankuro." The redhead told him with almost complete honesty, he didn't need to hear about their experiment with French kissing. She frowned, trying to find the best way to explain the situation. "I didn't intend to stay there the first time, I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping and I went to Naruto to talk. After we talked for a while, I fell asleep...and I slept better than I have in my entire life. Naruto's presence just...soothes me, I guess. So I kept going back...every night since." She finished the unusually long and difficult explanation and fell silent, looking at her brother with aqua eyes that pleaded for him to understand.
Kankuro frowned. "It has to stop, Gaara. If anyone from home finds out...they'll never believe you. You'll be an outcast again at best."
"I know...but I need this right now. We just have to make sure no one else finds out."
"But..."
"No."
The masked shinobi sighed. "Sheesh...you don't know how to make anything easy for me, do you Sis?"
Gaara's expression lightened as she recognized her brother's way of accepting the situation. "You'd be bored. Now, about him?" She pointed at the dead assassin and the group got back to the business at hand.
Kankuro knelt beside the dead ninja and cautiously examined the corpse. "He's definitely no amateur." The puppetmaster used Crow to move the body and rifle through the attacker's belongings. "Half these weapons are coated with scorpion venom and a couple have something else on them that I can't identify just yet. It will need to be tested, but I'm fairly certain it's some kind of poison." He continued to report as he systematically had Crow removing and setting aside the various weapons and other dangerous items. "The guy had a poison capsule in his mouth in case of capture, which he obviously broke. Potent stuff from the look of him. He also had a couple of explosive booby-traps on his personal gear...most likely intended to destroy his remains or possibly finish the job for him if he died without success. Lucky for us, I'm damn paranoid and was able to disable them without setting them off."
"None of that tells us who he was, or who sent him." Temari glared at the dead man in disgust. "I'd really like to know how he knew just which room was Gaara's and how he made it past all the traps without waking me."
Kankuro carefully removed the dead man's mask so they could see the assassin's face.
"Hey..." Naruto blinked in shock. "I know him, he was one of the chunin hopefuls at the test today. He failed."
"That explains why he attacked without doing enough surveillance to find out I wasn't here." Gaara said flatly.
"Yeah, all failed applicants have to leave Konoha by tomorrow. The Crybaby thought it would be a good idea to reduce the number of foreign ninjas in the village as the exam moves into the more dangerous stages." Temari explained at Naruto's blank look.
"Oh, that makes sense...but why would they send a genin to assassinate Gaara?" Naruto's eyebrows furrowed as he attempted to puzzle everything out. "They had to know this would fail, right?"
"It's almost insulting when you think about it." Temari muttered, eying the very young, very dead wannabe assassin sourly.
"Perhaps it was intended to be." Another voice pointed out dryly, before Kakashi slipped out of the shadows of the hallway to join them. "Or perhaps it was some sort of test run, to gauge what sort of defenses you have in place for the exiled Kazekage."
Seeing four pairs of eyes suddenly on him with a mixture of confusion and suspicion, Kakashi smiled sheepishly with his visible eye. "I guess the esteemed Hokage didn't mention that this apartment building also houses a number of leaf jonin, including myself." He bowed slightly. "Consider me a bit of back up security, for just such an occasion as this. I have already notified the Hokage about the situation and patrols throughout the village are being doubled as we speak."
Kankuro nodded in approval of the increased security. "Gaara needs someplace secure to stay for the night, until we figure out how this guy got in without triggering the traps."
"She can stay with me." Naruto volunteered, just a bit too quickly if the leaf jonin's raised eyebrow was any indication. "I mean, uh...I can sleep on the couch...or uh..."
Kankuro opened his mouth, a protest on the tip of his tongue.
Gaara cut him off before he could make a sound. "Thank you, Naruto. I would be honored to accept you hospitality." She nodded. "We should go now." She grabbed his hand and darted out the window with the blonde in tow.
Kakashi watched them go, a smirk playing behind his mask. "So...what was that about?" He asked dryly, turning to the elder sand siblings.
Temari shrugged nervously. "Gaara has never been much for crowds."
"Yeah." Kankuro was quick to agree, but he made plans to look in on his sister and her...boyfriend, he mentally cringed at the term, after they finished dealing with the assassin.
"Gaara?" Naruto whispered once they settled back into his narrow bed.
"Hm?" The redhead's response was muffled against his chest.
"I need this too." He mumbled sleepily.
Aqua colored eyes snapped open as Gaara recalled saying those words to her brother earlier. She pushed herself up on one elbow, intending to ask the jinchuriki what he meant by that, but the blonde had drifted off.
A small smile lifted the corner of her lips as she watched him sleep. His mouth hung open and small snores periodically rumbled from him. She found the fact that he slept so easily in her presence to be oddly satisfying. She leaned in and kissed him softly on the cheek.
"Thanks." She whispered, not entirely sure what the word was for but feeling it needed to be said.
Gaara settled back into what had quickly become her favorite sleeping position, curled into Naruto's chest with his chin on top of her head and his arm draped over her, and soon joined the blonde in sleep.
To be continued...
Author's Note: Alright people. The next chapter is in the works and I hope to finish it in the next week or so. Please review!