The Chūnin Exams begin in a border town called Haven, and we spend half the day after our little get together at The Blunt Kunai getting to it.
Well, Kakashi does, since we get to 'ride' there unconscious and sealed in an incarceration scroll.
The reason for the scroll is because the exam starts tomorrow, and Haven is hundreds of kilometers away from The Leaf.
Now, while we could run that distance in a day, at the speeds we would need to maintain to manage it, even Naruto would be feeling it by the end.
He would likely be fine by morning of course, but most people (namely me and most definitely Sakura) don't have his irritatingly monstrous stamina and rate of recovery.
Consequently, we ride in the scroll, and Kakashi spends half the day running us there.
When he releases us from the scroll, we're in a small room with three beds crammed in, and Kakashi happily informs us that this is the room that's been assigned to us for the duration of our stay in the town.
While Sakura and I take in our… lacking accomodations, which thankfully seems to have its own bathroom at least, Naruto eyes our sensei suspiciously.
"Why do I feel like you have a room that's bigger than this one all to yourself?" the blonde asks.
Kakashi grins. "Because I do," he answers.
A man with that much of his face concealed really has no business being that expressive.
While naruto sticks out his tongue at Kakashi, Sakura heads to the sole window in the rokm. She pushes the curtain aside and peeks outside.
"Whoa," she says. "So many ninja."
"What? Really?" Naruto asks, rushing to join her, and, a little curious, I head to the window too.
The, I reckon from its elevation, third floor window gives an unobstructed view of a street heavy with foot traffic, with most of said foot traffic being ninja.
Now, this by itself, should be nothing noteworthy. Certainly not enough for Sakura to react with such amazement, seeing as she grew up in a Hidden Village and is herself a ninja.
What makes the scene outside the window amazing though, is that much of the ninja we can see, are foreign.
I don't think I've seen more than ten foreign ninja in my life.
In fact, I don't think I've seen all that many foreigners, period.
"This is so cool," Naruto says, face pressed up against the glass. "Look those guys are from Cloud," he adds, pointing at a team of Cloud ninja walking down the street.
They're a two-nin team, as, I understand, are most Cloud teams, their sensei making their number three.
The Cloud team is walking in the direction we're looking, so I can't see their faces, but there's something about them, even from the back, that niggles at my memory.
No. Not my memory. Caleb's.
The sensei is a blond woman, who even from behind I can tell is quite… shapely, and her genin are a boy and girl, the boy with silver hair and the girl with red.
Wait… that's Omoi, Samui, and… what was the redhead's name again?
Before I can dredge it out of Caleb's memories, Naruto flings the window wide open and yells out into the street. "Hey!"
Everyone pauses, and trained ears immediately pinpoint the source of the sound.
With a single word, Naruto has gotten the attention of the entire street.
"Naruto," Sakura whisper-shouts, jabbing the boy with an elbow. "What are you doing?"
Naruto ignores her.
"Listen up," he shouts instead to the street full of foreign ninja below. "My name is Naruto Uzumaki and there's only two things you need to know about me; one, I'm gonna be Hokage one day, and two, I'm gonna be winning The Chūnin Exams.
"Got it?"
A silent street and incredulous faces greet Naruto's proclamation, and the boy just begins to cackle, pleased with himself, when a half-eaten, lightning-coated bagel comes flying at his face at high speed.
I try to stop it, I really do, and I'm sure that with my sharingan turned on I would have managed it.
Unfortunately, I don't have my sharingan turned on. So I miss. Hence Naruto receives a half-eaten, lightning-coated bagel flying at high speed to the face.
The projectile slams into the boy so hard, it sends him flying all the way across the, admittedly, small room to slam into the opposite wall.
"Naruto!" Sakura screams in worry, in the same moment a shout of "Karui!" comes from outside.
Yes, Karui, that's her name; the hot-blooded, redhead from Cloud… who is also the one who threw the bagel.
Shit!
The Leaf and Cloud have… not the best relationship.
Is it possible for this to become an international incident?
Karui's teammates are certainly acting like it, seeing as the girl's sensei currently seems to be contemplating murder, and the boy, Omoi, looks like he's watching the world burn before his eyes.
"Gah!" With a loud scream of rage, Naruto, with a bleeding nose and breadcrumbs all over his face, dashes past us and out the window.
Kakashi grabs his jacket.
"What the—!?" Naruto splutters as his arrested motion leaves him dangling out the window in Kakashi's grip. "Put me down!"
"Okay," Kakashi agrees easily and drops him.
Naruto lands on the street, tucking into a roll to bleed out some of the energy of his fall.
Before he's even fully up, Kakashi has jumped down to join him.
To my surprise, Sakura follows too, the air-walking technique making her own decent significantly smoother.
Now left by myself up in the room and suddenly feeling awkward about it, I head down too, like my teammates taking the expeditious route that is the window.
Samui literally drags Karui over to us by the ear.
Naruto starts to speak, but Kakashi places a firm hand on his head.
Samui gives an extra sharp tug on Karui's ear. "Apologize," she says.
Looking like she's literally eating glass, Karui says; "I'm sorry for attacking you."
Naruto starts to speak again but Kakashi's grip on his head tightens.
"What do we say?" he asks Naruto with completely fake pleasantness.
Naruto growls, then bites out through gritted teeth; "It's fine."
From the look in his eyes though, it's anything but. And from the way they stare at each other, this is far from over.
"We're good?" Samui asks, and I only just now notice that all this time, she and Kakashi's eyes have been trained on each other's.
In fact, the entire street is tense, watching with baited breath.
The civilians present look terrified.
This just almost became a major incident. And honestly, I'm not even sure who to blame for it, Naruto or Karui.
"We're good," Kakashi says. "Just cute, little genin being their excitable selves."
Samui nods, then she turns and marches both her students away.
Slowly, the street relaxes, and everyone carries on with what they've been doing.
Although, for the rest of the day, I don't miss the glances at us.
Fucking Naruto.
——
"Are those two some sort of idiots?" Kankuro asked as he and his siblings watched the jōnin-sensei successfully defuse what could have easily turned into a big deal from the restaurant across the street.
"You have to ask?" Temari queried, and Kankuro had to admit that she had a point; those two were obviously idiots.
"Naruto Uzumaki," Gaara said softly, repeating the idiot blonde's name.
Temari scoffed. "You actually remembered it?" she asked rhetorically. "Don't bother yourself, pepper—" their nickname for him "—an idiot like that is unlikely to ever be anything worthwhile."
Kankuro had to agree with that.
Gaara, of course, said nothing. But that was okay, their adorable, little brother was never really one for talking.
——
Kurotsuchi, genin of Stone and granddaughter of The Third Tsuchikage looked down from her rooftop perch.
Naruto Uzumaki, huh? He looked fun.
More interesting though was that 'last' Uchiha teammate of his.
Meh. No matter. No one in this exam could match her. That was the whole point of her being here.
Kurotsuchi will show the world that Stone was still the most powerful of all the Hidden Villages. Just as she had promised her grandfather.
Thanks for reading.
As always, I got a Patre-on.
I appreciate your support.