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Chapter 8: Preliminaries - Part 1
A few hours after the sound shinobi ambushed Team 7, or at least tried to, they arrived at the tower in the middle. Luckily the sound team had the earth scroll, which just so happens to fit with their heaven scroll. Walking into the tower, Naruto placed the chakra exhausted Hinata against a wall, a clone doing the same with a sleeping Sasuke.
As he sat in the empty room, except the riddle board on the far end of the room, Naruto decided to take a look at his scrolls.
"Okay let's give this a shot." He mumbled to himself as he got up and walked to the riddle board.
'Hmm, let's see. Heaven – Earth – Open – Connect. I'm guessing the Heaven and Earth are referring to the scrolls, so maybe I should open them. No they told us not to when we entered the forest, but then again we only had one back then and now we have both and we're in the forest tower. Well I suppose there's only one way to find out.' The boy reasoned as he pulled out the two scrolls and threw them over eachother to form a cross.
Waiting a few seconds, Naruto tensed up when he heard a loud *POOF* and saw smoke rising from the scrolls, but he relaxed when he saw Iruka standing in the middle of the scrolls smirking down at him.
"Iruka-sensei!" Naruto yelled as he jumped onto his sensei out of excitement.
"The one and only. Now you might be wondering why I'm here." Iruka began while chuckling at the blue eyed boy's antics. "I'm here to congratulate you and your team on passing the second stage of the Chuunin exams, and with two days to spare. Unfortunately your sensei is a bit busy at the moment so he couldn't be here. Now let's get you and your team some medical attention." Iruka finished as he slung a still sleeping Sasuke over his shoulders.
"What happened to them anyway? I mean you all look more beat up than you should, especially you Naruto. You look like the dead walking." Iruka asked while looking over Team 7, concern evident on his face.
"We got attacked by this Pedo looking guy that summons snakes, if my guess is right it was Orochimaru of the Sanin. He put a seal on Sasuke and modified the seal on my stomach to restrict the Nine-Tails Chakra. Hinata is suffering from Chakra Exhaustion because she kept her Byakugan active the whole time after the attack and only passed out a few minutes before we entered the tower." Naruto explained to a shocked Iruka.
'They survived an encounter with a Sanin.' Iruka though with amazement as he led Naruto to the medical center.
:-:
The first thing Hinata noticed when she woke up was that she was in a dark room, the second was that she was lying on the most comfortable bed she ever felt and the third and finale thing she noticed was that someone sat in a chair next to her bed, flipping the pages of some book that was hard to make out.
"Oh, you're finally awake huh?" asked a familiar voice. She could see the unknown figure close the book he was reading and leaned forward in his chair, revealing the covered face of her silwer haired sensei.
"Kakashi-sensei. Where are we? Where is Sasuke and Naruto-kun?" The bleary eyed girl asked.
"We're in the forest tower. As for your teammate's whereabouts, Sasuke is in another room and Naruto is… well why don't you take a look for yourself." The Cyclops answered and pointed to her right side at the last part.
Turning her head, Hinata let out a small *eep* when she saw Naruto lying with his head on her pillow while somehow simultaneously sitting in a chair and holding her hand.
"When did we arrive at the tower?" she asked once she managed to calm herself down again.
"You got here this morning. Both you and Sasuke arrived here on Naruto's back." Kakashi answered before continuing, "He told me about Orochimaru and the sound shinobi. How are you holding up?"
"I'm as fine as someone can be after encounters like that." Hinata answered with a small smile then giggled, "Though I suppose my ego is a bit bruised now that I think about it."
Kakashi gave a small smile at the girl's words before standing up.
"Rest up for now. We're gonna have a few preliminary rounds in two days' time due to too many teams passing the second stage." He said before walking out of the room, leaving Hinata with her own thoughts and a sleeping teammate.
'I wonder who I'll be up against.' Was her last thought before sleep over took her again.
:-:
Sasuke lay awake in his bed, trying to remember how he got there. The only thing he could remember from after the snake summoner attacked them was seeing the fearful face of his female teammate.
"My neck is killing me." He mumbled as he tried to sit up.
"I can imagine. Who knows how much that damned snake modified the seal after he gave me one." Came an unfamiliar voice in the corner of his dark room. Stepping out of the shadows was the proctor of the second exam, Anko Mitarashi if Sasuke remembers correctly.
"What are you doing here?" The boy asked curiously and a little on guard at the woman's sudden appearance.
"I came to see how much the seal affected you. So… how do feel?" She asked, her eyes slightly narrowed.
"I feel fine." Was the short answer she received.
"What's your dream?" She asked immediately after.
"To kill my brother." The raven haired boy answered again, "What's with the questions?"
"Would you sacrifice your friends to gain the needed power to kill your power?" Was her next question, ignoring the boys' own.
"Yes…Wait no, no I wouldn't." Sasuke answered, mentally kicking himself for thinking otherwise.
"I see. So the seal is already corrupting your judgment." Anko stated before walking out of the room leaving a confused Sasuke on his own.
Closing the door behind her Anko turned to her companion.
"So?" Kakashi asked not even looking up from his book.
"Seal it, and make sure to keep an eye on him. I don't know how much stronger his seal is than mine, but it's corrupting him so fast it might be nearly impossible to condition it." Anko answered.
"Things just got a whole lot more complicated." The Cyclops mumbled before walking of.
:-:
The next day you could find Naruto going through the cupboards in the Tower kitchen in search of ramen. Not finding any he settled for making himself a sandwich. As he ate his food he decided to explore the rest of the tower, and soon found his silver haired Cyclops giggling at his usual orange book.
'He's always reading that book, I wonder if it's any good. I guess I'll check it out for myself later… oh yeah that reminds me.' He thought to himself as he appeared next to his sensei.
"Hey Kakashi-sensei. Can I ask you a few things?" The boy asked with a bit of nervousness.
"Sure, what is it?" Kakashi answered looking away from his book at the tone of his students' voice.
"Well the first thing I wanted to ask was if you have a copy of the newest Bingo Books?" Naruto asked, curiosity overpowering his nervousness.
"Yea. I picked it up this morning, haven't taken a look through it though." The Cyclops answered, pulling out a small black book from a pouch on his leg and replacing it with his green one.
"Can I take a look at it?" Naruto asked to which Kakashi held his arm out before leaning over the boys shoulder.
'Hmm… let's see. I think he said it was page… 26.' Naruto thought as he flipped through the pages. Finally he came to the one he was looking for and scanned the contents.
Name: Naruto Obito Uzumaki
Hair Color: Red tipped blond
Eye Color: Cobalt Aquamarine
Age: 12
Height: 5'1"
Gender: Male
Weight: Unknown. Estimate of 49 kg
Level of Ninjutsu: Unknown. Estimate of mid to high Chuunin
Level of Taijutsu: Unknown. Estimate of high Genin to low Chuunin
Level of Genjutsu: Unknown.
Known Jutsu: Shadow Clone Jutsu
Transformation Jutsu
Substitution Jutsu
Kenjutsu
Things of note: Has abnormally high chakra reserves.
Believed to have a Kekkei Genkai
Kill count: 216
Notable kills: Gatou the fishing magnate.
Once the boy finished reading he looked up at his surprised Sensei with a mixture of both shock and excitement. He realized that he will finally be treated as a real shinobi.
"Congratulations Naruto, this is a cause for celebration if I've ever seen one." Kakashi stated with a genuine eyesmile while ruffling the boys' hair. "But before that. What else did you want to ask me?"
"Oh yeah. When I was fighting against Pedo-Sannin and the Sound Shinobi I felt a strange feeling going through my body and when I followed the direction it* pulled me in, I dodged a fatal attack. I could also feel the Sound Shinobi sneaking up on us from a few meters away." Naruto stated, not noticing Kakashi's reaction to his name for Orochimaru.
"It sounds like you're a Battle Sensor. Aren't you just full of pleasant surprises today, huh Naruto-kun?" Kakashi answered while chuckling from amazement.
"What's a Battle Sensor, Kakashi-Sensei?" The blond asked, raising an eyebrow and cocking his head to the side.
"Well, like a normal sensor you can sense the location of anything that has chakra signature, within a certain radius of course. The more you use it, the bigger the radius gets. Now unlike a normal sensor, you can sense the chakra signature of people to such a degree that you can see their form. That means you can perfectly see every movement made inside your sensing radius. I believe you could also sense incoming chakra attacks, which would explain why dodged all those attacks. I'm guessing your subconscious used it and forced your body to move when it sensed danger." Kakashi explained.
"The only battle sensors that the Elemental Nations have seen came from either the Uzumaki or Senju clan, so to my knowledge you're the first battle sensor in a very long time."
As his sensei explained his newfound power to him, Naruto felt his excitement rise to an all-time high. If he could use the power to its fullest degree, he could become one of the strongest shinobi in the village.
"That's so COOL!" The boy yelled as he jumped up and down in the hallway they were walking in.
"Oh yeah, that reminds me. The third wanted me to give you this once you and your team came out of the forest." Kakashi said as he pulled out a note and storage scroll. "You can read the note now, but you can only open the scroll after the preliminaries and only when you're with either me or Jiraiya-Sama." Kakashi said, only giving his student the scroll once he agreed to his terms.
"Anyway, I have to go now. Unless you have more questions." The Cyclops stated before walking away once he saw Naruto shake his head.
"See you later Kakashi-Sensei" Naruto said as he started walking to Hinata's room to check up on her.
Opening the letter on his way he started to read.
Dear Naruto
I don't really know what to write. I realize I'm ruining your chance of a normal life by sealing the Nine Tails into you, but I hope you realize that I didn't have any other choice. You might hate me and I understand, so as an apology I asked my own teacher, Jiraiya of the Sannin, to take you on as an apprentice once you become a Chuunin. Of course you don't have to if you don't want to, but I hope you give him a chance. He can teach you many things, some of them are of my own creation. Maybe on day you can tame the fox's power. I don't know what path you decided to take in life, but know I'm proud of you, and if that doesn't mean anything to you then you should at least know that your parents are too and they loved you very much
P.S- Don't EVER give the damned Perv any money, he still owes me 20 Ryo.
-Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage.
:-:
The next day all participants that passed the second part of the exam were gathered in the Tower's Arena. The Third Hokage standing on a stage to address them all. To the Hokage's left was the procter of this part of the exam, Hayate Gekko.
Tuning out the boring speech, all members of Team 7 were busy scanning through the possible competition. They were drawn out of their observations though when the procter stepped forward and asked for everyone who thought they couldn't continue, to leave the arena. When everyone who gave up was gone, the procter called for Sasuke and someone named Yoroi Akadou to step onto the stage while everyone else was sent to the viewing balcony.
:-:
Eyeing his opponent, Sasuke was ready to use either Ninjutsu or Taijutsu to beat his opponent. Seeing Yoroi starting to move in, Sasuke subconsciously activated his Sharingan and redirected a thrown kunai towards its thrower. Yoroi, catching the kunai just before it could hit him in the face, didn't see Sasuke go for a round house kick towards his head.
When the kick knocked his opponent down, Sasuke followed up with a jab to Yoroi's neck but the man evaded the attack just before it could knock him unconscious. Making the mistake of deciding to attack from a range, Yoroi move further away from the Uchiha not realizing his mischievous smirk.
Sasuke watched as his opponent jumped away with a smirk on his face. Not many know that he, unlike his clan, specializes in stringed weapons including bows and Naruto's birthday present for him, the crossbow. Taking a storage scroll out of his weapon pouch, Sasuke injected some chakra into it before a strange looking weapon popped out. The weapon had a handle and trigger, on the end of the weapon two wings were spread out on either side with a slit to load with a smaller form of an arrow , spanned to either ends of the wings was a string that once pulled back and hooked on the trigger, looked like it would launch the small arrow.
'Well let's test out how effective the idiots' creations actually are.' Sasuke mused while he loaded his weapon with a bolt, aimed it at his surprised opponent, pulled the trigger and watched as the piece of wood was launched through his opponents left shoulder, rendering his arm useless.
After another few minutes of the one sided battle, Sasuke got bored and decided to end his match by charging his opponent and slamming a fist into Yoroi's face, rendering him unconscious and advertently winning the raven haired boy the match.
:-:
Naruto could only watch Sasuke's fight with pride, not because of his teammate brutally beating his opponent, no he couldn't care less about that. He was proud because Sasuke's opponent was being brutally beaten with a weapon HE created. Seeing its effectiveness also gave him a lot more ideas to increase the damage being dealt, one of those included explosive bolts. He silently chuckled at all the ideas, though he didn't realize Kakashi and Hinata sweatdropping and staring at him with concern.
Well I hope this is enough for now. I'm going to try for weekly updates again, now that I have a bit more free time. Also I feel like I should clarify some things about the story.
The first thing would be that most of the characters will use weapons in this fic, I just suck at writing into fights which doesn't pair well with me sucking at writing fights too.
Second would be that Naruto is a creator in this fic, he likes tinkering with random ideas in his free time, due to his Uzumaki blood, which is how he came up with the crossbow. I plan on expanding on this idea much further.
Third would be Hinata's character development. It's going to be slow in the first part but once I get to Shippuden's time frame everything is going to get better (hopefully), and she's going to play a much bigger role in the story then too.
I hope you all just bear with me and the story. I have a lot planned and I really want to share this with my readers.
Anyway see you all next week and this is The_Dovabean signing off. Later.