As the battle began, Sasuke leaped into a tree with two large shuriken in hand. Lu dashed at Mizuki a kunai in his right hand Lu began his onslauhgt by throwing the kunai at Mizuki, which he easily deflected. The kunai flew directly behind Mizuki, lodging itself in the dirt. This wasn't an issue, as he had a plan that revolved around the kunai, which had a steel wire attached to it. Sasuke threw one of his two large shuriken at Mizuki, then hopped down while throwing the other straight into the grass infront of him. Lu charged at Mizuki while he was distracted by Sasuke's shuriken, kicking Mizuki in the side. This resulted in Mizuki losing his balance, which proved fatal as Naruto followed up on Lu's attack with a left hook to Mizuki's face. As Mizuki recovered, Naruto jumped back and Lu kneed Mizuki in the stomach, launching Mizuki backwards a couple feet. Mizuki responded by throwing three explosive kunai in front of him, jumping back during the explosion, and using a smoke bomb to conceal himself.
"Bingo," Sasuke and Lu thought.
Mizuki's recovery was interrupted by a steel wire attached to the kunai Lu had previously thrown, causing Mizuki to trip over and fall. Next, Sasuke substituted himself with the large shuriken he'd thrown at Mizuki previously, delivering a flying back-kick to Mizuki's chest, knocking Mizuki to the ground.
"Is it my turn now?" one hundred Narutos questioned in unision, ready to attack.
"Go ahead," Lu smirked.
"He deserves it," Sasuke grinned.
The beating that Mizuki faced couldn't be described as anything but spectacular by the adolescents as they watched their traitorous former instructor get beaten to a pulp, desperately trying to defend himself from the one hundred clones, who were flooding the area with their signature orange clothing and blonde hair.
After Mizuki had been defeated, the trio tied him to a tree, stripping him of his headband, weapons, and chunin vest, patiently waiting on the ANBU to arrest Mizuki.
"You may have won," Mizuki chuckled, "but that blonde here is the nine-tailed demon
fox," he continued," If anyone's the traitor here it's the blonde kyuubi br -"
"That's enough, Mizuki," a voice called suddenly. Simultaneously with the voice's interruption, Iruka appeared. "I knew there was something off about you, but this is truly the lowest of the low, even for you, Mizuki," Iruka seethed. He turned to face Naruto, waiting for any response, but it seemed like the blonde was unaffected by what Mizuki had said. He smiled at Naruto, giving him a thumbs-up. "You certainly passed, Naruto," he congratulated proudly, handing Naruto his own headband as a sign that Naruto had become a genin.
"Wait, does this mean-"
"Yes Naruto, it means you're now a genin," Iruka gladly stated. This resulted in a small cheer in triumphance from Naruto, which Lu and Sasuke snickered in response to,
"Hey… don't make fun of me," Naruto pouted, jokingly.
"We're just glad to see a smile on your face again, Naruto," Lu smiled. Shortly after their small chat, the ANBU black ops had retrieved Mizuki, telling the boys that the hokage would want to see them the following evening.
The next morning, as everyone sat in attendance waiting for their genin headbands, Naruto proudly wore his in his seat with a slight grin on his face.
"Hey… how come the dead-last idiot has a headband already? Did he steal it?" Kiba complained.
His complaint was firmly dissmissed by Iruka when he responded by saying "He's not the dead last if he's the first to earn his headband, is he, Kiba?" This retort made students in the room chuckle, embarrassing Kiba. "Now, class, as you can see, Naruto has his headband already," he began, "So if you could all patiently wait as I call your names so you could receive your own, I'd appreiceiate it," Iruka instructed, ending his announcement.
Within five minutes each passing student received their headbands and had already been seated.
"Those of you that have passed are free to leave," Iruka instructed, "and be sure to return here at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, your genin squads should be prepared by then.
As the students left the academy, three ANBU operatives shunshined in front of Lu, Sasuke, and Naruto. Before they could react, the ANBU operatives had already shunshined back to the hokage's office.
"Uh, what happened?" Naruto, dazed, mumbled. The other two boys had the same question on their minds. As Hiruzen Sarutobi turned to face the children, it seemed as if their question had been answered.
"If I recall on the report, it was you three who took down the traitor, Mizuki, correct?" the old hokage began, "I've called you three here to pay you a b-rank mission's fee, and to let you know that this will go on your mission completion record. This also means all three of you have a choice to be independent genin as this is a field promotion. Any objections?" Hiruzen inquired, before doing as he promised and adding 75,000 ryo to the boys' shinobi bank accounts. After the transaction was completed, the three were then allowed to leave the hokage tower and continue their days as they pleased.
"Naruto, Sasuke, are you two free today?" Lu asked curiously. In response to this question both the blonde and the noirette turned to face Lu.
"Yeah, I was just about to train, though," Sasuke admitted.
"Oh really? Same, I was just about to see if I could improve my taijutsu any further with my clones," Naruto added.
"Great, because I wanted to do hands-on training with you two today. There's no chance that all three of us could be in the same cell because each genin cell requires two male genin and one kunoichi, meaning only two of us, if that , could be in the same cell," Lu summarized.
"I mean, sure, but how exactly are we going to train?" Naruto asked.
"Don't worry about that and follow me," Lu dismissed.
After about twenty minutes, the three arrived at a training ground and began discussing the exercise.
"What if we have a three-way sparring match? I'm sure my clones can provide help if any one gets in any real trouble, allowing us to train longer," Naruto suggested.
Both Lu and Sasuke stopped talking and slowly turned their heads towards Naruto, a false lightbulb glowinmg over their heads.
"I'm surprised you came up with that idea, Naruto," Lu exclaimed.
"It's almost as if when it comes to battle or training, Naruto's brain does a complete 180 and he becomes the next Minato Namikaze in terms of genius," Sasuke jokingly added.
Shortly after their mild excitement at Naruto's suggestion, the boys began thinking again.
"Hey, sasuke what justu and techniques do you know?" Lu asked curiously.
"I know fire style : great fireball jutsu, I have a decent shunshin, obviously all of the academy justu, I'm working on the fire style : phoenix flower jutsu, and I have a decent grasp on the genin-low chunin katas for the Uchiha clan's taijutsu, although I can't progress more due to the lack of a sharingan," Sasuke answered.
"And Naruto? What about you?" Lu extended his question.
"I know the multi shadow clone technique, the sexy jutstu…" he began, not noticing the shocked looks on both Lu and Sasuke's faces, "the shunshin is a little hard because I go too far, probably due to my chakra reserves or chakra control, I can use the earth style: headhunter technique, I can hardly do the academy's techniques, and my taijutsu should be about low chunin level," Naruto summarized.
"Sexy jutsu? For what purpose do you have that justu?" Sasuke retorted almost immediately after Naruto finished his summary.
"For pranks, obviously teme," Naruto teased, blowing raspberries in response.
"O-kay, now that we have that covered, I think we should have Naruto do one on one fights with us and learn from the other in small sessions so he can perfect the shunshin and academy techniques. This should allow us to get him up to speed, then after that, we can change it to personal learning time in rotations of sparring," Lu suggested.
With no objections added to Lu's idea, the training began. Their regimen began with Lu and Naruto fighting, while Sasuke taught Naruto's clone. Naruto and Lu's sparring match began with Naruto drawing a kunai and Lu doing the same. Naruto then threw the kunai at Lu, then followed up by throwing three shuriken at Lu as he deflected the kunai. During this sequence, Naruto leaped toward Lu as his opponent was evading his shuriken, allowing Naruto to close the distance. Lu threw an explosive kunai in the ground, then prepared an earth style: headhunter justu, submerging into the ground under Naruto.
"I can't see him, where'd he go?" Naruto leaped into the trees surrounding the clearing, only to notice a small hole in the ground. "Oh… he must've done a headhunter jutsu," he concluded, before throwing a smoke bomb in the hole where Lu had submerged himself.
This resulted in no reaction from his opponent, which surprised Naruto, but he got his reason soon.
"Did you really think I'd set up a jutsu like that without making myself hidden?" Lu asked, his kunai pressed to Naruto's throat.
"Well, I guess you could say that," Naruto said, as he dispelled.
"Shit, it was a clone," Lu sighed. He then hopped out of the tree back into the clearing, where he was met with a barrage of shuriken. As he deflected the shuriken, Lu noticed there were more coming from his blind spot, suggesting each time Lu turned from facing him, Naruto threw shuriken at his opponent's back. Lu had then thrown a smoke bomb down, shunshinning to his previous blind spot, where he found Naruto waiting.
"Gotcha," he commented as he pinned his opponent down.
"Hey, that's not fair, how come I lost the first round?" Naruto pouted as he and Lu walked back to the clearing.
"Hey sasuke, it's your turn now," Lu called out, swapping places with the noirette. As Lu approached Naruto's clone, he commented that Naruto could excel in trapping techniques and that Naruto should make more clones to go to the library and test out some traps, a suggestion that Naruto decided to follow.
"Alright, dobe, are you ready to get your ass handed to you?" Sasuke commented as he approached Naruto, cracking his knuckles and stretching.
"Sure, emo, that's if you can even touch me," Naruto smirked.
Sasuke opened up the match by using a fire style: great fireball jutsu to force Naruto to dodge, so he could follow and interrupt Naruto's escape. To Sasuke's surprise, Naruto was nowhere to be found.
"Where'd that blonde bastard go this time?" Sasuke grumbled. He got his answer as soon as he felt a vibration at his foot. This resulted in Sasuke springing up into the air after placing an explosive tag at his feet. Once the tag exploded, Sasuke noticed there was nothing but dirt where the small explosion was set off.
"Tsk, a clone," Sasuke thought, before resting momentarily, waiting for his opponent to attack. Naruto threw a kunai from Sasuke's blind spot in a tree, which was met with a substitution from Sasuke that led to him diving into Naruto, knocking them both out of the tree. Naruto recovered quickly and created two shadow clones that rushed at Sasuke. Sasuke responded by hitting one clone in the liver, the other in the chest, and a fire style :great fireball jutsu was launched at the blonde. Naruto responded by throwing a kunai into a tree with wire attached, throwing three shuriken at Sasuke, then in the flame, shunshinned behind his opponent, landing a devastating kick to Sasuke's back chest. The kick spiraled Sasuke into the wire previously thrown by Naruto, tripping him, leading to Naruto summoning two clones and a coordinated taijustu assault from all three blondes transpired as Sasuke recovered. It began with a sweeping kick at Sasuke's left leg, momentarily unstabilzing his balance, then an uppercut to punish the noirrette's mistake, then a right hook to his face, then all three blondes each kicked Sasuke in his stomach, launching him backwards into the forest's clearing again. Sasuke quickly recovered and threw three wired kunai coated in oil that wrapped around Naruto, restraining him, then casting one last fire style : great fireball jutsu, setting the wire ablaze. Naruto used a substitution justu and swapped himself with a log, something Sasuke expected. What he didn't expect was for ten clones to swarm him , distracting him enough for Naruto to pin Sasuke down.
"I win," Naruto smirked. Much to his horror, he was tripped to the ground by a wire, then pinned to the ground.
"No dobe, I win," Sasuke smirked.