Chapter 5

The Chunin Exams

Team 7 had spent the last four days planning various strategies to do with the chunin exams, they were hoping there was an open-ended exam where their black ops style training and teamwork would pay off. An intel-gathering exam was also likely. There was also the possibility of a written exam, but they weren't too worried, Naruto had developed close range chakra communication seals in the unlikely event that they are unable to communicate in the usual ways.

Sasuke's bokken had been finished and he was carrying it everywhere, he had one of Naruto's gauntlets in a discreet storage seal on his wrist. Sakura was wearing a darker outfit, much darker, they were shinobi, it was their job to be discreet., she had a dark grey version of her combat dress on, knee-high combat boots with dark grey leggings, she also had a storage seal with a combat hoodie on, to cover her hair and arms. Naruto had naturally swapped his orange tracksuit out, at the moment he was sporting classic Konoha uniform minus the flak jacket, he had a custom one made, it was styled like the Kumo ones but the same green as the Konoha, the extra shoulder movement made his seal easier to use.

Team 7 was approaching the building that the exam was supposed to be taking place in, the double doors staring at them, one of the many obstacles that stood between them and being chunin… but who says you have to take all your problems head on? They were ninja! They decided to treat everything as though they were on a mission in hostile territory, so the building was scaled from the outside and they used Naruto's earth seal to determine where people were, they then slipped into different entry points around the floor.

Sasuke entered through a partially cracked window and melted into the crowd with a slight genjutsu that Sakura had taught him. Sakura herself used a large area sound genjutsu to make everyone look away from the door as she slipped in and applied the same genjutsu Sasuke had. Naruto decided, however, that it was a brilliant idea to enter through the bathroom window, send a clone to actually make an explosion in another room so that he could slip into the room while everyone's focus was shifted, he used a henge to become a fly and found Sakura and Sasuke.

Once the proctor, a tall, scarred man appeared in the room, they all cancelled their genjutsu, surprising all the people around them who only just noticed this group just stood there. It was flashy, but also a good infiltration practice.

"Alright, Listen up. I am Ibiki Morino, your proctor for this exam. This is a written exam, there will be silence and no cheating, If you get caught cheating you will get a warning, three times and your whole squad is disqualified. Every answer you get wrong takes away from your points. You will be assigned seats." Ibiki was clearly a no-nonsense man that took absolutely zero shit from anyone.

Naruto was sat four seats to the left of Sasuke, who was two behind Sakura. Sakura was on the front row, no opportunity for her to cheat at all, Naruto put two pens out on his desk, one really loud, to get Sasuke's attention. Sasuke saw and saw Naruto making a discreet swapping motion with his fingers and realised the plan, he put a second pen down too.

Sasuke wrote a small note to Sakura on one of his pens and swapped it with hers, the note filled her in on the plan, she just nodded slightly and tapped her desk twice. She then filled out her paper while Sasuke copied her movements with his Sharingan, then he swapped Sakura and Naruto's paper, Naruto now had a mostly complete paper, minus the 10th question which was temporarily redacted, but he pretended to scrawl all over it, so they couldn't gather that he was cheating. Sakura filled out the now blank page that she had. Team 7 had finished in 20 minutes and were now sitting comfortably.

Half an hour later and the exam was approaching it's final ten minutes when the last question would be revealed. 14 teams out of 35 had been expelled for cheating, but the remaining 21 weren't all great. Ibiki strolled back to the front of the room.

"Okay, remaining 21 teams, The 10th question is optional, but it is also mandatory to progress to the next phase of the exam." Ibiki paused to let that sink in.

"Why wouldn't we take it then?" said Kiba Inuzuka, a Konoha genin from the Inuzuka clan, one of the 9 Konoha rookies to be taking the exam this year.

"Because if you fail it you will be banned from all future Chunin exams and won't progress to the next phase of the exam."

"That's unfair!" Shouted some Kumo nin

"Yeah that's bullshit, other people are here that have taken other exams!" this one came from a Suna genin.

"Well, they didn't have me as a proctor. So, who wants to drop out? Remember this has to be done as a team." four hands immediately shot up, two from different teams and two from the same team.

"Nope! I'm gonna take your stupid question and I'm gonna pass it easily! What kind of crappy shinobi would I be if I gave up when there's a little on the line?" Naruto declared as he stood up, quelling all other hands from rising, iron determination entering their eyes. Ibiki gave him a look over, then scowled, it had to be him, didn't it? Ibiki leaned in with a wicked, sadistic grin on his face.

"Very well, Here is the 10th and final question…."

===Time Skip===

The teams were lined up outside Training Ground 44, or the Forest of Death. They had just had the rules explained to them by proctor Anko Mitarashi. They had been given a Heaven scroll and they needed an Earth to pass the exam. Not too bad all in all. Anko gave the signal for all of the teams to prepare to enter and team 7 slid straight into the forest, scarcely a sound between the three of them.

They had been tracking a team for the last 10 minutes, 2 hours had passed since the exam started and they had three days, so the real struggle wasn't going to be getting a scroll, it was surviving for that time. 16 teams had entered the Forest. There was a guaranteed failure rate of 50%. This team in front of them would be part of that 50%, Sakura would make sure of that. She weaved a genjutsu around them to make them think that they had done a 180 somewhere, leading them straight into team 7's ambush, Sasuke dropped on one of them, they were a Kiri team. Naruto shot a high voltage, low current bolt at the central shinobi, Sakura had set up some complex ninja wire to ensnare the final member in a razor sharp spider web.

Sasuke woke his target up after tying him to a tree and obscuring team 7's identities. They used Sakura's genjutsu to force him to reveal which scroll they had and where. They took it and Naruto left a lovely little seal array to guarantee that they would be unable to participate in the exam, if they moved out of a radius or flared their chakra, the seal would communicate with explosive seals on their legs and blow them off, the seals would fade when the exam ended.

Team 7 moved on after picking up their second heaven scroll, they still needed an earth but this would be a good bargaining chip. Naruto heard a twig snap in a nearby clearing and saw a freaky looking Kusa nin stood in a clearing over their teammates bodies, he signalled to Sasuke who relayed it to Sakura, they stopped to take a look at this. They hid up in some tree branches for 6 minutes exactly, people tend to work in measures of 5, so adding that extra minute was enough time for the person to make any moves, Sasuke then asked Sakura to use a genjutsu on him to throw his voice and obscure his presence.

"You. What scroll do you have?" Sasuke commanded, the authority of a clan head present in his voice, steady and calm. The nin threw their head back and began cackling. Team 7's eyes all narrowed. The nin raised an earth scroll above their head and shook it a little before swallowing it whole. Sakura's face distorted in disgust. Naruto felt the chakra in the area swell, the air seemed to feel dark and tainted. This… thing… emitted such a malevolent aura it seemed tangible. Naruto signalled to Sasuke for a pincer attack, Sasuke nodded, unsealed his gauntlet, drew his bokken and activated his Sharingan, the red glow looking every bit as menacing as the aura below them.

Swiftly and stealthily, Sasuke leapt to another tree on the other side of the clearing, He and Naruto raised their gauntlets, Naruto fired off a colossal flame directly at the Kusa nin, while Sasuke's air blast served only to accentuate the inferno. Sakura had placed a strong genjutsu on them, making it seem as though an earth jutsu had been cast over their legs, preventing them from moving.

The explosion dwindled, team 7 was confident they had destroyed the bizarre opponent, however, instead of a charred corpse, they were met with the same nin, stood virtually unharmed, their hair was slightly singed and their clothes were smouldering but other than that, they were fine. Naruto leapt down, lightning bolt charged and ready to fire at the lightning rod kunai Sakura launched at the nin, Sasuke used his tree as a springboard while activating his bokken, teeth grit and Sharingan raging.

The ninja moved for the first time, slipping like a snake over the kunai and using the momentum to carry the flick of their leg into Sasuke's abdomen, during this movement they had drawn three kunai and launched them at the flying Naruto. He gritted his teeth and used the kawarimi jutsu to dodge the kunai, appearing next to the ninja and launching punches at their face.

The ninja grabbed his wrist and threw him over their shoulder and launched him at the recovering Sasuke so they could focus their attention on Sakura, who launched a genjutsu, allowing her to blend into a faux mist, the shinobi just launched forward faster, wicked grin splitting their face, and dispelled the genjutsu with ease. Naruto recovered and created a dozen kage bunshin, Sasuke using kawarimi to swap Sakura with one of them.

Naruto then touched his palm to the ground and launched a bunch of earth spears at the shinobi, who slid between them and even used one to propel themselves into the air before releasing dozens of shuriken at team 7, Sasuke shot forward, using the earth spears to push himself higher, the shinobi dodged between Sasuke's kenjutsu strikes elegantly, dodging and weaving but was still losing ground under the relentless pressure. Duck a body swing, swipe at his feet, he jumps, swings downward, step sideways, spin kick to the back. Sasuke spins forward in the air and while horizontal in the air, pushes his feet off the kick and then puts his hands down onto the pillar and swings up to a standing position again. The shinobi draws a kunai, wicked smile ever-present. Sasuke raises his bokken again, smirking the whole time. A simple diagonal shoulder slash is intercepted by the kunai, but not for long, the razor-sharp barrier on the bokken glides through the metal kunai and straight into the shinobi's flesh.

Sasuke's smirk intensified as he leapt back, separating the two of them. The shinobi's grin faltered for a second, clearly, they had just been caught off guard. Naruto then lands a flying spinning kick to the side of the shinobi's head, forcing them off the stone pillar, Naruto landed with a hand on the ground, he shot earth spears around the ninja, binding him. Sasuke jumped up and brought his sword up to stab through the shinobi. They Kawarimi'd away, then they formed hand seals for the first time and charged at Sasuke, Sasuke met the charge with his sword. As they neared each other the shinobi's neck began extending, shooting towards Sasuke, who leapt into the air, flipping over the monstrosity, Naruto using an earth spear he had hidden behind Sasuke to stab the elongated neck. Sasuke, mid-flip, twisted his sword to decapitate the monster, his razor-sharp bokken making the neck look like a delicate ribbon being sliced.

Instead of being met with a spray of blood and gore, the neck simply crumbled away. An earth clone. The shinobi was gone, possibly to tend their wounds.

Sasuke sheathed his sword, Naruto stood up and turned to face Sakura, the shinobi was back, holding a kunai to Sakura's neck, grin long gone. Naruto created 20 kage bunshin and weaved about in a charge towards the shinobi, then they parted to show Sasuke with his arm raised, he shot a jet stream of water straight through the shinobis forehead, piercing it immediately. It crumbled away again. Sasuke's Sharingan widened, he whirled around, there was the shinobi, neck extended. He didn't have enough time to block or dodge before the shinobi bit into his neck. The neck retracted with a laugh.

"Kukukuku…" with that the shinobi disappeared.

Sakura and Naruto ran over to Sasuke, who was clutching his neck.

"Sasuke-kun! Are you okay?" Sakura yelled in order to check on her writhing teammate. All they could hear were his grunts and heavy breathing, he dropped to one knee and grimaced. Naruto looked around, concerned that the fighting had drawn the attention of rival teams, he created three kage bunshin to scout out the area.

"Sakura-chan, is there anything you can do for him?" she shook her head in the negative while he glared at naruto.

"I'm fine, let's keep moving." Sasuke said with venom, but Naruto knew it was directed at himself, annoyed at his own weakness for not being able to dodge it with his kawarimi. He stood up and grimaced again, his hand going white from clamping down on his neck. He took a step, then a second but on the third, he stumbled until Sakura caught him under his arm. She gave Naruto a quick glance before gritting her teeth.

Sasuke passed out from the pain over Sakura's shoulder so Naruto created another kage bunshin to carry their weakened teammate while they got clear of the location. They had managed to find an upturned tree and were currently hiding beneath its roots. Sasuke was currently running a low fever and occasionally twitching, this convinced Sakura that is was a weak poison or something akin to it, but Naruto wasn't convinced, a black mark seemed to be appearing around the wound and the shinobi went to considerable effort to apply this, and retreated immediately after, it seemed suspicious.

None of Naruto's clones had run into any enemy resistance yet, but things weren't looking great, because there seemed to be a couple of battlefields nearby yet no sign of any casualties, which is unlikely given the competition. Naruto was crouched in a tree nearby, serving as a sentry to their base, with two clones in other trees, forming a triangular perimeter around the makeshift shelter. He had two other clones out looking for food, the ten he created at the battlefield were still scouting for enemies and three teams had been created to actively search for the exit.

They hadn't found anything yet, but that meant that at least for now, they were safe.

===The End===

===For Now===

AN: Wow, this one took some putting together, it was slowly pieced together over a series of writing sessions spanning many months, over a year actually, because I could never really form a cohesive idea on where exactly I wanted to go with this story and then I started a few other little pet projects exploring a more character driven story, mostly romance pieces that will never see the light of day, so moving back to an action and power based story was difficult to say the least, but I can safely say that this account is achieving its purpose, to allow me to explore my writing and personal growth throughout the years, I'm sorry to the people that have read some of my stories and hope that I update them again, but many of the earlier ones just don't interest me anymore or require a full rewrite that I do not have the attention span to do.

I don't really know where I am going with this, in all honesty, if you want to either take over this fic or take some of the ideas from it then I'd be happy to, especially if you want to use the powers, I put alot of time into them and some others that I have stashed away, so if you want those then please send me a message and I'll see what I can do.

As I've written down this AN, I re-read the entire story and to be honest, I still remember where I was going with it but I just cannot bring myself to write it, I've noticed with ALOT of Naruto fics, people always get stuck on the Chuunin exams, and now that I'm here I think I know why: The original was so good, it's tough to write something like that and imagine it changing in any way, so fanfics about Naruto are so difficult to get past that stage. Long story short, this was a project I kept to myself for nearly two years and 5 chapters in and I just cannot write any more of it. I am sorry to the people that have enjoyed it, but unless I get a sudden burst of love for Naruto again, it's unlikely this will ever be continued.