15

Team Yurei had taken the time to cast Knight Armor replacements for their maid outfits, which had been mildly annoying to get right when they'd first been ensuring that all the seal tags stuck around instead of being stored away, before leaving the Uzumaki compound together. They stopped along the way to the Forest of Death to grab freshly baked cinnamon rolls, sesame dumplings, and a bowl of ramen to go and were still the first team to reach the training ground.

"So what have you done to annoy the crap out of the proctor of this stage?" Tenten asked via the communication jutsu as they ate their snacks.

"Ensured that if I want we can be the only team that passes," Naruto answered.

"And how did you pull that off?" Hinata questioned.

"Replaced all the heaven and earth scrolls in their crate with transformed paperwork clones holding the scrolls. If they dispel then the scroll is left behind, but I can summon any of them to me at any time to get their scroll and they can reverse-summon themselves to the compound or the summoning stones. Well, except for the four scrolls I have in one of my seals already. Those paperwork clones have an apology note that the scroll was already taken."

"...when did you have time to arrange for that?"

"I made the extra clones needed when I made my daily set this morning. The crate of scrolls has been sitting in a largely-unsecured storage room for three days without anyone even checking on them. Though I did have to replace all of them, since I don't know what order they're going to pull them from the crate, which was annoying given that they definitely won't need them all."

The two girls gave him a look that told him they knew that 'largely-unsecured' meant 'behind a heavily-locked and possibly-guarded door but with a way to slip in through abuse of shapeshifting'. Which was, to him, essentially unsecured. They could've at least thrown a tamper-evident seal on the crate!

Toma arrived just as they were finishing up their snacks, leading a group of chunin that included one carrying the crate of scrolls. They headed into a tent that had been set up in advance, though only after the proctor grabbed a clipboard and pen from one of the chunin and headed over to Team Yurei.

"Since you're here already," Toma said. "You can sign the waiver that says that the village isn't responsible if you get seriously injured or die in there now."

"I wonder how many of these are on file for us," Tenten asked as she took the clipboard. "I know we had to sign one when we were fixing the fence, and the time Anko-sensei took us into the forest for killing intent training. Did we sign one when we went through the tunnel to the central tower to help with that plumbing issue in Anko-sensei's preferred quarters?"

"She snuck us in unofficially," Hinata noted. "And was annoyed that she'd done so only to find that maintenance had fixed the problem already. So no."

"Oh, right. Forgot about that, and that the Hokage got her to confess to doing it with a single disappointed look."

It wasn't long before other teams started showing up, each being given the waivers to sign as they arrived, and with ten minutes to spare all the teams had arrived and signed their waivers. Though Naruto was concerned because one of the two Kusa teams felt wrong all of a sudden...and from what he could hear the Kiri team had finally realized that he was likely the Uzumaki who had encountered Zabuza and were planning on 'dealing with him' in the forest.

"Okay everyone," Toma called, producing one of each scroll from a pouch. "The way this is going to work is that each team will get a single scroll and be assigned an entry gate. Some of you will have a heaven scroll and some of you will have an earth scroll. You'll have five full days, a hundred and twenty hours, for your entire team to make it to the tower in the center of the training ground with one of each scroll. Opening the scrolls before you are inside of the tower is an automatic disqualification for your team, as is entering the tower without at least one of each scroll or all three team members present. During the five days you cannot cross the border of the training ground so as to simulate being in the field. How you obtain both scrolls is up to you. Be aware that there are many dangers in the forest even before taking into account other teams."

Each team was given a scroll and a gate number without anyone seeming to notice that the scrolls were transformed clones holding scrolls. Naruto found it mildly amusing that the heaven scroll they received was one of the clones with a note instead of a scroll, leaving them with only four real scrolls hidden in one of his storage seals. To be fair to the other Konoha teams, he had those clones dispel themselves as soon as they were in bags or pouches so that they'd all have actual scrolls. Well, with the exception of Kabuto's team who had gotten one of the other three 'just a note' clones by pure chance. The remaining two notes were with the Oto team and Team Baki and Naruto had decided to have the clone in Kankuro's pack dispel to leave the note and the one with the Oto team reverse-summon itself to the compound to leave no trace.

The rest of the clones would need to decide what to do during the next eight to ten hours before Naruto ended up sleeping and they dispelled, short of him deciding to summon them or something. Or maybe he'd get knocked out in a fight and they'd dispel then, perhaps? That was likely enough, in theory, that Yoko was intentionally absent from the shrine with a note posted that she was feeling under the weather and didn't want to risk making others sick left behind...and three younger girls from the civilian families in the area were currently hunting for something close enough to a normal shrine maiden uniform to not be disrespectful so that they could help out. Attempt to help out?

Naruto wasn't holding out a lot of hope, given the way the girls had acted in the shrine up to this point.

Shikamaru was unusually happy with Rio today, because she was taking the blame for them bowing out of the chunin exams. They were too inexperienced to be worrying about trying to get promoted, but if he had done anything to pull them out or prevent them from entering in the first place then he'd have gotten far too much complaining from his mother. That this also ensured that there was no chance of being made to go up against any member of Team Yurei later was an added bonus. Sure, Tekuno-sensei was going to push for them to do more training now, but after hearing that the next stage was in the so-called Forest of Death?

Training was a lot less stressful than a multi-day life-or-death struggle, and if they'd passed the second stage then they'd have been pushed into even more intense training to prepare for the finals anyway. No, better to stick to a less stressful and infinitely more manageable training routine. Except that he'd realized that something more than the usual was going to be needed, just from watching the scuffle in the classroom.

Which was why he was looking for where to buy a decent set of weights. If all three members of Team Yurei were wearing some, in addition to Lee? They were likely a good way to improve in key ways, no matter how troublesome they'd be to get used to at first. All chunin should ideally be able to handle themselves in multiple ways and Shikamaru knew that he was fairly limited on the physical front. Nara generally were, leaving that to the Akimichi side of the Ino-Shika-Cho dynamic. It was time to step up and get out of the training rut that had stopped applying when Ino had made rookie of the year.

"So our first goal is to meet up with Karin," Tenten sent with the communication jutsu. Their plan was to only speak out loud if interacting with other teams now that they were in the forest proper. "And you've got a couple hundred clones running around the forest already to help keep an eye on as many teams as possible for the day."

"Yep," Naruto confirmed, though he was frowning. "And they've already told me that we're likely the primary target for...three to four teams right now? I already knew that the Kiri team is trying to track me specifically, one of the two Kumo teams is looking for us in general, the Ame team at the next gate over decided that we were going to be the closest team to them and should be taken out first, and I don't know how to count the Kusa team that felt wrong before we started splitting up with one of the three heading this way."

"Which one is going to reach us first?" Hinata asked.

"The Ame team, easily, followed by the lone Kusa shinobi."

"Well, perhaps we can put on a good show for one of the various hidden cameras? I see a clearing with one up ahead."

They set themselves up for the approaching Ame team, themselves and several basic traps arranged to hopefully give the camera watching the clearing a good show without doing anything obvious to reveal that they knew where the camera was. It didn't take long for the Ame team, named after their team leader Shigure, to reach them. The three Ame genin landed at the far edge of the clearing and walked forward, the tall and hatless Shigure in front with his six umbrellas on his back and obviously-blinded right eye. Baiu was to the left from Team Yurei's point of view, leaving Midare to the right.

"Allow me," Hinata sent to the others as she stepped forward alone. This particular team had a glaring weakness revealed in the information provided on them, though Naruto and Tenten did have to be ready in case they didn't focus their attacks on Hinata.

"You should give your scroll up now," Shigure said. "No team willing to act like mere maids has any hope against our might."

"My apologies," Hinata said with a slight bow. She was delaying a little while using chakra threads to adjust the positioning of a couple of the traps. "But we will be unable to comply with the demands of obvious simpletons such as yourselves. Your village obviously doesn't train its shinobi properly and we couldn't possibly disgrace ours by simply handing a scroll over. Why, you just barged into a clearing your enemy had been waiting for you in without checking for traps."

She triggered two of the traps as she was finishing the last sentence, groups of kunai launching at each of Baiu and Midare. They spun and looked ready to dodge, only to realize that the six kunai coming at each of them were going to miss. Instead they started looking for a follow-up attack or trap, so neither of them noticed the ninja wire connecting pairs of kunai. This meant they were taken by surprise when the wires struck them, the kunai looping around them to tie them up. Chakra threads struck out to ensure that the kunai pairs pulled tight and tied together to secure the duo.

Tenten had been generally annoyed that the byakugan made that kind of thing trivial for Hinata, and Naruto as well even if she'd not had time to complain about him having a byakugan due to only finding out today. She'd grumbled that he was too good at it before without knowing why anyway.

"And assuming that just because the kunai aren't going to strike you that they're safe to ignore as well," Hinata continued with a sad shake of her head. "I'm amazed that your little village lets you out without a minder at all, though I suppose that those two did position themselves to shield you. Purely by accident instead of intention, I'm sure."

Shigure scowled and looked over his left shoulder, likely finding it easier to do so in that direction due to his blinded right eye. He saw Midare struggling to free himself from the ninja wire, then turned back to Hinata. "You'll find that I'm harder to catch with such trifles even without them shielding me, and I can see that you're a Hyuga. They excel in taijutsu, but have many issues at range, which must be why you resorted to the traps at all." A moment later he was pulling his umbrellas off of his back and throwing them up into the air, held there by his chakra as they spun faster and faster.

And this was where the glaring weakness came in. Stupidly, the information Ame had provided on the team included the use of the supposedly-unstoppable 'senbon shower' and that they collectively didn't carry kunai or shuriken out of pride in their skills with senbon. Something easily confirmed with the byakugan at this point. Naruto's byakugan also easily showed him Hinata starting up a supersized version of a dust-collecting vortex jutsu, formed into a dome spinning around her but just barely not touching the ground so as to not give it away. It was fully in place before Shigure triggered the release of the senbon from his umbrellas, his chakra directing them all at Hinata with incredible accuracy, but as each one hit the cleaning jutsu it was captured as though it was a large piece of dust. The fight between Shigure's chakra directing the needles and the cleaning jutsu's pull allowed many of the senbon to almost, but not quite, reach Hinata before her chakra won out and pulled the senbon out of his control. Not that they'd have harmed her by then anyway, having lost enough momentum to have no hope of piercing her barriers, but her Knight Armor wasn't even tested.

She did a little 'tut-tut' that she'd practiced quite a bit to get right before she released some soapy water from her mouth, mixing it in with the vortex to clean the likely-poison coatings off of the senbon. Just after the spray of senbon ended, with all three Ame genin staring in shock, she pushed the now filthy water off to the side, into a hole that formed in the dirt before covering it back up again to bury the likely-poisoned water. The now-dry senbon were then gathered with a few chakra strings and adjustments of the vortex, slapping together into several bundles spinning around her. Lengths of ninja wire came out of her sleeves and tied up each bundle as she gradually dropped the vortex, her chakra strings stacking the bundles of now-pristine senbon along one arm even as Shigure nearly-instinctively caught his umbrellas.

"You really shouldn't throw your toys around like that," Hinata chided. "You could have put someone's eye out. Nor should you have left them so filthy. Who knows what could have happened if you or your friends had stuck yourselves?"

"I guess she noticed that he attempted to target her eyes," Tenten noted.

"It was a bit obvious," Naruto agreed. "Not exactly an uncommon tactic against Hyuga though."

Hinata then stepped forward, the senbon vanishing one bundle at a time into one of her seals as Shigure started backing away. He stopped when he was next to his teammates. Baiu was working his way free, but more ninja wire shot out of Hinata's sleeves to hit the two bound shinobi. This time it was under the control of a clothing-mending jutsu, stitching their sleeves to their sides and their pant legs together. "Now then, I'll be nice and let you take care of your friends, but only if you hand over your scroll."

Shigure gulped, but produced their scroll and tossed it to Hinata. She nodded as Naruto and Tenten body-flickered over to the traps, disarming the unfired ones and storing all of them, then the team left the Ame genin in the clearing. The various kunai that had been launched by the traps were left with them, though how long it would take them to realize that they were the best choice for dealing with the ninja wire was unknown and largely unimportant to Team Yurei.

"What the fuck was that?" Shito asked, gesturing at the monitor that had been showing the one-sided battle.

"Mostly a dust-collecting jutsu," Kurenai replied. "Throw in a general soapy-water jutsu because the senbon were probably poisoned, and a mending jutsu fed ninja wire instead of normal thread."

"...that 'dust-collecting' jutsu just acted like an advanced version of a wind wall. Far better than any I've seen Asuma pull off too."

"She oversized it a bit. Normally it's only half a meter or so at most."

"I just wish we got audio on these things," Anko said. "I'm sure she slapped them down verbally in some way too. She turned some of the Hyuga lessons on dealing with nobles into some properly infuriating lines when we had them practicing the maid routine."

"So how much does your team charge for a copy of those 'cleaning' jutsu?" Gai asked.

"Meh. We only held off on dropping a copy into the archives to preserve some of the surprise."

"And Hinata wouldn't have used it against someone using kunai or shuriken," Kurenai added. "Even when oversized like that the jutsu has limits. Senbon are light enough to be grabbed at that scale, but Naruto discovered that you need to get it significantly larger for shuriken and we didn't bother figuring out how large it had to be for kunai."

"Sucks to be that team though, having their village advertise that weakness of theirs."

Unlike the Ame team, they weren't expecting the single approaching shinobi from the Kusa team to have skills anything like what the paperwork from their village said. Largely because just after they'd left the Ame team one of Naruto's clones outside of the training ground had spotted the team's corpses, minus their faces, indicating that the three had been replaced before making it to the training ground.

He'd summoned the clone with that team's scroll and let Hinata add it to the one she'd gotten from the Ame team, then hand two of the four he'd started with to Tenten as well so that each of them had two scrolls. They'd luckily ended up with three of each, meaning that if needed any of the three of them could get the team into the tower now.

Also unlike the Ame team, there wasn't a good clearing to arrange an intercept point in, even before taking into account that the lone individual approaching seemed to be specifically avoiding anywhere that had a camera. Which made it obvious that they didn't want to be seen by those monitoring the limited cameras in the forest. Naruto knew that Old Man Hokage had some other way of checking on things though, so had one of his clones outside of the training grounds find him...and in the process learned that it was a crystal ball jutsu of all things thanks to the clone watching the old man get a lock on him.

The first thing the approaching shinobi hit them with was a massive wind jutsu with three 'branches' in the flow, obviously intended to blow them away and separate them. This failed entirely, their Knight Armor and surface-sticking being easily up to the task of keeping them from being blown away. Naruto had needed to hold onto Hoshi, but in a worst-case scenario could have just summoned the little guy back. The wind died down a moment later, and the supposedly-Kusa shinobi landed on a branch near them just afterwards.

"I suppose that I should've expected your skills to be underreported," the shinobi said. "Though you could at least have the decency to look like that ruffled your outfits."

"Who are you," Tenten demanded, broom in her hand and likely wishing she'd brought actual swords instead of filling her seals with cleaning supplies.

"Surely you read up on your opposition."

"And I'm sure that you'd love for us to assume you're limited to the skills of the corpse whose face you're wearing," Naruto replied. "We're not stupid enough to assume that you're actually Shiore."

"Now how did you discover that, I wonder?" The shinobi reached up and pulled the stolen face off, the odd effect keeping things shaped correctly releasing as they did so, but it only took Naruto a moment to recognize the face of Orochimaru.

Anko-sensei and Jiraiya had both ensured that he knew what the rogue Sannin looked like, for remarkably similar reasons. As well as went into varying levels of detail on not trusting the man.

"I suppose I shouldn't expect any less of my apprentice's students though," Orochimaru continued. "Still, I have a couple of things to take care of, such as ensuring that Naruto here really isn't the one holding the nine-tailed fox." He reached into a pouch, only to pause as he didn't find what he was looking for. Frowning, he checked another pouch and two pockets. "Huh. I'd hoped to get some cooperation to save time by offering you the scroll you need in exchange for a few minutes of examining your stomach, but it appears that someone managed to get it from me. How...unfortunate, though I have to admit that I'm impressed with whoever pulled that off."

"Thank you," Naruto said with a grin.

The man looked at them curiously. "Very interesting, and I bet you're not going to tell me how you managed to get the scroll away from me either. I don't suppose that you'd be willing to allow me to take a look anyway, since you already claimed the payment for me doing so?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "I've been warned repeatedly by people I trust that you aren't to be trusted."

"Ah. And I can't really blame you or the most likely candidates for that advice either, so it seems that we'll have to do this the hard way."

A moment later the man released a veritable wave of killing intent, at least five times more powerful than anything thrown at the team before then. They froze for a moment, but Naruto pushed through the fear and decided to fight fire with fire as a hopeful distraction by focusing his own killing intent on Orochimaru. His hope was that it would at least break the Sannin's concentration, and for half a second it seemed to work.

Then there was a blurred sequence of hand seals and a snake came out of the man's mouth to send an impossibly long sword straight at Naruto. The thing was glowing, barely paused as it struck and shattered each of the Knight Armor protections, and went through his cheek and out the back of his head in the middle of him trying to dodge. It then swung downwards as it retracted, leaving the bottom of his head before passing down through his shoulder and cutting a good way into his rib cage.

Unable to even yell in pain as he fell to the forest floor, he barely noticed as the Sannin vanished in a body flicker. He was too busy being hit by clone memories and chakra as they all forcibly dispelled while trying to maintain focus on converting his chakra to medical chakra to attempt to heal the massive injuries. Hinata was next to him at the same moment that he slammed into the ground, immediately trying to use her own skills to help put him back together even as the Tome switched from the necklace form to its book form on his chest to aid as well. In the background he half-noticed Tenten dropping them underground with an earth jutsu and Hoshi summoning another fox or two, but his personal focus was on keeping his own healing going and as much of his blood as possible in. And whatever the poison from the blade had been from getting too far into his system...

Orochimaru had almost left the far end of the training ground entirely before he'd recovered enough to stop himself and catch his breath. That...whatever the fuck it was had terrified him, making him feel like he was drowning in an ocean of banal yet somehow critical paperwork while his less agreeable subordinates were hunting him down. Obviously a deviously clever modification of killing intent, now that he could actually focus on thinking about it, and one that no normal person was ever likely to be able to manage. Even Konan, who could literally be one with the paperwork couldn't manage an effect like that as she still had a healthy fear of paperwork. Like all of her paper being used up as paperwork, at least as he understood things. It had only come up a couple of times while he'd worked with her as a member of Akatsuki.

From what he knew of killing intent, only someone who had truly mastered and held no personal fear of paperwork could so much as hope to generate feelings like the boy had. Similar to how the less you feared a killing blow the greater your ability to manifest normal killing intent, though there were those that thought you had to not fear death itself to manage that. He was well aware of the distinction thanks to his own research.

Sadly, a combination of several factors meant that the boy was probably dead. A complete lack of nine-tails chakra, blood on Kusanagi that made it obvious that it hadn't been a clone technique, and the severity of the cut inflicted made for survival being a near-impossibility. The blood was also useless due to the poisons on the blade and discarded before the blade was returned to storage. The almost certainly lethal attack was an unfortunate mistake, and not one that Orochimaru had wanted to make. He held no ill will towards the boy or his father at this point, the latter having been given up as soon as Oto was formed. A small hidden village generated far too much paperwork, Minato taking on Konoha's load? He, Hiruzen, and anyone else that followed could have it.

No, Orochimaru had honestly been willing to trade the scroll they should've needed for a quick examination to ensure that the 'decoy' claim was accurate before moving forward with more destructive ways of flushing out the actual container of the nine-tailed fox. Those would be going forward at this point, but the death of Konoha's last Uzumaki hadn't been in the plans for this stage of things.

Thinking for a moment, he was certain that his skin paled further than normal as he finally put details together into a whole. An Uzumaki who had mastered paperwork? That almost certainly meant a master of the paperwork jutsu. If his panic-fueled supercharging of Kusanagi with more than eighty percent of his chakra to punch through any possible defenses the boy could have up had caused that to be lost again then every Kage on the continent was going to be out for his blood.

Summoning a messenger snake to tell Kabuto to get to the boy as soon as fucking possible, just in case there was some hope of saving the boy's life, only took a moment. That he honestly wanted to see what his apprentice's team of brats could do helped wipe away other concerns, and if the boy didn't survive then Anko was probably owed an apology.

Hell, even if the boy did somehow survive then he still owed her an apology, just less of one. How to deliver it was an entirely different question though.

It had taken a little over two hours to largely put Naruto back together, using up a good portion of his own chakra as well as Hinata's and that of two of the best healers the foxes had to offer. At least four teams had passed through, or so Hoshi claimed, but their mini-bunker had evaded detection. All three of their 'emergency ramen' seals were emptied into Naruto's stomach, the contents of an entire cinnamon roll seal went into Hinata's, and the two of them fell asleep shortly afterwards.

They slept for nearly six hours, watched over by Tenten, Hoshi, and five other foxes, and Naruto only realized that he'd released his shapeshifting when he'd woken up to find Hinata cuddling his tail.

"It's too bad that your uniform is ruined," Tenten said as she poked at the scraps of the maid dress still on Naruto's chest while he and Hinata ate again. They were foregoing the communication jutsu for the moment as it did take some concentration to use. "Anko-sensei only got us the one set since she didn't think we'd need spares for the exams."

"Um," Naruto said, frowning. He put his plate down and stood up before canceling the technically still-active Knight Armor spell. The barrier layers had all been shattered and the spell-formed dress somewhat destroyed, but it was still an active spell. A moment later the almost-pristine uniform he'd had on when casting the spell appeared on him, the destroyed dress vanishing in motes of light. Grinning, he then concentrated and cast the Knight Armor spell again, forming a pristine uniform and putting all the barriers back in place. "There we go, though I can feel that my hair is still a mess." Patting himself down a little, he nodded. "I'm just glad that none of my seals were in the way of the blade and he didn't go far enough down to catch the resistance belt."

"...I completely forgot that we're using that spell after seeing his sword go straight through you like the protections weren't there."

"It was some kind of armor-piercing effect and I have no idea how to stop it from happening again, but at least I know to dodge sooner now." His parents were working on ideas in the Tome, but hadn't come up with much beyond a 'the next time Orochimaru confronts you, reverse summon yourself out of there instead of standing around'.

In his defense, this was the first time they'd really run into an opponent where that was honestly the best course of action.

"You should both drop the spell and get some sleep," Hinata said. "While we could accomplish our remaining goals tonight we should probably wait until morning. Especially since Naruto doesn't have clones monitoring everyone anymore."

Naruto nodded. "Old Man Hokage probably knows that I survived, since I can't see him not having kept an eye on us until I was stable, but I'll need to send some clones to see him in the morning anyway. Though why am I dropping the spell?"

"Because you're the one that was nearly cut in two and I can tell that you still aren't fully recovered, even if you're getting close. Your chakra will recover faster without the spell active. I'll watch over you and Tenten first, and wake you up around...three-thirty, say, so that I can get some more sleep before we get moving in the morning."

"Right. Well, give me a little time, I want to send a clone to somewhere near the tower with one of the smaller summoning stones so that we have a place in the training ground to escape to if Orochimaru shows up again."

"Send the clone out and then set up a shower. Your hair really is a mess with the dried blood in it."