43

Naruto idly wondered why Tekuno looked annoyed as the fireworks timed to start when the first stage officially began were going off. Technically the exams had started two hours prior with the 'keep participants from finding the correct first stage room' dance, and that entire building was going to be quite busy for the next couple of hours as the genin hunted down clues throughout it. Hoshi was in the building keeping an eye on things as well, but the genjutsu-hidden real clues were comically easy to spot for anyone with sensor skills.

Of course, it would be interesting to see how many of the examiners noticed that the little fox was hiding more of the real clues than they expected.

But for now, it was time for the demonstration matches, which weren't being delayed while Kumo tried to pretend that they knew about and were responsible for the honestly not too bad fireworks display.

"So how many puppets do you have?" Naruto asked. "Because I've got five with me that are combat-ready."

"...I can only handle three at a time right now," Kankuro admitted, pulling a scroll off of his back and unsealing two humanoid puppets. One had four arms and the other had six, with the byakugan showing that the four-armed one had more weapons hidden within it. "And I'm still more comfortable with two." A moment later he connected five chakra strings to each puppet, connected to the fingers and thumb of each of his hands, and that allowed the puppets to stand up.

"Hmmm. Not sure if it would be fair to pull all five out at once against only two of yours."

"You think you can actually manage five puppets at once?"

"Yes, and the paperwork puppeteer technique makes it even easier."

"Paperwork what?"

Naruto grinned. "Turns out that if you're good enough at paperwork then you can use the skill to handle more puppets."

"I kind of want to see you keeping five puppets moving at once," Temari admitted from the sidelines. "Especially since Kankuro has been at this for years and you're an acknowledged newbie."

Most puppeteers probably couldn't use clones to practice with multiple puppets at a time every single day for months, so it wasn't a fair comparison, but Naruto unsealed all of his puppets. Including two of his non-combat birds, because why not? He then dropped paperwork clones into all of them. The sight of the large Shukaku-like tanuki puppet starting to move had caused every Suna shinobi in the audience to stiffen and back up if they had the option of doing so.

"Well?" Naruto asked.

Kankuro gulped as he looked at the seven puppets all obviously moving independently of one another, including turning to look at him, and his chakra strings vanished. He shuddered as his two puppets collapsed. "I, er..."

"I think you've won by intimidation," Yugito said, looking between Naruto's puppets and Kankuro. "Both because I'm a little in awe of the display and because he's probably happy that he's wearing brown pants already."

Naruto pouted. "But I wanted to see how a normal puppeteer does things."

Unfortunately, it was obvious that Kankuro wasn't going to be in any suitable mental state for an actual demonstration match for the rest of the morning. Naruto packed up his puppets and sighed as one of Kiri's jounin prepared to fight against one of Kumo's wielding a supervibrato sword.

"This is way too easy," Sasuke noted with the communication technique as they moved from room to room collecting their clues. They'd lose points for visiting too many rooms not in their team's clue chain, but that didn't seem to be a problem yet.

"Hoshi seems to have hidden two-thirds of these clues," Ino pointed out.

"And left false ones, yes, but there are non-Hoshi signatures involved. But none of the access doors, false panels, or even the room locks themselves have been well-hidden or a challenge."

"I'll admit that I wouldn't have understood half of these clues," Kiba offered.

"Some of them have been obscure, but you've shown that you're most likely to get the hunting references that we miss."

At the current rate they were going they'd likely be done with over an hour to spare. Getting updates from their animal-form clones watching the fights in the arena wasn't even helping alleviate boredom much, since Naruto-sensei had scared his first opponent into being unable to fight.

Hinata had endured watching two different weapon-focused battles while waiting for her turn. Kiri and Kumo both produced excellent kenjutsu specialists, and Temari's battle fan presented interesting challenges for a Kumo shinobi. Doubly so since wind generally overcame lightning when all else was equal...and Temari proved that she was able to use the reinforced fan in both close-range and long-range styles.

Getting hit in the head with that thing had looked painful.

But now it was time for a somewhat literal catfight, the former holder of Matatabi against the one bound to the remains of the tailed beast.

"How did you want to do this?" Hinata asked.

Yugito smirked, obviously coating herself in chakra as her fingernails extended into claws. "Turns out that after some time I was able to recover a few tricks."

"Huh. Literal claws?"

"Yep. Not something you figure out quickly either, since it took me a couple of years to pull them off."

Hinata raised an eyebrow, then focused a little. A moment later she was able to shapeshift her fingernails into claws, which she then examined. "I can see how this could be useful."

"...that's not fair. How long have you been able to do that?"

"This is my first time forming claws like this."

"Seriously?"

"Yep." A moment later Hinata's claws were coated in blue-black flames. "But they seem quite useful."

Eyes narrowing, Yugito apparently decided that they'd chatted enough, darting in. Hinata side-stepped the initial rush, though her opponent was faster than expected. Also a lot more capable of reacting to changes in the situation than bandits, given the almost immediate shift to try to launch an attack anyway.

But not as fast as Naruto was during their spars since he had four gates locked open.

Except that a retaliatory swipe was met by the chakra coating Yugito, and the flames did nothing. Definitely an interesting trick, and Hinata devoted some mental focus to figuring out how it worked. The chakra didn't feel like normal elemental chakra...

Back and forth between the two in taijutsu, without attempting to strike with the Gentle Fist while using the claws, didn't get very far. Hinata dropped the shapeshifting to get normal fingers back, and used chakra reinforcement to block her opponent's claws instead. Striking at chakra points followed, but the odd chakra coating was diffusing the strikes before they could close chakra points.

Now, neither of them was going all out in an attempt to harm the other, nor was Hinata using clone tactics or combined-element releases. This was a friendly demonstration match, and the previous two hadn't had a real winner, just continuing for a bit before both sides decided that they'd shown enough. But Anko-sensei wasn't exactly a fan of draws, so Hinata started adding various chakra natures into her strikes to see how the protective layer of chakra reacted to them. Any one of the five main elements reacted similarly, the chakra layer almost looking like it was taking on the counter-element.

Combined-element strikes, such as ice chakra, had caused the entire protective layer to almost flicker, and pushing out combined-element chakra from index and ring fingers before a normal attack on a chakra point from the middle finger allowed the latter to strike true. The first time this was managed caused Yugito to flinch, and she didn't recover in time to stop the following six strikes. At that point she had an entire leg no longer responding properly and the coating of chakra was obviously not intended to be partial.

Keeping up with the jounin was a lot easier at that point, and Hinata followed the attempted retreat with ease, striking at more chakra points as she did so. Medical chakra tuned to cause unconsciousness followed, a trick that only worked because of how disrupted the woman's chakra already was.

"I thought these were going to be more showing off than aiming for a win," one of the other Kumo jounin noted.

"Except that by winning I showed off my ability to work around whatever it is she figured out for protecting herself from normal and basic elemental chakra," Hinata replied.

"...point to you. She hasn't explained to anyone how that trick works."

"I'm still not sure how she managed it either, but I figured out a counter anyway."

It had taken twenty minutes to get Yugito conscious and able to watch, as annoyed as she was at losing like that, but now it was time for the final match. Naruto pulled out Kubikiribocho, as requested, and looked at his blue-haired opponent.

"I can't recall your name," Naruto admitted.

"That isn't surprising," the slightly older shinobi admitted. "It's Chojuro."

"Ah, right. Wielder of Hiramekarei. I hope you've been charging it with a lot of chakra."

"...you seem to know more than I expected."

"I'm not a kenjutsu specialist, but I did research famous blades after finding out that two of them were technically on loan from Uzushiogakure originally."

"Ah." The paired swords known as Hiramekarei were pulled off of Chojuro's back in their bundle of bandages as everyone else moved to the stands. There was far less of an initial show than setting up puppets had been and getting out of the way only made sense, especially with the range Hiramekarei could apparently operate at. "I'm probably not going to do well."

"If we're sticking to kenjutsu then you probably have a lot more skill than I do, and definitely more respect for the blades."

"...you don't respect the blades?"

"Ask Karui here in Kumo if you want. I chopped up one of her blades with a kitchen knife."

That seemed to annoy the young man, based on the look on his face and the sudden murderous vibes coming off of him. The swords suddenly lighting up with chakra, shredding the bandages wrapped around them and allowing him to separate the two was another sign.

Dodging the first swing, which had the chakra from the swords extending significantly to cover the distance between them, wouldn't have been difficult. Naruto instead coated Kubikiribocho in chakra and blocked, slicing through the two lines of chakra trying to slice through him.

"Chopping up chakra projections just doesn't have the same kick," Naruto complained, before pulling out the kitchen knife and holding it in his other hand. This obviously made Chojuro angrier, one of the two fish-shaped blades being swung horizontally and the other vertically. The latter formed what looked like a large hammer, and Naruto lifted Kubikiribocho to block that strike while the kitchen knife was used to cut the chakra from the horizontal 'cutting' projection.

Unknown to most other than his original team, Naruto had practiced kenjutsu with his clones, both to be able to pretend to be a specialist from other villages and to have a style of his own. The latter was intentionally designed to look like he was a lucky idiot with his various swords so as to make it seem less likely that he could realistically portray a skilled kenjutsu specialist. He didn't have the form down for the supervibrato swords yet, but Kubikiribocho and Kusanagi had been practiced with quite a bit, including wielding them together and with a dagger or kitchen knife in addition.

The seemingly-inexperienced style definitely seemed to be enraging Chojuro though, because the block and cut move likely looked like they'd been just barely pulled off. Which was only really possible due to the current attacks being more 'anger-fueled lashing out' than 'skilled kenjutsu specialist aiming to tear apart their opponent'. But angering someone with a sword was also generally the easiest way to defeat them.

Amusingly, chakra-conducting kitchen knives seemed to be an excellent tool to keep them angry, and Naruto wasn't sure if his was intentionally created for that purpose or merely a side effect of some retired shinobi in Uzushiogakure wanting all of their knives to be combat-ready.

Keeping dodging to only when two different hammer-projections were coming in, because the kitchen knife wasn't large enough to block those effectively no matter how much chakra you pumped into it, was reasonably simple.

Eventually Chojuro seemed to realize that he'd fallen into an emotional trap and pulled back on his anger, scowling at Naruto. Before anything could be said, Naruto changed the script and darted in, changing the chakra flow to Kubikiribocho to magnet release and funneling wind into the kitchen knife. A sweep with the larger blade triggered a block with the pair of fish-shaped blades, only for them to stick in place. The kitchen knife then came down and started, just barely, to cut one of the two...before the pull on the chakra increased and the cutting power vanished at the same time that the twin blades were released from the larger one.

Jumping back, Naruto scowled. "Right. They don't have to absorb your chakra, do they?"

Chojuro blinked, staring at the small cut in one of the two blades. "You...you tried to cut Hiramekarei...with a kitchen knife."

"Yep." The kitchen knife vanished in a puff of smoke, only to be replaced with a tanto. "But I think I need something a little bit stronger with the way you're wielding those two."

Apparently the previous rage from implying cutting up swords with a kitchen knife was nothing compared to attempting to do so with a legendary sword. Admittedly, Tenten would likely be just as annoyed and liable to yell at him for an hour or so if or when she found out, but she wasn't the one currently dropping into a murderous rage while wielding the legendary sword. At the same time, pulling the tanto out was probably a good idea, because it was just large enough to block some of the hammer-blow attacks and it seemed that Chojuro might have still been holding back before.

Using a tanto with the larger swords wasn't something Naruto had practiced as much as the knife or dagger, but he did have plenty of tanto practice and was able to mix it in well enough to handle the seemingly-sloppy blocks and cuts.

"He has no form," Karui swore as she watched the match. "It seems that he barely uses his swords at all, even, and I should be embarrassed to have considered him a sword user at all even if he does have a legendary blade. He's obviously had more practice with the kitchen knife than the swords!"

"Word is he can cook," Hitomo commented. "So that kind of makes sense."

"...he's making a mockery of kenjutsu specialists by making it seem like anyone can just grab a sword and run with it!"

"Which makes dealing with idiots on missions easier."

Okay, he might have a point on that one. "That still doesn't mean that he should be escaping entirely unscathed like this."

"I'm honestly impressed with his skill, personally."

"...what skill?"

"You can't see that this is anything but aimless flailing? No obvious stance, but he always has the blades he needs in the positions he needs them in. Not once with the kitchen knife was it the one in position to block a hammer blow, and he only dodged when there were two hammer blows incoming. In a shorter fight it wouldn't have been obvious, but there's no way he's managing to keep his blades ready to block every time by accident or luck. My guess is closer to self-taught, or perhaps originally figured out against worthless bandits and in dire need of refinement."

Now that Hitomo had mentioned it, Karui could see what he was talking about. It wasn't likely something that could be noticed if you were participating in the fight, but from the outside it was definitely there. And then her left eye started twitching. "I've still not seen him fight the same way twice!"

"He's an Uzumaki, only predictable in their unpredictability."

That brought her up short. "...there was an entire clan of people like him."

"Yep."

"They had to be the single most infuriating opponents on the planet."

"Bad enough for multiple villages to team up to take them down and nearly lose, with rumor having it that they caused less actual damage than originally reported."

A lull in the battle as Chojuro once again regained his mental footing was enough for Naruto to decide that the tanto wasn't going to continue to cut it, so he stored it and pulled out Kusanagi. That paired with Kubikiribocho was a combination that he'd practiced far more, and against the legendary pair of Hiramekarei it appeared that the additional power might be needed. Well, either that or a more obvious show of having proper skills, but that was quitter talk when you'd already committed to a bit.

Having a sword that could match some of the 'suddenly longer' tricks was an added bonus, and even better was that until that trick was used Chojuro wouldn't be likely to expect it. Being able to release the sword and control it with chakra was another possibility for a surprise, though channeling chakra through it to increase its already impressive cutting ability was a lot harder at range.

Idly wondering if Chojuro had noticed that the small cut in one of the two fish-shaped blades was already gone, likely courtesy of some self-repair seal or similar built into the swords, Naruto darted in close again. This time the sweep of Kubikiribocho wasn't blocked in the same way, merely deflected, but that was okay because it still left an opening for Kusanagi to come in. To Chojuro's credit, he did get one of the two blades up to block...but that wasn't enough to stop Kusanagi, just slow it down..

Unlike with the kitchen knife, Kusanagi both didn't rely on chakra flow for its cutting power and seemed better at holding onto the chakra being flowed through it. The combination meant that one of the two fish-shaped swords was cut clear in half and Chojuro barely avoided having his arm cut off. In fact, the latter had only been avoided because Naruto pulled back on Kusanagi in time while aiming for it to look like he just didn't know how to follow through on the strike properly.

"What...how?" Chojuro said as Naruto darted back. The older shinobi didn't seem to notice as he stared at the damaged sword.

"Kusanagi is sharp," Naruto answered.

That got a look at the sword, that hadn't even been extended yet. "...how many legendary swords do you have?"

"Only the two, but that's because I handed Nuibari and Shibuki off to my teammates."

A potential international incident regarding destroying a legendary sword in a demonstration match was resolved through Naruto demonstrating that the sword could be repaired with enough chakra. That nobody noticed one of his clones sealing away the cut-off part of the sword so that it could be examined to maybe figure out secrets later was another thing entirely, especially as Chojuro assumed that the cut-off piece had vanished because it had been pulled back into place instead of run off with.

"You feeling better?" Temari asked.

Kankuro shivered slightly, flashing back to the sight of the one-tail in puppet form. "No."

"Well, you're responsive now."

"A supposedly-novice puppeteer was controlling seven puppets without any obvious effort, two of them flying, and either found or made a puppet of the one-tail. That he happens to be bound to the remains of."

"...I'm doing my best to suppress the horror of that puppet."

"He didn't even need to keep his fingers under control to avoid having the puppets do things he didn't intend. It was like he breathed life into them and then let them do their own thing instead of controlling them directly!"

It was obvious that Temari hadn't noticed that particular detail, but she wasn't a puppeteer trained to pay attention to what another puppet-user was doing with their fingers to try and determine what the puppets would do next. Not quite the same as keeping an eye on hand seals, but Uzumaki almost never used those either. Maybe there was a way to train yourself to maintain and control the chakra strings without needing to connect them to your fingers? Sasori had to use some other method to maintain his chakra strings when controlling the hundred puppets he was famed to be able to control, after all.

"One of the jounin did suggest that he's not a newbie," Temari finally said. "They recognized two of the other puppets as other Sasori designs and questioned if Konoha has had them for longer than we knew."

Kankuro blinked a couple of times. "So...someone who's been working with some of Sasori's puppets for years and just kept it secret?"

"That's the guess, and if they had to recreate things from scratch then they might have developed an entirely different technique."

"Which would imply that our generations of refinement could be losing out to some new way of doing things."

"Or maybe their method doesn't hold up in actual fights, which we don't know because the intimidation factor worked too well against you."

...dammit, that was a...good...no, wait, it wasn't. "They mentioned Sasori approving of his skills, and I don't think they were kidding."

Well, at least she knew enough about puppeteering to pale slightly at that implication.

"So all four Konoha teams made it through to the second stage," Naruto noted as the five sensei ate a meal together.

"They haven't told us that yet," Kurenai-sensei noted. Not questioning, just stating it.

"All four teams were led out of the village to the caves a few minutes ago," Hinata noted. Which could be explained by her checking with her byakugan, or by her or Naruto being good sensors.

In reality, they'd both known that the four teams had passed before anyone was led out of the village thanks to Hoshi and clones monitoring things and reporting back. More clones were in the caves, and Hoshi had followed the genin in. More for monitoring and reporting on things than with any specific plans to ramp up the difficulty this time.

"Which means we've got a few days to kill," Tekuno said. "And not much we're allowed to do here."

"Did you know they set up a 'visiting shinobi' mission desk?" Naruto asked, only to get looks from the other four. "Specifically for sensei that are willing to do C-rank missions nearby while Kumo's shinobi are busy running the exams right now, but as I understand it they'll be including things suitable for genin should preliminaries eliminate only part of a team."

"Now that's an interesting way of handling visitors," Yugao commented. "Logical on the surface, but showing that they've got a smaller shinobi pool than we do in a general sense."

"They need far more shinobi dedicated to in-village tasks than we do with our civilian population."

"True, but they don't need to defend a civilian population either."

Tekuno nodded. "A better question for the moment is if anything in their mission list is interesting enough for us, not to mention if Naruto is willing to let any of us take Kumo up on the offer."

Naruto shrugged. "Couple of escort missions that should only take a week, three bandit-eliminations, and a bunch of low-importance courier tasks. Nothing all that interesting unless you want to see how bandits act here compared to back home, but I don't have a problem with any of you deciding to take them up on things."

"Are you going to take any in order to slip out and complete any of the other missions you were given?" Kurenai-sensei asked.

"Don't have anything left that isn't directly tied to the exams."

"...seriously?"

Hinata grinned. "Hokage-sama was quite surprised with our turned-in reports."

"I got pictures," Naruto added, pulling out a small stack of pictures from a seal and handing out copies.

"You got pictures from inside of his office," Yugao observed.

"Yep. Fairly certain he and his guards didn't notice me getting the pictures either. As far as I know none of the copies I gave to Old Man Hiruzen, Tsunade, or Hiashi have been revealed yet, but they haven't held their meeting about the mission results yet as they're waiting on the final reports to come in."

"...you secretly got pictures from inside of his office?"

"Do you want to see the ones I have of the Raikage learning about the banners?"

Even Hinata seemed to be surprised about that one.

Despite permission being granted, no attempt had been made by Hinata or the three jounin to take any of Kumo's offered missions. They left that to the other villages, and by the end of the day the stack of missions was still depleted. Nobody had come to inform the Konoha group about the mission desk either, making it seem like it was something the other villages just knew to look for...possibly because Konoha was the only hidden village that didn't do this in some fashion.

That information likely made it into all of their reports.

Monitoring the second stage continued, and someone was sent to notify all the sensei that preliminary matches would be needed a day before the stage was supposed to end. All four Konoha teams had made it through by then, with only one Kiri team keeping it from being all Konoha and Kumo right now. Four other Kiri teams were looking like they had a good chance of pulling through as well, and there might be a single team from one of the smaller villages that made it through, but it wasn't looking likely that any more than that would.

...more amusing was that the Team Yurei food cart was doing better business than the Kumo cafeteria in the bunker at the end of the second stage, with a training hall having been ceded to the trio to set up the larger cart in so that Kiba could make more jerky. It also seemed that nobody was checking for binary knockout drugs, because everything being served to non-Konoha shinobi was laced with a component of one and none of the genin had avoided the cart once it was available.

"We've got a couple of hours before the second stage is officially over," Yugito said to the gathered sensei. "There's a chance that at most one more team will make it through, but we're calling it incredibly unlikely as the needed token is currently buried in a cave-in." There were a couple of flinches there. "The only fatality so far has been a single Shimogakure kunoichi, who happened to be the one that triggered the cave-in, and that team was already extracted and has departed."

It had been very stupid of the girl to use explosive tags in a cramped cave system, and if not for some quick work by one of Hinata's clones the entire team and two others would've been buried. Instead the single kunoichi had been crushed and it was unlikely that anyone realized that external intervention had happened at all. Naruto also wasn't as nice as Hinata and probably wouldn't have intervened as much as she had since no Konoha shinobi were involved.

...he'd have probably still saved the two Kumo teams, but allowed the entire Shimo team to be crushed by their teammate. Especially as neither of the girl's teammates had told her off for her previous use of explosive tags.

"Unless someone finds that token then we're only looking at Kumo, Kiri, and Konoha in the preliminary elimination rounds," Yugito continued. "Kumo with half of the teams, the other half split down the middle between Kiri and Konoha. We'll be using a computer-generated random set of matches with a bias for pairing up entrants across villages, so all the initial matches are going to be non-Kumo entrants against Kumo entrants unless things are unbalanced by another team finding that last token. We need two rounds though, because we've got four times too many genin for the final stage, but the bracket will be laid out such that nobody will have any chance of fighting a teammate in the second round."

It was nice to know that they admitted to the pairing biases. Naruto's clones had even found and checked the computer, deciding against tweaking the settings after generating a couple of sample sets of combatants. The software was less configurable than the version Konoha used, and the terminal did need a password...that someone had helpfully stuck on a note attached underneath the upper-left drawer of the desk. Which was admittedly more secure than under the keyboard itself, given that the desk was locked, but not secure enough.

Being led through to the external entrance to the bunker had been reasonably straightforward, though if they normally brought injured anyone through this route then it could probably stand to have a wider path. Of course, it was likely that this was the backup access method as the cave-in had destroyed a more direct path, and Naruto had needed to update maps to include those details.

Despite being in the bunker, the group of sensei were sequestered in a set of rooms the genin didn't have access to as the second stage timer ran down. Which didn't stop Team Yurei's genin, or Tenten, from reaching out to Naruto and Hinata with the communication technique upon realizing that they were there. Included was confirmation of the plan to use the knockout drugs to simplify elimination matches as a way of sticking with the chef theming.

"I've just heard from the engineering staff," Yugito said as she returned from an 'urgent meeting' that she'd been informed of when they arrived. "We were going to hold the preliminary matches here, but they don't trust some of the support columns after the cave-in and they want to get everyone out as soon as possible. A nearby training ground is being prepared instead and we'll be pulling teams that pass the second stage there and sending all others back to the village proper. Those still in the caves will be escorted out the entrance they were brought in through, but you'll be welcome to join them."

Those with teams that had passed were taken by Yugito to collect their teams and head off to the training ground for the preliminary matches while the rest were brought to the caves to collect their teams from inside of them or to where their eliminated teams had been staying before being escorted out of the bunker. There was some grumbling about not being able to see the preliminaries, but Naruto didn't think it was that serious. Konoha hadn't let the sensei of eliminated teams watch their preliminaries either, after all.L